Women's March leader won't condemn anti-semitic comments by Louis Farrakhan of Nation of Islam

We probably want them to hold a higher standard of conduct than the TEA Party, whose leadership refused to denounce their own members and leadership’s racist actions and remarks. Refusal to take action, especially early in a movement’s life, leads to a successful movement with those uncomdemned associations becoming a plank of their activism.

4 Likes

I loved the Brother Mouzone/Omar team-up later on in the series. Two stone-cold professional killers with radically different styles who earn each others’ respect even as they never quite earn each others’ trust. It reminded me of the dynamic in For a Few Dollars More.

4 Likes

Not exactly a move in the right direction.

4 Likes

An ‘awful lot’ of holier-than-thou White folks do the same and more to the likes of Joel Osteen and Pat Roberson; gullible, desperate people gonna be gullible & desperate…

21 Likes

Every time someone says “Farrakhan is hateful and bigoted as hell. Could you stop kissing his feet” you can set your watch by the replies. “He’s misunderstood.” “He’s done so much for the Community.” “He isn’t as hateful as you think.”

Sounds like Klansmen talking about Nathan Bedford Forrest. And as one of the people he keeps calling subhuman filth and all the rest, yeah, I have no patience with it just like neither of us have any patience with Steve King or David Duke. And neither of us should.

2 Likes

I just checked, he’s 85 years old. Tick tock. I don’t expect his name being out there too much longer.

2 Likes

Not advocating, just noting.

4 Likes

Uh - he really ducked addressing that issue.

Oh - I guess not. Maybe it would be good if others who support these types of ideas regarding ethnicity but oppose Farrakhan took a step back and reflected on the inherent contradiction involved.

“ “I decry racism and anti-Semitism in every form and strongly condemn the anti-Semitic statements made by Minister Farrakhan. I assume that Trumpet Magazine made its own decision to honor Farrakhan based on his efforts to rehabilitate ex-offenders, but it is not a decision with which I agree.”

11 Likes

That and state that you have to view racist/sexist people in the context of their times and circumstances. But that consideration isn’t applied equally.

7 Likes

If you won’t condemn the anti-termite remark, you are an anti-semite. There’s no doubt to give the benefit of.

9 Likes

Here in Chicago there is a stark cultural divide between those who only think of Farrakhan as a joke and/or a hateful relic and those who still afford him a position of respect.

This seems like a small moment to point to, but last summer when Ice Cube’s basketball league was in Chicago at the United Center, Farrakhan and his wife had front-row seats and received a round of applause from the crowd of a few thousand when introduced. He’s not a pariah for a lot of people, as the present story unfortunately demonstrates.

1 Like

The 2017 Women’s March (or marches, all over the world – I attended the one in NYC) marked the first day that many of us felt the rage and even the despair that had been building and building over the previous months finally ease for a while. We got out of our homes and stopped reading every damn tweet and FB post and Instagram meme that flashed before our eyes, and when we looked up we were surrounded by good people. The sleaze and degradation of the incoming administration seemed a little less acutely painful for a while. And now – Tamika Mallory is showing her true colors, and they’re incredibly ugly and jarring. I don’t know a single person attending a Women’s March™ event this Saturday. You’re unable or unwilling to openly condemn a scourge like Farrakhan? Piss off.

3 Likes

I never thought otherwise. :slight_smile:

2 Likes

Dude… first of all, you seem to have a really weird fixation with the term “kissing people’s feet.” Maybe try using a different metaphor for false idol worship, see how some variety feels.

O_o

Next, the exact same thing can be said about 45’s enablers and apologists. Or Elon Musk’s. Or Jordan Peterson’s. Or really, ANY toxic cult of personality persona, it doesn’t need to political or religious in nature.

That’s how cults work; they suck in the weak and naive.

So it goes with Farrakhan.

And to be clear, it’s not “most” Black people that support him (which seems to be what you are erroneously implying) and he is not considered a leader in the legitimate Black community.

He’s just as much an embarrassment as someone like Jared Kushner should be to you.

8 Likes

How would you feel if someone implied that Klansmen represented your community?

Who said otherwise?

6 Likes

Could you kindly give some sourcing on this?

15 Likes

2 Likes

I think it’s important to note that the most vocal critic in this clip identifies herself as “pro-life” & complains that she was shut out of the Women’s March. I’m sure that the fracturing of the Women’s March would be met with glee by the right & might even be engineered by them, knowing how easy it is to fracture left-wing alliances along the faultlines of identity. The Women’s March offered hope & solidarity to so many people, it would be a prime target for a COINTELPRO-type op. I feel we need to think carefully about how to preserve solidarity AND diversity, before we jump on the bandwagon to condemn a movement of millions, just because of one organizer.

3 Likes

discovery-Lorca-okay

5 Likes

It was already was targeted by the right and has been since the beginning, because they are hyper-partisan and easy to rally.

However, it has also been targeted by the left since the beginning. Some used the Women’s March 2017 as the launching point to understand white feminism versus intersectionality and considered it to be a poster child for how to not be inclusive, some used the women’s march as a symbol of how meaningless establishment views and actions are, and some because of complaints of antisemitism from back then. The only difference between what was once rumored antisemitism to now is that Mallory (whom it would be insulting to refer to as just an organizer tbh) has a direct, public line attaching her to antisemitic beliefs and the further digging by national news outlets resulted in uncovering people who were organizers in the march who are willing to say they felt targeted by the leadership of the women’s march.

It would be nice to simply say it’s a right-wing media conspiracy, but it’s not. There are major problems that need to be addressed.

EDIT

It’s also true that Farrakhan, people who follow Farrakhan, and the Women’s March itself draw an unfair share of the attention and condemnation. Steve King is getting less shit for being an openly racist white nationalist than any of these people from media as a whole, and just look at the man that got put in office because of white nonsense.

11 Likes