Black Panthers, Third World revolutionary movements, CIA surveillance and plane hijackings. Elaine Mokhtefi is a century of history in a person. We speak to her about her experiences as an activist ranging back to protesting segregation in 1944. Her book Algiers: Third World Capital is an enthralling testament to a life of involvement in the tangible fight for freedom and justice in colonized and exploited countries.
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QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.
Welcome to the QAA podcast episode 330, Elaine Mukteffe.
As always, we are your host, Jake Rocketanski and Julian Field.
Okay, listeners, this is a very particular and special episode that is very important to me.
It is a conversation with Elaine Mukteffe.
I will be introducing who she is in a moment, but I think what really stands out for me in this episode is that we are talking about someone who is essentially a living century.
You know, her first activism was at age 16 in 44.
She's currently 96 years old, answered an email for some reason that I sent her after I read her book and agreed to do this.
Just a generosity and, you know, a quality of person that is very rare.
And I just, you know, want to say that I'm very grateful for her answering in the first place and sitting down with us.
And I really hope you enjoy this episode because we will be, you know, traipsing around the world, traipsing through history to figure out, you know, what freedom movements are and how maybe today we could carry on that beautiful legacy.
So without further ado, let's get on with it.
I am very excited today because we have a dream guest for me.
So I've got a little spiel to introduce her.
Elaine Mokdeffi is an American anti-imperialist writer and organizer who played a crucial role in the international liberation movements.
After working with anti-colonial circles in Paris, she joined the Algerian struggle for independence and later became deeply involved in building solidarity between newly liberated Algeria and freedom movements around the world.
She worked as a translator and liaison for revolutionary figures, including the Black Panthers in Exile, and coordinated with the likes of Eldritch Cleaver, France Fanon's widow Josie, and anti-apartheid activists.
Her memoir, Algiers' Third World Capital, documents how post-independence Algeria became a global hub for decolonial organizing and how Mokdefi herself bridged continents, languages, and movements in pursuit of a freer world.
Elaine, welcome on the show.
Hi.
I'm really glad to have you on and I'm going to kind of start at the beginning.
You know, you were expelled when you were 16 years old from Wesleyan College in Georgia for opposing segregation.
The year was 1944.
So could you tell us a little bit about that and how that influenced your political path?
Yes, I was sort of a rebel at the time in that it was a time of segregation.
And very clearly, people like myself couldn't take it.
And so we gradually grew together a small group of people who were opposed to segregation.
And we did things like sit in the back of the bus or have black people sit down next to us and things like that.
And the college that I was going to said that this was not for them and I should leave.
So I was kicked out at the end of my first year.
Did you find a lack of solidarity among Georgians or the Americans at the time?
Well, yes, you had to be very careful.
Even the young women who were part of the school, students of the school, kept to the rules.
But we were several girls from the north at that southern college, and we sort of banded together.
But I was the only one that was kicked out.
And that got you started on, you know, a lifetime of activism?
That got me started.
Certainly did.
Yes, then I went to school in New York and to a place called, and that doesn't exist anymore, but to a Latin American Institute.
And there I heard about politics.
And so I got involved in the United World Federalists.
We were just after the Second World War.
And this was a kind of spirit of liberation.
We learned about decolonization and supported liberation movements and so on.
It was very exciting times and we didn't see any obstacles.
Of course, we learned about them very quickly.
Of course, yeah.
And took that into consideration.
Could you tell us a bit about the concept of third worldism and just the third world in general?
I think people have a misunderstanding about that word and what the movement was like.
During the war, a group of students in the United States had set up an organization for the creation of a world government.
These were high school students and it was an idea that seemed part of the time.
So it was open.
We were open to meeting people, to supporting people around the world for justice and peace.
It was very open times.
Nothing could stop us.
We were militants and the United World Federalists became one of the most important organizations in the United States.
The student movement part of the organization was very active.
But gradually the Cold War invaded us.
We were attacked for being too far left and so on.
At the time, we didn't have any impression of ourselves being either left or right.
We were just for justice, decolonization, world peace, and it all seemed very natural to us.
And so, you know, a lot of countries at the time, they believed, okay, we're going to take our place in the world order.
We are, you know, participants.
We have a right to participate.
We're going to send our delegations to these kind of symposiums and such.
And, you know, you end up becoming a translator and a facilitator for some of these.
And we'll get into that.
But first, I wanted to talk a little bit about the fact that you traveled to France and then to Algiers where you got involved with the Algerian Revolution.
So just for the listener, the Algerian Revolution, roughly between 1954 and 1962, was a mass anti-colonial uprising against French occupation, led primarily by the National Liberation Front, or FLN.
It was a brutal and determined struggle for independence, marked by guerrilla warfare, civilian resistance, and widespread repression by the French military.
Despite intense violence, torture, and decades of colonial rule, Algerians mobilized across rural and urban fronts to reclaim their land and identity.
The revolution became a symbol of third world liberation, inspiring other anti-colonial movements across Africa, Asia, and the Americas.
So you ended up in Paris in the early 1950s.
What brought you there and how did you come to be involved with the FLN?
