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- Promotes anti-white and anti-Semitic hatred
- Calls for the abolition of capitalism
- Was involved in a controversial 2008 voter-intimidation case, later dismissed by Attorney General Eric Holder
See also: Khalid Abdul Muhammad Malik Zulu Shabazz
Founded in 1990, the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (NBPP) is a militant black separatist organization, notorious for promoting racial violence against Jews and whites. According to an Anti-Defamation League report:
"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."
NBPP preaches a “Ten-Point Platform” that includes such items as these:
- We want the power to practice self-determination, and to determine the destiny of our community and THE BLACK NATION.
- We want full employment for our people … We believe that since the
white man has kept us deaf, dumb and blind, and used every dirty trick
in the book to stand in the way of our freedom and independence, that we
should be gainfully employed until such time we can employ and provide
for ourselves.
- We believe that this wicked racist government has robbed us, and now we are demanding the overdue debt of reparations.
- We believe our people should be exempt from ALL TAXATION as long as
we are deprived of equal justice under the laws of the land and the
overdue reparations debt remains unpaid.
- We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings, [and] free health-care (preventive and maintenance).
- We want an end to the trafficking of drugs and to the biological and chemical warfare targeted at our people.
- We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this devilish and decadent American society.
- We believe that Black People should not be forced to fight in the
military service to defend a racist government that holds us captive and
does not protect us.
- We want an immediate end to POLICE HARRASSMENT, BRUTALITY and MURDER of Black People.
- We ... believe that all Black People should unite and form an African United Front and arm ourselves for self-defense.
- We believe that all Black People and people of color should be
released from the many jails and prisons because they have not received a
fair and impartial trial.
- WE DEMAND AN END TO THE RACIST DEATH PENALTY AS IT IS APPLIED TO
BLACK AND OPPRESSED PEOPLE IN AMERICA. [All emphases are in the
original.]
Another NBPP document, titled "The Nationalist Manifesto," asserts
that whites seek to exterminate people of African descent: "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."
Despite its name, NBPP is not a successor to the original Black Panther Party of the 1960s. Indeed, Black Panther co-founder Bobby Seale condemned NBPP for “hijacking our history” and “our name.” David Hilliard, also a former Panther and the Executive Director of the Huey P. Newton Foundation, similarly denounced
NBPP: “Failing to find its own legitimacy in the black
community, this band would graft the Party’s name upon itself, which we
condemn.”
NBPP's earliest roots can be traced to Michael McGee,
a former member of the original Black Panthers and a two-term Milwaukee city council member, who in 1990 recruited street-gang thugs and cobbled
together a "Black Panther Militia." "They already know how to shoot,"
said McGee. "I’m going to give them a cause worth dying for." Later that
year, McGee arranged
a meeting at a local public school to recruit additional members for
his new organization. "Our militia," he told those in attendance, "will
be about violence. I’m talking actual fighting, bloodshed and urban
guerilla warfare."
Inspired by McGee’s confrontational tactics, radio producer Aaron Michaels founded
a similar group in Dallas in 1990; the following year, he registered the New Black Panther Party
name. By the time it hosted a “National Black Power Summit and
Youth Rally” on May 29, 1993, Michaels’ Dallas outfit had given rise to a
national NBPP organization. McGee, who was a guest speaker at that event, claimed that there were now
NBPP chapters in some 20 cities across America. Michaels had become the
organization's acknowledged leader, and he soon recruited a number of
radical and outspoken racists to his cause.
Khalid Abdul Muhammad, a former spokesman for Nation of Islam (NOI) leader Louis Farrakhan, was one of the most prominent extremists to join NBPP in the mid-1990s. By 1998, Muhammad had become NBPP's chairman, with Aaron Michaels agreeing to take the lesser position of “Minister of Defense.” When Muhammad died of a brain aneurysm in February 2001, Malik Zulu Shabazz, Muhammad’s longtime protégé, succeeded him as chairman of the organization.
In the wake of the September 11, 2001,
terrorist attacks, NBPP promoted numerous conspiracy theories alleging Jewish complicity. NBPP officer Amir Muhammad, for instance, suggested that
Jews had been forewarned of the terror plot and thus stayed away from the attack sites on 9/11: "There are reports that as many as
3,000 to 5,000 so-called Jews did not go to work [at the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon] that day, and we need to take a serious look at
that."
