Before, we talked about the Oscar-winning hit " The Trial of Seven Gentlemen in Chicago " and the vigorous left-wing movement around the world in the 1960s. The most symbolic scene in "The Trial of Seven Gentlemen in Chicago" was Bobby Hill, a black man who was tied up by five flowers and sealed his mouth during the trial. Now that half a century has passed, the black people in the United States are still being violently treated. Why are the oppressed blacks still unable to unite? Why are minorities still persecuted in the United States? Why did the affirmative movement fail? We may be able to get some answers in this movie "Judas and the Black Messiah", which has been nominated for six Oscars.
"Black Messiah" means the black savior, and the title tells the whole story. This is the modern version of the betrayal of Jesus by Judas the traitor.
On December 4, 1969, the "black savior"-the leader of the Black Panther Party, Fred Hampton, who carried the lofty ideals of communism, was betrayed by a traitor and was shot at home by a team of FBI agents. Kill, he was only 21 years old when he died.
The Black Panther Party has only existed for more than ten years in American history, and the single spark was quickly extinguished. However, their thoughts and their struggles still linger over the United States like ghosts until now. Excavating this dusty history, we will find that in the United States half a century ago, there were also a group of young people who wanted to take the road that was never imagined, even if they gave their lives for it.
Chapter 1: "Government Comes from the Barrel of a Gun"
In the 1960s when the Black Panther Party was born, the American civil rights movement has also been vigorously carried out for many years. Although the "Civil Rights Act" that clearly stipulates the various freedoms and equal rights of blacks was passed, the blacks still face the hunting by the KKK, the systematic discrimination by the government, and the arbitrary torture by the police. The Black Panther Party came into being as a black national political party that resisted oppression by violent means.
Compared with Martin Luther King’s empty slogan of fighting for the economic equality of blacks, the Black Panthers adopted an armed fight for rights and required the U.S. government to commit to the autonomy of black communities, guaranteeing employment and housing, equal education, and blacks’ objection to military service in the Vietnam War. Requirements for fair judicial treatment, opposition to white police violent law enforcement, and the release of all black political prisoners.
The Black Panther Party worships Chairman Mao and regards him as a dual mentor armed with the body and spirit. Acknowledge that "government comes from the barrel of a gun" and regard it as the central idea of the Black Panther Party when it was founded. When the Black Panthers started lacking funds to purchase weapons, they bought a large number of Chairman Mao's quotations in San Francisco, where there are many Chinese, and sold them to the students of the University of California, Berkeley College.
But the leaders of the Black Panther Party certainly know that the most important force is not the barrel of the gun, but the people. In the slums, the Black Panther Party organized unemployed blacks to give birth, provided free nutritious breakfasts for more than 100,000 black children, convened volunteers to carry out literacy campaigns, and at the same time gave lectures to black youths who did not have the conditions to go to school; provided free medical care and made great improvements. Sickle cell anemia is prevalent among blacks; in terms of public security, the Black Panther Party has established its own armed forces. They appear in the streets and lanes in uniform uniforms with black leather jackets and berets, and maintain normal patrols. Internally prevent crimes, externally prevent KKK and police violence.
It can be said that the black communities controlled by the Black Panther Party achieved autonomy to some extent. If it is just for welfare and militia joint defense in the black community, then the Black Panther Party will definitely not attract such attention from the US government. What they are really afraid of is the complete set of political philosophy and political demands behind the Black Panther Party.
At the beginning of the establishment of the Black Panther Party in 1966, it issued a famous ten-point program based on the "Declaration of Human Rights" and "Declaration of Independence."
With armed forces, the Black Panther Party continued to learn from Li Desheng's great ideas and determined to unite the black people. Bobby Hill, one of the founders of the Black Panther Party, once said: “The Black Panther Party is the people’s party. The core principle of the Black Panther Party’s survival is to believe in the people, rely on the people, and obtain the support of the people to discover the power of the people. One thing I care about is to liberate all people from all forms of slavery so that everyone can become their own master."
The Black Panther Party's rally also welcomes supporters of all races, and hippies and Vietnamese veterans are free to participate in the Black Panther Party's public rally. In reality, the Black Panther Party’s speeches are indeed often attended by a large number of whites and Jews. Together with Puerto Ricans, Latinos and lower-level whites, they established the Rainbow Alliance to promote the idea of racial equality.