Well, you couldn't live in France for any length of time without taking sides.
The war started in 1954 and everyone took sides.
There were demonstrations continually in Paris.
And so I had already realized that there was a subculture and that Algerians were discriminated against in France.
It was very obvious.
And so I took sides.
And there were demonstrations against the war and so on.
And at the time, I became more and more fluent in French and became capable of translating or interpreting.
And so I was often called upon to participate in international organizations and do the interpreting and so on, and French English especially.
And I gradually became more and more aware of what decolonization meant and what the Algerian war meant and so on.
And I was gradually meeting people who were as aware as I was of the necessity for solidarity.
And so specifically, you know, how do you kind of become acquainted with the FLN and decide to move to Algeria?
Well, in, I think it was about 1959 or so, or maybe 1960, I don't remember.
But I helped organize an international conference, a youth conference in Ghana.
Ghana had just become independent and Nkrumah invited this organization, the World Assembly of Youth, to hold an organizational meeting in Accra.
And I was asked to organize that meeting and so I did and met the representatives of many organizations fighting for their independence.
And I met Franz Fanon at that meeting.
He was the Algerian representative in Africa at the time.
It was during the Algerian war.
And he and the delegate from the FLN, in addition to him, the representative in Africa of the FLN, we sort of formed a block and wrote resolutions and got them passed by this organization and so on and so on.
After which I came back to the United States, looked up the Algerian office in New York and started to work for them.
So the last years of the war, I was working for the FLN in New York in their information office.
It was an office that was trying to get resolutions passed at the United Nations on independence of colonized countries.
And it took that office, which was founded in 1955.
It took them until 1960 to get a resolution passed in favor of independence for colonized nations.
And a year later, in 1961, finally, in the seventh year of the Algerian war, the United Nations called upon the nations of the world to recognize Algerian independence.
And of course, the French, you know, were not going to let go easily.
So, you know, what was the situation in terms of them, I guess, acquiescing to that independence?
Were they kind of forced to it?
And how did that happen?
Well, I think they were forced to it when they lost support of the United States and other Western countries.
I don't think that they on their own would ever have withdrawn so easily after seven and a half years of war.
So they saw that it was unending, that there was no solution other than independence.
Their main backer, the United States, was now abstaining on votes at the United Nations.
It was time to let go.
You mentioned Frantz Fanon.
He was a Martinesian psychiatrist, writer, and revolutionary who became a fierce voice for anti-colonial liberation, especially through his involvement in the Algerian struggle for independence.
His work exposed the psychological violence of colonialism and championed the transformative power of revolutionary action.
In books like Black Skin, White Mask, and The Wretched of the Earth, he offered a searing analysis of racism, dehumanization, and the necessity of resistance.
Fanon's legacy endures as a radical theorist of liberation whose ideas fueled freedom movements worldwide.
So at this point, did you understand that you were kind of taking part in history, or did you just feel like you were taking the next right steps for you?
No, really.
I was just doing what I had to do.
I just felt that I wanted to be part of any movement that was for justice and for freedom.
And I didn't think of myself in historical terms at all.
And so what was your impression of Fanon?
Like, what would you have to say about him in retrospect?
In retrospect, I realized how important what he had to say was.
And it took many years, really, for his writing to be looked at seriously.
I mean, it's only in the very recent years that there have been studies of his writing, his two main books, and His name has become known really around the political world as a revolutionary, a man looking for justice, as a black man looking for justice.
And it's all very recent.
Actually, he was well known in Algeria from the beginning, from the beginning of years of the war, when he was a psychiatrist in Algeria and then moved to Tunisia to work with the National Liberation Front and so on.
And another figure that you came into contact with was Jean-Paul Sartre, who was a French philosopher and writer.
He was also a committed anti-colonialist.
And obviously he's known for his existentialist thought, but he also wrote the preface to Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth.
What can you tell me about your interactions with Sartre and his involvement with the freedom movements?
He had a famous meeting with Sartre in, I think it was in Italy, during the Algerian War.
And he met Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, etc.
And they talked about liberation, decolonization, and so on.
And Sartre prepared a fantastic introduction to Fanon's book.
Unfortunately, it was delivered to he only saw that introduction when he was lying in the hospital in Washington when he was a dying man.
He had leukemia.
And at the time, there was very little that could be done for him.
You mentioned a little bit about the All-African People's Conference held in Accra in 1958.
So for the listener, this was a landmark gathering of anti-colonial leaders and activists and movements hosted by Kwame Nkrumah in the newly independent Ghana.
And this was a kind of a vision of African liberation and solidarity, rejecting colonial domination.
Obviously, you know, apartheid was on the, you know, the docket.
It was a turning point in that pan-African resistance and alliances were forged there that would shape the future of decolonization.
So how did you feel that the international community took this All-African People's Conference?
I'm also thinking of the Bandung Conference for the Third World Movement.
These were gatherings that said, hey, what if we didn't wait for the colonial powers or even the United States to come to the table?
What if we formed solidarity?
Can you tell us a little bit more about that and your involvement with it?
