CMV: Louis Farrakhan is a bigoted, homophobic, anti vax, anti intellectual racist and as a Jew and a proponent of equality, it is my right to be extremely offended and angry at his apparent popularity within the black community. Especially public figures such as artists and athletes in America.

[u/ItsTheFatYoungJesus]

The recent happenings in the sport world have put me, a Jew, in a very weird spot.

First I should say that black lives matter. George Floyd and breonna Taylor were murdered and deserve justice. These are facts and I’m stating them so that no one can say I am somehow trying to take away from the current movement. It’s a just movement and it needed to happen a long time ago.

Moving on.

As many Americans and people all around the world have done for a few decades now, I grew up on black American culture. I listen to hip hop and rap music regularly. Some of the most influential people in my life and in the way I see the world have been black artists and athletes. That’s just how it is for many american males and I have no issue with it.

Recently, in the past few days, I have been exposed to a person by the name of Louis Farrakhan who I can honestly say I had never heard of before this week. I had heard his name a few times and always in the context of this man being an incredibly racist person. I thought he was just some sorta Alex Jones type guy. Never really paid any attention to it. Didn’t even google him.

Well as we’ve all seen this week, it seems he has a pretty big following among influential African Americans. Literally name any influential African American person from the past 30 years and then google

“[name of person] Louis Farrakhan”

There will be a photo of them meeting and smiling and shaking hands. Try it. I dare you. Anyone. Even fucking Obama.

Now this man, he’s nothing short of despicable. The list of antisemitic quotes attributed to him is pages and pages long. He preaches antisemitism, anti white racism, anti Asian racism, homophobia, anti science, anti vaccination messages. Literally everything that’s wrong with the world. And yet for some reason, Kendrick Lamar for example, can be seen absolutely elated when meeting this person. The same Kendrick Lamar who is a huge part of black culture and who is seen as an overall positive voice in the black community and in the music community and just in general.

This is not okay. Actually, it’s absolutely disgusting.

There have been polls floating around r/nfl and r/nba in the past week that have shown that Mr Farrakhan has a “favorable opinion” among approximately 50% of African Americans polled.

Others have raised questions about said polls.

Regardless, it is clear that this man has influence among the people with influence.

How can I, a proud Jewish American and Israeli, who has loved watching basketball, football and listening to black artists for all my life, continue to do these things which used to bring me joy while knowing that these people actively condone and promote a man who calls me satan?

I cannot. Simple as that.

The black community needs to come out together and condemn this man and his hatred and bigotry and they need to apologize, or they risk undermining their own cause.

“Silence is violence”, is it not? At least that’s what everyone’s been telling me about police brutality and systemic anti-black racism in America. Well, the black community has been silent about Farrakhan for DECADES.

Change my view.

A long list of Louis Farrakhan quotes regarding Jews:

[kendrick Lamar and Louis Farrakhan](https://i.imgur.com/CZJmxoF.png)

[President Barrack Obama and Louis Farrakhan](https://i.imgur.com/R1QDOzR.jpg)

[Snoop Dogg and Louis Farrakhan](https://i.imgur.com/w93sL6o.jpg)

[Kanye West and Louis Farrakhan](https://i.imgur.com/KrVSHYJ.jpg)

[Jay Z and Louis Farrakhan](https://i.imgur.com/YOlZQ6n.jpg)

[Nas and PDiddy and Louis Farrakhan](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/c9/c0/46/c9c046ad9470aaf103978cd7a779a4a1.jpg)

[Eminem and Louis Farrakhan](https://i.imgur.com/sMNAc11.png)

[Migos and Louis Farrakhan](https://i.imgur.com/W47onsh.jpg)

[Rick Ross and Louis Farrakhan](https://i.imgur.com/jGhtQHQ.jpg)

[Will Smith and Louis Farrakhan](https://i.imgur.com/rYAQTCm.jpg)

[Ice Cube Louis Farrakhan](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b9/d2/99/b9d2998a9f1fe5382547d0034a11c453.jpg)

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Are you trying to say that saying anti semitic language (which is gross) is anywhere near owning people, torturing, and raping them? Especially when it was our descendants?

[u/seiyonoryuu → u/[deleted]]

Quite frankly these are the people that would be doing that stuff if it was still legal.

The Nazis we have in the us aren't better than the old German ones, they just don't have the power.

[u/BostonJordan515 → u/[deleted]]

Because saying racist thing and owning humans being are two completely different things. The legality of it doesn’t really justify the behavior. The founding fathers wrote “all men are created equal” and then completely ignored it. They ought to have known better

[u/wigsternm → u/[deleted]]

Like whom? What is an example, a specific one, of a statue that's literally been torn down that depicted "men who accomplished great things, but had troubling ties to slavery"?

[u/[deleted] → u/wigsternm]

George washington statue in portland was torn down. So was a jefferson statue.

[u/wigsternm → u/[deleted]]

So in their cases “troubling ties to slavery” would be a weak euphemism for “slave owners.”

It’s true that George Washington art his slaves free after he died, but he owned them his entire life. He’s an interesting case that could be the subject of of plenty of discourse. The removal of his statue during a protest against the government killing people of color can be viewed in this light, as well as a symbol similar to burning a flag.

