Minister Louis Farrakhan has dropped a whopping $4.8 billion lawsuit against the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for the alleged “abuse,” “misuse,” and “false use” of the term anti-semitism to smear his name and vilify the Nation of Islam.
The suit holds the ADL responsible for defamation and First Amendment rights interference and Farrakhan, 90, wants the organization to be “permanently barred” from using the terms “anti-Semite,” “anti-Semitic,” and “antisemitism,” to hinder his exercise of free speech.
The Anti-Defamation League is a global, Jewish organization and anti-hate advocacy group specializing in civil rights law and combating antisemitism, bias, and extremism, according to its website.
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The Nation of Islam (NOI), which Farrakhan has worked on behalf of for decades, is an Islamic and Black nationalist movement founded in Detroit, Michigan, by Wallace D. Fard Muhammad in 1930.
While the ADL is a non-governmental group, Farrakhan claims that it is “unAmerican” and that its activities are “so intermingled and intertwined with those of the F.B.I., and various local and state police departments, that it literally functions as a governmental actor that can be held liable for violating a person’s constitutionally protected rights.”
NOI members believe the ADL paid an agent to infiltrate the ranks of the Nation of Islam and then planted false evidence that resulted in the arrest of dozens of its members.
Farrakhan also lists several instances in the lawsuit in which the ADL denounced remarks he’s made at public appearances to back up his defamation claims, but the very first instance happened in 1984 when Farrakhan was defending a set of remarks made by Jesse Jackson during Jackson’s presidential campaign in which he called for equitable foreign policy to support Israeli-Palestinian relations with a pro-Palestine message.
That Jackson presidential campaign ran into real backlash from Jewish advocates when the Washington Post published a January 1984 feature in which he referred to New York City as “Hymietown” and “Hymies,” remarks he had not expected to make their way into print. Farrakhan defended Jackson in the wake of that interview, and afterward, the Muslim minister would be branded as an anti-Semite, and Jackson’s campaign never recovered.
After a barrage of threats had been launched against Jackson by some Jewish Americans, Farrakhan came to his defense and was also allegedly met with similar attacks. He said the then-National Director called him a “Black Hitler” even though he asserted that he “has never harmed a hair on the head” of any Jewish person or even advocated for such.
The complaint goes on to say that he “honors, respects, and even admires many members of the Jewish community, including his boyhood idol and one of the greatest violinists, Jascha Heifetz, who was a Russian Jew, and his own Jewish violin teachers.”
He also mentioned a public appearance he made at the Los Angeles Forum in 1985, where protestors affiliated with a branch of the ADL called for his death. They allegedly stood outside the entrance of the building, chanting, “Who do you want? Farrakhan. How do you want him? Dead!”
While Farrakhan boasts some admiration for Jewish people, he claims there is a fundamental opposition against his theological viewpoint, which is founded on the belief that Black people are the real children of Israel. In the suit, he states:
I am declaring to the world that you, the black people of America and the Western
Hemisphere, are the lost, the rejected, the despised, the prodigal son, the lost sheep, the
God’s people. You are the people of God. Now, this is not a problem of antisemitism.
This is a problem of theological viewpoint… So, the best thing you can do is tell the
people I’m a hater, I’m a bigot, I’m an anti-Semite?… I just challenged the Jewish
scholars. Show me the history of your suffering in Egypt for 400 years. I know you
can’t show it to me, that’s all I’m saying; it’s not violence, it’s not antisemitism, it’s a
theological argument.
It’s also important to note the several instances in which he himself has made some discriminatory declarations against Jews.
He once called Adolf Hitler a “great German” who “rose Germany up from the ashes of her defeat by the united force of Europe and America after the First World War.” It shouldn’t be lost on anyone that the period Farrakhan is referring to notably precedes Germany initiating World War II and the Holocaust, in which Hitler carried out a massive genocide, killing six million Jews.
In 1998, he made a speech in which he said, “The Jews have been so bad at politics, they lost half their population in the Holocaust.”
In remarks at the 20th anniversary of the Million Man March, Farrakhan also said, “The satanic jews control everything and mostly everybody.”
And in 2018: “Jews are responsible for all this filth and degenerate behavior that Hollywood is putting out: turning men into women, and women into men.”
Other Black people the suit claims the ADL has labeled anti-Semites include Andrew Young, the Rev. Jackson, Kwame Ture, Nelson Mandela, Marc Lamont Hill and Dave Chappelle.
The billions of dollars Farrakhan seeks would go to declaratory relief, attorneys’ fees and costs, and “any other relief warranted as a result of the Defendants’ actions.”
As for the ADL’s response, the organization’s director, Jonathan Greenblatt, a named defendant in the complaint, told The New York Post that the suit “has no merit.”
“Louis Farrakhan is an antisemite. One need look no further than his own words and statements to come away with the same conclusion,” he said.
Read the original story here.