Well, there was a place for men like Lumamba and Fanon to meet and to consult.
They became, I hesitate saying lifelong because their lives weren't very long, friends, very close friends and with people who had a very legitimate and very active role in decolonization.
And it all sort of started in Bandung back in the, I guess Bandung was back in the 50s and in Indonesia where they first drew together people like Shu and Lai and Nehru and I think it was in 1954 or 55 and there were even two representatives of the Algerian National Liberation Front and they passed resolutions.
This is sort of a first of the gathering together of important international figures and it was right after that that the two Algerians who attended that conference in Bandum went to the United States, set up the office in order to influence the United Nations and to influence nations in favor of their independence.
Yeah, I mean all of these international meetings were significant.
They were significant because they were organized by the people themselves who were trying to influence the international organizations, the labor movement, the East and the West, the United Nations and so on.
It was all during that period in the 50s.
Little did you know that there was powerful dark forces is the best way I can kind of describe them organizing to make sure that none of these dreams would come true or at least to try to do so.
Well it was also during the same period that these national organizations were created in the United States and elsewhere in Europe that were monitoring politics on the international level and were keeping tabs on people and divining ways of stopping the progress towards justice.
It was a very tight period and we were only beginning to watch our backs.
That was meant to be the future that we would have to be very careful and it became more and more difficult to be generally outspoken and our organizations that were in favor of solidarity with other organizations from other national countries and so on had began organizing and were obviously openly courageous.
What role do you think paranoia played?
Because I know that a lot of these figures that were involved in these freedom movements, they did eventually succumb to like feeling extremely paranoid about what was going on and the surveillance and all of this.
And, you know, today we talk about conspiracy theories, but at the time they were onto something.
There really was like shadowy, powerful people plotting to make sure they did not see that freedom and that justice.
Yes, we came more and more aware of these various organizations and two faces and so on.
I remember very well that we were being looked after.
I can still see in my vision, my long-term vision, the guys that were watching my back.
And it was, you had to be rather clear-eyed about what you were afraid of and not give in.
What do you think the FBI, the CIA thought of this young Jewish-American woman getting involved in pan-African revolutionary movements?
I mean, I know that eventually every nation that we are talking about here has tried to ban you from landing or being a part of it.
But what do you think that they made of your strange role?
Well, I don't know what they thought, but they certainly were tagging me.
And what is an interesting fact is that I've seen my dossier at the CIA, which is something that an American can do.
It's really when I started being active in favor of Cuba that they got interested in me.
And I just sort of, I could tell that I was being followed or not.
There were different acts that became obvious to me.
At the time, did you have friends or family members who were saying, Elaine, you know, you're messing with stuff.
You know, you're going to get in trouble.
You know, you got to stop or you got to be careful.
Did you have people who knew that these people were following you or looking after you and were worried for your own safety?
Oh, well, yes, there was one member of my family who did, in a way, warn me.
Yes.
I mean, you know, when you're active in this sort of very open, responsible way, it's very difficult to become totally clandestine.
And what I was doing in advocating independence for decolonization and so on was so obviously open to the world.
There was nothing secret about it.
It was our desire for justice, that's all.
And a call for solidarity.
I can't say anything more than that.
And why would it be undercover?
It's out in the open today for justice for Palestine and so on.
It's out in the open.
And there's no reason for it to be clandestine.
We should be able to say what we believe and look forward to what we hope for for the Palestinian people.
It's totally inexcusable to arrest people for their beliefs in freedom and justice.
It's unacceptable.
Absolutely.
So do you think, I mean, the CIA probably didn't realize how pissed off they were going to be because you eventually become involved with the Black Panthers, who, you know, famously, not an organization that the kind of three-letter agencies in the United States were fans of.
Yes, this was back in the late 60s, early 70s, 1960s and 1970s.
Eldritch Cleaver arrived in Algeria from Cuba, where he had been in hiding.
He had been indicted and was supposedly to go to jail in the United States.
He left clandestinely for Cuba.
And then finally, the Cubans had sent him to Algeria.
And he arrived in, I think it was in 1969 or something, or 1970.
And after his arrival in Algeria, the Algerians recognized him as a representative of the Black Panthers of an organization for liberation and gave him residence.
And other Panthers then very naturally came to Algeria.
They set up the Algerian government at the time, helped them organize themselves within the country.
It was a difficult task because they didn't speak any of the main languages of the countries, but they did manage and they made contacts with other liberation movements who also had offices in Algiers and Belarusiers.
And this was just prior to the International Cultural Conference, African Cultural Conference in 1969, I think it was.
So they arrived just maybe a couple of weeks before.
So just for the listener, I'm going to go through a couple of these organizations and figures.
The Black Panther Party was a revolutionary Black Liberation organization founded in 1966 by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale in Oakland, California.
They fought against police brutality and systemic racism, advocating for self-defense and community control.
Beyond their militant stance, they created vital community programs like free breakfast for children, health clinics, and education initiatives.
The Panthers represented a radical organized demand for dignity, survival, and black self-determination in the face of state violence.
Within that organization, Eldridge Cleaver is a figure.