In 1969, the "Anti-Fascist United Front" led by the White Left Front and the Black Panther Party opened the first national meeting. The meeting reached a consensus: The current nature of the civil rights movement is a black movement with a white front. In the future, it is planned to form one. The "New Party, New Workers Party," and hopes to establish a "American Liberation Front that includes the entire people of the United States" in accordance with the model of the "Liberation Front" in Africa and Latin America.
The power of the Black Panther Party reached its peak in 1970, with strongholds in 68 cities across the United States, with a total of thousands of members. They have programs, practices, leaders, and friends. But the single spark, which only burned for a few years, was quickly extinguished and became an episode in American history. From the perspective of later generations, it looks like a detached life.
Chapter 2: Hasta la Victoria Siempre! Victory forever
There is a wave of an era in an era. Now, no matter how we want to restore the times, we may not fully understand why there were so many young people at that time who were willing to give their lives for social change.
In the 1950s and 1960s, as the British and French colonial empires lost their hegemony after World War II, a wave of striving for national independence and equal rights emerged throughout the world. This is the era of revolutionaries, the era of heroes, and the era in which it is generally believed that only through action and resistance, one's compatriots can be freed from hegemony and exploitation.
In Africa, during the ten years from 1960 to 1970, a total of 32 regions were freed from the control of the suzerainty and established as states.
In 1961, a 43-year-old black man named Nelson Mandela in South Africa had organized anti-apartheid protests for many years. Because he was deeply influenced by Marxism-Leninism, he was imprisoned and tried for "treason". After being released from prison, he set up a radical armed protest organization "The Spear of the Nation". He learned about guerrilla struggle from the ancient country in the far east. In his autobiography "The Long Road to Freedom," he wrote, "In Edgar Snow's brilliant book "Red Stars Illuminate China", I found that Mao Zedong's determination and non-traditional ideas led him to victory."
In 1959, a 30-year-old young man named Yasser Arafat had just returned from the battlefield. He joined the Egyptian army and defeated the coalition forces of Britain, France and Israel in the Second Middle East War and regained control of the Suez Canal. In this year, he founded an organization called the Palestine National Liberation Movement. This organization later became more famous as "Fatah". As a rare secularist and socialist political group in the Arab world, it began to work for The Palestinian people have struggled for independence throughout their lives.
Also in 1959, 31-year-old Che Guevara and a revolutionary comrade, 33-year-old Castro, after five years of mountain guerrilla warfare, overthrew Batista’s dictatorship and established the first society in America. Ideological regime.
After the Cuban Revolution was completed, Che Guevara helped Castro establish the socialist system, and he became famous in the Western world for his hard-line attitude towards the United States.
Che Guevara supports the cause of national liberation in Africa. As a high-ranking official in Cuba in 1964, he successively visited 8 African countries including Algeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the People’s Republic of China. In 1965, he left Cuba and left the Congo, hoping to use his experience in guerrilla warfare to help the Congolese people complete the uprising. Leaving Cuba, he said the famous saying "Hasta la Victoria siempre! Victory forever."
Two years later, in 1967, Che Guevara, who was engaged in guerrilla warfare in Bolivia, was arrested by government forces because of infiltration by the US Central Intelligence Agency and ended his 37-year-old life.
This man who "fought like an eagle" dedicated his short life to the revolution in his mind, and brought romanticism to the extreme. The death of Che Guevara caused a great shock to the hearts of young people at the time, and became a symbol of resistance to authority and the left-wing movement of the world until now.
In 1967, millions of Cubans gathered in Revolution Square to bid farewell to their heroes. Castro said in his eulogy: "If we are looking for a model person, a person who is not just a model of our time, but a model of the future, I sincerely say that such a person is in behavior. There is no trace of taint, and the perfect example of flawless behavior is Che! If we want to express what we want our children to be, then as enthusiastic revolutionaries, we will definitely say from the bottom of our hearts:'We want them to be like Che !'"
Chapter 3: They can kill revolutionaries, but they cannot kill revolutions
The global wave of opposing national oppression and opposing imperialism has profoundly promoted the transformation of the black affirmative movement in the United States to revolutionization.
