‘Black Panther’: The masking of Oakland’s Panthers

by The People’s Minister of Information JR Valrey

Coogler’s “Panther” has a terrible counter-revolutionary message but before I get into that, let me tell y’all what I think is great about this box office record breaking Disney-Marvel film. The cinematography is phenomenal. That aspect is better than a Black version of “The Matrix.” The costumes and the colors are on another level. The sets are beautiful.

Black-Panther-Political-Prisoners-in-movie-poster-style-by-Left-Voice-163x300, ‘Black Panther’: The masking of Oakland’s Panthers, News & Views
Here are some of the real Black Panthers, most of them still in prison for having the courage to serve their people. Will “Black Panther,” the movie, bring them and their decades-long struggle for justice for themselves and their people to the public eye? Will we organize to free them at last so they can bring their wisdom back to the streets and the people they love?

I also like seeing dark-skinned Black women in complex acting roles with intellect and decision making power like the general, the scientist and the spy. One of my favorite parts in the movie is when T’Challa tells his scientist sister to heal the CIA agent, and she walks away in disgust, saying something close to “another white man?”

That one scene shows that this is not a film about Africans vs. African Americans; it is more a film about bourgeois minded nationalist leadership vs. pan-African mass leadership. I feel the women do some of the strongest acting in the film, and I think that their characters are the most politically and morally impeccable.

Thirdly, the dialogue in the film is on point. The movie obviously does what a piece of art is supposed to do. Judging from social media opening week, it moves movie-viewers; whether positively or negatively, it does its job. Fourthly, I like how “Black Panther,” the film, includes herbal medicines, telekinetic energy and other futuristic technologies that will hopefully influence the youth who see this movie to want to become scientists.

Now the two main characters, Killmonger and T’Challa, work for and with the CIA. Let’s be clear on that from the jump.

Killmonger’s story

Early in the movie when Killmonger is being introduced, it is said that he was U.S. military trained and worked with elite military units to destabilize governments around the world. The premise of the movie in regards to Killmonger is that he may have traded sides from the U.S. and the whites, when he is determined throughout the film to lead the pan-African world revolution. There is more than one scene in the movie where he talks about giving weaponized vibranium to the oppressed Black people of the world so that they could topple their oppressors.

His politics sound slightly like those of Qaddafi; his profile is that of Idi Amin. Many people that I talked to who did not identify with him were concerned and scared of him because of his rage. His rage is fueled by seeing what Blacks in Oakland, Cali, experience and Wakanda having the one resource, vibranium, which could free us, and Wakanda refusing.

In current day politics, that could be coltan, essential to electronics, or uranium, needed for nuclear weapons. Coltan is used in weapons also. Or it could be the gold, plentiful in Africa, that Qaddafi was going to use to back the African currency, the dinar, before he was toppled.

Beyond the international political front, Killmonger also reminded me of people like 2Pac, who shot two police officers, as well as the young people who stormed downtown Oakland and kicked off the historic ‘09 rebellions which eventually got Johannes Mehserle, the officer who killed Oscar Grant, convicted of manslaughter.

There is more than one scene in the movie where he talks about giving weaponized vibranium to the oppressed Black people of the world so that they could topple their oppressors. His politics sound slightly like those of Qaddafi; his profile is that of Idi Amin.

Killmonger was also fueled by the fact that T’Challa’s father, then king, personally assassinated his father, a prince and the king’s brother, because he admitted to giving away the secret weaponized vibranium technology to the whites while on his overseas Wakandan mission. Killmonger, who was probably a pre-teen at the time, was playing outside of the apartment that he shared with his father and later found his father’s dead body.

Killmonger grew up in Oakland and never had been to Wakanda. T’Challa’s father was a nationalist king. He cared about Wakanda and Wakanda only, although the rest of the African world was suffering the trials and tribulations that we face from Haiti to the Congo to East Oakland today. Wakanda could have helped, but it refused and did not see a connection to us, like so many African nations of today.

