With the death of Muhammad Ali, we must recognize that an important historical figure has finally left us. He didn’t “make” history the way an influential politician, scientist, or military figure would. Rather, he transcended his profession to the point of being a sign of his very turbulent times. In the 1960s and ’70s, everyone had an opinion of him. Further, that opinion meant something. Muhammad Ali staked out a very controversial political position early in his career, more or less stuck with it when the chips were down, and waited for the rest of us to catch up. And unfortunately, that’s exactly what we did.
From a white nationalist standpoint, there’s a lot of good and bad about Ali — most of it bad. But let’s start with the good.
Ali was, above all else, a highly successful prizefighter. Had he not been successful, he would have been ultimately forgotten outside of boxing circles regardless of his political opinions. How many of us remember Eddie Machen or Cleveland Williams? These were two top heavyweight contenders during the 1960s. Excellent fighters, both, but more or less forgotten today. Even heavyweight champions such as Floyd Patterson and Sonny Liston are remembered only dimly in the popular mind, and I suspect mostly because they both fought Ali.
I can state with confidence that Ali was the greatest heavyweight boxer who ever lived. No heavyweight could match a prime Ali for skill, speed, durability, stamina, and resourcefulness. From 1965 until his government-imposed exile in 1967 for refusing the draft, Ali possessed the tools to defeat all of the smaller, flatfooted heavyweight greats who preceded him (Rocky Marciano, Joes Louis, Gene Tunney, Jack Dempsey). The ones who had the skills to match Ali were either too small (Ezzard Charles, a former light-heavyweight) or had their records peppered with losses and draws (Jack Johnson).
Ali ruled the roost in the 1970s during a true golden age of heavyweight boxing. And this was after his prime. Joe Frazier, Floyd Patterson, Oscar Bonavena, Ken Norton, George Foreman, George Chuvalo, Ron Lyle, Earnie Shavers . . . this was a real murder’s row of bruisers, and Ali beat them all. Sure, he had some close shaves later in his career (Jimmy Young and the Norton rubber match, for example). Suffice to say, however, the only heavyweight who ever decisively beat Muhammad Ali in a meaningful bout (Larry Holmes) used to be Ali’s sparring partner.
As for the later greats (Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield, Lennox Lewis, and the Klitchko brothers, I really think that Ali could have outboxed them while handling their power. Regardless, watching Ali box in his prime was a thing to behold. Youtube has immortalized him, of course. Here is a taste. Ali connecting on journeyman Brian London with 11 punches in 3 seconds.
Amazing if you’re into this sort of thing.
Another good thing about Ali was his sense of humor. I’m sure we all remember his bantering with Howard Cosell and fiddling with the man’s toupee. And there’s his clever doggerel poetry.
The crowd did not dream
When they put down their money
That they would see
A total eclipse of the Sonny!
Indeed, much of Ali’s boasting and “I am the greatest” business was over time top and very entertaining. It did a lot to promote his fights, even if most of the crowds early on wanted to see him lose. He also released a spoken-word record album in 1963. This was before his conversion to Islam when he was still known as Cassius Clay. It was called . . . you guessed it . . . I Am the Greatest. It was mostly tongue in cheek. At one point he assesses his poetry skills by boasting “Keats! Shelley! I whup all of ‘em!” Elsewhere in the recording, a woman in the audience asks him, “Mr. Clay, have you ever been in love?” And Clay responded, “Not with anybody else!”
Love him or hate him, that’s pretty funny. And for an athlete, let alone a great one, this is a very rare thing. Here he is doing some pretty good stand-up comedy on the Dean Martin Show in the mid-1970s.
Finally, Ali had a conservative/racist streak that I’m sure many white nationalists would appreciate. He steadfastly opposed black-white miscegenation. He once refused a $400,000 offer to play the lead in the film adaptation of The Great White Hope, a highly fictionalized biopic of Jack Johnson, the first Negro world heavyweight champion (the role ultimately went to James Earl Jones). Johnson was notorious for his taste in white women, and Ali stated bluntly that he “wouldn’t appear on no screen with no white women.” And this was during his exile, when he needed the money.
