’70s Blaxploitation Movies

 

Quote of the Day: “An independent filmmaker’s only hope of survival is to do something the mainstream studios can not or will not do”—Roger Corman, Hollywood’s king of B movies.

Let’s start by explaining what a pimpmobile was. If you take a look at the ‘70s films listed in this post, you’re going to see a lot of them, rolling jukeboxes cruising the ghetto streets of south Chicago, south-central Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and above all, New York City’s Harlem, for many years the unofficial capital of Black America. A pimpmobile was a big luxury car, usually a Cadillac Eldorado or Lincoln Continental, tricked out with garish accessories that boasted of money to burn. It was the ride par excellence of the urban criminal class, with no attempt to remain inconspicuous. On the contrary, it was as conspicuous as the Batmobile. It bragged to the world: I’m the king of the city. Nobody can stop me. Not white society, not the law, not my enemies in the streets. No one. That’s what the era of ‘70s Blaxploitation movies was all about—a young man’s fantasy of women, riches, limitless power, and revenge.

By 1978 or so, other than a couple of stragglers and late wannabees, they were gone, over. But their violent, hoes-and-playaz themes and style have endured and echoed for almost half a century, in thousands of record albums and music videos.

These films seemed to come out of nowhere at the turn of the decade, but they didn’t. For a dozen years, Americans were becoming accustomed to racial dramas, at first warm and positive ones like A Raisin in the Sun and Lilies of the Field. They often starred, as you’ve already noticed, Sidney Poitier, who back then had a unique stature almost unimaginable today: America’s Official Negro Hero. Mind you, the civil rights movement helped get work for other actors, among them Brock Peters, Diana Sands, young comedians Bill Cosby, Nipsey Russell, and Godfrey Cambridge, and a married couple, Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis.

It was Davis who unintentionally set a new Black wave of films into motion when Sam Goldwyn Jr. hired him to direct Cotton Comes to Harlem. Though a mainstream movie, not a Blaxploitation film—the term didn’t exist yet—the 1970 box-office success of Cotton proved to Hollywood that “race” movies didn’t have to be integrated; they could be jet black and still be a money-making hit. The few whites in Cotton Comes to Harlem were clueless officials, doofus-y cops, and hissable villains. The formula was repeated the following year with MGM’s Shaft, launching a franchise. The ads for Shaft bragged, “Bolder than Bond. Cooler than Bullitt.”—big boasts in 1971.

Independently made and released films had broken what amounted to studio monopoly and were booked by more and more theaters. Hollywood’s always-striving lower rung producers sensed an opportunity in low-low budget Black action movies.

A couple of other things happening at the same time converged. Movies in general had become much more violent once censorship was relaxed in the ‘60s. Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and The Wild Bunch (1969) stand out, but there were hundreds of others. Cop movies took the longtime place of Westerns. Gangster movies captured the imagination of the culture after The Godfather opened in early 1972. Martial arts movies—“Kung Fu fighting”—became all the rage. And the racial rage of that political era completed the combustible elements of Blaxploitation, the very name a sardonic play on “sexploitation,” another, slightly earlier cinematic phenomenon of the era.

They lit the fuse. The dry kindling that was waiting for them were thousands of smaller, single-screen old movie theaters, many of them in now-abandoned parts of American cities. They’d been struggling since TV took over. A few lucky ones became revival houses that showed old movies and foreign films. Far more became porno theaters, in a time a decade before home videotape. And many more specialized in Black action. As many whites left the slums after WWII (my family among them), theaters in newly ghettoized urban neighborhoods adjusted to the necessity of pleasing a new clientele.

