Learning Targets:1) I can seek to understand other
perspectives from varied backgrounds.
2) I can draw evidence from literary or informational texts
to support analysis, reflection, and research.
The following notes assignment will be used as your
reference material for the in-class essay, which we will be writing on Tuesday. You will
send along these notes with the completed essay by midnight Tuesday.
As preparation for your own interviews; please read
carefully. The essay is simply a compare and contrast between the two interview styles: Question and Answer (q and a) and story. You will use the notes you have compiled from reading the Malcolm X interview and either the Elvis Costello or Hitler interview.
In class today (Friday) and Monday, you are first listening to an NPR interview (link below) and then
reading two interviews.
After having listened to the NPR interview, read the Malcolm X interview, and then choose either
the Elvis Costello, an English singer song writer, who is routinely listed in
the 100 greatest artists of all times or the one on Hitler. The
interviews are longish, and the expectation is that your do not skim, but read
everything. That is why you have two days. Please read silently- and
independently. Some of what they say may be disturbing. Remain open-minded and
focus on the language and technique.
Assignment: 1) First listen to the NPR question (link below)
Note the types of questions (open or closed ended), the background knowledge
that the interviewer brings, the manner in which the interviewer rephrases and
paraphrases what the interviewee said. As well, note how the interviewer
maintains a sense of non-bias. You do not have to write anything for this, but listen carefully.
2) Open up a word document and take notes on the following
check list, which you will use as a reference on Tuesday, when you write a
comparison essay between the Q and A and story techniques used in the interviews. Make sure your notes are easily accessible
and include textual evidence. This is all you will have to write your essay.
You will not have access to the articles that you read. This is a writing
assignment (50%) category.
Checklist of what you should be looking for:
1. Note the types of
questions used (check Monday / Tuesday's blog, if unsure); look for examples
from the interviews.
2. word choices of the interviewer (select a few and make an
analytical observation- remember these are notes; you do not need complete
sentences.)
3. comments on the surroundings
4. how they handled delicate questions (like what?)
5. how they demonstrated they were listening and attuned to
Malcolm X and Costello or Hitler.
6. In the Costello or Hitler interview, how were the
interviewee's words integrated into the story
7. Make sure to include textual examples. Note that you can
copy and paste from the interviews directly into your notes. This will save
time.
Like I said, you will
be able to use your notes, so make them copious. Copy and paste from the text as needed. Reflect on what you heard yesterday in the
Ted Talk.
One more item:
You will completing two interviews, one in each of the
following styles. You will be using the Costello style for your assigned
classmate interview and the question / response (q and a) for your outside
interview. More information will be forthcoming.
SUMMARY: you are listening to the NPR interview
You
must read the Malcolm X interview- the style is Question and Answer (q and a)
You must choose to read either the Elvis Costello interview OR the
Hitler interview – the style is referred to as a story interview
The following interview is considered one of the
best of the 20th century. It gives us deep insight into Malcolm X and the Civil
Rights Movement.
The Malcolm X Interview
A PLAYBOY CLASSIC: ALEX HALEY INTERVIEWS MALCOLM X
On February 21, 1965, Malcolm X was gunned down in the
Audubon Ballroom in Harlem. One witness to the hail of gunfire that killed him
was his then four−year old daughter, Qubilah Shabazz, who has now, at age 34,
has been implicated in a plot to kill her father’s bitter rival, Louis
Farrakhan. In light of the continuing controversy over Malcolm X’s death, and
life, we now offer visitors the opportunity to read the great spiritual and
political leader’s own account of his beliefs, as recounted in a May 1963 PLAYBOY
INTERVIEW. The questioner was the late Alex Haley, who would go on to co−author
The Autobiography of Malcolm X before completing his own masterpiece of
African−American literature, ROOTS. Many will be shocked by what he has to say;
others will be outraged. Our own view is that this interview is both an
eloquent statement and a damning self−indictment of one noxious facet of
rampant racism. As such, we believe it merits publication−−and reading.
PLAYBOY: What is the ambition of the Black Muslims?
MALCOLM X: Freedom, justice and equality are our principal
ambitions. And to faithfully serve and follow the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is
the guiding goal of every Muslim. Mr. Muhammad teaches us the knowledge of our
own selves, and of our own people. He cleans us up−−morally, mentally and
spiritually−−and he reforms us of the vices that have blinded us here in the
Western society. He stops black men from getting drunk, stops their dope
addiction if they had it, stops nicotine, gambling, stealing, lying, cheating,
fornication, adultery, prostitution, juvenile delinquency. I think of this
whenever somebody talks about someone investigating us. Why investigate the
Honorable Elijah Muhammad? They should subsidize him. He’s cleaning up the mess
that white men have made. He’s saving the Government millions of dollars,
taking black men off of welfare, showing them how to do something for
themselves. And Mr. Muhammad teaches us love for our own kind. The white man
has taught the black people in this country to hate themselves as inferior, to
hate each other, to be divided against each other. Messenger Muhammad restores
our love for our own kind, which enables us to work together in unity and
harmony. He shows us how to pool our financial resources and our talents, then to
work together toward a common objective. Among other things, we have small
businesses in most major cities in this country, and we want to create many
more. We are taught by Mr. Muhammad that it is very important to improve the
black man’s economy, and his thrift. But to do this, we must have land of our
own. The brainwashed black man can never learn to stand on his own two feet
until he is on his own. We must learn to become our own producers,
manufacturers and traders; we must have industry of our own, to employ our own.
The white man resists this because he wants to keep the black man under his
thumb and jurisdiction in white society. He wants to keep the black man always
dependent and begging−−for jobs, food, clothes, shelter, education.The white man
doesn’t want to lose somebody to be supreme over. He wants to keep the black
man where he can be watched and retarded. Mr. Muhammad teaches that as soon as
we separate from the white man, we will learn that we can do without the white
man just as he can do without us. The white man knows that once black men get
off to themselves and learn they can do for themselves, the black man’s full
potential will explode and he will surpass the white man.
PLAYBOY: Do you feel that the Black Muslims’ goal of
obtaining "several states" is a practical vision?
MALCOLM X: Well, you might consider some things practical
that are really impractical. Wasn’t it impractical that the Supreme Court could
issue a desegregation order nine years ago and there’s still only eight percent
compliance? Is it practical that a hundred years after the Civil War there’s
not freedom for black men yet? On the record for integration you’ve got the
President, the Congress, the Supreme Court−−but show me your integration, where
is it? That’s practical? Mr. Muhammad teaches us to be for what’s really
practical−−that’s separation. It’s more natural than integration.
PLAYBOY: In a recent interview, Negro author−lecturer Louis
Lomax said, "Eighty percent, if not more, of America’s 20,000,000 Negroes
vibrate sympathetically with the Muslims’ indictment of the white power
structure. But this does not mean we agree with them in their doctrines of
estrangement or with their proposed resolutions of the race problem." Does
this view represent a consensus of opinion among Negroes? And if so, is it
possible that your separationist and anti−Christian doctrine shave the effect
of alienating many of your own race?
MALCOLM X: Sir, you make a mistake listening to people who
tell you how much our stand alienates black men in this country. I’d guess
actually we have the sympathy of 90 percent of the black people. There are
20,000,000 dormant Muslims in America. A Muslim to us is somebody who is for
the black man; I don’t care if he goes to the Baptist Church seven days a week.
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad says that a black man is born a Muslim by nature.
There are millions of Muslims not aware of it now. All of them will be Muslims
when they wake up; that’s what’s meant by the Resurrection. Sir, I’m going to
tell you a secret: the black man is a whole lot smarter than white people think
he is. The black man has survived in this country by fooling the white man.
