Press TV – Kevin Barrett



I never met Malcolm Shabazz, the outspoken activist whose grandfather, Malcolm X, was the most influential African-American of the 20th century. Now I will never meet him. According to reports, Malcolm Shabazz was recently murdered in Mexico.

I had been hoping to get to know Malcolm Shabazz at last February’s Hollywoodism Conference in Tehran. But the US National Security State had other ideas. While trying to catch his flight to Tehran, Malcolm was arrested by the FBI. No explanation for the arrest was ever provided.

Why did US authorities prevent Malcolm from traveling to Iran?

The arrest was almost certainly politically-motivated. Malcolm Shabazz’s presence at the Hollywoodism Conference would have brought the event invaluable publicity – especially in the black community and among Muslims, anti-Zionists, and anti-imperialists worldwide. And that publicity would have fueled Malcolm’s impending rise to superstar-dissident status.

Make no mistake: Malcolm Shabazz, like his grandfather, posed a serious, “actionable” long-term threat to the powers-that-be.

Malcolm had converted to Shi’a Islam and become a spokesman for the “axis of resistance” – not just anti-Zionist forces in the Middle East, but anti-empire forces around the world. Like his grandfather, he had had some brushes with the law when he was young. And like his grandfather, he was on the road to putting his past behind him and becoming a charismatic spokesman for the world’s dispossessed.

I do not know whether the usual suspects – the “asteroids” who assassinate the enemies of empire on behalf of the CIA, the World Bank, and related entities, according to author John Perkins – killed Malcolm Shabazz. But I am 100% certain that they were thinking about it.

How can I be so sure?

I have been studying these assassinations for many years. My conclusion is that the empire’s assassins profile their potential enemies, and decide which ones present an “actionable threat.”

Charismatic leaders with access to the media are among the most actionable threats. President John F. Kennedy was murdered because he was so charismatic and media-savvy that he was capable of pushing through policies that the guardians of empire deemed unacceptable: Nuclear disarmament, rapprochement with Cuba, détente with Russia, withdrawal from Vietnam, a new deal for the Third World. This story has been beautifully told by James Douglass, one of America’s leading peace activists, in his book JFK and the Unspeakable.

JFK’s brother Robert Kennedy also presented an actionable threat to the powers-that-be. RFK would have been elected president in 1968 had he not been gunned down by CIA assassins. Robert wanted to be president, so he could prosecute his brother’s murderers and continue his brother’s policies. But the “asteroids” – and their bankster masters – had other ideas.

Martin Luther King was also an “actionable threat.” MLK had turned against the Vietnam War and the whole military-industrial complex, even as the FBI was trying to drive him crazy and make him commit suicide. Far from committing suicide, MLK was planning to lead a half-million people to occupy Washington DC and stay there until the war and poverty were both ended. So – as a jury verdict legally established in 1999 – the US Army, FBI, and CIA worked together to murder Dr. King. The full story is in William Pepper’s book Act of State.

Other “actionable threats” in recent history include JFK Jr., who was murdered in 1999 for pursuing the killers of his father and uncle; Senator Paul Wellstone, murdered in 2003 for planning to investigate 9/11 and prevent the US from invading Iraq; and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, killed with a cancer weapon for the crime of having enough charisma to almost single-handedly lead Latin America out from under the US empire.

Malcolm Shabazz’s grandfather, Malcolm X, was also an “actionable threat” when the CIA orchestrated his assassination in 1965. Malcolm X was forging an anti-empire alliance consisting of Muslims and other non-Western victims of imperialism, along with poor and middle-class American whites and blacks…the same alliance Dr. King was assembling when he was killed three years later.

And now, Malcolm Shabazz – who was forging an updated version of the same anti-empire alliance – is murdered in Mexico. Coincidence? Maybe.

But look at it from the point of view of his likely murderers. From their perspective, Malcolm Shabazz seemed to be following in his grandfather’s footsteps. If they waited much longer to kill him, and let him establish his growing reputation as a respected activist, it would be a lot harder to stage an assassination and then spread the media propaganda line, based on the ancient history of his alleged teenage misdeeds, that he was “just a thug.”

If they waited until his book was finished and published, killing him would look suspicious…and sell his book.

And if they waited until he got as famous and influential as his grandfather, they might have wound up with a major problem on their hands.

So, apparently, they decided to take pre-emptive action. Kill him while he’s only a decade or so past his “troubled” phase. Do it in a way that reinforces the “troubled young man with a criminal history” Operation Mockingbird mantra. Spread that mantra through all of the controlled-media outlets.

Whatever happened to Malcolm Shabazz, it is abundantly obvious that the intelligence agency assets infiltrating US mainstream media are conducting a scripted posthumous character-assassination designed to obscure Malcolm’s role as an up-and-coming activist and long-term threat to the Empire.

If you search the CIA-Mossad-linked Google for “Malcolm Shabazz,” the first result is a story published by the CIA propaganda front, the Huffington Post. The story is a smear designed to drag Malcolm’s name through the mud.

Huffington Post: “In his youth, he set a fire that caused the death of his grandmother.”

Reality: Malcolm Shabazz denied having set that fire as a child; he was forced to plead guilty in the same way that virtually all defendants, especially African-American ones, are forced to plead guilty in plea bargains to avoid facing long prison terms for crimes they may or may not have committed.

Huffington Post: “Shabazz continued to have trouble with the law throughout his life.”

Reality: His last conviction was in 2002, more than a decade ago; the only “trouble” the character-assassins could find since then was an arrest, with no conviction, meaning he was and remains legally innocent. In other words, he was legally deemed innocent of allegedly “punching a hole in a store window” in 2006 (seven years ago!)

In the USA, where Obama’s presidency has not decriminalized “Driving While Black,” practically all young black men have “trouble with the law.” Actually, it isn’t that they have trouble with the law. It’s that the law has trouble with them. Being young, black, and male means being guilty until proven innocent.

The imperial propagandists at the New York Times, Huffington Post, and similar outlets are working overtime smearing Malcolm Shabazz. This apparently pre-orchestrated smear smells like an intelligence operation. It is strong circumstantial evidence that Malcolm Shabazz was yet another political assassination victim.

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Dr. Kevin Barrett, a Ph.D. Arabist-Islamologist, is one of America’s best-known critics of the War on Terror.



He is host of TRUTH JIHAD RADIO; a hard driving weekly radio show funded by listener donations at Patreon.com and FALSE FLAG WEEKLY NEWS (FFWN); a audio-video show produced by Tony Hall, Allan Reese, and Kevin himself. FFWN is funded through FundRazr.



He also has appeared many times on Fox, CNN, PBS and other broadcast outlets, and has inspired feature stories and op-eds in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Chicago Tribune, and other leading publications.



Dr. Barrett has taught at colleges and universities in San Francisco, Paris, and Wisconsin; where he ran for Congress in 2008. He currently works as a nonprofit organizer, author, and talk radio host. Dr. Kevin Barrett, a Ph.D. Arabist-Islamologist, is one of America’s best-known critics of the War on Terror.He is host of TRUTH JIHAD RADIO; a hard driving weekly radio show funded by listener donations at Patreon.com and FALSE FLAG WEEKLY NEWS (FFWN); a audio-video show produced by Tony Hall, Allan Reese, and Kevin himself. FFWN is funded through FundRazr.He also has appeared many times on Fox, CNN, PBS and other broadcast outlets, and has inspired feature stories and op-eds in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Chicago Tribune, and other leading publications.Dr. Barrett has taught at colleges and universities in San Francisco, Paris, and Wisconsin; where he ran for Congress in 2008. He currently works as a nonprofit organizer, author, and talk radio host.