Another Hollywood Cover-Up
Minneapolis, USA, March 8—Protestors at trial of killer cop Derek Chauvin. His murder of George Floyd sparked multiracial rebellions around the world.
“Judas and the Black Messiah” is the latest in the plethora of “revolutionary” films that have the masses talking. The film focuses on real-life FBI informant Bill O’Neal’s experience in infiltrating the Black Panther Party and his role in the 1969 assassination of Fred Hampton, Chairman of the Chicago chapter of the organization.
Workers and youth who have been flooding the streets in mass multiracial rebellions against racism and police are the target audience. Movies like this one are produced to tell these workers and youth that we can’t win. However, learning from past revolutionary movements has taught us that we can win and that we must.
Fred Hampton was class-conscious and understood that mobilizing for true revolution required the mobilization of all workers. In his time working with Hampton, O’ Neal witnesses Hampton uniting the Panthers with militant groups like the Young Lords, (Puerto Rican youth) and the Young Patriots (white youth from Appalachia) in Chicago to form a Rainbow Coalition.
O’Neal is conflicted with the job he took on after seeing the work the party was doing. Ultimately, the film plays out as it did in the Biblical text and this Judas decides to sell out Hampton and the rest of his comrades. By the time O’Neal realizes he’s been double-crossed by the FBI, the deed has already been done. Hampton is shot in his bed, and multiple other party members are killed across the U.S by capitalist attack dogs.
The film grabbed mass attention through its depictions of Black men and women in armed struggle against the bosses, but it intentionally cuts out a lot of Hampton’s anti-capitalist politics.
Hampton’s most famous quote is: ““We don’t think you fight fire with fire best; we think you fight fire with water best. We’re going to fight racism not with racism, but we’re going to fight with solidarity. We say we’re not going to fight capitalism with black capitalism, but we’re going to fight it with socialism. We’ve stood up and said we’re not going to fight reactionary pigs and reactionary state’s attorneys like Hanrahan with any other reactions on our part. We’re going to fight their reactions with all of us people getting together and having an international proletarian revolution.” You don’t hear that in the movie!
Not a “Rainbow Coalition” but Multiracial Working-Class Unity
The Panthers were very militant and hated the racist police. We learn from their commitment and hatred of the racist system.
But they and the militant organizations in their coalition thought that unemployed youth could pick up arms and make a revolution by themselves. They didn’t aim to build a mass base for revolution in the industrial working class or among soldiers. Fred Hampton was a Marxist and sought coalitions with others. True. But their strategy couldn’t win.
By building one mass party across “racial” lines, among workers, youth and soldiers for communist revolution, we can win. We must learn from the mistakes of our past revolutionaries who have fought and died in the name of abolishing capitalism. We must fight directly for communism.
And while rats and informers are ever a threat, we must not allow that to stop us from organizing the masses. We continue to fight for a communist world where all our children will be fed, where no one will be judged based on the color of their skin, and where we will all share tighter bonds with one another.
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