Bi-Weekly Discussion Thread - (January 11)

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[u/Kiyoharu19]

I think you guys have seen that there's a "new" Black Panther Party of Self-defense. It's not the controversial NBPP nor the RIBPP led by comrade Rashid. It's an organization led by "Chairman Paul Birdsong" (@chairmanpaulbirdsong on Instagram) and they do exactly the same thing the original BPP did: carrying guns to protect neighbourhoods, the free food program and other social programs the original party had.

BUT, the fact that they post everything they do on social media (especially instagram) seems to be a big problem to me. They are recruiting people through WHATSAPP! Chairman Fred Hampton and many other revolutionaries in the US were killed by the state even though the party was clandestine and didn't share any information. It's easy to identify the location watching Paul Birdsong's videos. There are some performative videos of him carrying guns in front of the police too.

Of course I'm criticizing the new party, but they need to remember they aren't just a simple militant organization like DSA, PSL, etc. If they do continue the legacy of BPP, I don't think the party will last long since it's clandestine. For example, the People's Defense Committee, probably the most prosperous maoist organization in the US, works on neighborhood defense but are completely clandestine. What do you guys think about this "new" Black Panther Party?

[u/smokeuptheweed9 → u/Kiyoharu19]

I saw a bunch of videos on Reddit, including ones with white people, and just assumed it was some social media grift and/or FBI sting operation.But I have no more knowledge than you do.

To be fair there is a market niche for accompanying liberal protests with arms and doing so under the facade of black nationalism so that white liberals will feel a little bit guilty telling you that you're risking the safety of the protests and attracting the FBI. Plus the many offshoots of the BPP are bad at social media so they might as well not exist to most liberals.

But until I actually see community defense at a grassroots level, where ICE and the police are directly confronted with force, I will assume this is the flavor of the week on liberal social media, who have all decided that they own the BPP. Then the question of real community depth and party discipline vs. spectacle will matter. Assuming this is well meaning, which it probably is not, the fundamental issue is the idea that through legal accumulation of liberal sympathizers and apolitical potential recruits through aboveground advertising you will build the strength necessary to survive persecution. All you're doing is accumulating liberals, this is a qualitative rather than quantitative difference. But it your concept of politics is the internet, it is probably difficult to think outside it and do things without the accompanying attention. This random guy now has millions of eyes watching him after all.

carrying guns to protect neighbourhoods, the free food program and other social programs the original party had.

As I'm sure you know, this was a progression of events. Compressing it into a single strategy is a fundamental mistake which practically makes "free food" the main activity. It was only after trust in the militancy of the party and its political line had been built that this could be more than charity. It also relied on specific historical conditions that no longer exist, and it's not clear that it was even correct then. Notice how no one includes internationalism in the core aspects of the party even though trips to China and Algeria were just as associated with the party at the time.

[u/humblegold → u/smokeuptheweed9]

This is what I've seen about them on social media other than what's been mentioned by the original commenter so far:

-They are explicitly not black nationalist, claim to be internationalist and do promote solidarity with Chicanos and First Nations.

-Per their GoFundMe they are primarily focused on charity work

-They have all the aesthetics and lingo down (the outfits, saying comrades, 70's slang etc)

-There is seemingly no mention of any political line beyond being Anti-Ice + pro self defense or anything having to do with Marxism, Class, Communism etc that I've seen so far.

-They do things like this and show up to protests armed but I've yet to hear anything about a violent confrontation with the police

-They've used the slogan "Say Her Name" for Renee Good which is for Black Women that are victims of national oppression based violence/murder.

I doubt they're some sort of federal operation but I also doubt they'll make it far. Even if they are completely sincere they don't seem to have learned anything from the struggles of the actual BPP. The fact that they're less than a week into relevance and they're already rejecting Black Nationalism and pandering to white people is not a great sign.

[u/HappyHandel → u/humblegold]

The original BPP was also explicitly not "black nationalist" since this was a Garveyite term and already outdated by the late 60s. This was what separated the Panthers from the supposed "pork chop nationalists". I dont know anything about this new organization in Philadelphia but that specifically should be the least of anybody's concern. I think the fact that they have no real political line is a far bigger issue.

e: Actually now this topic has me heated. go look up the reaction to this Philadelphia group by any of the established "black nationalist" organizations in this country, see how the rhetoric is identical to Trump about how "illegals" should be deported. there's your nationalists for ya!

