This isn't a blog

ungoliantschilde:

truffletroll:

ungoliantschilde:

brevoortformspring:

Malcolm X didn’t go around killing hundreds of people that didn’t agree with his position or philosophy—or were just in the way of his latest objective.

And an allegory is not a direct translation. That is why ‘allegory’ is its own separate word.

True, but there needs to be enough similarities between the subjects for the allegory/metaphor to work. That’s simply not the case here, and to suggest there is, is at best, offensive.

I’m not sure that even Claremont meant to compare Magneto and Malcolm X; it seems his only intent was to depict the relationship between Malcolm X and MLK, through Magneto and Xavier (it was a false dynamic, but I won’t get into that here).

I agree, but that was more Roy Thomas and Stan Lee than Chris Claremont. And it was never more than a comparison, as opposed to an allegory or a direct representation.

And no, I do not think that Malcolm X was terrorist. I think Malcolm X was a political activist at best, and a rabble-rouser at his worst. Like all of us, Malcolm X was just a Human being. Subject to the same faults and mistakes as the rest of humanity.

Malcolm fought hate with hate, and I understand why… I just don’t agree with it. Then again, I am not a black guy living in 1960s America. I might feel differently if I was in his shoes.

Magneto is pretty clear cut to me though. Malcolm X is more of a moral gray area in my mind, as comparison. Magneto is quite clearly a monstrous person that has allowed his own sadness to dictate his actions. He lives only to please himself.

He wraps himself in the banner of prosperity for Mutants, but it is really only about him. Magneto serves his own goals, no matter what else he tells himself. It’s like the quote I gave before from the first X-Men movie, where Wolverine tells Magneto that he is full of it because he wants to change the world, but only for his own benefit and at someone else’s expense. Magneto is not righteous. He is selfish.

I dunno…Lee & Kirby apparently created the X-Men to avoid having to think up new origins all the time. There were certainly themes of outsiderness and disenfranchisement in those issues, but I think that was more to with teenagedom (Spider-Man shared the same themes) than black civil rights. Claremont was the one that turned mutants into a metaphor for minorities, and drew parallels between Mags-Xavier and Malcolm X-MLK. 

I can see where he was coming from – at the time (and even now, actually), the media painted Malcolm X as militant who encouraged violence, and MLK as a “model minority” and a less threatening option. It’s easy to see how Mags and Xavier fit into that dynamic. Malcolm X never actually preached violence, though, just self-defence (and not the George Zimmerman type of self-defence, either!). That’s why I don’t think comparisons, of any sort, should be made between Malcolm X and Magneto.