Ta-Nehisi Coates responds to Matthew Yglesias on Magneto:
Given where I'm from, you don't really have to sell me on this one. I started in on comic books, just about the time shortly after Magneto joined the X-Men, though I've never read the books where this actually happened. (What back issues should I be digging up?) Anyway, like any self-respecting proto-Malcolmite, I immediately identified with Magneto.
There's a great scene in the first Secret Wars where all the heroes are ragging on the X-Men for embracing Magneto. I think Captain America calls Magneto a "terrorist," and Wolverine steps in and basically goes off on Cap explaining the history of mutants, and how Magneto came to a "drive em into the sea" philosophy. I would transcribe the thing but my collection is all boxed up. But Wolverine ends the rant being held back by other X-Men, yelling something like "I used to respect you!"
I could imagine a Magneto reconciliation process as part of a peace agreement given the political realities of his stature among mutants, but Magneto really is a terrorist in that he sees the murder of civilians as a means to an end, and as such he should really face a trial. Of course the one time that happened he used mind control to force the judges to aquit him--long story.
The conflict between Xavier and Magneto has frequently been analogized to the dispute between Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, but the comparison doesn't really fit. For one think, MLK was a pacifist, and Xavier clearly sees a role for violence in defense of mutants, or he wouldn't have ended up putting together a team of incredibly powerful mutant superheroes and trained them to fight. Xavier's view that mutants should be able to use force in self-defense while working towards mutual coexistence with humans is actually more comparable to Malcolm X's latter-day perspective, while Magneto's Brotherhood of Mutants is more like Hamas--a group of people who respond to legitimate grievances with monstrous methods.
