Power to whom?
Colin Wilson
Revolutionary Suicide Huey P. Newton (Wildwood House £1.95)
This is a disturbing and rather fascinating book, but hardly for the reasons the author intended. Huey P. Newton is the founder of the Black Panther revolutionary party. When he left school, he became a s,-nall-time criminal, specialising in daylight burglaries and credit card frauds. Sent to jail at the age of twenty-two, he spent most of his time in solitary confinement in a dark cell with excrement on the floor. He survived, and it taught him to use his inner freedom. An ellcounter with Malcolm X and the Black Muslims made him politically conscious; but, being non-religious, he felt no temptation te join. Finally, with, another young black dissident, Bobby Seale, he founded the Black Panther party, whose chief aim seems to have been baiting and harassing the police. FinallY, one night in October 1967, two policemea stopped Newton's car, and one of them made him get out, slapped his face, then shot him in the stomach. What then happened seems obscure; when Newton woke up in hospital, he was told that he had shot one of the policemen dead, and wounded the other. AC' cording to his own account, he was sett* conscious after being shot, and in any case,' had no gun. At his first trial, he was foutT guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to fit" teen years in prison. The verdict was late; quashed, on the ground that the judge had failed to give correct instructions to the jurY; after a second trial, he was acquitted. The moral he draws from all this is what might be expected. Negroes are exploited hY_ white capitalist 'pigs,' and the time has conlde for them to refuse to be pushed around, OA demand their rights. The capitalist 'pigs' art,' their bullies framed Newton and landed hint l,r1 jail, but Right eventually triumphed (if he WI' forgive the expression), and now, purged hY the ordeal, he presents to the world his doci; trine of "revolutionary suicide" — whI„ce declares that the revolutionary must L'e prepared to die for his cause, rather like 0' Japanese suicide pilots.
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What actually comes over from the boo rl quite another matter. The author is his efin advocate, and he naturally presents himseh his best light. He is asking us to believe t.h_cl, the Black Panthers are basically a 'defensibleorganisation, full of peaceable and reasonaTe men, whose only aim is to preventtiL American police — who are represented _4A' Nazi thugs — from bullying underprivilege'A citizens. They do this by standing arours't whenever they see the police trying to arr.' 3 somebody, and reciting from law books loud voice. As Newton describes it, he all"th did his best to be polite and reasonable W the police, even under extreme provocatioa._;t all sounds quite convincing. Until you stlie reading between the lines. He explains whYnie became a burglar: "I .felt that white Pe°;-he were criminals because they plundered._os world." In a chapter on 'Loving,' he mentwery that "several beautiful girls loved me v, much." He adds as an afterthought tha,t loved them just as much, then explains helot he would convince these girls that they n'cli to both remain "free", but that if they Want stay with him, they had to support him; u,lor girl he had lived with for several years
cirle attempted suicide because he insisted
ing off with other women — to demonstrate his freedom from bourgeois prejudice; she thereafter quietly vanishes from the narrative. 8Y this time, the reader has the feeling that he is dealing with a pretty accomplished selfdeceiver. Later in the book, he describes an episode When a policeman opened his cell door at night and called him an asshole; ". . . I guess I woke up half the jail shouting at him, calling hirn everything but a child of God and inviting him to open the door so he could show what kind of a man he was." This admission slips out in the middle of a long anecdote, and it tends to contradict his earlier statements that he was always polite and reasonable with his "tormentors." Then there was the incident When he pointed a loaded shotgun at a Policeman and warned him that if he touched his gun, there would be a bloodbath. And at the end of the book, you are left wondering Who did kill one policeman and wound another while Newton was semi-conscious. This review probably sounds as if I found the book — and its author — unbearable. Oddly enough, this is not so. In spite of this capacity for self-deception (which seems common to most left-wing revolutionaries), he coMes over as honest and intelligent, and these are endearing qualities. A few weeks kago, I was reading one of the most terrifying l'ooks I have ever read: Killer, by Thomas Caddis and James Long, the journal of a mass Murderer named Panzram who killed twenty-one people out of sheer hatred of ociety and its 'justice.' It is frightening because Panzram was also, basically, decent and intelligent, and you can see the logic of h,is lifelong 'act of revenge' against society. after the sickening atmosphere of that book, P. Newton was like a breath of fresh air. e is basically as illogical as Panzram; but he 4P' developed his intelligence and learned to t'dress himself. This book may be just flother nutty revolutionary pamphlet, but at east you feel that Newton has found a kind of ;alvation through his intelligence. He is of\ring his point of view in a well-written book. . e may reject it; but at least there is contact, Instead of mindless violence.
C°11n Wilson's The Occult has been recently rutted in paperback by Mayflower Press.
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