Muhammad Ali, Thomas Hobbes, and the Politics of Fear

I get the sense that Muhammed Ali was implying the idea of an autonomous black belt nation to which he owed his loyalty, not the United States of which he was not a citizen. He quite possibly did not think of white Americans as fellow citizens but as citizens of a different nation state. I have read more about how the NOI influenced Malcolm X and how he broke with the NOI in his last years. We would have to investigate this influence to understand the nature of Muhammed Ali’s defiance.

Do remember that Malcolm X was a passionate advocate of autonomous black nationalism, going so far as to counsel against integration as Muhammad Ali would also. Malcolm X would break this nationalism, this attempt to bring the interstate system to the US. I believe that Muhammad Ali is on record as regretting that he did not follow Malcolm X here. There is a lot to be understood here about the well springs of Muhammad Ali’s defiance. But I can’t see how the NOI is not part of the story.

OK, it seems controversial here to claim that to understand Muhammad Ali’s politics in the 60s we have to understand his relationship to the Nation of Islam and the nature of Elijah Muhammad’s black ***nationalism***. Wow. Please enlighten me, layman, about black political thought.

@ RNB, you misunderstand my skepticism. It’s directed at the notion that you’ll cough up some textual evidence. But, never mind – I know pretty much nothing about black political thought, so I’ll shut up.

Had this piece been better researched (say by reading the Time obit), we might have learned that “Ali filed for status as a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War, on the grounds that his religion prevented him from “participating in wars on the side of nonbelievers, and this is a Christian country, not a Muslim country. We are not, according to the Holy Qur’an, to even as much as aid in passing a cup of water to the wounded.” http://time.com/3646214/muhammad-ali-dead-obituary/

My general objection to the sloppiness of sourcing here, and to that of RNB, in particular, is a matter of record. However, in this case, RNB appears to be right on the mark. Ali himself situated his refusal to serve within the long-established tradition of religious conscientious objection.

Further, Ali very likely had the specific example of NOI founder Elijah Muhammad in mind when he declared his willingness to accept incarceration, rather than serve. Dawn-Marie Gibson describes how Elijah Muhammad was arrested in 1942 for violating the Selective Service Act and refused parole in 1943 (A History of the Nation of Islam, p. 31)

So, there’s that.

Elijah Mohammed in “What The Muslims Believe”:

“10. WE BELIEVE that we who declare ourselves to be righteous Muslims, should not participate in wars which take the lives of humans. We do not believe this nation should force us to take part in such wars, for we have nothing to gain from it unless America agrees to give us the necessary territory wherein we may have something to fight for.”

Muhammad Ali:

“War is against the teachings of the Holy Qur’an. I’m not trying to dodge the draft. We are not supposed to take part in no wars unless declared by Allah or The Messenger [i.e. Elijah Muhammad]. We don’t take part in Christian wars or wars of any unbelievers.”

As to the radicalism [for radicalism’s sake] of Ali’s position, see this from the NYT obit:

“I remember when Ali joined the Nation of Islam,” Julian Bond, the civil rights activist and politician, once said. “The act of joining was not something many of us particularly liked. But the notion he’d do it — that he’d jump out there, join this group that was so despised by mainstream America, and be proud of it — sent a little thrill through you.”

And as to “peddling an anodyne ‘We’re all human beings, let’s be friends’ piece of feel-good agitprop,” sometimes anodyne “We’re all human beings, let’s be friends” is just fine:

“I enjoyed interviews with Howard the best,” Ali told The Associated Press yesterday. “We always put on a good show. I hope to meet him one day in the hereafter. I can hear Howard now, saying, ‘Muhammad, you’re not the man you used to be.'”

That’s from the NYT obit of Cosell in April of ’95.

CR wrote ‘I never challenged the claim about the influence of the NOI on Ali. It was this claim: that Ali was articulating the notion, in RNB’s words, that “blacks were members of an autonomous black nation who should have their own state, perhaps in the Black Belt; they thus could not be conscripted to serve in an army of a foreign state.”’

