how did the black panthers capture the public attention/imagination so completely?

[ed miliband]

even before i was vaguely political i would have been able to name to half-a-dozen(+) panthers - and i'm a (culturally) middle class white kid from london (albeit one who likes hip hop)

seems like the panthers occupy a strange cultural space perhaps even more so than something like may '68 (i knew of hampton etc long before cohn-bendit etc)

why is this?

[NewLeft]

They were targeted against by the state through passive propaganda for reasons mentioned below, they preached maoism/organized the working class and most importantly, represented blacks..

I see figures like Angela Davis used in bourgeois media frequently.. Her large afro makes her a romanticized icon. It's also a way of transforming a radical into a symbol of a certain quality like power..

[Ostrinski]

Probably because of how relevant they were to the political question of lower class black people in how they tried to close the gap between the party and the rank and file. They were able to amass so much support all across the nation that the state was forced to take a stand. Interestingly, how relevant a movement or organization is can be measured by the response of the state. The Black Panthers, the early labor unions, the native american movement were all met with strict repression while random petite-bourgeois leftist social clubs are glanced over without a second thought. There's a reason for that.

[Ostrinski]

Angela Davis a bourgeois sell out. She wrote some good stuff though.

[gorillafuck]

their aggressive rhetoric and their open carrying of weapons captured a lot of media attention. not to mention that they were fashionable. a bunch of black men (and women) with leather jackets, afros, and weapons were pretty appealing to all the fashionable upper-middle class white radicals of the time. they used to target white college students when they were selling the little red book.

one difference between them and malcolm x is that malcolm didn't care about garnering the support of white fashionable radicals, whereas they thought that by appealing to those types, they could buy more weapons.

[gorillafuck]

they still are fashionable, too. leftist indie rock girls don't reblog pictures of malcolm x on their tumblrs. they do with black panthers.

[ed miliband]

yeah i guess the sexiness is a big factor in it all

who cares about shit politics when you can be sexy?

[ed miliband]

they still are fashionable, too. leftist indie rock girls don't reblog pictures of malcolm x on their tumblrs. they do with black panthers.

reminds me that i know white indie girl with liberal politics who did a fashion project on the bpp

kinda love her tho so i won't diss that

[brigadista]

hold up -
the black panthers organised within and defended there own communities.

They organised practical programmes in very poor and marginalised communities and they were socialists. They formed a defence force against very aggressive policing of their communities in the absence of any other form of defence.

Historically they were very important and to reduce them to fashion is insulting and racist .

when you look at how they were suppressed - you can see just what a threat they were-

as for Angela Davis - for anyone wanting to know about her they should read her autobiography - its all much more complex than you are all saying here- and women race and class is a great book still very relevant-

what the panthers achieved under the conditions of the time deserves a lot more respect

there is a black panther sticky thread here:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/black-panther-guide-t59295/index.html?t=59295&highlight=black+panthers

worth spending some time there

[bcbm]

i think its a combination of things. as mentioned the image, definitely, but i think it goes a little deeper than appealing to white radicals. these were armed people of color standing up to the police and the state, something that up to that point had not happened very often. i think that spoke to a lot of people in their communities who had been victimized and harassed by the police. and they showed there was substance behind the words and jackets and guns, they organized community programs that dealt with real needs in their community and that is really why they got so much support and why the state came down on them so hard. i think its sad today that that part of the panthers has been lost to just the 'militant' image because its what made the panthers so important.

[bcbm]

dammit brigadista

[brigadista]

panthers were proper militant

[Os Cangaceiros]

The symbolism of the BPP was definitely important for them, as far as making them culturally famous. It was carefully cultivated, just like Subcommandante Marcos' "balaclava and pipe" image (by Marcos' own admission).

[brigadista]

yep they had a minister of propaganda - see my avatar [i'm not him!]

check out some of his artwork-

http://www.moca.org/emorydouglas/



hes still going strong!!!

[ed miliband]

Yp9StQhWGdc

[ed miliband]

sorry i think i fancy the young angela davis

[NewLeft]

her speeches are exhilarating..

[Ostrinski]

My aunt met her a few months ago.

[NewLeft]

she's still out and around, apparently she was at several occupy protests.

