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href="https://dukeupress.wordpress.com/2017/01/26/the-black-panther-party-and-black-anti-fascism-in-the-united-states/">https://dukeupress.wordpress.com/2017/01/26/the-black-panther-party-and-black-anti-fascism-in-the-united-states/</a></font>
<h1 id="reader-title">The Black Panther Party and Black
Anti-Fascism in the United States</h1>
<div id="reader-credits" class="credits">January 26, 2017<br>
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<h4>Today’s guest post comes to us from Robyn C. Spencer,
author of the new book <em><a
href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-revolution-has-come?utm_source=blog&utm_medium=blog%20post&utm_content=b-BlackAntiFascism_Jan17">The
Revolution Has Come: Black Power, Gender, and the
Black Panther Party in Oakland</a></em>.</h4>
<p>Fascism has been thrust into the mainstream political
vocabulary of the United States after the election of
President Donald Trump on a platform grounded in
xenophobia, corporate dominance, and right wing white
nationalism. After the election, search engines and
online dictionaries reported a <a
href="http://college.usatoday.com/2016/11/14/troubling-words-looking-up-trump-merriam-webster/">dramatic
increase</a> in users seeking to define the term. News
outlets from <em>Al Jazeera</em> (“<a
href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/11/foul-stench-fascism-161110100340474.html">The
Foul Stench of Fascism in the Air</a>”) to <em>Forbes</em>
(“<a
href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2016/05/31/yes-a-trump-presidency-would-bring-fascism-to-america/#4ba2503d2a75">Yes,
a Trump presidency would bring fascism to America</a>”)
to the <em>Washington Post</em> (“<a
href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/donald-trump-is-actually-a-fascist/2016/12/09/e193a2b6-bd77-11e6-94ac-3d324840106c_story.html?utm_term=.96b8b4cc50b8">Donald
Trump is actually a fascist</a>”) published articles
analyzing how Trump fits into fascist paradigms. Most
recently, <em>The Nation</em> (“<a
href="https://www.thenation.com/article/anti-fascist-activists-are-fighting-the-alt-right-in-the-streets/">Anti-Fascists
Will Fight Trump’s Fascism in the Streets</a>”)
chronicled the long history of anti-fascist organizing
in Europe and the United States to inspire activists
engaged in resistance at this political moment. Black
history has been marginalized in this burgeoning
contemporary discourse about fascism. Analyses of the US
as fascist have a long history in the Black intellectual
tradition. Black thinkers like Harry Hayward, Claudia
Jones, George Jackson and Kuwasi Balagoon <a
href="https://libcom.org/library/black-radical-tradition">used
fascism as an analytical framework</a> to understand
the rise of segregation in the South after
Reconstruction; white populism at the turn of the 19<sup>th</sup>
century; land and labor struggles in the Black Belt
South, and the evolution of capitalism in the 1970s.</p>
<p>The Black Panther Party played a prominent role in the
modern history of Black anti-fascism. Panther leaders
were deeply influenced by “The United Front Against
Fascism,” a report by Georgi Dimitroff delivered at the
Seventh World Congress of the Communist International in
July-August 1935.</p>
<p>By 1969, the Panthers began to use fascism as a
theoretical framework to critique US political economy.
They defined fascism as “the power of finance capital”
which “manifests itself not only as banks, trusts and
monopolies but also as the human property of FINANCE
CAPITAL – the avaricious businessman, the demagogic
politician, and the racist pig cop.” The <em>Black
Panther</em> newspaper began to feature excerpts from
Dimitroff’s writings and articles with titles such as
“Fascist Pigs must withdraw their troops from our
communities or face the wrath of the armed people,”
“Students Struggle Against Fascism,” and “Medicine and
Fascism.” The Panthers advertised local showings of
films like <em>Z</em> about fascism in Greece and used
their iconic artwork as a cultural tool to <a
href="http://www.itsabouttimebpp.com/BPP_Newspapers/pdf/Vol_III_No7_1969.pdf">visually
demonstrate anti-fascist resistance</a>.</p>
<p>In July 1969 close to 5,000 activists from
organizations like the Black Students Union, Communist
Party USA, Los Siete de la Raza, Southern Christian
Leadership Conference, Students for a Democratic
Society, Third World Liberation Front, Young Lords,
Young Patriots, Youth Against War and Fascism, and the
Progressive Labor Party flocked to Oakland, California’s
Municipal auditorium in response to the Black Panther
Party’s call for allies to gather and strategize against
fascist conditions in the United States. This <a
href="https://diva.sfsu.edu/collections/sfbatv/bundles/207569">United
Front Against Fascism</a> (UFAF) conference was an
important moment in the history of the Black Freedom
movement and the New Left. The Panthers hoped to create
a “national force” with a “common revolutionary ideology
and political program which answers the basic desires
and needs of all people in fascist, capitalist, racist
America.” At the opening session, Seale called for unity
of action arguing that “we will not be free until Brown,
Red, Yellow, Black, and all other peoples of color are
unchained.”<br>
</p>
<div data-shortcode="caption" id="attachment_17031"
class="wp-caption alignright">
<p class="wp-caption-text">The Black Panther Party, the
International Liberation School, and the National
Committees to Combat Fascism, “Poster for the National
Conference for a United Front Against Fascism,”
Student Digital Gallery, accessed January 23, 2017, <a
href="https://digitalgallery.bgsu.edu/student/items/show/6582"
rel="nofollow">https://digitalgallery.bgsu.edu/student/items/show/6582</a></p>
</div>
<p>On the first day of the UFAF Panther leaders, activist
professors, movement lawyers, labor activists, radical
politicians and others addressed the crowd in the large
auditorium until midnight. The second day was organized
into workshops on fascism and women, workers, students,
political prisoners, political freedom, health and
religion. Vigorous debates erupted between conference
attendees over Marxist theory; the “male showmanship” of
some speakers; the structure of the conference; and the
