JPost Editorial: Farrakhan’s fellow travelers
During a panel at New York City’s New School in November, Sarsour defended Farrakhan by saying, “If what you’re reading all day long, morning and night, in the Jewish media is that Linda Sarsour and Minister Farrakhan are the existential threat to the Jewish community, something really bad’s going to happen and we’re going to miss the mark on it.”Seth Frantzman Where antisemitism and racism intersect
We believe it is perfectly legitimate for Jewish organizations to call out so-called human rights activists for their hypocrisy. On one hand they claim to be fighting discrimination based on one’s race, gender ethnicity or other aspects of a person’s identity that are not chosen, yet at the same time they are willing to associate with crude antisemites like Farrakhan.
Farrakhan and his fellow travelers resolve the contradiction by claiming, for instance, that given the long history of racial oppression in the US and the Jews’ purported role in that oppression, attacking Jews and Jewish power is a completely legitimate as a form of affirmative action. But similar verbal attacks on blacks, Hispanics or members of the gay community are seen as racist or bigoted because these communities have been victims of oppression.
This point was illustrated when Mysonne, a rapper from the Bronx and left-leaning activist, attempted to defend the Women’s March movement’s Mallory. Yet, as the National Review’s Mairead Mcardle pointed out, Mysonne himself has in the past accused the Jews of oppressing black people, saying in a Twitter post that “Farakahn [sic] has a view of Jews based on the pain and harm that he can prove they’ve inflicted on blacks for hundreds of years!” “To disagree with farakhan [sic] is understandable,” he posted, “but to act as if the violence, pain, control and destruction that people he has evidence that are in fact Jewish have imposed on Blacks is not realistic.”
The twisted logic goes something like this: All Jews are fair game for being derided and lambasted because some Jews might have oppressed black people.
As long as movements such as the Women’s March don’t condemn the likes of Farrakhan and say any antisemitism is unacceptable, they should be kept out of the tent of peace-loving, conflict resolution-seeking organizations.
Their backhanded endorsement of Farrakhan’s views speaks volumes.
‘If your leader does not have the same enemies as Jesus, they may not be THE leader,” wrote Women’s March co-founder Tamika Mallory on Twitter on March 1. Her bizarre tweet came as she was under fire for attending a speech by Louis Farrakhan at the Saviour’s Day convention in Chicago. The ADL has condemned Mallory for attending and noted she received a special shout-out from Farrakhan. Now everyone is piling on Mallory and the Women’s March to denounce antisemitism.Democratic Congressman Confirms Relationship With Farrakhan, Unbothered By ‘The Jewish Question’
“Memo to the Left: Denounce antisemite Louis Farrakhan,” wrote Elad Nehorai at The Forward.
Large numbers of people seem to agree that Mallory is in the wrong for her silence about antisemitism and for attending these kinds of events. But the focus on Mallory misses the forest for the trees. Mallory is just one person.
Her views of Farrakhan are shared by large numbers of people – including former US president Barack Obama.
In January 2005 a photo of Obama with Farrakhan emerged. Taken by Askia Muhammed at a gathering of the Congressional Black Caucus, the photo was buried for 13 years. An article by Vinson Cunningham at The New Yorker notes that “after some pressure from one of the caucus’s staffers, Muhammad agreed to bury it.” He writes that “Farrakhan is the author of vile, uncountable, unreconstructed, cause-derailing antisemitic slurs, but his Million Man March made him and the Nation a stubborn unignorable feature of the political landscape for black would-be public servants who came of age in the 1990s.” This includes Keith Ellison, the rising Democrat.
Connect the dots and what you get is not just one passionate Women’s March leader, but a whole forest of people who have hung out with Farrakhan. And it’s not really about Farrakhan. He’s just one person. It’s about his ideas, his words and the fact that people didn’t feel ashamed to be associated with him.
Democratic Illinois Rep. Danny Davis confirmed in an interview Sunday that he has a personal relationship with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, a notorious anti-Semite, and said he isn’t bothered by Farrakhan’s position on “the Jewish question.”ADL says Democrat who won’t condemn Farrakhan lacks ‘courage’
Farrakhan has repeatedly denounced Jews as “satanic,” praised Hitler as a “very great man” and has said that white people “deserve to die.” (RELATED: Seven Louis Farrakhan Quotes On Jews, Gays And White People)
Davis previously told The Daily Caller that he considers Farrakhan an “outstanding human being” and said he regularly meets with Farrakhan. Davis’s office falsely told the Anti-Defamation League that the congressman had been misquoted.
The congressman wasn’t sure why the ADL wrote that he had been misquoted in his praise for the anti-Semite, and said he wasn’t sure if someone from his office had told the ADL he was misquoted, he told The Daily Caller News Foundation on Sunday. “I think that was what they wanted to write. Nah, I don’t have no problems with Farrakhan, I don’t spend a whole lot of my time dealing with those kind of things,” Davis said.
The Anti-Defamation League blasted on Sunday Rep. Danny Davis, an Illinois Democrat, for lacking the “courage” to condemn anti-Semitic preacher Louis Farrakhan.The Antisemitism Problem of the Women's March Co-Founders
“It is unfortunate that the congressman apparently can’t muster up the courage to denounce Farrakhan’s blatant anti-Semitism and instead chose to praise him,” an ADL spokesman told JTA.
Davis in a Daily Caller interview posted Sunday doubled down on an earlier interview in which he called the Nation of Islam leader “an outstanding human being who commands a following of individuals who are learned and articulate.”
The ADL had sought a clarification from Davis on the earlier interview, an ADL official said, and Davis said the remarks were out of context and he asked for more information about Farrakhan’s anti-Semitism. The ADL provided Davis with a compilation of Farrakhan’s virulent attacks on Jews over the decades.
The adamant refusal of Women's March co-founders Linda Sarsour and Tamika Mallory to condemn the virulent antisemitism of Louis Farrakhan. An absolute disgrace to women's rights. Even (third) Women's March co-founder Sophie Ellman-Golan has condemned Farrakhan's antisemitism.