It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Friday, June 05, 2020
Revisiting the "Nazi Occult": Histories, Realities, Legacies (German History in Context)
Scholars have debated the role of the occult in Nazism since it first appeared on the German political landscape in the 1920s. After 1945, a consensus held that occultism - an ostensibly anti-modern, irrational blend of pseudo-religious and -scientific practices and ideas - had directly facilitated Nazism's rise. More recently, scholarly debate has denied the occult a role in shaping the Third Reich, emphasizing the Nazis' hostility to esoteric religion and alternative forms of knowledge. Bringing together cutting-edge scholarship on the topic, this volume calls for a fundamental reappraisal of these positions. The book is divided into three chronological sections. The first, on the period 1890 to 1933, looks at the esoteric philosophies and occult movements that influenced both the leaders of the Nazi movement and ordinary Germans who became its adherents. The second, on the Third Reich in power, explores how the occult and alternative religious belief informed Nazism as an ideological, political, and cultural system. The third looks at Nazism's occult legacies. In emphasizing both continuities and disjunctures, this book promises to re-open and re-energize debate on the occult roots and legacies of Nazism, and with it our understanding of German cultural and intellectual history over the past century. Contributors: Monica Black; Jeff Hayton; Oded Heilbronner; Eric Kurlander; Fabian Link and J. Laurence Hare; Anna Lux; Perry Myers; John Ondrovcik; Michael E. O'Sullivan; Jared Poley; Uwe Schellinger, Andreas Anton, and Michael T. Schetsche; Peter Staudenmaier. Monica Black is Associate Professor and Associate Head of the Department of History at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Eric Kurlander is J. Ollie Edmunds Chair and Professor of Modern European History at Stetson University.
Eating Nature in Modern Germany: Food, Agriculture and Environment, c.1870 to 2000
Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian and the Dachau concentration camp had an organic herb garden. Vegetarianism, organic farming, and other such practices have enticed a wide variety of Germans, from socialists, liberals, and radical anti-Semites in the nineteenth century to fascists, communists, and Greens in the twentieth century. Corinna Treitel offers a fascinating new account of how Germans became world leaders in developing more 'natural' ways to eat and farm. Used to conserve nutritional resources with extreme efficiency at times of hunger and to optimize the nation's health at times of nutritional abundance, natural foods and farming belong to the biopolitics of German modernity. Eating Nature in Modern Germany brings together histories of science, medicine, agriculture, the environment, and popular culture to offer the most thorough and historically comprehensive treatment yet of this remarkable story.
In spite of its prominence, the role of the occult in turn-of-the-century Russian culture has been largely ignored, if not actively written out of histories of the modern state. For specialists and students of Russian history, culture, and science, as well as those generally interested in the occult, Mannherz’s fascinating study remedies this gap and returns the occult to its rightful place in the popular imagination of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russian's https://tinyurl.com/yatx4znc
The Secret King is the first book to explode many myths surrounding the popular idea of Nazi occultism, while presenting the actual esoteric rituals used by Heinrich Himmler's SS under the influence of rune magician Karl-Maria Wiligut, the Secret King of Germany."
Stephen E. Flowers, PhD, is a prolific writer and translator in the fields of runology and the history of occultism. He is also the author of books on magical runic traditions under the pen name Edred Thorsson. HE IS ALSO A PRACTISING SETIAN/SATANIST AND CO FOUNDER OF THE TEMPLE OF SET
Matysik on Treitel, 'A Science for the Soul: Occultism and the Genesis of the German Modern' Author: Corinna Treitel Reviewer: Tracie Matysik
Reviewed by Tracie Matysik (Department of History, University of Texas at Austin) Published on H-German (July, 2005)
The Occult in German Modernity: From Periphery to Center
What does it mean to write a history of occultism? Is it to study the fringes of society, the underworld of culture? Is it to study esoteric forms of reactionary escapism? In her thoroughly researched book, A Science for the Soul, Corinna Treitel suggests that to study the occult is not at all to study marginal phenomena. Rather, it is to access from an unlikely angle all of the complexities and contradictions of a most central concern: namely, what Treitel calls the "German modern." Treitel insistently and convincingly depicts the occult movements in Germany not as a retreat from modern society--with its urban masses, its industrial logic, and its depersonalized materialism. Rather, she suggests that the occult was one of the important ways in which individuals and organizations in modern Germany gave meaning to their own lives, and simultaneously gave meaning to the categories that have come to occupy center stage in modern German historiography, categories such as science, religion, state, liberalism, and subjectivity.
