New Black Panthers

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The New Black Panthers or New Black Panther Party (NBPP), whose formal name is the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, is a U.S.-based black power organization founded in Dallas, Texas in 1989. Despite its name, the party's formation was independent; it is not a formal successor organization to the Black Panther Party.

The NBPP attracted many breakaway members of the Nation of Islam when former NOI minister Khalid Abdul Muhammad became the national chairman of the group from the late 1990s until his death in 2001. The NBPP is currently led by Malik Zulu Shabazz. The party still upholds Khalid Abdul Muhammad as the de facto father of their movement.

1 Background
2 Philosophy, Ideology, and Criticism
3 Recent Controversies
4 References
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] Background

With the Black Panther Party in shambles, in 1987 an alderman in Milwaukee threatened in frustration to disrupt white events throughout the city unless more jobs were created for black people. A "state of the inner city" press conference in 1990 at city hall brought this situation to a head as the alderman, McGee, announced the creation of the Black Panther Militia, which inspired Aaron Michaels, a community activist and radio producer, to establish the New Black Panther Party. Michaels rose to widespread attention for the first time when he called on blacks to use shotguns and rifles to protest against the chairman of a school board who had been taped calling black students "little niggers". [1]

In 1998 Khalid Abdul Muhammad brought the organization into the national spotlight when he led the group to intervene in response to the 1998 murder of James Byrd in Jasper, TX. He also made the NBPP well-known for their vehement school board disruptions and public appearances.

[edit] Philosophy, Ideology, and Criticism

The New Black Panther Party self-identifies with the original Black Panther Party and claims to uphold its legacy. It also says that many others see the organization this same way. But the NBPP is apparently largely seen by both the general public and by prominent members of the original party ^[1]as wholly illegitimate and even charlatan. Huey Newton Foundation members, containing a significant number of the original party's leaders, once successfully sued the group, though their ultimate objective in doing so — to prevent the NBPP from using the Panther name — appears to have been unsuccessful. In response to the suing, Aaron Michaels branded the original Panthers "has-been wannabe Panthers", adding: "Nobody can tell us who we can call ourselves." [2]

The New Black Panthers defend their
anti-Semitic beliefs on Hannity & Colmes

Although it says it sees capitalism as the fundamental problem with the world and "revolution" as the solution, the new party does not draw its influences from Marxism or Maoism as the original party did. Instead, in a carefully-worded, roundabout form of ethnic nationalism, [3] they say that Marx himself based his ideology and teachings on indigenous African cultures, and that the NBPP therefore need not look to Marxism or Maoism as a basis for their program, but can look to ideologies that stem directly from those African origins. [4]

Many groups subscribing to varying degrees of radicalism over the past generation have called for the "right to self-determination" for blacks, particularly U.S. blacks. But critics of the NBPP say that this self-proclaimed descendant group represents a dangerous departure from the original; specifically, that it is loudly anti-white, and also anti-Semitic, and support the Palestinians. The NBPP is considered by the Southern Poverty Law Center to be a "black racist" hate group, and even many of the mildest critics of the organization seem to believe that, at the very least, the NBPP's provocative brand of black nationalism undermines other civil rights efforts. Though it is questionable whether or not the group speaks against white people or white racism, and does not seem to criticize white people the way white supremacist groups do unto black people.

[edit] Recent Controversies

Critics characterize what they see as the NBPP's actively destructive extremism by pointing to examples such as Muhammad's "Million Youth March", a youth equivalent of the Million Man March in Harlem in which 6000 people protested police brutality but also featured a range of speakers calling for the extermination of whites in South Africa. The rally ended in scuffles with the NYPD as Muhammad urged the crowd to attack those officers who had attempted to confiscate the NBPP members' guns. Chairs and bottles were thrown at the police but only a few in the conflict suffered injuries. Perhaps more significantly was the fact that Al Sharpton appeared and spoke at this event, and was criticized later for taking part in its controversial rhetoric. The Million Youth March became an annual event thereafter, but rapidly lost popularity as time progressed.

Following the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York City and Washington, DC, the party promoted the 9/11 conspiracy theory that 4,000 Israelis who worked at the World Trade Center were warned ahead of time by the State of Israel and called in sick the day of the attack — a theory made most widely known by Amiri Baraka in his poem "Somebody Blew Up America." [5] The party also participated in the Reparations marches on Washington in 2002 that drew crowds of tens of thousands of African-Americans from around the United States.

Earlier in 2006, the New Black Panther Party regained the media spotlight by interpolating itself into the 2006 Duke University lacrosse team scandal, organizing marches outside of Duke University and made numerous media appearances where they demanded that the jury organized by District Attorney Nifong convict the accused lacrosse players. [6] Malik Zulu Shabazz met with the DA and asserted repeatedly that the DA's answers meant he was supporting the claims made by the NBPP, a point that was widely disputed.

Most recently, the New Black Panther Party provoked a melee outside of Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney's campaign headquarters after she had lost a Democratic primary to her opponent, Hank Johnson. The NBPP's Chief of Staff, Hashim Nzinga, had been acting as security detail for the Congresswoman when, in a volatile confrontation, he physically attacked reporters, derogatorily calling them "Jews" and insisting that they must focus on Hank Johnson rather than on McKinney, since Johnson, he alleged, was a "Tom". [7] In a subsequent appearance on the Fox News Channel program Hannity & Colmes, Nzinga vociferously defended these actions and further accused his interviewers of being part of a Zionist media complex bent on defaming African-Americans and, by extension, the New Black Panthers.