What's the Deal With the Smear Campaign Against Possible DNC Chair Keith Ellison?
Politics
Since announcing his bid to lead the Democratic National Committee, Rep. Keith Ellison has enjoyed the support of both the Democratic establishment, with an endorsement from Sen. Chuck Schumer, and the party’s populist wing, in Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. That has not stopped archival aggregator KFILE, CNN’s recent acquisition from BuzzFeed News, from picking up a long-simmering right-wing smear campaign accusing the first Muslim congressman of anti-Semitism, resurfacing vaguely conspiratorial questions about his association as a young man with Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, despite the fact that Ellison has spent over a decade apologizing for and repudiating his earlier ties.
In the early ’90s, Ellison was working as a community organizer in North Minneapolis. At this point, unemployment for African Americans was at 13 percent and images of the Rodney King beating had been seared into the public imagination. It was in this context, according to Ellison, that he decided to participate—along with people like Barack Obama, Rosa Parks, Jesse Jackson, and Maya Angelou—in the organization effort around Farrakhan’s 1995 Million Man March and Day of Atonement. As he wrote in an essay published on Medium last night:
My values — going back to my childhood — were always based on respect for all people and rejection of bigotry and racism. When I first heard criticism about Louis Farrakhan, the leader of Million Man March, I felt the March’s message of empowering young African Americans was being attacked.
But I clearly didn’t go deep enough. I defended the organizer of the March in writing, but I glossed over the hurtful and divisive language he directed at other communities. In my effort to pursue justice for the African-American community, I neglected to scrutinize the words of those like Khalid Muhammed and Farrakhan who mixed a message of African American empowerment with scapegoating of other communities. These men organize by sowing hatred and division, including, anti-Semitism, homophobia and a chauvinistic model of manhood. I disavowed them long ago, condemned their views, and apologized.
In my effort to pursue justice for the African-American community, I neglected to scrutinize the words of those like Khalid Muhammed and Farrakhan who mixed a message of African American empowerment with scapegoating of other communities. These men organize by sowing hatred and division, including, anti-Semitism, homophobia and a chauvinistic model of manhood. I disavowed them long ago, condemned their views, and apologized.
“I have a deep and personal aversion to anti-Semitism regardless of its source, and I reject and condemn the anti-Semitic statements and actions of the Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakhan, and Khalid Muhammed,” Ellison wrote in a 2006 letter to the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota, just after he received the endorsement of the local Democratic party in his bid for Congress. “I should have come to that conclusion earlier than I did. I regret that I didn’t.”
Equally eyebrow raising—according to CNN’s KFILE, anyway—was Ellison’s defense of the right of Kwame Ture (born and known for much of his life as Stokely Carmichael) to criticize Zionism. “Concerning Zionism and Ture’s speech, the [Africana Student Cultural Center’s] position is simply this: Whether one supports or opposes the establishment of Israel in Palestine and Israel’s present policies, Zionism, the ideological undergirding of Israel, is a debatable political philosophy. Anyone, including black people, has the right to hear and voice alternative views on the subject—notwithstanding our nominal citizenship.”
He continued: “Alternatively, the University’s position appears to be this: Political Zionism is off-limits no matter what dubious circumstances Israel was founded under; no matter what the Zionists do to the Palestinians; and no matter what wicked regimes Israel allies itself with—like South Africa. This position is untenable.” Shocking stuff! CNN’s Andrew Kacynski cites another column of the undergraduate Ellison’s, arguing for reparations for slavery, as evidence of…exactly what is unclear.
“He’s the first Muslim elected to Congress, and if he supports us 70% of the time, that’s great,” Minnesota state representative and longtime Jewish community activist Frank Hornstein told the Forward this week. “If we’re expecting another Chuck Schumer, we’re not going to get it,” he continued. (Like Sanders, Schumer, the new Senate minority leader, is Jewish.) “But there’s a lot of benefit to having someone who has credibility on the left and is defending Israel.”
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