Ali didn’t always stay on the leftist script and occasionally expressed a sense of race-realism that was pretty shocking even then. For example, after beating George Foreman in Zaire, the champ was asked what he thought of Africa. Ali responded by saying “Thank God my great grand-daddy got on that boat!!” We all know he referred to Joe Frazier as a ‘gorilla’ before their rubber match in the Philippines in 1976. ‘Gorilla,’ of course, rhymes with ‘thrilla’ and ‘chilla’ and ‘Manilla.’ So how could Ali resist likening a black man to a lower primate species for the sake of a good poem? Then again, he repeated the insult in 2001, so maybe it wasn’t just about rhyming after all.
It would be unfair of me not to note that, other than during the heady days of the Civil Rights Movement in the late 1960s, Ali got along pretty well with whites and seemed pretty comfortable with us, especially as he got older. Later in the 1970s, he started to pal around with mainstream celebrities and was pretty chummy with President Ford in the White House. White people began to like him.
In 2009, Ali even went to Ireland to visit the hometown of his maternal great-grandfather Abe Grady. Not that it would have cost him anything to do this, but he did claim that he was proud of his Irish heritage.
The bad about Muhammad Ali, however, overshadows all of this. We, as white nationalists, should never forget the damage this man did, not only to our country and culture but to our race as well.
First, to our country. Refusing to be inducted in the draft during the Vietnam War was one thing, but declaring that he “had no quarrel with the Vietcong” or that no Vietcong ever called him “nigger” was stupid and offensive. Ali, of course, was completely ignorant of the atrocities committed by the Vietcong and of any reasons why the United States would oppose such a loathsome foe. After all, he really wasn’t as intelligent as he let on. In 1964, a month before he won the title, he scored in the 16th percentile in the army’s fairly simple induction exam (30th percentile was passing). Many of the questions were ding-dong dumb, like this one:
A man works from six in the morning to three in the afternoon with one hour for lunch. How many hours did he work?
A. 7
B. 8
C. 9
D. 10
Petros Spanakos, an Olympic teammate of Ali’s, attested to Ali’s stupidity. He said that Ali (then Clay) had such difficulty writing letters home he (Spanakos) had to write them for him.
Suffice to say, public high school graduate Cassius Clay was probably not terribly familiar with George Kennan’s X Article and probably couldn’t do a comparative analysis of Containment versus Deterrence and other Cold War foreign policy concepts. He opened his big mouth anyway. By making his clueless statements about the Vietcong and then standing by them, Ali renounced any fealty to all the other young American men of his generation (black and white) who heeded the call out of a sense of patriotism or duty. Ali had none of that, and was rightfully shamed for it. Whether he realized it or not, he was encouraging other young men to do the same thing. And, of course, that’s what they did.
Not only this, but his statements somehow placed the Vietcong on a higher moral plane than that of the segregationist whites he grew up with. It’s as if to say he had a reason to have a fight whitey, because they called him names, whereas the Vietcong were better than that. Yes, they refrained from using racial epithets while slaughtering people by the tens of thousands in the name of their communist utopia. Such a comment from a well-known professional athlete should be considered treasonous during a time of war. It was just what the left needed to get Western civilization to start eating itself.
Another way Ali helped accomplish this was by telling a whopper of a lie in his 1975 autobiography. It was edited by the execrable Toni Morrison, so this should come as no surprise. In the second chapter, entitled “Gold Medal,” the man who fifteen years prior could not successfully write his own letters home, relates a harrowing scene in which then gold medalist Cassius Clay and some friends faced off with white racists on a bridge over the Ohio River. The whites were armed and wanted trouble, with one of them referring to Clay as “Olympic Nigger.” If one of Clay’s friends hadn’t captured the whites’ leader and put a switchblade to his throat, the whites would have opened fire on Clay and his friends.
After the altercation, Clay suddenly became disillusioned with the gold medal which he still wore. In some big, moralistic epiphany, he tore it off his neck and tossed it into the river, clearly indicating that such an award was worthless when he was still treated like a second-class citizen in his own country. When his friend asked him why he did it, he said, “It wasn’t real gold. It was phony.”
It’s a great story. But it’s a lie. None of it happened. Ali, dingbat that he was, simply misplaced his medal. It’s a pernicious story because it maligned whites in order to make some political statement about horrible America is. But if America is so bad, why did he have to lie about it?