He was a writer, revolutionary, and leading figure, of course.
He was known for his fiery rhetoric and uncompromising stance against white supremacy.
His book, Soul on Ice, blended autobiography with radical political critique.
It became a touchstone of black liberation literature, and he was the minister of information for the Panthers and became an international symbol of resistance and fled the United States to avoid arrest.
He spent years in exile, including in Algeria, where he met you, and he continued to organize until there were internal splits that, you know, fractured the movement.
So I want to kind of place us here.
You're in Algeria.
Eldridge Cleaver arrives.
What makes you decide to get so involved with the Black Panthers when you were already doing a lot of work for the Algerian revolution?
Did you feel that after the revolution came to an end, your role there was less important and there were other struggles that you could help?
Well, I felt some American identity with the Black Panthers.
We spoke the same language.
We had some of the same history.
And they were, in a way, in difficulty because they didn't speak any of the languages of the country.
They didn't speak Arabic and they didn't speak French.
And so they needed someone that was sort of a bridge between the Algerian authorities and themselves.
The Algerian authorities were very open to them at the time.
So I was sort of their go-between between them because I did speak French and I would translate for them when they had meetings, when they were spoken public.
I mean, the Algerian government was very generous.
They gave the liberation movements a stipend every month.
They opened the airwaves to them.
They opened the radio and the national television to them for interviews and for statements and so on.
So there was already a pattern when the Panthers arrived.
There's a pattern with many African organizations that were looking towards independence, like South Africa and Zimbabwe and Mozambique and Angola.
They all had offices in Algiers.
Many of them had people training with the Algerian army.
Nelson Mandela was even among them.
It was a very revolutionary time when many, many countries were looking towards independence and needed help.
And Algeria was right in line with them.
And the Panther survival was considered absolutely normal.
It's hard for us today to imagine a government of a nation siding with freedom movements in general and saying, we are all in this together.
That was a very unique point in history, I think.
Yes, I feel really, very strongly about that, that Algeria was able to help these movements already before their own independence.
They accepted within the Algerian army members of different countries who were looking to organize themselves in liberation movements already during the war, before independence.
I think that, you know, during the Bandung Conference and in this period of time, there was an idea that maybe the United States would be the deciding factor, that maybe they respected freedom movements enough to allow them to flourish.
You know, JFK obviously spoke quite positively of them at times.
When did you start to understand that maybe that was not going to be the case, that maybe the United States had its own empire in their mind and that the Cold War was very important to them?
Oh, I can't think of a specific moment.
I do remember Kennedy's speech when he was a senator.
I think it was in 1958.
He called upon France to let go.
I remember him saying that France had been at war in the Second World War and then 10 years in Indochina.
And now a number of years in Algeria.
It was a quarter of a century that France had been at war and had let go.
Algeria should be independent.
And it was a major speech in the Senate.
And Kennedy said afterwards that he had never received so much negative correspondence as to that speech.
And so I want to briefly acquaint the audience with COINTELPRO, which is short for counterintelligence program.
It was a covert operation run by the FBI from the 1950s through the 1970s to surveil, infiltrate, discredit, and destroy political movements seen as threats to the U.S. status quo.
Under the guise of national security, it targeted black liberation groups like the Black Panther Party, civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr., anti-war activists, socialists, indigenous organizers.
The program used illegal tactics, surveillance without warrants, forged documents, harassment, and orchestrated violence to fracture movements from within and incite paranoia and division.
For groups fighting for dignity, autonomy, and justice, COINTELPRO was not just surveillance, it was a sustained campaign of psychological warfare designed to neutralize the possibility of real systemic change in the United States.
I wanted to ask you, do you think COINTELPR targeted assassinations, forced exiles?
Did they play a role in like the deep rifts, maybe the delusions of grandeur, the cults of personality that developed within the Black Panthers?
Or do you think that those were going to happen naturally?
Well, I think that the Black Panthers were not always necessarily on top of what was happening in their own organization.
And they certainly weren't advised as to how to react to the FBI or the CIA or government prowess.
And they had an underground organization, it's true, but they didn't know how to use it.
They had a very revolutionary and very wise leader of their armed sector, Don Cox.
It was an organization that had experience, but not general education.
And how to use arms, when to use arms, why to use arms became really important questions for people like the leaders of the Panthers.
And obviously the government forces were more apt organization than they were, but nonetheless, there was a military armed underground within the Panther organization.
It was routed out.
People were killed.
The FBI killed, broke up some of their organizations and so on.
And so it's very difficult to manage a national organization, no less an international organization.
And they failed.
They found it very difficult to operate under the circumstances.
And so this organization split.
And that split became definite and led to their demise.
John Cox has written a book putting a lot of the blame on the Panthers themselves of taking too many things for granted, not taking enough precautionary action.
That's a delicate subject.
Of course.
What was your perception at the time of the United States government?
Did you start to understand it a little differently than you had maybe in the 50s?
You know, it's difficult for me to go back.
I've felt for a long time that the government was not on the right track as far as independence around the world and justice around the world was concerned.
