Bamboozled: Two Recent Biographies Shed New Light on Liberal Icons (Gandhi and Malcom X)

Pajamas Media ^ | 5/8/2011 | John Boot

[mojito]

Did you hear that ripping sound? Two liberal icons known by their silly stage names — Mahatma Gandhi and Malcolm X — have just been torn down from their sanctified perches thanks to a pair of massively researched but finally damning new biographies.

Both men, it turns out, were at pains to take on phony identities. Each hid his homosexuality, each was racist, each took pains to manufacture favorable coverage, each was driven by petty hatreds instead of shining ideals — each of these supposedly principled figures was an out-and-out phony.

Perhaps the most delicious irony of this myth-busting is that writers with impeccable liberal credentials are the ones who are doing the exposing — and implicitly rebuking the generations of journalists who actively participated in the distortion and exaggeration.

[....]

Mohandas Gandhi also successfully hid his homosexuality — his biographer Joseph Lelyveld, former editor of The New York Times, writes in his admiring new book Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India that the Indian leader dumped his wife to have an affair with a German bodybuilder, Hermann Kallenbach. “How completely you have taken possession of my body,” he wrote to Kallenbach. Gandhi even said that Vaseline was “a constant reminder” of his boyfriend.

[ansel12]

I thought it was interesting about the anti-semitism, you have devoted an awful lot of effort to discredit that claim, yet your only argument seems to be that one of his homosexual lovers was Jewish, and that the author didn’t bother mentioning that, that and the Marcus Garvey oversight?, mistake? has you hammering at this article critical of two liberal icons.

[allmendream]

I made one comment - about something that jumped out at me as obviously not being true.

In response you asked if there were anything else.

I pointed out the Jewish lover being identified as “German” right before launching into the ‘he is an antisemite’ line.

Sorry if, after you asked, I supplied more. I will be sure to not respond in good faith the next time you ask me for more information - lest it elicit accusations that by answering I have some sort of agenda and devotion to the issue.

You asked.

I answered.

You got upset about the answer.

You try to make this about me.

So do you take the stance that it is OK to outright lie or leave out relevant information - so long as the narrative constructed thereby tends to discredit a liberal icon?

[ansel12]

I don’t think that he left out anything relevant, nor can I figure out what upset you so about this article, it sure seems like more than just the Marcus Garvey mistake, it seems to bug you very much.

[allmendream]

I am not upset about the article - I am - if upset about anything - upset over your infantile antics.

I said one thing.

You asked for more.

You evidently didn't WANT more.

Too bad for you. Cry some more about it. Try to read my mind some more. Accuse me of being a liberal or having an agenda and being upset over it.

It sure doesn't make you look disinterested.

So what is YOUR interest in this article?

“Gandhi was a homosexual and an antisemite” was the main thrust vis a vis Gandhi - in this article. You don't find it at all relevant, given that context, that his homosexual lover was Jewish? LOL!!!! OK THEN!!!!!!

And just how many lies are OK? Do you have to catch a liar in every lie - or is one sufficient?

It must be really upsetting you to have you devote so much time to defending this drivel WITHOUT even once deigning to answer my questions about why you think lies are appropriate or just how many it takes before you distrust a source.

[blueunicorn6]

Malcolm X - Malcolm Y?

[ansel12]

What is the relevancy of one of his lovers being Jewish?

[allmendream]

Well, speaking PURELY in the hypothetical:

If the two things I was bringing up about you; as to why you are such a lowlife - were that you were racist against Blacks and a raging homosexual - and I described your homosexual lover as being “from Chicago” - do you think it would be a rather blatant omission to not point out that your gay lover from Chicago was Black?

[ansel12]

No, that kind of thing is common, and “German Body Builder” is enough of a description.

As a teen I knew a guy that had founded a racist organization (white), his girlfriend was a black woman, do you really think that currently no anti Semites have Jewish lovers etc., especially in the bizarre world of anally fixated homosexuals, a body builder no less?

[allmendream]

“What is the relevancy of one of his lovers being Jewish?”

