Hell yeah, the Black Panthers are exactly the heroes we need right now.
Agreed! Just to remind everyone, from Wikipedia:
The Black Panther Party (originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense) was an American far-left, Marxist–Leninist and black power political organization
Marxism-Leninism offers answers to the literal problems we’re living today. Organize and read!!
Good. I’m willing to bet jackbooted thugs are less likely to shoot someone when there’s a visibly armed protestor nearby.
I’m not sure if it’s crazier that statement was made or the fact that I read it and agreed with it before I even thought how crazy of a time this is.
1960’s all over again.
But probably worse.
At least they aren’t super soldiers with ray guns
60s was far worse. Entire parts of large cities burned to theground, mass murders at college campuses by National Guard, KKK very active in Mississipi …
The 20s are not over, and Donvict 2.0 is only at the one year mark.
Vietnamese and Cambodians are probably liking this decade a bit more.
I mean… They seem perfectly capable of fighting amongst themselves…
Hard agree on that front. The world is absolutely crazypants batshit right now.
A specific part more than others though
Sure, if you don’t count the unrest in Iran, the ongoing invasion of Ukraine, the Chinese genocide of the Uyghurs, the Israeli genocide in Gaza, etc etc etc
Then sure, the world is a rosy and wonderful place other than the US.
Didn’t say the world is a rosy and wonderful place. But unrest in Iran, Russian imperialism, Chinese suppression and Israel killing Palestinians has sadly been the status quo for the last few decades. I interpreted batshit crazy as very different than it was before. But you’re right, there is a lot more places where life has gotten harder.
If it makes it any better this has happened repeatedly historically. Though it only really works when the ones you’re protesting against are gormless cowards, so it should be rather effective.
Think of a bully if someone stronger stands up to them they will run a way. I would like to see vets, blank panthers and others stand and protect the protesters. Having black panthers and vets unite for one common cause would send a powerful message.
Not specifically for vets, but the Iron Front is very popular with a lot of the antifascist vets I know, including myself.
Edit - The Sons of Liberty are specifically a vet organization
Thanks for the link for iron front and the fact that they have Blue sky is better
You’re welcome!
Remember: Peaceful protests are like barking - annoying, but by itself harmless. It’s the fear of the bite that makes the barking scary.
You don’t have to jump straight to violence, and I believe that it’s more effective to start with non-violent demands. Once you escalate, there’s nowhere left to go. But the threat of it is what makes the peaceful option less destructive.
As the saying goes: Nothing will meaningfully change until the rich fear for their lives.
“Power concedes nothing without a demand.” -Fredrick Douglas
The only way to tell if your protests are working is if the state is restoring to violence to stop you from continuing to demonstrate.
The only way protests are ultimately effective is for the beleaguered group to be easier to negotiate with then it is to further supress them with violence.
The powerful give no ground willingly. It must be taken from them.
Unions are the peaceful alternative for negotiations that workers and their bosses agreed upon instead of dragging them out of the factory into the street and beating them to death.
More people need to remember this history.
Even MLK credited the success of his work during the Civil Rights Movement to the Black Panthers being willing to do what he could not, and the Million Man March on Washington - seen today as an example of successful peaceful protest - was a threat to every white American in a seat of power. If he could mobilize a million people to shut down the capital of the federal government peacefully, imagine what else they could do.
This is the key point that many do not get. There must be the threat of violence AND the non-violent union/organised resistance option to defeat authoritarian governments. One or the other on its own will not work.
Unfortunately for the US, the rich have spent the decades since the Civil Rights Movement convincing the general populace that their rights were won by holding a snarky sign on a street corner and not by burning down entire city districts after the murder of MLK by the government (which his family proved in court, by the way. Unfortunately, no criminal court would hear the case so it was only in a civil court, but the judge was convinced well enough to find the government guilty).
Years of protesting and nothing solid was accomplished. Within a week of billions of dollars in damage to property and big business, the Civil Rights laws were drafted, voted on, and signed into law.
