I don't watch Fox News so I hadn't been aware of their newfound obsession with the New Black Panther Party. The Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center both identify the NBP as a hate group, which it is. In fact, of the 932 active hate groups in the United States identified by the SPLC, only one has been so heavily advertised and pilloried on Fox News: the New Black Panthers. Not the Klan. Not Neo-Nazis.
What has the White Citizens Council conservative media establishment up in arms is that they believe white voters were allegedly intimidated by the NBP on election day, 2008.
However, there is this minor problem with the story:
In fact, no voters at all in the Philadelphia precinct have come forward to allege intimidation. The complaints have come from white Republican poll watchers, who have given no evidence they were registered to vote in the majority black precinct.
An Associated Press story inaccurately described the scene as one where white voters were being intimidated by the Black Panther members. The only white people at the scene that day appeared to be the Republican poll watchers. And Fox News host Megyn Kelly inaccurately described video taken of the incident as made by a “voter.” In fact, the video was made by Stephen Robert Morse, a blogger hired by the local Republican Party on behalf of the John McCain presidential campaign.
The Philadelphia video also did not capture any racial slurs, although the two Black Panthers were shown in an earlier National Geographic documentary using derogatory terms against whites. The Southern Poverty Law Center has classified the New Black Panther Party as a hate group.
The incident allegedly took place was at 1221 Fairmount Avenue in Philadelphia, where approximately 65% of the nearby residents are black.
A civil complaint was filed against the NBP by the Bush Justice Department on January 7, 2009. J. Christian Adams, a former Bush Campaign poll watcher, conservative activist, and now Fox News pundit, was the prosecutor assigned to the case. Adams had no experience in voting rights law or civil rights law when he was hired, but he did have an extensive background in Republican politics. When the Bush Justice Department decided to drop the case against all but one of the defendants, Adams was silent. But last month he resigned in protest. DOJ cited the lack of a pattern of intimidation and the fact that no voters actually came forward to say they had been intimidated. The Civil Rights Commission held a hearing about the matter last April:
"No citizen has even alleged that he or she was intimidated from voting." In an April 23 hearing on the DOJ's decision in the case, Civil Rights Commissioner Arlan Melendez stated that "no citizen has even alleged that he or she was intimidated from voting," which "was clear to the Justice Department last spring, which is why they took the course of action that they did."
Media Matters has published an extensive write-up of Adams and the "manufactured outrage" on the right. They note the basics:
- Adams is a long-time right-wing activist, who is known for filing an ethics complaint against Hugh Rodham that was subsequently dismissed, served as a Bush poll watcher in Florida 2004, and reportedly volunteered for a Republican group that trains lawyers to fight "racially tinged battles over voting rights";
- Adams was hired to the Justice Department in 2005 by Bradley Schlozman, who was found by the Department of Justice Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility to have improperly considered political affiliation when hiring career attorneys -- the former head of the DOJ voting rights section reportedly said that Adams was "exhibit A of the type of people hired by Schlozman";
- Adams has admitted that he does not have first-hand knowledge of the events, conversations, and decisions that he is citing to advance his accusations;
- The Bush administration's Justice Department -- not the Obama administration -- made the decision not to pursue criminal charges against members of the New Black Panther Party for alleged voter intimidation at a polling center in Philadelphia in 2008;
- The Obama administration successfully obtained default judgment against Samir Shabazz, a member of the New Black Panther Party carrying a nightstick outside the Philadelphia polling center on Election Day 2008;
- The Bush administration DOJ chose not to pursue similar charges against members of the Minutemen, one of whom allegedly carried a weapon while harassing Hispanic voters in Arizona in 2006;
- No voters have come forward to claim that they were intimidated from voting on account of the New Black Panthers standing outside the polling center in 2008;
- The Republican vice chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, which is currently investigating the Justice Department's decision, has called that investigation "very small potatoes" full of "overheated rhetoric filled with insinuations and unsubstantiated charges," and said it has not "served the interests of the commission"; she further said that DOJ has given a "plausible argument" for not pursuing additional charges in the case.
The New Black Panther Party has obviously not developed the sophisticated voter suppression techniques used by Republicans. Their tactics are decidedly 1950's. Why Republicans would accuse them of using to these tactics to suppress the black vote is too difficult to explain. This "new" Black Panther Party shares nothing in history and heritage with the old one, except a name. It has been denounced by the Huey P. Newton Foundation and Bobby Seale. It's mainly a small collection of garden variety black supremacists, racists and anti-Semites. The clown show that is the NBP certainly deserves ridicule and probably prosecution. However, there is this little thing called evidence. The voters of November 4, 2008, probably ignored the entire spectacle of nutcase New Black Panthers mixing it up with some white Republican poll watchers since, you know...history was being made.
All of this goes hand in hand with the Republican Party's conspiracy theories about vote fraud. The targets of these conspiracies are almost always any organization that has anything to do with black people, curiously enough. First ACORN stole the election, and now the Black Panthers! Eek!
Media Matters makes another good point: Fox News neglected to go into outrage mode about this:
DOJ did not pursue allegations that Minutemen intimidated Hispanic voters with a gun in 2006. Perez testified that in 2006, the Justice Department "declined to bring any action for alleged voter intimidation" "when three well-known anti-immigrant advocates affiliated with the Minutemen, one of whom was carrying a gun, allegedly intimidated Latino voters at a polling place by approaching several persons, filming them, and advocating and printing voting materials in Spanish."
I wonder why?
