Re: [sixties-l] Re: The Black Panthers (Horowitz reply)

From: sixties@lists.village.virginia.edu
Date: Tue Jun 13 2000 - 01:55:07 CUT

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    Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2000 18:02:43 -0700
    From: David Horowitz <Dhorowitz@earthlink.net>
    Subject: Re: [sixties-l] Re: The Black Panthers

    I guess Art gets a few special privileges ("intellectual dishonesty"
    "so-called analysis"). The difference you and me Art is that I gave you very
    concrete instances of Panther criminality, complete with references. I am
    attaching to this post my account of my life with the Panthers which you will
    see is full of the kind of detail that can be checked. You are an agnostic on
    whether the Panthers killed Betty Van Patter but I'll bet you can tell me
    whether Mumia or Angela Davis or the Rosenbergs are innocent or guilty. Why
    the big problem here. "Progressive" journalists like Hugh Pearson, David Weir,
    Ken Kelley and Hugh Pearson have all written about this case and confirmed
    what I have have reported. Before you sling abusive phrases like "intellectual
    dishonesty," have the courtesy to confront something I've said with a fact
    that refutes it.

    Why don't you try your hand at telling us why a black man like you should be
    so patronizing to Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, David Hilliard, Elaine Brown and
    other Panther leaders. Why would think that they are controlled by their
    "lumpen" status, and that criminality was not a choice they made of their own
    free will. Do think it serves the black communityh to have the three of them
    who are still alive touring the country lying about their pasts, pretending
    that the FBI destroyed a Party that they destroyed themselves?

    Hugh Pearson is a black journalist about your age who has written a book about
    the Panthers, based on interviews with the Panthers themselves. Pearson
    idolized them and set out to write a favorable book. What he came up with is
    pretty much what I have been saying for the last 20 years. If you are serious
    about finding out what happened, you will take a look at what Pearson has
    written.

    I don't think you understood my point about Melvin or others. I was answering
    your claim that "Society" is to blame for the Panthers' crimes. You're right
    that just because the Panthers were criminals doesn't in itself refute the
    idea of the left (I've made that argument at length in Radical Son and The
    Politics of Bad Faith). But it does suggest that the left's enemies in these
    battles -- particularly law enforcement -- were far more accurate in seeing
    who the Panthers were than the "freedom movement" as you call it. How are you
    going to do any better at changing the world (assuming that is a possibility)
    if you take an agnostic view of this past and refuse to come to terms with
    what the left actually did -- as opposed to what it claims to have done?

    On Machiavelli: Look, no political criminal ever said to himself I'm doing
    this for me. It's always for the cause. Well, I take that back. In Radical
    Son, I recount a scene that was reported to me by someone who was there. It
    was after Huey had killed the 18 year old Kathleen Smith -- a prostitute who
    made the mistake of calling him "baby" when he was high on cocaine. He told
    this friend of mine that this was the first time he had killed someone that
    was not for political reasons. Well, he had killed quite a few people,
    including Betty, and committed quite a lot of criminal mayhem (drive by
    shootings in which he shotgunned the doorman at an after hours club for
    example), that only a sociopath would call "political." And that's the
    problem.

    Young people like you have learned nothing from the past because like previous
    generations of leftists you are quick to dismiss the testimony of people like
    me, who are the only people who can tell you the truth. You don't have to
    agree with my conclusions, but you can't learn if you dismiss what I say
    without listening, which is what you have done so far.

    Art McGee wrote:

    <snip>



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