He’s been dancing and grinning and white men never guessed what he was
thinking. Now you’ll hear the bourgeois Negroes pretending to be alienated, but
they’re just making the white man think they don’t go for what Mr. Muhammad is
saying. This Negro that will tell you he’s so against us, he’s just protecting
the crumbs he gets from the white man’s table. This kind of Negro is so busy
trying to be like the white man that he doesn’t know what the real masses of
his own people are thinking. A fine car and house and clothes and liquor have
made a lot think themselves different from their poor black brothers. But Mr. Muhammad
says that Allah is going to wake up all black men to see the white man as he
really is, and see what Christianity has done to them. The black masses that
are waking up don’t believe in Christianity anymore. All it’s done for black
men is help to keep them slaves. Mr. Muhammad is teaching that Christianity, as
white people see it, means that whites can have their heaven here on earth, but
the black man is supposed to catch his hell here. The black man is supposed to
keep believing that when he dies, he’ll float up to some city with golden
streets and milk and honey on a cloud somewhere. Every black man in North
America has heard black Christian preachers shouting about "tomorrow in
good old Beulah’s Land." But the thinking black masses today are interested
in Muhammad’s Land. The Promised Land that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad talks
about is right here on this earth. Intelligent black men today are interested
in a religious doctrine that offers a solution to their problems right now,
right here on this earth, while they are alive.You must understand that the
Honorable Elijah Muhammad represents the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy to
us. In the Old Testament, Moses lived to see his enemy, Pharaoh, drowned in the
Red Sea−−which in essence means that Mr. Muhammad will see the completion of
his work in his lifetime, that he will live to see victory gained over his
enemy.
PLAYBOY: Are you referring to the Muslim judgment day which
your organization’s newspaper, MUHAMMAD SPEAKS, calls "Armageddon"
and prophesies as imminent?
MALCOLM X: Armageddon deals with the final battle between
God and the Devil. The Third World War is referred to as Armageddon by many
white statesmen. There won’t be any more war after then because there won’t be
any more warmongers. I don’t know when Armageddon, whatever form it takes, is
supposed to be. But I know the time is near when the white man will be
finished. The signs are all around us. Ten years ago you couldn’t have paid a
Southern Negro to defy local customs. The British Lion’s tail has been snatched
off in black Africa. The Indonesians have booted out such would−be imperialists
as the Dutch. The French, who felt for a century that Algeria was theirs, have
had to run for their lives back to France. Sir, the point I make is that all
over the world, the old day of standing in fear and trembling before the
almighty white man is gone!
PLAYBOY: If Muslims ultimately gain control as you predict,
what do you plan to do with white people?
MALCOLM X: It’s not a case of what would we do, it’s a case
of what would God
do with whites. What does a judge do with the guilty? Either
the guilty one repents and atones, or God executes judgment.
PLAYBOY: You refer to whites as "the guilty" and
"the enemy"; you predict divine retribution against them; and you
preach absolute separation from the white community. Do not these views
substantiate the fact that your movement is predicated on race hatred?
MALCOLM X: Sir, it’s from Mr. Muhammad that the black masses
are learning for the first time in 400 years the real truth of how the white
man brainwashed the black man, kept him ignorant of his true history, robbed
him of his self−confidence. The black masses for the first time are
understanding that it’s not a case of being anti−white or anti−Christian, but
it’s a case of seeing the true nature of the white man. We’re anti−evil,
anti−oppression, anti−lynching. You can’t be anti−those things unless you’re
also anti−the oppressor and the lyncher. You can’t be anti−slavery and
pro−slave master; you can’t be anti−crime and pro−criminal. In fact, Mr.
Muhammad teaches that if the present generation of whites would study their own
race in the light of their true history, they would be anti−white themselves.
PLAYBOY: Are you?
MALCOLM X: As soon as the white man hears a black man say
that he’s through loving white people, then the white man accuses the black man
of hating him. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad doesn’t teach hate. The white man
isn’t important enough for the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and his followers to
spend any time hating him. The white man has brainwashed himself into believing
that all the black people in the world want to be cuddled up next to him. When
he meets what we’re talking about, he can’t believe it, it takes all the wind
out of him. When we tell him we don’t want to be around him, we don’t want to
be like he is, he’s staggered. It makes him re−evaluate his 300−year myth about
the black man. What I want to know is how the white man, with the blood of
black people dripping off his fingers, can have the audacity to be asking black
people do they hate him. That takes a lot of nerve.
PLAYBOY: How do you reconcile your disavowal of hatred with
the announcement you made last year that Allah had brought you "the good
news" that 120 white Atlantans had just been killed in an air crash en
route to America from Paris?
MALCOLM X: Sir, as I see the law of justice, it says as you
sow, so shall you reap.The white man has reveled as the rope snapped black
men’s necks. He has reveled around the lynching fire. It’s only right for the
black man’s true God, Allah, to defend us−−and for us to be joyous because our
God manifests his ability to inflict pain on our enemy. We Muslims believe that
the white race, which is guilty of having oppressed and exploited and enslaved
our people here in America, should and will be the victims of God’s divine
wrath. All civilized societies in their courts of justice set a sentence of
execution against those deemed to be enemies of society, such as murderers and
kidnappers. The presence of 20,000,000 black people here in America is proof
that Uncle Sam is guilty of kidnapping−−because we didn’t come here voluntarily
on the Mayflower. And 400 years of lynchings condemn Uncle Sam as a murderer.
PLAYBOY: To return to your statement about the plane crash,
when Dr. Ralph Bunche heard about it, he called you "mentally
depraved." What is your reaction?
MALCOLM X: I know all about what Dr. Bunche said. He’s
always got his international mouth open. He apologized in the UN when black
people protested there. You’ll notice that whenever the white man lets a black
man get prominent, he has a job for him. Dr. Bunche serves the white man
well−−he represents, speaks for and defends the white man. He does none of this
for the black man. Dr. Bunche has functioned as a white man’s tool, designed to
influence international opinion on the Negro. The white man has Negro local
tools, national tools, and Dr. Bunche is an international tool.
PLAYBOY: Dr. Bunche was only one of many prominent Negroes
who deplored your statement in similar terms. What reply have you to make to
these spokesmen for your own people?
MALCOLM X: Go ask their opinions and you’ll be able to fill
your notebook with what white people want to hear Negroes say. Let’s take these
so−called spokesmen for the black men by types. Start with the politicians.
They never attack Mr. Muhammad personally. They realize he has the sympathy of
the black masses. They know they would alienate the masses whose votes they
need. But the black civic leaders, they do attack Mr. Muhammad. The reason is
usually that they are appointed to their positions by the white man. The white
man pays them to attack us. The ones who attack Mr.Muhammad the most are the
ones who earn the most. Then take the black religious leaders, they also attack
Mr. Muhammad. These preachers do it out of self−defense, because they know he’s
waking up Negroes. No one believes what the Negro preacher preaches except
those who are mentally asleep, or in the darkness of ignorance about the true
situation of the black man here today in this wilderness of North America. If
you will take note, sir, many so−called Negro leaders who once attacked the
Honorable Elijah Muhammad don’t do so anymore. And he never speaks against them
in the personal sense except as a reaction if they speak against him. Islam is
a religion that teaches us never to attack, never to be the aggressor−−but you
can waste somebody if he attacks you. These Negro leaders have become aware
that whenever the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is caused by their attack to level
his guns against them, they always come out on the losing end. Many have
experienced this.
PLAYBOY: Do you admire and respect any other American Negro
leaders−−Martin Luther King, for example?
MALCOLM X: I am a Muslim, sir. Muslims can see only one
leader who has the qualifications necessary to unite all elements of black
people in America. This is the Honorable Elijaj Muhammad.
