Dem defends organization whose leader said 'kill crackers'

Footage of racist rants and incitements to "kill crackers" and "their babies" made by the New Black Panther Party member who was accused of voter intimidation, then released from those charges, didn't dissuade a leading Democrat from defending the radical organization.

Democratic strategist Michael Brown appeared today on Sean Hannity's radio show opposite Erik Rush, author of "Negrophilia: From Slave Block to Pedestal – America's Racial Obsession," a new title by WND Books.

"The purpose of what the New Black Panther Party was trying to do was try to level the playing field so people of color felt safe going to the polls," said Brown, citing a "pattern of and history of voter intimidation going on in certain places around the country."

"I don't understand why the New Black Panther Party thought they needed to be out there in the first place," Rush countered. "This isn't 1965.

"If you had a white paramilitary group out there saying the same kinds of things and doing the same kinds of things," Rush added, "I think they'd be underneath the jail right about now if you ask me."

On Election Day 2008 Samir Shabazz, also known as Maurice Heath, the New Black Panther Party's Philadelphia leader, was videotaped alongside another party member guarding the entrance of a Philadelphia polling place clad in black fatigues and wielding a nightstick.

The Obama administration at first followed up on the Bush administration's initial prosecution of the case as an incident of voter intimidation but dismissed it in May 2009 – a month after three members of the party failed to appear in court. The administration also got Shabazz to agree not to carry a "deadly weapon" near a polling place until 2012.

"These guys are criminals. ... How do you stand with people who will intimidate voters and incite murder?" Rush asked Brown. "If a guy who can spout that kind of stuff gets favor from the Obama administration, it's surrealistic."

Former Department of Justice official J. Christian Adams recently testified to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and cited the Shabazz case as indicative of the department's repeated "hostility" toward cases with black defendants and white victims, admitting, "We abetted wrongdoing and abandoned law-abiding citizens."

Brown condemned the ravings on video released yesterday of Shabazz shouting, "You want freedom? You're gonna have to kill some crackers! You're gonna have to kill some of their babies!

"I hate white people – all of them! Every last iota of a cracker, I hate 'em," Shabazz shouts into a megaphone on a crowded sidewalk. "Through South Street with white, dirty, cracker whore [expletive] on our arms. And we call ourselves black men with African garb on."

But Brown accused Rush of "burying his head in the sand" to reports of voter intimidation by police during the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004 in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Mississippi where "people of color were intimidated."

"People in the African-American community know and in the Latino community know, that if you put a large force of police out there, there's a perception of intimidation," he said.

An incredulous Hannity remarked: "Police officers show up at baseball games, they show up at football games, they show up at concerts. They show up wherever they expect there's going to be a large percentage of the town, the community, where they're going to be congregating in one particular area. They do so for people's safety."

"It sounds to me like a very weird, very subjective and very convenient interpretation of the police being out there in the first place," said Rush. "The perception is only going to be on the part of people like your guest here who think that white people wake up in the morning thinking how they're going to get blackie."

"People like (Shabazz) did not have that sort of motivation," Rush said. "…They're not out there so black people can feel safe."

National Geographic describes the New Black Panther Party as "a militant hate group headquartered in Washington, D.C., that seeks to redefine the black struggle for equality and demand liberation from what it sees as white supremacy."

The party has marched on Independence Day, dragging American flags through the streets, trampling the flag on the ground and setting it on fire. Members reportedly protested celebration of Independence Day at an event called "4th of U-lie" on July 5, 2008. Members say the day is not a celebration of independence for blacks.

Rush, who exposed the anti-American ravings of President Obama's longtime minister and then "spiritual adviser," the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, cited Obama’s "soft spot" for black liberation theology.

"Negrophilia," published by WND Books, is charting in the Top 5 of Amazon categories on African-American Studies and Discrimination & Racism. Rush has adopted a Glenn-Beck-style blackboard approach toward revealing the intents and tactics of the "professional race-baiters who seek to manipulate, intimidate and subjugate Americans of every color – even and especially from the highest offices in the land."

Race-baiters' unseen tool is "negrophilia," says Rush, "an undue and inordinate affinity for blacks," combined with the "reflexive demonization of whites as inherently wicked." It's rooted in leftist tactics of division and aimed at advancing policies that keep blacks "obedient," whites "silent" and "political control” secure.

To interview Erik Rush, please contact Tim Bueler at (530) 401-3285 or e-mail.