If there’s one charge Republicans are desperate to make stick, it’s that Democrats—and black Democrats in particular—have an anti-Semitism problem. Doing so is central to their efforts to peel off Jewish support for the Democratic Party (which typically comes in at about 75 percent in elections for federal office, including that of president). It’s also crucial to muddying the waters more broadly on the matter of the Republican Party—in particular under Donald Trump—being the party of racism and/or white nationalism. Charging Democrats with being at least too comfortable with anti-Semitism aids GOP efforts to claim that both parties supposedly have a problem with bigotry.
One other thing the Trump-led Republican Party is doing is cozying up to the right-wing government of Israel. This past Monday, the U.S. officially opened its embassy in Jerusalem, fulfilling a long-held desire of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It’s no coincidence that just a couple of days beforehand, the conservative “news” website Daily Wire ran an article about Democratic National Committee Vice Chair Rep. Keith Ellison, Louis Farrakhan, and anti-Semitism, despite the fact that there had been no new news on this issue over the previous few weeks. This push was all about combining the two stories in order to multiply their impact on public opinion, to spread their message more effectively: Democrats are against Jews, Republicans are for Jews. Therefore, Jews should be Republican.
The Daily Wire article was in large part a reaction to remarks Ellison made about Louis Farrakhan and anti-Semitism at a Harvard Law Forum on April 2, during which he stated: “It is frustrating to be pulled out and … it’s like it’s your daily moment to denounce anti-Semitism. We denounce it. We absolutely denounce it. We think it is reprehensible, murderous, and genocidal. And it offends me that anyone would insist that I do it one more time.”
Articles about Ellison’s remarks ran that week in various outlets. Nothing either mentioned or linked to in the May 11 Daily Wire article (which got over 25,000 views) is from later than the first week in April. This was a rehash job through and through. Despite that, the article tries to pretend that something new had happened:
Now [Ellison]’s acting offended by charges over his ties with Farrakhan, complaining that the accusations of anti-Semitism are a “smear.”
Now? Now? I guess if by “now” the author, Hank Berrien, meant “39 days ago,” then, well, sure. In an age when the head of the Republican Party says, to paraphrase Annie Lennox of the Eurythmics, “something that wasn’t true” 6.5 times a day, then what the hell, right?
It was Farrakhan’s February 25, 2018 hate-filled speech that prompted this newest round of controversy for prominent figures who, like Ellison, had at any point in the past spoken positively about Farrakhan. After Farrakhan’s speech, another round of conservative attacks on Ellison ensued, which led the congressman to respond in a statement posted to Medium on March 18. Here’s an excerpt:
I do not have and have never had a relationship with Mr. Farrakhan, but I have been in the same room as him. About a decade ago, he and I had a brief, chance encounter in Washington, D.C. In 2013, I attended a meeting in New York City with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and nearly 50 others where I advocated for the release of an American political prisoner. I didn’t know Mr. Farrakhan would be there and did not speak to him at the event. Contrary to recent reports, I have not been in any meeting with him since then, and he and I have no communication of any kind.
But as the attacks on me and my fellow Black representatives in Congress intensify, I want to be clear: this is a smear by factions on the right who want to pit the Jewish community and the Black community against each other, and distract from the hatred and bigotry on display by the president and the white supremacists who stormed Charlottesville this summer with their anti-Semitic chants and Confederate flags. I declined to dignify questions raised about Mr. Farrakhan because I know they are inherently political, and are designed to separate me from people who I work with every day on issues of importance for Americans of all backgrounds.
The critics will not be satisfied. They won’t be satisfied any more than President Obama’s production of his birth documents satisfied his critics, or Hillary Clinton’s eleven-hour testimony before the House Select Committee on Benghazi sated her detractors. It’s all part of a larger strategy perfected by a man named Lee Atwater, known as the Babe Ruth of negative politics. “Republicans in the South could not win elections by talking about issues,” Atwater explained. “You had to make the case that the other guy, the other candidate, is a bad guy.” Political smear isn’t personal; it’s a strategy for gaining power. It’s frustrating and tedious, but once understood, it should be dismissed, not indulged.