PLAYBOY: Many white religious leaders have also gone on
record against the Black Muslims. Writing in the official NAACP magazine, a
Catholic priest described you as "a fascist−minded hate group," and
B’nai B’rith has accused you of being not only anti−Christian but anti−Semitic.
Do you consider this true?MALCOLM X: In so far as the Christian world is
concerned, dictatorships have existed only in areas or countries where you have
Roman Catholicism. Catholicism conditions your mind for dictators. Can you
think of a single Protestant country that has ever produced a dictator?
PLAYBOY: Germany was predominantly Protestant when Hitler
−−−−
MALCOLM X: Another thing to think of−−in the 20th Century,
the Christian Church has given us two heresies: fascism and communism. Where
did fascism start? Where’s the second−largest Communist party outside of
Russia? The answer to both is Italy. Where is the Vatican? But let’s not forget
the Jew. Anybody that gives even a just criticism of the Jew is instantly
labeled anti−Semite. The Jew cries louder than anybody else if anybody
criticizes him. You can tell the truth about any minority in America, but make
a true observation about the Jew, and if it doesn’t pat him on the back, then
he uses his grip on the news media to label you anti−Semite. Let me say just a
word about the Jew and the black man. The Jew is always anxious to advise the
black man. But they never advise him how to solve his problem the way the Jews solved
their problem. The Jew never went sitting−in and crawling−in and sliding−in and
freedom−riding, like he teaches and helps Negroes to do. The Jews stood up, and
stood together, and they used their ultimate power, the economic weapon. That’s
exactly what the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is trying to teach black men to do.
The Jews pooled their money and bought the hotels that barred them. They bought
Atlantic City and Miami Beach and anything else they wanted. Who owns
Hollywood? Who runs the garment industry, the largest industry in New York
City? But the Jew that’s advising the Negro joins the NAACP, CORE, the Urban
League,and others. With money donations, the Jew gains control, then he sends
the black man doing all this wading−in, boring−in, even burying−in−−everything
but buying−in. Never shows him how to set up factories and hotels. Never
advises him how to own what he wants. No, when there’s something worth owning,
the Jew’s got it. Walk up and down in any Negro ghetto in America. Ninety
percent of the worthwhile businesses you see are Jew−owned. Every night they
take the money out. This helps the black man’s community stay a ghetto.
PLAYBOY: Isn’t it true that many Gentiles have also labored
with dedication to advance integration and economic improvement for the Negro,
as volunteer workers for the NAACP, CORE and many other interracial agencies?
MALCOLM X: A man who tosses worms in the river isn’t
necessarily a friend of the fish. All the fish who take him for a friend, who
think the worm’s got no hook in it,usually end up in the frying pan. All these
things dangled before us by the white liberal posing as a friend and benefactor
have turned out to be nothing but bait to make us think we’re making progress.
The Supreme Court decision has never been enforced. Desegregation has never
taken place. The promises have never been fulfilled. We have received only
tokens, substitutes, trickery and deceit.
PLAYBOY: What motives do you impute to PLAYBOY for providing
you with this opportunity for the free discussion of your views?
MALCOLM X: I think you want to sell magazines. I’ve never
seen a sincere white man, not when it comes to helping black people. Usually
things like this are done by white people to benefit themselves. The white
man’s primary interest is not to elevate the thinking of black people, or to
waken black people, or white people either. The white man is interested in the
black man only to the extent that the black man is of use to him. The white
man’s interest is to make money, to exploit.
PLAYBOY: Is there any white man on earth whom you would
concede to have the Negro’s welfare genuinely at heart?
MALCOLM X: I say, sir, that you can never make an
intelligent judgment without
evidence. If any man will study the entire history of the
relationship between the white man and the black man, no evidence will be found
that justifies any confidence or faith that the black man might have in the
white man today.
PLAYBOY: Then you consider it impossible for the white man
to be anything but an exploiter and a hypocrite in his relations with the
Negro?
MALCOLM X: Is it wrong to attribute a predisposition to
wheat before it comes up out of the ground? Wheat’s characteristics and nature
make it wheat. It differs from barley because of its nature. Wheat perpetuates
its own characteristics just as the white race does. White people are born
devils by nature. They don’t become so by deeds. If you never put popcorn in a
skillet, it would still be popcorn. Put the heat to it, it will pop.
PLAYBOY: You say that white men are devils by nature. Was
Christ a devil?
MALCOLM X: Christ wasn’t white. Christ was a black man.
PLAYBOY: On what bases this assertion?
MALCOLM X: Sir, Billy Graham has made the same statement in
public. Why not ask him what Scripture he found it in? When Pope Pius XII died,
LIFE magazine carried a picture of him in his private study kneeling before a
black Christ. What was the source of their information? All white people who
have studied history and geography know that Christ was a black man. Only the
poor, brainwashed American Negro has been made to believe that Christ was
white, to maneuver him into worshiping the white man. After becoming a Muslim
in prison, I read almost everything I could put my hands on in the prison
library. I began to think back on everything I had read and especially with the
histories, I realized that nearly all of them read by the general public have
been made into white histories. I found out that the history−whitening process
either had left out great things that black men had done, or some of the great
black men had gotten whitened.
PLAYBOY: Would you list a few of these men?
MALCOLM X: Well, Hannibal, the most successful general that
ever lived, was a black man. So was Beethoven; Beethoven’s father was one of
the blackamoors that hired themselves out in Europe as professional soldiers.
Haydn, Beethoven’s teacher,was of African descent. And Solomon. Great Biblical
characters. Columbus, the discoverer of America, was a half−black man. Whole
black empires, like the Moorish, have been whitened to hide the fact that a
great black empire had conquered a white empire even before America was
discovered. The Moorish civilization−−black Africans−−conquered and ruled
Spain; they kept the light burning in Southern Europe. The word
"Moor" means "black," by the way. Egyptian civilization is
a classic example of how the white man stole great African cultures and makes
them appear today as white European. The black nation of Egypt is the only
country that has a science named after its culture: Egyptology. The ancient
Sumerians, a black−skinned people, occupied the Middle Eastern areas and were
contemporary with the Egyptian civilization. The Incas, the Aztecs, the Mayans,
all dark−skinned Indian people, had a highly developed culture here in America,
in what is now Mexico and northern South America. These people had mastered
agriculture at the time when European white people were still living in mud
huts and eating weeds. But white children, or black children, or grownups here
today in America don’t get to read this in the average books they are exposed
to.
PLAYBOY: Can you cite any authoritative historical documents
for these observations?
MALCOLM X: I can cite a great many, sir. You could start
with Herodotus, the Greek historian. He outright described the Egyptians as
"black, with woolly hair."And the American archaeologist and
Egyptologist James Henry Breasted did the same thing. Read Pliny. Read any of
the ancient Roman, Greek and, more recently,European anthropologists and
archaeologists.
PLAYBOY: You seem to have based your thesis on the premise
that all nonwhite races are necessarily black.
MALCOLM X: Mr. Muhammad says that the red, the brown and the
yellow are indeed all part of the black nation. Which means that black, brown,
red, yellow, all are brothers, all are one family. The white one is a stranger.
He’s the odd fellow.
PLAYBOY: Since your classification of black peoples
apparently includes the light−skinned Oriental, Middle Eastern and possibly
even Latin races as well as the darker Indian and Negroid strains, just how do
you decide how light−skinned it’s permissible to be before being condemned as
white? And if Caucasian whites are devils by nature, do you classify people by
degrees of devilishness according to the lightness of their skin?
MALCOLM X: I don’t worry about these little technicalities.