[The Douche]

Another thing, is that the media approach to radical politics was different in the 50s-early 70s, it wasn't until the middle/late 70s that the media learned they were helping fuel the fires of the radical right and radical left by giving them a platform.

[Sasha]

You cant deny a good dose of whatever the black foccused version of orientalism is was involved, if it was a white group other white people would have had far more interest in all the very real infighting and other (often cointelpro fueled) problems the bpp was struggling with, now in the eyes of whites they where a monolith homogeneous gang of badass "shaft" goes revolutinairy and that black chick is hawt too. Like mentioned before its pretty similair as for example the zapatistas are vieuwed now.
I think one can defenitly say that no matter how much a paradox, prefailing racism did wonders for their image.

[gorillafuck]

i think its a combination of things. as mentioned the image, definitely, but i think it goes a little deeper than appealing to white radicals.as far as their importance, yes. as far as why they garnered media attention, I don't think it goes much beyond the fact that there were some cool looking militant black people.

I think there's some clear centrism towards American left politics in American anarchists supporting a national liberation oriented marxist-leninist group in America, but opposing similar groups abroad.

[black magick hustla]

i dont think current bpp admirers have a lot of substance. the bpp is really fuckin cool and has like mass appeal in their image and the fact that they carried loaded shotguns in front of the pigs. i do think the importance of the bpp was exaggerated though, it never had more than a few thousand militants and it was more or less a big failure, and the worst aspects of gang culture definitely stayed there and were related to their demise. (bodily punishment, intra party executions, many bpp members thought the bpp was just another gang, newton had a crazy edge ,was addicted to crack, and threatened drug dealing gangs for free shit etc)

[black magick hustla]

but then again early 20th century communist parties in germany and italy were basically proletarian mafias, with enforcers, street fighters, etc. so disregard any of the above lol

[Prometeo liberado]

Back in the day they not only talked their political line, they also walked the walk so to speak. Organized a before school breakfast program, tutored kids after school, ran adult reading classes, self defense(from the cops) community policing and so on. They didn't wait for the outcome or answers from debating leftist, the BPP lived the nightmare so they knew very well what the immediate and long term answers were. Any group that can organize and get shit done like they did can't be erased from history. Pretty sure.

[Sir Comradical]

Unbelievably cool uniforms.

[black magick hustla]

Any group that can organize and get shit done like they did can't be erased from history. Pretty sure.

what shit did they get done? as i said, i think people exaggerate their importance cuz' they towed the militant line and in many ways, they exemplify a lot of values idolized by leftists. a lot of people talk about the breakfast program, which is cool and all and it probably touched the personal lives of a few individuals, but in theory something like that could've done by an NGO or a church, which is pretty much what happens today.

[Ostrinski]

what shit did they get done? as i said, i think people exaggerate their importance cuz' they towed the militant line and in many ways, they exemplify a lot of values idolized by leftists. a lot of people talk about the breakfast program, which is cool and all and it probably touched the personal lives of a few individuals, but in theory something like that could've done by an NGO or a church, which is pretty much what happens today.If they were so irrelevant, how do you explain the repression that was absent with regard to other leftist groups?

[Prometeo liberado]

what shit did they get done? as i said, i think people exaggerate their importance cuz' they towed the militant line and in many ways, they exemplify a lot of values idolized by leftists. a lot of people talk about the breakfast program, which is cool and all and it probably touched the personal lives of a few individuals, but in theory something like that could've done by an NGO or a church, which is pretty much what happens today.

Exactly my point. If you had read the beginning of my post I stated that they "walked the walk". You state that the breakfast program was "cool and all" (a very condescending thing to say by the way) but "in theory" could have been done by an NGO or church. Well what the hell do you think walking the walk means? Fuck waiting for the anyone else to step up and do it the BPP just did it! As for "what shit did they get done" I'm pretty sure that my post listed several. Did you even read it first? It's not that long or confusing. Shit, PM me and I'll go over it with you line by line. Or is this the new Kassad school of thread writing?

[black magick hustla]

If they were so irrelevant, how do you explain the repression that was absent with regard to other leftist groups?

:shrugs:, because they were involved in violent, illegal shit and had the capacity to cause more violent, illegal shit? i don't think they were completely irrelevant, but they weren't as important as leftists think. for fucks sake, the fbi monitored crustpunks in portlandia...

