Friday, January 23. I970

SCARLET AND BLACK

Page Three

 

 

ON THE RIGHT

by William F. Buckley, .Ir.

if it blurs in

th e mind just

what and who

are the Black

Panlhers, w h y

they are an or-

g a n i z a ti o n

founded a few

years ago on

the doctrine that

the United States

is a racisl-oppressive country

best dealt with by the elimination

of its leaders and institutions.

Suggestive of its rhetorical style

is the front page oi its house

organ which ieatured on the day

of his death a photograph of

Robert Kennedy in a pool of his

own blood, his face transformed
to the likeness of a pig.

Do you think Robert Kennedy
was a pig, I asked Eldridge
Cleaver awhile ago? Yes, he said.
Did he believe in the elimination
of the pigs? Yes he did. Well,
why not begin with Nixon: surely
he is the chief pig? I observed.
Mr. Cleaver, who has had inti-
mate experience with the law,
advised me that he knew enough
not to counsel directly the assasV
sination of the president, but that
in fact if someone did kill him.
that would be one less pig in the
world.

So what do we do about the
Panthers? Why itwe are Leonard
Bernstein the conductor, we have
a big cocktail party to which we
invite a local representative of
the Party, and at the cocktail
party we are so ingratiating that
the Ford Foundation should have
brought back Alistair Cooke so
that the hungry of this world, like
you and me, might have been
permitted via television to be
present at the love-in.

Mr. Bernstein was modishly
dressed, in turtle-neck sweater
and double breasted jacket, and
had obviously been studying up
on the idiom of the times, indeed
so thorough is Mr, Bernstein that
it is altogether possible that he
staged a rehearsal or two,
because a dialog with a Black
Panther is every bit as difficult
to perform as a symphony of
Schonberg. Anyway, the Black

r :97.

I. That Ahrv i... in. only Plrr.

nights?

Panther, Mr. Cox, began by an-
nouncing that if business didn't
provide iull employment, then
the Panthers would simply take
over the means of production and
put them in the hands of the
people, to which prescription it
is recorded that Mr. Bernstein’s
reply was, “I dig absolutely.”

Mr. Cox told the gathering how
very pacific he and his conteds
crates are, that ultimately of
course they desire peace, but that
they have been attacked in their
homes and murdered in their
beds and have the right to defend
themselves. “I agree one hun-
dred percent,” Lenny said,
neglecting to ask Mr. Cox to
explain what defensive uses his
Confederates intended to put the
hand grenades and Molotov cock-
tails that were discovered in the
raids,

One lady present, wife of a
Black Panther who is in jail on
the charge of planning to kill a
few pigs and conspiring to
dynamite mid-town department
stores, expressed great in-
dignation at the interruption of
her husband’s activities by the
police, who recently arrested 13
Panthers, holding ten of them on
$100,000 bail. She brought along
her lawyer, who asked the dis
tingulshed gathering oi artists
capitalists for donations. Some
one who desired to be anonymous
promised $7,500. Sheldon Hal‘s
nick, the lyricist, came in with
$250. Burton Lane, the composer,
gave $200, and Mrs. Harry Bela-
iontc gave $300. Lenny said
proudly that he would donate the
proceeds lrorn his very next
concert. He is loo shy a man to
say how much he earns per
concert, but he didn’l want to
appear a tease, so he said the
sum would be in four figures.

We should study the Bernstein
approach. it is a singular contris
bution to conviviality, No doubt
Mr. Bernstein curses himself for
having only just now discovered
it. Just two years ago he might
have invited George Lincoln
Rockwell and his Nazis into his
apartment, to ask him to explain
the causes of his grievances, and
raised a little money for those
frequent occasions when Rock-

Did You
Know:

not. on Tuesday

2. That Ahrv lpncinlius in with piping-hot dohmy
wodnordny through Monday.

3. Thai Ahrv trier u hard or III can to got thou on

inn. on Tuesdays. too.

EUT SOMETIMES WE GET BEHIND. ISN'T IT WORTH
WAITING FOR US JUST A LITTLE 0N TUESDAYS?

YOU KNOW IT ISI

Ahrvuno’s Pizza

TOM Ir BETTE GARBISON

236-6221

well found himself on the shady
side of the law, though to be sure
Rockwell would not have been so
romantic a guest as he never
actually advocated killing
anyone. 0n the other hand, there
are surely still around enough
members of the Ku Klux Klan
to fill Mr. Bernstein’s living
room, or atleastmostofit.

