by Danny Haiphong
The film that does justice to Huey P. Newton and the Black Panther Party has yet to be created. Stanley Nelson’s PBS depiction “is riddled with distortion and inaccuracy” and virtually ignores the party’s enormous “contributions to the historic struggle for socialist liberation” and internationalist solidarity. “Newton envisioned that Black America would work together with a community of nations to develop a new world free of exploitation.”
Huey Newton: A Revolutionary Hero
by Danny Haiphong
“The film omits the political ideology of the Party and the historical context from which it formed.”
Stanley Nelson's documentary The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution aired on PBS just weeks after Beyonce's Super Bowl performance. It is not clear whether this was intentional or a coincidence, but the two products do share a common theme. Both attempted to embody the Black Panther Party through imagery and art. However, neither gave an accurate picture of what the Black Panther Party represented in the context of history and political struggle. This author took great offense to the documentary when it came out in select theaters in the summer of 2015. The greatest crime of the film is its depiction of the Black Panther Party’s founder, Huey P. Newton.
The Black Panther Party has received renewed national attention. Activists and journalists have praised Beyonce's performance at the Super Bowl as a catalyst for independent research of the Black Panther Party. While this claim is debatable, the proximity of the documentary’s television debut and Beyonce’s performance means that many will view the documentary as a legitimate introduction to the Black Panther Party. However, the film is more of a project of miseducation than the other way around. The film omits the political ideology of the Party and the historical context from which it formed. What little content exists is riddled with distortion and inaccuracy.
“Nelson's depiction mimics the US imperial establishment’s portrayal of Newton.”
This is especially true in Nelson's spotlight on Huey P. Newton. Nelson describes Newton as a troubled leader whose release from prison opened the floodgates to the Black Panther Party's demise. The film solicits anecdotes of Newton’s mental decline and his supposed transformation into a "gangster." Nelson's depiction mimics the US imperial establishment’s portrayal of Newton. The film failed to highlight his contributions to the Black Panther Party and the revolutionary struggle as a whole. True to the entire film, the demonization of Newton created a comfortable, but politically dangerous, media spectacle for liberal US viewers.
Revolutionary forces the world over must rescue Huey Newton's legacy from the grips of imperial narratives. Huey P. Newton lived a complex life and dedicated himself to revolutionary transformation. Like many oppressed Black Americans, Newton received an assembly line education in the US public school system and graduated illiterate. He was inspired by his older brother to eradicate his illiteracy and obtain a college degree. It was in community college that Newton was exposed to the Black movement of the time. He became frustrated with the limitations of campus politics and cultural Nationalism. With the aid of Bobby Seale, Newton responded by organizing the first Black Panther Party chapter in October 1966.
Newton was instrumental in the Black Panther Party's organization of armed patrols of the police in and around the Oakland area. His courage to stand up to what the Black Panther Party called "the army of occupation" in the Black community was an effective recruiting tool. Newton organized security for Malcolm X's wife, Betty Shabazz, during her visit to the Bay area. It was here that a fully armed Newton confronted a police officer that failed to arrest a journalist for an assault on his body. The officer stood down after Newton guaranteed he would use his weapon if the officer used his.
“The demonization of Newton created a comfortable, but politically dangerous, media spectacle for liberal US viewers.”
Newton also organized an independent investigation of 22 year-old Denzell Dowell's death at the hands of the Richmond police. The investigation exposed the racist and repressive character of the police. The Black Panther Party organized armed rallies in Richmond. This prevented police intervention and inspired residents to bring arms to the rallies for self-defense. The Black Panther Party covered these rallies in their newspaper. The Panther newspaper helped spread the militant activities and ideas. Coverage of the Dowell investigation spurred the formation of Black Panther Party chapters all over the country.
Aside from his courage and willingness to stand up to the police, Huey Newton was also a theoretical genius. Newton studied the works of Marx, Lenin, Mao, and Fanon with precision and purpose. He wrote numerous essays on Black capitalism, war, and was the architect of the theory of revolutionary intercommunalism. Newton believed that the inherent contradictions of global imperialism required a worldwide revolutionary struggle for socialism. This struggle would lay the basis for intercommunalism and erode the artificial national boundaries drawn by imperialist plunder. Newton envisioned that Black America would work together with a community of nations to develop a new world free of exploitation.
“Huey Newton was a theoretical genius.”
Whatever mistakes Newton made during his time as leader of the Black Panther Party do not outweigh his great achievements and contributions to the historic struggle for socialist liberation. Individual errors must be placed in proper context. Newton's advanced political analysis tackled questions such as sexual oppression and anarchism. His sacrifice for freedom can be seen in his offer to send Black Panthers in 1970 to fight on the side of Vietnamese during the US invasion of the country. The US government made numerous attempts on Newton's life and, while not yet proven, may have orchestrated his eventual murder in 1989.
