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Revisiting the Assassination of Fred Hampton: New FOIA Docs, COINTELPRO, and the "Black Messiah"
🕑 Added 2021-02-19 20:51:19 +0000 UTCIn this episode, Breht welcomes Aaron J. Leonard back on the show, this time with his co-author Conor Gallagher, to discuss new FOIA documents they recently received regarding the FBI agent assigned to Fred Hampton, the informant who helped in the efforts to assassinate Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, what the left gets wrong in their understanding of COINTELPRO, and reactions to the new film on Fred Hampton "Judas and the Black Messiah".
Check out Aaron and Conor's books:
Heavy Radicals: The FBI's Secret War on America's Maoists
Previous Rev Left episode on Fred Hampton here:
https://revolutionaryleftradio.libsyn.com/fred-hampton
Outro Music: "Fight For You" by H.E.R.
Comments
Matt
Breht, do an episode on Thomas Sankara! You're 2 for 2 with Fred Hampton and Billie Holiday, if you make an ep on Sankara I'm convinced it'll get turned into a movie some day. [Said 50% jokingly, 50% completely serious this is what would happen]
Revolutionary Left Radio
I dont think you are being too cynical, I think you are being the PERFECT AMOUNT of cynical lol. I completely and totally agree.
Matt
What bugs me about the Fred Hampton thing.... I think it's great that mainstream culture is coming around to COINTELPRO and the assassination of Hampton. I remember learning about Hampton's murder as a teenage history nerd and thinking, "man, how come nobody knows about this??" Hard to imagine then that years later this would get such a prominent treatment in mainstream culture, and that's really cool in some ways. And this might, MIGHT get people to think "huh, maybe this is still happening today." But it also might not. We're only coming around to this 50 years later, when it's all long over. The New Yorker, for instance, were praising the film without acknowledging that their publication (under different people, of course, but still the same institution) openly made fun of the Panthers in the 1960s for alleging an FBI conspiracy. What kind of intelligence/law enforcement agency shenangians are going on today that, if you talk about it, the same people in the press celebrating this film will ridicule you? The libs are duplicitous and we shouldn't trust when they pretend to give a shit. Haha maybe I'm being too cynical, but the more I learn the more cynical I become towards our chief purveyors of culture.
