(Offshoot of this discussion on MLK vs Malcom X on violence)
What the Black Panther Party had done breakfast programs, free health clinics, and other mutual aid, but didn’t do the community safety patrols?
We know that the patrols were effective, morally good, and a big part of the BPP’s public perception. We also know that the United States is still racist as fuck, and that black liberation has not been achieved yet.
I see the Black Panthers as one of the most promising leftist experiments in the US. In the spirit of scientific socialism, how do you think the movement would have gone, had the party been less militant?
Would it have just been easier to dismantle? Would it have been seen as less of a threat, so not worth extreme actions? Would the general public have been more or less supportive? Would the black community have been more or less supportive? How would its legacy be different?
My analysis
Partly informed by this interview with the BPP minister of defense
Benefits:
- Community safety: obviously. The patrols were started to address a critical need in the community.
- Recruitment: the militant aspect of the party had massive appeal to folks that had been oppressed for generations. It gave agency and a way to direct the rage into something useful
- Publicity: great way to get into the news, which helps get the message out
Drawbacks:
- Attracted more attention from the feds
- Spooked white people
- Increased risk for party members
Since we have the benefit of hindsight, we know that the feds were a major part of the dissolution of the movement. I assume that if the feds had NOT intervened, the movement would have continued to grow in power and made massive improvements to the lives of black people and Americans in general.
I trust that the BPP members made reasonable decisions to counter CoIntelPro, but I also trust that the focused power of the federal government is able to succeed in whatever fucked up stuff it wants to do. That’s to say: the BPP may have simply been in an unwinnable fight.
Avoiding the eye of sauron for as long as possible is a prudent strategy, and I think a less militant BPP could have drawn less focus from the feds. Mostly, I think they received disproportionate focus because white people saw organized, armed black folks and it tickled the “enemy combatant” part of their brains.
If the party had instead focused on nonviolent mutual aid, I think it could have lessened the suppression efforts, possibly to a point where the fight was winnable. At very least, it could have given more time to grow the organization, so that once more militant actions were needed they would be more powerful.
On the other hand, I think there wouldn’t have been as much excitement about the party. I do not know if having more time to grow without suppression would have been cancelled out by slower growth.
If we were able to run it back, I think a less militant BPP may have ended up making more progress towards black liberation.
Hard agree. Even within the BPP, the militant elements are transmitted better than the nonviolent ones.
It’s especially tricky when we know that the state is manipulating the narrative.
… But now that I think of it, maybe we can use that to our advantage?
I think it’s safe to assume that the mainstream narrative largely IS the state’s narrative. We have other sources to try to pin down “reality,” and by comparing the two we can approximate how the state shaped the narrative.
Through that lens, we can assume the state wanted militant elements highlighted. They may have wanted nonviolent elements diminished too, but it’s hard to say.
So: Why does the popular narrative of the Black Panther Party reduce them to cop killers?
I can think of two possible explanations for wanting to do that:
(Disclaimer: I absolutely have confirmation bias for it to be 2)
My first reaction was that 1 is a simpler explanation and fully justifies the suppression… but I’m not so sure anymore.
Cointelpro proves that the state saw the black liberation movement as a legitimate threat.
In the interview with a current Panther in the OP, he said that the feds stamped out not just the Panthers, but other related organizations as well. That’s likely why the Young Lords were subject to violence from the FBI - they joined with the Black Panthers and Young Patriots in the rainbow coalition. Someone else mentioned that the BLA was also infiltrated.
They came down hard and wiped out everything.
Why? What caused them to react SO, SO extremely?
Racism? Possibly. Organized black people with guns may have provoked an overly extreme response. But you could describe gangs the same way, and feds have not tried to wipe them from the face of the earth.
I don’t think that’s it though - it must have been a reaction from capital. The throughline for all of these orgs is not how militant they were, it was their position against capital. Hell, MLK was killed after he started to point the finger at capitalism.
And with that lens, we notice that the popular narrative omits that the Panthers were communists. The poplar narrative omits that MLK ever pointed the finger at capitalism. “The black liberation movement was about racism, not class.”
And so we ask again, with capital as the author instead of the state: Why does the popular narrative of the Black Panther Party reduce them to cop killers?
Rhetorically: when has capital ever felt the need to justify killing someone?
I agree with a lot of the general vibe. Remember what a state is. Lenin says, that a state is the tool of organized class warfare. A capitalist state is the weapon, the capitalist class weilds to crush any hope of liberation of the subjugated masses. Any kind of organization or movement that has any hope of effecting meaningful change will always be violently attacked. For this, it doesn’t matter at all whether they choose to defend themselves like the Panthers or choose to try to move the hearts of their opressors through their own suffering and blood by non-violence. If they are in any way a threat, they will be attached mercilessly. Laws will be changed, liberties revoked or ignored. And most relevant for this topic: ideology will be created to attempt to manufacture consent. For the Panthers they chose to paint them as “cop killers” not because they were militant, but because they were a threat. Whenever an organization committed to non-violence becomes a threat, other ideology is used. Any number of other reasons can always be given. And that’s exactly what happens with all these other organizations. Ideology is cheap. Our stance on when it is and when it isn’t strategically smart to use more or less militant means should never depend entirely on an unlikely bet on liberals (in)ability to find other reasons to crack down on us. They always will. Even if they have to make them up, lie, fabricate, whatever. And ultimately, they totally do act without any justification too.
In a similar vein:
We know that capital will not tell us how to overthrow it, but I’m only now starting to see how it limits our imagination.
The oppressed cannot fight an oppressor they do not understand, so capitalism must never be the oppressor.
You cannot effectively fight capitalism if you never conceive of the right weapons, so effective weapons must not be talked about.
Understanding that, our job as revolutionaries gets way easier, because we CAN coax capital to tell us how to overthrow it - we just do the stuff that it suppresses and don’t do stuff that it promotes.
The capitalist narrative around the black panthers is that they were overtly militant, so we should take that as a strong signal that our movement should NOT be overtly militant. The nonviolent mutual aid was suppressed, which is a strong signal we SHOULD do nonviolent mutual aid.
I don’t quite follow the logic here. The militant stuff was materially suppressed too, so by your logic we should do it. Unless you only mean ideological suppression. But then the state promoted and funded some of the nonviolent aid so by your logic we shouldn’t do it?
Anyway it seems like in this discussion, we speak a lot in terms of a triple “we”-“the state”-“the people”. Remember that we are the people and that we learn through active involvement in movements.
Right, I mostly mean ideological suppression.
What nonviolent mutual aid that was promoted by the state are you thinking of? I can’t think of anything that’s part of the capitalist narrative, but I could be missing something.
I am actively involved, and I’m afraid. We should all be afraid. I do not want what happened to the black liberation movement to happen to us, and I’m trying to think of ways to avoid that.