But where and when exactly it all occurred in my head, I really can't say.
I mean, I have had a lot of luck.
I do want to talk a little bit about Eldridge Cleaver.
You know, he was clearly a man that you admired, but you saw some pretty big flaws in as well.
You describe him, and this is not just you, but there was a certain violence to him, especially with his wife.
He committed sexual assault and murder.
You know, in the book, it's very interesting because you don't mince your words.
You don't like let him get away with it.
And, you know, but also you recognize his importance in history.
So, you know, in retrospect or at the time, whatever you'd like, how did you square those different aspects of this man?
It's a bit difficult.
He and I had a special relationship.
He was very frank with me.
There's been a very good biography of him written by a professor at the University of Nevada, Justin.
I can't remember his last name right now, but it's a very good biography.
He had access to most of Eldridge's documents and Kathleen's documents, and it's a very neutral kind of politically neutral biography of Eldridge.
He and Kathleen knew that they were part of history, and so they were very conscious of everything they did, very conscious of it so that it would be interpreted in the way that was most valuable to them.
And anyone dealing with them had to take that into consideration.
And at the time, Eldridge needed people like me because we were able to interpret events in the country he was living in, in Algeria.
But he also needed people who would be in contact with European organizations and so on.
And he couldn't travel.
It was very, very difficult for him to travel.
And I think that people like me were essential to their continued existence in a decent way in Algeria.
But we were not essential as far as politics were concerned.
Politics were theirs and they determined what their relationship was to Panthers back in the United States.
So their role in Algeria in relation to freedom organizations and as well as leftist organizations, revolutionary organizations in Europe and other countries.
And they were extremely active, militant, and they were organized like an army in Algeria.
They set up daily schedules for each person who was there.
And at the end of the day, they had to go over what they had done and so on.
It was a very, very tight organization.
And then it started to break down.
After the split came down, it started to break down.
People started taking positions individually.
And they also had to start thinking about the future.
What was the future of people who were living in Algeria, who aren't part of the culture, who would have difficulty finding work and couldn't go back to the United States?
So each one had to take personal decision as to the future of them and maybe the family, because many of them had wives and children.
There must have been 40 or 50 of them, the Panthers, and the surrounding crowd among them, women and children.
So they all had to take very personal decisions that, in a sense, had nothing to do with Panthers.
It's their future as individuals.
And Eldridge's the same.
And Eldridge decided that he was going, that he was leaving Algeria and he was going to France.
He was going to set up in France.
And he had friends among politicians in France who were going to help him.
And he had an extraordinary encounter with someone who knew Giscard Best, who became president of France and who actually helped Albert and his family.
Amazing story.
And they set up in France as a family.
It's quite amazing.
It is so funny to see these different, I guess, colonial powers have such different stances, right?
So you see sympathy for the Panthers from the French government, which they did not have for the Algerian movement.
And then you saw sympathy for the Algerian movement in the American government.
So there was this brief kind of, I guess, game of chess with these colonial powers and some of these revolutionary movements.
Yeah, some of them doing each other favors and some of them standing up against each other.
It's quite amazing.
I do want to go back to Algeria.
There's a few wild stories.
I want to talk about the hijackings, but first I want to talk about a night that you describe where Eldridge basically killed a man who he that was part of the Panthers, who he thought was having an affair with his wife or that there was some sort of link there between them.
And he came to you and confessed.
Well, how did you take that?
Because that was a strange position for you to be in.
It was a terrible position to be in.
I took it as being, meaning that if the body was found and anyone in the Algerian, of the Algerian authorities learned about the murder, that he would be in trouble.
And he sort of counted on me to help him.
I don't know what I could have done, but he told me.
Whereas the Panthers themselves were not informed.
They didn't know for months what had happened.
They thought that the man had just left Algeria, that Rahim had just left Algeria.
And it was only him and Byron both who had gone.
And that was it.
They didn't realize what had actually happened.
It was several months before the other members of the Panthers realized what had happened.
And the Algerian government did eventually find the body, right?
They found the body practically immediately.
Okay, yeah.
And they realized that it was a Black American.
And what happened?
What did they do?
Did they just decide to squash it?
Nothing.
They identified him through a Frenchman who frequented the Panthers, and that was it.
Nothing was said.
I imagine that they looked down upon the liberation movements dealing their own justice, but nonetheless, there was a limit to how far they could intervene for that sort of thing.
They felt.
The relationship between you and Cleaver is obviously central to the book.
How did you part ways?
And looking back, how do you see that relationship?
Well, I helped him leave Algeria.
I saw him the morning that he took off, dressed as a gentleman with a derby and a long black coat.
And a friend drove him through Tunisia and to the airport in Tunis.
He got on with the false passport on the plane to France and lived on in France for several years.
He got to know Juscardassan, the president of France, and who set him up in Paris with papers, documents.
And I asked Eldridge to do the same for me.
And I felt that he, well, we had coordinated work on several levels and so on, that he should have been able to help me.
And he was, I'm convinced that he would have been able to if he desired.
He didn't do it.
And I thought that was a terrible letdown for me.
