{"id":2256356,"date":"2024-05-31T02:40:02","date_gmt":"2024-05-31T06:40:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-big-cigar-and-the-bullshistory-of-the-black-panthers\/"},"modified":"2024-05-31T02:47:57","modified_gmt":"2024-05-31T06:47:57","slug":"the-big-cigar-and-the-bullshistory-of-the-black-panthers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-big-cigar-and-the-bullshistory-of-the-black-panthers\/","title":{"rendered":"The Black Panthers: The Big Cigar and Bullish Beginnings"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">18<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fthe-big-cigar-and-the-bullshistory-of-the-black-panthers%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2256356&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>In late 1977, before \u200dorchestrating a tragic mass suicide in a Guyanese \u200bjungle, Rev. Jim Jones tried\u2064 to uplift his homesick \u200bfollowers in Jonestown with celebrity guest appearances. Jones, known for his political influence and relations with prominent figures \u2063like Huey Newton, later fulfilled his promise \u2063of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/cuomo-blames-toxic-political-environment-amid-scandal-deaths-in-nursing-homes-accurately-reported\/\" title=\"Cuomo Blames \u2018Toxic Political Environment\u2019 Amid Scandal: Deaths In Nursing Homes \u2018Accurately Reported\u2019\">mass death<\/a>. Newton and Jones shared controversial and violent \u2063histories intertwined with political\u200b and criminal \u2064acts. The media coverage and portrayal of\u200d these events often \u2063shape the narrative differently than the historical reality.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>In late 1977, in the days before he suborned <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/suicide\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title>mass suicide<\/a> in a Guyanese jungle, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/opinion\/2634006\/how-san-franciscos-democrats-made-jim-jones-and-then-made-his-memory-vanish\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title>Rev. Jim Jones<\/a> tried to buoy the sagging spirits of his 900-plus homesick parishioners with a series of celebrity guest appearances, patched into the Jonestown encampment through a dodgy phone connection and an even dodgier PA system. Before migrating to South America \u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/news\/crime\/1441252\/crime-history-913-killed-in-jonestown-massacre\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title>Jonestown<\/a> was supposed to be a way station on route to the Soviet promised land \u2014 Jones operated the People\u2019s Temple church out of <a href=\"http:\/\/xaminer.com\/tag\/san-francisco\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title>San Francisco<\/a>, where he accumulated political influence with terrifying ease and charmed local progressive stars like future Mayor <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/opinion\/2378166\/kamala-harriss-willie-brown-affair-is-less-of-a-scandal-than-trumps-with-stormy-daniels\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title>Willie Brown<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/opinion\/595676\/angela-davis-and-the-future-of-the-womens-march\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title>Angela Davis<\/a>, and, from a remove of mutual admiration, Black Panther co-founder <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/opinion\/beltway-confidential\/2754596\/connecting-the-dots-between-fani-willis-and-unrepentant-communists\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title>Huey Newton<\/a>. \u201cI want the Guyanese government to know that you\u2019re not to be messed around with,\u201d Newton said to the adherents of the Peoples Temple down a crackling phone line. \u201cKeep strong and we\u2019re pulling for you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A handful of months later, Jones finally made good on his promise to conjure mass death, recording the gruesome proceedings for posterity. The recovered audio tape catches his last words, an homage to Newton, his new friend and ideological comrade, and his famous phrase: \u201cWe didn\u2019t commit suicide \u2014 we committed an act of <em>revolutionary suicide<\/em> protesting the conditions of an inhumane world.