Influenced by a variety of groups including the original Black Panthers, Black Panther Militia, and the Nation of Islam (NOI), the New Black Panther Party (NBPP) is rooted in a mix of Black Nationalism, Pan-Africanism and racist and anti-Semitic bigotry.
By feeding off of the nostalgia for, and presenting itself in the image of, the original Black Panther Party, a radical Black Nationalist group active in the 1960s and 1970s, the NBPP has been able to maintain some influence in the black community. However, while the NBPP attracts some followers under the guise of championing black empowerment and civil rights, its record of racism and anti-Semitism has tarnished its efforts to promote black pride and consciousness.
Much of the NBPP's ideology derives from the notion that African-Americans continue to suffer as a result of a racist white power structure that has oppressed them politically and economically since slavery. The primary perpetrators of this institutional racism, according to the NBPP, are whites, whom it views as ultimately responsible for Black exploitation; Jews, whom it sees as wielding disproportionate control of political and economic affairs; and law enforcement, which it sees as facilitating racial injustice on the ground.
The 2008 election of President Barack Obama compelled the group to address the continued relevance of its outlook on race in the U.S. Malik Zulu Shabazz, NBPP National Chairman, maintains that despite his admiration for Obama and his high hopes for Obama's presidency, the challenges facing Black Americans remain.
For example, in a January 2009 interview with the New York-based newspaper Black Star News, Shabazz reinforced the group's position that "systematic racism" exists, noting that Obama's election merely proves that Blacks can rise above it. Shabazz added that the election "does not change the need to fight against racism, police brutality, bad education, lack of health care and housing, oppression abroad, or the litany of concerns our people face. No one is lulled to sleep to think that because Obama has been elected those problems will disappear."
Efforts by Shabazz to convey a nuanced view of race and politics are tainted by the fact that as leader of the NBPP for nearly a decade, he has espoused some of the group's most incendiary views against whites. During demonstrations and speaking engagements Shabazz has, among other things, likened whites to the devil and contended that "the very nature of white people" creates problems in the world.
This view of white people is evident throughout the group's own materials, as well as in the outside resources the group promotes. The downloads section of the NBPP Web site includes a document titled "The Nationalist Manifesto," which asserts that the ultimate goal of whites is to exterminate people of African descent. It reads, "The Black man's menace, has been, and still is, the white man's diabolical and determined plan to commit GENOCIDE! Even as they exterminated the American Indians, and the Australian Aborigines; so too, every plan, every scheme, points to their murderous intent to liquidate the African people."
Posted By: DAVID JOHNSON
Wednesday, September 1st 2010 at 10:53PM
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