IfNotNow Statement on Louis Farrakhan, Women’s March, and Antisemitism.
For media inquiries, contact Yonah Lieberman / press@ifnotnowmovement.org
Last week, a leader of the Women’s March — an organization which, like us, exists to fight for the freedom and dignity of all people — attended an event at which Louis Farrakhan spoke and expressed many of his long-held antisemitic, homophobic, and transphobic views. Since then, there has been immense outcry from the Jewish community, expressing justified hurt, anger, and confusion.
Let us be clear: Louis Farrakhan is an antisemite. He is a homophobe and a transphobe as well. It is painful and confusing to see Women’s March leaders embrace Farrakhan, because it demonstrates that they may not take antisemitism as seriously as they take other forms of oppression. We love and respect our allies and will fight alongside them for justice — but it’s important for us to know they share our commitment to working against anti-semitism as part of that shared struggle. The statement released by the Women’s March on Tuesday was a first step, but it must be followed by meaningful action as well.
Let us be clear on this as well: the reaction by the Anti-Defamation League, the Republican Jewish Coalition, and other Jewish institutions to this incident has been outsized, particularly in the face of the rise of violent, antisemitic white nationalism. While Farrakhan’s influence is relatively small, this white nationalist movement has the ear of the President of the United States. Given this power discrepancy — and given these institutions’ own unwillingness to call out racism and Islamophobia in the American Jewish community, and discrimination based on ethnicity and religion in Israel — it is unsettling to see how often the ADL and others criticize Black and Muslim activists and politicians for any association with Farrakhan. That the ADL and other Jewish leaders undermining the Women’s March fail to understand that the true threat to our community today is the rise of white nationalism is a galling moral failure. Not only does it distract from white nationalism and problems in our own community, it sets up a false dichotomy between the Black and Jewish communities which painfully erases the existence of Black Jews.
The leaders of the Women’s March have erred. But we can name that error without writing them off. Our fight for collective justice requires strong relationships between allied groups who will sometimes hurt one another. The Jewish community must have faith in the ability of our allies on the left to grow, knowing that just as white Jews have to unlearn racism, non-Jews have to unlearn antisemitism. Luckily Judaism gives us the perfect tool for balancing accountability and faith in each other: t’shuvah, the process of apology, correction, and moving forward.
IfNotNow is a movement led by young Jews to transform the American Jewish community’s support for the occupation into a call for freedom and dignity for all Israelis and Palestinians. IfNotNow has chapters in Austin, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Detroit, Los Angeles, Minneapolis-St. Paul, New York City, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, the San Francisco Bay Area, Toronto, and Washington, DC.