But I know that white society has always considered that one drop of black
blood makes you black. To me, if one drop can do this, it only shows the power
of one drop of black blood. And I know another thing−−that Negroes who used to
be light enough to pass for white have seen the handwriting on the wall and are
beginning to come back and identify with their own kind. And white people who
also are seeing the pendulum of time catching up with them are now trying to
join with blacks, or even find traces of black blood in their own veins, hoping
that it will save them from the catastrophe they see ahead.But no devil can
fool God. Muslims have a little poem about them. It goes, "One drop will
make you black, and will also in days to come save your soul."
PLAYBOY: As one of this vast elite, do you hold the familiar
majority attitude toward minority groups−−regarding the white race, in this
case, as inferior in quality as well as quantity to what you call the
"black nation"?
MALCOLM X: Thoughtful white people know they are inferior to
black people.Even Eastland knows it. Anyone who has studied the genetic phase
of biology knows that white is considered recessive and black is considered
dominant. When you want strong coffee, you ask for black coffee. If you want it
light, you want it weak, integrated with white milk. Just like these Negroes
who weaken themselves and their race by this integrating and intermixing with
whites. If you want bread with no nutritional value, you ask for white bread.
All the good that was in it has been bleached out of it, and it will constipate
you. If you want pure flour, you ask for dark flour, whole−wheat flour. If you
want pure sugar, you want dark sugar.
PLAYBOY: If all whites are devilish by nature, as you have
alleged, and if black and white are essentially opposite, as you have just
stated, do you view all black men−−with the exception of their non−Muslim
leaders−−as fundamentally angelic?
MALCOLM X: No, there is plenty wrong with Negroes. They have
no society.They’re robots, automatons. No minds of their own. I hate to say
that about us, but it’s the truth. They are a black body with a white brain.
Like the monster Frankenstein. The top part is your bourgeois Negro. He’s your
integrator. He’s not interested in his poor black brothers. He’s usually so
deep in debt from trying to copy the white man’s social habits that he doesn’t
have time to worry about nothing else. They buy the most expensive clothes and
cars and eat the cheapest food. They act more like the white man than the white
man does himself. These are the ones that hide their sympathy for Mr.
Muhammad’s teachings. It conflicts with the sources from which they get their
white−man’s crumbs. This class to us are the fence−sitters. They have one eye
on the white man and the other eye on the Muslims. They’ll jump whichever way
they see the wind blowing. Then there’s the middle class of the Negro masses,
the ones not in the ghetto, who realize that life is a struggle, who are
conscious of all the injustices being done and of the constant state of
insecurity in which they live. They’re ready to take some stand against
everything that’s against them. Now, when this group hears Mr. Muhammad’s
teachings, they are the ones who come forth faster and identify ghetto. He lives night and day with the rats
and cockroaches and drowns himself with alcohol and anesthetizes himself with
dope, to try and forget where and what he is. That Negro has given up all hope.
He’s the hardest one for us to reach,because he’s the deepest in the mud. But
when you get him, you’ve got the best kind of Muslim. Because he makes the most
drastic change. He’s the most fearless. He will stand the longest. He has
nothing to lose, even his life, because he didn’t have that in the first place.
I look upon myself, sir, as a prime example of this category−−and as graphic an
example as you could find of the salvation of the black man.
PLAYBOY: Could you give us a brief review of the early life
that led to your own"salvation"?
MALCOLM X: Gladly. I was born in Omaha on May 19, 1925. My
light color is the result of my mother’s mother having been raped by a white
man. I hate every drop of white blood in me. Before I am indicted for hate
again, sir−−is it wrong to hate the blood of a rapist? But to continue: My
father was a militant follower of Marcus Garvey’s "Back to Africa"
movement. The Lansing, Michigan, equivalent of the Ku Klux Klan warned him to
stop preaching Garvey’s message, but he kept on and one o my earliest memories
is of being snatched awake one night with a lot of screaming going on because
our home was afire. But my father got louder about Garvey, and the next time he
was found bludgeoned in the head, lying across streetcar tracks. He died soon
and our family was in a bad way. We were so hungry we were dizzy and we had
nowhere to turn. Finally the authorities came in and we children were scattered
about in different places as public wards. I happened to become the ward of a
white couple who ran a correctional school for white boys. This family liked me
in the way they liked their house pets. They got me enrolled in an all−white
school. I was popular, I played sports and everything, and studied hard, and I
stayed at the head of my class through the eighth grade. That summer I was 14,
but I was big enough and looked old enough to get away with telling a lie that
I was 21, so I got a job working in the dining car of a train that ran between
Boston and New York City. On my layovers in New York, I’d go to Harlem. That’s
where I saw in the bars all these men and women with what looked like the
easiest life in the world. Plenty of money, big cars, all of it. I could tell
they were in the rackets and vice. I hung around those bars whenever I came in
town, and I kept my ears and eyes open and my mouth shut. And they kept their
eyes on me, too. Finally, one day a numbers man told me that he needed a
runner, and I never caught the night train back to Boston. Right there was when
I started my life in crime. I was in all of it that the white police and the
gangsters left open to the black criminal, sir. I was in numbers, bootleg
liquor, "hot"goods, women. I sold the bodies of black women to white
men, and white women to black men. I was in dope, I was in everything evil you
could name. The only thing I could say good for myself, sir, was that I did not
indulge in hitting anybody over the head.
PLAYBOY: By the time you were 16, according to the record,
you had several men working for you in these various enterprises. Right?
MALCOLM X: Yes, sir. I turned the things I mentioned to you
over to them. And I had a good working system of paying off policemen. It was
here that I learned that vice and crime can only exist, at least the kind and
level that I was in, to the degree that the police cooperate with it. I had
several men working and I was a steerer myself. I steered white people with
money from downtown to whatever kind of sin they wanted in Harlem. I didn’t
care what they wanted, I knew where to take them to it. And I tell you what I
noticed here−−that my best customers always were the officials, the top police
people, businessmen, politicians and clergymen. I never forgot that. I met all
levels of these white people, supplied them with everything they wanted, and I
saw that they were just a filthy race of devils. But despite the fact that my
own father was murdered by whites, and I had seen my people all my life
brutalized by whites, I was still blind enough to mix with them and socialize
with them. I thought they were gods and goddesses−−until Mr. Muhammad’s
powerful spiritual message opened my eyes and enabled me to see them as a race
of devils. Nothing had made me see the white man as he is until one word from
the Honorable Elijah Muhammad opened my eyes overnight.
PLAYBOY: When did this happen?
MALCOLM X: In prison. I was finally caught and spent 77
months in three different prisons. But it was the greatest thing that ever
happened to me, because it was in prison that I first heard the teachings of
the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. His teachings were what turned me around. The
first time I heard the Honorable Elijah Muhammad’s statement, "The white
man is the devil," it just clicked. I am a good example of why Islam is
spreading so rapidly across the land. I was nothing but another convict, a
semi−illiterate criminal. Mr. Muhammad’s teachings were able to reach into
prison, which is the level where people are considered to have fallen as low as
they can go. His teachings brought me from behind prison walls and placed me on
the podiums of some of the leading colleges and universities in the country. I
often think, sir, that in 1946, I was sentenced to 8 to 10 years in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, as a common thief who had never passed the eighth grade. And the
next time I went back to Cambridge was in March 1961, as a guest speaker at the
Harvard Law School Forum. This is the best example of Mr. Muhammad’s ability to
take nothing and make something, to take nobody and make somebody.
PLAYBOY: Your rise to prominence in the Muslim organization
has been so swift that a number of your own membership have hailed you as their
articulate exemplar,and many anti−Muslims regard you as the real brains and
power of the movement.What is your reaction to this sudden eminence?
MALCOLM X: Sir, it’s heresy to imply that I am in any way
whatever even equal to Mr. Muhammad. No man on earth today is his equal.
Whatever I am that is good, it is through what I have been taught by Mr.
Muhammad.
