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The true story of assassinated activist Fred Hampton is brought to vibrant life with never-better performances from Daniel Kaluuya and Lakeith Stanfield
The sad, shifty and inglorious business of government informants working inside radical protest groups is something that usually takes years to come out – if at all – because nobody wants to talk about it. Governments don’t want to gloat because it might mean admitting they knew all about certain events or attacks in advance but did nothing because they wanted to keep their asset in place to forestall some bigger situation. And the protest groups are angry and ashamed at the infiltration. And something desolate attaches to the long-term snitches themselves, who look horribly dysfunctional, like bigamists revealed to have a second wife and family. Sam Pollard’s documentary MLK/FBI touched briefly on the supposedly loyal insiders within Martin Luther King’s organisation who were secretly reporting to J Edgar Hoover – a subject so painful that it can still hardly be discussed.
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