False equivalencies are the bread-and-butter of fascist mantra. It’s more than simply weak “bothsidesism” comebacks. Fascists need false equivalencies to justify the hatred, the ignorance, the outrageous action. As long as a single ballot can appear irregular, such justifies (in the fascist mind set) all manner of voter suppression. This is hardly a new phenomena, but it blossomed and continues to blossom in the Trump and post-Trump eras.
Some of my favorite false equivalencies include: “the Capitol riot was no different than any BLM march” (one was a series of protests against racist law enforcement practices, the other was an attempted overthrow of a fair election, but –sure- they’re equivalent)…”Isn’t Marjorie Taylor Greene the Right Wing equivalent of AOC?” (well, aside from the fact that one is an erudite advocate of the people and the problems we face in the upcoming decades while the other is a conspiracy-spouting redneck reality show reject, yes. Sort of. Tell me, does Fox News give out diplomas to go with their “education?”) … There are dozens of these, of course, but my personal favorite showed up last October in the run up to the election. It was comparatively subtle, but I consider it the mother of all false equivalencies: “Let me get this straight: The NY Times can post … its story on Trump’s taxes … but the NY Post cannot post its story on [Hunter Biden’s laptop.] It’s political censorship.” The Post did post the story, of course. That part was just lying. But the bigger point here: that somehow Trump’s taxes and Hunter Biden’s laptop are equivalent sources of news is beyond dishonest. Lemme dumb it down for my little Trumplings –and if you feel I’m condescending to you, by all means, keep that feeling; you’ve earned it—this particular false equivalence is the equivalent of ESPN reporting that Tom Brady threw for 300 yards and four TDs in the Superbowl (easily confirmed/denied, source for whom misinformation comes with a severe penalty, information fits what we know about the person, and gives a strong indication of how the game went) vs. Gisele reporting that the eight-year-old son of Pat Mahomes II threw five INTs in a Pop Warner game (not as easily fact-checked, biased and rarely fact-checked source, seems ridiculous and false on its face, no neutral party willing to stand behind this claim, and-most importantly- completely irrelevant and insignificant to anything Superbowl related.) I want to say smart people didn’t stoop to this level, but it’s smart people coming up with this shit. You’re all guilty, Trumpies. Go back to school and learn what “equivalent” means.
Why did I go into all that? Because Judas and the Black Messiah presented viewers with a bona fide painful false equivalence that helped justify the FBI’s persecution of the Black Panthers. Agent Roy Mitchell (Jesse Plemons) doesn’t actually seem like a bad guy. When he “recruits” [read: coerces] Bill O’Neal (LaKeith Stanfield) to work as a mole among the Chicago Black Panthers, we are apt to loathe Mitchell, but the man does actually invite O’Neal to his house (“here’s a cigar” … “have a drink, no the good stuff” … “meet my children” …) It’s pretty clear that if Mitchell is racist, he’s also a fantastic actor. However, then it comes out: “the KKK and the Black Panthers are two sides of the same coin.”
What?!
Oh, he believes it. And this is exactly where the FBI is coming from, a false equivalence built of prejudice. It may not even be Mitchell’s prejudice, but there it is, strong as steel and plain as day. And it’s the same argument that BLM protests and the attack on the Capitol are the same. I have no doubt they look the same from a certain POV. But they are not. And they’re no closer in make-up than Marjorie Taylor Greene is to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Now, one might ask if the FBI or J. Edgar Hoover (Martin Sheen) ever called the KKK public enemy #1, but that’s a different movie. This one is about the leader of the Chicago chapter of the Black Panthers, Fred Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya), and the man who sold him down river, Bill O’Neal.
That Bill is Judas is evident. We even get a “30 pieces of silver” moment presented to a conflicted O’Neal. Hampton’s Messiah status is not as obvious, but only for circumstance. Fred Hampton was born in 1948, which makes him barely twenty when he became leader of the chapter. And during the fifteen month span of the film timeline, Fred is in jail for at least a third of it.
Presented as unpolished but confident and charismatic, Fred Hampton uses idealism as his main weapon. Speaking of which, he deliberately went unarmed into potentially hostile [read: violent] situations. He also made sure his
lieutenants were unarmed as well when speaking to Chicago gangs and even the Young Patriots Organization (!), a group of Confederate flag waving yahoos. Hampton sought to win them all, united under the banner of the collectively oppressed. I cannot tell you the balls it takes for a black man to walk willingly into a house that bears the confederate flag and attempt to win the locals, but Fred was that man … and Daniel Kaluuya successfully made us believe he was that Fred Hampton.
The problem with Judas and the Black Messiah is that it feels like I’ve already seen it. In 2020, I saw Seberg, The Trial of the Chicago 7, and The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution. This left precious little material I didn’t already know. I suppose one might guess that the fates of the two leads were a mystery, however, The Trial of the Chicago 7 gives away Fred Hampton’s fate while the first 30 second of Judas and the Black Messiah tells us what happened to Bill O’Neal. That’s hardly the fault of writer/director Shaka King and company, but it makes for a film in which the performances better be epic to grab your attention. Luckily, the performances were epic. Kaluuya was up for modern day Messiah exactly as Stanfield was up for modern day Judas. In future years, these performances will be the only thing about this film that will allow me to pry it from the other three in mind.
To avoid a penalty steeper
Silver gets Judas in even deeper
Noting today’s GOP
Wouldn’t you agree
Integrity can be bought even cheaper
Rated R, 126 Minutes
Director: Shaka King
Writer: Will Berson and Shaka King
Genre: Yet another Black Panther film
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Those who followed Fred Hampton
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: The FBI
