Interested in the history and the social programs they created like free breakfast.
The FBI murdered their leadership, for one.
And the CIA pumped a load of heroin into the inner cities to pacify the urban black population as part of their financing of various undeclared wars in the South-East Asian conflict.
Decades later a similar thing would happen with crack cocaine as part of the anti-Sandinista action.
Fun fact, the reason cocaine is on the drug schedule is so they could put black people in jail.
I thought that was still on conspiracy theory stage. CIA’s involvement in drug trade is known and proven, them using it as a tool against black people not so much
In that case you have to say that it was purely accidental that heroin tore through the ghetto while most of white society was unaffected. And then the same thing happened accidentally twenty years later.
And then compare and contrast to the current opioid crisis, which did affect all strata of society because prescription drugs were marketed to doctors as safe.
I mean factors like poverty surely pay a role. It’s often the poor communities that are hit the hardest by drug epidemics. So no surprise that the black community was hit the hardest but the influx of drugs did hit other communities too.
We know drugs were brought in and they hit poor urban communities the hardest. For intention you’d sorta need something to actually show for it imo.
I dislike how this narrative completely bypasses the power hungry, money hungey gangsters who were perfectly fine making money off the backs of their communities.
My dude you really need to study history a bit. Things people did in the name of profits:
*locked emergency exits so that workers cant sneak out resulting in many deaths in fires
*continued to sell cars they knew were dangerous and killed people because the potential fines were cheaper
*pollute rivers until they caught fire in some areas
*essentially used the US government as a bludgeoning weapon to topple south american governments over concerns that said governments might threaten their banana profits
*added melamine into dog food because it caused protein content tests to falsely show higher protein content resulting in many dead dogs
*sell the methanol containing heads of distilled spirits which can cause injury or death
*700,000 deaths a year from smoking related cancers and other associated diseases whoch the tobacco industry fought tooth and nail to dismiss links between said diseases and smoking
*entice women in africa to forgo breast feeding in favor of infant formulas often made with contaminated local water which didn’t just harm their children but also ensured that they became completely dependant on infant formula once their milk stopped coming in.
*the modern fossil fuel industry is responsible for climate change and theyve known this since the 70s according to their own leaked internal documents. similarly to the tobacco industry theyve been spreading misinformation for decades trying to stop anyone from regulating them. this is very likely to substantially compromise global ecosystems, increase resource competition and subsequent conflict and make much of the earth effectively uninhabitable.
I dislike how this comment is deliberately vague as to who you’re talking about.
The non-CIA people involved in the heroin and crack epidemics
So you want to blame the street level dealers rather than people making it available wholesale.
Nope. You’ve exaggerated it.
Oh, you know who they mean.
Lol. The people selling it to their local communities are just as bad as the people at the top. The people at the top are many times from the local communities you guys are defending.
I’m not sure if you’re talking about these specific communities, or all of America all of the time.
Yeah, it’s definitely the fault of the poor folks.
/s
High level gangsters tend to not be poor people?
You know what the problem with having a lot of illictly gained money is?
The same thing that happens to a lot of extremist groups, they refuse to adapt and align with others that aren’t the same as them, but share their viewpoint. The Panthers did not hold women in the same regard as men, and thus, their female membership was non-existent. Towards the end, there are stories of brutality against women, and during the late 70s and early 80s, women were attempting to gain more rights for themselves. Imagine being a member of the Panthers and having a wife that was a feminist. It doesn’t take violence to overthrow a movement, simply reducing their numbers at the street level can be enough to ground them. With fewer and fewer men joining or staying with the panthers, and the issues surrounding Huey P. Newton, the power of the party declined and eventually collapsed under itself with no one to support it.
This is a super simplified and very narrow argument for the downfall of the Panthers. I would suggest reading up more on it. There are plenty of books on the subject. Just remember that the more you read and study, the greater an informed position can be reached. Don’t rely on just one narrative or one viewpoint. Read, analyze, and discuss with others. Knowledge is gained slowly and deliberately and rarely completed.