\u201d And that was it. The wailing believers, now bereft of revolutionary fervor and overwhelmed with panic, fell silent. <\/p>\n<figure><figcaption>Andr\u00e9 Holland in The Big Cigar (Apple TV+)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The 1970s was a deranged time in American history \u2014 the denouement of phony \u201860s radicalism, of revolutionary cosplay, when a handful of fanatic intellectuals decided to get their hands dirty and take up the gun, as advised by their <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/cuba\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title>Cuban<\/a> idols: <em>Seremos como el Che<\/em>. Be like Che. <\/p>\n<p>In the week following the Jonestown massacre, an unsigned editorial in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/new-black-panther-party\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title>Black Panther Party <\/a>newspaper, likely written by Newton, offered up a particularly demented variation of an already tired radical deflection \u2014 that if something bad happened, one should blame the hidden hand of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/cia\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title>CIA<\/a>: \u201cIt is quite possible that the neutron bomb was used [by the CIA] at Jonestown. The neutron bomb contains radioactive molecules, which, when released into the atmosphere, kill human beings \u2014 but do not destroy property. Mass genocide, not mass suicide, took place at Jonestown.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The affection between Newton and Jones is unsurprising. One wouldn\u2019t know it from the countless slobbering media productions \u2014 the pro-Panther films, TV shows, documentaries, plays, comic books \u2014 but Newton shared many traits with Jones beyond a penchant for paranoid conspiracy. They were both sexual predators who demanded unwavering loyalty from their adherents. (Jones was called \u201cFather,\u201d Newton \u201cthe Servant.\u201d) Both were political simpletons, convinced that a Marxist revolution was peering around every corner. Both were violent fanatics, employing the language of peace while viewing every disagreement, no matter how minor, as an act of war.<\/p>\n<p>In 1974, Newton\u2019s violent streak would again catch up with him when he was arrested for the murder of a 17-year-old prostitute \u2014 he punched her in the face, then shot her through the jaw \u2014 and the savage beating of his tailor, both of whom made the mistake of calling him \u201cbaby,\u201d an old childhood nickname he hated. Newton would later confess his guilt to party comrades in both cases, but only after jumping bail and fleeing the country with the help of his friend Bert Schneider, the Hollywood producer behind <em>The Monkees <\/em>and <em>Easy Rider<\/em>. He would find an eager protector in Cuban dictator Fidel Castro for the next three years. One of the few non-Panthers to visit Newton in Cuba? The Rev. Jim Jones.<\/p>\n<p>However, if you\u2019ve watched <em>The Big Cigar<\/em>, Apple TV+\u2019s scripted drama series purporting to tell \u201cthe incredible true story of Newton\u2019s escape to Cuba,\u201d the person described above will be unrecognizable. Based on a 2012 article by <em>Esquire <\/em>writer Joshuah Bearman, the six-episode series is, Apple says, a \u201cwild caper about Black Panther founder Huey P. Newton escaping from the FBI to Cuba with the assistance of famed producer Bert Schneider in an impossibly elaborate plan \u2014 involving a fake movie production \u2014 that goes wrong every way it possibly can.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Well, it <em>does<\/em> go wrong in every way it possibly can. <em>The Big Cigar <\/em>is needlessly long and impressively boring, offering a reverential history of the Panthers devoid of nuance and divorced from basic facts delivered by scenery-chewing actors saddled with cringe-inducing dialogue. <\/p>\n<p>In <em>The Big Cigar<\/em>, the benevolent and nonviolent Newton is constantly being \u201cframed\u201d by racist police officers working on behalf of a fascist system that, mysteriously, isn\u2019t fascist enough to keep him behind bars despite his habit of being found in close proximity to murdered political enemies. No one appears to have noticed that the country Newton hated with such vigor afforded him the rights he claimed didn\u2019t exist in America, while in the countries he admired \u2014 China, Cuba, North Korea \u2014 the filing of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/cbp-ice-release-reports-on-border-arrests-seizures\/\" title=\"CBP, ICE release reports on border arrests, seizures\">criminal charges<\/a> was deemed unnecessary since accusations also doubled as a verdict.<\/p>\n<p>Apple\u2019s<em> <\/em>Huey Newton is, predictably, a thoughtful and charming visionary set upon by a (very real) surveillance state that sought to destroy him and his comrades because, according to the script, they were merely \u201ctrying to help people.