From the introduction, one might understand the primary purpose of Treitel's book to be the contestation of a previous historiography led by George Mosse and others that emphasized the influence of the occult movement on Nazi ideology.[1] This literature had understood the occult as a dimension of vlkisch ideology that fostered irrationalism, that in turn fed into a race-based mysticism in which Nazi leaders were to have cloaked themselves and their racial policies. A more recent literature has begun to contest the alliance between occultism and Nazism, and it is to this literature that Treitel adds her own work.[2] Painting the occult not as a form of reactionary mysticism, but rather as a set of practices aimed at negotiating modernism, Treitel seeks to clarify the lines between occultism and vlkisch ideology, recognizing in particular the embrace of the very modern, scientific practices that infused the occult movements--even as they pursued mystical ends. Not surprisingly, the relationship of Nazism to occult movements occupies center stage in the last chapter of the book. Here Treitel makes a careful distinction between individual interest by Nazi leaders in occult experiments and methods, and Nazi police and policy hostility to occult movements that were said to exhibit ideological tendencies inconsistent with Nazi aims (pp. 240-241).
While this is a very important intervention, and provides a valuable framework for the book itself, the real weight and strength of the book lies in its study of the occult at the fin de siecle and in the Weimar era. Here the book makes for a fascinating contribution to the newer literature on German liberalism. While it recognizes the importance of a former school of German historiography that stressed the authoritarian illiberalism of the state in the German Kaiserreich, it finds liberalism in the public sphere--in terms of civic organizations and public discussion--to be much more of a work in progress. In this regard, the book examines things such as the thriving publication industry that profited from the occultist movements; the role of the public in determining the reliability of evidence and experience in scientific demonstration; and the reliability of that same evidence and experience in public legal proceedings.
Pursuing this theme of a vibrant public sphere, Treitel makes two strategic decisions in the book that enable her to cut the widest possible swath through German culture. First, she takes as her focus not so much the beliefs of individuals in the occultist movements, but rather their practices--the occult "in action," as she calls it. While Treitel does not spend a lot of time explaining what this distinction means, or what the relationship(s) of belief to practice might be, one can discern from her own practice the implications of this move. By not focusing solely on true believers, those who make some variety of the occult the central and possibly single tenet of their own belief system, she is able to look at the occult within more of a "marketplace" of beliefs.[3] That is, she looks at the wide range of those who dabbled in the occult--those who, for instance, experimented with sances or with dowsing--but who did not necessarily make such occult practices the center of their belief structures. In this way, she points to the larger consumer culture in which the occultist movements participated, and on which their economic existence depended. Figures as seemingly diverse as Sigmund Freud and Hitler could both partake in the occasional sance or dowsing, without committing fully to occultism.
The turn to occult practices rather than belief also enables Treitel to depict how a relatively widespread interest in the occult motivated other fields of inquiry to consolidate their own beliefs and practices against the occultist movements. This development is perhaps clearest in the first two chapters--which may be the best in the book--as Treitel explores the relationship of occult movements to the emerging "science" of psychology. Here she convincingly argues that this emerging field of psychology was deeply influenced by experiments in occult phenomena, but that it also sought to distance itself and its own modes of experimentation from the taint of the occult and connotations of mysticism or pseudoscience. It was precisely because of the proximity and overlapping areas of inquiry, however, that such a clarification was necessary to the professionalization of psychology as a scientific discipline. Such points of clarification, however, were not confined to psychology or other sciences dealing with human experience and knowledge. Treitel argues also that established religions--especially Catholicism--felt the need to resist the occult movements not so much because the occult tempted its followers, but rather because it needed to clarify how its own appeals to certain kinds of mysticism differed from those of the occultists. In this way, Treitel suggests throughout the book, the presence of the occultist movements helped to foster the clarification of terms such as "religion," "science," "psychology," and even the "individual."
