Review of "The Black Panther Party: A Graphic Novel History" by David F Walker and Marcus Kwame Anderson

Well, first of all, I loved this book. I don't always like graphic novels, but it seems to work well for this subject. It's a good way to convey all the different people (with little comic-style portraits) and threads and factions.

And I also have a big soft spot for the Black Panthers, not least because I have the impression that they were more socialist than Black Nationalist. This comes across really strongly in the films "Judas and The Black Messiah" and "The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution", both of which I also liked.

But this is more of a warts-and-all portrait than either of those, and there's quite a lot to not like so much about the Panthers, honestly depicted here. The factionalism, which sometimes turned murderous. The gun thing - now I know that Black people with guns has a liberatory dimension, but it's hard to feel comfortable with how comfortable the Panthers seem to have been around guns. 

And this rather does raise questions about the meaning of "armed struggle" for revolutionary organisations. Proper armed struggle requires a military wing, and military wings attract people who like military stuff. If you are fortunate they are actually good at it, but either way it's really hard to subordinate them to an overall political strategy...I think that comes over in the story of the Panthers' ultimate failure. The same things seem to have consumed the white radical left too, as the history of the Weather Underground illustrates.

There were also factional disputes about the role of "the working class" and "lumpenproletariat" and criminal elements in bringing about the revolution. Some Panthers favoured the latter, and that clearly didn't work out well. Other Marxists have generally tended to view the lumpenproletariat as usually reactionary. In the context of American Black communities where workers have been generally excluded from the better working-class jobs, appealing to a simplistic idea of working-classness is not going to work. Micro-entrepreneurship is one of the routes to a livelihood for some, both legal and otherwise...the same thing happens in the cities of the Global South, where the formal "working class" is something of a privileged stratum. So I think the Panthers who wanted to recruit from criminals were ultimately wrong, but not obviously so.

It doesn't pull its punches or hide the details of where some of the Panthers ended up - Elridge Cleaver becoming a conservative Republican, for example, and Huey P Newton consumed by drug addiction. It's also really good on Cointelpro, J Edgar Hoover's anti-radical counterintelligence and infiltration program.

The book starts with a quick survey of pre-Panther Black political figures, and it's a shame to see Marcus Garvey and Wallace Fard (both reactionaries to the core) listed alongside W E B Du Bois (not a reactionary at all) with not even a hint of a critical distinction. Still, that is just one page - much of the rest, about SNCC and SCLC and so on is great, and very informative.

Review of "Regenesis" by George Monbiot

 

One of those rare occasions where I came to scoff and ended up being convinced. I went to hear him speak in Stroud as part of a promo tour for the book and wasn't so impressed, but I read the book anyway, and was simply overwhelmed by the quality and detail of the analysis. I wish I could still believe in regenerative grazing and low-impact animal agriculture, but I can't. I'm not a dogmatic vegan...not really a vegan at all. I could live without meat - I did for about twenty years, but I am really fond of dairy and quite like eggs. But sadly Monbiot has convinced me that animal agriculture is an ecological and planetary disaster, so I am going to have live without them.

There's an interesting section at the end on synthetic foods. During the talk this reminded me of Soylent Green, and of Simon Fairlie's account of James Lovelock's scenario in which much of the planet is rewilded but we are all shut out of it and fed a load of factory-produced food. In the book it's better...though I think if he's serious there should be some proper engagement with how this is going to happen without becoming the patented intellectual property of a few multinationals.

I guess that's the overall shortcoming of George...he's really great on pointing out in overwhelming detail why and how things are bad, and he's quite good at sketching out how they could be better. How to get from here to there isn't his thing.

Review of "The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America's Enemies" by Jason Fagone

Nice enjoyable book about Elizebeth Smith Freedman, a cryptoanalyst women with an interesting life history, largely ignored by history in favour of her more famous husband William. Her career spans both World Wars as well as Prohibition, and she seems to have been a really nice woman, with a great professional and work ethic, nice interests and values, and a charming personality. I have to admit that I skipped over some of the more technical crypto bits - I'm sure others wouldn't even have found them very tricky, but it's never been my thing.

Review of Drumline

A film about the world of American college marching bands - specifically the bands of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities. These are wonderful and terrible at the same time - amazing to look at, but part of a culture of dedication and discipline that is utterly alien to any British sensibility, even the British brass band sensibility, which has its own different culture of dedication, discipline and competitiveness. The band members are athletes as much as they are musicians, and the training is quasi-military and very physical. In the film at least they seem to spend more time doing physical exercise than practicing either their music or their moves.

Watching this was very much part of my covid experience - when I couldn't be bothered to do much else I could watch lots of American college marching band videos, which were sort of inspiring but also very very weird.

This is as much a sport movie as a music film...will the main character make the team? How will the rivalries between competing band be resolved, and who will win the title? 

Watched via informal distribution.

Review of Drumline: A New Beat

 

Surely enough with the American college marching bands now. This is a sequel to Drumline, set years later, but surprisingly little has changed in the world of the A and T marching band, or in the plot. Again someone (this time a young woman) joins the band's drummers, and there's a lot of will-she/won't-she be picked for the all important P1 grade that gets her to play at public perfomances. And the rivalries within and between bands, and so on. I liked the actual perfomance scenes, the rest of it was a bit dull for me.

Watched via informal distribution.

Review of "The Donation of Constantine" by Simon LeVay

This is not great literature, but it's an enjoyable historical novel about an unfashionable and murky episode in the history of the Roman Catholic church. The Donation of Constantine was (is?) a document forged in the early Middle Ages which appeared to underwrite the temporal power of the Pope. Even at the time some people thought it was dodgy, but it became accepted as a genuine document because it was so convenient. The book is not, to my mind, absolutely clear where it stands on this - some of the characters clearly think that the end justifies the means, and I think that's pretty much church doctrine.

There is quite a lot about miracles, saints and relics, and it reminded me firstly of Gibbon, who is absolutely scathing about this; and secondly, in a weird way, of the novel "Unquenchable Fire" (recently read), which is set in a future America after the advent of a new-age pagan religion...because it was obvious to me how awful and loathsome the superstitions of that religion were, though not to the characters in the book or perhaps even to the author - and because it's only the longevity of Christianity that makes its doctrines and narrative seem less absurd.