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Chile, 1973. Salvador Allende is democratically elected on a socialist platform. A coup orchestrated by the CIA overthrows him. He is assassinated. Pinochet’ s junta officially kills 3,500 people and tortures 30,000. Nicaragua. The Sandinistas govern with a left-wing agenda. Washington finances the Contras. In 1986, the International Court of Justice condemns the United States for“ illegal use of force.” Washington ignores the verdict. Vietnam. Korea. Angola. Mozambique. Congo. The list goes on. And each time, behind the rhetoric of democracy and freedom, the same cold logic emerges: crush any economic alternative to the American capitalist order.
The Black Panther Party: War at Home
Flashmag! Issue 170 March 2026
What few people know is that this war never needed to cross an ocean to be waged. It was also fought within the United States itself, against Americans who dared to think differently. In October 1966, in Oakland, California, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. The party practiced armed defense of minority communities against the U. S. government and fought for the establishment of revolutionary socialism through mass organization and community programs. The party’ s goals were clear: feed, care for, and educate. Fred Hampton, a young leader in Chicago, launched free breakfasts for Black children— soon benefiting 30,000 children. Medical clinics. Community schools. Legal programs for the most disadvantaged. A social program that deeply embarrassed the federal government by showing what the U. S. state refused to do for its Black citizens.
The response was immediate and brutal. In 1969, J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI, described the party as“ the greatest threat to the internal security of the country” and sabotaged the party through an illegal and secret counterintelligence program— COINTEL- PRO— consisting of surveillance, infiltration, perjury, and police harassment, designed to undermine and criminalize the party.
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