I did not say that Ali was articulating that notion. I said that he may have believed it. It is something worth investigating. Malcolm X believed it–that was the meaning of his black separatism and nationalism until the last years of his life. Muhammad Ali was inspired by Malcolm X. What I said is that to understand Muhammad Ali’s political defiance we have to understand what he understood by the nationalist politics of the Nation of Islam at that time.

Black nationalism can be a form of interest group politics within a nation but it can also be a form of actual nationalism. For some time Malcolm X was an actual racial nationalist, even willing to cooperate with the Klan in standing against integration for which the civil rights activists were fighting. Like Malcolm X in the last years of his life Muhammad Ali would later break from the Nation of Islam and its leaders Elijah Muhammad and Louis Farrakhan. But Muhammad Ali did not follow Malcolm X out of the Nation of Islam at the time.

RNB, this post is about the threat Ali’s words posed to the state when an individual claims he right to choose their enemies. That threat doesn’t change just because the individual chooses it as part of a set of political beliefs. I’m not sure why you take issue with the interpretation of Ali’s claim in this sense, since he could be taking back the right to define his enemies under the ideals of the NOI to a union or a Marxist organization or a lesbian separatist perspective but it would still be the same threat to the Hobbesian ideal. What’s your problem with the actual claim of the OP, except to bristle at the omission of the NOI’s influence on Ali? Also, since this argument is about how the state perceived the threat of radicals like Ali, do you have any evidence that the popular response to Ali’s statements at the time was to interpret it clearly in terms of the threat of black Islam as a separate nation state atwarwith the US? Or is the popular response more just an inchoate expression of the threat the OP identifies?

Also Some commenters might want to dial back on the attempt to paint Ali as dumb and easily influenced by the NOI. A few people here seem to be having difficulty understanding that an uneducated black man would be able to stake out and defend his own political positions without being influenced by a shadowy organization. Crooked Timber has a couple of threads about the science of IQ – you might want to read them before buying into the idea that Ali was stupid and easily manipulated. He may not have been “intelligent” to the army’s standards but the evidence of his fighting style and his skill with words suggests he was a lot smarter than most (mostly white, middle or upper class) commentators of the time were willing to give him credit for.

The NYT obit for Ali, which is quite long and which I read today (well, 80 – 90 percent of it at any rate), left me with a couple of impressions relevant to the OP and thread. Not going back to check details but I think the gist is right.

First, Ali’s remark about the Vietcong, made under pressure of or in response to press questioning in around Feb. ’66, when the Fulbright For. Rel. Cte televised hearings on the war were upsetting the Johnson admin, made headlines and definitely caused a stir in govt and other circles. Whatever the motives for his refusal to fight in Vietnam, and religious beliefs doubtless were a major factor, the three years’ enforced absence from boxing, during which he gave speeches at campuses, forced him to think more about his answers to these questions (i.e. about the war) and articulate them more sharply.

Second, I think the question of intelligence is something of a red herring or a false trail (pick your metaphor) here. Pretty clearly, Ali was far from ‘stupid’. It’s true that he, according to the obit, did not have an academic bent, graduated toward the low end of his high school class, and, quoting the obit, “was not taught to read properly” — a construction that places the blame on those responsible for teaching him, which may or may not be correct (though it’s certainly not hard to imagine some students getting through the segregated schools of Louisville at the time without learning to read well). All that does not necessarily have anything to do w intelligence. His reading deficit may account for why he didn’t pass some sort of Army aptitude test that he took, but the Army, again according to the obit, subsequently lowered the cutoff score, which is why Ali’s draft status was reclassified 1A and the conscientious-objection issue then came to a head and he was stripped of his titles by state boxing commissioners and out of the ring for 3 and a half years while his case made its way through the courts.

Ecrasez:
In 1967, two years later, Ali refused conscription

Pretty sure the obit I read said 1966, b.c, as I mentioned above, it coincided with the Senate hearings.