By 1972, the product was ready. There were Black actors of the ‘60s ready to take Hollywood’s traditional, uncertain, highly reversible climb to the director’s chair in the ‘70s, as Ossie Davis had done. Ivan Dixon of Hogan’s Heroes helmed Trouble Man, one of the first films called Blaxploitation even in its time. Blacula made its own claim on Bram Stoker’s timeless story. Shaft director Gordon Parks was a famous photographer who’d made a few documentary films in 16mm. By contrast, his son Gordon Parks Jr. had no screen credits when he made Superfly (1972), destined to become, if anything, even more influential than his father’s film the year before. Many Blaxploitation movies at least paid lip service to Black history, the struggle to get somewhere in life. Superfly didn’t bother much with philosophy; it was straight-up glorification of a life of crime.

This is roughly where your humble narrator entered the picture: offscreen, as a newly minted movie projectionist. My very first shift was at the Melba, a long-gone 600-seat theater in the Bronx. It had been built as part of a neighborhood improvement scheme when the neighborhood was Jewish; 50 years later, it was showing Sugar Hill on a double bill with Scream, Blacula, Scream. This was a somewhat different kind of movie than those I’d recently studied at the NYU film school, with different, very direct lessons about the kind of responses a sharp filmmaker could draw out of an audience.

The projector lamp often went out, resulting in a screamingly violent audience until light could be restored. The theater manager, himself Black, refused to spend the few dollars to buy repair parts. He cackled uproariously, “We promised them the black motion picture experience, now didn’t we?” Indeed, we did. I didn’t stay long at the Melba. Something about life expectancy.

I moved my job downtown to 42nd Street. Sure, drunks still occasionally fired guns at the soundproof projection booth windows there, trying to knock off the light beam, and mobs still tried to hammer down the iron door to the booth. But the burly ushers had tire irons and crowbars, to use on the mobs, not the doors. On balance, it was a safer, altogether more normal environment than the central Bronx. Paid better, too. Think of 42nd Street in its heyday, in modern terms, as a 14-plex on two sides of a single block. But no 14-plex in today’s world has or had more than 19,000 available seats.

Times Square and 42nd Street became the instant capital of the brief Blaxploitation era, mostly because Harlem and the newly Black parts of Brooklyn didn’t have anywhere near enough screens to compete. 42nd and 34th Streets were sites of major bus and train connections. In that era, there were many servicemen of every shade of color hanging out at the movies just killing time for a few hours. Contrary to public belief, most 42nd Street movies were no different from the ones you saw elsewhere, but cheaper, and part of a double bill, long after that ended in most other theaters. You’d see two cop thrillers, say The New Centurions with Sudden Impact, or two lesbian melodramas, Fraulein Doktor with The Fox. Of those 14 screens on “The Street,” only two were showing porno. Okay, three when Flesh Gordon was in town.

Black Eye was better than the run-of-the-mill Blaxploitation films of the day, and for maybe the first time Hollywood realized what a screen presence Fred Williamson had. As an actor, he wasn’t the black John Gielgud, no, but he was at least the black Roger Moore, polished, handsome, and sharp, much more believable than Richard Roundtree’s Shaft.

The plot was also much more like a classic noir detective story than like other Blaxploitation films, head and shoulders above routine stuff like The Mack, Hell Up in Harlem, or Cleopatra Jones. The movie was photographed with unusual skill for a relatively low budget studio film. I suspect this was being groomed as a crossover, a film that could transcend a Blaxploitation label for at least modest mainstream success. That quest for crossover appeal to whites didn’t catch on quite yet, but it would soon.

Trick Baby was a relatively serious story that tried to ride the blaxploitation wave. Despite the fact that it has the streetwise pedigree of coming from an Iceberg Slim novel, or maybe because of it, Trick Baby doesn’t have much of the crude-but-effective slam-bang action, or the uninhibited earthy humor of its contemporaries, the real blaxploitation films. Superficially it has the authentic look of The Mack or Truck Turner, with its dirty streets, pimpmobiles, and mafia-ridden cops, but it comes across as a woodenly acted, low rent biracial version of The Sting set in Philadelphia. The “old” black guy more or less looks the part, though the actor was only 42 at the time, but his Iceberg Slim dialog is so stilted and literary that he might as well be Baby Stewie in Family Guy.