PLAYBOY: Be that as it may, the time is near when your
leader, who is 65, will have to retire from leadership of the Muslim movement.
Many observers predict that when this day comes, the new Messenger of Allah in
America−−a role which you have called the most powerful of any black man in the
world−−will be Malcolm X.How do you feel about this prospect?
MALCOLM X: Sir, I can only say that God chose Mr. Muhammad
as his Messenger,and Mr. Muhammad chose me and many others to help him. Only
God has the say−so.But I will tell you one thing. I frankly don’t believe that
I or anyone else am worthy to succeed Mr. Muhammad. No one preceded him. I
don’t think I could make the sacrifice he has made, or set his good example. He
has done more than lay down his life. But his work is already done with the
seed he has planted among black people. If Mr. Muhammad and every identifiable
follower he has, certainly including myself,were tomorrow removed from the
scene by more of the white man’s brutality, there is one thing to be sure of:
Mr. Muhammad’s teachings of the naked truth have fallen upon fertile soil among
20,000,000 black men here in this wilderness of North America.
PLAYBOY: Has the soil, in your opinion, been as fertile for
Mr. Muhammad’s teachings elsewhere in the world−−among the emerging nations of
black Africa, for instance?
MALCOLM X: I think not only that his teachings have had
considerable impact even in Africa but that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad has
had a greater impact on the world than the rise of the African nations. I say
this as objectively as I can, being a Muslim. Even the Christian missionaries
are conceding that in black Africa, for every Christian conversion, there are
two Muslim conversions.
PLAYBOY: Might conversions be even more numerous if it
weren’t for the somewhat strained relations which are said by several Negro
writers to exist between the black people of Africa and America?
MALCOLM X: Perhaps. You see, the American black man sees the
African come here and live where the American black man can’t. The Negro sees
the African come here with a sheet on and go places where the Negro−−dressed
like a white man,talking like a white man, sometimes as wealthy as the white
man−−can’t go. When I’m traveling around the country, I use my real Muslim
name, Malik Shabazz. I make my hotel reservations under that name, and I always
see the same thing I’ve just been telling you. I come to the desk and always
see that "here−comes−a−Negro" look. It’s kind of a reserved, coldly
tolerant cordiality. But when I say "Malik Shabazz," their whole
attitude changes: they snap to respect. They think I’m an African. People say
what’s in a name? There’s a whole lot in a name. The American black man is
seeing the African respected as a human being. The African gets respect because
he has an identity and cultural roots. But most of all because the African owns
some land. For these reasons he has his human rights recognized, and that makes
his civil rights automatic.
MALCOLM X: They don’t stand for anything different in South
Africa than America stands for. The only difference is over there they preach as
well as practice apartheid. America preaches freedom and practices slavery.
America preaches integration and practices segregation. Verwoerd is an honest
white man. So are the Barnetts, Faubuses, Eastlands and Rockwells. They want to
keep all white people white. And we want to keep all black people black. As
between the racists and the integrationists, I highly prefer the racists. I’d
rather walk among rattlesnakes, whose constant rattle warns me where they are,
than among those Northern snakes who grin and make you forget you’re still in a
snake pit. Any white man is against blacks. The entire American economy is
based on white supremacy. Even the religious philosophy is, in essence, white
supremacy. A white Jesus. A white Virgin. White angels. White everything. But a
black Devil, of course. The "Uncle Sam" political foundation is based
on white supremacy, relegating nonwhites to second−class citizenship. It goes
without saying that the social philosophy is strictly white supremacist. And
the educational system perpetuates white supremacy.
PLAYBOY: Are you contradicting yourself by denouncing white
supremacy while praising its practitioners, since you admit that you share
their goal of separation?
MALCOLM X: The fact that I prefer the candor of the Southern
segregationist to the
hypocrisy of the Northern integrationist doesn’t alter the
basic immorality of white supremacy. A devil is still a devil whether he wears a bed
sheet or a Brooks Brothers suit. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches
separation simply because any forcible attempt to integrate America completely
would result in another Civil War, a catastrophic explosion among whites which
would destroy America−−and still not solve the problem. But Mr. Muhammad’s
solution of separate black and white would solve the problem neatly for both
the white and black man, and America would be saved. Then the whole world would
give Uncle Sam credit for being something other than a hypocrite.
PLAYBOY: Do you feel that the Administration’s successful
stand on the integration of James Meredith into the University of Mississippi
has demonstrated that the Government−−far from being hypocritical−−is
sympathetic with the Negro’s aspirations for equality?
MALCOLM X: What was accomplished? It took 15,000 troops to
put Meredith in the University of Mississippi. Those troops and
$3,000,000−−that’s what was spent−−to get one Negro in. That $3,000,000 could
have been used much more wisely by the Federal Government to elevate the living
standards of all the Negroes in Mississippi.
PLAYBOY: It is a matter of record that President Kennedy, in
the face of Southern opposition, championed the appointment of Dr. Robert
Weaver as the first Negro Cabinet member. Does this indicate to you, as it does
to many Negro leaders, that the Administration is determined to battle the
forces of white supremacy?
MALCOLM X: Kennedy doesn’t have to fight; he’s the
President. He didn’t have any fight replacing Ribicoff with Celebrezze. He
didn’t have any trouble putting Goldberg on the Supreme Court. He hasn’t had
any trouble getting anybody in but Weaver and Thurgood Marshall. He wasn’t
worried about Congressional objection when he challenged U.S. Steel. He wasn’t
worried about either Congressional reaction or Russian reaction or even world
reaction when he blockaded Cuba. But when it comes to the rights of the Negro,
who helped to put him in office, then he’s afraid of little pockets of white
resistance.
PLAYBOY: Has any American President, in your
opinion−−Lincoln, FDR, Truman,Eisenhower, Kennedy−−accomplished anything
worthwhile for the Negro?
MALCOLM X: None of them have ever done anything for Negroes.
All of them have tricked the Negro, and made false promises to him at election
times which they never fulfilled. Lincoln’s concern wasn’t freedom for the
blacks but to save the Union.
PLAYBOY: Wasn’t the Civil War fought to decide whether this
nation could, in the words of Lincoln, "endure permanently half slave and
half free"?
MALCOLM X: Sir, many, many people are completely misinformed
about Lincoln and the Negro. That war involved two thieves, the North and the
South, fighting over the spoils. The further we get away from the actual
incident, the more they are trying to make it sound as though the battle was
over the black man. Lincoln said that if he could save the Union without
freeing the slaves, he would. But after two years of killing and carnage he
found out he would have to free the slaves. He wasn’t interested in the slaves
but in the Union. As for the Emancipation Proclamation, sir, it was an empty
document. If it freed the slaves, why, a century later, are we still battling
for civil rights?
PLAYBOY: Despite the fact that the goal of racial equality
is not yet realized, many sociologists−−and a number of Negro
commentators−−agree that no minority group on earth has made as much social,
civil and economic progress as the American Negro in the past 100 years. What
is your reaction to this view?
MALCOLM X: Sir, I hear that everywhere almost exactly as you
state it. This is one of the biggest myths that the American black man himself
believes in. Every immigrant ethnic group that has come to this country is now
a genuinely first−class citizen group−−every one of them but the black man, who
was here when they came.While everybody else is sharing the fruit, the black
man is just now starting to be thrown some seeds. It is our hope that through
the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, we will at last get the soil to plant the seeds
in. You talk about the progress of the Negro−−I’ll tell you, mister, it’s just
because the Negro has been in America while America has gone forward that the
Negro appears to have gone forward. The Negro is like a man on a luxury
commuter train doing 90 miles an hour. He looks out of the window, along with
all the white passengers in their Pullman chairs, and he think she’s doing 90,
too. Then he gets to the men’s room and looks in the mirror−−and he sees he’s
not really getting anywhere at all. His reflection shows a black man standing
there in the white uniform of a dining−car steward. He may get on the 5:10, all
right,but he sure won’t be getting off at Westport.