“one of”???

You mean “the only one mentioned” perhaps?

That the guy was Jewish would obviously have thrown a monkey wrench in the narrative he wanted to construct - rather than dealing with the reality (indeed there is many a racist who would have a lover of what they consider a “lower” race).

Describing a Jewish weightlifter homosexual via his nationality of German in the context of Gandhi being an anti-semite is a double whammy - gives the image of Gandhi with a neoNazi blond blue eyed ‘Uberman’ - not a Jewish homosexual.

But why the monomaniacal focus on the lie of omission? Isn't the lie about Marcus Garvey enough for you?

[ansel12]

LOL, there is no question that you are upset about that negative charge against Gandhi.

“one of”???
So Gandhi was a virgin except for the bodybuilder?

I was right about you using this to fight the anti-semitism charge against the liberal icon, it is sure a narrow argument you are making so vehemently.

[x]

Malcolm X a liberal?

Maybe in the sense that he wasn't a conservative in the accepted sense of the word, but he wasn't exactly Martin Luther King or Eleanor Roosevelt or Albert Schweitzer and didn't exactly think well of "White liberals."

Gandhi may have been a liberal icon, but was he actually a liberal? Look at how he lived his life. Not exactly a secular progressive.

History is way too complicated to divide it all up into an "our side" and a "their side." Some people don't fit well into either side.

[allmendream]

It was not the case that of the numerous homosexual lovers the author brought up ONE of them was a German Jewish bodybuilder.

The ONE lover brought up by the author was that guy (the one who Gandhi thinks of when he sees Vaseline. ewwwwwww) - who they called a German - but didn't see fit to mention was Jewish.

So did YOU write this infantile drivel? Why the fanatical defense of this slapdash amateurish crap that omits what it doesn't outright lie about?

My argument is a simple one - and from the beginning.

I knew he was lying about Marcus Garvey - what else did he lie about? How many lies do you have to catch from a source before you know they are less than scrupulous with the truth?

I guess you like being lied to. Nothing I can do for you there champ.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks mojito.

[ansel12]

The article has clearly made you angry and it is hard to believe that the mistake on Garvey would set your passions so aflame against this author and cause you to so forcefully and passionately focus your real efforts towards his mention of Gandhi’s gay lover, instead of Malcolm X himself.

By the way I’m having to take your word that the author made that mistake, I don’t remember the book well enough to know if you are telling the truth.

[allmendream]

I said one thing tool. You asked me if I had more. I did.

You held onto it only being a lie of omission like it was your LIFE.

I asked you why you didn't seem to mind the lie about Marcus Garvey. But you don't want to talk about that, other than to call me a liar.

Why no answer about the article? Do you have any connection to the author? That would be three times I have asked now.

Malcolm X said the REASON those bad bad white men lynched his poor pappy was that he was a Garvey-ite. And then right after the story about how it was just a railroad accident (not at all incompatible that a lynching would be recorded as an accident) the idiot brain dead lying author
says Malcolm played down his father's political involvement.

Well, other than saying it was the reason he was killed, yeah, not too focused on his fathers politics. Sheesh!

[ansel12]

I don’t know - but I do know that you don’t need to catch a liar in every lie to know that they are less than scrupulous with the truth.

Your very first post to me sounded very angry about the article, and you never let up.

The article on these two homosexual leftists really upset you, I guess I will never know the full story.

[allmendream]

Is that why you asked for more? Because my original complaint had nothing to do with the homosexuality you wanted to talk about?

Are you the author or connected with the author? Are you the homosexual lover of the author?

I guess I will never know the full story.

[eclecticEel]

I already know that Gandhi had serious faults, you can pick up any of the hagiographic biographies out there and figure that out; but come’on, let’s have a bit more discernment than to believe the salacious musings of some conspiracist.

[mojito]

The “salacious musings” appear in the new biography of Gandhi by Joseph Lelyveld, a senior editor at the New York Times for decades, and a man of impeccable establishment liberal credentials.