In a July 10 interview on Frances Swaggart’s “Frances and Friends” program, right-wing commentator Jesse Lee Peterson argued that African Americans were better off under Jim Crow than they are today because they didn’t have “hatred in their hearts,” and compared the Blacks Lives Matter movement to the Klu Klux Klan.

Peterson also insisted that slavery in America was not about race because “it was the blacks in Africa who sold the blacks.”

“There were even black people in America who had slaves as well, and during that time it was about economics, it wasn’t about color,” Peterson said. “And black people are not the only ones who’s been enslaved. The Jews have gone through what they’ve gone through. White people have been enslaved, other people have been enslaved, and that’s not a reason to hate. You overcome evil by not hating it. And black people were better off… before the Civil Rights Movement, under the Jim Crow laws, than they are today because they didn’t have that hatred in their hearts.”

He continued, “There is never an excuse to hate, and God said that we should even love our enemies, it means don’t hate them so you’re protected from them. The Klu Klux Klan didn’t go around killing black people, they killed some black folks. Just like Black Lives Matter, Barack Obama have created an environment by falsely accusing white cops of killing black people, the Klu Klux Klan did the same thing, so evil is evil, and it doesn’t matter who it’s coming from.”