Democrat Lawmakers Heaped Praise on Extremist Whose Follower Executed Bloody Attack at Capitol
There’s never a particularly good time for hate prophet Louis Farrakhan to be in the news. It’s worse when that news involves a dead Capitol Police officer.
Noah Green, who was shot to death by Capitol Police during Friday’s attack at the Capitol, was a 25-year-old Indiana man who described himself as a “Follower of Farrakhan” and called the religious leader “Jesus,” Fox News reported. Green rammed Capitol Police Officer William “Billy” Evans and another officer at a Capitol barricade in a vehicle before emerging from the car with a knife, The Associated Press reported.
Green’s Facebook page, Fox News had previously reported, said that he had donated $1,000 to the Nation of Islam, which is led by Farrakhan, arguably the most prominent open anti-Semite in theUnited States.
In a Washington Post article that barely mentions the attacker’s professions of solidarity with the Nation of Islam or Farrakhan, reporters Emily Davies, Justin Juvenal and Michael E. Miller wrote that Green had “slid into deep religiousness and paranoia that left family and friends concerned about his mental state in recent years.”
It’s unclear what role Farrakhan’s teachings played in the attack, if any. Reports about Green paint a picture of a deeply disturbed man who suffered from paranoid delusions. Those with mental illness can, of course, attach themselves to any number of religions in a febrile manner.
However, Farrakhan’s name will always stand out in this context because of just how poisonous and anti-Semitic his black nationalist version of pseudo-Islam remains. The attack dredged all of that rhetoric back up again — and provided a reminder that several prominent Democrats have unapologetically lent their support to Farrakhan without disavowing it or by underplaying their involvement with him.
Just so we’re clear the magnitude of the hate we’re talking about here, Farrakhan has a history of alluding to Jewish people as “termites.” In 1984, according to The Weekly Standard, he said “Hitler was a very great man.” In 1985, according to the same article, Farrakhan told an audience, “Don’t you forget, when it’s God who puts you in the ovens, it’s forever!”
While much of his invective is aimed at Jews specifically, Farrakhan also attacks whites in general. In 2000, according to The Guardian, he said, “White people are potential humans — they haven’t evolved yet.”
As Fox News reported on Saturday, one of the most prominent Democratic supporters of Farrakhan is South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn, the House majority whip.
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Clyburn is arguably the reason President Joe Biden is in the White House in the first place. His endorsement of Biden just before the South Carolina primary changed the trajectory of the race, helping Biden rout Sen. Bernie Sanders both in South Carolina and in the Super Tuesday primaries that followed.
In 2011, Clyburn shared a stage with Farrakhan in Pittsburgh for a discussion called “The Disappearing Black Community and How We Can Get It Back,” according to Nation of Islam publication The Final Call. Even though there were calls for him to boycott the event, Clyburn told The Final Call he was “not bothered in the least bit” by criticism of his appearance.
“I want to thank [Minister] Farrakhan for offering up a number of precepts that we ought to adhere to,” Clyburn said, according to The Final Call.
According to Fox News, Clyburn didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
Illinois Rep. Danny Davis has been a more outspoken ally of Farrakhan’s, calling him “an outstanding human being” who “does outstanding things” in 2018.
“I personally know [Farrakhan], I’ve been to his home, done meetings, participated in events with him,” Davis told The Daily Caller in a 2018 interview.
“I don’t regard Louis Farrakhan as an aberration or anything, I regard him as an outstanding human being who commands a following of individuals who are learned and articulate and he plays a big role in the lives of thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of people.”
According to Fox, Davis didn’t return a text message seeking comment on Friday’s attack.
Another Nation of Islam supporter in Congress is the newly elected senator from Georgia, Raphael Warnock. In a 2013 speech, Warnock said the Nation of Islam’s “voice has been important for the development of black theology.”
“It was the Black Muslims who challenged black preachers and said, ‘you’re promulgating … the white man’s religion. That’s a slave religion. You’re telling people to focus on heaven, meanwhile, they’re catching hell,’” Warnock said, according to Fox News.
The Nation of Islam, he said, “put a fire” under black preachers and kept them “honest.”
According to Fox, Warnock didn’t immediately comment return a request for comment.
And then there’s Rep. Maxine Waters, an ally of Farrakhan for years. Here she is, along with members of the Congressional Black Caucus, greeting Farrakhan back in 2005 in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina:
In 2002, Waters was in attendance for Farrakhan’s Saviours’ Day speech — a speech given by the leader on one of the Nation of Islam’s most important holidays, commemorating the birth of its founder, Wallace Fard, also known as Wallace Fard Muhammad.
“We have Maxine Waters here, our great congresswoman from this area,” Farrakhan said during a speech in which he praised Palestinian suicide bombers.
“The Palestinians have nothing to defend themselves with, so they’re so exhausted and exasperated. Think about that, strapping bombs to themselves, making themselves a weapon,” Farrakhan said.
“And then for the world to get upset because Iran or somebody is trying to send them some weapons. Wait a minute. If you were Jewish and you saw unarmed Jews being persecuted, wouldn’t you come to your brothers’ aid? Do you expect Muslims to see their brothers suffering like that and not come to their aid?”
Waters’ office — and here’s a shocker — didn’t comment immediately when Fox News reached out.
Another prominent Democrat with ties to Farrakhan who wasn’t contacted by Fox News is Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, currently much in the news due to the Derek Chauvin trial. Ellison is a bit different in that he was a member of the Natio of Islam years ago but dismissed it as a youthful dalliance when he first ran for Congress in 2006.
However, The Daily Caller reported that Ellison met with Farrakhan multiple times while he was in Congress from 2007 to 2019. Jeryl Bier, then of The Weekly Standard, reported in 2018 that Ellison had also visited a Nation of Islam museum in photographs he described as having been taken “some time in the past few years.”
I since wrote in @weeklystandard of a visit @keithellison made to a Nation of Islam museum/radio studio in Chicago (CROE) some time in the past few years, but Ellison has not commented on that visit either.https://t.co/vj36zPvEFD
/end pic.twitter.com/ccJ3XWnn1S— Jeryl Bier (@JerylBier) June 12, 2018
It doesn’t particularly matter how much of Farrakhan’s hate-preaching influenced the Capitol attacker.
The point is that Farrakhan is a hate-preacher, one that’s been embraced by too many Democrats who have been allowed to ignore their ties to him for far too long.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