PLAYBOY: Is there anything then, in your opinion, that could
be done−−by either whites or blacks−−to expedite the social and economic
progress of the Negro in America?
MALCOLM X:
The white man committed the crimes that have produced the
miserable condition that our people are in. He can’t hide this guilt by
reviling us today because we answer his criminal acts−−past and present−−with
extreme and uncompromising resentment. He cannot hide his guilt by accusing us,
his victims, of being racists, extremists and black supremacists. The white man
must realize that the sins of the fathers are about to be visited upon the
heads of the children who have continued those sins, only in more sophisticated
ways. Mr. Elijah Muhammad is warning this generation of white people that they,
too, are also facing a time of harvest in which they will have to pay for the
crime committed when their grandfathers made slaves out of us.But there is
something the white man can do to avert this fate. He must atone−−and this can
only be done by allowing black men, those who choose, to leave this land of
bondage and go to a land of our own. But if he doesn’t want a mass movement of
ou rpeople away from this house of bondage, then he should separate this
country. He should give us several states here on American soil, where those of
us who wish to can
go and set up our own government, our own economic system,
our own civilization.Since we have given over 300 years of our slave labor to
the white man’s America, helped to build it up for him, it’s only right that
white America should give us everything we need in finance and materials for
the next 25 years, until our own nation is able to stand on its feet. Then, if
the Western Hemisphere is attacked by outside enemies, we would have both the
capability and the motivation to join in defending the hemisphere, in which we
would then have a sovereign stake.The Honorable Elijah Muhammad says that the
black man has served under the rule of all the other peoples of the earth at
one time or another in the past. He teaches that it is now God’s intention to
put the black man back at the top of civilization, where he was in the
beginning−−before Adam, the white man, was created. The world since Adam has
been white−−and corrupt. The world of tomorrow will be black−−and righteous. In
the white world there has been nothing but slavery, suffering, death and
colonialism. In the black world of tomorrow, there will be true freedom, justice
and equality for all. And that day is coming−−sooner than you think.
ELVIS COSTELLO INTERVIEW
Be aware that this is a British interview, so some of the
spelling is different.
Vancouver, on a sun-dappled Saturday afternoon, seems an
unlikely place to meet Elvis Costello. It feels too much at ease, too lacking
in sharp edges. All morning, I've been walking in Stanley Park, dodging the
joggers and cyclists circling the waterfront with its tethered yachts and
pleasure boats, while relistening to a selection from Costello's 33 albums on a
loop through my headphones. The soundtrack doesn't fit, quite. Though he is
capable of the full range of human emotion, the staples of "guilt and
anger" that he identified once early in his career "after 14
Pernods" as his songwriting stock-in-trade remain dominant themes. The
voice is not always used in the attack mode that has long made it such an
insistent weapon, but it still carries an unrivalled degree of hurt and vitriol
when required.Buy it from Buy the CD Download as MP3 Elvis Costello National
Ransom Decca (UMO) 2010 You'd hesitate, in this sense, to suggest that Costello
had mellowed; he still, no doubt, has little desire to venture in the vicinity
of Chelsea; even so, when I meet him in a cafe near the water, he cuts a
chipper figure – all gap-toothed smiles and heavy specs and winklepickers and
carrying his silver fedora in a toughened box. Contrary to appearances, as he
sits down among the latte drinkers in their chinos and leisurewear, he says he
has rarely felt more at home than he has here.Most of that has to do with his
third-time-around marriage, to the Canadian jazz singer Diana Krall. After our
interview, he explains, he has to dash home to look after his twin
four-year-old boys. Krall is playing in Lima, Peru, so he is the stay-at-home
dad for a weekend. They have been married seven years now and absences still
seem to be making hearts grow fonder."We have a lot of time apart, which
makes for a lot of longing," he says. "Monday night will be great when
Diana is home and we can be a family with the boys until one of us has to leave
again. That seems to keep things alive, for us anyway."He appears, I
suggest, for someone who, in his public persona at least has always looked a
little at odds with the world, to be more content than he has ever been. He
flinches a little at the thought. "I don't know if content is the right
word," he says. "Content is a word that has never sat well with me.
Like 'maturity'. They are two words I've never liked. I think they imply some
sort of decay. A settling."How about happiness? I ask. For a long while,
in his songs at least, simple happiness seemed to be the state he most
distrusted."Not now," he says. "I think when I was younger I
experimented on myself in various ways and with various poisons. But now I look
after myself all I can." Costello is 56. "Obviously, when you have
four-year-old sons at my age you hope you'll be around as long as possible. And
my wife is 10 years younger than me, so I don't want her to be dragging me
round in a wheelbarrow at any point. You've got to be on your toes a
bit."Costello warms easily to his theme of domestic bliss. Over the
summer, he says, every week or so his and his wife's tour schedules would
cross. "I'd get to see the lads on her bus, and travel with them for a day
or two, then peel off and go to do my show. It was a bit like The Partridge
Family. She was David Cassidy; I was Shirley Jones. Anyway, our life here is
the opposite of moving out to the sticks and closing the curtains and thinking:
that's me done now."To prove the point, even by his own workaholic
standards, Declan Patrick MacManus is currently in a rich moment of
productivity. His new album, National Ransom, will be his third in as many
years. Over the summer, he has been performing live with his two
"regular" bands, the Imposters (an evolution of his original
Attractions) and the Sugarcanes (the wild and whirling bluegrass-tinged group
he assembled for his last album, Secret, Profane & Sugarcane). There have
also been recent stage outings with the Brodsky Quartet, the classical ensemble
he has worked with for 15 years now, and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. In
June, he was in the UK for a brief tour; I saw him play a memorable solo show
at the Royal Festival Hall in London for Meltdown: two hours with only
half-a-dozen guitars for company.In between times, he has also developed his
alternative career as a chat-show host in two series of Spectacle, a sort of
The Old Grey Whistle Test meets Parky, in which he interviews and plays with a
musical hall of fame: Smokey Robinson, Bruce Springsteen, the Police (who he
also supported on a comeback tour), Elton John and so on.Having over the years
followed particular passions one after the other – writing orchestral music,
collaborating with the likes of Paul McCartney and Burt Bacharach – Costello
now seems to be pursuing everything all at the same time. Is that how he likes
it?"Just to do rock'n'roll shows would seem like a confinement to
me," he suggests. "I like not having to choose one thing or another.
Life for me is about movement. I do what my dad and my grandfather both did.
I'm a working travelling musician, but just on a bigger scale..."Costello
refers to his troubadour heritage several times in our conversation; as he gets
older, he likes the idea of himself as having inherited the family firm; it
roots him. His grandfather spent decades in the orchestras at northern concert
halls until the arrival of talkies ended his career. His father was the lead
singer with Joe Loss's big band in the 1950s. Some of Costello's earliest
memories are of hearing his father practise that week's new songs in their
front room."He'd have a bunch of things to learn and I have a very vivid
sensory memory of feeling the glass door to the front room vibrating when he
practised them over and over."Costello's mother ran the record section of
Selfridge's in London, so there was always a variety of music in the house. I
wonder when the 60s first became apparent at home, when he first heard Bob Dylan
(with whom he has toured a couple of times in recent years)?"It would have
been 1962," he says. "Strangely enough, this English lord brought us
the first Dylan record to hear. This man was the brother of our neighbour and a
Labour peer. I don't recall his name, but he came to visit this spinster who
lived downstairs from us and he insisted on bringing this record up to play to
my father."What did his old man make of it?"I think my folks were a
bit bewildered by it, because it wasn't like anything we had heard. By that
point, I had missed rock'n'roll completely. If it came on the radio, my dad
would turn it off – not because he didn't approve or anything, just because he
didn't think it was any good. It wasn't hip. He was listening to Charlie Parker
and Dizzy Gillespie. By the time I had control of the radio, rock'n'roll had
passed us by: Chuck Berry was in jail, Jerry Lee had been thrown out of the
country, Elvis was in the army. We were left with Cliff."Costello believes
music is a commitment to openness, to never stopping hearing. His mother, now
in her eighties and one of his keenest critics, will still listen to anything.
