Why did the Clintons share a stage with Farrakhan?
Imagine President Trump being invited to speak at the funeral of a white singer whom he admired (say Ted Nugent, if he were to pass), and he saw that David Duke was on stage in a place of honor. Imagine the reaction of the media if Trump actually gave a speech in the presence of David Duke. Well, former president Clinton gave a speech in the presence of Louis Farrakhan. (Hillary Clinton was sitting off to the right but did not speak.)
Why would Bill Clinton, a good man and a friend of the Jewish people, do this? There are several possible answers:
1) He was taken by surprise at Farrakhan’s presence and didn’t want to do anything that would disrupt the service. But the shoe-on-the-other-foot question remains: Would he have acted similarly if it had been Duke rather than Farrakhan?
2) Clinton doesn’t believe that refusing to sit alongside a bigot is the proper response to bigotry. Again, the shoe-on-the-other-foot question: Would he sit alongside Duke?
3) Clinton doesn’t regard Farrakhan as comparable to Duke. But that is simply wrong – Farrakhan is a blatant antisemite with an enormous following.
(4) Farrakhan’s antisemitism is not as serious a problem as Duke’s white supremacy. But without getting into comparative assessments of bigotry, antisemitism is surely a serious and growing problem.
Farrakhan is at least as bigoted as Duke. This is a man who only last year called Jews members of the “Synagogue of Satan” and claimed that Jesus called the Jews “the children of the devil.” Farrakhan is also a homophobe who claimed that “Jews [are] responsible for all of this filth and degenerate behavior that Hollywood is putting out turning men into women and women into men.” In the past, Farrakhan delivered similar remarks, claiming, “When you want something in this world, the Jew holds the door” and calling Hitler “a very great mean.” He’s also a racist, claiming, “White people deserve to die.”
Many younger people on the Left may not know the extent of Farrakhan’s bigotry, or they may condone it by claiming that he did a service to black communities.
FOR EXAMPLE, Tamika Mallory, co-founder of the Women’s March, called Farrakhan “GOAT (greatest of all time).” And Democratic National Committee deputy chair Keith Ellison once called him “a role model for Black youth.”
Earlier this year a picture of Barack Obama smiling with Farrakhan emerged. (Although I supported Obama both in 2008 and 2012, I would not have campaigned as enthusiastically for him had I known about this suppressed photograph then.) Keith Ellison, who may become Minnesota’s next attorney-general, later distanced himself from Farrakhan but, like Mallory, claimed that Farrakhan’s contribution to black empowerment is “complex.” Would we accept this kind of complexity and nuance if a white singer’s family had invited David Duke?
Liberals need to make unequivocally clear that the Democratic Party tent will never be big enough for antisemites and anti-Americans like Farrakhan (just like Republicans need to do the same with sympathizers of the so-called alt-right.) There are not “good people” on the side of antisemitism any more than there are “good people” on the side of white supremacy.
There is no place for a double standard when it comes to antisemitism. Black antisemitism should not get a pass account of the oppression suffered by so many black people. Neither should “progressive” tolerance of antisemitism of the kind shown by Bernie Sanders’s support for Jeremy Corbyn, the antisemite who heads the British Labour Party and may well become the next prime minister of America’s closest ally.
Just contrast the Aretha Franklin memorial service with the current controversy surrounding the decision of The New Yorker to invite Stephen Bannon for what promised to be a critical conversation with the journalist David Remnick. After many prominent liberals, such as Judd Apatow, Jim Carrey, and Patton Oswalt announced that they would not attend lest they “normalize hatred,” Bannon was disinvited. Chelsea Clinton tweeted, “For anyone who wonders what normalization of bigotry looks like, please look no further than Steve Bannon being invited by both @TheEconomist & @ NewYorker to their respective events in #NYC a few weeks apart.”
To that I would add, look no further than the Clintons sharing the stage with Farrakhan. I hope they will take this occasion to distance themselves from, and strongly condemn Farrakhan’s antisemitism.
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This article first appeared in The Hill.