Killmonger tried to get Klaw, a white man, to take him to Wakanda. Klaw saw that as a suicide mission and refused. He later took Killmonger’s woman hostage, and Killmonger killed them both, later dragging the body of Klaw, who was a wanted man, back to Wakanda as a gift of goodwill to gain entrance.

Once in, he challenged T’Challa for the throne in the ritualistic way that was right by the Wakandans and won by most American sports standards. He threw T’Challa off a cliff, and T’Challa was assumed dead and Killmonger was inaugurated king.

Later T’Challa comes back, but in my opinion Killmonger had already been deemed the winner and therefore king. In sports, you cannot review a play from three plays ago after the call has been made and the match has proceeded. Also, it is important to keep in mind that Killmonger represents the African world revolution, and he was cheated from the throne because of nepotism.

T’Challa’s story

T’Challa is the prince who wants revenge and wants to capture Klaw, the man who murdered his father, the king. He is surrounded by loving women who make his journey as king easy; the Wakandan spy, his sister the scientist and the female general who is loyal to the throne.

Although he is from the most powerful and technologically savvy nation in the world, he saves the life of and works with a CIA agent, and brings him to Wakanda to be cured with their herbal medicine. The CIA agent is supposedly stuck in Wakanda after Killmonger comes to power and T’Challa is considered dead.

The CIA agent is the co-star of the movie and makes a few key decisions, like after being given the OK from Wakanda, he shoots down the planes that Killmonger sends out with the weaponized vibranium that will be used around the world to free the oppressed, kind of like Qaddafi’s ideas of sponsoring revolutions around the world.

T’Challa is the prince who wants revenge and wants to capture Klaw, the man who murdered his father, the king. He is surrounded by loving women who make his journey as king easy; the Wakandan spy, his sister the scientist and the female general who is loyal to the throne.

T’Challa disrespected the throne and the ancestral customs when he cheated and came back to challenge his cousin, after Killmonger was deemed king. My homeboy said, “Well, T’Challa never tapped out like Bonacu, who previously had challenged T’Challa for the throne.” My answer was, “How could he if he is presumed dead?”

T’Challa later kills Killmonger and regains the throne. Then he goes to the spirit world to chastize his father for making a mistake when he assassinated his brother, Killmonger’s father. In his twisted mind, his solution to repair the situation is to give Wakandan technology to the U.N., not the pan-African revolution, to share with the world.

Any student of political history will tell you that the U.N. has never served Black and Brown nations. It is just an imperialist front for oppressive nations to appear in the international media as though they are trying to come up with diplomatic solutions to their genocidal murder, rape and pillaging of the resources of the many oppressed nations, while the oppressors are also moving militarily simultaneously outside of U.N. authority without consequence.

Any student of political history will tell you that the U.N. has never served Black and Brown nations.

Many people in theaters across the world applauded the U.N. move, without considering its consequences. It just goes to show how little the oppressed world knows about the actual and factual white supremacy machinery that is controlling their minds and resources, from the U.N. to Disney to the Boule.

T’Challa represents Paul Kagame in current day politics. He has been running Rwanda for almost 25 years. He got to that position by assassinating Rwandan President Habyarimana and Burundian president Cyprien Ntaryamira by bombing their plane in ‘94. He did not win through elections is the point.

T’Challa represents Paul Kagame in current day politics.

Kagame also spent time for military training in the U.S., while the character T’Challa went to an Ivy League school in the U.S. Although Kagame has the blood of the Rwandan and Congolese genocide on his hands that has taken nearly 10 million lives. Alongside his counterparts Museveni in Uganda, Kabila in the Congo, and their Western imperial puppet masters in the U.S. and Europe, he is allowed to operate with impunity because he occupies the land and wields the military might to deliver coltan, a mineral that the Western world is heavily dependent on for its computers and weapons systems.