Ali (or Toni Morrison or Richard Durham, his co-writer) lied about it because Muhammad Ali was a tool of the anti-whiteLleft which wanted nothing more than to tear apart the racial cohesion of American whites. Prior to the 1960s, America was primarily a white country, which employed many white cultural elements to bind its people together as a nation. Any strong, healthy society needs this as well as a belief in its own greatness. More than this, however, it needs a certain number of young men willing to fight and die for the nation as a whole. Men are less likely to do this if they believe their society or their nation is not great. Ali’s most consequential accomplishment in life, more so than anything he did in the ring, was to help tear down the idea that the United States was a great nation. Sadly, we’re still feeling the effects of this today.
Ali’s negative cultural impact can still be seen as well. Thanks to Ali, many athletes today trash talk. When modern boxers and mixed martial artists celebrate their victories in vulgar, uninhibited displays, they’re emulating Ali. Prior to Ali, athletes, especially champions, more often than not were humble in victory and respectful to their vanquished opponents. That was the norm. Now, unfortunately, it is not. To be fair, Ali chilled out by the 1970s and was always gracious in defeat. But the damage had been done in the 1960s, and it was a lot of damage.
Ali could also be very ugly. He taunted his opponents, especially early on. Of course, the things he said to Joe Frazier are legendary. He called Floyd Patterson an “Uncle Tom” and “White man’s nigger” during their first fight. To George Foreman, he promised, “I’m gonna beat your Christian ass, you white flag-waving bitch, you!” (Remember that Foreman angered the left — especially the black left — in 1968 when he waved an American flag after winning Olympic gold.)
As far as Ali’s racial impact, he was a leading part of the brown tide against white hegemony in America, which reached a head in the late 1960s. All the counter-culture types thought he was cool. And, of course, all but the most old-fashioned, Christian blacks loved him. That he scorned his “Christian name” Clay for the exotic sounding Muhammad Ali, was certainly a dig at white, Christian America. So was joining the black Muslims, an unheard of thing in the 1960s. (Ali’s trainer Angelo Dundee was so oblivious at the time, he thought the word “muslim” referred to a type of cloth.) Of course, Clay knew or said nothing about how historically Muslims were more barbaric, more warlike, and more enthusiastic slave owners and traders than Christians ever were. In 1964, when Clay converted to Islam, slavery was still legal in Saudi Arabia, the center of the Muslim world.
Then there’s the overt, anti-white racism of the Black Muslims. Whites are blue-eyed devils. Whites are depraved. Whites are oppressors. Et cetera. Et cetera. Ali may not have spouted that nonsense himself, but the fact he remained a devout Muslim for the rest of his life casts doubt on his true feelings towards whites. How the liberal media was able to ju-jitsu that highly racist and conservative factoid out of all their Ali hagiographies was actually quite deft. Whites shouldn’t get too bent out of shape over Ali’s racism. After all, whites deserve it. So, if you’re white and want to like Muhammad Ali, then you’ll need to kick back a dose of self-hatred. Don’t worry, it’s good for you. Indeed, Muhammad Ali helped make anti-white racism cool.
As bad as all this is, Muhammad Ali worst racial impact upon whites is negrophilia. Yes, worship of the black man, the numinous Negro. Ali was one of the first black celebrities of any kind who captured the imaginations of young, draft-card burning white kids who were itching to rebel against the man. He was tall, handsome, charming, and reasonably well-spoken. He spoke at colleges and held his own in discussions with Bill Buckley and others. He stayed true to his convictions, even when he could have kept making big money as a prizefighter. This is real superhero territory for naïve white kids who were enamored with the left and needed cultural icons to revere. Perhaps the epitome of Ali worship can be found in Norman Mailer’s The Fight. Don’t read it. It’s terrible. Mailer basically treats Ali like a demigod. Much of the book is nauseating.
If there is one good thing that comes out of all this: Muhammad Ali is proof that multiracial societies, especially ones that contain large numbers of blacks, cannot function well. Cassius Clay, by all accounts, had a privileged childhood in America (compared to most of the rest of the world), he reached vertiginous heights in his chosen profession, and he found tremendous wealth and glory. He should have been grateful to the nation which enabled him to do these things. Yet, when it mattered most, he sided with his nation’s enemies. Why? Because he placed racial allegiances before national ones. And this is how it always is. Race trumps all. A nation with conflicting racial loyalties within its borders will never be strong and will never last long.
