Reading about the fascinating 60s radicalism, I found a group called the “White Panther Party.” They had a 10-point manifesto stating:
Full endorsement and support of the Black Panther Party’s 10-point program and platform.
Total assault on the culture by any means necessary, including rock and roll, dope, and fucking in the streets.
Free exchange of energy and materials—we demand the end of money!
Free food, clothes, housing, dope, music, bodies, medical care—everything free for every body!
Free access to information media—free the technology from the greed creeps!
Free time & space for all humans—dissolve all unnatural boundaries!
Free all schools and all structures from corporate rule—turn the buildings over to the people at once! 8. Free all prisoners everywhere—they are our comrades!
Free all soldiers at once—no more conscripted armies!
Free the people from their phony “leaders”—everyone must be a leader—freedom means free every one! All Power to the People!
Did they really believe in freeing all prisoners? Is this just talking about political prisoners, or do they genuinely mean all prisoners in state and federal prisons? How could anyone really believe the latter?
Elsewhere in the article, it say they were in favor of firearms. Did they believe in total anarchy and every man for himself?
Based on the other points in their manifesto, I’m pretty sure they did mean everyone.
I’m sure that they believed that, if everyone was truly free, with everything provided at no charge (see points 3-5), that it’d be a groovy utopia, and crime would cease to exist. (Whether that was a realistic belief or not is another discussion entirely… )
Yeah, you are missing a big part of the picture. Once the barriers were broken down, no would would have to worry about things like working or money so there would be no need for crime and it would just go away because everyone is good on the inside unless they are oppressed by the man. I never did figure out what people were supposed to do all day in this society other than take drugs, have random sex, and listen to music. Some people give philosophies like this including true communism the courtesy of serious debate but I think that is about as effective as taking any group crackpots seriously.
So did they even believe that, say, white racist terrorists who were imprisoned for raping and murdering black families should be released? Did they think that guys like James Earl Ray deserved to be released? Soldiers locked up in military penitentiaries for committing atrocities against civilians? Sociopathic predators who needed to kill people the same way you and I need to eat food and drink water?
As the Cold War was at its height at that time, even a few of the demands becoming reality, or the attempt at disrupting American society itself would have been of great use to the Soviet Union.
Clearly, you aren’t taking enough of the good stuff for this to make sense to you. Or, at least, you aren’t taking as much of the good stuff as those guys were back then.
But, seriously, there are so many logical flaws in their premises (see some of what Shagnasty pointed out, for starters), that this particular one pales in comparison.
Freeing all prisoners is not the most ridiculous or impossible of their stated goals. Numbers 1 and 2 are the only ones they could even begin to effect. Whatever they believed, it’s pretty clear they didn’t give it much thought beyond “I want this.”
I don’t know about all prisoners, but I remember a fair amount of rhetoric that all black prisoners should be released because all black prisoners were political prisoners. Hard to know how seriously they meant it.
Are you implying that the Soviet Union “put them up to it?” Because that is certainly wrong.
**Argent Towers **is on the right track with the idea of anarchy. To be exact, it was a poorly thought out idea of a utopian society where basic needs are taken care of, people are free to assume their own fulfillment, and all sorts of other good stuff naturally happens.
It bore about as much relationship to genuine political philosophy as the flying cars in Popular Mechanics had to the 1967 Camaro., and the Soviet Union took it just about that seriously.
To be fair, they eventually got #9. AmeriKKKa did get rid of its conscripted army. Look how well that worked out for the revolution.
While rhetoric like this does reflect some elements of the actual beliefs of some radicals, it’s important to recognize that it’s in large part political trolling: making the most extreme statements possible in order to piss off The Man. I doubt that even the most extreme and naive radicals meant it as a literal model for a future society. This essay may give better insight into what the White Panthers really represented.
This is just silly. If the Soviets were going to promote a political group, surely it would be one whose demands weren’t such extreme and ridiculous, and one that had a better chance to be taken seriously. The White Panthers were a tiny group that never had an extensive following.
Bear in mind that law enforcement would create these groups, just to see what would come out of the woodwork. The Utah Communist party was disbanded when its 8 members realized they were all planted in it by one government agency or another.
You realize this was probably about 5 guys, on acid, do you? This sort of stuff does not represent “the left,” or even “the far left,” even as it was in the crazy times of the late '60s.
As Colibri says, inasmuch as there was any real purpose behind it at all, it had more in common with trolling than actual political sloganizing.
I would guess that celebrity support for Sinclair had far more to do with the fact that he was the manager of a rock band who had been convicted for marijuana possession than any sympathy for his political manifesto or support for the White Panthers as a group.
Steven Pinker tells a story when he was growing up that he was an anarchist. He once was having an argument with his parents about the police. He made the statement that if the police disappeared, they personally wouldn’t be committing crimes. Therefore, the police were unnecessary.
His theory was later tested when the Montreal Police struck in 1969. Immediate chaos reigned as people rioted and looted. The incident colored his perceptions about man and the need for authority.
Weird connections. I’ve read some of the SF and horror novels written by Mick Farren. But until reading the Wikipedia articles on the White Panthers, I hadn’t known he was a sixties radical.
As for sociopaths with a need to kill, remember it was a different time back then. Homosexuality was a mental illness, autism was caused by cold distant mothering and people believed in total equality of the sexes. We now know this is wrong. Even the sexes being equal, men and women are phyically wired to think differently. One is not better or worse, it’s just different.
So it’s not hard to see how they people believed a change in thinking is all that was needed
Of course it all is about on the same level as if you said, we don’t need policemen, IF everyone would just obey the law. Well that’s right, but not doable.
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