In his ecumenical Easter edition of Fox News Sunday, host Tony Snow interviewed Nation of Islam honcho Min. Louis Farrakhan. In the process Snow showed signs of wanting to be the second journalistic convert, after columnist Robert Novak, to Farrakhan revisionism. This is the view that — though the man sounds like a crackpot anti-Semitic anti-American demagogue — he is in fact a cleverly disguised family-values proto-Republican. In one of his questions to Farrakhan, Snow said: “You have in the past, described some – – some Zionists — and you’ve been misquoted on this largely, but you have said some Zionists are practitioners of a dirty religion.”
That’s an interesting — and euphemistically dishonest — way to put it. Farrakhan has hardly been misquoted. Who needs to misquote a man who is so quotable that he once regaled Washington Post editors and reporters with the tale of his 1985 trip aboard a flying saucer to chat with the shade of Elijah Muhammad? A year before that, in June 1984, Farrakahn gave a speech larded with references to the evil scientist Yakub, whom Nation of Islam adepts believe created the degenerate white race by selective cross-breeding of weak black stock. This, as it happens, is the same speech in which Farrakhan said that Judaism is a “gutter religion” — a phrase whose paternity he has ever since been denying.
A strange chorus of right-wing well-wishers has lately joined Farrakhan in his denials, which may be where Snow picked up the “some Zionists” phraseology. For the record, here are excerpts of what Farrakhan said in his June 24, 1984, address to followers at his Chicago headquarters, as broadcast on WBEE radio, tape-recorded by the Chicago Sun-Times, and subsequently transcribed by the Associated Press. The only possible misreading to which these excerpts might lend themselves is that anti-Semitism is the only hatred Farrakhan indulges in; as a reading of the whole speech (readily available on Nexis) makes clear, he also hates Christians, whites generally, and large chunks of the modern world:
I say to the Jewish people, and to the government of the United States of America, the presence of a state called Israel is an outlaw act. . . . America and England and the nations [that backed Israel’s existence] are criminals in the sight of almighty God. Now that nation called Israel never have had any peace in 40 years and she will never have any peace because there can be no peace structured on injustice, thievery, lying and deceit and using the name of God to shield your gutter religion under his holy and righteous name.
Tony, Bob, et al.: Please don’t make us quote this man’s vile words again.
