If you follow or participate in the Women’s March, whose goals are admirable, be aware that you’re getting in bed with some very unsavory characters—the March’s leaders.

Last Sunday, as reported by CNN, Louis Farrakhan, the bigoted and unhinged leader of the National of Islam (the “Black Muslims”) gave a blatantly anti-Semitic speech. Click on the screenshot to see the details:

Minister Louis Farrakhan engaged in a series of anti-Semitic remarks on Sunday. Farrakhan has led the black nationalist group Nation of Islam since 1977 and is known for hyperbolic hate speech aimed at the Jewish community. During the speech in Chicago, Farrakhan made several anti-Semitic comments, including, “the powerful Jews are my enemy.” “White folks are going down. And Satan is going down. And Farrakhan, by God’s grace, has pulled the cover off of that Satanic Jew and I’m here to say your time is up, your world is through,” he later said. The CNN article contains a lot of tweets from CNN anchor (and liberal) Jake Tapper recounting Farrakhan’s remarks with embedded videos, like this one: At 2:57:00 he begins approvingly quoting some of the anti-Semitic comments made by Rev. Billy Graham and President Richard Nixon in the Oval Office.https://t.co/WE5ys7It8R — Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) February 28, 2018 At 3:15, Farrakhan calls Jews 'the mother and father of apartheid, the Jews."https://t.co/WE5ys7It8R — Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) February 28, 2018 Tapper goes on, but you can see Farrakhan’s anti-Semitic bile at the CNN site.

The Forward adds more:

Farrakhan made multiple inflammatory comments during his three-hour speech. He claimed that “the powerful Jews are my enemy,” that “the Jews have control over agencies of those agencies of government” like the FBI, that Jews are “the mother and father of apartheid,” and that Jews are responsible for “degenerate behavior in Hollywood turning men into women and women into men.” Farrakhan has been known to make anti-Semitic comments for decades, including calling Adolf Hitler “a very great man” and claiming that Jews were behind the 9/11 terror attacks.

Even the dubious Southern Poverty Law Center, itself too eager to demonize Muslim reformers or apostates like Maajid Nawaz and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, has denounced Farrkhan and the Nation of Islam as producing “deeply racist, anti-Semitic and anti-gay rhetoric”, stating that such behavior “earned the NOI a prominent position in the ranks of organized hate.”

Now, who was at Farrakhan’s speech but Tamika Mallory, one of the four co-chairs of the Women’s March? (They include, as Wikipedia notes: “Linda Sarsour, the executive director of the Arab American Association of New York; Tamika Mallory, a political organizer and former executive director of the National Action Network; Carmen Perez, an executive director of the political action group The Gathering for Justice; and Bob Bland [a woman], a fashion designer who focuses on ethical manufacturing.”) And it turns out that three of these four women—all save Bland—have sucked up to Louis Farrakhan.

CNN reports on Mallory, who has a history of osculating Farrkahan (see also my post here):

Women’s March co-chair Tamika Mallory was in attendance, CNN’s Jake Tapper pointed out on Twitter after she shared an image from the event on Instagram.

Mallory has posted on social media about Farrakhan in the past — on February 21, 2016, she posted an image of him from a stage at the Joe Louis Arena with the caption: “The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan just stepped to the mic for #SD16DET… I’m super ready for this message! #JUSTICEORELSE #ForTheLoveOfFlint.” Mallory did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment on Sunday’s speech.

Mallory, and Perez as well, both have firm connections to Farrakhan, expressing approval for the man and his ideas, as documented in an article in The Algemeiner. This picture, from Perz’s Instagram account, shows their approbation (Perez on left, Mallory on right):

I should add that, as I posted last year, Perez is a big fan of other dubious characters. As NYT writer Bari Weiss noted in a column called “When progressives embrace hate” (and I’ve checked on these statements):

Ms. Mallory, in addition to applauding Assata Shakur [JAC: characterized by Tapper, truthfully, as “a cop-killer fugitive in Cuba”] as a feminist emblem, also admires Fidel Castro, who sheltered Ms. Shakur in Cuba. She put up a flurry of posts when Mr. Castro died last year. “R.I.P. Comandante! Your legacy lives on!” she wrote in one. She does not have similar respect for American police officers. “When you throw a brick in a pile of hogs, the one that hollers is the one you hit,” she posted on Nov. 20. Ms. Perez also expressed her admiration for a Black Panther convicted of trying to kill six police officers: “Love learning from and sharing space with Baba Sekou Odinga.”

And here’s Linda Sarsour weighing in on a Perez Instagram post, noting that “the brother does not age” and “God bless him”. Indeed!

You might construe this as just a factual assertion, but I think it’s darker than that:

So Perez and Mallory are big supporters of Farrakhan (and terrorist killers) and I suspect Sarsour is, too, given her “God bless him” weigh-in above. As reader BJ—who called the speech, Mallory’s attendance, and some links to my attention—noted: “This would be all over the media if it was about the leaders of a huge right-wing march following Richard Spencer, and since Farrakhan is just as hateful as Spencer, the only difference between the two is that Farrakhan has far more followers and, apparently, influence over respected organizers.”

You’d expect progressives to call out Perez, Mallory, and Sarsour for their association with an unrepentent Jew-hater like Farrakhan, who is the black equivalent of Richard Spencer. But no, some liberals make excuses for it, so eager are they to overlook anti-Semitism in the cause of being woke. Just have a look at this defense of the Women’s March leaders on the feminist site Jezebel (my emphasis):

Of course, neither Sarsour, nor any of the other Women’s March co-founders, is immune to criticism (and Weiss raises a few valid points in her op-ed [JAC: here], particularly around Carmen Perez and Tamika Mallory’s association with Louis Farrakhan, a black activist who has been labeled by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-Semitic and homophobic extremist; neither Perez nor Mallory have responded to our request for comment on the affiliation or Weiss’s piece). But progressives should understand who these criticisms serve, especially when they originate from Islamophobic arguments—and understand that, as a Palestinian-American Muslim woman, Sarsour’s very identity and existence is considered controversial in a country that continues to support policies that discriminate against one of the most oppressed people in the world.

Transation: “It’s okay for Sarsour, Perez, and Mallory to hang around with a rabid anti-Semite, because the critics of that can be fobbed off as simple Islamophobes. Besides, Sarsour is supporting the oppressed feminists, so it’s okay for her and her cronies to express anti-Semitism.”

Like others who endorse the Woman’s March, Jezebel is so enamored at the March’s well-meant aims that they’ll either overlook or defend the viper at the breast of the Women’s March organizers. I am mystified at this. Perez and Mallory associate with a bigoted loon, Sarsour says “god bless him”; and all three are dubious characters, characters who hang around with and praise bigots and killers. Is this the best the Women’s March can do? Can’t they find leaders who aren’t in bed with bigots? And why does the liberal press ignore this? (We already know the answer.)