There are disreputable characters that haunt the ranks of both Republicans and Democrats. The right has its David Dukes and Milo Yiannopouloses; the left has its Oliver Stones and Ward Churchills.
Louis Farrakhan is certainly an embarrassment to Democrats. The Nation of Islam leader is an infamous and vocal anti-Semite with a long history of viciously racist rhetoric. Only last month he was heard on a video insisting that he’s not an anti-Semite, he’s an “anti-termite.” The comment drew criticisms from a few on the left—Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Rep. Greg Meeks (D-N.Y.), Chelsea Clinton—but otherwise our left-leaning friends seem to prefer that Farrakhan just go away quietly. That’s understandable, perhaps, but regrettable nonetheless.
Farrakhan is currently on a tour of the Islamic Republic of Iran. He delivered a speech to a government body called the Expediency Discernment Council (we assume it sounds better in Farsi) in which he denounced the United States for withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal and re-imposing sanctions on the country. “The American government is plotting against you every day,” Farrakhan told Iranian officials. He also claimed to be aware of plans by the U.S. government to attack several Islamic countries—“because it is impossible to change the way of thinking of Islamic Iran, they never sleep and are always working to create an internal enemy in Iran.”
At an event at the University of Tehran, Farrakhan offered words of hope to the regime in Tehran: “Allah does not give you an assignment or a mission to establish his truth without backing you with the strength necessary for carrying out the assignment. So America is making it very hard for Iran to successfully carry out its mission, but if you have the strength to persevere under these hard trials, the victory will be yours.” He was captured on video by Iran state media saying “Death to Israel” as others in the audience chanted “Death to America.”
Among the most chilling of Farrakhan’s comments was “If you don’t work to end the division inside Iran, you will not survive the sanctions.” By “division inside Iran” we assume he meant the hundreds of thousands of pro-democracy protesters the regime has systematically and brutally repressed.
It’s tempting to say none of this matters, and that Farrakhan’s racist ideology has no purchase in American life. But Farrakhan boasts longstanding ties to and tangled relationships with several members of the Congressional Black Caucus, among them Maxine Waters of California, Al Green of Texas, and William Jefferson of Louisiana. Rep. Keith Ellison, the Minnesota congressman and deputy chairman of the Democratic National Committee, has tried unsuccessfully to obscure his longstanding ties to the Nation of Islam leader. Farrakhan boasts enthusiastic supporters in the Women’s March movement. And, of course, Barack Obama himself was once caught on camera grinning with Farrakhan.
The man’s not going away. Even if the mainstream media mostly looks the other way, it’s impossible to ignore an American citizen who cavorts with the nation’s enemies and constantly emits hatred of Jews. We invite our liberal and progressive friends to cast aside their apprehensions and call this man what he is.