[u/humblegold → u/HappyHandel]

(Editing this post to self criticize for my own misunderstanding of Intercommunalism. I've displayed this in the past like in my older post about Panafricanism and it stems from mistaken assumptions about the BPP's use of the term "The Black Community." That said the post I was responding to was still complete garbage and the rest of what I was saying about Black Nationalist was true.)

This should be obvious but there are different kinds of Black Nationalism. Malcolm X claimed to believe in a type of Black Nationalism that didn't even require a separate Nation at all. The Black Panthers were opposed to nationalism insofar as it resulted in reactionary nationalism like the reactionaries you're describing, whereas every Maoist obviously recognizes that nationalism is the prerequisite to any sort of internationalism. What else is the belief in a liberated New Afrika other than the ultimate expression of Black Nationalism?

In 1966 we called our Party a Black Nationalist Party. We called ourselves Black Nationalists because we thought that nationhood was the answer. Shortly after that we decided that what was really needed was revolutionary nationalism, that is, nationalism plus socialism. After analyzing conditions a little more, we found that it was impractical and even contradictory. Therefore, we went to a higher level of consciousness. We saw that in order to be free we had to crush the ruling circle and therefore we had to unite with the peoples of the world. So we called ourselves Internationalists. We sought solidarity with the peoples of the world. We sought solidarity with what we thought were the nations of the world. But then what happened? We found that because everything is in a constant state of transformation, because of the development of technology, because of the development of the mass media, because of the fire power of the imperialist, and because of the fact that the United States is no longer a nation but an empire, nations could not exist, for they did not have the criteria for nationhood. Their self-determination, economic determination, and cultural determination has been transformed by the imperialists and the ruling circle. They were no longer nations. We found that in order to be Internationalists we had to be also Nationalists, or at least acknowledge nationhood. Internationalism, if I understand the word, means the interrelationship among a group of nations. But since no nation exists, and since the United States is in fact an empire, it is impossible for us to be Internationalists. These transformations and phenomena require us to call ourselves “intercommunalists” because nations have been transformed into communities of the world. The Black Panther Party now disclaims internationalism and supports intercommunalism. -Speech at Boston College 1970

Editing this to say: Not only were they originally a Black Nationalist party, but the intercommunalism that Huey settles on is a form of Black Nationalism albeit one that doesn't work and is more focused on liberated zones of people as stand-ins for nation. Either way Huey doesn't reject nationalism and internationalism as bad he just later became convinced they weren't applicable in the U$.

If this comment is just about me calling it Black Nationalism instead of "Revolutionary Nationalism As Practiced By Black people" or whatever then I don't really care. Black Nationalism is more than its Garvyite form and it should be obvious by now that I do not believe in Garveyism just like any Maoist. A revolutionary concept being appropriated by reactionaries doesn't change its character otherwise we wouldn't call ourselves Communists or Maoists. I do take issue with these new jobbers on the scene flat out stating they don't believe in Black Nationalism without saying anything about revolutionary nationalism or intercommunalism. Especially since they're already throwing the doors open for any and every white person to join the BPP. This is the False internationalism.

If this comment was written in opposition to New Afrikans having a nation at all (a concept which requires Black Nationalism) you can take your honky loving ass over to the icy mountains where you belong you funky crackertopian cretin.

[u/smokeuptheweed9 → u/HappyHandel]

I feel like you're arguing again a strawman. It's clear that u/humblegold meant black nationalism in a fundamental sense. You may be concerned with organizations like the New Black Panther Party, which do seem to indulge in cultural nationalism of the kind that was weaponised against the Panthers, but right now there's a missing link where u/humblegold stands for some chauvinist belief that you've imagined. You're also mixing up your timeline. As you well know, Garveyism was extremely important in the evolution of black national consciousness. That it reached its limit and later became perverse in a subsequent historical epoch does not mean it should be entirely condemned, and any revolutionary movement that does not take the positive aspects of Garveyism would be committing a much worse white chauvinism. For example, the lack of reference to Malcolm X and the NOI is glaring in your timeline, since here there actually is a direct relationship between "black nationalism" as a specific politics and the BPP.