\u201d Newton\u2019s 1967 murder of Oakland police officer John Frey, which happened on his first day off of probation for an <em>attempted<\/em> murder of a black civilian who had disrespected him, is dismissed in the series as a crime \u201cpinned\u201d on him for being black and radical. <\/p>\n<p>What of the accusations that precipitated his escape to Cuba? Newton nearly killed his tailor, fracturing his skull in multiple places during a particularly severe pistol whipping, and <em>actually<\/em> killed 17-year-old prostitute Kathleen Smith.<\/p>\n<p>According to <em>The Big Cigar<\/em>, these were just more Amerikkkan conspiracies against the black power uprising: \u201cThey say I beat the tailor, but he denied it under oath. They threw me in jail anyway.\u201d Cut to Newton \u2014 the perpetually innocent, always misunderstood Newton \u2014 in a dank cell, being bloodied and bruised by a racist white police officer. The tailor, Preston Callins, did indeed deny under oath that \u201cthe Servant\u201d nearly killed him and definitely didn\u2019t fracture his skull in four places, but only after he was threatened by Newton and paid $6,000 to forget about the whole affair. <\/p>\n<p>And there is little doubt that Newton murdered Smith, but this, too, is presented as another crime \u201cpinned\u201d on an innocent revolutionary, for which he was \u201cacquitted\u201d upon return from Cuba. He wasn\u2019t. (A mistrial was called on procedural grounds, followed by two deadlocked juries and a prosecutor who refused to continue with the case.) Nor are viewers told that, before the trial, two Panthers were sent to <em>murder<\/em> the one witness who saw Newton pull the trigger, only to show up at the wrong address and engage in a gun battle with a confused-but-armed homeowner. One attempted assassin ended up dead, having been mistakenly shot by the other. Party veteran Flores Forbes escaped but was bleeding badly from a bullet hole in his hand. When a Panther named Nelson Malloy, who ran the party\u2019s free ambulance service, helped Forbes get treatment for his wounds, it was determined that he, too, would need to be silenced for knowing too much. He was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/suspect-in-fatal-shooting-of-iowa-officer-has-long-criminal-history\/\" title=\"Suspect in fatal shooting of Iowa officer has long criminal history\">shot multiple times<\/a> and left for dead, only to survive and be permanently consigned to a wheelchair. But the <em>Big Cigar<\/em> audience knows none of this and is meant to root for Newton as he sets out on his Cuba adventure and counts down his \u201c48 hours to freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When <em>The Big Cigar <\/em>shows Hollywood producer Bert Schneider facilitating Newton\u2019s escape, he does so alongside his partner, the left-wing screenwriter Artie Ross, portrayed by Olli Haaskivi, who is shown to be an initially reluctant co-conspirator but one ultimately convinced of Newton\u2019s moral righteousness. But Ross, who died in 2008, would likely have rankled at this portrayal. According to Ross\u2019s sister Dorien, despite his ideological sympathies, he understood that Newton was essentially one of the bad guys: \u201cArtie\u2019s take on Huey Newton was that he was a crazy person who had killed all the people he said he had killed. Artie felt that he was in the midst of an insane thing because this guy was off the wall, seriously paranoid, got in fights wherever they went.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s impossible to imagine a modern film in which the Panthers are the bad guys despite very often <em>being<\/em> the bad guys. The only film that treats the Panthers as anything other than heroes is a brief scene in <em>Forrest Gump, <\/em>where the group\u2019s fanaticism and extremist rhetoric are played for laughs, though there is no suggestion that the group is honeycombed with murderers and crooks. On a recent <em>PBS Newshour<\/em> segment on the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=RVrAJSNQhk8\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title>\u201cmisunderstood legacy\u201d<\/a> of the group, the academic Panther sympathizer interviewed bizarrely complains that \u201cpopular representations of the Black Panthers is wrong [because] so many people find out about the Panthers through <em>Forrest Gump<\/em>.\u201d <em>Time <\/em>magazine, too, recently called the Panthers the \u201cmost misunderstood civil rights groups in American history\u201d in a story trumpeting their \u201coverlooked health programs.\u201d NPR\u2019s <em>Weekend Edition<\/em> likewise claimed in 2016 that the group\u2019s \u201creputation has been mostly misunderstood.