implications of community control of the police. Some of
the most provocative discourse at the UFAF came out of
the women’s workshop where Panther women discussed male
supremacy as a reflection of capitalism and argued that
“<a
href="http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520293281">there
cannot be a successful struggle against Fascism unless
there is a broad front and women are drawn into it.</a>”
The role of state repression in stifling dissent was a
central theme and many speakers touched on the issue of
political prisoners as evidence of the operation of
fascism in the United States.<sup> </sup>The Panthers,
under heavy infiltration and attack by the FBI’s
counterintelligence program by this time, positioned
combatting state violence as the core of anti-fascist
organizing.</p>
<p>This orientation was evident on the last day of the
conference which was devoted to the Panthers detailed
plan to decentralize police forces nationwide. They
proposed amending city charters to establish autonomous
community based police departments for every city which
would be accountable to local neighborhood police
control councils comprised of 15 elected community
members. They launched the National Committees to
Combat Fascism (NCCF), a multiracial nationwide network,
to organize for community control of the police.</p>
<p>After the conference inquiries about starting NCCF
chapters flooded into Oakland from Salt Lake City, Utah;
Albany, New York; Las Vegas, Nevada; Toledo, Ohio;
Sunflower, Mississippi; Keatchie, Louisiana; Erie,
Pennsylvania; Richmond, Virginia; St. Louis, Missouri
and Austin, Texas. The NCCFs offered a multiracial group
of local activists around the country a new avenue of
involvement in Black Power politics at time when the
Panthers had launched purges and membership freezes to
combat infiltration from COINTELPRO. By April 1970, the
FBI recorded 18-22 NCCFs around the country. The story
of these NCCF chapters is <a
href="http://www.upress.state.ms.us/books/1288">best
seen in local BPP history</a>. Each chapter evolved
differently. Some attracted activists of color and
eventually dovetailed into de facto Panther chapters
like in Louisiana and Detroit, and others remained a
separate organization that served as a base for militant
whites allies, like the Berkeley NCCF which rallied
enough votes to <a
href="http://www.itsabouttimebpp.com/our_stories/Chapter1/The_iccf.html">put
the Panther’s plan for community control of the police
on the ballot</a>.</p>
<p>It is unclear to what extent the NCCFs fueled an
increased engagement with fascism at the grassroots
level and how the solidarity politics of the United
Front evolved over time. The conference solidified the
Panthers’ alliance with the Los Siete Defense Committee.
The August 16, 1969 issue of <em>The Black Panther</em>
included “Basta Ya,” a newsletter in Spanish that was
produced by Los Siete supporters which contained updates
on the case, and announced community programs initiated
by the Defense Committee, such as a Panther inspired
Breakfast for Children Program in the Mission District
in San Francisco. The rich potential of the Panthers
efforts was derailed by COINTELPRO. Several FBI agents
surveilled UFAF events. One agent, Thomas Edward Mosher,
infiltrated the Panthers’ pre-conference planning
structure, insinuating himself as a liaison between
groups and attending meetings in leaders’ homes. Heavily
infiltrated by FBI agents whose goal was to collect
information, derail political action, foment violence
and plant seeds of suspicion and decimated by raids and
arrests of Panthers nationwide, the Panthers shifted
gears. In response to critics inside and outside of the
BPP about the majority white attendance at the UFAF, the
Panthers sought to find common ground with Black people
who could “relate to the social practice of 400 years of
brutality and murder perpetrated on us by the fathers of
fascism,” yet felt alienated from the Panthers’ lexicon.
The history of how the Panthers organized against
fascism locally and nationally in Panther chapters and
NCCF offshoots is essential at this political moment but
remains elusive in both history and memory.</p>
<p>In late January 2017, <a
href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/americans-worried-fascism-231852728.html">fascism
remains in the top 1% of words searched in the US</a>
according to Merriam-Webster, leading one news article
to opine that “Americans Worried About Fascism.” Yet the
<a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Front_Against_Fascism">UFAF’s
Wikipedia page</a> is two sentences long and does not
even acknowledge that the Panthers were the main impetus
behind the conference. The NCCFs don’t even have a
Wikipedia page. The history of the UFAF demonstrates
that discussions about fascism in the US are nothing
new. It shifts the discussion of fascism away from an
American exceptionalist terrain where the US is compared
with Europe and government structures or despotic
leaders are analyzed and instead demonstrates the value
of unearthing manifestations of fascism in the lived
experiences of Black people in the US. Perhaps most
importantly, this brief glimpse into the UFAF’s history
reveals the multiplicity of tactics that the Panthers
used to combat fascism including visual culture,
political education, and grassroots campaigns against
state violence. If the growing resistance movement to
Trump’s fascism is to realize its potential for societal
transformation, it must draw from the deep well of Black
anti-fascist resistance.</p>
<p><em>To read more of Robyn Spencer’s work on the Black
Panthers</em>,<em> <a
href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-revolution-has-come">pick
up </a></em><a
href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-revolution-has-come?utm_source=blog&utm_medium=blog%20post&utm_content=b-BlackAntiFascism_Jan17">The
Revolution Has Come</a><em><a
href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-revolution-has-come">
for 30% off</a> using coupon code <strong>E16SPNCR</strong>.
You can <a
href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/Assets/PubMaterials/978-0-8223-6286-9_601.pdf?utm_source=blog&utm_medium=blog%20post&utm_content=b-BlackAntiFascism_Jan17">read
the book’s introduction here</a>.</em></p>
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