Disney and the CIA

Now let’s talk more about the subliminal messaging and the history of Disney. Walt Disney, who founded the company with his brother Roy, was a Nazi sympathizer, who is most famous in U.S. military history for participating in Project Paperclip, which was a CIA program that brought over 1,500 Nazi mind scientists – psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists and early media-makers – to the U.S. under an amnesty program which also employed them at Disney and in Hollywood.

In the Disney company’s own recounting of its history, they admit to making morale boosting propaganda films for the U.S. government in 1941, the height of World War II. The real job of the Paperclip scientists was to perfect mind control and continue Hitler’s experiments with television and motion picture mind manipulation.

It is important to note that in 1939, Hitler’s Germany inaugurated the use of motion pictures as a mass military weapon, to brainwash the world into homogeneity – kind of like the internet and social media. Once perfected, the CIA called its media machine a Wurlitzer Piano, because for every note you strike, you could make the people do a different dance, just like in the movie “The Wiz.” So this is the historical connection that Disney, the company, has with the CIA.

The original writer of “Black Panther” is a white man by the name of Stan Lee. He reportedly wrote the comic “Black Panther” months before the organization with same name was formed in Oakland, California. Comic fans claim that there is no connection between the two, but there is definitely a connection between the movie and this Black revolutionary organization.

It is important to note that in 1939, Hitler’s Germany inaugurated the use of motion pictures as a mass military weapon, to brainwash the world into homogeneity – kind of like the internet and social media.

First off, in the film, Killmonger is from Oakland, home of the Black Panther Party as well as of Ryan Coogler, the director and one of the writers. The film was released on the birthday weekend of Minister of Defense Huey P. Newton of the Black Panther Party.

The promo picture is of T’Challa sitting like Huey in a futuristic chair, mimicking the iconic Huey P. Newton photo with his gun and his spear. Also, in one scene in the movie, Killmonger is in a room with a Public Enemy poster on the wall; right after you see it the first time, the camera moves swiftly past Huey’s poster on the wall also.

On a political level, the symbolism is made to cover up or confuse the achievements of the Panther Party, which are many. Please study the 10 point platform, political prisoners and the survival programs, if you need to learn more.

On a political level, the symbolism is made to cover up or confuse the achievements of the Panther Party, which are many.

Many in my generation remember the ‘83 classic movie “Scarface,” which was one of the biggest commercials promoting the selling of cocaine ever made. Black and Brown young people wanted to be Al Pacino in “Scarface” until “New Jack City,” thus fueling the psychology behind the crack explosion of the ‘80s-‘90s.

But “Scarface” was also important because the movie started off with an unnecessary scene of a Fidel Castro speech with scenes from the Mariel boatlift of 1980. The story included Fidel’s speech because it was important for the government through Hollywood to get the youth in the U.S. and around the world to identify with Alpha 66 and the treacherous Gusano Cubans who worked with the CIA in the Bay of Pigs and lost against Castro’s forces, resulting in their capture and release years later to Miami. Remember, that is how “Scarface” starts.

In ‘71 at the height of the Panther revolutionary phenomenon, “Shaft” is released, a movie about a Black police officer who dresses like the Panthers. When people are talking about changing the conditions in the community in a revolutionary way, Hollywood tries to introduce a cool cop. Coincidence?

The Black Panther Party and Huey’s image specifically was again attacked through the medium of Hollywood with the ‘73 movie “The Mack.” Was it a coincidence that the character the Mack was from Oakland, looked like Huey, sounded like Huey, had problems with the Ward brothers like Huey and had a mentoring relationship with the children in the neighborhood like Huey did, with the Panther liberation school. Coincidence?

In 2001, Spike Lee wrote and directed another hit piece on Huey, in a “A Huey P. Newton story,” where he profiled Huey as a chronic cigarette smoking lunatic who co-founded the Black Panther Party. Hollywood’s attacks have proceeded to this very day.