I've given him more, I had more confidence in him than he showed.
I want to move on a little bit to these hijackings, which are some of the more unbelievable things from our contemporary perspective.
Two different hijacked planes just kind of showed up to Algeria.
So, I mean, could you tell us a bit more about that?
Oh, yes.
It was unbelievable.
One morning, somebody called me from the National Liberation Office and telling me that a plane was over the Atlantic and heading for Algeria, headed by some air pirates, and that I should get to the airport with Eldridge Flever immediately.
So I called Eldridge, but he had already heard.
DC, Don Cox had been listening to Shortwave and had heard that this hijacking had taken place.
And so anyway, we all for Eldridge and Don Cox, and I think it was Seiko Odinga and myself, went to the airport.
And the people who had undertaken the hijacking had stated to the tower at the airport that they were not Black Panthers.
They had originally said they were, but then all of a sudden, just before they landed, they said they were not Black Panthers.
They were white revolutionaries.
So quite amazing.
Anyway, we were at the airport and they came down off the plane and the Algerians took the money bags.
And we all went in to the airport and we met these two extraordinary people, a young woman and her boyfriend.
And they had told us that they didn't have any arms.
They pretended they had arms to the pilot and the crew and that they didn't really have any arms at all.
The whole thing was out.
And they had no colleagues either.
They had told the pilot and the crew that they had colleagues among the passengers.
But of course they didn't.
At any rate, they crossed the Atlantic, just the two of them, with the staff of the airplane, and they arrived in Algiers and they gave up their money bags to the Algerians, who immediately saw that they couldn't keep, they couldn't pass the money on to the bad campers.
It was impossible.
They had to give the money back.
Otherwise, no pilot, international pilot in the world would have landed in Algeria in the future.
It was sine qua non.
And so they gave the money back.
And then there were some people in Detroit who were contemplating another pirate tea, but they had read about the first growth, but they certainly hadn't seen that the money had been given back.
And so instead of $500,000, they asked for a million dollars.
They got the million dollars and they crossed the Atlantic, eight Americans.
And when they arrived in Algeria, the Algerians by then knew the procedure.
And so we weren't invited to the airport.
Another day, another hijacker landing here.
But the eight members, including several children and babies, in fact, were given immediate asylum.
They were allowed to remain in Algeria.
No action was taken against them.
But it was up to the Black Panthers to take care of them.
So there were no consequences to the individuals, but the money was given back to the airlines.
And the Panthers made the mistake of attacking Bhu-Median, president of Algeria at the time, for not giving money to them.
And that was not a very fortunate path to take.
Right.
They pissed off the very government that had been giving them a stipend that had been housing them.
They used, so these were kind of, I consider them American tactics, but they didn't ask my advice.
At any rate, they gave the money back and that was it.
In the long term, it didn't affect the Panthers staying in Algeria if they so desired.
But by then, the Black Panther organization in the United States was really on its way out.
And the Panthers in Algeria had to decide what their future would be.
And so all of this had an effect, but it wasn't a disaster.
Each group, there were couples with their children, so on.
Each group made their own decisions as to where they would go because most of them could not go back to the United States.
They were wanted for one thing or another.
So some went to Tanzania, some others went to Zimbabwe or Zambia, and so on and so on.
Elvidge decided to go to France.
And you also kind of had your own issues with the Algerian government, mostly because there was, you know, it was a bit messy after the revolution.
There was a regime change and you refused to inform to the secret police of the Algerian government on one of your, you know, friends and contacts.
And they turned on you.
Yes, that's true.
I worked at the time at the Ministry of Information with two other women and a man.
And we had a small group.
And our job was to create a magazine that could be used internationally.
And we were working on it when one of the young women was contacted by someone that she vaguely knew and asked whether she would like to become the wife of ex-President Ben Bella, who was by then in prison under Ruma Diamond's regime.
And she asked to meet him and she went to meet him and she said that she would not.
Whereupon the marriage took place in Algiers without the president and the ex-president.
And she would go and live with him three or four weeks and then come spend one week with her parents in Algiers.
She was not a prisoner, obviously.
And somehow the Secret Service decided that I would be someone who would tell them what she would do when she was in Algiers.
And they asked me to spy on her and to report back to them.
And I refused.
And that was the reason I was deported.
I refused, yeah.
So they said, goodbye.
That must have been pretty difficult.
I mean, I know that, you know, the love of your life and your husband, Mukhtar Muqtefi, was involved, you know, in the freedom movement, in the original revolution.
He was also a writer.
Was that difficult to have the government turn on you and even though you felt in some ways Algerian?
Well, you know, the secret service has its own rules or seems to be their own rules.
And my husband had been in the Liberation Army.
He knew a lot of the authorities and he did try to intervene and was unable to do anything about it.
And so finally he came out.
Rather than my going back, he came out.
And yes, we lived in France for a number of years and then we went back, came back to the United States.
Since then, I have been back to Algeria three or four times.
Yes.
I mean, my name was on a list at the airport.
And even with a visa, I was unable to get in.
But now my name is off that list, thank goodness.
Yeah, about time.
24 years later.
