It's not easy to sum up neatly the Black Panther Party of the late 1960's and early 1970's: they were Marxist ideologues, militant revolutionaries, black nationalists and grassroots community activists; but within the Party's ranks there were also plenty of two-bit hustlers and hoodlums who were more than willing to knock off a liquor store... in the name of the cause. The Party's leaders such as Huey Newton, Bobby Seale and Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver were all icons of the "revolutionary" counterculture of the day; and their rhetoric and actions were extremely influential on the generation coming of age during the "protest years"... it's hard to believe those stoned hippies have become the self-serious old folks who hold so many positions of power and influence today. At the time, the Black Panther Party seemed to be a real force to be reckoned with as they framed the political debate largely on their own terms; but, ultimately, their leader's increasingly confused politcal message, the Party infighting, the senseless deaths, the anarchic violence, the stupid petty-criminality -- the sheer inanity of it all -- undermined and overshadowed any constructive (if woefully misguided) aims the Party may have once held. Political activism collapsed into self-indulgent gangsterism, and the Black Panther Party for Self Defense faded away.
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