Michael Schulz isn’t the blackest-sounding name, but he made Cooley High, a cheerful blatant ripoff of American Graffiti, and his next picture was Hollywood backed, a true crossover at last: Car Wash, an engaging workplace comedy whose Black cast did not peddle cocaine or fire guns. By now, the music business and the movie business were agreed: Black movies could sell records, plenty of them. Motown became a respected partner to the studios.

The earliest Blaxploitation films were mostly made with white directors and crew members. The only Blacks were in front of the camera. Thank God It’s Friday reversed that formula; Blacks and whites clowned it up on screen, with a great deal of black control behind the scenes. By now, things had changed. In 1977, Esquire magazine ran a feature called “Why Blacks Aren’t Scary Anymore.”

In the decades since, Blacks came to regard the films of the Blaxploitation days with a mixture of affection and embarrassment, not unlike the way my family regards the Irish movie gangsters and East Side Kids of the Depression.

As another symbol of the end of the era, Harlem radio station WBLS, which once angrily billed itself as the “World Black Liberation Station” recast itself in a smoother, more seductive mode to take advantage of lucrative multiracial advertising revenue. Now it was called the “World’s Best-Looking Sound.”

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  1. Jimmy Carter Member
    Jimmy Carter
    @JimmyCarter

    Loved Night Shift.

    We We were lil’ bitty, We watched Car Wash a bazillion times. 

     

    I’ll never forget the line, I think it was The Jeffersons (because I watched that religiously as a kid), when They were talking about the neighbors that just moved in, a white Family, and one of Them stated, “Uh, oh…. Here comes the neighborhood!” Still cracks Me up. 

    • #61
  2. ToryWarWriter Coolidge
    ToryWarWriter
    @ToryWarWriter

    And of course we got this from the films.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    • #62
  3. MISTER BITCOIN Inactive
    MISTER BITCOIN
    @MISTERBITCOIN

    By 1978 or so, other than a couple of stragglers and late wannabees, they were gone, over. But their violent, hoes-and-playaz themes and style have endured and echoed for almost half a century, in thousands of record albums and music videos.

    Did VCR contribute to the end of blacxploitation movies?

     

    • #63
  4. Titus Techera Contributor
    Titus Techera
    @TitusTechera

    kedavis (View Comment):

    Taras (View Comment):

    Let’s not forget Undercover Brother (2002), with Denise Richards as “black man’s heroin”,

    Not heroin. Kryptonite.

    The best of the new bunch:

    • #64
  5. MISTER BITCOIN Inactive
    MISTER BITCOIN
    @MISTERBITCOIN

    Gary McVey (View Comment):
    Incredibly, that’s not actually a pimpmobile, though it sure looks like one. It’s a limited production car, a Clenet I think. Pimpmobiles were big on the long hood/short deck look. 

     

    an ostentatious luxury car of a kind characteristically used by a pimp

    https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pimpmobile

     

    • #65
  6. MISTER BITCOIN Inactive
    MISTER BITCOIN
    @MISTERBITCOIN

    In 1970s, people could distinguish between movie and reality.

    Today truth is more violent than fiction?

     

    • #66
  7. MISTER BITCOIN Inactive
    MISTER BITCOIN
    @MISTERBITCOIN

    Did this genre feature this type of dialogue:

    male: <insert comment>

    female: excuse me, I’m speaking

     

    • #67
  8. Hartmann von Aue Member
    Hartmann von Aue
    @HartmannvonAue

    kedavis (View Comment):

    Hartmann von Aue (View Comment):

    Man, everyone’s mentioning Yaphet Koto and now I want to look for Homicide: Life on the Streets on Amazon.

    Well, that and Shaft.

     

    Another suggestion: Warning Sign, with him plus Sam Waterston and Kathleen Quinlan.

    Yes! I saw that when it was relatively new. 86? 

    • #68
  9. Hartmann von Aue Member
    Hartmann von Aue
    @HartmannvonAue

    Vance Richards (View Comment):

    Gary McVey: In 1977, Esquire magazine ran a feature called “Why Blacks Aren’t Scary Anymore.”