Prior to the release of this statement, numerous conservatives gleefully noted that a Washington Post Fact Check had assigned Four Pinocchios to Ellison’s statement that he had “no relationship” with Farrakhan. It turns out to be more complicated than that, so I want to address the full story. The initial WaPo article ran on March 9, and based its award on three things:
- a video showed “Ellison chatting with a group of men that includes Farrakhan during a function at the Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church, Va. The two men are not seen talking directly to each other, but they are just feet apart. The date of the event is unclear, but it was between 2010 and 2013.”
- “2013: Ellison attended a dinner for Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Sept. 23 with at least 30 other U.S. Muslim leaders, including Farrakhan….it’s unclear how close Ellison and Farrakhan are seated, but it was a setting for a formal discussion, with microphones, so Ellison would not have been able to miss Farrakhan’s attendance. Ellison told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune that he did not know in advance who would be attending.
- “2016: Ellison met privately with Farrakhan….Ellison’s staff initially indicated they would offer a response but failed to do so. Ellison, asked by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer about the meetings on Feb. 22, did not address them.”
The first two show absolutely nothing about a “relationship” between the two men. The only evidence for the third was Farrakhan saying the meeting had happened, which he did in a video interview posted to his Facebook page. After Ellison’s March 18 post to Medium, in which he explicitly denied the 2016 “private” meeting with Farrakhan, the Fact Check article was updated as follows: “We had asked repeatedly about this meeting, and we find it curious he would not deny it immediately. He might have avoided Pinocchios if he had answered our questions rather than ducking them.”
“Might have avoided Pinocchios”? In other words, the WaPo gave Pinocchios that they wouldn’t have given if Ellison had denied having met Farrakhan before their article had run. Conservative media didn’t gleefully report the WaPo’s update.
I want to put Keith Ellison and politics in general aside for a moment and say something about Louis Farrakhan. However much or little power he wields, this man does spread hate. That kind of hate violates our progressive values. It also harms any community or people who embrace it. Hate harms the hater as well as the people being hated.
As progressives, we rightly talk about empathy, about putting oneself in the shoes of someone different from you. Farrakhan has condemned Jews, whites, and LGBTQ folks in brutally dehumanizing and violent language. The Southern Poverty Law Center—whom progressives rightfully respect—has labeled Farrakhan an “extremist” and an anti-Semite, and designated the organization he runs, the Nation of Islam, a “hate group.” It shouldn’t be hard to imagine how it feels when one’s supposed allies refuse to denounce or even embrace someone who dehumanizes you.
Keith Ellison was right to denounce Louis Farrakhan in 2006, and on numerous occasions since then. He has even apologized for having ever defended Farrakhan. Ellison is perfectly justified in his frustration that he keeps being asked to do so again and again.
And that frustration results from a double standard. As Terrell Jermaine Starr wrote in The Root, Trump supporters “are regularly interviewed on network television … but face no consequences for supporting a white supremacist president.”
Louis Farrakhan holds no position in the Democratic Party. Donald Trump is the leader of the Republican Party. No, Donald Trump has not publicly praised Adolf Hitler, as Farrakhan has. But saying that one is not as hateful or racist as Louis Farrakhan is an awfully low bar to clear. Furthermore, Trump wields power that Farrakhan can only dream of, and can transform his hateful thoughts into policy that directly affects every American.
Donald Trump has a long, documented record of racist statements and actions, and built his campaign in part on stoking white racial and cultural anxiety. Republicans chose him as their standard-bearer over sixteen other candidates without such a history. As president he said that there were “some very fine people” on both sides of a protest where one side was populated by neo-Nazis. Please don’t forget the praise that statement earned:
When David Duke publicly praises something you’ve said about race in America, that pretty much means you’ve said something racist.
As progressives, we should call out hate wherever we see it. But let’s be clear about one thing: The continued right-wing attacks on people like Keith Ellison—who have rejected hate already—are motivated solely by politics. I’d like to give Rep. Ellison the last word on the matter:
The right’s attempt to split the Jewish and Black communities is not going to work. Martin Luther King demonstrated this when he invited Rabbi Abraham Heschel to march with him in Selma, Alabama. And now more than ever, when the right-wing is working to divide us by skin color, faith traditions and by our place of birth, human solidarity is critical to seeing us through this perilous time.
Ian Reifowitz is the author of Obama’s America: A Transformative Vision of Our National Identity (Potomac Books).
Below is video of me from this past week on cable news discussing this issue (yes, it’s unfortunate that the screenshot makes it looks like I’m about to sneeze):