The Importance of Radical Activism in 2025

By Isabella Cain

In 1964, Malcolm X stood before the Organization of Afro-American Unity and declared: “You’re not to be so blind with patriotism that you can’t face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or who says it.” Today, as we look across the global political landscape in 2025 marred by growing authoritarianism, censorship, and the suppression of justice movements, these words resound with renewed urgency. The legacy of Malcolm X, his unflinching radicalism, internationalism, and moral clarity, provides not only a historical lesson, but a blueprint for resistance. 

Malcolm X’s radical activism was rooted in a recognition that justice could not be compartmentalized by borders, race, or religion. He famously expanded the scope of Black struggle to an international context, linking the plight of African Americans to anti-colonial struggles worldwide. In his later years, after his pilgrimage to Mecca, he deepened his commitment to global solidarity, writing in 1964 that Zionism was a “new form of colonialism.” Though this statement has often been buried under sanitized portrayals of his legacy, it reflected his consistent opposition to oppression, regardless of who was perpetrating it.

In 2025, the world is witnessing one of the most visible and polarizing global crises of our time: the continuing siege and bombardment of Gaza. With over 40,000 Palestinians killed and entire neighborhoods razed to the ground, many activists and observers have drawn comparisons between the current Israeli state violence and the historical systems of apartheid, colonization, and racial segregation Malcolm X denounced. Yet, mainstream political discourse often paints support for Palestine as “divisive” or “radical,” pushing moral clarity to the margins in favor of vague calls for “peace” and “stability” that ignore the root causes of the conflict.

It is in this climate that Malcolm X’s legacy takes on renewed importance, not simply as a figure to be remembered, but as a strategy to be revived. He challenged the American establishment at its core, refusing to dilute the truth to make it palatable. He exposed the deep connections between racial capitalism, imperialism, and global violence, insisting that oppressed peoples had a right to self-defense, dignity, and sovereignty. His life reminds us that true activism is rarely accepted by the status quo in its time.

Radical activism today, in the spirit of Malcolm X, means refusing to look away from racism, bigotry, and genocide when it’s politically inconvenient. It means confronting the double standards in how violence is portrayed, how resistance is labeled, and how “legitimate” forms of advocacy are policed. College students across the United States and Europe have been arrested for protesting their universities’ complicity in Israeli apartheid. Nonprofits have been deplatformed, and major media outlets continue to frame the conversation in ways that dehumanize Palestinians and obscure the colonial dynamics at play.

And yet, radical activism has never been more necessary. In 2025, advocacy that merely asks for reform or symbolic gestures is insufficient in the face of mass displacement, ethnic cleansing, and the brutal entrenchment of settler-colonial regimes. The current moment demands a form of activism that dares to challenge foundational injustices, even when doing so results in surveillance, smear campaigns, or professional consequences.

Radical does not mean violent—it means honest. It means going to the root of the problem, as Malcolm X always insisted. And the root of the current crisis in Palestine is not a conflict between equals, but the ongoing dispossession of a people under military occupation, funded and supported by some of the most powerful governments in the world. To stand with Palestine is not to be “anti” anything but to be for human rights, for decolonization, and for liberation.

Malcolm X understood that the liberation of one people is tied to the liberation of all. He stood with revolutionary struggles in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, knowing that racism in America could not be separated from imperialism abroad. In 2025, as Black, Indigenous, and migrant communities continue to face systemic injustice, the struggle for Palestine is part of a larger fight for a decolonized and equitable world. The calls for ceasefire, boycott, and divestment are not isolated acts of protest, but part of an international tapestry of resistance that has existed since before Malcolm X.

Critics often argue that Malcolm X’s radicalism is outdated, too uncompromising for the complexity of today’s politics. However,  this critique misunderstands both the past and the present. Malcolm X’s clarity about oppression remains vital because the structures he opposed, white supremacy, capitalist exploitation, and colonial violence, are still with us, albeit in evolved forms. Far from irrelevant, his legacy provides a moral compass in an age of manufactured confusion.

To invoke Malcolm X in 2025 is not to romanticize the past, but to reignite its fire. His radicalism, informed by both pain and vision, urges us to move beyond performative solidarity and embrace action that challenges the very foundations of power. The movement for Palestine, international Civil Rights, and the fight to keep black history in schools, are not fringe causes, they are the frontline in the global struggle for justice. And like Malcolm X, we must be willing to stand on that frontline, even when it is uncomfortable.

In a world where the powerful continue to redraw the boundaries of legitimacy and silence dissent, radical activism remains our most vital tool. Malcolm X taught us that freedom is never given; it must be taken, demanded, and defended. In 2025, the urgency of that lesson has never been clearer.