    Growing up in an all-white neighborhood, movies/TV and sports did more to combat racism than anything else. Now it seems like the sports and entertainment worlds are the ones stirring up racism.

    See my comment about Joe Morgan over on the memorial post for him. He was a hero to thousands of midwestern white kids, especially short kids like myself. And who else remembers that Sunday school song about “red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight”? We sang it and we believed it and now…the wokescolds call us who are melanin impaired “racists”. God’s wrath be upon them.

    • #69
  10. Titus Techera Contributor
    Titus Techera
    @TitusTechera

    Blaxploitation has long been a joke–here’s Michael Jai White’s surprisingly successful version:

    He then made a sequel to Undercover Brother–not worth watching…

    • #70
  11. Titus Techera Contributor
    Titus Techera
    @TitusTechera

    But the best thing about Blaxploitation has got to be Eddie Murphy’s comeback:

    • #71
  12. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Hartmann von Aue (View Comment):

    kedavis (View Comment):

    Hartmann von Aue (View Comment):

    Man, everyone’s mentioning Yaphet Koto and now I want to look for Homicide: Life on the Streets on Amazon.

    Well, that and Shaft.

     

    Another suggestion: Warning Sign, with him plus Sam Waterston and Kathleen Quinlan.

    Yes! I saw that when it was relatively new. 86?

    It came out in 85, but you might have seen it in 86.  I didn’t first see it until later either.  As I recall, I got this one, and something called “Red Alert” at the same time, the cover had that big hatch at the vacuum chamber at NASA or wherever it was.  That movie was something of a disappointment, but “Warning Sign” has stuck with me.  

    Apparently “Red Alert” was from 1977, about sabotage at a nuclear power plant.   That does seem right, but I haven’t seen it in decades.

    DEFCON-4 also came out in 1985, at the time it was a so-bad-it’s-good movie that I enjoyed with some of my friends, but now I’d probably call it just bad.  Even terrible.

    • #72
  13. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    Dolomite‘s a funny case, because the name is bigger now then it was then. Like It’s a Wonderful Life, or the 1957 Chevrolet, icons now, not wildly successful in their day. 

    But yes, Murphy is great in it. 

    • #73
  14. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Mad TV had some of that Dolomite stuff too.  And other bits over the years it was on.  Probably the best bits have been removed from youtube, stupid fools.

    • #74
  15. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    MISTER BITCOIN (View Comment):

    Did this genre feature this type of dialogue:

    male: <insert comment>

    female: excuse me, I’m speaking

     

    No. Blacks had a longstanding exemption from feminism. The bluntly nasty slogan “Shut up, B—-” could have been written for Blaxploitation. Though 22 year old interns at The Atlantic might strain to find strong females in some of the movies, they were almost all “body” roles. The women often fired guns, but in the end they were there to be barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen. I don’t know if the Black pictures were worse than the white ones of the day in that respect, but they sure as hell weren’t any better. 

    • #75
  16. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    MISTER BITCOIN (View Comment):

    In 1970s, people could distinguish between movie and reality.

    Today truth is more violent than fiction?

     

    It was more violent then than now, in fact. 

    • #76
  17. Titus Techera Contributor
    Titus Techera
    @TitusTechera

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    MISTER BITCOIN (View Comment):

    In 1970s, people could distinguish between movie and reality.

    Today truth is more violent than fiction?

     

    It was more violent then than now, in fact.

    Yeah, America used to have moments of horror–thousands of bombings from ’69 into the early ’70s, to say nothing of rates of violent crimes that would terrify today’s wannabe terrorists. Or the amazing achievement of NYC before’92, at least four consecutive years of more than 2,000 murders. It was close to 10,000 people murdered.

    The truth is, America’s had the first generation of peace in a while, so people forgot what violence really is like. So they want it again, or at least are playing with something that might get out of hand… The people who maybe should stop this–they, too, have been made soft by soft times.

