Dec. 3, 1964 | Malcolm X Debate at Oxford University

Dec. 3, 1964 - Malcolm X engaged in a debate tonight at the Oxford Union, a debating society in the city of Oxford, England, whose membership is drawn primarily from the University of Oxford.
The motion of this evening’s debate, which was televised by the BBC, was taken from a statement made in July by Sen. Barry Goldwater, the Republican candidate for President: “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” Mr. X, who broke with the Nation of Islam earlier this year, argued for the affirmative.
During the debate, Mr. X criticized the way the Anglo-American press portrayed the Congo crisis, noting that the communist Simba rebels were portrayed as primitive, cannibalistic “savages” who engaged in every form of depravity imaginable, while Tshombe and the white mercenaries were portrayed in a favorable light with almost no mention of any atrocities on their part.
He stated that what he regarded as the extremism of the Tshombe government was “never referred to as extremism because it is endorsed by the West, it is financed by America, it’s made respectable by America, and that kind of extremism is never labelled as extremism.”
Many in the audience at Oxford were angered by Malcolm X’s thesis and his support for the Simbas who had committed atrocities, with one asking: “What sort of extremism would you consider the killing of missionaries?”
In response, Mr. X answered: “It is an act of war. I’d call it the same kind of extremism that happened when England dropped bombs on German cities and Germans dropped bombs on English cities.”

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