Muhammad Ali was undoubtedly a great boxer. But for racially conscious whites, his life story should be an even greater lesson.
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16 comments
The line “he placed racial allegiances above national ones” is an interesting criticism of the man coming from a writer on this web site. Isn’t that what Counter Currents and the Alt-Right all about ?
Jeff,
Fair point. But I said Ali’s tribal loyalties were bad for whites, not malum in se.
“First, to our country. Refusing to be inducted in the draft during the Vietnam War was one thing, but declaring that he “had no quarrel with the Vietcong” or that no Vietcong ever called him “nigger” was stupid and offensive. Ali, of course, was completely ignorant of the atrocities committed by the Vietcong and of any reasons why the United States would oppose such a loathsome foe.”
I am going to have to agree with Ali on this one, Vietnam was not worth the life of one white man. I could care less about the atrocities committed by the Vietnamese against their own people–I wish they would all start killing each other right and left, the more the better. Vietnam was another meaningless war in which thousands of white men were killed, millions in treasure wasted, and the only ones to benefit were the jews.
Seconded. And that Ali felt less loyalty to multiracial America than to his own kind is perfectly understandable as well. As to him being an anti-White Black Muslim? So what? He at least was being honest about it. That the anti-White left has used that to get dumb White kids to hate themselves is hardly his fault. He made it quite clear how he felt about Whites.
On the other hand, I agree entirely that the worst effect that Ali had on American society was negrophilia. In fact, I can’t help but notice some of that in the first part of Mr. Quinn’s own article, where he speaks admiringly of Ali’s fighting prowess, even describing Ali’s beating of Brian London as ‘a thing to behold’. Maybe it’s just me, but to me there’s something not healthy, even slightly ‘cucked’, about a White man enjoying watching a Negro beat up another White man.
Hi Leon,
Disagree about the cucking. Ali’s destruction of the black Cleveland Williams is equally breathtaking. I just didn’t include it because I thought the Williams clip was more well known. Also, Ali and London were fighting on equal terms with rules. They were both trying to hurt each other. Yes, it pains me whenever a white loses to a black in sport, but in those instances that doesn’t stop me from admiring the skill of the black. Jack London made similar comments when Jack Johnson defeated Tommy Burns over 100 years ago.
I think it is possible to assess a person’s skill at something without bringing in race. Paul Robeson is great example. A despicable human being and anti-white racist, sure. But I will never say he couldn’t sing.
Agreed, the end of the article criticises black worship when the 1st half is over inflated praise which runs like any MSM obituary.
He was a promoted icon in a promoted sport. I doubt many White athletes from MMA fighters to cross country skiers would be given such praise. If Muhammad Ali was White he would be an object of ridicule but has been inflated as a Philospher-Athlete king.
Muhammad Ali was a good athlete but he was also lucky in having a massively thick skull. You will notice he has a big head whilst, as documented in the article, not much brains. Despite fighting without guarding his face and taking massive hits he was never KO’d in his career and only knocked down three times: Once by Joe Frazier, once by Chuck Wepner and once by Henry Cooper, the later two being White.
See here in one of his last fights in 1980 against Larry Holmes how, despite noticeable signs of Parkinsons, he can take massive consecutive blows to the face which would put any normal person into a coma (35:50 is a heavy set of hits):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sqjkeqrvWo
The promotion of Muhammad Ali leads to the overshadowing of a White boxing great, Rocky Marciano, an Italian-American Heavyweight Chamion, undefeated in his proffessional career, only 5’10 but considered to be one of the most powerful punchers. We can compare the behaviour of the two in the videos below are easily see who should have our abmiration.
Rocky Marciano:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFUJ3KDjrlI
Muhhamd Ali/Cassius Clay:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBVviGSgu7M
Peter Quint,
Not sure how the Jews were the only ones to benefit. Vietnam was very unpopular with them and many of their intellectuals openly opposed it (eg Zinn, Chomsky). Jews were very hawkish during WW2 when they were saving their own people in Europe, but during a war that had little impact on diaspora Jews or Israel, American Jews suddenly became less hawkish and led much of the anti-war resistance. How exactly did Jews benefit from the Vietnam War?
In any event the Vietnam war was an abomination and the draft was despicable.
“How exactly did Jews benefit from the Vietnam War?”
Increased government debt, sales of military hardware, taking advantage of chaos and division of Whites about the support of Vietnam War, etc.
