(Since writing this post on Monday night, several new and equally incendiary video clips have surfaced. Go to second page of post for updates.)
Too bad Leonard Bernstein isn’t still around — he’d love to have this fellow over for one of his Park Avenue “Black Panther fondue and Twister parties,” as Iowahawk so memorably put it:
[youtube mN67KJdd6Mw]
A Black Panther urging the taking of lives? Gee, that’s never happened before.
Back in 2005, on the 35th anniversary of the day the infamous party that Leonard and Felicia held to raise money for the original Panthers, I wrote:
Also attending was Tom Wolfe, who wrote the event up for an article originally published in New York magazine, called “Radical Chic.” Later that year, it would be published in book form, along with his “Mau-Mauing The Flak Catchers”, another article about similar (if more low-rent) shenanigans on the West Coast.You could make a pretty good argument (as I’m about to attempt) that “Radical Chic” was the most influential, or at least most significant, magazine article of the past forty years–and that it foreshadowed the next 34 years of American politics.
It helped that the timing of Wolfe’s article and book was exquisite. 1970 was the apex between two key presidential election years: two years after far left anti-war protestors attempted to disrupt the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and two years before its 1972 equivalent, where, as Ben Wattenberg said back then, “there won’t be any riots in Miami because the people who tried to riot in Chicago are on the Platform Committee.”
As Wolfe tells the story, he was visiting his wife-to-be while she was working at Vanity Fair, and noticed an invitation on journalist David Halberstam’s desk to a cocktail party and fundraiser to be put on by the Bernsteins to raise money for the Panthers. Wolfe was intrigued, and called the number on the invitation to RSVP. A voice on the other end took down his name and told him he was added to the list. He arrived, the Bernsteins had some idea of who he was from his New York and Esquire articles, and in plain sight, he pulled out his reporter’s notepad and ballpoint pen, and began to jot down the evening’s events.
“I was openly taking notes”, he recently said, “but they just assumed that if I was there for New York magazine it was because I must have approved of what they were doing.”:
I just thought it was a scream, because it was so illogical by all ordinary thinking. To think that somebody living in an absolutely stunning duplex on Park Avenue could be having in all these guys who were saying, ‘We will take everything away from you if we get the chance,’ which is what their program spelled out, was the funniest thing I had ever witnessed.
By the time of the 1972 presidential campaign, the ultra far-left anti-American politics that Wolfe observed in miniature in the Bernstein’s duplex would come to dominate the Democratic Party–to varying degrees, right up to the present day. As I wrote last month, that was the year where the wheels really came off the Democratic Party:
Radical chic and punitive liberalism became the norm, to the point where McGovern compared Ho Chi Minh to George Washington in a Playboy interview, and his aides took to wearing upside down flag pins on their lapels.This was a very different Democratic party from the New Frontier of JFK and LBJ’s Great Society which, while it was a little too big government for me (particularly as it ballooned under LBJ), had lots of redeeming qualities: they were patriotic; believed in strong defense at home and trying to spread democracy abroad; had a vigorous space program; and at least with JFK, were willing to cut taxes.
The election this past November may have been a watershed–the year that radical chic finally began to die. President Bush defeated a man who made first made his mark on the American stage in 1971 with a radical chic gesture of his own: as a Navy reserve officer excoriating US troops serving abroad, in front of the US Senate’s Committee on Foreign Relations.This is an extraordinary moment for the Democratic Party.
…Which, at least temporarily, they’ve weathered in a fashion as cool and crisp as one of Bernstein’s dry Martinis.
In 2006, Democrats were able to regain control of Congress by running candidates who talked a surprisingly moderate game, but would serve, as Kevin McCullough memorably and presciently dubbed them that November, as Nancy Pelosi’s “Crash Test Dummies.” They were followed by an even more centrist, moderate junior senator from Illinois, a man with a lifetime of executive experience who had absolutely no ties whatsoever to radical chic figures, racialist ministers, or even Chicago machine politics.
Longtime readers of my blog will know — and likely share — my fascination with history seeming to slow to a crawl after 1968. So much of the naughts seemed like we were reliving the late 1960s and 1970s over and over again. While drafting Radical Chic in the spring of 1970, I wonder if it ever occurred to Wolfe that we’d still be discussing the next generation of the Black Panthers forty farging years later? (Or that they’d have found a presidential candidate to endorse in 2008?)
