Muhammad Ali & History

Lenin writes in State and Revolution “During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the “consolation” of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping he latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it.”

Was Muhammad Ali a great revolutionary? That is for time to tell. I am more concerned that the corporate elites and the others that are trying to control society are going to sanitize & sterilize what he said and his actions, his attitudes, and his beliefs as soon as possible.

He was certainly not a part of the power elite, being of African descent and was not going to be used by them if he could at all avoid it.

After wining Gold in the Olympics, he went into professional boxing and made quite a name for himself as he clinched (actually bludgeoned his way to) the World Heavyweight Title.

Then came that little incident with the Vietnam War. He wasn't going to serve “the man” in the jungles of a country that most Americans could not even find on a map or even see as a threat to the nation. Yet when asked why he was going to not report to the draft board when his number was called, we get the sanitized quote. He said something much more. He called the nation out for its actions and attitudes against the people of African descent.

“Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights? No I’m not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end. I have been warned that to take such a stand would cost me millions of dollars. But I have said it once and I will say it again. The real enemy of my people is here. I will not disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality…. If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people they wouldn’t have to draft me, I’d join tomorrow. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I’ll go to jail, so what? We’ve been in jail for 400 years. “

Don't remember that one from the history books?
Try this one:

“My conscience won't let me go shoot my brother, or some darker people, or some poor hungry people in the mud for big powerful America. And shoot them for what? They never called me nigger, they never lynched me, they didn't put no dogs on me, they didn't rob me of my nationality, rape and kill my mother and father.”

Not the cute quote we get in history books either, is it? And yet we won't get this. We get the sanitized version. “I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong...They never called me nigger.”

And after the Supreme Court battle (that more dissenters should have tried to use to stay out of a war that we had no reason to be in, he came back to the boxing ring and proceeded to win back the title that the boxing authorities had stripped from him.

And as long as he entertained us, he was OK. (I was going to put something else there, but…)

So as long as he boxed, and kept the people entertained, he was OK.

When he retired, he was pretty much gone from public view. Outside of sports commentary and commercials (where he played capitalist pitch man hawking garbage we really did not need) he was invisible. Whatever political speeches he made, they were hidden from us.

Then the damage from all that boxing came out and we learned about Parkinson's Disease. It's not a disease in as much as it has no bacterial or virus as a cause. It's a consequence of taking too many blows to the head. And he took those blows keeping boxing fans – rich and poor – entertained.

He made statements about Islam. And we heard some of them. We know only the few that the press deemed worthy to release to us or were caught live. Others, are off the record in as much they were not recorded.

So we know a sanitized Muhammad Ali. We know the entertainer that the corporate elite want us to know.

We need to know so much more.