The Left’s Farrakhan Problem By Rich Lowry
“Time’s up,” the slogan of the Hollywood anti-harassment movement, has a very different meaning for Louis Farrakhan.
At his annual Saviours’ Day conference in Chicago last weekend, the Nation of Islam leader boasted, “And Farrakhan, by God’s grace, has pulled the cover off of that Satanic Jew, and I’m here to say your time is up, your world is through.”
Farrakhan is as immodest as he is anti-Semitic. He may seem like yesterday’s Jew-hater, since he could never gather the kind of crowds he did for the so-called Million Man March in Washington, D.C., 20 years ago. Yet he still has a following. Thousands showed up to hear him spew his usual garbage during his Saviours’ Day speech, including one of the organizers of the Women’s March.
The CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, calls Farrakhan “quite possibly, the most popular anti-Semite in America today.” Certainly, the haters of the alt-right don’t measure up. The white nationalist Richard Spencer would surely love to get Farrakhan’s crowds and have such a relatively robust institutional presence and publishing operation, let alone manage to maintain influence with more mainstream figures.
Tamika Mallory, the Women’s March organizer, wasn’t abashed about her attendance at the rally. She posted a video on Instagram of herself at the event, and showed no sign of distress at Farrakhan’s greatest hits (“the powerful Jews are my enemy”; Jews are “the mother and father of apartheid”; “when you want something in this world, the Jew holds the door”; the Jews control Mexico, and a swath of Europe; and any number of other vicious lies).
Called out on her presence at the speech, Mallory tweeted a response worthy of a fellow traveler with the Nation of Islam: “If your leader does not have the same enemies as Jesus, they may not be THE leader!” What enemies could she be speaking of?
Mallory further pushed back by stating, “I am a strong black woman.” Actually, her putrid equivocation over Farrakhan speaks to the opposite of strength.
She added that the black community is “complex.” So is any community, but that doesn’t justify tolerating rank hatred.
And it wouldn’t be an argument with a left-wing activist if she didn’t cite the buzzword of the hour, explaining that she has “done intersectional work for 20+ years.”
Ah, yes, intersectionality. Farrakhan has his own notions of that. In 2006, he declared that “it’s the wicked Jews, the false Jews that are promoting lesbianism, homosexuality.” He’s updated this theme slightly to account for transgenderism — “the Jews were responsible for all of this filth and degenerate behavior that Hollywood is putting out turning men into women and women into men.”
Mallory isn’t the only Women’s March organizer with a soft spot for the lunatic minister. Carmen Perez is another admirer. “There are no perfect leaders,” she explains, although there is a lot of daylight between normal human imperfection and Farrakhan’s paranoid rantings. Yet another organizer, Linda Sarsour, took part in a Nation of Islam event in 2015.
Are these activists too minor to bother about? Well, if tea party organizers 10 years ago had been friendly toward David Duke, we would — understandably — have heard no end of it.
Just as mainstream conservatives must ostracize the alt-right, the center-left should guard against progressives making excuses for Farrakhan. With the exception of Jake Tapper of CNN, though, the media has ignored the latest eruption of the Farrakhan story.
As a reminder of how much this hygiene is necessary, Rep. Danny K. Davis of Illinois popped up to justify his relationship with Farrakhan. He told the website The Daily Caller, “The world is so much bigger than Farrakhan and the Jewish question and his position on that and so forth.” Could anyone say this about David Duke and remain in office?
Farrakhan’s time should be up, but it never quite is.
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