The New Black Panther Party - Radical Muslim Based

By Ed Blazejewski

The New Black Panther Party (NBPP), whose formal name is the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, is a U.S.-based organization founded in Dallas, Texas in 1989. Despite its name, NBPP is not an official successor to the Black Panther Party. Members of the original Black Panther... Party have insisted that this party is illegitimate and have vociferously objected that there "is no new Black Panther Party". The Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center identified the New Black Panthers as a hate group. The NBPP attracted many breakaway members of the Nation of Islam when former NOI minister Khalid Abdul Muhammad became the national chairman of the group from the late 1990s until his death in 2001. The NBPP is currently led by Malik Zulu Shabazz, and still upholds Khalid Abdul Muhammad as the de facto father of their movement.

The New Black Panther Party self-identifies with the original Black Panther Party and claims to uphold its legacy. It also says that many others see the organization this same way. But the NBPP is apparently largely seen by both the general public and by prominent members of the original party as illegitimate. Huey Newton Foundation members, containing a significant number of the original party's leaders, once successfully sued the group, though their ultimate objective in doing so — to prevent the NBPP from using the Panther name — appears to have been unsuccessful. In response to the suit, Aaron Michaels branded the original Panthers "has-been wannabe Panthers", adding: "Nobody can tell us who we can call ourselves."

Although it says it sees capitalism as the fundamental problem with the world and "revolution" as the solution, the new party does not draw its influences from Marxism or Maoism as the original party did. Instead, in a carefully-worded, roundabout form of ethnic nationalism, they say that Karl Marx based his ideology and teachings on indigenous African cultures, and that the NBPP therefore need not look to Marxism or Maoism as a basis for their program, but can look to ideologies that stem directly from those African origins. The NBPP says it fights the oppression of black and brown people and that its members are on top of current issues facing black communities across the world. Also, it points to not all of its members being NOI, though the group acknowledges universal "spirituality" practices within the organization.

Over time, many groups subscribing to varying degrees of radicalism have called for the "right to self-determination" for black people, particularly US blacks. Critics of the NBPP say that the group's politics represent a dangerous departure from the original intent of black nationalism; specifically, that they are starkly anti-white, and also anti-Semitic. The NBPP is considered by the Southern Poverty Law Center to be a "black racist" hate group, and even many of the mildest critics of the organization have said that, at the absolute least, the NBPP's provocative brand of black supremacy undermines other civil rights efforts. Members have referred to "bloodsucking Jews", and Khalid Abdul Muhammad has blamed slavery and even the Holocaust on the "hooked-nose, bagel-eating, lox-eating, perpetrating-a-fraud, so-called Jew"."

The Southern Poverty Law Center, a NBPP critic, has pointed to NBPP members stating sympathy or understanding of Kamau Kambon's advocacy of the genocide of whites[citation needed], and Khalid Abdul Muhammad in his statement that "there are no good crackers, and if you find one, kill him before he changes."tatement that "there are no good crackers, and if you find one, kill him before he changes."

Critics have called the NBPP extremist, citing Muhammad's "Million Youth March", a youth equivalent of the Million Man March in Harlem in which 6,000 people protested police brutality but also featured a range of speakers calling for the extermination of whites in South Africa. The rally ended in scuffles with the New York Police Department as Muhammad urged the crowd to attack those officers who had attempted to confiscate the NBPP members' guns. Chairs and bottles were thrown at the police but only a few in the conflict suffered injuries. Al Sharpton appeared and spoke at this event, and was criticized later for taking part in its controversial rhetoric. The Million Youth March became an annual event thereafter, but rapidly lost popularity as time progressed.Former Nation of Islam and New Black Panther Party member, King Samir Shabazz, had a long history of confrontational racist behavior, advocating racial separation and making incendiary racial statements while promoting anti-police messages in the media and on the streets of Philadelphia.

Reacting to a video of two representatives of the New Black Panther Party positioned outside of a polling place on Election Day in 2008 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, one of which was armed with a nightstick, who called themselves "security" when questioned by a bystander with a camera, he referred to their actions as voter intimidation. He also spoke of the major differences between the methods of the original Black Panthers and the New Black Panthers, particularly the differences in their 10 Point Plans. Before the close of the interview, Seale re-iterated that there is no connection between the original Black Panther Party for Self-Defense and the New Black Panther Party.