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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31065 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 16, 2023

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in-depth lessons on the Black Panther Party’s free breakfast and medical programs, often seen as taboo topics to cover in class because critics historically smeared the group as violent and communist.

Plenty of violent groups do good things for people in the 'hood. It gets them good publicity and a small core of supporters. Saddam Hussein created public welfare programs.

And Al Capone set up a soup kitchen precisely to repair his public image. That the Black Panthers were "smeared" as being violent and Communist is nonsense, they were Marxist-Leninist in ideology. As to violence, well - that's one of those 'six of one and half a dozen of the other' questions, but certainly they didn't think the struggle would be won by handing out flowers.

To add on to this, my understanding is that these supporters, esp. if geographically clustered well, enables the coverup of activities and other forms of support that allow the organisation to exist stably.

Some of it does make sense when one considers that many such societies started as kinship or mutual-aid organisations. It does seem like a pretty central modus operandi for underworld groups.

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