"I had grown up with the names Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young, for
example," he says. "So when I got to the point I might be disposed to
them, I understood it. The same with classical music – you have to live with it
for a few years until it works on you."Not surprisingly, given his unique
education, his latest album references at least a century of song. As if to
prove the point, he is releasing versions both on 78rpm vinyl and digital
download. It makes tacit links between the Depression era and our current
financial apocalypse – the "national ransom" of the title track – and
stops off at many places in between.To emphasise this journey, Costello has
added the time and place of his songs to his sleeve notes. Thus "Jimmie
Standing in the Rain", a poignant little song about a cowboy singer in the
northern clubs, is footnoted "Accrington, 1937"; "One Bell
Ringing", meanwhile, carries the note "London underground – 22nd of
July 2005" which alerts you to the fact that it is a lament for the murder
of Jean Charles de Menezes. In the past, Costello has allowed his songs to be
more loosely allusive, so why the sudden specificity?"I've always felt writing
a song was a bit like going on location," he says. "That's true in an
almost literal sense. Where you are seeps in somehow. I'm not sure I started
writing any of them with exactly those times and place in mind, but that's
where they seemed to want to end up. It's an unconscious process a lot of it,
but I thought it was interesting to note it."The album has an apocalyptic
feel in parts, particularly on tracks such as "Stations of the
Cross", which alludes to the New Orleans floods and Bible Belt preachers
in Costello's impacted poetry. Listening to him over the years, I've often
wondered how much the language and texture of his youthful Catholicism
influenced his writing – he has suggested elsewhere that the "smell of
frankincense" has never really left his clothes; is he a frustrated
sermoniser at heart?He laughs. "I went to Catholic school and went to
church as a kid and – perhaps unusually – I only have good memories of it. The
people in cloth I knew were mostly gentle and dedicated, and not some sort of
conflicted, twisted people who were trying to frighten you or worse. I was
named after a priest, I look a bit like a priest, I wear black a lot, but I
think I had worked that one out by the time I was 10. Maybe I'd be more a
fallen priest, a priest in a Graham Greene story."Does the aforementioned
"guilt and anger" have its root in some of those
years?"Certainly when I was younger I used to like to think that those
emotions were the forces working on me, partly because it gave me ways of
thinking about things that were perhaps harsher than my actual life. That's
useful for a writer. It's like going on the lash when you are 13 and not being
old enough to buy a drink."He can still summon that anger, for a song such
as "National Ransom", which drips contempt for the carnage wrought by
Wall Street; does he feel it just as strongly?"Well," he says, with
the air of a connoisseur, "anger isn't just one thing, is it? I mean,
there is dismay, which we all experience, then there's more violent anger, and
then there is a grumpiness that we might go in and out of. Anger covers a lot
of ground. Some of it is very useful, some of it completely useless. I think I
can recognise the distinctions."His Menezes song plays with a lot of those
shadings; it's not a protest song exactly, more an attempt to get inside the
paranoia of the event. Is that the tone he was looking for?"It was one of
those songs that wrote itself," he says, "and I realised what was
being said as I wrote it. Some of the images in it have nothing to do with the
specific case. It is more the fact that this killing by the police could have
happened to any one of us and that is a strange place for Britain to have got
to. It wasn't trying to place blame, just to capture that state that we live
in."Does he still feel, living away from Britain, that it is his
subject?"I read the news," he says, "like we all
do."Listening to Costello play the Royal Festival Hall in the summer, I
was struck by the idea that Costello always sounds better under a Tory
government. It's where he found his voice. Songs such as
"Shipbuilding" – his complex, lyrical response to the Falklands war
and the implications of our industrial heritage – both defined and
deconstructed their era. His relationship with his home country in the years
since has been troubled. He was widely reported in 2005 as saying that he never
wanted to play in Britain again, that his audiences there didn't warm to him or
respect him. Does he still feel that way?"That was a sort of game of the
media," he says. "It was something about me forsaking the country to
come here. But in fact it is 20 years since I lived in the UK. I left for
Dublin 20 years ago. Some flippant remarks I had made became exaggerated to 'I
hate Britain' in the press. Which was both comical and not much of a
surprise."Costello, perhaps, was not forgiven by the music press who
wanted him to stay forever as a kind of lyrical punk agitator and not go off to
write for string quartets. "If you depart from what people know you for,
then of course you run the risk of horrifying them," he admits. "But
that's not the end of the world." His productivity has in many ways
counted against him in this respect. Everyone has to buy your first or your
second original album. But your 33rd?If Costello has never made it to the
national treasure status he deserves at home, he is, however, fast acquiring it
in North America. Spectacle was a prime time hit in most of the world;
bizarrely, in Britain, it was scheduled at midnight ("I guess they only
thought it was fit for drunks to watch," he says. "Which struck me as
odd.") One of his guests, a long-term fan, was Bill Clinton. In August,
Costello also had the privilege of not only meeting Barack Obama, but also
playing for him. The event, at the White House, was in honour of Paul
McCartney; Elvis played "Penny Lane" with the Beatle and the
president facing him in the front row. No pressure there then?He smiles.
"Paul was great. He sat in that room all afternoon while we were
rehearsing, so that cut down the intimidation factor by about 50%. But still it
was pretty weird playing 'Penny Lane' to him in that room with George and
Martha Washington on the wall and a marine in full dress uniform playing the
piccolo trumpet."Even so, and whatever your view of Obama's policies, it
was, he suggests, an infinitely more enjoyable occasion than that experienced
by his wife at the White House when she was invited to play in honour of Tony
Bennett by Obama's predecessor. "There was to be a cocktail party in the
evening with George W and Condi and the gang. Diana remembers looking in at the
gym in the basement when it was about to start and seeing everyone else who was
due to go on also hiding down there, unable to face it like her. So, it was
better than that."When he set out, 30-odd years ago, did he ever imagine
he'd be playing the White House – 1977 must seem like another life
entirely?Recently, he says, the BBC wanted to make a documentary about the
strange journey of his career, but he wasn't convinced. One of the oddest
things, he says, was that they had no real footage of him playing until about
1989. "All the Top of the Pops stuff before that they didn't trust anyone
to play their own instruments. I mean, there is a certain kitsch appeal to
that, but not much."He'd prefer to tell the story through his own famous
lenses. He's working on a memoir, which is progressing slowly ("every day
I write the book" would be stretching it, he suggests). "I have lots
of sketches," he says. "But it won't be an exhaustive kind of thing.
I really liked Bob Dylan's book. It may have been fantastically exasperating
for the kind of fan who wanted the map reference for the 'Gates of Eden', but
it told the story of how he became himself and how he became himself
again."In looking for a way to structure it, he is half-thinking about
using the songs he has written as chapters. That, though, may present problems
of its own. "Many people build a career on just one or two songs," he
says, with a degree of pride and self-mockery. "I have 400 of the fuckers."
Hitler interview
"No room for the alien, no use for the wastrel"
This edited interview of Adolf Hitler by George Sylvester
Viereck took place in 1923. It was republished in Liberty magazine in July 1932
"When I take charge of Germany, I shall end tribute
abroad and Bolshevism at home."
