The July 4, 2020, address, “The Criterion,” by The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan has been removed from YouTube after more than 1 million people have already viewed it because of an unrelenting campaign by Jewish groups.
As vehemently as they like to deny the charges, this behavior proves the adage that anti-Semitism, of which the Minister is accused, is often more about someone who is hated by Jews, rather than about someone who himself is a Jew-hater.
These folks say that anyone who argues that Jews control the entertainment industry is anti-Semitic. But this act is clear proof of the expression by Israeli journalist Gilad Atzmon, who wrote on Dec. 14, 2016: “Jewish power is the power to silence criticism of Jewish power.”
After the Million Man March when the attempts to defame Farrakhan failed, the 21st-century strategy to blunt his success turned to ignoring him, like no one could see the elephant in the room—the elephant being his enormous body of good works among Black people who the society has abandoned.
What these Farrakhan haters do then is to go after people with ties to the corporate culture to demand that they denounce the man who has been a friend and an asset to the success of Black people for 65 years. The Minister is the exemplar of leadership in a post-Caucasian world. So, they go after people invested in that world to renounce him, those who have something to lose if they fall from favor in “Holly-weird.”
President Barack Obama was made to “denounce” and “renounce” Farrakhan by Sen. Hilary Clinton, in order to win the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008. The list goes on and on. One of the most recent was entertainer Chelsea Handler, because, like Obama, she has something to lose if the media/entertainment world turns its back on her.
The Farrakhan haters know full well that for most of those otherwise well-meaning outsiders: defending Farrakhan just “is not a hill to die on,” as the saying goes. That is, unless they are willing to commit career suicide, they just can’t defend the Minister who is not necessarily core to their being or to their own mission.
So, Minister Farrakhan is persona non grata in the corporate-owned media and academic circles, and anyone who might see the great value in the message he teaches, is intimidated to just pretend that they don’t see his miracles right before their eyes, while the hateful opponents dominate the conversation with their wicked lies. They won’t let him talk, but they line up to talk really bad about him.
When it comes to criticizing the wicked behavior of some Jewish leaders, like those who condemn Minister Farrakhan, there is no such thing as a real “marketplace of ideas,” because given a chance to fairly evaluate Minister Farrakhan and his message and its track record of success, compared to the alternatives, too many among the public would choose Farrakhan.
Their strategy works every time. In a 2002 interview with “Democracy Now’s” Amy Goodman, the following exchange took place with former Israeli Education Minister Shulamit Aloni. “Often when there is dissent expressed in the United States against the policies of the Israeli government people here are called anti-Semitic. What is your response to that as an Israeli Jew?” Goodman asked.
“Well it’s a trick, we always use it. When from Europe someone criticizes Israel, we bring up the holocaust. When in this country people are criticizing Israel, they are (called) anti-Semitic,” Aloni said.
It’s used, even against Jews who get out of line. Dr. Norman Finkelstein was denied tenure at DePaul University in 2003 because he spoke against the apartheid policies of the government of Israel.
Last October, when Dr. Finkelstein spoke at his alma mater, Princeton University, he was lambasted. The school’s newspaper, “The Prince,” said he uttered an “anti-Semitic trope” when he described Israeli snipers as “drinking the blood of Gaza’s one million children.”
“The ‘Prince’ quoted me as recalling by analogy abolitionist Frederick Douglass’s description of slave-catchers as ‘biped bloodhounds’ and his public declaration that if a slave catcher sought to take the slave back, he ‘will be murdered in the street,’” Finkelstein wrote in an op-ed after the incident.
“Both my parents were survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto, my father was a survivor of Auschwitz and the Auschwitz death march, and my mother was a survivor of Majdanek and two slave-labor camps. Every other member of my family on both sides was exterminated. I will perhaps be forgiven for loathing concentration camp guards and murderers of innocents,” he said.
Finkelstein’s defense described his circumstance then, and Farrakhan’s predicament with Jewish defamers today: “The ‘Prince’ accuses me of anti-Semitism. It would appear, however, that not only is the messenger being vilified for his discomfiting message, but the delivery of that message is being tagged as anti-Semitic so as to silence future messengers.”
That’s the true meaning of silencing Minister Farrakhan’s July 4 address.