NBPP has consistently maintained that Jews were "significantly and substantially" involved in the transatlantic slave trade. At an August 2002 slavery-reparations demonstration in the District of Columbia, Party members sold t-shirts that read: "How did we get to America? Heartless Christian Buyer, Ruthless Jewish seller."
NBPP's traditionally close ties to Louis Farrakhan and his Nation of Islam (NOI) became strained during Khalid Abdul Muhammad's tenure as Panther chairman. But relations between the two groups took a decided turn for the better in February 2005, when Farrakhan appointed Muhammad's successor, Malik Zulu Shabazz, as national co-convener of the 10th anniversary commemoration of NOI's Million Man March. Since then, Shabazz has been a frequent guest at NOI events, and, conversely, NOI representatives have also taken part in NBPP events.
In 2006, some NBPP members worked on the security entourage of Georgia congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, who was seeking re-election. After McKinney lost the Democratic primary in August to a fellow African American named Hank Johnson, one of those Panthers shouted expletives at the media, calling them "crackers" and telling them, "You got what you damn wanted. You got your Uncle Tom [a reference to Johnson], now go put your cameras on him." When a reporter subsequently asked McKinney why she thought she had lost the vote, an NBPP member interrupted, shouting, "Why do you think she lost? You wanna know what led to the loss? Israel. The Zionists. You. Put on your yarmulke and celebrate."
Also in 2006, NBPP organized a number of marches
outside Duke University and made numerous media appearances to demand
that a jury convict the three white Duke lacrosse team members
whom a black female had accused of rape. When the
prosecution's case ultimately collapsed in April 2007, and it became clear that
the defendants had been falsely charged, NBPP steadfastly maintained that the rich,
white families affiliated with Duke had placed political pressure on the
investigation and had forced the charges to be dropped.
On Election Day, November 4, 2008, NBPP was involved in a controversial incident outside an open polling station in Philadelphia, where Jerry Jackson (an elected member of Philadelphia’s 14th Ward Democratic Committee and an official Democratic Party polling observer) and Minister King Samir Shabazz (chairman of NBPP’s Philadelphia chapter) intimidated white voters with racial slurs (e.g., "white devils") and threats of violence. “You are about to be ruled by the black man [a reference to Barack Obama], Cracker!” they yelled at voters. Samir Shabazz, who brandished a police-style nightstick, was eventually led away by police.
On January 7, 2009, the Justice Department under President Bush filed criminal charges against Jackson, Minister Shabazz, and NBPP chairman Malik Zulu Shabazz for violating the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The failure of all three men to appear in court led to an order by U.S. District Judge Stewart Dalzell to seek judgments or sanctions against the three Panthers.
As of May 5, 2009, the Justice Department (which was now under President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder) was still considering the case. But in the middle of that month, the Department filed a notice of voluntary dismissal. It did ask for a default judgment against King Samir Shabazz, but limited the punishment to an order that he not exhibit a “weapon within 100 feet of any open polling location on any election day in the city of Philadelphia” until November 15, 2012.
In June 2010, J. Christian Adams, who had served in the Voting Section of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) for five years, resigned over what he called the “corrupt nature of the dismissal of the [Philadelphia] case.” Adams was one of the five lawyers who had initially begun litigating the case and had urged continuing it to the end, but he was overruled by associate attorney general Thomas Perrelli, an Obama appointee, and later by assistant attorney general Thomas Perez. In July 2010, Adams testified before the U.S. Civil Rights Commission that the DOJ had instructed attorneys in its civil rights division to ignore cases involving black defendants and white victims. According to Adams, the Obama DOJ had shown "hostility" to such cases "over and over and over again."
On September 21, 2010, NBPP members dined with Louis Farrakhan and Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at New York City's Warwick Hotel.
