wrobert at uci.edu wrote:
>
> Carrol, I know that you have said that this is your last word on the
> matter, but I am curious about your take on the use of the word 'fascism'
> by the panthers in the 70's to try to put together a left coalition (I
> can't remember if it was a faction of the panthers or not). robert wood
[I already posted one more, so ...]
I had and have immense respect for the Panthers, and I think some aspects of their work still point usefully to future possibilities. I knew a number in person, and nothing in the '60s hurt (and still hurts) like the murder of Fred Hampton. But their very strengths and successes showed most vividly what all of us in the '60s lacked -- any sense of history. Within this fundamental (but in the circumstances unavoidable) weakness it is sort of pointless to identify this or that particular error, blunder, idiocy, etc.
Within that historical vacuum, and suffering from the repression that came down on the Panthers (combined with the unwillingness and/or inability of white leftists to offer much support, it makes sense that the Panthers would see themselves confronted with Fascism. But in this long lull (beginning with the defeat of the ERA) we should have had/do have the space within which to acquire a bit more sophistication. It is about time that leftists learn that the date is no longer 1932. The CP began correcting the supposed ultra-leftism of that period by plunging into the embrace of the DP, and it seems too many u.s. leftists have never quite escaped from that 1936 travesty but obsessively repeat it.
Carrol