structural:scholar_edition
France and United Kingdom

On November 23, 1964, on his way home from Africa, Malcolm X stopped in Paris, where he spoke in the Salle de la Mutualité. After his return to the United States, he accused the United States of imperialism in the Congo by supporting Tshombe and "his hired killers" as he called the White mercenaries. X accused Tshombe and the American president Lyndon B. Johnson of "...sleeping together. When I say sleeping together, I don't mean that literally. But beyond that, they're in the same bed. Johnson is paying the salaries, paying the government, propping up Tshombe's government, this murderer".

X expressed much anger about Operation Dragon Rouge, where the United States Air Force dropped in Belgian paratroopers into the city of Stanleyville, modern Kisangani, to rescue the White Belgian hostages from the Simbas. Malcolm X maintained that there was a double standard when it came to White and Black lives, noting it was an international emergency when the lives of Whites were in danger, making Dragon Rouge necessary, but that nothing was done to stop the abuses of the Congolese at the hands of "Tshombe's hired killers". X charged that the "Congolese have been massacred by White people for years and years" and that "chickens come home to roost."

A week later, on November 30, Malcolm X flew to the United Kingdom. On December 3 he took part in a debate at the Oxford Union Society. The motion was taken from a statement made earlier that year by U.S. presidential candidate Barry Goldwater: "Extremism in the Defense of Liberty is No Vice; Moderation in the Pursuit of Justice is No Virtue". Malcolm X argued for the affirmative, and interest in the debate was so high that it was televised nationally by the BBC.

In his address at Oxford, Malcolm rejected the label of "Black Muslim" and instead focused on being a Muslim who happened to be Black, which reflected his conversion to Sunni Islam. Malcolm only mentioned his religion twice during his Oxford speech, which was part of his effort to defuse his image as an "angry Black Muslim extremist", which he had long hated. During the debate at Oxford, he criticized the way the Anglo-American press portrayed the Congo crisis, noting the Simbas were portrayed as primitive cannibalistic "savages" who engaged in every form of depravity imaginable while Tshombe and the White mercenaries were portrayed in a very favorable light with almost no mention of any atrocities on their part.

Malcolm X charged that the Cuban émigré pilots hired by the CIA to serve as Tshombe's air force indiscriminately bombed Congolese villages and towns, killing women and children, but this was almost never mentioned in the media while the newspapers featured long accounts of the Simbas "raping White women, molesting nuns". Likewise, he felt the term mercenary was inappropriate, preferring the term "hired killer" and that Tshombe should not be described as a premier as he preferred the term "cold-blooded murderer" to describe him. Malcolm X stated that what he regarded as the extremism of the Tshombe government was "never referred to as extremism because it is endorsed by the West, it is financed by America, it's made respectable by America, and that kind of extremism is never labelled as extremism".

Malcolm X argued this extremism was not morally acceptable "since it's not extremism in defense of liberty". Many in the audience at Oxford were angered by Malcolm X's thesis and his support for the Simbas who had committed atrocities with one asking, "What sort of extremism would you consider the killing of missionaries?". In response, Malcolm X answered "It is an act of war. I'd call it the same kind of extremism that happened when England dropped bombs on German cities and Germans dropped bombs on English cities".

On February 5, 1965, Malcolm X flew to the United Kingdom again, and on February 8 he addressed the first meeting of the Council of African Organizations in London. The next day he tried to return to France, but was refused entry. On February 12, he visited Smethwick, near Birmingham, where the Conservative Party had won the parliamentary seat in the 1964 general election. The town had become a byword for racial division after the successful candidate, Peter Griffiths, was accused of using the slogan, "If you want a nigger for a neighbour, vote Liberal or Labour." In Smethwick, Malcolm X compared the treatment of ethnic minority residents with the treatment of Jews under Hitler, saying: "I would not wait for the fascist element in Smethwick to erect gas ovens."