The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution

The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution sheds light on the Black Panther Party — and all its reviled, adored, misunderstood, and mythologized history. The most eerie and unsettling subplot is the insidious, evil and dastardly machinations of the FBI, under the direction of J. Edgar Hoover. Encouraging local police to assassinate Panther members, planting informants in the party whose duplicity led to murders, sending letters implying infidelities to spouses of party members, manipulating the relationships between Newton and Cleaver so they were at each other’s throats. There was little they would not do to thwart any gains towards racial equality, which they saw as a threat to the government. If only half of the FBI dealings in this film are true, it makes you rethink the assassinations of Malcolm, JFK, RFK and MLK. Hoover’s programme ‘Counterintelligence Programme Black Nationalist-Hate Groups’ was right from the devil’s playbook.