In 2013, Coogler’s “Frutivale Station” was a good movie. It just wasn’t about what made the Oscar Grant anti-police terrorism movement start, which is what blew the name up for Hollywood to want to make the movie in the first place.

On Jan. 7, 2009, downtown Oakland erupted because after seven days then Mayor Ron Dellums refused to call for the indictment of the Oakland police officer Johannes Mehserle, the triggerman who shot the fatal bullet into Oscar Grant. For the most part, the rally-protesting movement and the street rebels were two different groups except for a few people protesting the police murder. I was among that few.

I went to Santa Rita, fought a trumped up arson case for 13 months, while also continuing to report on what was going on with the Mehserle trial for KPFA, KPOO and the SF Bay View among other outlets around the country, from the Bay to LA for over a year. The people were fighting on both fronts, not because they knew of how “angelic” Oscar was, as he was portrayed in the “Fruitvale Station” film, but because he was another nameless and faceless Black man murdered by the police. The people’s fight was not portrayed at all.

Consciously for some and perhaps unconsciously for others, it was a million dollar attempt by Hollywood to distract the people worldwide, those too young to understand, and those soon to come, as to the scope of what the Oakland rebels of ‘09 were fighting against: state sponsored police terrorism. Ask children under 12 who Oscar Grant is, and they will tell you a fictional Hollywood story instead of about the three street rebellions and the hundreds of protesters, including Lovelle Mixon murdering four Oakland police officer two months after Oscar was killed. Is it a coincidence that none of those things made it to the movie?

The overall political message of “Black Panther” tells you that since you cannot be the Black Panther character, king of Wakanda, you can be a CIA agent like T’Challa’s right hand man, the next best thing. How is it that people who are against police terrorism have become pro-CIA in this case, when the CIA is simply one of many international police agencies for white supremacy?

Some would say that it’s only a movie, and I would respond that corporations spend millions on advertisements at the Superbowl for a reason. The military, intelligence and law enforcement agencies work with Hollywood to convince you that they are our friends and they are not killing us by the millions around the world.

Look at “CSI,” “Mission Impossible,” “James Bond,” “The Avengers,” “Batman,” “The First 48,” “Ride Along,” “21 Jump Street,” “Top Gun,” “Black Panther” and the rollcall is endless. They are always selling you something.

It may be a product; it may be a political idea. In most cases it’s both. If you don’t catch the subliminals and sometimes even if you do, psychology tells us it can be lodged in your subconscious without you or your children even knowing.

The military, intelligence and law enforcement agencies work with Hollywood to convince you that they are our friends and they are not killing us by the millions around the world.

Now when you type “Black Panther” into YouTube, there is no Huey, Bobby, Lil Bobby, Assata, Sekou, Kathleen, Ericka, Mumia, Sundiata, Herman, Jalil, Afeni or any of the others that gave up their lives and freedom for us; there are only comic book characters for the first few hundred videos. What a brilliant COINTELPRO* move.

“There will never be another Black messiah unless we create him,” predicted J. Edgar Hoover, former director of the FBI and chief architect of COINTELPRO.

The People’s Minister of Information JR Valrey, journalist, author and filmmaker, can be reached at blockreportradio@gmail.com or on Facebook. And tune in to BlockReportRadio.com.

*COINTELPRO is a secret FBI counter-intelligence program to disrupt and destroy political organizations considered “radical” or “subversive” that came to focus on the Black Panther Party. It was the Panthers’ Free Children’s Breakfast Program that led FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to declare, on June 15, 1969, that “the Black Panther Party, without question, represents the greatest threat to internal security of the country.” According to Wikipedia, COINTELPRO operated officially from 1956 to 1971, but “COINTELPRO tactics are still used to this day, and have been alleged to include discrediting targets through psychological warfare; smearing individuals and groups using forged documents and by planting false reports in the media; harassment; wrongful imprisonment; and illegal violence, including assassination.” – ed.