Black Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan is bringing his anti-Semitism to new and larger audiences, appearing before friendly crowds on college campuses and in other public forums, according to the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. Farrakhan’s “message has become all the more troubling because of the large crowds he has drawn and because of the support and sympathy for Farrakhan expressed by some respected elements in the Black community — implying a degree of legitimacy and acceptance for a philosophy infected by the poison of hate,” the ADL said in a report released at the ADL’s 72nd annual national commission meeting here last week.
“In view of this, Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam remain of serious concern because of the dangers inherent in public appeals to bigotry and racism, ” ADL national director Nathan Perlmutter said in the report, prepared by the research and fact finding department of the ADL’s civil rights division.
BLACKS DIVIDED OVER FARRAKHAN
According to the ADL, the Black community is not of one mind about Farrakhan. On the one hand, the report said Black audiences have often applauded him enthusiastically. “On the other hand there have been many clear repudiations of Farrakhan’s anti-Semitism by the Black community,” the ADL said.
Perlmutter said: “Farrakhan cloaks his anti-Semitism in religious symbolism, innuendo and threats.” He cited recent remarks by Farrakhan at the State University of New York at Old Westbury, Long Island, where the Black Muslim leader charged Jews with threatening the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s life and killing Christ and said they would be “punished and die” for those acts.
In a recent speech to some 1,500 persons at Northeastern University in Boston, Farrakhan was quoted as saying that “Those people who call themselves Jews, you have failed in your covenant …” and “Jews have not been in bondage in any place called Egypt under any king named Pharoah. It’s not a real story …”
MESSAGE OF HOPE AND HATE
The report said that Farrakhan, since being propelled into the public spotlight during Jackson’s Democratic Presidential nomination bid last year, “has blended the preacher’s call to self respect and self help with the demagogue’s call to scapegoating and suspicion.
“His audiences hear him describe how they can improve their lives and whom to blame for their misfortune. His message provides a promise of a better life through pride and economic independence, but also supplies devils to hate — whites, Jews, Zionists and American society.”
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