    • #77
  18. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    MISTER BITCOIN (View Comment):

    By 1978 or so, other than a couple of stragglers and late wannabees, they were gone, over. But their violent, hoes-and-playaz themes and style have endured and echoed for almost half a century, in thousands of record albums and music videos.

    Did VCR contribute to the end of blacxploitation movies?

     

    Indirectly, yes, although the fad had passed by the time VCR ownership was widespread. The VCR was the last straw in TV’s conquest of the weaker movie theaters. For decades, they’d managed to survive on concession sales and on the modest rentals that distributors charged for second rate and second run product. Before VCRs and cable, you’d pair up a middling new film and a hit from a year or two back. Sure, it wasn’t Star Wars, but it offered twice as much “seat time” for the money, and the price was generally cheap.

    Blaxploitation had no chance of being on TV at that time, so theaters were all they had. 

    • #78
  19. Doctor Robert Member
    Doctor Robert
    @DoctorRobert

    kedavis (View Comment):

    While it may not have been a “Blaxploitation” film per se, Escape From New York may have had the most garish pimpmobile of all, with the dual-front-mounted chandeliers:

     

    Funniest. Movie. Ever.   Saw it in a crowded Hartford downtown theater.  Just as the movie started a tall black gent sat down right in front of me, so I spent the movie leaning from side to side.  When this Pimpmobile appeared I whispered to my (late first) wife, who was whiter than driven snow, “it figures” or some such.  She chucked me on the arm but we both were amused to see the tall black gent laughing out loud.

    Funniest movie ever.  Thanks for the photo, Kedavis.

    • #79
  20. MISTER BITCOIN Inactive
    MISTER BITCOIN
    @MISTERBITCOIN

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    Dolomite‘s a funny case, because the name is bigger now then it was then. Like It’s a Wonderful Life, or the 1957 Chevrolet, icons now, not wildly successful in their day.

    But yes, Murphy is great in it.

    or Star Trek, no one watched it on network television… it became a cult hit in syndication

    I guess we can brady bunch, gilligan’s island to the list

     

    • #80
  21. MISTER BITCOIN Inactive
    MISTER BITCOIN
    @MISTERBITCOIN

    Titus Techera (View Comment):

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    MISTER BITCOIN (View Comment):

    In 1970s, people could distinguish between movie and reality.

    Today truth is more violent than fiction?

     

    It was more violent then than now, in fact.

    Yeah, America used to have moments of horror–thousands of bombings from ’69 into the early ’70s, to say nothing of rates of violent crimes that would terrify today’s wannabe terrorists. Or the amazing achievement of NYC before’92, at least four consecutive years of more than 2,000 murders. It was close to 10,000 people murdered.

    The truth is, America’s had the first generation of peace in a while, so people forgot what violence really is like. So they want it again, or at least are playing with something that might get out of hand… The people who maybe should stop this–they, too, have been made soft by soft times.

    What’s disturbing is that now we have mayors and DA’s who will not impose law and order.  In fact some are supporting rioters.  People are writing books such as In Defense of Looting.  The fringe left is no longer fringe.

    I never thought that 911 would be busy or out of service 

     

    • #81
  22. MISTER BITCOIN Inactive
    MISTER BITCOIN
    @MISTERBITCOIN

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    MISTER BITCOIN (View Comment):

    By 1978 or so, other than a couple of stragglers and late wannabees, they were gone, over. But their violent, hoes-and-playaz themes and style have endured and echoed for almost half a century, in thousands of record albums and music videos.

    Did VCR contribute to the end of blacxploitation movies?

     

    Indirectly, yes, although the fad had passed by the time VCR ownership was widespread. The VCR was the last straw in TV’s conquest of the weaker movie theaters. For decades, they’d managed to survive on concession sales and on the modest rentals that distributors charged for second rate and second run product. Before VCRs and cable, you’d pair up a middling new film and a hit from a year or two back. Sure, it wasn’t Star Wars, but it offered twice as much “seat time” for the money, and the price was generally cheap.