It is here, in the definition of the limits of the occult in relationship to other spheres of knowledge that the second strategic decision of Treitel's book becomes important--namely, her decision not to define "the occult." Her book treats the occult as a fluid concept, as a concept that is in process, and whose character emerges only in relation to other fields of inquiry and practice. What emerges as the "lunatic fringe," as she often calls it, is determined more by the beholder than by the content of the fringe itself. So, for instance, Sigmund Freud would come to resist the occult in order, at least in part, to distinguish his own practice of psychoanalysis from the form of depth psychology elaborated by his wayward disciple, Carl Jung. Likewise, in a different moment and with a vastly different purpose, Heinrich Himmler would condemn the "hocus pocus" aspects of "the occult," while supporting "legitimate research on astrological questions" (p. 225). If the occultist movements prompted other cultural phenomena to clarify their own identity, the movement was reciprocal: a wide range of shifting fields of inquiry as well as political and cultural contexts worked actively in the early twentieth century to shape what constituted (and constitutes?) "the occult."
The book stretches from 1850 to 1945, but its real concentration is between the 1890s and the 1920s when the occult movements were establishing themselves institutionally. With this particular concentration, the reader will notice one strange lacuna: there is no sustained discussion of World War I. While the book often moves fluidly between the Wilhelmine era and the Weimar era, it does draw out some of the differences in occultist strategies before and after the war. In particular, it paints the occultist movements before the war as interested primarily in the subjective experience of the individual, and after the war as participating in many of the standardizing and objectifying methods that gained popularity in social reform during the Weimar era. Yet the reader is still left to wonder what exactly the effects of the war on the occultist movements were, and how such transitions came about. Were the occultist movements able to continue their publications during the war? Did they experience censorship from the state, as many organizations did? Did they, like the psychoanalytic movement and similar groups, have to halt local and/or international congresses? Did they learn some of their post-war standardizing methods from participation in the war effort itself? Clearly answers to these questions could fill an entire volume themselves. Yet the book might have benefited from at least some hint in their direction.
That said, the book is a very valuable contribution to the field of German cultural history. It offers three appendices that list the organizations, presses, and other institutions related to the occult, which will prove useful to the specialist researcher. In addition, its comprehensive bibliography will be a valuable resource for students of German cultural history more generally. Finally, the book is simply a pleasure to read, written in a very accessible, inviting style that will make it a treat for the specialist and non-specialist reader alike.
Notes
[1]. George Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1964).
[2]. See for example Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology (New York: New York University Press, 1992).
[3] See Peter Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (Garden City: Doubleday, 1969), pp. 137-138.
Citation: Tracie Matysik. Review of Treitel, Corinna, A Science for the Soul: Occultism and the Genesis of the German Modern. H-German, H-Net Reviews. July, 2005. URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=10757
Germany's painful entry into the modern age elicited many conflicting emotions. Excitement and anxiety about the "disenchantment of the world" predominated, as Germans realized that the triumph of science and reason had made the nation materially powerful while impoverishing it spiritually. Eager to enchant their world anew, many Germans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries responded by turning to a variety of paranormal beliefs and practices―including Theosophy, astrology, psychical research, graphology, dowsing, and spirit healing. No mere fringe phenomenon, the German occult movement had a truly national presence, encompassing hundreds of clubs, businesses, institutes, and publishers providing and consuming occult goods and services.
In A Science for the Soul, historian Corinna Treitel explores the appeal and significance of German occultism in all its varieties between the 1870s and the 1940s, locating its dynamism in the nation's struggle with modernization and the public's dissatisfaction with scientific materialism. Occultism, Treitel notes, served as a bridge between traditional religious beliefs and the values of an increasingly scientific, secular, and liberal society. Drawing on a wealth of archival materials, Treitel describes the individuals and groups who participated in the occult movement, reconstructs their organizational history, and examines the economic and social factors responsible for their success.
Building on this foundation, Treitel turns to the question of how Germans used the occult in three realms of practice: Theosophy, where occult studies were used to achieve spiritual enlightenment; the arts, where occult states of consciousness fueled the creative process of avant-garde painters, writers, and dancers; and the applied sciences, where professionals in psychology, law enforcement, engineering, and medicine employed occult techniques to solve characteristic problems of modernity. In conclusion, Treitel considers the conflicting meanings occultism held for contemporaries by focusing on the anti-spiritualist campaigns mounted by the national press, the Protestant and Catholic Churches, local and national governments, and the Nazi regime, which after years of alternating between affinity and antipathy for occultism, finally crushed the movement by 1945.
