Latest news with #MattAmha
CBC
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- CBC
Malcolm X at 100: How his legacy has been celebrated — and co-opted — in pop culture
Social Sharing American civil rights activist and revolutionary Malcolm X would have turned 100 years old this year. Before he was assassinated in 1965 at the age of 39, Malcolm X had become a prominent figure in the Nation of Islam, known for his eloquent and passionate public speeches about Black nationalism and the critiques of American society. To commemorate his life, Commotion host Elamin Abdelmahmoud talks to professor Mark Anthony Neal, and culture critics Sandy Hudson and Matt Amha for a brief look at the commercialization of Malcolm X's legacy over the decades, and how it has or hasn't aligned with his actual mission and message. We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player. WATCH | Today's episode on YouTube: Elamin: Mark, Malcolm X came to prominence at a time when we obviously didn't have social media, internet. What do you think it was about his understanding of mass media that made him become this iconic voice that we now know? Mark: He came of age in the early parts of the electronic media era, right? He would have watched film as a kid. He would've been a young adult when television became a thing. So he was always sensitive to the representation of Black bodies and Black culture in the context of these films. Just think about a little Malcolm watching a Tarzan movie and trying to put in context what he was seeing, in terms of the way that Africans were treated. But I think more importantly, he was a photographer in his own right. So he was always concerned with capturing and documenting what was happening. And then, of course, the critical moment for him was when CBS News does their special, The Hate That Hate Produced, which really is a thing that allows more Americans in 1959 to find out what the Nation of Islam was and who Malcolm X was. He had to learn on the fly how to navigate media culture in that context. Elamin: Sandy, I'm curious for you because you are someone with real-world experience being an activist. As you look at the ways Malcolm X engaged with the media, what do you make of the way that he leveraged it? Sandy: I think it was wonderful. I think he really understood media. He was the one who said, "If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing." And so he really understood the power of media, and he didn't trust it. But that didn't stop him from using the media as a tool for education and to try to influence people to understand his goals, and to reach his goals. I certainly take that lesson from him, and I have tried to use that lesson in my own activism — using the media as a tool for mass education. Elamin: Matt, obviously there's something quite intentional about the ways that Malcolm X leveraged media. What do you make of the way that he approached it? Matt: I mean, Malcom was a showman in a lot of ways, you know? He understood the theatre of emerging media which, as Mark points out, at the time would have been colour television. I think he was a master of spectacle — and that isn't to say that it is in any way shallow. But it's to say that you understand the way that media and public attention functioned, and he understood how to ultimately bend it to his will. He was a kind of forebearer in that sense, in a lot of ways. Elamin: I want to spend a moment on that idea of it being theatre, because I don't think you are saying that it's fictitious in any kind of way. But you're saying it's a way to sort of get attention, and direct it towards the thing that you want that attention to be on. Matt: Well, what I mean to say by theatre is, there's a famous instance in 1957 where a Black man named Johnson Hinton is beaten in Harlem. He takes thousands of Black men from Harlem and marches down to the precinct in his community and stands them outside and makes demands of the NYPD, who eventually yield. That imagery of having hundreds of Black men standing outside of the precinct, making this demand of the New York Police Department, is a moving image. I mean, radicalism is about your belief system, but there's also a kind of aesthetic demonstration of radicalism as well. And the press at the time, and still to this day, often respond to that, right? And he, to me, was a kind of master of using that and turning it on its head, as Sandy says, for the purposes of political education.
CBC
13-05-2025
- Politics
- CBC
How did 6ixBuzz get so influential?
6ixBuzz TV started off as a way to highlight Toronto hip-hop artists, created by two founders from the city who wanted to highlight the culture they saw around them. But in the past few years, the Instagram account has also started highlighting health and political news using controversial headlines. This strategy has amassed them more than two million followers — a large enough reach that Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre even participated in a 6ixBuzz Q&A during this year's federal election campaign cycle. Today on Commotion, host Elamin Abdelmahmoud speaks with culture critics Matt Amha and Joyita Sengupta to look at the rise of the popular and controversial 6ixBuzz and what it means for Canada's media landscape. We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player. WATCH | Today's episode on YouTube: Elamin: [The] other troubling part of 6ixBuzz, which is the way that it consistently exploited these toxic anti-Asian sentiments for its financial bottom line, especially towards Brampton's South Asian communities. Joyita, can you talk a little bit about that, about the history of how intentional 6ixBuzz was about that? Joyita: I think we have to acknowledge the fact that none of this is occurring in a vacuum. So the context that we're coming into this with is the fact that anti-immigration sentiment has already been on the rise in Canada for the last couple years. Anti-South Asian hate content online has also been on the rise in the last couple years — and that's globally, not just in Canada. But it's unique when we talk about 6ixBuzz, in the sense that Brampton is considered the epicentre of what people consider to be a "problem" when it comes to over-immigration, over-representation of South Asians in this community — [but] we've always been here. So the tricky thing with the way 6ixBuzz approaches this is this feigned neutrality. They'll post something, like, "Canada's largest cricket dome opening in Brampton." They don't cover cricket. We know what the comments are going to look like. Elamin: And they go, "What do you think?" Joyita: "What do you think, guys? Eyes emoji." It's this lobbing to the trolls in the comments that are going to knock it out of the park for them. Elamin: It's playing with an undercurrent that's already kind of there. Joyita: Exactly. So it's one of those things where it's like, are they the only ones doing this? No. But when I talk to — in my reporting — international students, newcomers, other young South Asians, particularly in Brampton, 6ixBuzz came up time and time again. And for people that were in some of the most stressful times of their lives, not knowing whether they were going to be able to stay in this country after spending their life savings to be here, or if they were experiencing racism in real life — being followed, being recorded — they talked about the comments on 6ixBuzz, and they talked the way that this kind of content was being platformed and rewarded by these platforms. Elamin: Matt, what do you make of that, about the idea that 6ixBuzz has become a central hub for this? Matt: What strikes me most is that this is really a story of betrayal. This is a great betrayal. And 6ixBuzz was created as a kind of alternative media that was designed to represent the first-generation Toronto and Canadian experience, and the kind of immigrant experience in this country — and particularly the experiences and concerns of us that grew up in this so-called "inner city," that grew up in these underfunded communities. But the page and its owners, it appears, they went through this process of radicalization, or understanding the degree to which a performance of radicalization was lucrative and could be lucrative for them. This was a page that was initially a landing spot for Black and brown people, for marginalized people. That same page then turned brown people into racist fodder in a bid to attract a new kind of audience. And that's where this idea of betrayal, I think, comes into play. They built this audience initially by creating these relationships with marginalized people in their city, but they now use those very identities to drive race panic and immigration panic to an audience that they are trying to appeal to. And they're now serving these people to whom they owe their success — in its entirety — on a platter. And they are presenting them as an internal horror, as a scary alien population. I think the logic of that is really troubling. The kind of base premise of 6ixBuzz today is fear. It's crime panic, health panic, immigration panic. It is a project that's really indistinguishable from that of Breitbart under Steve Bannon, or even Rebel News. Driving fear and hysteria, the kind of brand that trades on our worst impulses, that uses fear-mongering as a vector for attention and clicks and, ultimately, revenue. And if you are interested in profit, it makes sense, but I think ethically, [it] raises all kinds of questions. These are street guys running a fundamentally street enterprise. And I understand more than most that the conditions of life in the inner city and in community housing in Toronto can drive all kinds of desperation and a kind of mania for upward mobility. When the hustler begins to destroy the world that he lifted himself out of, they should be subject to critique. I think, in some way, that's what's happening here.