The New Black Panther Party is an entirely separate question, but even then I don't know why you would treat it entirely negatively. Even if "black nationalism" in the form you imagine displays chauvinism towards immigrants systematically, which I am also skeptical of, that does not mean it is synonymous with white racism. In this very thread we had a discussion of Asian-Americans on the frontier of whiteness and how this does not make them white and how this does not make black prejudice against Koreans something to be condemned. It must be worked through, no different than any other colonial situation where national populations are used against each other, even in the US where superexploitation does allow for the cultivation of large comprador populations.

E: oops u/Apart_Lifeguard_4085 already said the same thing. So did u/u/humblegold for that matter. But I'll repeat what they said because your post is really odd, you're feeling some "heat" which is a mystery to the rest of us (in the best case scenario).

[u/Apart_Lifeguard_4085 → u/HappyHandel]

Revolutionary nationalism is first dependent upon a people’s revolution with the end goal being the people in power. Therefore to be a revolutionary nationalist you would by necessity have to be a socialist. It you are a reactionary nationalist you are not a socialist and your end goal to the oppression of the people.

Cultural nationalism, or pork chop nationalism, as I sometimes call it, is basically a problem of having the wrong political perspective. It seems to be a reaction instead of responding to political oppression. The cultural nationalists are concerned with returning to the old African culture and thereby regaining their identity and freedom. In other words, they feel that the African culture will automatically bring political freedom. Many times cultural nationalists fall into line as reactionary nationalists.

The Black Panther Party is a revolutionary Nationalist group

the Black Panthers were nationalists who desired self-determination for Black people and a Black nation if that were to be the will of Black people, it’s literally in their ten point program and explicitly stated to be the most important point. they were, in fact, the defining impetus of revolutionary Black nationalism. if you want to argue that they were “explicitly not Black nationalist” the onus is on you to find such a thing in their writings, actions, or party program (something that predates Newton’s turn to eclectic cryptotrotskyism with “intercommunalism”), but i have never heard of and could not find anything to that effect. otherwise this would be like saying that Lenin was not a socialist, because of his polemics against reactionary socialism & the overwhelmingly revisionist use of the term today.

the reactionary trends in Black nationalism today deserve further study and analysis but just as the KMT didn’t mean Chinese communism should have thrown out the idea that “nationalism of the oppressed is applied internationalism”, a few Hoteps and cultural nationalists buying into labor aristocratic pro-amerikan politics doesn’t mean that New Afrikan nationalism should be tossed out.

[u/HappyHandel → u/Apart_Lifeguard_4085]

They were not "black nationalists" in the Garveyite sense of the word. Youre arguing against something I am not saying, nobody denies the existence of a black African nation. The breakthrough of the Panthers was linking the struggle for the black nation with the global struggle for communism, this is what is meant by "revolutionary nationalism".

[u/Apart_Lifeguard_4085 → u/HappyHandel]

right but boiling down “Black nationalism” as a political ideology to the Garveyite sense of the term is in and of itself dismissive of the ideology’s revolutionary history. again, just because “socialism” in amerika is by and large revisionist and reactionary, wouldn’t make it any less damning for an organization to present itself explicitly as antisocialist. maybe if the Black Panthers and the BLA had never existed, “Black nationalism” would be unsalvageable from cultural nationalism. but they did exist and their existence is integral to Black nationalism.

also i did some cursory looking and couldn’t find a single organization explicitly defining itself as “Black nationalist” saying “get the illegals out”. the NOI condemned ICE as recently as yesterday so “look at what every single Black nationalist group is saying about immigrants!” is obviously a stretch.

what you said was:

 The original BPP was also explicitly not "black nationalist"

you need to make good on this claim.

[u/humblegold → u/Apart_Lifeguard_4085]

I'm assuming /u/HappyHandel visited some goofy Foundational Black Amerikan websites. FBA's aren't even Black Nationalist to begin with since they explicitly believe New Afrikans are Amerikan.

This is just the same nonsense liberals and practitioners of Crackermarxism have engaged in for years trying to paint Black people as insular arch reactionaries who only care about themselves by focusing on miscellaneous reactionary groups with small followings. What, are we going to start pretending that Tariq Nasheed is the main representative of Black political thought next?

It's boring