    Blaxploitation had no chance of being on TV at that time, so theaters were all they had.

    How are movie theaters still in business today?

    Actually they are not?

     

    • #82
  23. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    Titus Techera (View Comment):

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    MISTER BITCOIN (View Comment):

    In 1970s, people could distinguish between movie and reality.

    Today truth is more violent than fiction?

     

    It was more violent then than now, in fact.

    Yeah, America used to have moments of horror–thousands of bombings from ’69 into the early ’70s, to say nothing of rates of violent crimes that would terrify today’s wannabe terrorists. Or the amazing achievement of NYC before’92, at least four consecutive years of more than 2,000 murders. It was close to 10,000 people murdered.

    The truth is, America’s had the first generation of peace in a while, so people forgot what violence really is like. So they want it again, or at least are playing with something that might get out of hand… The people who maybe should stop this–they, too, have been made soft by soft times.

    Agreed. BLM might–might–compare to the Black Panthers, but Antifa is Romper Room compared to the Weathermen and SDS. Not just some, but hundreds of bombings. Hundreds of cops killed. Each year. If anything, today’s Blacks are slightly to moderately less Left than today’s white liberals are. That wasn’t true in 1971. 

    • #83
  24. Hartmann von Aue Member
    Hartmann von Aue
    @HartmannvonAue

    Titus Techera (View Comment):

    But the best thing about Blaxploitation has got to be Eddie Murphy’s comeback:

    Thanks. I saw some good reviews of this and was curious enough to look it up on Amazon.de at the time. Unfortunately it is not available here. 

    It was good to see Wesley Snipes on the screen again, too, even in a supporting role. 

    • #84
  25. MISTER BITCOIN Inactive
    MISTER BITCOIN
    @MISTERBITCOIN

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    Titus Techera (View Comment):

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    MISTER BITCOIN (View Comment):

    In 1970s, people could distinguish between movie and reality.

    Today truth is more violent than fiction?

     

    It was more violent then than now, in fact.

    Yeah, America used to have moments of horror–thousands of bombings from ’69 into the early ’70s, to say nothing of rates of violent crimes that would terrify today’s wannabe terrorists. Or the amazing achievement of NYC before’92, at least four consecutive years of more than 2,000 murders. It was close to 10,000 people murdered.

    The truth is, America’s had the first generation of peace in a while, so people forgot what violence really is like. So they want it again, or at least are playing with something that might get out of hand… The people who maybe should stop this–they, too, have been made soft by soft times.

    Agreed. BLM might–might–compare to the Black Panthers, but Antifa is Romper Room compared to the Weathermen and SDS. Not just some, but hundreds of bombings. Hundreds of cops killed. Each year. If anything, today’s Blacks are slightly to moderately less Left than today’s white liberals are. That wasn’t true in 1971.

    Weathermen alumni such as Bill Ayers and his wife now live vicariously thru BLM and Antifa.

    BLM and antifa are better funded than Weatherman and SDS?

     

    • #85
  26. kedavis Coolidge
    kedavis
    @kedavis

    Hartmann von Aue (View Comment):

    Titus Techera (View Comment):

    But the best thing about Blaxploitation has got to be Eddie Murphy’s comeback:

    Thanks. I saw some good reviews of this and was curious enough to look it up on Amazon.de at the time. Unfortunately it is not available here.

    It was good to see Wesley Snipes on the screen again, too, even in a supporting role.

    Fortunately for all of us, on the 37th day or whatever, God created torrenting. :-)

    • #86
  27. Gary McVey Contributor
    Gary McVey
    @GaryMcVey

    MISTER BITCOIN (View Comment):

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    Titus Techera (View Comment):

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    MISTER BITCOIN (View Comment):

    In 1970s, people could distinguish between movie and reality.

    Today truth is more violent than fiction?

     

    It was more violent then than now, in fact.

