I'd been looking for this quote!

I will say that it should never be easy for them to destroy us. If you start with Malcolm X and count all of the brothers who have died or been captured since, you will find that not even one of them was really prepared for a fight. No imagination or fighting style was evident in any one of the incidents. But each one that died professed to know the nature of our enemies. It should never be so easy for them. Do you understand what I'm saying? Edward V. Hanrahan, Illinois State Attorney General, sent fifteen pigs to raid the Panther headquarters and murder Hampton and Clark. Do you have any idea what would have happened to those fifteen pigs if they had run into as many Viet Cong as there were Panthers in that building. The VC are all little people with less general education than we have. The argument that they have been doing it longer has no validity at all, because they were doing it just as well when they started as they are now. It's very contradictory for a man to teach about the murder in corporate capitalism, to isolate and expose the murderes behind it, to instruct that these madmen are completely without stops, are licentious, totally depraved — and then not make adquate preparations to defend himself from the madman's attack. Either they don't really believe their own spiel or they harbor some sort of subconscious death wish.

https://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/soledadbro.html

  • zifnab25 [he/him, any]
    ·
    1 year ago

    I mean, this is comically unfair to the movement Hampton was running. Daycares and public kitchens are a very different animal than a full guerilla residence movement.

    And let's not casually forget the atrocities committed on the Vietnamese people. From zippo raids to agent orange bombings, the horror of war inflicted on Vietnam fully eclipsed anything the FBI managed on Hampton.

    If Fred had been Vietcong and Edward Hanrahan had been an Army Major, he'd have been killed with attack helicopters and poison gas rather than barbiturates and revolver fire. He'd be just as dead.

    Not every revolution succeeds. Just ask Zachariadis or Arbenz or Gadaffi. Militarism isn't a magic bullet.

    • AssortedBiscuits [they/them]
      ·
      1 year ago

      George Jackson and Fred Hampton were both Panthers. This is self-crit by George Jackson for the BPP's failure to protect Hampton if anything. And he had a point. And the BPP understood he had a point because the BLA was formed a little after Hampton got assassinated, where they got the reputation for being cop killers.

      • zifnab25 [he/him, any]
        ·
        1 year ago

        the BLA was formed a little after Hampton got assassinated, where they got the reputation for being cop killers

        An organization that lasted a decade and got its leadership just as locked up or dead as the original Black Panthers. Militarism was not a panacea.