Throughout, A Science for the Soul examines German occultism in its broadest cultural setting as a key aspect of German modernism, offering new insights into how Germans met the challenge of pursuing meaningful lives in the modern age.
Editorial Reviews
Review
"An important addition to the growing historiography that affirms that terms like 'irrationalism' fall short of describing the complex of Nazi Culture during the 1930s and 40s."
(Times Literary Supplement)
"Treitel offers a social history of the German occult, panoramic in scope, which seeks to provide a comprehensive overview of a variety of occult organizations and their relationship to Wilhelmine society at large."
"An original and substantial contribution to the field of modern German―and European―cultural and social history. Corinna Treitel's scholarship is sound, her sources extensive and appropriate, and her writing clear and concise."
(Geoffrey Cocks, Albion College)
"A sophisticated and compelling contribution to the intellectual history of modern Germany."
(Kevin Cramer Canadian Journal of History)
"Treitel does a wonderful job of demonstrating the breadth of Germans' interests in the occult and exposing the developing market for spiritualists and their work."
(H. Glenn Penny Central European History)
"Treitel's detailed exploration... provides a valuable contribution to the literature on modern occultism."
(B. J. Gibbons Historian)
"Treitel's book provides much valuable information."
(Leslie Price Journal of the Society for Psychical Research)
"There is much to be admired in this thoroughly researched work."
(Alexander C T Geppert Medical History)
"Skillfully researched, strongly argued, beautifully written, Treitel's book adds to our understanding of the spiritual as a vital presence in modern culture."
(Kevin Repp Journal of Modern History)
About the Author
Corinna Treitel is an assistant professor of history at Wellesley College.
WHAT IS ANARCHISM?
NOT THIS
BUT THIS
DEFUND POLICE ISLIBERAL REFORMISM
ABOLISH THE POLICE
SOME CALL IT LOOTING, OTHERS CALL IT REAPPROPRIATION
(OF OUR SURPLUS VALUE)
Fires Set Outside White House as Uprising Against Racist Police Murders Continues
Multiple fires broke out near the White House late on Sunday evening, as militants gathered in Washington DC for the third night in a row following the murder of George Floyd by pigs in Minneapolis.
Police were completely overwhelmed and unable to enforce an 11 PM curfew. Revolutionaries greatly outnumbered the few hundred police, supported by national guardsmen. The lights illuminating the north side of the White House were turned off. In the past, they were only ever turned off when a president dies.
A fire was started in the basement of St John’s church, which since 1816 has been the “Church of the Presidents.” Every president from James Madison on has worshipped there.
Around the corner, militants smashed the plate glass window front of the headquarters of the AFL-CIO Union federation, which has affiliated police unions, and someone started a fire in the lobby. Fifty yards away, on I Street, a car was burning.
Looting was reported at several commercial districts around the capital, including Georgetown, the old money neighborhood to the west of the White House, where gunshots were reported.
Aerial views of the area around the White House showed it wreathed in black smoke.
Donald Trump; his wife, Melania; and son Barron had been taken down to the White House bunker at the height of the protests on Friday. Trump has reportedly expressed that he fears for his safety, as revolutionaries have come close to overtaking the barriers separating them from the White House.
In Soho, one of Manhattan’s wealthiest neighborhoods, widespread looting took place on Sunday night, as fires were also set by revolutionaries around the city.
Bloomingdales, Chanel, Gucci, Coach, Supreme, and Louis Vuitton were among the retailers completely looted by 3 a.m., their previously boarded-up windows cast aside on the sidewalk. Groups of militants sprinted through the streets carrying sneakers and luxury items.
The expropriations in Soho followed the fourth day of anti-pig protests in New York in the name of George Floyd, whose murder at the hands of a police officer has sparked uprisings across the country. Turnout for marches and rallies in the five boroughs swelled Sunday.
Liberals have been effectively taking the sides the police, acting as peace police to scold revolutionaries and brokering “truces” with police for publicity photos of them taking knees. However, this has done nothing to change the momentum for revolutionaries, who are continuing to set fires to police vehicles and expropriate from capitalist strongholds. America is on the brink of complete revolution, which will overthrow the ruling elite, pig police force and military and capitalist infrastructure.
