Were the old Black Panthers and similar movements /ourguys/...

This is quickly disproven. Blacks are hyperconsumers.

Makes no sense. That's why anti-racism is now a commodity good, as it amplifies all other commercialism. I would say that if anything, anti-racism has been the one of the biggest boons for capitalism. Obey your thirst, Sprite.

This guy is like babby's first.

Wow! Geat analysis!

Truly we have transcended irony.

Just ignore Nazis.

In what sense is BLM a corporate puppet?

They couldn't have been more /ourguys/ if they tried. Their breakfast program is a great model for all praxis.

they're a bunch of soros fundies.

Fred Hampton was the guy

The FBI deserves the cruelest punishment for murdering this man.

The Black Panther rank and file were pretty lefty but unfortunately the leadership got pozzed by the FBI.

Do they even do anything to improve the material conditions of black people or do they just serve to spout pure idealism?

It sucks that niggas can't understand this anymore. Identity politics has plagued black communities and all that's left is a desire to live a lavish life like everyone's favorite rapper. This destruction of the the Black Panthers, was the final step in indoctrinating working class black folks into the ruling class ideology.

If they actually managed to dismantle the police force they would, but they haven't managed to do fuck all even there

REEEEE

Absolutely /ourguys/
COINTELPRO fucked them though. Splitting them from other leftist groups until they were easily washed out with idpol and left totally ineffectual.

*FBI

COINTELPRO was the FBI's program.

It's kind of insane that people are still able to delude themselves into thinking bourgeois states are genuine democracies.

The problem with BLM is that there's basically no requirements for being a part beyond a general opposition to police brutality. So there are people involved with BLM who are ideologically Black Panthers 2.0, but there are also literal corporate puppets who keep the former group from doing anything beyond run-of-the-mill liberal protests.

Racial laws have nothing to do with capitalism

The first two sentences of this quote is distinctly fascist.

Is black fascism a thing? That would be interesting.

...

What's fascist about it? Recognizing power structures and propagating power structures are two different things

He's explicitly embracing that life is defined by racial/tribal conflict and, implicitly, I feel, he understands that and he doesn't blame the white racist for sharing the view.

That's almost the opposite of what he says. He states that whatever inane racial ideas you have are no concern of his if there isn't a system of oppression (the capitalist state) backing it up.

But he doesn't say that. He points out that people's prejudices towards eachother are meaningless, only power and relations of power between people matter.

Nonsense, anonymous. We also have the New Black Panthers. They are biased, as we say, and also /areguys/ as per our lingo.

Any of you know of any texts that further detail the whole "the power of racism comes from capitalism" idea? Not really seeing how that works - surely a communist society could still form lynch mobs and whatnot?

marxists.org/history/usa/workers/black-panthers/

I think the idea is that capitalism has to have some sort of narrative to explain its internal contradiction and crisis that they cause, but that narrative can not be that there is fault with capitalism; it is always workers are greedy, state is corrupt, jews etc.

naaaaah. Wut? For real. I cry

I think it was Freddie DeBoer, or maybe the Charel house guy, who pointed out that the right's M.O. has remained mostly the same through the ages: find capitalism's contradictions and blame them on your favorite scapegoat. Jews, gommies, immigrants, whatever. Two birds with one stone.

It's for shit like this that I'm worried that the second wave of socialist insurrection will have to deal harshly with mass media.

Capitalism demands racism, whether for slavery or the prison-industrial complex or scapegoating or anything else, and the state obliges. Lynch mobs don't happen just because of prejudice, they happen because people blame their problems caused by Capitalism onto an other. Which is not to mention that the worst causes of racism have been perpetuated and protected by the state, not individuals.

i cri evrytiem

Like a lot of the "New Left" of the 1960s, they were within the Marxist tradition but didn't believe the working class in first world nations would be the most likely source of revolution. The Black Panthers instead looked to the lumpenproletariat, which would include a lot of black America. There's a good summary on p. 14 of "Huey P. Newton: The Radical Theorist" at books.google.com/books?id=_Y449Mf4XSgC&lpg=PA1&pg=PT43

