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July 13, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:06:38
The Truth About Muhammad Ali
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Hi everybody, my name is Stephan Molyneux.
I'm the host of Freedomain Radio, the largest and most popular philosophy show in the world with over 200 million views and downloads.
Yes, that's right.
I'm the greatest!
I'm going to screw my courage to the sticking place, jump into the ring and attempt to help you to understand The truth about Muhammad Ali, one of the most famous, not just sports people or athletes, but one of the most famous people over the last hundred years.
Once ranked up there with Hitler in terms of worldwide recognition, though obviously for slightly different reasons.
And he has a challenging life, a multifaceted life as an athlete, as an orator, as a poet, as a civil rights activist, as a Muslim.
It is a challenge to unravel many of the threads that go into his life.
But it's well worth doing so, because the story of Muhammad Ali is the story of the 20th century in many, many ways.
He died June the 3rd 2016 at the age of 74 from a respiratory illness which was a condition complicated by his long-standing battle with Parkinson's disease which many people of course think Resulted from his many blows to the head and body that occurred over the course of his professional boxing career, he had 61 fights over a professional career lasting 21 years.
Of those 61 fights, he won 56 of them.
Including 37 knockouts.
He was three times crowned the world heavyweight champion and once the light heavyweight Olympics gold medal champion in 1960.
And he once had 31 straight wins in a row before being beaten by Joe Frazier.
All right, let's dive into his early life.
The future world heavyweight boxing champion was born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr.
in Louisville, Kentucky on January 17, 1942.
After having his bicycle stolen at 12 years of age, it was suggested that Clay learn how to defend himself, and he was referred to a local boxing gym run by white Louisville policeman Joseph Martin.
Yes, I'm as surprised as you are, I'm sure.
Clay said, I stood there, smelling the sweat and rubbing alcohol, and a feeling of awe came over me.
Cassius Clay Jr.
was excited by the prospects of the boxing gym, but terrified of his father's wrath over having his bicycle taken.
Biographer Jack Cashill said, By all accounts, Cassius Clay Sr.
was a volatile, insecure man, a dedicated parent when sober, a powder keg when not.
One friend described him to Jack Olson, who did the most in-depth reporting on Ali's early life, as, quote, just a frustrated little guy who can't drink.
Longtime Ali physician Ferdi Pacheco said, he grew up in an atmosphere of impending explosion, and there are police reports to prove it.
So Clay's mother, Odessa Clay, called the police on her violent husband many times, including once for slicing the skin of young Cassius Jr.
Multiple accounts report Cassius Sr.
instructing his son about racial injustices and systemic corruption and resentment of the police.
And according to biographer Jack Olson, quote, he set up an environment that made the black Muslims or some other hate white movement perfect for the kid.
Trainer Joseph Martin, the white policeman said, the kid was scared to death of his father.
Clay eventually joined the boxing program and over six years, the white cop Martin became almost a surrogate father to the future world champion.
Clay said, I trained six days a week and never drank or smoked a cigarette.
Boxing kept me out of trouble.
There wasn't nothing to do in the streets.
The kids would throw rocks and stand under the streetlights.
There wasn't nothing else to do but boxing.
On June the 11th, 1960, Cassius Clay received his high school diploma, graduating with a D minus grade point average.
Clay said, I saw there was no future in getting a high school education or even a college education.
I started boxing because I thought this was the fastest way for the black person to make it in this country.
I was not that bright and quick in school, couldn't be a football or basketball player because you had to go to college and get all kinds of degrees and pass examinations.
A boxer can just go to the gym, jump around, turn professional, win a fight, get a break, and he is in the ring.
If he's good enough, he makes more money than ballplayers make all their lives.
High school principal Atwood Wilson said, why in one night he'll make more money than the principal and all of you teachers make in a year.
If every teacher here fails him, he's still not going to fail.
Now, he did quickly take to the ring.
He made his competitive debut in 1954 in a three-minute amateur bout.
Martin later recalled, he stood out because he had more determination than most have.
He was easily the hardest worker of any kid I ever taught.
Over the following five years, Cassius' amateur career flourished.
He won a number of awards, including the Golden Gloves Tournament of Champions in 1959.
In 1960, he was selected for the U.S.
team for the Rome Olympics.
Actually, first, he refused to go.
He was terrified of flying.
Eventually, though, according to Joe Martin's son, he bought a second-hand parachute and wore it on the flight.
In September 1960, an 18-year-old Cassius Clay traveled to Rome, Italy, to represent the United States as a light heavyweight in boxing at the Summer Olympics.
Clay took home an Olympic gold medal, and his brash innocence in victory was markedly different from the persona which would make him a worldwide name in years to come.
He seemed fairly proud to be there, he said, I stood there so proudly for my country, I felt like I had whooped the whole world for America.
After his victory, a Russian journalist tried to goad the young Olympic gold medalist into criticizing the state of race relations in the United States.
Clay refused, which starkly contrasts with his later verbiage.
Clay said, Tell your readers, we got qualified people working on that problem, and I'm not worried about the outcome.
To me, the USA is the best country in the world, including yours.
Now.
Little aside here, since the early 1920s the goal of the Communist Party worldwide was partly to ferment race baiting and to poison race relations between blacks and whites in an attempt to destabilize the capitalist West or at least capitalist America and this was generally part of the plan and we'll see how that played out with the Nation of Islam down the road.
The mythology of Muhammad Ali often involves a story of the Olympic gold medalist and his friends being denied service at a Louisville, Kentucky restaurant due to their skin color.
The story purportedly leads to a disillusioned young clay throwing his Olympic gold medal off a bridge into the Ohio River, distraught at the state of race relations in the United States.
Okay, couple of problems with the story.
Number one, he grew up.
in Louisville, Kentucky.
So the idea that he would be refused service at a particular area of a restaurant could not come as a huge shock for him.
He, of course, had made it to the Olympics.
He had a surrogate father who was white who really helped him achieve his goals and his ambitions and his dreams.
So it's a little hard to believe some of this stuff.
Ali's friend, Bundini Brown, bluntly recalled, Honkeys, sure, bought into that one.