In the early 1960s, Martin Luther King also had that dream, hoping to obtain equal treatment for blacks with whites through non-violent peaceful protest. In 1963, after he finished the famous "I Have a Dream" speech, he won the support of the American elite. In 1964, the "Civil Rights Act" was passed. In the same year, Martin Luther King won the Nobel Peace Prize and his reputation reached its peak.
However, the wave of revolutions all over the world quickly changed his thinking. He began to realize that the real problem is not that legislation prohibiting discrimination in public places can be solved by protecting black voting rights. He began to talk frequently about the urgent need for fundamental changes in the political and economic life of the United States, eager to see the redistribution of resources to change racial and economic injustice. And this really brought a murderous disaster for him.
In 1967, a year before he was assassinated, he published a speech in New York that was not so famous in the Western world, but was even more deafening, "Breaking the Silence." He said: "This is an era of revolution. Everyone in the world is standing up against the old system of exploitation and oppression. A fragile, but fair and just new order is about to emerge. The suffering people in this country have never stood before. Get up. The people in the dark have seen the light. We in the Western world must support this revolution. The sad fact is that because of comfort, complacency, fear of communism, and our tendency towards injustice, Western countries have It has nurtured so much revolutionary spirit in modern society, but now it has become a refuge for counter-revolution. This has led many people to believe that only Marxism has revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a trial for the failure of our democracy, and it is also on the road of revolution that we started. Practitioner. Our only hope is to regain the revolutionary spirit, declare war on a hostile world, and defeat poverty, racism, and militarism forever."
The change in Martin Luther King’s view of the affirmative movement was actually promoted by another person a few years ago, and he was Malcolm X.
Malcolm X criticized Martin Luther King’s view, thinking that his goal is to make black people forgive those who have treated them roughly for four hundred years, and let them forget everything that white people have done to them. Malcolm believes that African Americans are regarded as colonized within the United States. Although there is no existing colony, the existence of black Americans is the colony itself. White people deprived of surplus value from the labor paid by American blacks in cotton fields and factories, so African Americans shared their history and goals with their black compatriots who were invaded by Britain and France in Africa. It is in this broader sense that activists believe that the struggle of black Americans for black power and self-determination is part of the global anti-imperialist decolonization movement.
In the last few years of his life, Malcolm X established the Organization of Afro-American Unity as a response to the Organization of African Unity across the ocean. In an interview with American media in 1965, he said: "Our problem is not the violation of civil rights, but the violation of human rights. We are not only deprived of the right to become American citizens. We are also deprived of the right to be human." A week later, He was strangely assassinated during his speech in a meeting place where no video recording was allowed.
One year after Malcolm X was assassinated, the Black Panther Party founded by 30-year-old Bobby Hill and 26-year-old Huey Newton was born. For them, the predecessors have tried all the roads. To change the status quo of blacks and other oppressed groups in the United States, there is only one road left: revolution.
Not surprisingly, the Black Panther Party became a target of the US government. The FBI regards it as the number one threat to US national security and has implemented the most notorious plan in its history: "COINTELPRO". In an internal FBI memo leaked afterwards, FBI Director Edgar Hoover made four points: First, the first task is to prevent the union of black armed groups, because this "will be the first black revolution in the United States." Second, we must prevent the birth of the "Black Messiah"; third, the primary goal within the group can be eliminated first; and fourth, we must stigmatize black leaders.
The huge state apparatus systematically monitored, assassinated, imprisoned, publicly humiliated, and falsely accused a large number of leaders and members of the Black Panther Party. The two founders went to jail one after another, and the third leader Fred Hampton said this famous sentence before being shot by the FBI with 99 shots: They can kill revolutionaries, but they cannot kill revolutionaries. !
If it weren't for 1971, a group of activists broke into the Pennsylvania FBI office and stole more than 1,000 confidential documents. These FBI activities, including the cause of Hampton’s death, may remain historical mysteries forever. This incident was later made into the documentary "1971".
Until now, half a century later, the black people in the United States still shouted "I can't breathe", after all, they couldn't wait for their "black messiah."
Today, "Black Panther" has been made into a popcorn movie, and Malcolm X and Martin Luther King have become the prototypes of Magneto and Professor X in Marvel movies.
When the meaning of resistance is dispelled, consumed, and entertained, perhaps, the true Judas who killed the black Messiah was not this traitor, but a cynic who was soaked in consumerism and hedonism, and no longer aspiring to fight.
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