The New Face of American Progressivism Is Illiberal and Anti-Semitic https://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/politics-current-affairs/2017/08/the-new-face-of-american-progressivism-is-illiberal-and-anti-semitic/

August 2, 2017 | Bari Weiss
About the author: Bari Weiss is the author of How to Fight Anti-Semitism. She is a former opinion editor and writer at the New York Times.

Leading the much-ballyhooed “Women’s March” that took place in Washington in January, and the simultaneous marches in cities across the U.S., were four women who have since become the face of the progressive left in the U.S. In keeping with the current obsession with racial quotas, one is white, one black, one Hispanic, and one Arab. Bari Weiss notes that they share a fondness for bigots, especially of the anti-Semitic variety:

Start with [Linda] Sarsour, by far the most visible of the quartet of organizers. It turns out that this “homegirl in a hijab,” as one of many articles about her put it, has a history of disturbing views. . . . “Nothing is creepier than Zionism,” she wrote [on Twitter] in 2012. And, oddly, given her status as a major feminist organizer, there are more than a few statements that seem to make common cause with anti-feminists, like this from 2015: “You’ll know when you’re living under Shariah law if suddenly all your loans and credit cards become interest-free. Sound nice, doesn’t it?” She has dismissed the anti-Islamist feminist Ayaan Hirsi Ali in the most crude and cruel terms. . . .

Largely overlooked have been the similarly outrageous statements of the march’s other organizers. Tamika Mallory, in addition to [joining Sarsour] in applauding [the convicted police-killer] Assata Shakur as a feminist emblem, also admires Fidel Castro, who sheltered Shakur in Cuba. . . . [Carmen] Perez also expressed her admiration for a Black Panther convicted of trying to kill six police officers.

But the public figure both [Mallory and Perez] regularly fawn over is Louis Farrakhan. On May 11, Mallory posted a photo [of herself] with her arm around Farrakhan—the eighty-four-year-old Nation of Islam leader notorious for his anti-Semitic comments—on Twitter and Instagram. “Thank God this man is still alive and doing well,” she wrote. It is one of several videos and photos and quotes that Mallory has posted of Farrakhan. . . .

Readers born after 1980 will probably have little idea [of Farrakhan], since he has largely remained out of the headlines since the Million Man March he organized in 1995. But his views . . . remain as appalling as ever. “And don’t you forget, when it’s God who puts you in the ovens, it’s forever!” he warned Jews in a speech at a Nation of Islam gathering in Madison Square Garden in 1985. . . . He called Hitler “a very great man” on national television. Judaism, he insists, is a “gutter religion.”

Yet, Weiss notes, even those progressives who find such sentiments and associations distasteful turn a blind eye to the dubious connections of their new leaders.

Read more on New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/01/opinion/womens-march-progressives-hate.html