In March 2012, NBPP weighed in on the explosive case of Trayvon Martin, a black teenager who had recently been shot and killed under disputed circumstances by a "white Hispanic" named George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida. Declaring
that “White America” had “failed black people” for “400
years” and would no longer be permitted to “kill black children and
get away with it,” the Panthers initially
offered a $10,000
bounty for the “capture” of Zimmerman. Lest there be any
ambiguity about what was meant by “capture,” the group
not only demanded “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” but
also circulated a flyer
that read: “MURDERED in Cold BLOOD—Child killer of Trayvon
Martin—WANTED DEAD or ALIVE.” Soon thereafter, the Panthers upped
the ante to $1
million,
a sum which they expected to collect in donations “from the black
community [including] athletes and entertainers.” The Panthers’
southern regional leader, Mikhail Muhammad, said:
“He [Zimmerman] should be fearful for his life. You can’t keep
killing black children.”
On April 6, 2012, three NBPP leaders conducted a group phone call to
discuss a scheduled rally that was to be held in memory of Trayvon
Martin. During the course of that call, they said:
- "[I]f you are having any doubt about getting suited, booted, and
armed up for this race war that we’re in that has never ended, let me
tell you somethin…the thing that’s about to happen these honkies, these
crackers, these pigs, these people, these motherf***er[s]…it has been
long overdue.”
- "[W]e got to suit up and boot up…and get prepared for the war that
we’re in…this stuff got to boil over, and all your greats talked about
that happened to be bloodshed involved with revolution -- true
revolution means some bloodshed, so there‘s blood being spilled because
there’s a new life that is beyond this bloodshed."
- “And there are those who wish they could stand in this hour, to see
the destruction of the devil‘s world and the devil’s society -- and I‘m
ain’t talking about no dude underneath the ground with a pitchfork and
pantyhose. I’m talking about that blonde-haired, blue-eyed, sometimes
brown-eyed, Caucasian walkin' around with a mindset, a demonistic
mindset, and a nature to do evil and brutality.”
For additional quotes from the NBPP conference call, and to hear an audio recording of the call, click here.
Also on April 6, 2012, an NBPP leader called for "the complete removal of capitalism," on grounds that it "sets up a class structure and a class society" founded on "racism" and the exploitation of the "have nots."
In May 2012, NBPP's national field marshal, King Samir Shabazz, made a number of incendiary statements, including the following:
- “I
love white-on white-crime,
because that is the best crime, and we‘re going say ’black power’
to that. You understand what I mean?”
- “I
love black people, and
I hate the g*ddamn white man, woman, and child, grandma,
aunt, uncle, Pappa Billy Bob, and whoever else. Redneck Tom and
Blueneck Robert, and whoever else you wanna name. I hate the white
man. I hate the very look of white people. I hate the sound of white
people. G*ddamnit, I
hate the smell
of white people. I
hate the oppression of white people, I hate the murder and the rape
and the torture and the taking away of our names, our culture, our
God, our music and damn, I hate
this cracker for everything he has done to us.”
- “You should be thankful
we’re not running around here hanging
crackers by nooses
and all that kind of stuff, yet,
yet, yet.”
- “Some of us, some of
y’all –
are even scared to have a wet
dream about killing the g*ddamn cracker.”
- “We’re raising men and
women in this army, we don’t have time for punks. We
don’t allow fa*gots and lesbians in this army –
sorry,
wrong army. This is for black
liberation, not rainbow
liberation.”
- “Just imagine everybody
listening right now, you walk outside on your block in your hood,
and everybody on your block is now revolutionary. Everybody
on your block is ready to bang on this cracker.
Can you imagine what kind of community that would be? … That is
the kind of community our ancestors would be proud of.”
- “You can fight this white
man – and I’m not telling you to go out there and attack nobody –
but in self-defense it’s okay to fight back. We’re
taught to send this cracker to the cemetery; when he put his hand on
us, we send him to the cemetery in self defense.”
In a June 2012 segment on NBPP Radio, an NBPP member known as "General TACO" ("Taking All Capitalists Out") warned that his organization would “hunt” white people's “pink asses down” and kill them because of their “history” of pushing “crack, AIDS and unemployment“ on black people in order to ”exterminate” them. He then added: “Once [white people] die, we should dig ‘em up, and kill ‘em again, bury ‘em, dig ‘em up, and kill ‘em again, and again, and again!”
Over the years, NBPP leaders and representatives in New York have
worked with elected officials such as city councilman Charles Barron, who has appeared at a number of local NBPP events.
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