Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who for decades has talked about “Satanic” Jews controlling the government and Hollywood and once called Hitler a “great man” – claims his poisonous reputation is a “false narrative” rejected by the Anti-Defamation League.
Farrakhan, 90, has filed a $4.8 billion Manhattan Federal Court suit against the civil rights group, accusing it of interfering with his First Amendment rights by falsely labeling him an antisemite.
“This claim is to ensure that the abuse, misuse and false use of the terms ‘anti-Semite,’ ‘anti-Semite,’ and ‘antisemitism,’ as falsely accused by [ADL] forever prohibited from being a tool to slander [Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam] and restricting the exercise of constitutional rights,” he said in court papers.
Farrakhan insists he has “never harmed a hair on the head of any Jew or even advocated it,” and boasts he “respects, respects, and even admires many members of the Jewish community, including his childhood idol and one of the greatest. the violinist, Jascha Heifetz, who is a Russian Jew, and his own Jewish violin teacher.”
He called his contentious relationship with the ADL a “battle of Biblical proportions” and supported his court filing with 787 pages of “supporting” documents.
Farrakhan and the ADL have been at odds since 1984.Getty Images
Farrakhan has referred to Jews as “termites;” allegedly referred to Judaism as a “sewage religion,” and declared “powerful Jews are my enemies.”
“The Jews were so bad at politics that they lost half their population in the Holocaust,” he said during a 1998 speech.
“Jews are responsible for all the filth and bad behavior that Hollywood does: turning men into women, and women into men,” he said recently, in 2018.
The Anti-Defamation League is “an un-American organization and has woven itself into the fabric of both the government of the United States, in general, and into local governments in America, in particular, to advance un-American interests until it tramples and violates the Constitutional rights of Minister Farrakhan and the American people,” he said in the lawsuit.
The dispute began in 1984, according to Farrakhan, when he supported then-presidential candidate Jesse Jackson after he was accused of referring to Jews with racial slurs.
Farrakhan insists the ADL is the “chief advocate” for falsely labeling some celebrities as antisemitic.Getty Images
“It is because of Minister Farrakhan’s unwavering defense of himself and Reverend Jackson that the ADL began to label him with the false and hurtful label of ‘anti-Semitic,'” Farrakhan said in court papers.
While the ADL does not typically comment on litigation, Director Jonathan Greenblatt told The Post that the suit “has no merit.
“Louis Farrakhan is an antisemite. One need look no further than his own words and statements to reach the same conclusion,” he said.
Farrakhan’s attorney did not immediately return a message seeking comment.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
