Nation of Islam, ‘Alt-Right’ Find Common Ground — Over Racial Separation
The Nation of Islam and white nationalists in the “alt-right” have been finding common ground in recent weeks — bonding over their dreams of racial separation.
Last month, NOI leader Louis Farrakhan tweeted: “Black People: We should be more convinced that it is time for us to separate and build a nation of our own.” Farrakhan’s sentiment was retweeted by a number of white nationalist Internet figures like Richard Spencer, Mike Enoch, and the American Renaissance site.
A new Anti-Defamation League blog post explores what may seem like an unlikely alliance — but is in fact very natural.
Farrakhan’s brand of black nationalism and Spencer’s white nationalism have “considerable” overlap in terms of ideology, the ADL wrote: both are “virulently anti-Semitic and call for separate ethno-states.”
Farrakhan responded to the alt-right a couple days later at a speech in New Jersey. He called the movement “white people of intelligence.”
“Do you know white people of intelligence feel the same way? Somebody told me that the ‘alt-right,’ Mr. Trump’s people, had a tweet or something – we kinda like what Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam is saying, we with them to separate in a land of their own. I said: very good, alt-right, ya’ll want to talk about it? Talking has been done, nothing to talk about because now it’s either separation or death.”
Email Sam Kestenbaum at kestenbaum@forward.com and follow him on Twitter at @skestenbaum
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO