The Ku Klux Klan rallied on one side. The New Black Panthers rallied on the other.
Jonathan Bernstein watched from the middle as the white extremist group and the black extremist group spread their anti-Semitic rhetoric in the streets of Jasper, Texas, in 1998.
“It was like a circus,” remembered Bernstein, executive director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Central Pacific region in San Francisco and former head of the ADL in Houston. “The Klan was having their typical rally and the New Black Panthers were marching down the street towards them with rifles and bullhorns yelling things at them.”
The reason for the rally was the murder of African-American James Byrd Jr. by white supremacists in Jasper — a place Bernstein described as “a sleepy town, where even a sneeze would get media attention.” The New Black Panthers successfully capitalized on the opportunity to juxtapose themselves against the better-known KKK.
But the New Black Panthers, “who can whip crowds into very disturbing, emotional, anti-Jewish frenzies,” has been well known to the ADL since they emerged about 10 years ago, said Bernstein. “They are extreme anti-Semites with a lot of paranoia.”
He noted, however, that these extremists have no relation to the original Black Panther Party, born in Oakland during the 1960s to defend legal rights for black people.
And that’s why former leaders of the original party are currently threatening legal action against these “crazy, anti-Semitic, neo-fascist guys,” said David Hilliard, former chief of staff of the original Black Panthers. A list of complaints including copyright and trademark infringement and unfair competition were to be made public during a press conference yesterday.
“The Black Panthers considered the Jewish people our coalition partners. We supported browns, Asians, whites, working class, gays, women and Jews,” said Hilliard, who serves as executive director of the Oakland-based Huey P. Newton Foundation, holder of the Panthers’ name, logo and records. “The New Black Panthers have taken our image and bastardized it with their anti-Semitism and their support of terrorism. They have taken our name simply because they can use it to get instant validation. Otherwise they have no connection to us.”
However, Hilliard said there is a whole generation of youth who assume the New Black Panthers is connected to the original Black Panthers. It is time, he said, for the Black Panthers to reclaim its legacy and “recycle our vision of multiculturalism.”
Bernstein is not surprised the original Black Panthers is upset that the New Black Panthers is using its name “to advance their cause of hatred and anti-Semitism.” He applauded the group for disassociating itself and taking action against the New Black Panthers.
Bernstein described a speech once given by the New Black Panthers’ founder, the late Khalid Muhammad — a former aide to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan — as “the most vile, hateful attack on Jews you can possibly imagine.”
The hatred has not ended with the death of Muhammad, he said. After Muhammad’s death in February 2001 the group was taken over by Malik Zulu Shabazz, also a former follower of Farrakhan, who among other things, appeared on C-SPAN in October 2001 equating Zionism with racism.
“He can go off for hours on how Jews are controlling the world,” said Bernstein.
In 1997, Shabazz was on a flight to Austin, Texas, to give a speech at the two-year anniversary rally for the Million Man March. But it was delayed and he did not make it in time. Shabazz, said Bernstein, was quoted the next day in an Austin newspaper saying the ADL and then-Gov. George W. Bush “forced the delay” of his airplane.
And according to the ADL’s Web site, Shabazz said in a speech at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 31, 2001, that “Zionism is imperialism and support for Zionism is the root of why so many were killed on Sept. 11.”
Overall, however, Bernstein said he believes the New Black Panthers is a rather small operation. Like many extremist groups, though it claims to have 35 chapters nationwide, “one gets the impression that if Shabbazz were to fold up his tent there would no longer be a New Black Panther Party.”
Still, there is concern on the part of the ADL that the New Black Panthers is “so extreme they get more attention than they deserve.”
So the ADL will continue to monitor the group and actions of Shabazz, as well as the possible legal action on the part of the original Black Panthers.