According to biographer Jack Olson, quote, the medal was retired later.
Some of its silver underwear exposed where months of constant wear had rubbed off the gold.
And Ali claimed in his 1975 autobiography that he threw away his Olympic medal in disgust, but it was later revealed that he lost it a year after his return from Rome.
And this untrue gold medal story wasn't reported until after Clay had joined the Nation of Islam and Ali's close friend, Howard Bingham, has also confirmed that the story was concocted.
See, remember, a lot of the reporters, including sports reporters, were on the left, had sympathies with communism, and were interested in race-baiting as a way of destabilizing America.
Now, Cassius Clay reportedly first heard of the Nation of Islam in 1959.
He attended his first organizational meeting in 1961 and originally met both Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X in 1962.
Malcolm X reportedly saw great potential in clay as a mouthpiece for racial injustice, becoming a friend and mentor.
But Muhammad was negative towards clay due to a disdain of boxing as a, quote, filthy sport.
Technically, I think that's bloody.
Cassius Clay on Malcolm X, quote.
My first impression was, how could a black man talk about the government, white people, and be so bold and not be shot at?
Talking about just a whole movement totally different from others and so bold.
How could he say these things?
And only God must be protecting him.
He walked with nobody.
He was fearless.
That, that really attracted me.
As it turns out, Malcolm X didn't have as much to fear from white people as others.
Now, Clay kept his association with the group secret out of fears it would harm his boxing career.
He said, well, I figured they would pressure me if I revealed it, so I kept it quiet for about three years.
I sneaked into meetings, sneak in the back door, look around for the police officer, pass me in before going in.
But after beating Sonny Liston, after getting more regulation and my power finally is straight, I said, I don't know.
I told them that night I fought Liston and revealed it after that fight.
Despite initially being denied entry into the Nation of Islam by leader Elijah Muhammad due to his career, things immediately changed when Clay won the heavyweight championship from Sonny Liston in 1964.
According to Malcolm X's wife Betty Shabazz, after denunciations of how Clay would bring disgrace to the Nation of Islam, all of a sudden they were breaking their necks trying to get close to the heavyweight champion.
Because he had money, he had fame, he had reach.
And he had cred with young people, certainly.
In reporting Clay's new affiliation with the Nation of Islam, Elijah Muhammad made a public statement accounting that heavyweight champion Cassius Clay, briefly known as Cassius X, would now be known as Muhammad Ali.
Muhammad Ali said, Cassius Clay is a slave name.
I didn't choose it, and I didn't want it.
I am Muhammad Ali, a free name.
It means Beloved of God, and I insist people use it when speaking to me and of me.
Cassius Clay Senior Said, they have been hammering at him and brainwashing him ever since he won the gold medal.
He's so confused now that he doesn't even know where he's at.
They've ruined my two boys.
They should run those black Muslims out of the country before they ruin other fine people.
The Muslims tell my boys to hate white people, to hate women, to hate their mother!
The Muslims call me bad because I believe in God.
All they want is money.
Muhammad Ali said, I chose to be a Muslim.
I chose to be a follower of Elijah Muhammad because he was the only one offering definite plans which helped my people.
According to journalist Jeff Nilsen, quote, the nation of Islam was then widely regarded by the American media as a highly dangerous group.
There were fearful rumors that the black Muslims would forcibly create a separate nation for black Americans.
So when Ali announced his conversion, the media reacted as if they had been betrayed.
Muhammad Ali said, People brand us a hate group.
They say we want to take over the country.
That is not true.
All they want to do is live in peace.
You cannot condemn a man for wanting peace.
Muhammad Ali said, I believe in Allah and in peace.
I don't try to move into white neighborhoods.
I don't want to marry a white woman.
I was baptized when I was 12, but I didn't know what I was doing.
I'm not a Christian anymore.
I know where I'm going and I know the truth and I don't have to be what you want me to be.
I'm free to be what I want.
Minister Jeremiah Shabazz said, We taught him first that God is a black man.
And as far as white people were concerned, we taught him that the white man is the devil.
At this point, Ali didn't have a problem with our claim that the white man was evil.
Muhammad Ali said, all Jews and Gentiles are devils.
Blacks are no devils.
Everything black people doing wrong comes from the white people.
Drinking, smoking, prostitution, homosexuality, stealing, gambling.
It all comes from the white people.
Now, he did moderate these views a little bit later in life, but here he did really hit the trifecta.
Massive racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism.
Muhammad Ali on the white devil comments.
He said, I'm stressing just the works that the whites generally have been doing.
They blow up all these little colored people in church, wash down people in the street with water hoses.
It's not the color that makes you a devil, just the deeds that you do.
If you be a blue race and you do the works of the devil, then we call you a devil.
You got white people who died under demonstrations, died under tractor wheels for colored people.
I wouldn't call them no devil.
Martin Luther King Jr.
said, When Cassius Clay joined the Black Muslims and started calling himself Cassius X, he became a champion of racial segregation.
And that is what we are fighting against.
I think perhaps Cassius should spend more time proving his boxing skill and do less talking.
Then Madison Square Garden boxing program president Harry Markson said, We've made so much progress in eliminating color barriers that it's a pity we're now facing such a problem.
The heavyweight champion of the world preaching a hate religion.
segregationist Georgia senator Richard Russell said Cassius Clay in common with 180 million other American citizens has the right to choose the religious sect of his choice without being blackmailed harassed and threatened Now shortly after Ali publicly aligned himself with the Nation of Islam, his mentor and friend Malcolm X was essentially excommunicated from the group due to what could be best described as a power struggle.
Ali essentially washed his hands of his former mentor, aligning himself solidly with NOI leader Elijah Muhammad.
Muhammad Ali said, I was proud of my name and dedicated to the nation of Islam as Elijah presented it.
At that point in my journey, I just wasn't ready to question his teachings.
I was forced to make a choice when Elijah Muhammad insisted that I break with Malcolm.
Malcolm X was assassinated on February 21st, 1965, only four days short of the first anniversary of Ali's heavyweight championship victory.