So I want to talk a little bit about a strange figure that features in your book, Timothy Leary.
He was basically the intellectual face of the LSD phenomenon.
And I was not surprised that you described his politics as quite evasive.
I mean, what do you make of him and his role in left-wing politics at the time?
Well, I did take a rather immediate dislike to him.
He was someone who was very difficult personally, on a personal level.
He was a difficult individual.
And he was uncontrollable.
Eldridge tried desperately to control him, tried to get him to make statements against hard drugs and so on.
And he tried to get him to be careful of his relationships and of the acts that he and his wife would undertake.
And back to, he complained to the Algerian government that we were hassling him.
And I remember being called in to some of the authorities and asked, told that we were not to act as a police with Leary.
So we showed the authorities what Leary was up to.
Leary was going into the desert with his wife and taking a trip, an LSD trip in the desert.
And the authorities looked upon this as something that had to be stopped.
And we showed them the quantities of drugs that friends of Leary's were bringing into Algeria and that the Panthers were monitoring and had taken from the friends of Leary's.
So I think that they finally understood that who Leary was and what he was capable of.
And he finally thought that there were better places for him to continue his life than Algeria.
And so he did take off with his wife quite unannounced and went to Afghanistan, where he was arrested by U.S. police and taken back to the United States.
He seemed more interested in dropping acid, having sex, and he also seemed more interested in like non-political approaches.
He was convinced that if you gave the squares enough drugs, they would become good people.
And of course, this was something that probably seemed pretty absurd to like actual freedom fighters and the Panthers.
Yes.
In fact, there was an organization was formed in the United States called PIL.
I can't remember right now what it stood for, but it was against Leary and the taking of drugs.
This organization in the United States even had as a member one of his sons.
And there were people who had suffered from drugs and were definitely opposed to Leary's continuing hammering for drugs.
I mean, it seems like there couldn't be a more perfect kind of CIA guy because it's like disrupting freedom movements, disrupting actual left-wing solidarity and progress by introducing drugs and sex and psychedelics.
Did it feel like he was a bit of a wrecker?
Yes.
Well, I think that this organization and his future as the king of LSD were in play during that whole period.
And we didn't feel comfortable at all with him.
We didn't invite him to come to Algeria.
And he came as a result of some organization's decision to get him out of the United States and keep him out of jail.
He was in jail in a, I think it was in San Luis Obispo in California.
Elders used to say that it was not a real jail, that it was for people like Leary, who had a reputation and white men.
At any rate, he was helped out of jail very easily and sent to Algeria without our being asked whether it was a good idea or not.
We only learned that he was on his way.
They told us about this when he was on his way.
It was too late to turn back now.
So I want to talk to you a little bit about technology.
Obviously, you've been around for a lot of changes in technology throughout your life.
You know, what effect do you think the rapid acceleration of technology, Like, how do you think it affected existing and potential revolutionary movements?
Well, on the one hand, it made them closer, able to contact each other better.
And on the other hand, it was a disaster.
It meant that everything was listened to, everything was recorded.
There was no privacy anymore.
And the Panthers suffered from the lack of it, getting in touch with their colleagues in the United States, getting in touch with colleagues in Europe.
They suffered from the lack of easy communication.
And I mean, their only communication with the States was by telephone.
That was the only quick way of getting in touch.
Otherwise, you had to write a letter and send it through the mail.
So it was difficult to organize anything that needed immediate decision.
Very difficult.
And the minute you picked up the telephone in Algiers, you knew that there were the secret services in France and Britain and in the United States that were listening to you.
You had to watch your back.
You had to be very careful about what you said.
Otherwise, you had to write a letter.
And even with letters, I suppose that there was some kind of intervention.
And the FBI used letters to write to Algerian authorities, even to other panthers pretending to squeal panthers.
It was anything written you had to be careful about too.
I mean, who was this person who was writing to you and so on?
It was very difficult, but it was sort of long-term difficult.
It wasn't difficult like today with the internet.
I mean, it's obviously on my screen right away, but it was a slow process.
Everything was a slow process.
To organize something was a slow process.
You had to be sure who you were talking to and what you were organizing.
Yeah.
And that sort of slowed things down.
And also, yeah, it also made people suspicious of other people and all this sort of thing.
Do you ever get the sense that capitalism won, that the system, the system of control and violence kind of took the upper hand through a more decentralized approach?
Maybe not killing, you know, Fred Hampton in his bed, but maybe more, you know, kind of listening to everything all at once and making people feel like they couldn't organize a freedom movement.
Well, we were obviously in Algeria and among the organizations, the liberation organizations that were there, we obviously had an approach to the future.
Most of the liberation organizations saw the future through a kind of socialist organization, sort of a state organization.
And this definitely was the case in the beginning in Algeria.
That was definitely the way things were going to be set up.
And it was, you know, we were all in it together.
I think that it was definitely state organizations.
And in the beginning, state politics.
And we thought that was just fine.
And it took us a while to realize that that is not necessarily better for general welfare and for individuals.
And now we've come to a point where I wonder whether we can even speak out loud.
