Tag: Saladin Ambar

Erik Killmonger, the villain in "Black Panther," is one of the greatest political thinkers ever to appear in a blockbuster movie. Now back to my point about the political philosopher Killmonger. "It’s an extremely sympathetic position, yet the film keeps reminding us that he’s the bad guy — he ruthlessly murders his own accomplices and he dethrones T’Challa, nearly killing him in the process." Killmonger at least wants to do something to end the oppression of subjugated people," Faruqi points out. But it’s the root of his rage that Coogler so deftly explores in 'Black Panther.'" "Killmonger seems to embody the tradition of Black Nationalism and revolutionary politics," Professor Saladin Ambar of Rutgers University told Salon. Du Bois, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Ambar also noted that the Wakandans' isolationist philosophy, though despised by Killmonger and ultimately abandoned (or at least moderated) by Black Panther at the end of the movie, has strong historical roots. "It's important to remember that the Wakandans' conservatism had been rooted in self-preservation and their own anti-colonialism," Ambar said. As an illustrative analogy, Ambar juxtaposed two of American history's most famous African-American political thinkers — King and Malcolm X.