The theory, the speculation goes, that Malcolm X had discovered that Elijah Muhammad had multiple affairs.
This was against his teachings, that maybe he was going to go public with it.
Three black Muslims were arrested for his assassination.
So it turned out, if these theories are true, that Malcolm X didn't really have as much to worry about from white people.
Muhammad Ali said, turning my back on Malcolm was one of the mistakes that I regret most in my life.
I wish I'd been able to tell Malcolm I was sorry that he was right about so many things but he was killed before I got the chance.
He was a visionary ahead of us all.
Malcolm was the first to discover the truth that color doesn't make a man a devil.
It is the heart, soul, and mind that define a person.
Malcolm was a great thinker and an even greater friend.
I might never have become a Muslim if it hadn't been for Malcolm.
If I could go back and do it over again, I would never have turned my back on him.
In 1964, Muhammad Ali married 23-year-old single mother, Sanjee Roy.
The relationship didn't produce any children.
Roy previously had had a child when she was 13 years old and only lasted 16 months.
Ali proposed to Roy five minutes after they met in July of 1964 and they married one month later.
Roy has since said that the relationship was stressed by pressure for her to convert to Islam and adopt Muslim dress codes, which was quite the change for a woman who was a cocktail waitress slash model.
Sanji Roy described a particularly jarring incident where Muhammad Ali observed several white people giving her approving looks due to her physical attractiveness and attire.
She said, I'm crying and pulling away and you're jerking on me and yelling and you've forgotten that everyone's looking.
In the bathroom, Ali attempted to stretch her dress out but ripped it instead.
So now I'm nearly naked, I'm trying to break away and you're fighting me, pulling on my clothes, slapping me.
I don't know.
A cocktail waitress who has difficulty converting to Islam, I can understand that.
A professional fighter who has a temper, I can accept that too.
Muhammad Ali said, when Sanji and I split, I just about went crazy, sitting in my room, smelling her perfume, looking at the walls, but it was something that had to happen.
She wouldn't do what she was supposed to do.
Hmm.
She wore lipstick.
She went into bars.
She dressed in clothes that were revealing.
It didn't look right.
She made vows.
And then she broke them.
And that brought on all sorts of quarreling.
One time, I slapped her.
It was wrong.
It's the only time I did something like that.
And after I slapped her, I felt sorrier than she did.
It hurt me more than it hurt her.
Sanji Roy said, He was a good husband, but I wanted a man who'd be his own master.
They've stolen my man's mind.
I wasn't going to take on all the Muslims.
If I had, I probably would have ended up dead.
In the months before Muhammad Ali won the World Heavyweight Championship, there was awareness that Ali could potentially be drafted for military service in the war in Vietnam.
Local sponsors used connections in an attempt to delay the process, but Ali took the required Selective Service Aptitude Test as was required.
Given his poor performance in high school academics, it wasn't surprising that Ali didn't score very well.
His IQ was measured at 78.
Now, 70 or below, you're starting to talk about mental incompetency, but 78.
Ali didn't purposefully flunk the test.
He was actually functionally illiterate and his IQ score placed him in the 16th percentile from the bottom, while the army was only recruiting those in the 30th percentile and above.
Ali could barely read or write and later attributed this to undiagnosed dyslexia.
In early 1966, when I guess I was in my mother's belly, the Selective Service lowered the requirements to anybody in the 15th percentile or higher, which included the now heavyweight champion of the world and Nation of Islam centerpiece, Muhammad Ali.
So he was pretty much functionally illiterate, but graduated high school.
Good job, American educational system!
And of course, we've also seen this in the endless wars in the Middle East and elsewhere, that America and American military is lowering its standards, taking people that haven't finished high school, taking people with criminal records and so on.
Biographer Jack Cahill wrote, he was not pleased.
He immediately had his attorney apply for a deferment based on the financial hardship it would cause his parents, but the request was turned down.
The New York Times, with Ali when he heard the news, reported that he remarked, how can they do this to me?
I don't want my career ruined.
In March of 1966, Ali's lawyer once again appealed for reclassification, noting that Ali was a conscientious objector on religious grounds.
But that request was also denied.
Ali actually at one point claimed that he was a minister and therefore should not serve in the army, which will be important later.
In August 1966, the month before me, Ali was able to make a personal appeal to an administrative judge, testifying under oath that, quote, War is against the teachings of the Quran.
I'm not trying to dodge the draft.
We are not supposed to take part in no wars unless declared by Allah or the Messenger.
We don't take part in Christian wars or wars of any unbelievers.
I'm a big fan of in-group preference.
Not the worst thing in the world.
The judge sided with Ali, believing that he was, quote, sincere in his objection on religious grounds to war in any form.
The United States Justice Department argued that Ali's objections were not religious but political and racial in nature.
The Kentucky Appeals Board ultimately sided with the Justice Department and rejected Muhammad Ali's conscientious objector status.
When Muhammad Ali refused to step forward when his name was called by the Army Induction Officer on April 28, 1967, he was warned that he was committing a felony punishable by five years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
Muhammad Ali still didn't budge.
He was arrested on the spot and a martyr was created.
According to biographer Thomas Hauser, When the spotlight turned from Ali's acceptance of an ideology that sanctioned hate to his refusal to accept induction into the U.S.
Army, Ali began to bond with the white liberal community, which at the time was quite strong.
Hate to shock you, Thomas.
It's pretty strong now, too.
Now, the white liberal community, the leftists in general, were against the Vietnam War.
Was it because they were against violence?
No.
I mean, they love violence in terms of the forced redistribution of wealth, the welfare state, and all that kind of stuff.
But they're pro-communist and America was fighting against communism, so they were anti-war because they were pro-communist.
A lot of them, not all of them.
And so the fact that they aligned themselves with race-baiting and supported communism and were against what were perceived at the time to be America's goals.
Oh, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Now, the same day of Muhammad Ali's arrest, the New York State Athletic Commission suspended him of his boxing license and stripped him of his heavyweight title.
Other boxing commissions followed suit, and Ali was unable to obtain licensure to box within the United States for over three years.