I mean, people are being arrested for thinking.
Yes, even organizing for Palestine now can be punished by taking away your green card or exiling you to another country.
Yeah, some people are being, their papers, their documents, which they achieved with faithfulness and thought and confidence are being taken from them.
It's unbelievable.
Yeah.
Just because they don't agree with everything that is taking place and blah, blah, blah.
Yes, I mean, this movement that swept the country in favor of Palestine, swept the universities of the United States, it was wonderful.
It was a movement of freedom for Palestine and has been turned into something absolutely unbelievable, into anti-Semitism.
I know what anti-Semitism is.
It has nothing to do with being pro-Palestinian.
Unbelievable.
This is activism that you're still partaking in.
Like, you know, you're still going to protests after all these years?
Well, I went to one recently, yes.
And well, I still am protesting.
As long as I'm capable of it, I shall.
Because it's such a funny argument, such disastrous lies affecting individuals who are seeking better lives and being turned into something they're not.
Look, I mean, it's unbelievable.
Students in universities like Columbia, like Harvard, wherever, and much less prestigious organizations are being attacked for being anti-Semitic when actually what they are doing is being militants against genocide.
I feel like there's some people in the media or online or whatever who are very good at using these kind of icky labels to destroy any kind of thoughtful discussion.
Because the moment you call somebody an anti-Semite, whoa, whoa, whoa, you know, all of a sudden you're on defense.
And I think it's been a really good way to sort of deter some of the actual conversation that would benefit people who are disagreeing about this.
And I have the definite feeling that many of the people who are calling others anti-Semites are themselves our leaders and are anti-Semites.
And it is a way of them discharging that kind of accusation.
I mean, nobody can tell me.
I really, I insist on that.
No one can tell me what anti-Semitism is.
I've lived through it all my life.
You were alive during World War II.
I mean, I think you have a perspective that's very important on this matter.
People should probably listen.
Yeah, I'm convinced that those who are strongest today in calling pro-Palestinian thought and action anti-Semitic are themselves making up for their own failures as Democrats, as individuals in favor of humanities, justice, all the things that we might hope for.
What advice would you give a young person today that is interested in the same things that you were interested in at 16 when you fought segregation?
The people who are interested in liberation movements, who are interested in human rights and equality and dignity, what would you tell them?
There are certainly lots of people who are.
And what they need is remember to be, remember that solidarity with others is essential.
You have to work with others and you have to organize.
Yeah, you have to be outspoken.
You shouldn't be watching your back all the time.
You should be out there stating what you believe.
What you believe is based on justice, on freedom.
Elaine, your life was so dense with political struggle, adventure.
Does it feel good to sometimes just be an artist now?
I know you paint.
Does it feel good?
Yeah, it's very nice.
Yes.
I do remember things that happened a long time ago, but much better than what's happening today to me.
But nevertheless, yeah, let's all be strong, courageous, courageous, not afraid.
Numbers count, and individuals count too.
I don't know what else to say.
I think that's very beautiful.
That's a very perfect thing to say and a perfect way to end this discussion.
Thank you so much for agreeing to come on the show.
And obviously, we're going to put a link so people can go and buy your book.
We'll put a link to your website so they can go check out your art.
But I can't tell you how grateful we are that you joined us for this conversation.
Yes, I'm delighted.
I'm glad to have an occasion to speak and to tell people what to mean today.
Great.
Thank you so much, Elaine.
Take care.
Thank you very much.
Bye-bye.
Take care.
Wow, Jake.
It really feels like an honor to be able to sit in on a conversation like this.
Yeah.
I hope you don't mind.
I mean, I hope you don't mind.
I didn't really say much just because I was like so fascinated in what she had to say and being in the presence of somebody who has lived and participated on the right side, I would say, of so much history.
It was just one of those like cool.
It's like one of those moments that I'll like call my parents afterwards and be like, whoa, like, guess who I talked to on my show?
Like, this is so cool.
Absolutely.
And we hope you enjoyed that as well, listener.
You know, if you want to know how to be based for 96 years straight, that was your guide.
Good luck.
I could never be, I could never be half as bass.
I'm too scared.
I'm too scared to do half of the things that things that she was like chuckling about mentioning.
I was like, oh, well, that would get, I would never even be, I would never even be in the solar system of some of those decisions.
Oh, yeah.
If she was on a list in every country involved at some point.
It's so crazy to like think of like the risks involved, you know?
Yeah.
And how molten history was at the time.
So anyways, that's probably quite enough for one episode.
Thank you so much for listening to the QA podcast.
And if you don't already, go to patreon.com slash QAA and subscribe for five bucks a month.
You'll get, you know, a second episode for every main one that we make.
And, you know, it allows us to try to drum up stuff like this, which to me is where I feel like my job has a real higher purpose.
Not to say that, you know, covering Reddit and 80 is not the, you know, purposeful in general, but a little bit of a different tone.
Yeah, this is the shit that makes it worth it.
Yep.
For everything else, we've got a website, qapodcast.com.
Listener, until next week, may Elaine Muktefi bless you and keep you.
Bye.
Bye.
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