[black magick hustla]

Exactly my point. If you had read the beginning of my post I stated that they "walked the walk". You state that the breakfast program was "cool and all" (a very condescending thing to say by the way)

condescending to who





but "in theory" could have been done by an NGO or church. Well what the hell do you think walking the walk means? Fuck waiting for the anyone else to step up and do it the BPP just did it!

yes, which is today done by the state, and countless of ngos. my point is that that type of community service is more akin to charity/social work.




As for "what shit did they get done" I'm pretty sure that my post listed several. Did you even read it first? It's not that long or confusing. Shit, PM me and I'll go over it with you line by line. Or is this the new Kassad school of thread writing?

i read the thread, the whole thread was basically about how they were important because of breakfast programs and sticking guns to pigs. again, how is this "gets shit done"? i could probably point out liberal groups that had longer, more lasting and more important effects in civil rights reforms than the bpp.

[brigadista]

condescending to who





yes, which is today done by the state, and countless of ngos. my point is that that type of community service is more akin to charity/social work.




i read the thread, the whole thread was basically about how they were important because of breakfast programs and sticking guns to pigs. again, how is this "gets shit done"? i could probably point out liberal groups that had longer, more lasting and more important effects in civil rights reforms than the bpp.

they were called the black panther party for SELF DEFENCE- you are looking at them from a 2012 point of view -

you have to see their achievements in the context of the time -

and look at bobby seale's treatment in the chicago conspiracy trial - gagged - bound to a chair in the courtroom- silenced....treated like a runaway slave...

[gorillafuck]

Exactly my point. If you had read the beginning of my post I stated that they "walked the walk". You state that the breakfast program was "cool and all" (a very condescending thing to say by the way) but "in theory" could have been done by an NGO or church. Well what the hell do you think walking the walk means? Fuck waiting for the anyone else to step up and do it the BPP just did it! As for "what shit did they get done" I'm pretty sure that my post listed several. Did you even read it first? It's not that long or confusing. Shit, PM me and I'll go over it with you line by line. Or is this the new Kassad school of thread writing?as far as doing things like kitchens, it's a great thing to do but isn't indicative of good politics. hezbollah do the same things.

[Prometeo liberado]

as far as doing things like kitchens, it's a great thing to do but isn't indicative of good politics. hezbollah do the same things.
The OP's question was,
"how did the black panthers capture the public attention/imagination so completely?"
I gave some instances and reasons why this may have been so. You want to talk progressive platform? Thats a whole different thread. The fact that the call for social services, which seem so elementary today, were sorely needed yet only answered by the BPP is a testament to their line of action over theory.

[Ocean Seal]

i dont think current bpp admirers have a lot of substance. the bpp is really fuckin cool and has like mass appeal in their image and the fact that they carried loaded shotguns in front of the pigs.
I agree that their image was important.



i do think the importance of the bpp was exaggerated though,
it never had more than a few thousand militants
This is true, however, a few thousand militants would be alot for a guerrilla in a Latin American country, its considerably good right in the belly of the beast in America though.



and it was more or less a big failure,
I would disagree, the fact that the Panthers were getting larger before the massive repression against them that occurred (which was probably greater than any other repression in the United States New Left era) was indicative of their successes. The fact that members like Fred Hampton were reaching out to the white community and the party was affiliating with groups like the Peace and Freedom party really had the police running scared. Moreover, their ability to control the drug dealing gangs (even for a while) and keep the drugs out of the community was a huge defeat for the pigs and a huge organizational victory against the establishment. No drugs wars in the community means no need for the pigs, the ability to break down entire communities by throwing people in jail is more difficult, less infighting, and a people more open to a message of unity.


and the worst aspects of gang culture definitely stayed there and were related to their demise. (bodily punishment, intra party executions, many bpp members thought the bpp was just another gang, newton had a crazy edge ,was addicted to crack, and threatened drug dealing gangs for free shit etc)
This I haven't heard of.


as far as doing things like kitchens, it's a great thing to do but isn't indicative of good politics. hezbollah do the same things.
I would say good on Hezbollah then, it might not be indicative of good politics because anyone can do it, but it is indicative of good strategy.