Because, see, you don't want to be pounding people in the face without the right piece of paper behind you.
That's dangerous.
Muhammad Ali's passport was also seized, and he was prevented from legally leaving the United States to fight internationally.
Critics have argued that Muhammad Ali's objection to serving was due to allegiance to the Nation of Islam, which greatly benefited from turning him into a martyr and aided their acceptance within the American left.
Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad on if Ali was being mistreated due to his religion, quote, it can't be anything else.
Muhammad Ali is harassed to keep the other mentally sleeping so-called Negroes fast asleep to the fact that Islam is a refuge for the so-called Negroes in America.
By the by.
You can find out more about this in my presentation called The Truth About Slavery.
Islamic world responsible for the deaths of about a hundred million black people from Africa in their slave trade where they regularly castrated black males.
So I'm not entirely sure that it's the very best refuge in the known universe.
I'm not sure that the Middle Eastern world has apologized a lot for their role in slavery.
They didn't work like Europeans night and day for decades to end slavery worldwide.
But that, perhaps, is a topic for another time.
According to biographer Jack Cashill, quote, An encounter with Sugar Ray Robertson illuminates Ali's state of mind in early 1967.
When Ali was in New York for the Zarafali fight, the last before the exile, he called Robertson and asked if he could come and see him at his Midtown Hotel.
Robinson obliged.
Ali wanted to talk about the army.
You've got to go, said Robinson.
No, Ali answered.
Elijah Muhammad told me that I can't go.
Robinson explained the consequences of his refusal and Ali answered.
But I'm afraid, Ray.
I'm real afraid.
When Robinson asked if he was afraid of the Muslims, Ali refused to answer.
His eyes were glistening with tears.
Robinson reports.
Tears of torment.
Tears of indecision.
He'd seen what happened to Malcolm X. New York Times columnist William Roden.
Quote, Ali's actions changed my standard of what constituted an athlete's greatness.
Possessing a killer jump shot or the ability to stop on a dime was no longer enough.
What were you doing for the liberation of your people?
What were you doing to help your country live up to the covenant of its founding principles?
Now, in my humble opinion, William Roden is a total Lefty now the left took over race relations after the Democrats had a history and KKK was originally a terrorist offshoot of the Democratic Party and the Democrats on realizing that the winds were shifting.
In a sense, you could argue, and I had this conversation with two fine black ladies, Diamond and Silk, who referred to the Democrat plantation, the left has started taking over race relations and started buying off the black votes with welfare and with other kinds of transfers of income, helping to destroy the black families.
So this idea that only the left is really, really great at dealing with race relations is a complete fantasy.
And I think the statistics of the last 50 or 60 years have shown just how dangerous it is to put your community's future in the hands of leftists.
Muhammad Ali said, regarding the Vietnam War, 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.
Shoot them for what?
How am I going to shoot them?
Poor little black people, little babies and children, women.
How can I shoot them poor people?
Just take me to jail.
So some violence has been associated with the nation of Islam.
I don't think Vietnamese people are brown.
So he also said, 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.
Now, I don't mean to sound unsympathetic.
It's a stirring speech.
In jail?
Heavyweight championship, millionaire, screaming fans, famous the world over.
All of this stuff is straight out of the communist playbook.
See?
The Vietnamese who are being overrun by communists, the communists are just fighting for freedom and peace and equality.
Biographer Jack Cashill quote, The nation would profit more in the long run if Ali did go to prison.
By contrast, the last place the government wanted to put Ali was in the slammer.
Ali admits that government attorneys offered him all kinds of deals.
Trouble was that the Muslims insisted he never be in uniform and never be given a rank.
These were demands to which the government could not yield.
I don't know what these deals were, but it could have been domestic tours, it could have been non-combat roles or anything like that.
On June 20th, 1967, Muhammad Ali was found guilty by jury.
After only 21 minutes of deliberation.
After a court of appeals upheld the conviction, the case went to the U.S.
Supreme Court, which would not reach a verdict until, drumroll, of infinitely torpid U.S.
Justice, June 28th, 1971.
Four years later.
Now, remember, of course, the whole time that he's banned from fighting in America and can't fight overseas because they've taken his passport.
This is his peak physical time.
This is the time where he could have been doing his very best work in the ring.
He's losing speed over time.
In August 1967, Muhammad Ali married 17-year-old Belinda Boyd, who was renamed Khalilah Kamacho Ali after converting to Islam following the wedding.
They had four children together during their decade-long relationship, which ultimately ended with a very public betrayal.
Ali's long-time physician Ferdi Pacheco said, under her Muslim-prescribed floor-length flowing robes, one could sense a strong, well-formed body.
One got the sense of being in the presence of one of the world's great women, one of the world's great beauties.
So, not always the best choice of virtuous women.
He seems to have been dicknapped a little by looks.
So, Kalila Kamacho Ali said, You guys don't realize Ali wasn't the great Muhammad Ali as he is now.
He was going in that direction.
He was struggling in that direction.
He was struggling with people taking everything from him.
And everything.
And I was the only thing that held everything together.
He was depressed most of the time.
He was unhappy.
Didn't know what the hell was going to happen to him.
So while Muhammad Ali waited for his course to wind its way through the painfully slow legal process, sorry Mark Stein, he undertook a massive speaking tour which attracted a unique audience unlike that which the Nation of Islam could previously reach.
Sports writer Mark Cram wrote, These were not boxing fans, they were seekers of the anti-hero.
What mattered was Ali's style, his desecrating mouth, his beautiful irrationality, so like their music.
Don't you love it when people explain things and you have no idea what they're saying?
Biographer Mike Marquissey wrote, Both Ali and Bob Dylan felt themselves part of a separate culture.
Black and Jewish, I guess.
Wedded to values at odds with America's mainstream, and both were aware, often uncomfortably, that they were expected to speak for a separate, silent constituency.
Philosopher Bertrand Russell said, The men who rule Washington will try to damage Ali in every way open to them.
Ali is a symbol of a whole people determined no longer to be butchered and debased with fear and oppression.
