After publicly repudiating his former colleagues at the Nation of Islam, DNC deputy chairman Keith Ellison dined with the group’s notorious leader Louis Farrakhan and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani in 2013, according to reports.
The jihadist-friendly Ellison, a Democrat congressman representing Minnesota, is a former co-chairman of the Communist-linked Congressional Progressive Caucus.
Although Ellison was not a senior Democratic Party official in 2013, now that his DNC post makes him much more than a fringe figure in his party, the meeting takes on a greater, darker significance for Democrats, putting them in bed with raging genocidal anti-Semites, Muslim terrorists, and other enemies of the United States.
The private Sept. 24, 2013, event at the One UN Hotel in Manhattan, across the street from the United Nations complex, was reported in the Oct. 2, 2013, issue of the Nation of Islam newspaper, Final Call. Rouhani was in New York for the 68th UN General Assembly. “The dialogue revolved around the Iranian president’s speech and how to move forward in regard to relations with the United States,” according to the newspaper. “Translators were included in the meeting to facilitate communications in English and Farsi.”
“Abdul Akbar Muhammad, international representative of the Nation of Islam, and Supreme Capt. Mustapha Farrakhan were part of the Nation of Islam delegation,” the report stated.
Democrat lawmakers attending the event included Ellison, a Muslim, Andre Carson of Indiana, also a Muslim, and Gregory Meeks of New York. Ellison’s participation in the 2013 event was referenced by the Wall Street Journallast week, based on the Final Call article.
Rouhani is president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which conducts daily “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” rallies, and maintains a repressive police-state apparatus to crush dissent. Members of religions other than Islam are persecuted in Iran and homosexuality is punishable by death. Ellison, of course, is an outspoken supporter of Iran and its nuclear ambitions.
Farrakhan makes no effort to hide his racism, viewing it as an essential component of his religion and as something of which one should be proud.
He has spoken of “white devils” and of “the white man” as the “anti-Christ.” Whites are “vicious beasts” and “the skunks of the planet,” according to Farrakhan. “White people are potential humans … they haven’t evolved yet.” In a 1997 interview on “Meet the Press,” he stated, “It is not accidental that the black male is in the condition he is in,” and he claimed there was a “conspiracy of our government against the black male.”
Farrakhan calls Jews “bloodsuckers” who in his view somehow undermine American blacks. He calls Judaism, which antedates Islam by at least 2,000 years, a “gutter religion,” and describes Adolph Hitler as “a very great man.”
Farrakhan is an intellectual inspiration to Ellison. Not surprisingly, Ellison has a long, well-documented history of defending Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, which have been tracked by Discover the Networks.
As early as 1989, Ellison was denying the Nation of Islam was racist. In the 1990s, he served as a spokesman for the group.
In a 1995 column, Ellison heaped praise on Farrakhan:
Minister Farrakhan is a role model for black youth”; “is not an anti-Semite”; “is a sincere, tireless, and uncompromising advocate of the black community and other oppressed people around the world”; and is regarded by “most black people” as “a role model for youth and, increasingly, a central voice for our collective aspirations.
But Ellison’s political ambitions forced him to disavow Farrakhan and his group, insincerely, as it now turns out.
In 2006 during a run for Congress, Ellison tried to distance himself from his past involvement with the Nation of Islam, writing a letter to a Jewish group. He apologized to Jewish leaders, writing, “I have long since distanced myself from and rejected the Nation of Islam.” In the letter he falsely claimed he had been involved with the group for a mere 18 months around the time of the Million Man March in 1995, when in fact the period was closer to 10 years in duration. He also claimed not to have known about the Nation of Islam’s anti-Semitic views, saying he “did not adequately scrutinize” those views, and added that he had never expressed or defended such views. Around that time, he reportedly used the aliases Keith Hakim, Keith X Ellison, and Keith Ellison-Muhammad.
In 2016 while he was running for the DNC chairmanship, he tried to turn the tables on his critics, accusing themof trying to smear him by bringing up his association with Farrakhan and Nation of Islam.
Reports of his ties to Farrakhan were “bad reporting” and a distraction, Ellison said with a straight face on MSNBC. “I have a 10 year record in Congress,” he said. “It is just that kind of reporting that is not quality and doesn’t help people understand the real issues.”
“What does he have to do with anything going on in this race?” Ellison asked about Farrakhan. “Absolutely nothing.”
“We’re talking about something that happened in 1995. This is a year when the Million Man March took off — people were attacking it. I was very proud to be a part of it. But here I am having to answer questions about this, and I’m not talking about what our country needs to do and what the Democratic Party needs to do, because of this smear campaign from 20 years ago.”
Left-wing radicalism, anti-Americanism, and sympathy for Islamofascism aren’t exactly new in Democrat circles, but it is unusual for someone as high in the hierarchy of the Democratic National Committee as Ellison now is to be so associated with odious racist figures such as Farrakhan and the president of a country committed not only to the extermination of Jews, but to wiping the United States and Israel off the map.
But times have changed, and not for the better. Nowadays those who urge the extinguishing of American democracy and the murder of police officers are considered legitimate activists. Over the years Ellison has defended Kwame Ture (formerly known as Stokely Carmichael), as well as cop-killers and leftist icons Mumia Abu Jamal, Assata Shakur, and Geronimo Pratt.
Last month Ellison implicitly expressed support for the use of violence against President Trump in a tweet as he posed for a selfie with the cover of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook, by Mark Bray. “I just found the book that strike[s] fear in the heart of @realDonaldTrump[.]” Antifa is short for anti-fascist. Members of the movement use physical violence against conservatives and anyone else they lump in with the purported fascists they claim to oppose.
Ellison’s deficient character, as well as his ties to very bad people who want to hurt Americans, should worry patriots, especially with polling showing Democrats may be on the verge of recapturing Congress this November.
This article by Matthew Vadum first appeared Feb. 14, 2018, at FrontPageMag.