[The Douche]

The BPP, while a somewhat inspiring example of revolutionaries in the modern era, don't really hold a candle to the accomplishments of the first wave of US communists/anarchists in the SPA and IWW.

Obviously there was a serious problem in their organizational methods if police repression was able to destroy their movement.

[gorillafuck]

This I haven't heard of.I know they use to brutally beat members for disciplinary lapses, but I also never heard of intraparty executions.

I also want to see some proof that a lot of bpp members thought it was just another gang. they had extensive political education classes and I have a bit of trouble believing that someone who is forced to participate in many long discussions on Mao Tse Tung thinks they're in just another gang.

[gorillafuck]

The OP's question was,
"how did the black panthers capture the public attention/imagination so completely?"
I gave some instances and reasons why this may have been so. You want to talk progressive platform? Thats a whole different thread. The fact that the call for social services, which seem so elementary today, were sorely needed yet only answered by the BPP is a testament to their line of action over theory.I know you were just answering the OP, doesn't mean I can't give insight. and also, food kitchens are not at all likely to be the reason they got media attention.

[ed miliband]

see i'm not just talking about media attention - you really got at the crux of what i was trying to say when you mentioned indie girls posting bpp pictures on tumblr

and yeah - that surely has nothing to do with soup kitchens or whatever

[arilando]

their aggressive rhetoric and their open carrying of weapons captured a lot of media attention. not to mention that they were fashionable. a bunch of black men (and women) with leather jackets, afros, and weapons were pretty appealing to all the fashionable upper-middle class white radicals of the time. they used to target white college students when they were selling the little red book.

one difference between them and malcolm x is that malcolm didn't care about garnering the support of white fashionable radicals, whereas they thought that by appealing to those types, they could buy more weapons.
Another difference was that Malcolm X was a racist, while the black panthers werent.

[Prometeo liberado]

I know you were just answering the OP, doesn't mean I can't give insight. and also, food kitchens are not at all likely to be the reason they got media attention.

My response was to give reason's why their memory resonates so strong today. Not what kind of media attention they may or may not have gotten.

[gorillafuck]

Another difference was that Malcolm X was a racist, while the black panthers werent.when malcolm x started out he was a black separatist, and when he died he opposed separatism. he was not a racist (or reverse racist or whatever) when he died.

but it's true that malcolm, at the time of his death, was pretty much a general leftist anti-racist who supported any center-left government as opposed to huey newton and the BPP who were explicitly marxist-leninist and supportive of Mao Tse-Tung, Kim Il Sung, etc.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Supposedly, according to the documentary "Crips and Bloods: Made in America", over 15,000 people have died in the war between the Bloods & Crips. That's a lot more than the number that died during the Troubles in northern Ireland, as a point of comparison. The rivalry was intense during the 90's...plenty of people who weren't afraid to kill and weren't afraid to die. In my opinion, part of what made the BPP fearful to people in power was that the people in the BPP came from the same social background as many people in street gangs (lower working class/poor), such people didn't have as much to lose as, say, many people in SDS or the Weathermen. Imagine if all the hate and nihilism and pointless killing that plagues poor neighborhoods was directed at the authorities instead, it's enough to give people in power nightmares.

Of course, it probably didn't register with them consciously like that, as the major era of street gangs came after the BPP declined, but I think that registered on some level or another...whenever people with legitimate reasons to be resentful were radicalized, harsh attempts to squash them before they could grow usually followed, whether it was the rioters during the late 60's, or the BPP, or Detroit labor activists during the same period etc.


I know they use to brutally beat members for disciplinary lapses, but I also never heard of intraparty executions.





In October 1977 three Black Panthers attempted to assassinate Crystal Gray, one of the prostitutes present the day of Kathleen Smith’s murder and a key prosecution witness in Newton's upcoming trial. Unbeknownst to the assailants, they attacked the wrong house and the occupant returned fire. During the shootout one of the Panthers, Louis Johnson, was killed and the other two assailants escaped.[25] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huey_P._Newton#cite_note-24) One of the two surviving assassins, Flores Forbes, fled to Las Vegas, Nevada with the help of Panther paramedic Nelson Malloy. Fearing that Malloy would discover the truth behind the botched assassination attempt, Newton allegedly ordered a “house cleaning”, and Malloy was shot and buried alive in the desert. Although permanently paralyzed from the waist down, Malloy recovered from the assault and told police that fellow Panthers Rollin Reid and Allen Lewis were behind his attempted murder.[26] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huey_P._Newton#cite_note-25) Newton denied any involvement or knowledge and said the events “might have been the result of overzealous party members”.[22] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huey_P._Newton#cite_note-The_Odyssey_of_Huey_Newton-21)

