Where Black Nationalism Meets White Supremacy
Posted on 11 May 2020
As Louis Farrakhan turns 87 today, his influence across the spectrum of hate remains strong
MAY 11, 2020
During the past few decades there has been a resurgence of both white and black extremism in the United States. The white supremacy march in Charlottesville, featuring neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and other far-right groups, coincided with the rise of anti-Semitism in both Europe and the United States, as well as with a revival of black nationalism. Spearheaded by its leader, Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam (NOI) represents the most powerful link between the anti-Semitism of the black power movement of the 1960s and its 21st-century heirs and imitators. Beyond NOI, a web of white supremacists and black nationalists are linked together by online social networks that propagate anti-Semitic imagery, wild conspiracy theories about the effort of Jews to control America, and other forms of propaganda designed to foster hatred of Jews.
Black nationalism as a movement sought the political and economic empowerment of the African American community, race pride, reparations for slavery, and resistance to integration, thus opposing Martin Luther King Jr.’s agenda that sought to reform American society through nonviolent interracial activism. Perhaps in response to MLK Jr.’s emphasis on liberal, interfaith dialogue, or their own definitions of African Americans as a colonized third-world people engaged in a struggle for national liberation, black nationalist advocates in the United States included extremists who saw Jews as among their primary enemies. Hence, anti-Semitism has been weaponized by African American anti-Semites such as Louis Farrakhan to provoke its followers against America’s Jewish population, sometimes under the pretext of supporting Palestinians in their conflict with Israel.
Not since the 1930s has anti-Semitism been so threatening to the American Jewish community. Incidents, such as the shooting at Pittsburg’s Tree of Life synagogue and the Chabad in Poway, California, have made Jews vulnerable to attacks by white extremists, while attacks in Monsey and Jersey City have highlighted the danger posed by the inflammatory language of black nationalist anti-Semitism. In a survey taken by the American Jewish Committee in October 2019, 31% of Jewish respondents reported having taken steps to hide their Jewish identity in public, and 25% stated that they avoided Jewish sites. The AJC survey was taken before the attacks in Jersey City and Monsey.
Black nationalist groups such as the Black Hebrew Israelites and the New Black Panthers have contributed to the radicalization of “lone wolf” perpetrators who are responsible for the majority of violent anti-Semitic attacks by African American perpetrators. The mentally ill black gunman who invaded the home of a rabbi in Monsey, New York, celebrating Hanukkah with yeshiva students appeared to have been influenced by anti-Semitic postings that law enforcement officers found on his computer, which included anti-Semitic tropes from black nationalist sources. Similarly, anti-Semitic provocation appears to have a primary motive for the perpetrators of the kosher market shootout in Jersey City in 2019, who apparently were influenced by the anti-Semitism of the Black Hebrew Israelites.
Read in full: Where Black Nationalism Meets White Supremacy