As the third annual Women’s March approaches this coming Saturday, many influential activist groups have walked away from the national organization due to concerns over anti-Semitism. EMILY’s List, the National Council of Jewish Women, and even the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) have distanced themselves from the Women’s March. But when asked about these concerns, Code Pink — an official partner for the Women’s March — diverted attention to a shiny new object: Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa)’s white supremacy remarks.
“The forces of white supremacy and militarism are growing more vociferously each day and women and children in Yemen, Palestine, at the U.S. border, black and brown women and trans women of color are on the frontlines; they pay with their freedom, safety, dignity, and lives,” Ariel Gold, Code Pink’s national co-director, told PJ Media Tuesday. “To abstain from critical intersectional joint struggle in this time is shameful and with real consequences.”
All of this is Leftist intersectionalese jargon for, “I don’t care what the charges against the Women’s March are, its causes are just too darn important.” In fact, Gold went on to dismiss the concerns over anti-Semitism as a false flag attack to stop a “successful popular uprising.”
“The efforts that have been made to destroy the Women’s March are not surprising,” Code Pink’s national co-director declared. “Throughout history, successful popular uprisings and grassroots movements have been met with enormous backlash. When attacks from the outside are unsuccessful, efforts are made to sow distrust, jealousy, and divisions from the inside.”
Then she pivoted to Steve King.
“Instead of attacking the leaders of the Women’s March, people should be focusing on the dangerous forces inside our government with real power that support white nationalism and white supremacy,” Gold declared. “For example, the antisemitic, misogynistic, racist, anti-immigrant dog whistles of Trump and the recent and previous statements by Representative Steve King.”
King did indeed utter disgusting comments, and Republicans were quick to denounce him. House Republican leaders prevented King from holding any seat on a congressional committee. “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?” King asked in a New York Times interview. He tried to distance himself from the statement, but most people are not buying it.
Contrary to Gold’s assertion, however, this does not prove that “the forces of white supremacy … are growing more vociferously each day.” Republicans wasted little time in denouncing the remarks, and political action came quickly.
Yet the Code Pink co-director did not stop with the Steve King red herring. She had to mention every liberal cause imaginable, suggesting that support for the Women’s March would fight every kind of “phobia.”
“It is through joining with other groups fighting for equality and freedom, rather than splitting and dividing, that we all will be strongest in fighting the forces of racism, islamophobia, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, antisemitism, militarism and hatred,” Gold concluded.
Joining the Women’s March will fight anti-Semitism? Perhaps Code Pink should tell that to Tamika Mallory.
On Monday, Mallory, a co-president of the Women’s March, doubled down on calling the Nation of Islam’s Louis Farrakhan the “greatest of all time.” On “The View,” Mallory had a chance to explicitly condemn Farrakhan’s anti-Semitic statements, but she refused.
“We did not make those remarks,” Mallory said. “What I will say to you is I don’t agree with many of Minister Farrakhan’s statements.”
When asked to condemn the comments, she hedged, “I don’t agree with these statements.” She would not condemn them, and later argued that she “should never be judged through the lens of a man.”
The scandal runs deeper than Mallory’s remarks on “The View.” A devastating Tablet magazine exposé reported that Mallory and her colleague Carmen Perez claimed that “Jewish people bore a special collective responsibility as exploiters of black and brown people—and even, according to a close secondhand source, claimed that Jews were proven to have been leaders of the American slave trade.”
This anti-Semitic conspiracy theory traces back to The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, a Nation of Islam book that Henry Louis Gates Jr. slammed as “the bible of the new anti-Semitism.”
Linda Sarsour, another Women’s March leader, has troubling connections with the Nation of Islam. She has used the anti-Semitic group’s security team the Fruit of Islam, even calling them her “FOI brothers.”
Mercy Morganfield, a former spokeswoman for the Women’s March who ran the Washington, D.C. branch, blasted Mallory for appearing at a Nation of Islam event. When Tablet asked her about the anti-Semitism, Morganfield responded, “There are no Jewish women on the board. They refused to put any on. Most of the Jewish people resigned and left. They refused to even put anti-Semitism in the unity principles.”
The Women’s March response to the Tablet exposé actually drew more attention to the article, not less.
Would-be protesters across the country canceled their Women’s March events amidst this scandal. Code Pink may want to distract from this anti-Semitism and focus on Steve King’s white supremacy comments, but these problems are not just going to disappear.
Follow the author of this article on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.
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