Nelson's chose to use his documentary as an opportunity to smear Huey Newton's life and erase his work as a revolutionary hero. This alone makes the film an illegitimate source of information on one of the most important moments of revolutionary history. Huey Newton would have turned 74 on February 17th. Newton believed that while people could be imprisoned or murdered, ideas could not. It is the role of this generation's movement leaders to pass on Newton's ideas and actualize them. Stanley Nelson's film, rather than an asset, is an obstacle to this historic task.
Danny Haiphong is an Asian activist and political analyst in the Boston area. He can be reached at [email protected].
Another Danny Haiphong article follows:
Political Suicide and the Democratic Party
by Danny Haiphong
“The best possible scenario for radical and revolutionary forces in the US is the breakup of both parties.”
African revolutionary Amilcar Cabral coined the term "class suicide" to describe elements of the petty bourgeoisie in colonized nations that gave up their spoils and joined the struggle for national liberation from foreign capitalist domination. Cabral, Kwame Nkrumah, Frantz Fanon, and many other African revolutionaries possessed highly educated backgrounds and were destined for positions in the bureaucratic management of colonial exploitation. These leaders chose instead to sacrifice their livelihoods and lives for the masses. Today, the movement for self-determination of oppressed people in the US is struggling with the ideological opposite of class suicide: political suicide.
Political suicide was on full display on Super Tuesday. Hilary Clinton's Super Tuesday victory over Bernie Sanders was made possible by the Black vote. Black Americans voted overwhelmingly for Hilary Clinton based on her perceived ability to defeat the Republican Party in the general election. She helped her cause by adamantly defending the Obama Presidency as part of her southern strategy. Sanders, on the other hand, has thus far been unable to relate to Black America's fear of the Republican Party. The most radical section of US society could very well be the demise of a Sanders nomination.
“Radical and progressive forces in the US have been convinced that any candidate other than Trump or the Republican GOP will suffice.”
This is not to conclude that Sanders is somehow the solution to Black America's problems or the problems of oppressed people everywhere. Sanders is, by all accounts, a Democratic Party politician. His foreign policy supports imperial warfare and his domestic policy opposes worker control and power. A Sanders victory would not change the historical fact that imperial exploitation has dispossessed the majority of Black Americans, and oppressed people generally, of the power to determine the economic, political, and cultural development of society. Nothing short of a social revolution can change this.
Black revolutionary and prison movement leader George Jackson was an adamant believer that only a revolutionary movement could create the conditions for social transformation. However, revolutionary conditions have been restrained under the regime of fear imposed by imperialism’s two-party corporate duopoly. Super Tuesday's results are the product of political suicide. The 2016 elections have given rise to the deepest fears of the American electorate. Radical and progressive forces in the US have been convinced that any candidate other than Trump or the Republican GOP will suffice.
Yet nothing could be further from the truth. The Democratic Party is equally to blame for the world capitalist crisis that is wreaking havoc on the planet. It was a Democratic President that gave us NAFTA and the newest installment of corporate dictatorship, the TPP. The Democratic Party passed the crime bill of 1994, which greatly expanded the prison and police state to world record proportions. On immigration, the Obama Administration has deported double the number of migrants than the last Republican President. After the 2008 economic crisis, it took a Black President to protect the banks and expand the imperialist regime of austerity, privatization, and war. Yet despite the irreplaceable harm the Democratic Party has caused to the masses, the Blue Dogs remain the perceived safe zone against the Republican Party boogeymen.
“The Democratic Party is equally to blame for the world capitalist crisis that is wreaking havoc on the planet.”
This development is rooted in the interrelated processes of US imperialism's economic crisis and the domestic counter insurgency war the state has waged over the last four and a half decades. Monopoly capital gutted US industry beginning in the 1970's and started a process of capitalist accumulation dependent upon jobless recoveries, austerity, and war. The COINTELPRO machinery that repressed revolutionary movements and organizations in secret nearly five decades ago was transformed into a mass surveillance apparatus by the 21st century. Black misleaders and union collaborators filled the political vacuum. This allowed the Democratic Party to become firmly established as the lesser of the two evil, corporate parties.
The 2016 elections have been no different but the end result come November may dramatically change the political terrain in the US. Barack Obama will be officially out of the White House. The various official splits in the Democratic Party and Republican Party could further polarize the respective bases of the corporate duopoly. Donald Trump has already received promises from the GOP establishment that his potential victory may lead them to support Hilary Clinton. Sanders supporters, many of them loyal liberals, may become increasingly disaffected from the Democratic Party should he suffer an ugly exit from the race. The best possible scenario for radical and revolutionary forces in the US is the breakup of both parties. Such a scenario could open up room to intensify the struggle against political suicide and direct the masses toward a fight with the US capitalist oligarchy and its servants in Washington.
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