*exemption*

Since I mentioned the NYT obit (by Robert Lipsyte) @27, here is the link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/04/sports/muhammad-ali-dies.html?_r=1

Btw, I think my only quibble w the OP, and it is a quibble, is that the Viet Cong weren’t a sovereign state, though they were supported by one (or by a govt that had considerably more claim to be one), namely N. Vietnam. But it doesn’t change the OP’s argument.

They framed it (afaicr) as a religious exemption , and the religious movement he belonged to was the Nation of Islam

Which is to say it’s a mistake to see religious belief , politics and ideology as unrelated, in this case

They framed it (afaicr) as a religious exemption , and the religious movement he belonged to was the Nation of Islam

Assuming this is correct, I take yr pt that membership of the NOI was or cd be in itself a challenge to the state’s legitimacy to define enemies.

But my pt is, when a public figure and boxing champion declared to the press, concident w/ the Fulbright hearings, that he has nothing against the Viet Cong, that was, as D. Rowan put it above, ‘flipping the bird’ to the govt. And it’s something that doesn’t depend on being a member of the NOI. That is, he cd still have concluded that had “nothing against” the Viet Cong even if he hadn’t been an NOI member.

Right, but it’s the difference between wanting to see him as a member of the counterculture at the time (flipping the bird to the establishment) or a committed ideologue to a pretty illiberal seperatist movement. The first narrative better suits our contemporary standards and the myth of Ali that has been built up , but the second narrative is probably more accurate

I am very wary of negative opinions of pan-African ideology, not least because I remember the cancellation of two or three pan-African programs on LA’s KPFK in the ’80s or ’90s for no good reason. I’d learned a lot from those shows, and it pissed me off that the station got rid of them. Moreover, I never got the sense that pan-Africanists were “committed ideologues” in ways that counterculture opponents of ordinary government bullshit were not. I, for one, believe it’s possible to accept pan-Africanist ideas without being “committed” or “illiberal.”

“I’ve never seen any evidence that Ali or his attorneys held to the position,” I am talking about that case (hence that “or his attorneys”) and that public argument, both in its legal and larger political dimensions.

So the Muslim Program is contained in “Message to the Blackman” 1965. The Encyclopedia of Muslim-American History says this was submitted as evidence to the Court and played a key role in clarifying the religious basis of the objection to military service. It’s the second paragraph down.

https://books.google.com/books?id=owZCMZpYamMC&pg=PA117

So all the quotes above were put before the court by Ali’s lawyers.

Saying Ali didn’t come up with his quotes himself, or that his political stance was determined by others, is part of a long cultural tradition of denying black people their own voice. This is what Ali attacked with his name change and the quote in the OP about getting used to it. Applied to a boxer this is particularly stupid example of the tradition, since boxers are kind of loose cannons and we have evidence of Ali deploying this political theory in the ring, when he beat down his opponent and then said “what’s my name fool? Say my name!” (To a boxer who had refused to use it) His power was in his ability to say pure political statements in rough poetry that worked and suited his character. The idea that he had charisma but couldn’t frame his own one liners is just silly. And notably this kind of qualification is never applied to non-black boxers like Tyson fury or pacquiao. I wonder why..?

Lfc, the myth is that he was little more than a counterculture icon and bog standard liberal. The myth is that a lot of people today who consider themselves as moderate, who like to work through the system and reject extremism would have been his natural allies at the time. This is what you see in the hagiographies of Ali, which see him in the most convenient light possible for contemporary liberals , as an almost a banal character who can be admired for his witty repertoire, eloquence and right on politics.
The reality is He’s probably more interesting than that (afaict) , as are most historically important political figures who get stolen by some political faction, reimagined through contemporary priorities and turned into factional saints

@53: Perhaps it is a good thing that Smokin’ Joe has left us, because if he could read and hear some of the piffle in circulation today he would not only be smoking but would probably spontaneously combust.

Thanks of course to Ecrasez l’Infame for the textual evidence.

When speaking about war, the question would be who are you going to align with; as an (ordinary) individual I have no practical power, just as my individual vote is not meaningful. In this context such as the Nation, or even the anti-war movement collectively, can be at least the equal of sovereign states in their ability to command people’s loyalties, if not command their actions.