Reflecting on the protests following the murder of George Floyd and as an historical example of mutual aid in African-American political history, a moment from the history of the Black Panther Party.
We defend ourselves so we can all breathe in peace
To move from uprising to liberation we each have a role to play. The conflict is at our doors, and we need to put collective needs before individual wants.
Negroes must concern themselves with every single means of struggle: legal, illegal, passive, active, violent and non-violent.
Lorraine Hansberry
This is not as bad as things can get. They can — and often do — get worse before they get better. Think about all the previous rebellions, uprisings and protests against white supremacy and the oppressiveness of capitalism that brought us to this point. Even the civil rights movement was not a completely legal or nonviolent affair, though its purposefully misrepresented this way. Black men, women and children did fight back and form self-defense patrols everywhere resistance occurred.
Keep in mind, Black people were engaged in an illegal struggle, breaking laws to protest against apartheid Jim Crow policies. People are “sick and tired of being sick and tired,” as Fannie Lou Hamer said back in 1964. If they were already exhausted over half a century ago, imagine if she and others who died struggling alongside her were alive to see what is happening now.
Things should not be like this, but the struggle for the freedom to live without fear will continue as long as oppression is rampant in the United States. What is happening right now is the result of unaddressed issues like white supremacy, state violence and capitalism. If we do not deal with them now they will only arise again. So, our intentions regarding how we choose to fight and rid ourselves of these problems are everything in this moment that was forced upon us. The past can help guide how we approach this unwanted present. Every slave revolt; every Native uprising; every Black riot; every sit-in, walk-out and strike has something to tell us right now.
People throw around the word “revolution” every time there is an uprising, but many fail to understand that such momentous change does not happen in an instant. In minds that have been shaped by popular culture, and often romantic retellings of the past, some things can get lost. Former Black Panther Party member and Black anarchist Lorenzo Komboa Ervin’s writing provides a guiding light in this regard. InAnarchism and the Black Revolution, he explains that “revolution is a social process, rather than a single event.”
These events, revolts and rebellions like the ones taking place in the streets this very moment, are not the revolution itself. They are singular events in a long process that eventually can lead to a revolutionary struggle, which in itself is a substantial undertaking. Nonetheless, people have been doing important work that should give us hope.
Taking back what is ours
In the midst of the novel coronavirus pandemic and non-stop police violence, many people on the left sprung into action, forming new collectives and mobilizing existing ones to support their communities through mutual aid. Without the funding or backing that nonprofits have, anarchists, communists, abolitionists and people with no ideological label began feeding and caring for those in need when the state abandoned them. Many of these efforts had already been going on for many years before the pandemic.
Now, survival programs, much like those utilized by the Black Panthers, are of the utmost importance to sustain us in the fight against this horrific disaster of a pandemic amid continual, escalating state violence. By creating services within communities when no one else will, survival programs meet the needs of people when the state refuses to. Think free clinics, free breakfast programs, freedom schools, community self-defense and more. The possibilities are endless and it has been done before.
There has to be something or someone to nourish, protect, bailout, educate, house and provide healthcare for those in need, since the state is clearly more interested in killing those it deems undeserving of care and aid. That someone is all of us. And all of this should be done in ways that directly challenge the capitalist logic of moneymaking and profiteering. These are rights that we are afforded by birth, not something we should have to be able to afford based on the state of a manipulated economy. These priorities must come first, not the securities of the rich and their hoarded wealth, while others perish from poverty.
With tens of millions of people unemployed, the US government gave people crumbs, while at the same time bailing out the banks and corporations with trillions of dollars to survive a crisis they helped create. A lack of universal healthcare forced the most vulnerable; the poor; Black people; Native people; people of color and others to bear the brunt of the coronavirus pandemic.
Desperation is evidenced by the so-called “looting” in the midst of uprising. People will take as they please because that is the precedent the state had already set, extracting from the poor so the rich can grow richer. It is the effort to reclaim what has been taken from us year after year without giving anything in return that is now shaking the foundations of this country. We can change this reality.
There have been calls for a return to normalcy. People reminisce about former presidents Bush and Obama. Yet, if we are being honest, that for to many this means missing being able to comfortably ignore the problems we are facing now. Those presidencies set the stage for this moment through wars, neglected crises, countless deportations and continual state overreach. Some are willing to accept oppression as long as they are allowed to consume as they please and conveniently go about their day-to-day business.
