When an entertainer and a basketball star—the former with a history of mental health issues and the latter someone unconvinced that the planet is round—shared anti-Semitic black nationalist sentiments last year with their fans, the subsequent outpouring of condemnation was heartening.
Less heartening, though, was the realization that millions of young people follow those personalities on social media, and that many welcomed the addled icons’ fact-free foolishness as revelations of truth.
And that hundreds of members of a black nationalist group, chanting, “We are the real Jews,” marched in front of Brooklyn’s Barclays Center to celebrate the hoop shooter’s return—after a forced apology—to the court. “We support Hitler,” one marcher said to a Jewish bystander via microphone. “Because Hitler was killing your people, man. Hitler knew who the real Jews was.”
That addled ugliness owes much to one Louis Eugene Walcott, a former entertainer who morphed into one of the most noxious Jew-haters of our time, known today as Louis Farrakhan. In his crooning days, he billed himself as “The Charmer.” Apt, as in snake charmer.
Mr. Farrakhan recently delivered a diatribe at Chicago’s Wintrust Arena to some 10,000 people (and tens of thousands across various streaming platforms).
During his rant, The Charmer declared that “the powerful Jews are my enemy” and that “White folks are going down… Farrakhan… has pulled the cover off of that Satanic Jew, and I’m here to say your time is up, your world is through.”
(Not surprisingly, black activist Tamika Mallory—who, in 2018, accused the ADL of “attack[ing] black and brown people”—was present for the fun and shared an image from the event on social media.)
The Southern Poverty Law Center designates the “Nation of Islam,” Farrakhan’s black nationalist horde, as a hate group.
Not a hard judgment to make. Back in February 1995, Farrakhan suggested that Jews got America into World War II and that “international bankers” (code words for Jews) financed both sides of the war effort.
In 1984, he explained that “The Jews don’t like Farrakhan, so they call me Hitler. Well, that’s a good name. Hitler was a very great man.”
In 1994, he reminded listeners that “We know that Jews are the most organized, rich and powerful people… They’re plotting against us as we speak.”
In 2018, he shouted to an audience: “Call me a hater, you know how they do—call me an anti-Semite. Stop it, I’m anti-termite.”
And over the course of those years, The Charmer has accused Jews of preventing black people from advancement, of “leeching” their “blood,” and of nefariously influencing former President Obama. He also asserted that Jews have “no connection to the Holy Land” and that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is a descendant of the Rothschild family. He also raised the possibility of his own assassination by a Jew—although he then dismissed it by boasting that “I can tell you, they killed their last prophet when they killed” the object of Christian veneration.
He really should avoid talk of assassinations, accused as he is of having played a role in the fatal 1965 shooting of Malcolm X, the black leader who had grown disillusioned with the Nation of Islam. Among the accusers was Betty Shabazz, the late widow of the slain black leader. Farrakhan himself once seemed to admit complicity in that murder, remarking that “A nation gotta be able to deal with traitors and cutthroats and turncoats.”
All in all, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to characterize Charmer Farrakhan as a somewhat darker-skinned mini-Hitler. And, while he may not command a large army, he unfortunately leads, by the nose, a host of young people who don’t realize that the skill sets of demagogues, rappers and point guards don’t necessarily overlap in any way with those of intelligent people.
“What makes Kanye and Kyrie [the aforementioned rapper and NBA player] so dangerous and malignant,” Goldie Taylor, the African-American editor-at-large of The Daily Beast, wrote, “is that there are thousands of young Black boys who see them, see their success and wealth, and believe them. We cannot allow this to fester for another 50 years. We cannot let our children think this is okay.”
Can we get an amen?
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