Why won't Twitter remove Louis Farrakhan's hate speech?
Twitter reluctant to follow Facebook's lead and take down Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan's anti-Semitic video; insight from Kurt 'the CyberGuy' Knutsson.
What does an anti-Semite have to do to get ostracized around here?
Nation of Islam leader Minister Louis Farrakhan, 84, is America’s highest-profile Jew-hater. Former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke might covet that distinction, but he is far less in the spotlight today than yesterday. More importantly, Farrakhan can boast that his loathing for Jews has not stopped him from raking in federal tax dollars.
That’s right. The Washington Examiner reported last week that Farrakhan has received $364,500 in taxpayer money for preaching to prisoners.
Farrakhan’s many public anti-Semitic comments are almost too numerous to count. And ironically, he even managed to insult Jews on Oct. 16 while claiming not to be their foe. “I’m not an anti-Semite. I’m anti-Termite,” Farrakhan said – never mind that he equates Jews with home-destroying pests that routinely are exterminated with gas.
How charming.
The Washington Examiner reported that since fiscal year 2008, the Nation of Islam has received $354,500 in Justice Department grants to offer federal inmates “Nation of Islam religious services,” “Nation of Islam spiritual guide services,” “Nation of Islam study services,” and similar programs arranged by Nation of Islam’s leaders.
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The fact that the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Southern Poverty Law Center have labeled Nation of Islam a hate group evidently was insufficient to stop these taxpayer checks.
Farrakhan’s record is beyond dispute. He has spewed anti-Semitic and anti-gay hate for decades:
• In a May 27 sermon titled “Thoroughly and completely unmasking the Satanic Jew and the Synagogue of Satan,” Farrakhan said: “Do you know that many of us who go to Hollywood seeking a chance have to submit to anal sex and all kinds of debauchery, and they give you a little part. It’s called the casting couch. See, that’s Jewish power.”
• “Jews were responsible for all of this filth and degenerate behavior that Hollywood is putting out, turning men into women and women into men,” Farrakhan said in his Feb. 25 Saviour’s Day speech, according to an ADL compendium of this black supremacist’s outrageous remarks. “White folks are going down. And Satan is going down. And Farrakhan, by God’s grace, has pulled a cover off of that Satanic Jew, and I’m here to say your time is up, your world is through. You good Jews better separate because the satanic ones will take you to hell with them because that’s where they are headed.”
• “The Jews have control over those agencies of government. When you want something in this world, the Jew holds the door,” Farrakhan said. He also then stated: “White people running Mexico are Mexican-Jews.”
• “I believe that for the small numbers of Jewish people in the United States, they exercise a tremendous amount of influence on the affairs of government,” Farrakhan said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on April 14, 1997. “Yes, they exercise extraordinary control, and Black people will never be free in this country until they are free of that kind of control...”
• “German Jews financed Hitler right here in America,” Farrakhan said in Chicago’s Mosque Maryam, his headquarters, on March 19, 1995. “International bankers financed Hitler and poor Jews died while big Jews were at the root of what you call the Holocaust .... Little Jews died while big Jews made money. Little Jews being turned into soap while big Jews washed themselves with it. Jews playing violin, Jews playing music, while other Jews (were) marching into the gas chambers.”
• “The Jews don’t like Farrakhan, so they call me Hitler. Well, that’s a good name. Hitler was a very great man.”
These Justice Department and Bureau of Prisons funds are not Farrakhan’s first swim through the federal trough. He and Nation of Islam are based in Chicago, miles from Illinois’ corn fields. Regardless, the group has received federal farm subsidies.
As first reported by American Transparency/OpenTheBooks.com (on whose advisory board I serve), Nation of Islam scored $160,000 in federal agricultural supports for the Three Year Economic Savings Program. It operates the 1,500-acre Muhammad Farms. Even though that location is in Georgia, these federal payments have been mailed to Farrakhan’s home in Chicago.
Taxpayers backed Farrakhan’s operation even though the Illinois secretary of state deemed it “Not in Good Standing.”
Despite his rants against Jews, whites, and gays, the Congressional Black Caucus and other Democratic groups have feted Farrakhan. Rep. Danny Davis, D-Ill., called him “an outstanding human being.”
Then-Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., posed for a photo with Farrakhan at a 2005 Congressional Black Caucus meeting. The picture remained secret until Obama left the White House. The Daily Caller recently highlighted footage discovered by columnist Jeryl Bier. It shows Farrakhan in 2006, warmly embracing Democratic U.S. House members Al Green of Texas and Barbara Lee and Maxine Waters of California, among others.
Last Aug. 31, Farrakhan sat three seats to the right of President Bill Clinton, on stage at soul legend Aretha Franklin’s funeral in Detroit. The Revs. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson sat between them.
Louis Farrakhan, from left, Rev. Al Sharpton, Rev. Jesse Jackson and former President Bill Clinton attend the funeral service for Aretha Franklin at Greater Grace Temple, Friday, Aug. 31, 2018, in Detroit. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya) (Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)
Democrats and the left just can’t get enough of Farrakhan, no matter how many times he talks like a Nazi.
Meanwhile, President Trump has an Orthodox Jewish son-in-law, a daughter who converted to Judaism (both serving as White House advisers) and Jewish grandchildren.
President Trump moved the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. And – while wearing a yarmulke – he inserted a handwritten prayer into the Western Wall in Israel’s capital. Trump is the first sitting president to have done so.
And, yet, somehow, Trump’s enemies claim that he is the real anti-Semite.
So it goes, in the Upside-down States of America.
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