And itsabouttimebpp.com/Huey_P_Newton/pdf/Huey.pdf has a 1970 speech Newton gave where first he outlined Marxism for his audience, and then talked about how the Black Panther party fit into the Marxist tradition:

is pretty correct. with respect to black americans and american chattel slavery in specific, attached is a pdf of marx on slavery

the black panther party feels like pretty essential shit to get educated on if you're an american leftist - i always get weirded out by how little people on leftypol seem to have looked into them, as there is so much available, and a lot of their work is really, really good for understanding how to best factor in considerations of race (or i guess black american identity post-slavery in specific)

huey newton's book "revolutionary suicide" and assata shakur's autobiography (it should be available at assatashakur.org/) are really good starting points, along with "we will shoot back: armed resistance in the mississippi freedom movement. "we want freedom" by mumia abu-jamal is very good, as well

pic related is their 1968 book list and this website is run by BPP alumni itsabouttimebpp.com/BPP_Books/bpp_books_index.html
link posted by is good too

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I'm more amazed at the fact this dude was only 21 and already had some really developed views on that stuff, while nowadays 40 year olds think a TV show with the right degree of diversity on the cast will solve something.

This shows the importance of having an actual, organized group like the BPP instead of just a vague, loose, "cultural" leftism. The Panthers and associated groups organized the education of poor teens, illiterate people, and even inmates. Anyone interested in that period should read about George Jackson.

You might like this:

search.freedomarchives.org/search.php?view_collection=135

It's a journal from that period that covers black radical culture and politics (it describes itself as a jazz, economics, poetry, anti-imperialism journal). The mix of left-wing politics, decent writing and the slangs of that time is really amusing

This. BLM isn't a Political Party, they don't have a party line, they're made up of hundreds of different smaller orgs and groups across the country, and their opinions can change drastically from city to city, chapter to chapter. For instance, BLM in Chicago are extremely militant, they're very openly anti-capitalist and anti-zionist, they also evoke the BPP often. On the other hand some chapters are the exact opposite, they're deeply intrenched in their local church groups and are extremely moderate, even to the point of criticizing other BLM chapters for bing too radical. BLM is a big tent movement, some groups are Leftist, many are Liberal.

This might explain why a Manifesto of theirs was so radical but almost every single one of them I meet is just a shitty liberal who's having an identity crisis because he's the only black kid in theater class

Exactly. There are undoubtably lots of actual militants with good politics inside the movement, but because of it's extremely decentralized nature it's just naturally going to be filled to the brim with idpol liberals. This the same problem any modern Leftist movement is faced with, and a major reason as to why I think the Left needs to renegotiate certain ideas of Vanguardism and Democratic Centralism. I also think it was a bad idea for the movement to completely center all of it's politics around "anti-racism", it's too broad and nebulous a category and doesn't leave a lot of room to concretely discuss actual politics, instead it leads to endless arguments about defining racism, determining whether cops are or are not racist, and having completely metaphysical arguments about whether or not a white person can ever truly not be racist, and whether racism, as a social and psychological phenomenon, can ever be expunged from society. In other words, issues that fall completely outside of the realms of mass political action. What they should have done is present themselves as a prison abolition and police abolition movement from the beginning. That way a.) Liberals would never get involved, b.) prison and police abolition is a concrete material demand that directly makes a blow against both white supremacy as well as Capitalism, c.) it has the potential to become a multi-racial working class movement, as all working class people are oppressed by our current industrial-prison-complex, whereas constantly telling white people they're racist in the hopes that this will get police to act less racist is a bit of a dead end.

BLM Toronto is p cool because its libtardation upsets EVERYBODY

I completely agree. When a radical movement is open and structureless to the point where everyone can join and claim the banner it becomes nearly impossible to stop whatever initial radicalism there was to be dilluted and erased.

Left-wing and progressive movements in general shy away from restrictions, centralization and "party lines" because they think it's elitist and outdated, but experience has shown time and time again that without the proper mechanisms to ensure the training and education of new recruits, ideological cohesion of all segments and membership participation it's only a matter of time until those who adhere to unorthodox ideas are outnumbered by people with mainstream political sensibilities.

And contrary to popular belief, this openness does not facilitate dialogue and the exchange of ideas, but make it impossible because there's no centrally mandated solution to disputes and no commonly shared set of assumptions to build from. Everyone speaks at their own frequency and can only find common ground on the most basic and useless of praxis.

Being a member of BLM is amazing, and so is all the money, the women, and power that comes with it. Plus at the end of the day we're stopping rascism, and fascism. I recommend signing up and making a donation as soon as possible.

This is some exceptionally weak b8

Absolutely. This is pure idealism and amounts to little more than screwing around in the superstructure. The danger of the Panthers was their materialist method: the direct action taken to uplift the black population in their actual conditions of life to break the hold of the system over them, instead of attempting to change people's thoughts and somehow expecting this to alter reality.