    Yeah, America used to have moments of horror–thousands of bombings from ’69 into the early ’70s, to say nothing of rates of violent crimes that would terrify today’s wannabe terrorists. Or the amazing achievement of NYC before’92, at least four consecutive years of more than 2,000 murders. It was close to 10,000 people murdered.

    The truth is, America’s had the first generation of peace in a while, so people forgot what violence really is like. So they want it again, or at least are playing with something that might get out of hand… The people who maybe should stop this–they, too, have been made soft by soft times.

    Agreed. BLM might–might–compare to the Black Panthers, but Antifa is Romper Room compared to the Weathermen and SDS. Not just some, but hundreds of bombings. Hundreds of cops killed. Each year. If anything, today’s Blacks are slightly to moderately less Left than today’s white liberals are. That wasn’t true in 1971.

    Weathermen alumni such as Bill Ayers and his wife now live vicariously thru BLM and Antifa.

    BLM and antifa are better funded than Weatherman and SDS?

    Just as, fifty years ago, the hardcore Stalinist Communists lived vicariously through Bill Ayres, Tom Hayden and Bernadine Dohrn. I confidently predict that in another 40 years, there’ll be gushy articles about today’s wave of rage. “Why can’t we burn things down the way they did, all the way back in ’20?”

    BLM and Antifa are better funded because they’re largely publicity and propaganda operations. 

     

    • #87
  28. MISTER BITCOIN Inactive
    MISTER BITCOIN
    @MISTERBITCOIN

    Titus Techera (View Comment):

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    MISTER BITCOIN (View Comment):

    In 1970s, people could distinguish between movie and reality.

    Today truth is more violent than fiction?

     

    It was more violent then than now, in fact.

    Yeah, America used to have moments of horror–thousands of bombings from ’69 into the early ’70s, to say nothing of rates of violent crimes that would terrify today’s wannabe terrorists. Or the amazing achievement of NYC before’92, at least four consecutive years of more than 2,000 murders. It was close to 10,000 people murdered.

    The truth is, America’s had the first generation of peace in a while, so people forgot what violence really is like. So they want it again, or at least are playing with something that might get out of hand… The people who maybe should stop this–they, too, have been made soft by soft times.

    The people who should stop this are not only soft but corrupt and irresponsible.

    5 million new gun owners, 58% black, 40% women

    https://www.whas11.com/article/news/local/gun-owners-spike-women-african-americans-kentucky-nationwide/417-c6b92a7e-08bc-4499-a81e-6a9a195078cb

     

    • #88
  29. MISTER BITCOIN Inactive
    MISTER BITCOIN
    @MISTERBITCOIN

    Titus Techera (View Comment):

    Gary McVey (View Comment):

    MISTER BITCOIN (View Comment):

    In 1970s, people could distinguish between movie and reality.

    Today truth is more violent than fiction?

     

    It was more violent then than now, in fact.

    Yeah, America used to have moments of horror–thousands of bombings from ’69 into the early ’70s, to say nothing of rates of violent crimes that would terrify today’s wannabe terrorists. Or the amazing achievement of NYC before’92, at least four consecutive years of more than 2,000 murders. It was close to 10,000 people murdered.

    The truth is, America’s had the first generation of peace in a while, so people forgot what violence really is like. So they want it again, or at least are playing with something that might get out of hand… The people who maybe should stop this–they, too, have been made soft by soft times.

    Crime spiked in the 1960s and 70s and continued thru the early 90s… why?

    Because we stopped punishing criminals… Today DA’s in many cities, especially those funded by Soros, refuse to punish violent criminals 

    Here in Los Angeles, I will vote for the incumbent Lacey because her opponent Gascon is funded by Soros

     

     

    • #89
  30. Titus Techera Contributor
    Titus Techera
    @TitusTechera

    Yeah, 2020 was a boom for the industry. Except Remington, which went into bankruptcy a couple of years back, came out, & was sold for parts this summer.

    • #90
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