As individuals we must chose individual size enemies. That is, other nearby individuals, as a rule.

Someone has uploaded to You Tube a 1968 episode of Firing Line, Wm F. Buckley’s show, on which Muhammad Ali was the guest. Unfortunately the audio and video are out of sync so I didn’t watch more than the opening couple of minutes.

[Ended up watching (also on You Tube) a 1984 Firing Line w Buckley, Christopher Hitchens, and R. Emmet Tyrell. It was sort of all over the place, but there were some interesting moments, e.g. a discussion of Iran, and some bits about Vietnam at the end. Plus some amusing moments as well. However, it’s all pretty much off-topic.]

Shifting focus to Hobbes, it’s probably more accurate to say that the “ability of the state to define for its citizens whom they should fear and who were their enemies..” is an aspiration rather than a fact. After all, in Hobbes’ day, numerous British subjects went into the French, Russian, Spanish, Dutch or various German services and were not thereby deemed traitors, even if Britain was at the time at war with one or other of these. It is a tradition that persists in corners even now, and was, of course, a significant part of World War II. Moreover, universal liability for conscription is quire recent, so it was quite possible to sit out a war. It remains possible to oppose one politically.

Possibly the state was the more offended by Ali because the issue was not as clearcut as they would pretend.

Tabasco, thanks to the current candidate, we now know that an endorsement is only an endorsement if you actually say “I endorse X”. Saying “I support the nominee” or “I will vote for X ” apparently no longer counts as an endorsement. Just ask Paul Ryan .

RNB you don’t seem to have any argument with the OP. The point in the OP is that asserting an individual right to choose an enemy is a challenge to the Hobbesian view of the state. There’s nothing in the OP that says your reasons have to be correct, or you can’t do it as part of the political platform of your preferred organization. Is your point that Ali was not actually challenging the state, but betraying it? That might be academically correct but do you think the people who freaked out about an outspoken black man refusing to acknowledge another race as his enemy saw him as a traitor because they knew about he NOI’s separatist ideals, or because they saw an outspoken black man challenging the right of the state to set his enemies for him? The response seems pretty clearly to have been subconscious hobbesianism, not any kind of reasoned analysis of Ali’s allegiance to a rival state. Also, from the point of view of white america in the 1960s, NOI theory was just a load of bullshit to paint over the actions of a bunch of uppity blacks. I doubt they took the NOIs program for a new state seriously, but they would have been very concerned about a very public and charismatic spokesperson challenging their Hobbesian right to tell him who to kill.

I think you need to engage with the OP more if you want to make a clear point. A start would be to show some evidence that anyone responding to Ali’s position on the draft interpreted it primarily in terms of NOI nationalist ideals rather than as a straight up challenge to white authority.

Also I think you could make a better case of you recognized that Ali went to the NOI because they appealed to his well formed political ideals, rather than assuming he didn’t have a clue and adopted the ideals of the group he fell in with.

Except that the Americans were bombing Vietnam, so a Vietnamese boxer wouldn’t really have had the same grounds to make the claim as Muhammad Ali had. Also, boxing wasn’t really a big deal in Vietnam back then, so that boxer likely wouldn’t have had a public platform to make a pacifist case…

“The response seems pretty clearly to have been subconscious hobbesianism, not any kind of reasoned analysis of Ali’s allegiance to a rival state.”

A lot of the hostility he received, even from liberal sportswriters commited to the civil rights movement , was because of his relationship with the NOI, because of their threat of violence, their racial rhetoric, and their threat to both the white establishment and more moderate civil rights movement. This is what first brought him to the attention of the fbi as a young up and coming fighter dabbling with these religious and political views, and it’s what made the hostility to him so pronounced. You can’t remove the practicalities of his life at the time, the organisations and people he supported, the views he espoused, from this free floating intellectual idea of him challenging the “Hobbesian view of the state. ”
But I agree with your larger point, I have no idea what the arguing is about. I think the OP could have paced him much more explicitly in this milleu, but nothing in the OP contradicts rnb or Ecrasez l’Infame or ks’ broader point.