This is so surreal.
It’s like opening up your browser to be reading about The Weather Underground or the SDS or something…but then again, about 20 years ago, I don’t think I was thinking we’d have a Nazi sympathizer in the fucking White House, either, so I also thought Nazis were largely a part of history that would stay in the past.
Operation Paperclip. You’ve had multiple Nazis in the white house, the last one repeatedly lied about seeing 40 beheaded children to justify funding and shielding a genocide.
Trump is just the first fascist Nazi. But America has been totally fine synopsizing with Nazis.
Robert Evan’s has a fantastic audio book called The War On Everyone.
American Conservatism has always played footsies with fascism.
Weather Underground is just a distributed/crowd sourced weather app now full of individual weather stations. I love it both in function and name.
Solid app that’s been around since the early iOS days.
Weather Underground predates the iPhone by like a decade.
The guy said app so I assumed that’s what they were talking about.
SDS
Funny you say that, there’s also a be SDS org that has been around since the US invasion of Iraq, but got a lot of press recently during the campus protests over Gaza
It’s really wild how all these things are coming back around again.
It’s especially wild because it seems lately the mediascape has been practically saturated with stuff (most of it seemingly from very misinformed/uninformed people that are much younger than the boomers) that tries to paint “boomers” as one big monolith.
In some moments, I actually start to nearly buy into this nonsensical rhetoric.
And then I remember this is the generation where things like the Panthers, the Weather Underground, the SDS, and so much else was going on as well. The people kind of mindlessly spewing stuff about boomers would probably do well to zip their lip for a bit and actually learn something about that generation.
The animosity between generations is a lot like the animosity between races or most other us-vs-them bullshit in that it’s manufactured to keep potential allies fighting against each other.
This is ultimately a class war - everything else is a distraction.
The Weather Underground
Do you mean the Underground Railroad?
Huh, TIL
The Weather Underground had another round in the headlines when Obama was running. The far right (and the “liberal media” really didn’t help much, of course) tried to smear Obama by some kind of much later association of Obama with Ayers.
The whole thing was hella stupid, of course. Obama was born in 1961, FFS, and would have been 16 years at the oldest when the Weather Underground was even still active.
But being idiotic is what the far right does best, often with a big assist with dumb dumbs in the “liberal media”.
I think YT is great. You just have to be selective. And using things like Invidious help a lot, because watching YT normally is just filled with ads.
Oki has an Eraserhead poster behind him - I’m sold.
Also, I should have mentioned MOVE (and the bombing by the cops)…it’s also more geographically relevant, too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOVE_(Philadelphia_organization)
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How much you wanna bet certain conservative people start talking about gun control, or imposing restrictions on being armed at protests or something?
I don’t know if you’re being rhetorical, but that is the pattern
Yeah that’s the point I was getting at. One of the only times the NRA supported gun control was when the Black Panthers started carrying publicly.
good for them
when somebody on the right says “this is just asking for trouble”, tell them that Kyle Rittenhouse went there to defend businesses (not even people) and they approved of his actions, and so they can shut the fuck up
Don’t even try to give them an argument, tell them to shut the fuck up. Never give them validity to their bullshit arguments.
The best argument against people who argue in bad faith is “I don’t care” and move on.
in practice, yes this is what I actually say. fuck 'em, there’s no discussion to be had with them anyways. but the full form mention of Rittenhouse is clear cut and indefensible by their own logic (but yes we all know that their own logic is not actually logic yaddayaddayadda)
Good to see others getting armed.
I understand black Panthers or for blacks folks. But it’s it also open to other folks like Hispanics?
There’s a lot of vets that are Hispanic that could and would help, but again I understand if this is only a black folks only thing.
The real Black Panthers? They would… probably still prefer it to be a sister org to focus on the African American community but they would very much be allies.
These Black Panthers? Who the hell knows?
Because the thing people forget is that the reason The Black Panthers were so effective wasn’t because they were walking around locked and loaded. It was because of all the community outreach they did. So when the (white) cops and government came knocking? The neighborhoods locked arms because these were people who had been protecting them and who cared about them.