Civil rights activist Julian Bond Ali's college crowns were overwhelmingly white, and Ali would have them in the palm of his hands.
Ah, virtue signaling!
As present then as it is now.
Journalist Robert Lipsight wrote, He was leading people into areas of thought and information that might not otherwise have been accessible to them.
So, good job keeping him restrained and out of the public eye, American government.
Biographer Jack Cashill wrote, Among those otherwise inaccessible areas were the Nation of Islam's plans for a separate black homeland and Ali's own dread of the little, pale, half-white, green-eyed, blonde-headed Negroes that allegedly resulted from intermarriage.
I guess he wasn't there to pick up his honorary degrees in genetics.
Muhammad Ali said, I wish I could do that sentence in one breath.
I'm sure he did.
I wish I could do that sentence on one breath.
I'm sure he did.
Fitter than I.
And, he said, and no intelligent white man or white woman in his or her right white mind wants black boys and black girls coming around their homes to marry their white sons and daughters and in return introducing their grandchildren as little mixed up kinky headed half black niggers.
You want your child to look like you!
Alyosa said, Black and white are disagreeable in peace.
They can't get along together.
Worked 400 years, 16 hours a day from sunup to sundown without a payday.
That we should now be repaid.
You got 50 states and we make up 10% of the population.
Then divide up 10% of the land.
Now that we're no longer slaves and we can't get along, just let me go and live by myself.
The Nation of Islam and the Ku Klux Klan were both opposed to miscegenation and met regularly to discuss the shared goal of racial separation and the possibility of a pact.
Hey, did you ever know that?
In the build-up to his 1975 fight against Joe Frazier, Ali revealed that he even gave a speech about miscegenation at a KKK rally.
It was a hell of a scene, all those white hoods on the bonfire and me on the platform and all these Klansmen were talking.
I said black people should marry their own women.
I said blue birds with blue birds, red birds with red birds, pigeons with pigeons, eagles with eagles.
Can't believe you didn't get credit for the Angry Birds movie.
God don't make no mistake.
They said, yeah!
They said, you teach the rest of them niggers that and they're gonna be alright.
On the way out, a funny thing happened.
One of them says, We got the nigger!
String him up!
And I looked and I jumped.
One of them comes out with a rope and says, We're just joking, champ.
They let me go.
I don't know.
Dare I call that pretty black comedy?
Muhammad Ali said, You got the white racists who believe in separation, such as I believe.
One day, the black people of America must go to self.
Clean up self.
Help self.
Do for self.
I recognize the white racists.
Muhammad Ali, why ask me if I believe in segregation?
I recognize the fact that you believe in it.
What do you mean you don't believe in it?
Oh man, you're just crazy!
Every city I go to, I can find a black neighborhood and a white neighborhood.
How many Negroes live out here in this big old neighborhood?
I'd like to see peace on earth, and if integrating would bring it, I'd say let's integrate.
But let's just not stand still where one man holds another in bondage and deprives him of freedom, justice and equality, neither giving him freedom nor letting him go to his own.
When an interviewer commented that not all white people are racists, Ali responded.
Actually, the Huffington Post recently wrote admiringly of this.
He said, quote, There are many white people who mean right, and in their hearts want to do right.
If 10,000 snakes were coming down that aisle now, and I had a door that I could shut, and in that 10,000, 1,000 meant right.
1,000 rattlesnakes didn't want to bite me.
I knew they were good.
Should I let all those rattlesnakes come down, hoping that that 1,000 get together and form a shield?
Or should I just close the door and stay safe?
Huh, sort of reminds me of a Donald Trump story about a snake.
While on tour, Muhammad Ali also frequently discussed the financial sacrifices his family was making to oppose the war.
We can eat on $3 a day.
What do I need money for?
Now, according to boxer Joe Frazier, quote, Clay told me the house he was now living in had a color TV in every room, 12 telephones, note it was actually 22 telephones, and a swimming pool.
These pleadings of poverty ignored the reality that Muhammad Ali was making an average of $5,000 a week as a speaker, which due to inflation is equivalent to about $34,885 per week today, or just under $2 million a year.
$8,885 per week today, or just under $2 million a year.
So, I guess I need to do more boxing.
During an interview with Howard Cosell, Ali was asked if he'd ever returned to boxing, and commented, yeah, if the money is right. .
Forgetting that his previous career was a filthy temptation, Ali's comment led to him being stripped of his holy name and suspended for a year by the Nation of Islam, specifically Elijah Muhammad.
Muhammad Ali said, I made a fool of myself when I said that I'd return to boxing to pay my bills.
I'm glad Muhammad awakened me.
Biographer Jack Cashill wrote, The timing of Ali's suspension was bad enough to be suspicious.
Ali could hardly claim ministerial privilege from a religion that had disowned him.
It is possible, even likely, that Muhammad wanted Ali to go to prison.
Imprisoned, Ali would justify Muhammad's reactionary worldview and do wonders for the nation's recruiting, all without threatening His power.
See, remember?
He's still on trial, still waiting for the final decision about his, quote, draft dodging.
I don't say draft dodging.
You know, do we, the slaves who escaped and went through the Underground Railroad to Canada, we call them slave dodging?
No, drafting.
You could argue that the draft is worse than slavery.
So he was still waiting for this and he claimed that he was a minister.
Now, if he was kicked out of the religion, he couldn't claim that he was a minister.
It could be drafted again.
More didn't end until Nixon got into power.
During his time in exile from the Nation of Islam, Muhammad Ali's financial situation drastically improved.
See, that's sort of an important statement.
You know, if your friend won't see you anymore and suddenly you have lots of money, some of that money may be going to your friend.
His public statements veered more towards tolerance and an acceptance of personal responsibility.
Muhammad Ali's name was not mentioned in Nation of Islam publications for three years.
On November 26, 1970, Muhammad Ali returned to the boxing ring in Atlanta, Georgia, which didn't have a state athletic commission and thus state licensure wasn't a problem.
Why not do that before?
You might ask.
Well, significant political obstacles remained to scheduling the event, but ultimately the right politicians were compensated and Ali was victorious after over three years of inactivity or at least absence from the ring.