That way of living is not true liberation, but now is a good time to shape a world that is. We are prevented from experiencing liberation because of the problems created by money and class. Since we live in a country where having enough money decides virtually every facet of life, many survive miserably because they do not have enough.
Removing the barriers
These revolts across the US are a class struggle and people are going to have to answer questions about why some have more than enough and others do not have anything at all in the world’s wealthiest nation. The country that labels itself the most free in the world, should not have unchecked public police executions and poverty levels similar to those in the Global South.
Nowhere on the planet should have such poverty, but the grating reality is wealth inequality is made plain when a nation has the wealth the United States does. This led Malcolm X to predict there would be “a clash between the oppressed and those that do the oppressing,” a fight “between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the systems of exploitation.”
This is why celebrities and politicians and those who were comfortable enough before this are facing a backlash too. The riches that come with fame create problems when people who share an identity with the most oppressed people in the country put their class concerns first. They are ultimately revealing that they were okay with the way things were before this by prioritizing their relevance, brand, and repeating the same narratives as authorities. Celebrities who had more than enough when others did not, often feel they deserve for things to stay that way. But no one deserves more because they are famous, elected, or designated a “leader” of some sort. We all deserve safety and resources. This is the overt problem of capitalism that requires it to be abolished and relinquished to the hell from whence it came.
Now, as the government forces people back to work, it is clear that our labor is a crucial organizing tool. The need for a general strike is extremely relevant. Lorenzo Komboa Ervin also addressed this need, saying that “[the] general strike can take the form of industrial sabotage, factory occupations or sit-ins, work slowdowns, wildcats, and other work stoppages as a protest to gain concessions on the local and national level.” Since our labor is important enough for us to risk our lives during a pandemic, it should be withheld until people have what they need. This can happen in sync with all of the other actions taking place.
Massive efforts to provide political education to everyone possible are needed. People must be organized and politicized to harness the power we have when we work together. This is not about leadership, voting, or pleading away the problem. If that worked, we would not be here to begin with. As Lucy Parsons once wrote, “There are actual, material barriers blockading the way. These must be removed. If we could hope they would melt away, or be voted or prayed into nothingness, we would be content to wait and vote and pray.”
However, none of this is going to be easy; none of this transformation I speak of here will just be allowed to happen. We all have to find our place and our purpose whether we are teaching, planning, organizing, caring, cooking or creating art. Not everyone will be in the streets, but some will, and people should not do anything they are not ready, trained, or prepared to do.
There is not a single correct way to protest, and authorities will attempt to divide us by trying to shift blame to those who embrace radical tactics, as Black people have done historically. We can all learn new things, but we should be aware that this is not about any of us as individuals, it is about all of us together.
Actions need to be motivated by our collective needs, rather than a single person’s wants. May that guide our thinking as we move forward. Channeling Ella Baker, abolitionist educator and activist Mariame Kaba has told us to figure out who our people are. We have to know who we are accountable to, what our people’s needs are and have a purpose in every action we take.
Do not sit back, wait and complain. It is time to defend ourselves and each other. If you understand the revolutionary importance simmering in this pot of revolt, then find your place and start doing something to assist these actions in any way possible.
The conflict is at our doors, but keeping them closed will not shield anyone from the stench of a rotten society far past its expiration date. Help clear the air so everyone can breathe in peace.
…
William C. Anderson is a freelance writer. His work has been published by the Guardian, Truthout, MTV and Pitchfork, among others. He’s co-author ofAs Black as Resistance (AK Press 2018).
This was the common theme repeated at the Oakland Community School panel discussion with Ericka Huggins at the Black Panther Party’s 50th Anniversary Conference. This October the Black Panther Party for Self Defense celebrated it’s 50th anniversary. The four day anniversary conference was one of the many events that was held throughout the Bay in honor of the Party’s work and legacy. Founded in 1966 by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale–two students at Merritt College at the time– the Black Panther Party was created to empower the Black community and to challenge the injustices going on globally. Known as the ‘Vanguard of the Movement’, the Black Panther Party put into practice a vision that has forever changed Oakland’s Black community and continues to inspire and politicize Black people throughout the nation.
