Minimizing the role of Huey Newton, founder of the Party, along with Bobby Seale, Nelson elevates the role in the Party of Eldridge Cleaver—who individually did more to try to destroy the Party than the U.S. government. This elevation of Cleaver is a clue to the point of Nelson’s “documentary”—to produce a piece of provocative propaganda worthy of the FBI itself. Though Cleaver was but a fleeting darling of the establishment press who was in the Party for no more than a year or so before being expelled, footage of Cleaver and “Cleaverites” overwhelms almost half of Nelson’s two-hour film.
While referencing the COINTELPRO operations of the FBI, which has been well-documented to have had the goal of discrediting, disrupting or destroying the Black Panther Party, Nelson reduces the massive, brutal effort by the U.S. government to destroy the Party to the story of traitor William O’Neal, who infiltrated the Illinois Chapter of the Party as an agent of the FBI.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/07/03/ex-black-panther-leader-elaine-brown-slams-stanley-nelson-s-condemnable-documentary.html
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