I can’t say I was surprised when Justin Phillips published his pro-Black Panther piece in the San Francisco Chronicle. Phillips’s job is to distribute race propaganda in order to assuage the White guilt of the Chronicle’s owning family, the billionaire Hearsts, and their disgruntled young woke white reporters.
Phillips’s Panther panegyric treats the discredited group like some kind of kindly senior citizens at a nostalgic last waltz to their glory days. My recollections of those days are a little different. The Black Panthers were an eruption of violence, anti-White racism, hatred of the police, and a self-imposed separation from other races that was just as bad as segregation. They aimed to overturn the government of the U.S. “by any means necessary,” and their in-your-face posturing of “open carry” of guns anticipated the rise of the pro-gun MAGA cult by decades. The Black Panther party was short-lived, however, and eventually was repudiated, not only by White Americans but a majority of Black Americans. Their violence, directed not only towards cops but towards each other and the country in general, proved too much for most people to accept.
Lately there’s been an attempt to whitewash the Black Panthers, as evidenced not only by Justin Phillips’ agit-prop but by people like Cat Brooks. On her Facebook page (in January), she publicized an event called “The Black Panther Party Survival Programs: The Struggle Continues.”
I believe the Panthers’ motives were pure. The 60s and 70s were a time of revolt—by Blacks, by Gays, by women, by anti-war idealists. Had I been young and Black in the 1970s, I might have flirted with becoming a Panther—although I like to think I would have argued against violence. It’s easy to understand, today, why a generation of younger Americans who do not remember the real Black Panthers has succumbed to a form of Hollywood fantasy that transforms the party into charming comic book heroes with saintlike and even heroic qualities. So, yes, the original Panthers earned their place in history. But they were dangerously misguided in their approach, which comprised not only violence but a Communist top-down authoritarianism that tolerated no dissension. The last thing we need, in this tinderbox of a country, is for some major demographic group calling for a violent revolution, followed by the imposition of a dictatorship.
There’s actually a Black Panther Party twitter page. Their pinned tweet says, “Help us rebuild the Black Panther Party,” which I guess means that they at least recognize the party’s moribund state. They retweeted this: “[W]e must combat [political enemies] and strive for socialism, communism and freedom through the practice of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism!” The page is a mishmash of conspiracy theories, grievance, nostalgia, and Communist ideological infighting. Americans who wish to live in a “Marxist-Leninist-Maoist” dictatorship will welcome the Black Panther recrudescence, but the rest of us ought to take heed.
So the Black Panthers are trying to reassemble, with the help of apologists like Justin Phillips. For those of us who keep a close eye on Pamela Price, Carroll Fife and Cat Brooks, their references to, and reverence for, the Black Panthers are eyebrow-raising. Once upon a time, Black Panther sympathizers, especially elected ones, would have hidden their love of the Panthers; they would have been embarrassed to admit it. Today, in Oakland and Alameda County, they’re brazen enough to advertise it.
Meanwhile, slowly, craftily, one ordinance or law at a time, the Oakland City Council tightens its grip on our freedom, while Price lets crooks out of jail and goes after cops, Brooks continues her plunge into paranoia, and Justin Phillips keeps his job by shameless race mongering.
Steve Heimoff