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s an odd but persistent talking point, and one not supported by any evidence, that the Black Panthers are routinely dismissed by the media as a ganglike organization, often governed by violent psychopaths (which would, in fact, be a faithful description of the group). So it\u2019s little surprise to see <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/arts\/television\/article-the-big-cigar-pulls-back-the-curtain-on-when-huey-p-newton-worked-with\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title>reviewers celebrating<\/a> <em>The Big Cigar <\/em>for \u201chelp[ing] balance some of the biased media coverage\u201d on the Panthers.<\/p>\n<p>The media coverage of the Panthers has generally overvalued their influence and achievement. As a political organization, the Panthers were entranced by an endless supply of bad ideas and lunatic ideologies, alternatively referring to themselves as Maoists, Stalinists, adherents of North Korean mysticism, and even declaring their solidarity with Pol Pot\u2019s genocidaires in Cambodia. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/magazine\/2130960\/still-marching\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title>Eldridge Cleaver<\/a>, the party\u2019s \u201cMinister of Information,\u201d once famously declared that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/msnbc-crackpot-has-bizarre-theory-about-roe-v-wade-and-white-supremacy\/\" title=\"MSNBC Crackpot Has Bizarre Theory About Roe V. Wade And White Supremacy\">raping white women<\/a>, for which he spent time in prison, was a \u201crevolutionary act.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Like Newton, Cleaver responded to various looming criminal charges by fleeing the United States, first making landfall in Cuba, where, unlike Newton, he was shocked by the \u201cnature of control that those state apparatuses had over the people.\u201d Cleaver\u2019s political pilgrimages had the appropriate effect on his worldview: \u201cAfter I ran into the Egyptian police and the Algerian police and the North Korean police and the Nigerian police and Idi Amin\u2019s police in Uganda, I began to miss the Oakland police.\u201d By the 1980s, Cleaver was expressing his fealty to the Reagan revolution, only a dozen years after he had branded the then-governor of California \u201ca punk, a sissy, and a coward.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Newton would have no such second thoughts, preferring to occasionally blather on about the not-so-imminent revolution as he attempted to take over Oakland\u2019s drug trade while at the same time becoming an inveterate drug user. <\/p>\n<p><em>The Big Cigar <\/em>ends with a wistful and happy Newton, quoting Frantz Fanon, living under Cuban communism, enumerating various Panther achievements. When the screen goes black, we\u2019re only told that Newton \u201ccontinued to fight for revolution\u201d until he \u201cwas murdered in West Oakland.\u201d Viewers could be forgiven for thinking that, at long last, the Oakland pigs or the racist power structure finally got to him. <\/p>\n<p>In fact, Newton didn\u2019t die for \u201cthe people,\u201d as he titled a 1972 book, nor did he commit \u201crevolutionary suicide\u201d like Jim Jones. The FBI had lost interest and the world had moved on. In 1989, Huey Newton, revolutionary manque and servant of the people, was shot three times in the head for repeatedly ripping off his crack dealer. It was an ignominious end to an ignominious life. <\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>Michael Moynihan is a host of <\/em>The Fifth Column<em> podcast.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In late 1977, before the tragic mass suicide in Guyana, Rev. Jim Jones sought to uplift 900 homesick followers in Jonestown with celebrity guests, using a shaky phone line and a faulty PA system. This moment preceded their migration<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3181,"featured_media":2256357,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/LA.TV_.bigcigar.jpg.optimal.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[538],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2256356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-washington-examiner"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/LA.TV_.bigcigar.jpg.optimal.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2256356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3181"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2256356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2256356\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2256357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2256356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2256356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2256356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}