The Panthers did not hold women in the same regard as men, and thus, their female membership was non-existent.
https://gender.stanford.edu/news/women-were-key-black-panther-party
Yeah, just listen to the excerpts from Wake Up by RATM to hear the COINTELPRO tactics and how the feds wanted to eliminate “troublemakers”
It wasnt women that took em down.
Same goes for the Rainbow Coalition and Fred Hampton. Fuck everything about our fascist bootlicker gestapo forces
You been listening to Behind the Bastards four-parter on Clarence Thomas too? As Miles Gray observes, a lot of people with terrible opinions were able to move civil rights efforts forward into actual policy. (Thomas wasn’t one of those, but he dabbled in with black nationalism and misogyny in his early career.
I hadn’t but I have seen that podcast referenced quite a lot.
To simplify even more from a general anthropological perspective of many topics…
Tribalism is a reault of conservative values no matter how ethically good the cause or what those values may be. Not adapting to what’s socially going on, or doing things like responding to an oppressing tribe by using the same tactics of that tribe just creates discord. One need simply compare MLK to the Panthers. Same cause at the core, but entirely different values and ideology. And of course, tribalism is rife when there’s in-fighting of those that are ultimately wanting the same core outcome because it’s deteriorated to camp vs camp.
Lastly and most importantly, it gives bad reputation to the core idea and creates social opportunity to instill doubt with fallacy…
“They champion for this. It’s good.”
“Yes. But they also do this, so it cannot be good.”
“This is true.”
It’s not, but the average of our collective doesn’t think hard enough to consider such things. We fucking love a good flag and warcry; tribalism is in our nature and an old lingering detrimental trait that even the most progressive of intents can be snuffed out or tarnished by.
I don’t know the full details of the BP demise, but I imagine this general recipe we see countlessly in all history is not too far off.
This one feels a bit off the mark. Women served in key leadership roles as the party grew and evolved (partly owing to the fact that most of the original leadership was either imprisoned or murdered straight out). Is that to say that there were not problematic actions that should be called out re: women and their treatment within the party early on? Absolutely not. One of the things Huey later came to see as detrimental was his insistence on free association early on (i.e., free love) which ended up causing drama and caused a lot of harm particularly to the women involved in the arrangements later on. That being said, here are the words from the horses mouth (so to speak) re: women and other oppressed marginalized groups:
"Whatever your personal opinions and your insecurities about homosexuality and the various liberation movements among homosexuals and women (and I speak of the homosexuals and women as oppressed groups), we should try to unite with them in a revolutionary fashion. I say “whatever your insecurities are” because as we very well know, sometimes our first instinct is to want to hit a homosexual in the mouth and want a woman to be quiet. We want to hit a homosexual in the mouth because we are afraid that we might be homosexual; and we want to hit the woman or shut her up because we are afraid that she might castrate us or take the nuts that we might not have to start with. We must gain security in ourselves and therefore have respect and feelings for all oppressed people.
What truly did the party in was a combination of FBI and police assassinations, too much trust placed in Eldridge Cleaver (which Huey, again, came to regret later on), too much reliance on whitewashed panther satellites and academic-first “revolutionaries,” along with Huey and Bobby spending close to a decade in prison and off the streets, during which time the party had morphed away from their community action roots and been splintered due to infighting.
I highly recommend Huey’s “Revolutionary Suicide” for an insider’s look and opinion (also, it’s just a great read overall from a fascinating individual).
Edit: also, to call them an “extremis group” betrays, imo, bias founded on decades worth of whitewashed government propaganda.
I think this has more to do with it than the FBI personally.
Theres a cool autobio book by Don Cox called “Just Another removed” that details some of this. Obviously the Feds played a part but Don himself cautions not to give them too much credit. There’s plenty we can learn from what transpired aside from that. Leadership was an issue, and sexism was a really big issue are two big takeaways. A lot of the other stuff requires a bit more nuance to explain and would be best learned by the book itself. Interesting and not too long a read.
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