— MINISTER FARRAKHAN (@LouisFarrakhan)
March 7, 2018
Both tweets were attached to videos from his speech to Nation of Islam supporters at the organisation’s annual Saviours’ Day event last month, which included a series of antisemitic slurs.
By Thursday afternoon Mr Farrakhan’s second video had been watched nearly a million times.
The February 25 speech attracted further scrutiny after it emerged a number of leaders from the Women’s March group — which has organised protests involving millions — openly met and supported Mr Farrakhan over the last couple of years.
COMMENT: We can and must beat the rhetoric of Louis Farrakhan
One of those leaders, Tamika Mallory, attended the Saviours’ Day event and was singled out for praise by Mr Farrakhan.
Jonathan Greenblatt, head of the ADL antisemitism watchdog, said Mr Farrakhan had suggested “that Jews are part of ‘the Synagogue of Satan’, that the white people running Mexico are Mexican-Jews; that Jews control various countries including Ukraine, France, Poland and Germany where they take advantage of the money, the culture and the business; that Jesus called Jews ‘the children of the devil’; and ‘when you want something in this world, the Jew holds the door.’”
“He also claimed that Jews control the government and the FBI and use marijuana to feminize black men,” Mr Greenblatt added.
Mr Farrakhan has a history of making antisemitic remarks during his Saviours’ Day speech.
In 1985 he said: “Jews know their wickedness, not just Zionism, which is an outgrowth of Jewish transgression.”
He followed that in 1990 with: “the Jews, a small handful, control the movement of this great nation, like a radar controls the movement of a great ship in the waters … the Jews got a stranglehold on the Congress."
His 1996 speech included the passage: “You are not real Jews, those of you that are not real Jews. You are the synagogue of Satan, and you have wrapped your tentacles around the U.S. government, and you are deceiving and sending this nation to hell.”
Ms Mallory has repeatedly declined to condemn or distance herself from Louis Farrakhan, despite repeated calls for her to do so.
After nine days without comment, the Women’s March released a statement earlier this week, saying that “Minister Farrakhan’s statements about Jewish, queer and trans people are not aligned with the Women’s March Unity Principles.”
