My mom is one of those people who just cannot take in information that clashes with her world view and just shuts down if you say something negative about a Democrat (unless they’re progressive).
About halfway through the movie, we had to pause because my brother had to use the bathroom and she talked about growing up in that time frame she was terrified of the Black Panthers because all she knew about them was that they wanted to “kill whitey.” The movie helped her realize that she only read propaganda in the newspapers and misinformation from the FBI. She had never heard of Fred Hampton before the movie.
This morning she sent an article to the family chat about how a former cop confessed that the police and FBI were involved in Malcolm X’s assassination.
I’m not a history buff, so I don’t know how sanitized the movie is, but I think it pretty unapologetically shows cops and the FBI as villains and gives context to when Panthers kill them that keeps the Panthers as the heroes. I think we need more accurate biopics about radicals, libs love these kind of movies. Unfortunately, we’re far more likely to get another Sorkin Chicago 6.
Yeah, the latest rev left episode talks about that accusation being suspect. Primarily that it would be idiotic to start a shootout from your own office, and that the Chicago police has a pattern of using that excuse as justification for actions they took against the Black Panthers and other groups in the city.
Namely, it's the exact same justification they used the night they murdered Fred Hampton, despite the fact that out of the roughly 100 bullets fired only one came from the Panthers and it was very clearly a no-knock raid/execution.
"A shootout took place" is just the same "I feared for my life" excuse that officers have been using to justify any and every instance of police misconduct for decades now.
That's interesting I hadn't even been able to find anything about there having been a shootout (even coming from Chicago PD) but there's every chance I just didn't search well enough.
Maybe I'm misremembering the conversation?
I'd have to go back and listen to the episode again to remember what was actually said.
No you could very well be right it would have been weird that they made that up out of nowhere when the cops just bombing their office is way more evil, when the rest of the movie is fully sympathetic to the panthers.