Fortunately, one man is speaking out about them, even if his former employer looks the other way.
Update: As the logo in the lower right corner of the video at the top of the post highlights, the second half of the Naked Emperor News clip was taken from a show that aired on the National Geographic channel. You can watch another snippet of their 2009 program, “Inside the New Black Panthers”, here.
Update (7/9/10): Since writing this post on Monday night, several new clips have surfaced. Perhaps the most damning is this first one, spotted by Larry O’Connor of Big Journalism, who writes,“New Black Panther Party President Admits to Philadelphia Voter Intimidation; Holder’s Justice Department Still Silent:”
“You know we don’t carry batons…. PSYCHE! Heh heh heh… I’m just playin’” – Malik Zulu Shabazz, Preident of The New Black Panther Party.
The Justice Department has seen fit to drop voter intimidation charges against Malik Shabazz’ New Black Panther Party’s involvement in the now infamous events at a polling place in Philadelphia on November 4, 2008. In light of the recent testimony by former DOJ attorney J. Christian Adams before the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, the story is gaining further attention and scrutiny.
Now, Breitbart.tv is featuring a newly discovered video showing Shabazz boasting about his organizations intentions that day in Philadelphia.
“There were strong intelligence indicators that there was going to be some trouble at the polls and we wanted to make sure the police were not harassing our people so we wanted to go out and do what we could. It’s just that sometimes the New Black Panther Party, sometimes, whatever we do we just tend to do it kinda strong.”
Finally, Shabazz instructs his disciples that as soon as a “Black man” took over the Justice Department the charges were thrown out.
[youtube JunrpGf5QRc]
This new video is even more damning to the Obama Justice Department given the astounding testimony by Mr. Adams:
“I was told by Voting Section management that cases are not going to be brought against Black defendants for the benefit of White victims. That if somebody wanted to bring these cases, it was up to the US Attorney but the Civil Rights Division wasn’t going to be bringing it.”
Under these new revelations and the increasing pressure from the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, how long can Attorney General Eric Holder allow the perception to remain that crimes under his watch are only enforced if the victims and the perpetrators fit the correct racial profile?
Elsewhere, here’s video of “New Black Panther Chairman Malik Shabazz Praises Osama bin Laden.”
Move along, nothing to see here, either. He’s probably just a fan of of Sen. Patty Murray, the Washington State Democrat who praised Osama back in 2002.
And then there’s this. It’s a Website that proports to be the homepage of King Samir Shabazz, the brother of Malik Shabazz.
And finally, let’s get ready to rumble! In front of potentially several hundred thousand people, network cameras assigned to one of the highest rated cable TV news shows, not to mention a zillion flip cams carried by attendees:
[youtube nc0l_a5yt-c]
As Dan Riehl writes:
Priceless. There’s a black American president for the first time in history – and the new black panther party is ready to rumble with the Tea Party movement on the DC Mall in September. This dumb-ass couldn’t do a better job of marginalizing his group if he tried. Of course, Obama is trapped after having protected them with his DOJ. And a racial confrontation is the last thing Democrats want in September before the mid-terms.
This is so good for the GOP, the idiot must be a plant.
Heh.™
At Hot Air, Ed Morrissey adds:
I’d say that the confrontation will be interesting … and almost entirely one-sided. Beck will probably draw hundreds of thousands of Tea Party supporters to the Mall for his speech, regardless of whether he calls it a Tea Party or not, while Shabazz might draw dozens of his followers. The NBPP chair may wind up outperforming Beck in terms of percentage of overall followers, but that will be the only way Shabazz will outperform Beck.
Shabazz’ contention that Beck shouldn’t be allowed to speak at the Mall on any day certainly gives a revealing look into the oppressive Utopia envisioned by the NBPP, but it’s hard to take seriously someone who has appeared 20 times on Hannity’s TV show that Fox News has a “conspiracy” to keep him off the air — and to hint that it’s a Zionist conspiracy is even more hilarious. To the extent they’re aware of Shabazz at all, it’s probably just to recognize that he’s too ridiculous to put on the air.
I dunno — he and his brother have made quite an impression on YouTube already.
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