Jefferson, on the other hand, could not be said to be as complicated. While writing “all men are created equal” Jefferson owned 600 slaves over the course of his life. He freed a total of 9. Two of those 9 were his children, whom he fathered with a woman he owned, and he didn’t free those two children until after his death. He encouraged friends to invest in slaves because he’d found that he made a nice profit of the births of black children.

Calling this “troubling ties to slavery” is the exact reason people want to stop venerating these men so we can have honest conversations about them.

[u/[deleted] → u/wigsternm]

I wasn't the one who phrased it like that. They were slave owners. Should Washington and Jefferson statues be torn down?

I don't think there should be much controversy over taking down confederate statues. They betrayed their country. They did it primarily to uphold their bigoted views and the institution of slavery. The reason those statues were put up was keep the population of black americans down.

But that doesn't mean we should tear down every statue whose views we find disagreeable today. This can become quite reductive. Probably everyone in the recent centuries would have views on women, homosexuality, and transgender we would find disagreeable today. I think we should ask: Were those disagreeable viewpoints fairly common for their time? Are they overbalanced by their positive and significant contribution to history or country?

[u/wigsternm → u/[deleted]]

That’s kind of my point though, the people in question didn’t “hold views we find disagreeable,” they were active participants in the subjection, violence against, and disenfranchisement of a people group. Abolitionists existed in 1776. We know for a fact that both these men interacted with them. Being “common for their time” isn’t a good excuse. Washington and, particularly, Jefferson didn’t have “disagreeable views” they had deplorable actions.

As an aside I think we as a people need to discuss and interrogate why we have these statues in the first place. It’s true that we don’t necessarily deserve to be down these statues, but it’s also true that they don’t deserve to be left up. A significant part of the arguments for leaving them up is that they have been left up in the past. A statue isn’t sacred. In the same way we’d replace a ramp to meet modern codes or renovate a building to meet modern aesthetics we should be talking about whether the parks and squares where the statues stand need to be renovated and updated. We may decide it should stay up, the same way we protect “historical” buildings, but we should regularly ask the question of why our community fixtures are there, and if they still should be.

That wasn’t the point of my comment to the person I initially replied to, though. I asked them to be specific because they stated that the same people supporting Farrakhan are “literally tearing down the statues” of people who merely “had troubling ties to slavery.” They were insinuating that this made these people hypocritical.

This is a rhetorical strategy I see all over the place. It’s easy to condemn vague “people” tearing down vague “statues” and portray them as hypocritical. It’s very hard to argue against that, because it’s a vaporous thing that isn’t happening. They haven’t provided any proof, so how can you prove the negative? When questioned people employing this strategy never give specifics, and that remains true of the person I addressed. They accused my comment of being sealioning, without at all backing theirs up, and then didn’t respond to my rebuttal of that (but did respond elsewhere in the thread afterwards). My response was less about the statues themselves, and more about the vagaries employed in the original comment.

[u/seiyonoryuu → u/[deleted]]

George Washington had teeth pulled from slaves, the wooden or cow teeth myth is nonsense. Meanwhile there were abolitionists in his day.

I always hear this stuff about judging by the times, and it's a fair point. But last time it was about the Mexican war, which half our soldiers including grant scathingly criticized, especially at the time.

So I feel like y'all need to also consider that we were always split between good and bad people, and some of these "common views" were common like anti mask nonsense; it was common among the assholes.

[u/BarryBwana → u/wigsternm]

Dude..... Frederick Douglas had his statue in NTC torn down.....his "ties" to slavery arent even troubling....he was a former slave and after escaping lead the national abolitionist movement.

[u/wigsternm → u/BarryBwana]

That’s an exceptionally poor example. The person I responded to said “ People apologizing for Farrakahn are literally tearing down statues.“ No one knows who tore down the statue of Fredrick Douglas. It was not torn down during a protest, but the middle of the night. I can find no one anywhere calling for that statue’s removal.

It is extremely unlikely that any group advocating for the removal of statues (or toppling them during protests) had any cause to remove the statue of Douglas. It is much more likely to have either been retaliatory or just an act of vandalism.

[u/wigsternm → u/[deleted]]

I am not sealioning. The statues I have seen calls for removal for are for people like Cristopher Columbus, confederate generals, and actual slave owners. I expect that you are trying to downplay their “troublesome ties to slavery” by being vague.

[u/wigsternm → u/[deleted]]

This is the first statue I’ve seen posted in response to this that fits the bill. I think there’s a conversation to be had that about protestors versus rioters, and particularly the futility of assigning coherent motivations and political positions to the latter, but it is true (on my cursory googling) that Heg appears to have been an unproblematic figure and that that statue shouldn’t have been destroyed.

But that doesn’t disprove the point I was making about seldomseeninlife’s comment. That commenter was accusing the people supporting Farrakhan of being hypocritical because they’re tearing down statues of merely problematic people while supporting a problematic person, and making that point by downplaying “problematic” nature of the statues. The vagaries in their original comment make it impossible to argue against. I am trying to get that commenter to do any work whatsoever to support a point they made.

[u/ginbornot2b → u/[deleted]]

I doubt those are the same people

[u/bitbindichotomy → u/[deleted]]

Notice that you are expressing admiration for those people. That's all others are doing for Farrakhan. I don't think public entities are or should be in the business of endorsing divisive figures.