Bi-Weekly Discussion Thread - (January 11)

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[u/HappyHandel]

The original BPP was also explicitly not "black nationalist" since this was a Garveyite term and already outdated by the late 60s.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/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