Ali publicist Harold Conrad said, all it took was politics and money and three years of trying until we worked things out in Georgia.
So good job, rules!
A victory in federal court also forced the New York State Boxing Commission to reinstate Ali's license, this has nothing to do with the draft stuff, allowing him to compete twice in the state prior to the US Supreme Court decision.
Now, this allowed for the infamous fight of the century between Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali to take place, where Ali tasted his first defeat in the squared circle.
After initially being gracious in defeat, Ali quickly shifted the conversation in a direction which would benefit his political allies, Supreme Court case and promoters.
He only lost on the judges' scorecards because of his religion and his attitude toward the draft.
Excellent.
It's good to know the victim card can always be played, even by heavyweight champions of the world.
On June 28, 1971, the United States Supreme Court reversed Muhammad Ali's conviction for draft evasion on an 8-0 vote, punting the clear political football and avoiding further controversy.
According to biographer Jack Keshel, On his first pass with Justice Thurgood Marshall recusing himself, the other eight judges on this liberal court – they would all but outlaw capital punishment and condone abortion within the next year and a half – voted 5 to 3 to uphold Ali's conviction.
For largely emotional reasons, Justice Harlan reversed and threw the vote into a 4-4 tie.
This was still not enough to overturn the lower court decision.
Justice Potter Stewart then convinced his fellow judges of the political consequences of jailing a popular black icon, especially given their lack of unanimity.
He then contrived a technicality that would exempt Ali, but not other Muslims.
His fellow judges played along.
And that, my friends, is what we call the law.
Get famous or get imprisoned.
After another falling out with the Nation of Islam, Ali converted to mainstream Sunni Islam in 1975.
With the Supreme Court decision behind him, popular opinion on his side, and his boxing career back on track, Muhammad Ali faced his next true battle.
Divorce!
Oh, K.K.O.
Telegraph wrote, the Telegraph wrote, during his turbulent marriage to Boyd, Ali is also reported to have had two love children.
The first, Maya, came in 1972 with a woman reportedly named Patricia Harvell, and the second, Kalia, in 1974 to a 16-year-old woman, Wanda Bolton, who changed her name to Aisha Ali.
So if she had the baby when she was 16, I suppose he probably impregnated her when she was 15.
According to biographer Jack, in perhaps the single most regrettable moment of his public life, Ali brought Veronica, note his latest of many mistresses, with him to meet the first couple at the note his latest of many mistresses, with him to meet the first couple When the Philippines leader said to Ali, you have a beautiful wife, Ali did not correct him.
You have a beautiful wife too, he answered.
At the time, the faithful Belinda was back in Chicago with their four children.
What made it newsworthy was that it so challenged the integrity of Ali's public posture as a Muslim.
Muhammad Ali said, When you can live righteous in the hell of North America, when a man can control his life, his physical needs, his lower self, he elevates himself.
I guess it's hell because you have 22, not 23 telephones.
23 telephones changes everything.
Ali's recent Playboy interview criticizing White Christians as hypocrites for not living their values also added to the newsworthiness of the story.
Quote, Christianity is a good philosophy if you live it, but it's controlled by white people who preach it, but don't practice it.
They just organize it and use it any which way they want to.
If the white man lived Christianity, it would be different.
But I tell you, I think it's against nature for European people to live Christian lives.
They don't keep their vows the way that, say, Muhammad Ali does.
He also said, their nations were founded on killing, on wars.
France, Germany, the bunch of them.
It's been one long war ever since they existed.
And if they're not killing each other over there, they're shooting Indians over here.
And if they're not after the Indians, they're after the reindeer and every other living thing they can kill, even elephants.
Now, just by the by, I don't know if his reading prowess increased later in life, but if he's not, if he's dyslexic or functionally illiterate, he has to rely on what people tell him rather than what he can read himself.
And that's not unimportant.
It's always violence and war, he said, for Christians.
Muslims, though, live their religion.
We ain't hypocrites.
We submit entirely to Allah's will.
We don't eat ham, bacon or pork.
We don't smoke.
And everybody knows that we honor our women.
I don't know that you could really talk about the history of Islam as being entirely peaceful.
It did not exactly spread by the word.
I've got the truth about the Crusades as a presentation.
People can check out more about that.
Ali even took the incredibly audacious step of calling a press conference to demand his right to privacy when publicly cheating on his wife.
I could see some controversy in this if Veronica was white, but she's not.
The only person I answer to is Belinda Ali.
I don't worry about her.
Yeah, I can almost smell the honor coming off.
And of course, this is also what Malcolm X was reportedly upset with with Elijah Muhammad was his public declarations of fidelity followed by infidelity behind the scenes.
So apparently, it's only cheating if she's white.
As long as there's a standard, I guess.
Belinda Ali said, I was hurt a lot by what was going on, but mostly I kept the hurt inside.
That's how we lasted nine years together, but finally it got to be too much.
On September 2nd, 1976, Belinda Ali filed for divorce, claiming adultery, desertion, and mental cruelty.
She said, I was the hostess, I was the mother, I cooked, I cleaned, I did all those things, and I was happy doing it because it made him happy.
Everything got destroyed.
On June 19th, 1977, Ali married Veronica Porch, the mistress who led to his last divorce, and they had two children together.
Muhammad Ali said, I thought I was a true believer, but I wasn't.
I fit my religion to do what I wanted.
I did things that were wrong and chased women all the time.
I conquered the world and it didn't bring me true happiness.
The only true satisfaction comes from honoring and worshiping God.
I'm just looking for everyone to put these soundbites out there.
Ali continued to fight.
In the boxing ring, long past the point where it was even remotely advisable for him to be in competition.
He had such bad kidney damage that his personal physician begged him to quit, sending separate certified letters explaining the lab report to Ali, Veronica and his other associates, but none of them responded.
Ali's long-time physician Ferdi Pacheco said, Ali was a goldmine playing out, a well running dry.
The Muslims refused to see it.
I did not.
Cash cow.