Adolf Hitler drained his cup as if it contained not tea, but
the lifeblood of Bolshevism.
"Bolshevism," the chief of the Brown Shirts, the Fascists
of Germany, continued, gazing at me balefully, "is our greatest menace.
Kill Bolshevism in Germany and you restore 70 million people to power. France
owes her strength not to her armies but to the forces of Bolshevism and
dissension in our midst.
"The Treaty of Versailles and the Treaty of St Germain
are kept alive by Bolshevism in Germany. The Peace Treaty and Bolshevism are
two heads of one monster. We must decapitate both."
When Adolf Hitler announced this programme, the advent of
the Third Empire which he proclaims seemed still at the end of the rainbow.
Then came election after election. Each time the power of Hitler grew. While
unable to dislodge Hindenburg from the presidency, Hitler today heads the
largest party in Germany. Unless Hindenburg assumes dictatorial measures, or
some unexpected development completely upsets all present calculations,
Hitler's party will organise the Reichstag and dominate the government. Hitler's
fight was not against Hindenburg but against Chancellor Bruening. It is
doubtful if Bruening's successor can sustain himself without the support of the
National Socialists.
Many who voted for Hindenburg were at heart with Hitler, but
some deep-rooted sense of loyalty impelled them nevertheless to cast their vote
for the old field marshal. Unless overnight a new leader arises, there is no
one in Germany, with the exception of Hindenburg, who could defeat Hitler - and
Hindenburg is 85! Time and the recalcitrance of the French fight for Hitler,
unless some blunder on his own part, or dissension within the ranks of the
party, deprives him of his opportunity to play the part of Germany's Mussolini.
The first German Empire came to an end when Napoleon forced
the Austrian emperor to surrender his imperial crown. The second empire came to
an end when William II, on the advice of Hindenburg, sought refuge in Holland.
The third empire is emerging slowly but surely, although it may dispense with
sceptres and crowns.
I met Hitler not in his headquarters, the Brown House in
Munich, but in a private home - the dwelling of a former admiral of the German
Navy. We discussed the fate of Germany over the teacups.
"Why," I asked Hitler, "do you call yourself
a National Socialist, since your party programme is the very antithesis of that
commonly accredited to socialism?"
"Socialism," he retorted, putting down his cup of
tea, pugnaciously, "is the science of dealing with the common weal.
Communism is not Socialism. Marxism is not Socialism. The Marxians have stolen
the term and confused its meaning. I shall take Socialism away from the
Socialists.
"Socialism is an ancient Aryan, Germanic institution.
Our German ancestors held certain lands in common. They cultivated the idea of
the common weal. Marxism has no right to disguise itself as socialism.
Socialism, unlike Marxism, does not repudiate private property. Unlike Marxism,
it involves no negation of personality, and unlike Marxism, it is patriotic.
"We might have called ourselves the Liberal Party. We
chose to call ourselves the National Socialists. We are not internationalists.
Our socialism is national. We demand the fulfilment of the just claims of the
productive classes by the state on the basis of race solidarity. To us state
and race are one."
Hitler himself is not a purely Germanic type. His dark hair
betrays some alpine ancestor. For years he refused to be photographed. That was
part of his strategy - to be known only to his friends so that, in the hour of
crisis, he could appear here, there, and everywhere without detection. Today he
could no longer pass unrecognised through the obscurest hamlet in Germany. His
appearance contrasts strangely with the aggressiveness of his opinions. No
milder mannered reformer ever scuttled ship of state or cut political throat.
"What," I continued my cross-examination,
"are the fundamental planks of your platform?"
"We believe in a healthy mind in a healthy body. The
body politic must be sound if the soul is to be healthy. Moral and physical
health are synonymous." "Mussolini," I interjected, "said
the same to me." Hitler beamed.
"The slums," he added, "are responsible for
nine-tenths, alcohol for one-tenth, of all human depravity. No healthy man is a
Marxian. Healthy men recognise the value of personality. We contend against the
forces of disaster and degeneration. Bavaria is comparatively healthy because
it is not completely industrialised. However, all Germany, including Bavaria,
is condemned to intensive industrialism by the smallness of our territory. If
we wish to save Germany we must see to it that our farmers remain faithful to
the land. To do so, they must have room to breathe and room to work."
"Where will you find the room to work?"
"We must retain our colonies and we must expand eastward.
There was a time when we could have shared world dominion with England. Now we
can stretch our cramped limbs only toward the east. The Baltic is necessarily a
German lake."
"Is it not," I asked, "possible for Germany
to reconquer the world economically without extending her territory?"
Hitler shook his head earnestly.
"Economic imperialism, like military imperialism,
depends upon power. There can be no world trade on a large scale without world
power. Our people have not learned to think in terms of world power and world
trade. However, Germany cannot extend commercially or territorially until she
regains what she has lost and until she finds herself.
"We are in the position of a man whose house has been
burned down. He must have a roof over his head before he can indulge in more
ambitious plans. We had succeeded in creating an emergency shelter that keeps
out the rain. We were not prepared for hailstones. However, misfortunes hailed
down upon us. Germany has been living in a veritable blizzard of national,
moral, and economic catastrophes.
"Our demoralised party system is a symptom of our
disaster. Parliamentary majorities fluctuate with the mood of the moment.
Parliamentary government unbars the gate to Bolshevism."
"Unlike some German militarists, you do not favour an
alliance with Soviet Russia?"
Hitler evaded a direct reply to this question. He evaded it
again recently when Liberty asked him to reply to Trotsky's statement that his
assumption of power in Germany would involve a life-and-death struggle between
Europe, led by Germany, and Soviet Russia.
"It may not suit Hitler to attack Bolshevism in Russia.
He may even look upon an alliance with Bolshevism as his last card, if he is in
danger of losing the game. If, he intimated on one occasion, capitalism refuses
to recognise that the National Socialists are the last bulwark of private
property, if capital impedes their struggle, Germany may be compelled to throw
herself into the enticing arms of the siren Soviet Russia. But he is determined
not to permit Bolshevism to take root in Germany."
He responded warily in the past to the advances of
Chancellor Bruening and others who wished to form a united political front. It
is unlikely that now, in view of the steady increase in the vote of the
National Socialists, Hitler will be in the mood to compromise on any essential
principle with other parties.
"The political combinations upon which a united front
depend," Hitler remarked to me, "are too unstable. They render almost
impossible a clearly defined policy. I see everywhere the zigzag course of
compromise and concession. Our constructive forces are checked by the tyranny
of numbers. We make the mistake of applying arithmetic and the mechanics of the
economic world to the living state. We are threatened by ever increasing
numbers and ever diminishing ideals. Mere numbers are unimportant."
"But suppose France retaliates against you by once more
invading your soil? She invaded the Ruhr once before. She may invade it
again."
"It does not matter," Hitler, thoroughly aroused,
retorted, "how many square miles the enemy may occupy if the national
spirit is aroused. Ten million free Germans, ready to perish so that their
country may live, are more potent than 50 million whose will power is paralysed
and whose race consciousness is infected by aliens.
"We want a greater Germany uniting all German tribes.
But our salvation can start in the smallest corner. Even if we had only 10
acres of land and were determined to defend them with our lives, the 10 acres
would become the focus of regeneration. Our workers have two souls: one is
German, the other is Marxian. We must arouse the German soul. We must uproot
the canker of Marxism. Marxism and Germanism are antitheses.
"In my scheme of the German state, there will be no
room for the alien, no use for the wastrel, for the usurer or speculator, or
anyone incapable of productive work."
The cords on Hitler's forehead stood out threateningly. His
voice filled the room. There was a noise at the door. His followers, who always
remain within call, like a bodyguard, reminded the leader of his duty to
address a meeting.
Hitler gulped down his tea and rose.