From the Huey Newton wiki article

[black magick hustla]

anyway its not that i am trying to poop on the the soup, its just that it gets annoying sometimes when like leftists glorify the bpp and its tactics while not having any sort of criticism about them. a lot of the times its either like, anarchykids who have a fetish for violence, guns, criminals, and yes, black people, and on the other side you have like ml/maoist nerds who are trying to find something cool they can point at and say THEY ARE LIKE US, as opposed to a bunch of banal stalinist socialist realist boring shit. i think the corpse of the bpp is abused for the worst ends in the leftist millieu.

[Os Cangaceiros]

For anarchists it doesn't hurt that a few people associated with the BPP/BLA actually identified with anarchism, including Eldridge Cleaver, an admirer of Bakunin.

[Os Cangaceiros]

I will say though that attempts to pigeonhole the BPP into any concise specific ideology such as Maoism or whatever seems difficult, their politics were representative of the foggy new left soup that was en vogue at the time, IMO

[black magick hustla]

For anarchists it doesn't hurt that a few people associated with the BPP/BLA actually identified with anarchism, including Eldridge Cleaver, an admirer of Bakunin.

wasnt eldridge cleaver a complete nutter, like one of the dudes behind bla, which was a tenfold bigger fiasco than the bpp?

[Jimmie Higgins]

even before i was vaguely political i would have been able to name to half-a-dozen(+) panthers - and i'm a (culturally) middle class white kid from london (albeit one who likes hip hop)

seems like the panthers occupy a strange cultural space perhaps even more so than something like may '68 (i knew of hampton etc long before cohn-bendit etc)

why is this?

They were sort of looked at as the apex of the Black Power movement in the US and to a lesser extent of the New Left.

They are also famous just because they were probably the worst nightmare of the US government come to life. They were on the FBI's most wanted list; cops did military-style raids (guns blazing) on their homes and drive-bys on their offices; the federal government set them up and tried to have get other groups to physically attack them. And now even to this day they are sort of the anti-myth to a lot of the post-70s US cultural myths. It messes with the liberal views that radical politics are "alien" to US culture, but you can't get American than black Americans. It also screws with their "peacefulness always wins; if oppressed people ask nicely..." bullshit history of the civil rights movement. Todd Gitlin says the BPP are the "bad 60s" whereas "peaceful civil disobedience" were the "good 60s". The right just creates straw-men around them in order to deal with them, because otherwise their story messes with a whole bunch of their usual assumptions... Regan supporting gun control being just the shallowest.

In Hip Hop they are romanticized because most people making hip hop in the 80s and 90s grew up in the generation past them, and a generation where things only kept getting worse for most black people. So on the one hand you have your mother or uncle's glory stories of seeing Malcolm X speak or going to a Panther rally and their stories about how things got better to modern life where opportunities are increasingly closed on all workers, blacks in particular.

I think it's where some of the radical romanticism in punk comes from too.

[gorillafuck]

For anarchists it doesn't hurt that a few people associated with the BPP/BLA actually identified with anarchism, including Eldridge Cleaver, an admirer of Bakunin.Eldridge Cleaver was openly supportive of North Korea and visited so that seems odd.

[Os Cangaceiros]

He also became a Republican later in life. The plot thickens. o_0

[gorillafuck]

and a mormon.

[ed miliband]

how did his crack addiction go down with the republicans/mormons?

[Vanguard1917]

how did his crack addiction go down with the republicans/mormons?

They were likely to have been slightly more concerned about his past as a self-confessed 'insurrectionary' rapist of white (and black) women.

[gorillafuck]

yeah his past as a political radical as well as his past as a rapist was probably a lot more worrying to them than his crack addiction.

[Kassad]

Shit, PM me and I'll go over it with you line by line. Or is this the new Kassad school of thread writing?

I'm a little hungover right now, so I'm just going to come out and ask what you meant by this.