Now the name Muhammad Ali continued to appear on arena marquees and large checks were signed.
But the fighter who had come to be known as the greatest was functionally no longer in existence.
In 1976, to get another payday, Ali was booked into a fight with Japanese pro wrestler Antonio Inoki in Japan.
Now, the day of the show, one's a wrestler, one's a boxer, they couldn't figure out how they were going to fight, and eventually they did something kind of like a mixed martial arts fight.
And Inoki crab walked on all fours to avoid Ali's punches, and he kept kicking and kicking at Ali's knees, bruising his legs really badly.
Now, Ali's doctor said that these bruises could easily turn into blood clots and said you better cancel your future obligations rest and so on and Ali agreed and said okay I'll do the rest but he was talked out of it and committed to more obligations by the rest of his business associates get back into the field farmhand that's a nice way of putting it
Ali, of course, had a continual cavalcade of associates and advisors and bros who drained his net assets and encouraged him to keep competing and keep competing.
One more fight, one more title opportunity, one more payout.
In 1979, Ali announced his retirement from boxing only to announce a comeback fight against Larry Holmes almost immediately.
Boxing writer Richie Ghiacetti wrote, During this time, Muhammad Ali began to have issues with vocal stutters and trembling hands.
The State Athletic Commission ordered Ali to undergo a complete physical before being approved to fight again, but ultimately he was approved despite significant evidence as to his physical decline.
Huh!
I wonder if it's possible that there could be some kind of corruption In boxing plus government.
The man who had made millions and millions of dollars over his career was financially desperate enough that he would trade his future cognitive abilities for one more payday.
When the fight occurred between Muhammad Ali and Larry Holmes, Sylvester Stallone described it as like watching an autopsy on a man who's still alive.
After the money and celebrity decreased, Ali and Veronica Porch divorced in July 1986, making it his third failed marriage.
According to his daughter Maryam Ali, quote, I was always worried about my father with Veronica.
She was like a stage wife.
I knew that when my father stopped fighting and the bright lights and money disappeared, Veronica would be gone.
Muhammad Ali was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 1983, which greatly limited the quality of his life in later years.
Doctors and researchers and concussion experts continue to engage in heated debate as to the cause of Ali's illness, but nobody disputes that those last several fights were not exactly positive to his health and well-being.
Muhammad Ali in 1984, quote, What I suffered physically was worth what I've accomplished in life.
A man who is not courageous enough to take risks will never accomplish anything in life.
There were still 32 more years of cognitive decline and tremors to go, so hard to say at the beginning.
It looks a little different than perhaps during.
Muhammad Ali met his fourth wife, Yolanda Williams, when she was only six years old in May of 1963.
Now Williams acted as Ali's full-time nurse while he was still married to his third wife, Veronica Porsche, and eventually they married in November 1986.
Yolanda Williams said, I was scared of boys anyways and especially scared of this man I didn't know.
Muhammad had just turned 21 in January.
I came home from school that day and my mother was looking out the door.
I asked who she was looking at and she said, that's Cassius Clay.
Muhammad must have seen me then because he asked my older brother to get me.
I was reluctant to go over, but eventually I did.
Yolanda Williams Ali is a controversial figure among many of Ali's children and extended family members, with repeated criticisms of her decisions using power of attorney as Ali's physical and mental health declined.
What can't be disputed is that Yolanda assisted in righting Ali's sinking financial ship and restoring some semblance of order
in what had been an incredibly chaotic and financially somewhat wasteful life Muhammad Ali in November 1975 said the man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life Biographer Robert Lipsight wrote
Ali today seems to be blatantly for sale.
He's safe.
He's comfortable.
He's another dangerous black man who white America has found a way to emasculate.
Biographer Mike Marcuse wrote, Ali is being reduced to serving as a mouthpiece for whatever ideas and products those with influence and power want to sell.
And just by the by, When you look at the racism, homophobia, antisemitism of Ali's early life, and it's not like he was a teenager when this stuff was going down, you say, oh, well, he changed his mind and so on.
That's not something that's often offered to white people.
David Duke was last in the KKK decades ago and has repudiated the KKK, but he's always brought up in conjunction with the KKK, which is unfair if you're going to have a different standard for the racism of Muhammad Ali or some of the Well, challenging actions of Nelson Mandela.
Nelson Mandela isn't introduced as the communist Nelson Mandela.
And he was.
And we've got the truth about Nelson Mandela on this very channel, which you can check out.
But his double standard can get a little bit frustrating.
And I think we're kind of reaching boiling point with that kind of stuff.
So American sports writer, Dave Kindred said boxing had robbed him of middle age.
He was an old man at 41.
I think that's somewhat true and tragic.
So these are just some thoughts I have about it.
Hopefully this will be of interest to you.
It's a little frustrating when you work very hard to study for decades to gain wisdom to gain the ability to hopefully emphatically and effectively communicate philosophy to people that some people around the world are incredibly renowned for punching people in the head and in the side and in the spleen and in the belly and in the chest while you get the general idea.
So when you are a philosopher who wants to bring wisdom and value to the world and someone else is yelling and hitting and they're like, oh, let's just step on the philosopher to get to the yelling and hitting person.
Little bit frustrating, but that isn't the way of the world.
And it's up to me to up my game to try and match some of the excitement generated by people who turn other people inside out and into a kind of hamburger for lots of money.
So that's just, I got to work with, just want to get that off my chest.
And there we go.
One of the great attractions of Muhammad Ali, he was beautiful, he was fast, he was charismatic, he was incredibly engaging, he was unpredictable, and that always has a kind of excitement to it.
And without a doubt, he did set people's sights higher in the black community and elsewhere.
He's famous around the third world.
He's famous in lots of places.
But if we could kind of get that without this sort of anti-whiteness that goes on with this kind of stuff, because, you know, the fork in the road with regards to the black experience in America has been, well, are we going to Do the stuff that works in the white community while keeping our own identity or we're going to wholesale reject any values that the whites pursue, you know, education and attainment and self-restraint and reading and stability and all that kind of stuff.
So some of this anti-white culture that he embodied to me is really, really tragic for the American community.
