There is always a grey area that moral figures delve in between. Malcolm X and Magneto were two such figures. The similarity between the two personalities becomes apparent at first glance. Both were fostered at a young age after losing their loved ones to bigotry. Both fought for the cause of their people (blacks and mutants), and both, depending on point of view that was held were either ostracized or seen as liberators. However, this only begins to scratch the surface of their characters.
Their main motives were not just to liberate their people from the atrocities being committed but also to establish them as a new, dominant social force. A good illustration of this fact is when Magneto referred to mutants as homo superior in the Uncanny X-men series where he makes his revolutionary intentions clear to his mild mannered and reformist adversaries, i.e. the xmen,
Magneto: “I am not your enemy X-Men. Nor do I consider you mine. True, my goal has ever been the conquest of the earth, but solely to create a world in which our race, Homo superior, can live in peace. Look at yourselves risking your lives for a humanity that would rather see you behind bars, or dead. Why do you persist?”
Cyclops: “Is your way any better? A mutant dictatorship?”
Magneto: “Do not take that tone with me boy, I have lived under a dictatorship and seen my family butchered by its servants. When I rule, it will be for the betterment of all. Contentment breeds tranquility, discontent rebellion. Therefore I shall ensure one by eliminating the root causes of the other: hunger, poverty, disease, war. Freedoms lost will not be noticed, even in the most libertarian of states. And the material benefits should more than balance the scales.”[1]
Magneto’s counterpart in the civil rights movement, Malcolm X shows parallel views by associating with groups that preached black supremacy. Groups such as the Nation of Islam who were known to not mince their words in their repugnance for the white race as exemplified in this quote:
"Every white man knows his time is up," snapped the frail-looking Negro in the embroidered pillbox to 5,500 Negroes packed into Manhattan's St. Nicholas Arena one hot afternoon last week. "I am here to teach you how to be free. Yes, free from the white man's yoke. We want unity of all darker peoples on the earth. Then we will be masters of the United States, and we are going to treat the white man the way he should be treated." [2]
Both statements seem to portray a feeling of Marxian discontent of the proletariat, or in this case the sufferers, and their need to invert the hierarchy through a social revolution. What is clearly seen in both cases is a radicalization of the mutant and civil rights struggle through the actions and speeches of their charismatic figures. However, in both cases they do not speak about how the new society would look like and how institutions would function within its confines. One of the instances where Magneto and Malcolm X diverge is in the fact that Magneto is very clear about his dictatorial role in new society, whereas Malcolm X makes no such reference of his own role.
There is also a very clear disdain from both characters for anti-revolutionary reformists. In the case of Magneto that would be Professor X and the xmen, and in the case Malcolm X it would be Martin Luther King Junior. Magneto accuses xmen of fighting and protecting humanity which is trying to enslave and kill them whereas Malcolm X refers to King as a “stooge” for the white man and a “chump”. But what is also very interesting is the change in tone of both personalities in their endeavor to a more moderate stand point with time. Magneto before the end reconciles with Professor X and comes to see that mutants and humans can indeed live in a symbiotic society whereas, Malcolm X comes to regret his Nation of Islam days and begins to see that both blacks and whites can live in harmony with equal civil rights.
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[1] God Loves, Man Kills” (1982)
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