From monitoring the excessive violence of police, to providing breakfast, lunch, and dinner to Black youth in need of food, the Black Panther Party was truly about the empowerment and upliftment of Black people. Furthermore, the importance of self-determination was present throughout everything the Black Panther Party touched. Yes, the Black Panther Party was about calling out white supremacy and the way in which it continues to exploit and oppress Black women and men for capital gain; But let’s be clear, the Party was rooted in community. That commitment to community can be seen in the 60 plus survival programs that emerged from the Black Panther Party–one of those being the Oakland Community School.
The longest standing program of all the survival programs, the Oakland Community School (OCS) was established in 1973 in East Oakland, with the underlying principle being, “We serve the people everyday. We serve the people, body and soul.” Directed by Ericka Huggins and Donna Howell, OCS provided youth with a culturally relevant education and challenged the public school system’s perceptions of what it meant to be Black and poor.1 Student enrollment at OCS reached 150 and had a daunting wait list that even included unborn children. Students were taught a wide variety of subjects from math to history by members of their community. But it wasn’t just about memorizing facts and dates; Former OCS students passionately stated during the panel discussion at the conference that, “they taught us how to think not what think.” At OCS, Black youth were not afraid to be themselves or to ask questions. Their self-esteem and confidence was constantly reaffirmed as a result of the staff and faculty members who were led by the heart and invested in their development. OCS empowered Black youth to find their voices and help liberate their spirits.
Point 5 of the Black Panther Party’s Ten Point Platform states:
“WE WANT DECENT EDUCATION FOR OUR PEOPLE THAT EXPOSES THE TRUE NATURE OF THIS DECADENT AMERICAN SOCIETY. WE WANT EDUCATION THAT TEACHES US OUR TRUE HISTORY AND OUR ROLE IN THE PRESENT-DAY SOCIETY. We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of the self. If you do not have knowledge of yourself and your position in the society and in the world, then you will have little chance to know anything else.”
As described on the OCS website by Ericka Huggins, a typical day at OCS went as follows:
“The students remember starting the day with a ten minute exercise program. Breakfast, followed by a short, school wide interactive check-in preceded the morning classes. A nutritious lunch at midday and ten minutes of meditation in the early afternoon was followed by classes for the older children and rest for the smaller ones. Dinner concluded the day and the school vans transported the children who could not walk to their homes.”
It is important to note that it was the BPP’s Oakland Community School practice of providing breakfast for students that led to the nation’s requirement to provide breakfast for students in public schools. What’s even more interesting is that 50 years ago, the Black Panther Party knew that practicing meditation and mindfulness had a positive impact on student well-being. OCS students also participated in martial arts classes, helped support other survival programs, and had peer led justice committees for dealing with disputes and conflict which serves as further proof that the OCS was truly ahead of time. All of this was created to make up for what the public school system failed to provide for Black youth.
The parallels to our present day realities couldn’t be more similar.
Now in 2016, our public school system still leaves out the histories, experiences, and cultures of Black and brown people, pushing forth a narrative that is overwhelmingly white and European focused. In 2016, Black students continue to face assaults on their character as a result of zero tolerance policies that make using a cell phone, wearing one’s natural hair, or simply talking– a criminal offense. Rather than prioritize the hiring of quality educators and counselors, our country’s leaders believe that police officers should be trained as counselors and mentors– despite sweeping evidence that shows the negative and harmful interactions between police officers and Black youth. Our country’s leaders are clearly missing the point. We should be taking cues from those that have come before us and use BPP’s Oakland Community School as a model for what empowering and enriching academic environments look like.
What is incredible about the Black Panther Party and the creation of the Oakland Community School is that community rose up to take care of their own community. The Oakland Community School was created because there was a need. There was a need for a safe place for Black students to learn and grow. There was a need for Oakland youth to be educated by people who look like them, people who were from their community. There was a need to challenge the European frame of reference when talking about history. There was a need to
liberate the minds of Oakland Black youth. If we educate, heal, protect, and liberate our youth, those teachings will be passed on to the generations to come. Taking care of each other is a model for liberation and for that we are forever grateful of the revolutionary insight of the Black Panther Party.
References
“The Liberation Schools, the Children’s House, the Intercommunal Youth Institute and the Oakland Community School” Ericka Huggins, http://www.erickahuggins.com/OCS.html
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From riot to revolution: Protest as self-defense and mutual aid
November 3, 2016 (Black Organizing Project)