Malcolm X at 100: What the Guardians of Decay Don’t Want You to Remember
Every legacy system has its enforcers. Malcolm X made them nervous. He still does.
“There is no better teacher than adversity. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance the next time.”
– Malcolm X
May 19, 1925
One hundred years ago, Malcolm X was born.1
To mark this anniversary, almost no one said a word.
No official day of reflection. No national ceremony. No bipartisan praise.
Not because he was irrelevant but because he still threatens the unexamined order.
And maybe that's why I consider him a hero worthy of much deeper study and understanding.
Classifications Are Cages
The mainstream teaches you to pick your saints and villains from a fixed menu. If you're conservative, he was dangerous and you're supposed to fear Malcolm X. If you're progressive, he was righteous so long as you sanitize him.
None of these boxes hold up. All of them are too convenient.
The truth is that Malcolm X was never meant to be easy to digest.
Because Malcolm X evolved, and evolution often evokes unease.
The man who started as “Detroit Red,” a hustler, a prisoner, dogmatic separatist, died as someone radically committed to telling the truth wherever it led, even when it forced him to part ways with his past, even when it turned former allies into threats, especially when it required him to question himself.
The Medium Is the Message
Watch any clip of Malcolm X. Read any of his speeches.2
You'll realize it wasn't just the content; it was the way it was transmitted: the tone, the directness, the unwillingness to perform.
He didn't "go viral." He went visceral.
He didn't beg for respect. He demanded clarity.
He didn't operate in categories. He disassembled them.
In that way, Malcolm X understood something most today never grasp: the channel shapes the change.
He made himself the signal, not the noise.
And the system never forgave him for that.
Constant Reorientation Is a Threat to Legacy Systems
What makes a man dangerous isn't that he believes something. It's that he dares to change what he believes once he sees it's no longer true.
Sound familiar?
John Boyd taught:
"You've got to challenge all assumptions. Otherwise what becomes doctrine today becomes dogma forever after."
Malcolm did that, publicly, painfully, and without apology.
He reoriented. Not just once. Constantly.
First, from crime to discipline.
Then, from nationalism to humanism.
Then from separatism to a global framework for justice.
Every time he rose above a belief structure, the system moved to bring him down.
He didn't fit the "Left" or "Right." He disobeyed the false binaries.
He spoke as a man freed from the legacy system's map.
That's why he was a threat.
Apply The 5T Protocol and See Through the Smoke
If you've read my piece on Public Enemy, you know I've long believed many of the "controversial" figures in American life aren't controversial.
They're constructed to be so.
The Guardians of Decay, the narrative custodians of a fragile order, need certain voices to be misunderstood.
That's how they defend their turf.
The 5T Protocol helps us cut through the noise and evaluate it all:
Terrain: Malcolm X wasn't fighting whites, or liberals, or Christians. He was fighting lies and comfort. His battlefield was Orientation itself.
Targeting: He didn't just go after enemies. He addressed misunderstandings, even within his ranks.
Tone: He was fierce but never cruel. Precise, not performative. He didn't use shame; he used sharpness.
Tropes: Most media used terms such as "angry," "militant," and "divisive." But look closely: those were projections from a system terrified of Malcolm X's authenticity.
Tactics: He told the truth in public, knowing it could cost him his life. That's not extremism. That's clarity.
Use 5T next time someone tells you who's "divisive."
Ask: who benefits from that label?
What truth does it conceal?
Final Thought: The Real Malcolm X Was Too Dangerous to Commemorate
The reason hardly anyone marked his 100th birthday is simple.
Because Malcolm X, if remembered truthfully, is not safe to legacy systems.
He's not an icon for the Left. He's not a prop for the Right.
He's a live wire.
He is a model of how when you evolve and reorient so fast your enemies can't keep up, and your friends grow afraid.
If you want to honor him, don't post a quote.
Change your mind.
Challenge your assumptions.
See who told you they were truths.
And if you're brave enough, then take the time read The Autobiography of Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley. It opened my mind in high school, just as Public Enemy did in eighth grade.
You might be surprised what survives the fire.
No slogans. No side-taking. Just this:
Don't let the world classify the man before you've understood the mission.
Public Enemy Tried to Teach Us in 1990. Were You Listening?
Thirty-five years ago, something shifted for me. Thirty-five years later, its impact can still be felt. Profoundly. And the many lessons can be shared and taught to leaders and their teams.
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May 19, 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska as Malcolm Little.
Sometimes I wonder if he had access to time travel. Sometimes when you read speeches of his from the 1960s, he seems to be describing, at least anticipating, what we can see in 2025.
Mark, I was just having a very friendly conversation with another reader on a different Substack article, and he brought up Malcolm X as a potential Dagger John Hughes figure for black America. And then, boom!, your article popped up. Of course, you are correct. Malcolm X doesn't just speak to blacks, but to all of humanity.
"I felt that it was for the black man only a question of Johnson, the fox, or Goldwater, the wolf."
Malcolm said that in 1965 --and it's as true today as it was then. Unfortunately, I think the foxes and wolves have inverted. 😮