Corey, I very much appreciate the post. I hadn’t thought that far about Ali’s stance, and like it. Good stuff to ruminate on.

Holy shit are a lot of the comments dumb as posts these days. Actually, maybe that’s unfair to posts, which mostly serve simple but valuable purposes.

He was asserting the right of the citizen to be the final judge of what threatens or endangers him. In asserting that right, Ali was posing the deepest, most fundamental challenge to the power and authority of the state. …. That he also claimed to be more threatened by his own fellow citizens and government than by an officially declared enemy of the state only added to the subversiveness of his challenge.

I don’t really follow the reasoning of the post. He didn’t “also” claim that his fellow citizens and government were his enemy, that seems like the entirety of his claim. His words, to me, have nothing to do with whether the Vietcong (or the “Chinese or Japanese”) were his enemy, they are about the idea that the US was his enemy.

The idea that the US was being unjust or paradoxical or hypocritical in drafting people while not treating them equally was a spur to lower the drinking and voting ages, obviously this idea was even more pertinent with respect to racial inequality. Probably I am missing something, but Ali just seems to have made the point very forcefully.

hardindr @80
I just now saw your post @12, where you link to Kevin Drum in support of yr statement that Ali never said the quote the OP is based on. Glancing at the opening of the Drum piece, it appears that the quote in the OP is an amalgam of two separate quotes. However, Drum agrees that Ali said in 1966 that he had ‘nothing against the Viet Cong’. The OP could have gone with that quote and made the same argument.

You write: “People commenting here have no idea what they are writing about. I do not want to be associated with their foolishness.” So is it your claim that you are the only person in the thread who knows what s/he is writing about? Your statement is a little unclear on this score.

It seems to me that Ali’s refusal to go to Vietnam was very much in line with Martin Luther King’s views, and is another expression of the moral contradiction which Lyndon Johnson tragically embraced. The US Government finally, after Kennedy’s assassination and the murders in Philadelphia, MS, takes a full-blown stand against racism and for black America (and as King would assert, all America, since white America is poisoned by its racism even more than Black America). Then the next day the Vietnam War arrives via the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. “Bbbbut I thought we were accepting the principles of non-violence at long last.” The tragedy is that Johnson didn’t keep listening to King and Ali.

One of the comments hardindr seeks to have deleted is @12, which includes a link to Kevin Drum bemoaning the deception of an ellipsis between “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong” and “They never called me nigger.” In Drum’s account the ellipsis elides 13 months between utterances. “I have to cry foul on that, no matter how good it makes the quote,” he concludes. I think it’s more complicated than Drum allows.

Without sourcing, the BBC attributes this to Ali: “Man, I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong. No Viet Cong ever called me nigger.” It is possible that the BBC can’t resist a good quote. The video linked from the OP of Ali speaking to a group of white college students vaguely indicates that it took place “in a public open forum at a university in his exile from 1967 through 1970,” and Drum cites March 1967 as the month in which Ali said, “They never called me nigger.” Yet there are articles in the Los Angeles Times reporting badges and picket signs with the motto, “No Viet Cong ever called me nigger.” (“Negroes Infiltrate Recruits, Decry War,” Aug. 18, 1966, 23; William Trombley, “UC Negro Student Group Hits ‘Black Power’ Conference,” Oct. 27, 1966, 3) Later in the same newspaper, an article begins,

“Rap Brown claimed the Vietnamese never called him nigger.
“Muhammad Ali often boasted that he had no argument with the Viet Cong.”
(Stanley O. Williford, “Asian Americans Tell of Bigotry in Vietnam,” May 16, 1971, B1)

Drum assumes the popular quote to be the product of a fusion of the two quotes he reproduces, but it seems at least as likely that Ali said something similar on another occasion, perhaps several other occasions. It also seems likely that Ali didn’t originate the “never called me” remark. Unless Williford is mistaken, it could have been H. Rap Brown. Or it could have emerged as a motto among student activists. Knowing a “good quote” when he hears one, Ali deployed it. In any event, it’s a stretch to suggest Ali never actually said it.