“‘Thanks to the terrible power of our International Banks, we have forced the Christians into wars without number. Wars have a special value for Jews, since Christians massacre each other and make more room for us Jews. Wars are the Jews’ Harvest: The Jew banks grow fat on Christian wars. Over 100-million Christians have been swept off the face of the earth by wars, and the end is not yet.’ (Rabbi Reichorn, speaking at the funeral of Grand Rabbi Simeon Ben-Iudah, 1869,”
“Get hold of fifty of the wealthiest Jewish financiers, the men who are interested in making wars for their own profit. Control them, and you will put an end to it all.” — Henry Ford, father of the automobile industry, the Cleveland News, 20th September 1923.
“We are at the bottom, not merely of the latest Great War, but of nearly all your wars; not only of the Russian, but of every other major Revolution in, your history . . . We did it solely with the irresistible might of our spirit, with ideas and propaganda.” — A Real Case Against the Jews by the Jewish writer and Rothschild biographer, Marcus Eli Ravage, Century Magazine, January 1928, Volume 115, Number 3, pages 346-350.
‘There is scarcely an event in modern Europe that cannot be traced back to the Jews. We Jews are today nothing else but the World’s seducers, its destroyers, its incendiaries, its executioners.’ — By the Jewish scholar, Oscar Levy; in his preface to G. Lane-Fox Pitt Rivers, The World Significance of the Russian Revolution.
Henry Ford also noted that: ‘It was a Jew who said, ‘Wars are the Jews’ harvest’; but no harvest is so rich as civil wars.’)
I must disagree with you, the Jews were not fighting in Europe during WWII to save their own people, because their people were never in any danger–there was never a Jewish holocaust. There was, however, a white holocaust.
As for the Jewish anti-war stance during the Vietnam War, it was just camouflage. It is just another instance of the Jews not putting their eggs in one basket, and benefiting all around. The Jews were able to get immigration laws changed in 1965 which leads up to our present condition. The Jews were able to push through desegregation during the war which leads up to our present condition. The Jews began a massive Marxist propaganda campaign (i.e., All In The Family etc.) which leads up to our present condition. The Jews accomplished a lot under the cover of war protest.
He may have been against miscegenation and preached against it, all of his wives were mulattoes. Hence he had many light-skinned children. Some of his daughters have married white men (one of them is a jew). Thus one of his many grandchildren is a very white looking. So much for his preaching against miscegenation.
Pic of one of his daughter’s family:
http://images.maxpreps.com/site_images/editorial/article/c/b/6/cb6bbdcc-b437-454a-a236-5174d859c4d9/ea5d27ef-6921-e311-99e4-002655e6c126_original.jpg
Pic of his grandson:
http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/555f2bdc6bb3f7815772d40c-480/muhammad-ali-grandson.jpg
Mulattoes marrying blacks or other mulattoes is okay. As for Ali’s children marrying whites, I don’t know if he supported that or not. He may have had a change of heart as he got older. When I mentioned his opposition to black-white miscegenation, I was referring to his boxing days, when he was most vocal and had the most influence. If he reversed himself later, I will stand corrected.
Any strong, healthy society needs this as well as a belief in its own greatness. More than this, however, it needs a certain number of young men willing to fight and die for the nation as a whole.
They might not be dying for the “nation as a whole”, but they sure are willing to die for other parties.
The Klitschkos and Lennox Lewis would have 4-5 inches and 35 lbs on Ali. They would likely best him if matched prime for prime.
I suspect Vitali was a little too slow to keep up with Ali. He also liked to keep his hands low and was quite hittable. 6′ tall Chris Byrd with a 74″ reach was able to tag him quite a bit when they fought. Add 4 inches of reach and height to Byrd, make him orthodox, and you have Ali. Plus, Ali hit a lot harder than Byrd. Vladimir was faster and more skilled than his brother, but I have to hold that weak chin against him. I believe Ali would have tagged him enough times on the jaw to get him worrying more about defense than offense. Same with Lewis. In any case, I suspect Ali would have handled their power. If he could take shots from Liston, Frazier, Foreman, and Shavers, he would have been fine with these three.
Two words: who cares.
Yes, yes, I know. “Millions” if not billions grieve and mourn this monkey. But we should set ourselves to a higher standard.
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