First Published: People’s Voice, Vol. 5, No. 2, September 1, 1970.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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Ever since the Black Panther Party was formed in 1966, American imperialism has been searching for a way that it could either destroy the Panthers or render them ineffective. It has finally found its answer, and it has rendered the Panthers ineffective with a co-ordinated two-pronged attack over the last two-and-one-half years.
The attacks have combined physical attacks from the outside by local and state police forces and members of the federally-financed reactionary black nationalist US organization, along with internal ideological attacks aimed at fostering opportunism, reformism, and revisionism in the ideology and organizational actions of the Panthers.
The external attacks against the Panthers have been directed against the most militant and revolutionary members and chapters. The constant external pressure made the internal situation ripe for the advances of opportunists and revisionists. The internal attack featured a take-over of the Panthers by the revisionist “Communist Party”, the traitorous Gus Hall revisionist clique.
The revisionist Gus Hall clique began their dirty job on the Panthers in earnest in the Fall of 1968. The members and friends of the revisionist Gus Hall clique opened their houses in “fashionable” bourgeois suburbs to the Panthers for fund-raising events; they contributed money to the Panthers; they sent their bourgeois bloodsucking lawyers from the National Lawyers Guild to handle the legal work of the Panthers. An excellent example of this revisionist involvement was the involvement of Charles Garry, a revisionist, who was a $100,000-plus business lawyer prior to handling Panther legal affairs. Young revisionist members and friends were encouraged to enter into whatever close political relationship they could with the Panthers.
The revisionist clique’s efforts paid off, and the crowning glory for the revisionists was the “United Front Against Fascism” Conference in Oakland in August, 1969, where Herbert Aptheker, the revisionists’ chief theoretician and past editor of their theoretical rag, POLITICAL AFFAIRS, delivered the keynote address; Archie Brown, northern California organizer for the revisionists, and other top revisionists, sat on the rostrum, while revisionist rank and file members filled the conference.
The ideology of the Panthers degenerated tremendously during their downhill slide into the arms of the revisionists. The Panther newspaper, THE BLACK PANTHER, changed from propagandizing on behalf of Mao Tsetung Thought and stressing the need for armed self-defense to printing whole pages of revisionist garbage from the PEOPLE’S WORLD, the West Coast revisionist clique’s newspaper. Also during this period, the position of the Panthers on a proper response to the brutality of the cops changed from a position of promoting armed self-defense in the ghettoes to a position of passing around petitions in the ghettoes calling for “Police Review Boards” – a political technique and goal in the worst revisionist tradition.
There is a contradiction within the Panther organization now between the revisionists and those people who want revolution.
The recent release of Huey Newton on bail may help this contradiction come to a head. Newton seems to be an honest revolutionary somewhat confused at the present time by the revisionists. Of course, for the past two years his only regular contact with the outside world has been through his attorney, Charles Garry, a firm revisionist. Gerry has doubtless helped to give Huey a distorted picture of the outside world. But Huey is out now, and he can observe reality first hand.
Huey can either bring about a showdown between the revisionists and the revolutionaries in the Panthers, or he can let things slide and leave the revisionists in control of the Panther Party apparatus.
To let things slide would spell death for the Panthers as a viable organization. To force a showdown between the revisionists and the revolutionaries would mean renewed life for the Panthers and would bring about a situation where the revisionist scum would be removed from the leading posts and major influence in the Panther apparatus.
Many members of the revisionist Gus Hall clique’s “Che-Lumumba Club” have joined the Panthers and quite a few are in posts of responsibility in the Panther apparatus. They have become a foothold for the revisionist clique within the Panther organization.
The revisionists now control the fund raising of the Panthers, and with the trials of various Panther members taking place, the Black Panther Party has found itself becoming primarily a fund raising organization to cover legal expenses. The Black Panther Party has been transformed from a forward moving organization to an inward-directed, retreating organization; from an organization concentrated in working class ghettoes of the Negro national minority to an organization concentrated largely around college campuses. Today, the chief bastion of strength outside of Oakland for the Panthers is Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut! The largest rally ever held by the Panthers was held recently at Yale University, where a crowd estimated at 35,000 gathered in support of Bobby Seale. The crowd was almost all composed of white students from the Ivy League colleges of the East – quite a comedown for an organization that two years ago was beginning to revolutionize and organize black workers.
Right now it is up to Huey Newton – either to end the marriage of convenience with the revisionists arranged by American imperialism, or die as punks and stooges for the revisionists.