Workers World, Vol. 12, No. 19, November 27, 1970
As the Revolutionary People’s Constitutional Convention draws near, it is important to review the political attitude of some of the radical organizations toward the Black Panther Party. Some of these organizations have for a long time claimed to base themselves on the teachings of Marx and Lenin and some even on Mao. Three of these organizations is particular, the CP, the SWP and PLP, have been most vociferous in proclaiming themselves to be the true Marxists whose ideological and political hegemony the Black Panther Party must accept or else face certain disintegration and political doom.
Each of these organizations has professed, as the occasion has suited them, friendship, concern for the Panther defense, and on other occasions have even offered some help. These three organizations, although they vary in theoretical, political and tactical conceptions, have nevertheless one common denominator. While proclaiming friendship and even solidarity with the Panthers, their main thrust is to vilify and denounce them as “adventurers” and “individual terrorists” – code words for revolutionaries.
This is the sum and substance of the real relationships and political attitudes which the CP, the SWP and PL have maintained toward the Black Panther Party ever since its momentous rise and development as the most determined and revolutionary party of the Black people.
Careful examination of the official literature of these organizations in so far as it concerns the Black Panther Party shows that their assertions of friendship and solidarity against the unprecedented repression of the Black Panther Party are of a purely pro-forma character and merely designed to cover themselves.
Their real line is disguised but the Panthers are depicted as “adventurers,” “individual terrorists,” “sectarians,” “anti-working class,” “divorced from the mainstream of the people,” etc., etc.
Their most vicious and abusive attacks are against the well-known and popular slogan of the Black Panther Party of “pick up the gun.” Nothing enrages them so much as this popular slogan which has become the hallmark for revolutionary struggle against imperialism and has made the Panthers the object of worldwide sympathy and support by millions of oppressed people.
This line of attack by the CP, SWP and PL, which is masked by revolutionary phrases now and then, is nothing but a reflection in different words of fundamentally the same line which the imperialist establishment daily pours out through its media to vilify and slander the party.
While the racist, genocidal war machine of Nixon, Agnew and Mitchell daily visits death and destruction on the oppressed people both at home and abroad, they assign the task of preaching nonviolence, accommodation to the yoke of the oppressor, and slavish obedience to bourgeois legality to the liberal and radical apologists for imperialism.” Confine yourself to those tactics and avenues of struggle which the master class allots to you and don’t go beyond their restrictions.” This, in essence, is what the CP, SWP and PL have been urging the Panthers to do.
Now and then one of these groupings concocts a new stratagem to put across the same old line. In a long article in the Militant, November 27, the SWP has suddenly become aware of “the need to build a Panther defense.” The article devotes more than two and a half columns to presumably urge support for the Panthers. In reality, however, it is a vicious attack on the Panther leadership for presumably failing to build a nationwide defense campaign. And, of course, the article ends up with the usual tirade against “picking up the gun” and failing to have a program for “mass action.”
(It is also worth noting that will all their protestations about the need to build mass support for the Panthers, the SWP-YSA have been conspicuous by their absence at the demonstrations and rallies which have been held to mobilize support for the Panther Party under attack. In fact, the picture used by the Militant to illustrate the need for support actions is in reality a shot of a contingent of young people from Youth Against War & Fascism marching with signs, “Free the Black Panthers” and “End the Racist Frame-ups.”)
Nothing could be more cynical and disgusting than this rank hypocrisy. The attack of the CP, SWP and PL differ only in form, but the essence is the same. At a rally at the UN last Saturday, William Patterson of the CP could not resist attacking the Panthers just once more along the usual lines for urging the people to “pick up the gun.”
The Black Panther Party is not a bunch of individual terrorists, as the racist, imperialist media is forever telling the American people, nor are they committed to violence for the sake of violence, as radical apologists for the Establishment say. They are not adventurers nor are they isolated from the mainstream of Black people. As the Wall Street Journal showed last March in a poll taken by its own investigators, the majority of the Black people support the Panthers.
The Black Panther Party is conducting a resolute and determined revolutionary struggle for Black liberation. It is precisely for this reason that the government is using every device at its disposal in an attempt to exterminate them. Because the Black Panthers have dared to defend themselves they have earned the wrath of the entire imperialist establishment and all its lackeys. They have set an example of courage, fortitude and revolutionary determination unsurpassed in the annals of American history. In spite of all its frantic efforts, the Nixon-Agnew-Mitchell campaign of harassment, intimidation and outright assassination, the Black Panther Party lives. Its imprisoned leaders are undaunted.
In spite of the foulest frame-ups and persecution, the Black Panther Party has deep roots in the Black community and the terror of the government cannot sever these roots as was shown in Philadelphia and more recently in New Orleans. The people were standing behind the Black Panther Party in both these cities. The police, although armed to the teeth with the sanction of the entire government and geared to destroy the party in those cities, nevertheless were forced to back down.
These two victories are tremendously significant. They showed that the revolutionary determination of the Black Panther Party to stand its ground in defense of its rights and in defense of the rights of the people, forced the strongest imperialist power to back off. It showed, among other things, that their strategy is correct and appropriate to the form of struggle imposed upon them by the particular conditions prevailing in this country.
The urgent task right now is for all progressives and militants throughout the country to give unstinted and unconditional support to the heroic struggle of the Black Panther Party and to defeat the genocidal strategy of the Nixon-Agnew administration.
Long Live the Black Panther Party!
Free All Panther Prisoners!
Free All Political Prisoners!
Last updated: 11 May 2026