So, in the article it very specifically highlights their many community programs like the food program they’re doing in several locations.
Considering that the federal government is shuttering things like SNAP, there is a vacuum for Rainbow Panthers to fill the void.
A big part of the reason why the Black Panthers were so successful was that they followed a consistent, liberating anti-imperialist ideology:
The Black Panther Party (originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense) was an American far-left, Marxist–Leninist and black power political organization founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in October 1966
Hispanic protestors used to have the Young Lords and the Brown Berets, who the Panthers have partnered with in the past.
Both, as far as I know, are no longer active, but I’m sure there would be support for reviving them today.
Wow I did not know that. Thank you for providing some info about it.
There was also the White Panther Party back in the 60s-70’s formed mostly of white college kids following the Panther model. Essentially a more explicitly revolutionary alternative to SNCC, which was itself highly influential in the anti-war movement at the time.
These days there are several Panther groups doing smaller scale community self defence and mutual aid across the country, many of them led by second and third generation Black Panthers.
Wasn’t MC5 part of the White Panthers?
When people talk about “the boomers” as one big monolith, I have to chuckle because they are clearly overlooking things like this…
MC5 kickout the jams band? Did not know that.
I could be wrong, but I think there was also a white panthers party that they were part of.
The United Panther Party is another small modern Panther org. The UPP is mixed and Anarcho-Pantherist in political philosophy.
They have a sister group simply called The Panther Party which is open to anyone.
We need a new Rainbow Coalition. RIP Fred Hampton. There’s a reason they were terrified of him.
Historically, there were a few contemporaneous Panthers equivalents for other minority groups. The Hispanic one was The Young Lords
Fuck yes! Show them something more than a sign saying “I’m not very happy about the current state of affairs. Sorry”!
Agreed! We should all take example from the Marxist-Leninists over at the Black Panthers and organize to protect each other from the fascists in power in the US and in the EU!
about fucking time
Hey, my city is on Lemmy!
wait… shit… my city is in the news…
shit’s about to go down… 👀
We need more self-defense (or community defense) now more than ever. For Renee Nicole Good.
Just remember how scared and violent the Philidelphia police got when they felt threatened by the Black Panthers in the 80’s. The MOVE bombing.
Historically, angry Marxist-Leninists with guns have been very useful allies in dealing with NAZIs! But history suggests that things didn’t work out too well afterwards, for those ruled by the angry Marxist-Leninists with guns …
Are Black Panthers marxist-leninists?
The Black Panther Party was. Not to say these guys are tho.
ok looking into this more they just liked revolutionary movement and anti-capitalist and anti-imperialism agenda which is basically cherry picking the “duuuh” parts out of generally awfuly evil ideology.
They were and are fully Marxist-Leninist.
Yes, always have been.
They at least used to be …
Of all they people I know, they would say free health care or free lunch for kids. Them being ML wouldn’t even come in top 5 things about them, unless of course you were looking to criticise them
It’s a reasonable criticism. Just remember that the enemy of your enemy isn’t your friend, they’re your ally.
Reminder to everyone that the hugely successful and wonderful original Black Panther Party were considered “authoritarian” and “violent” by the majority of whites back in the day. The Black Panthers were OG Tankies in every sense of the word, and they were incredibly good as a consequence. From Wikipedia:
The Black Panther Party (originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense) was an American far-left, Marxist–Leninist and black power political organization founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in October 1966
Regarding a visit of Huey P. Newton to China:
During the trip, the Chinese arranged for him to meet and have dinner with an ambassador from North Korea, an ambassador from Tanzania, and delegations from both North Vietnam and the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam.[44] Newton was under the impression he was going to meet Mao Zedong, chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, but instead had two meetings with Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai. One of these meetings also included Mao’s wife Jiang Qing. Newton described China as “a free and liberated territory with a socialist government”
THESE are the people that we disregard and insult and call “tankies”!!