Muhammad Ali injected himself into the black community and was embraced by the black community and was trashing a lot of white people, very anti-white and so on, anti-Christian.
And that has translated into this terrible Oreo phenomenon in the black American community where if you're aiming and working hard and studying and being successful, you're acting white!
You know, and that's really a challenge.
Like, if I go to Japan, or if I'm dragged over in a barrel, I go to Japan and I'm just anti-Japanese and hate the Japanese, of course I'm going to fail in that society.
It's really frustrating.
It doesn't have to be that way.
Partly it's my attitude.
I mean, why not elevate people like Dr. Thomas Sowell or Dr. Walter Williams or other great black intellectuals to eminence and prominence so we don't end up in situations like in Detroit, where The library has been abandoned.
Almost everything has been stolen from the library in Detroit, which is largely black-run and democrat-run and has been for decades.
The copper wiring is ripped out.
The bookshelves are ripped out.
The only thing that is not stolen from the Detroit Public Library after it was abandoned are the books.
So that is a challenge.
Muhammad Ali has some responsibility in the current state.
A black culture in America which is quite negative towards the basic attributes which aren't white.
I mean, it's not like Asian kids aren't studying.
Hell, they're studying harder than white kids.
So by identifying the factors which produce success as white and then being anti-white, the bundle, the package, the baby with the bathwater is that you also reject the behaviors which will help improve your community by associating those behaviors with white people and then hating White people.
And again, this is big generality, lots of exceptions.
But that's a challenge.
Muhammad Ali was, in my opinion, almost without a doubt, a tool of the left to promote and provoke racial animosity as part of their general plan to destabilize Western civilization.
He may have been a tool of the Nation of Islam as a sort of recruiting and public figure and so on.
And that is a real challenge, a real challenge in sort of evaluating his legacy.
His family relations, I mean, were a complete mess.
You know, three failed marriages, endless womanizing, endless chasing, kids out of wedlock, and so on.
His only natural born son, and I'll put links to this below, it's hard to figure out the exact family tree, it's a bit of a kaleidoscope, but Muhammad Ali was alienated from his only natural son up until the day he died.
His son said, My father can't do a thing for me.
It's the same as not having one.
This is Muhammad Ali Jr., who lives on food stamps in a ghetto.
He stopped speaking to the boxing legend two years prior to his death.
He has been living in Chicago, adder below the poverty line for the last decade, living off handouts from charities and so on.
He has admitted that he doesn't care what happened to his father.
He's also been looking after his grandfather, who also has Parkinson's.
So that's not very, that's a very good situation to end up with.
As you get older, you realize that friendships and family and love and connection is pretty much what it's all about, other needs, basic needs having been met.
And he is another example of conquer the world and lose your happiness, because he was depressed, he was alienated, he was frustrated a lot of times, and do not mistake the public persona for the private person.
And this idea that you can gain the world and lose your own soul, it has been...
Well, preached for thousands of years and Jesus talks about it explicitly.
So that is a reality we have to remember.
Offer the world and lose your soul.
That can happen.
And the degree to which we all seek a fame or beauty or sexual market value increases or whatever, and the degree to which we will then end up with nothing or even worse, less than nothing, is the great temptation of the material world and of status, which is the enemy so often of wisdom.
And the fact that, you know, his beauty, his grace, his speed, his athletic prowess, his charisma made him such a hero in certain communities.
You know, our heroes become our futures.
Who we worship is where we move towards.
They're like a gravity well.
You can fight it for a while, but whoever you worship, you will tend to become.
So, speed, athleticism, brutal violence, this half-rhyming trash-talking.
I mean, this is certain darker elements, thug culture, rap culture, gangster culture within the black community.
He did his part.
To bring that forward and to move that forward and to provide charismatic acceleration to a lot of the nihilism that is embodied in that subculture and that is a huge problem.
You know, who you worship you become if you want to change your future as an individual, as a community, as a culture, as a collective.
If you want to change your future, you have to dislodge overturn and change your heroes who you worship, you will become who you venerate, you will follow whether it's conscious or unconscious.
But that having been said, the one thing that I will always love Muhammad Ali for and what I will always have taken from his life is be the greatest.
False humility is just another kind of hypocrisy.
If you are great at something or if you want to be great at something, believe in yourself, keep working at it, keep focusing on it, keep making yourself as great as possible.
Do not shy from or bow down from or recoil from your own capacity for greatness in this world because this world needs greatness so much in these times of distress and despair.
We need heroes.
We need sky hurling thunderbolts of wisdom and goodness to rise above the landscape and illuminate A darkening world for people we need that kind of heroism and the cockiness you could say the manic self-confidence the I don't know if it's something that lithium could fix but the hyperkinetic self-confidence of Muhammad Ali
really struck me when i was a kid and i've always wanted to achieve great things with my life and i have set my sights ridiculously high i have set my scope ridiculously wide i have set my reach ridiculously far and that dance around be the greatest and taunt the gods to strike you down and shrug off even the fists of the deities if they Deign to smash your aspirations.
Shrug them off.
Move forward.
In the West, we have, like, the myths of Icarus and, you know, the guy who comes up with these wax wings, flies too close to the sun, plummets into the ocean, and there's toast.
Pride goeth before a fool.
Pride cometh before a fool.
Don't be too proud.
The evil gods will get you.
Don't be too successful.
You will be struck down.
Hide your wealth.
Hide your light.
Don't.
Don't do it.
The charisma and energy and hyperkinetic self-confidence of someone like Muhammad Ali, combined with genuine philosophical wisdom and passion, I think is an unstoppable force.
And from that, I will forever venerate and honor the man for helping break me out of that sort of British Protestant hydro-bushel stuff and allowing me to stride confidently, hopefully like a Colossus over time, into the world and attempt to move people forward with the power and passion of rhetoric, reason, evidence, and philosophy.
I thank him for that.
I mourn the passing of that confidence, but if we can break off a little piece of that golden heart, put it in our own chest, and use it to inflame our own desires forward, his life will not have been lived in vain.
This is Stefan Molyneux.
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