If they were around today leftypol would say

'i would love to support them but there's just too much idpol'

They wouldn't even say that first part, they'd just call them spooked racists and deny any value to the movement.

Go back to reddit.

While there were socialist tendencies within the panthers, overall they were not willing to practice class-solidarity.

While it's certainly more than worth recognizing the uniquely fucked history of African Americans – slavery, Jim Crow, cultural discrimination – ultimately we must organize around the goal of ABOLISHING PRIVATE PROPERTY.

Confirmed for knowing absolutely nothing about the BPP's history. The Panthers constantly worked with the white working class, as well as white student protestors, the FBI literally killed Fred Hampton specifically because he was building a Rainbow Coalition of all races in Chicago, the Panthers organized black workers in the black community, but they weren't Black Separatists, it was their willingness the work with whites that made more reactionary Black Nationalists distrust them in the first place.

Now you're really betraying your ignorance, the BPP was a Communist organization in the most literal sense, and just because they addressed racism doesn't mean they abandoned class or the principles of Communism, and that's what divides them from the idpol of today.

[citation needed]

I dont know but black people used to have cool afro hair styles and good clothes.

Now they all have their pants falling down.

So I actually live in Oakland and have talked to Panthers and most of them were extremely dismissive when I brought up class and private property.

Their attitude seemed to be that focusing on class/economics divides the black community and scared people away from the organization. They also didn't appreciate the anti-religion aspect of Marxism, considering so many poor Blacks are very attached to their Church and especially Sunday service.

The BPP doesn't exist anymore. You were talking to LARPers.

If you want to learn more about the BPP, then Bloom and Martin's Black Against Empire and Muhammad Ahmad's We Will Return in the Whirlwind are pretty good over all views of the movement as a whole. Aside from that most of the Panthers wrote political autobiographies, Assata's Assata, Bobby Seale's Seize the Time, H. Rap Brown's Die, Nigga, Die!, and of course Huey's Revolutionary Suicide.

Are you literally talking about the NBPP? They're a splinter group from the Nation of Islam, they aren't Marxists, the original BPP disbanded in 1982.

~ socialistalternative.org/life-legacy-malcolm-x/black-panther-party/

However, there's clearly widespread misconceptions, because Wikipedia claims the Black Panthers were a Black Separatist organization.

~ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_separatism

Now isn't it possible that back in the day there were members of the BPP who expressed Black Nationalist/Separatist beliefs?

Yeah. There were and then the organization dropped that line of thinking while adopting a party line that was centered around class solidarity.

Also why are you making authoritative statements about a subject that you don't even have a wikipedia level of understanding on?

I guess because I actually had first hand experience with people who claim to be Black Panthers.

The Black Panthers aren't around anymore. So you were either talking with former Black Panthers which doesn't mean their current views represent the ideology of the organization itself. Eldridge Cleaver became a born-again, Reaganite so being a former Black Panther doesn't mean all that much in and of itself. Or you were talking with a New Black Panther who have no connection to the original party and aren't Marxists. Or you were talking to a complete bullshitter.

Yes, there was a major split between Huey and Eldridge Cleaver in 1971. Cleaver, a former member of the Nation of Islam (NOI) himself was geared more towards Separatism, as well as Foco tactics, and wanted to escalate an armed struggle. He was kicked out of the party while he was still in exile in Algeria, those who were still loyal to him left the party and formed a group called the Black Liberation Army, but even the BLA was less Separatist and more Marxist then Cleaver as an individual, they worked very closely the Weather Underground, and even though they were far more entrenched in idpol then the BPP they still never reached NOI levels of nonsense.

You most certainly have not. The "New Black Panthers" are in no way related to the Panthers of the 60's. They aren't Marxists, they aren't Socialists, and the organization itself came out of the NOI. Pretty recently they beat the shit out of an old 70-year old BLA vet who spoke out against them at an event. So unless youown a time machine, I assure you, you weren't talking to anyone from the BPP.

Listen to literally the first post in the thread

They can have both you spooked idiot

Do you seriously believe an explicitly black movement like the Panthers would be well-received here?

Yes
The BPPs official line would be very well received and while I'm sure some would find issue with the explicitly black message and image they would probably be treated like Richard Wolff
Plenty of support and criticism of smaller things

I feel like they could do a tremendous service both to their party's legacy and Leftism generally by either refounding the Black Panther Party or some sort of educational organization to clear up the widespread misconceptions about what the party stood for.

I'm not sure bringing back the whole "Yeah, we were Maoists" angle would be that popular in this day and age.