I remember, in the hour I spent
with Mr, Cleaver the one thing
I said to him that made him truly
angry. It was that the Black
Panther Party exists primarily
for the satisfaction of white
peopie, rather than black people.
The white people like to strut
their toleration, and strip
themselves of their turtle neck
sweaters to reveal their shame.
The Panthers have only a few
thousand Black members,
because the mass of the black
people are too proud, too unaf-
fected, to join the Panthers. to
attend Leonard Bernstein’s
parties.

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A WORD EDGEWISE

by John P. Roche

Biairo finally
went under. The
breakaway Ibos
regime, outnum-
bered and out-
g u n n e d, had

*‘ fought d e 5 per
ately to r its
autonomy, But,
despite Biblical
reassurance, Go-
liath usuallv has

an unbeatable edge over David.

No neat account can be made
of the rights and wrongs. The
Federal Nigerian government
was asserting the principle of
majority rule; the Ibos demand-
ing protection for minority rights
which would have destroyed
Nigerian sovereignty. Though the
participants were black Africans,
the terms of the dispute were
familiar to sixteenth century
French Huguenots (demanding
absolute guarantees against
Catholic power) and to
nineteenth century Poles (ate
tempting to prevent Russian
”cultural genocide”). Historical-
ly, there has been no workable
compromise 7 we in the united
States fought one of the bloodiest
civil wars in history to determine
the location of final power. To
be a little bit sovereign is like
being slightly pregnant.

So much for history, so much
ior logic. The implications of
Biafra must be explored on a
different level. In human terms
what has occurred in the past
three years is simply monstrous.
Reliable British sources indicate
that over 2,000.0001bos have died,
the bulk of them women and chil-
dren who have starved to death.
(Nigerian losses have also been
severe, but do not approach the
same order of magnitude.)
Starvation has been used as a
weapon by both sides; by Lagos
to weaken the Biafran capacity
to resist; by the Biafrans to
generate sympathy and support
from the World outside.

in terms of human suffering,
using the admittedly inadequate
index of mortality figures. the
war in Nigeria was the worst
event of the 1960’s. (Probably
second was the virtually un-
known Sudanese pacification or
three southern provinces — the
Arab regime moved ruthlessly
against the black inhabitants 7
with a death toll now_ estimated
at over 1,000,000.) Yet. in a world
full of international and regional
organizations, nobody did
anything about it.

EMPHASIS

905 Main

 

 

 

 

One rack, one
time only, special
prices.

Changed Tuesday.
Wednesday, a n (I
Thursday.

NO APPROVALS
ON THESE.

The Red Cross and various
religious groups tried valiantly
to succor the starving, but, while
too many human beings were
dying. the issue could not even
get discussed at the United
Nations and was buried quietly
by the Organization of African
Unity. The reasons for this were
not hard to discern (I set them
out here a year ago with the
somber prediction that there
would be no change 7 alas, l
was right), but a universal un-
willingness to tangle with the
explosive minority question has
turned the Eastern Region of
Nigeria into a vast graveyard.

Since the “International
Community” took a dive on
Biafra, the question arose:
“Should the United States do
anything? l’ An interesting United
Front, ranging from Senator Tom
Dodd to figures on the New Left,
said, “Yes," but, when pressed
as to WHAT we should do, they
got fuzzy. Their advice seemed
to be that we should call Lagos.
or London, or U Thant or Haile
Selassie (of the Organization of
African Unity) and tell them-him
“Something must be done!" This
was not terribly helpful. It would
have been more appropriate to
simply send the lbos a wreath.

I had a plan founded on my
rejection of the use oi starvation
as a weapon, the perhaps
Utopian notion that has led me
over the years to support feeding
Greeks, under Nazi occupation,
Red Chinese, the Egyptians, and
recently Nigerians of whatever
persuasion. Unlike other forms
of death, starvation is uniquely
the fate of the innocent, the
marginal, the unimportant. I
wanted the US. government to
announce that planes loaded only
with food and medicines Would
fly in reliei supplies to any area
of Nigeria suffering from disease
and famine A- and that USAF
fighters would convoy them
against the unlikely event that
somebody would try to knock
them down.

Although I knew of no other
way to get food and medicine to
the dying, my friends fled in
horror. “You might get us into
another Vietnam" was the
standard response. Fair enough.
i have supported risk-taking
before. But this would have been
a unique blow for the sovereignty
of humanity, rather than for any
parochial definition of national
interest. In any event, the politics
of inaction killed 2,000,000 people,
a point to be kept in mind when
we discuss the consequences of
American disengagement from
the turbulent world.

Welcome back
Students!

See you at
Penne s