COMMENT: This seems to be fas­cist cult week. We’ve touched on the “Truthers” and Far­rakhan, then the “Truthers” and now the leader of the Nation of Islam him­self. “Van­field” antic­i­pat­ed this post yes­ter­day with his/her con­tri­bu­tion about Nation of Islam leader Louis Far­rakhan’s pas de deux vis a vis slav­ery.

In addi­tion to blam­ing African Amer­i­can slav­ery on–you guessed it–the Jews, he has ardent­ly defend­ed Arabs in the Sudan and Mau­ri­ta­nia against con­dem­na­tion for their active, ongo­ing enslave­ment of black Africans.

Here in the Bay Area, the rip­ples are sub­sid­ing after Far­rakhan drew a stand­ing ova­tion from an African Amer­i­can audi­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Berke­ley. Crit­i­cized from many quar­ters, Far­rakhan’s appear­ance was defend­ed by the school admin­is­tra­tion under the rubric of “free speech.”

It seems that a tree-blight is spread­ing through the groves of acad­eme.

(Short­ly after 9/11, a close friend coun­seled me that, if I con­tin­ued in this line of research, I should be pre­pared to clash intel­lec­tu­al­ly to an increas­ing degree with Holo­caust deniers. Promi­nent “Truther” Jim Fet­zer has indeed attempt­ed to open the debate on that sub­ject to “both sides.” Blam­ing African Amer­i­can slav­ery on “Da Jooz” is of the same intel­lec­tu­al fab­ric. So is the con­trolled demo­li­tion of the World Trade Center/cruise mis­sile hit the Pen­ta­gon dri­v­el. I’m now braced for the onslaught of the Holo­caust deniers–“But what about this?”)

In addi­tion to the sub­stan­tive indi­ca­tions that Far­rakhan may well have been involved with the mur­der of Mal­com X, whose man­tle he has assumed, Far­rakhan has vapor­ized his cred­i­bil­i­ty by claim­ing that he has trav­eled in a UFO.

It appears that Far­rakhan’s defense of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood regime in Sudan, which has pur­sued the slavery/genocide against the black pop­u­la­tion of that unfor­tu­nate coun­try is based on a pro­fes­sion­al rela­tion­ship with that mur­der­ous regime.

When Far­rakhan’s defense of black African slav­ery was shat­tered by jour­nal­ists, many of them were ter­ror­ized by his goons.

“Far­rakhan’s Secret Rela­tion­ship” by Charles Jacob; The Dai­ly Cal­i­forn­ian; 5/16/2012.

EXCERPT: Nation of Islam leader Louis Far­rakhan addressed an esti­mat­ed 600 stu­dents at UC Berke­ley last Sat­ur­day, and told  Black stu­dents not to befriend any Jew with­out first read­ing The Secret Rela­tion­ship Between Blacks and Jews, a book whose the­sis is that “the Jews” were behind the black slave trade.  Heck of a way to start up a friend­ship!

Schol­ars both black and white have exposed the NOI book as a pack of lies, a mod­ern day calum­ny which, much like their medieval ana­logues — “the Jews poi­soned the wells,” “the Jews make mat­zo with the blood of Chris­t­ian chil­dren” –is meant to incite hatred for Jew­ish peo­ple.  Dan­ger­ous hatred. The Dai­ly Cal­i­forn­ian reports that Jew­ish stu­dents were hurt and shocked.  No doubt.

But what will be more shock­ing per­haps is Min­is­ter Farrakhan’s own semi-secret rela­tion­ship with the mod­ern day slav­ing of African Blacks by peo­ple, and in coun­tries, that the NOI leader has an inter­est to pro­tect.  In 1994, an African Mus­lim from Mau­ri­ta­nia  – Mohammed Athie — and I broke the sto­ry of a mod­ern day slave trade in Mau­ri­ta­nia and Sudan, in The New York Times.  We report­ed that “per­haps 300,000” African Mus­lims were still serv­ing Arab/Berber mas­ters. “Black Africans in Mau­ri­ta­nia were con­vert­ed to Islam more than 100 years ago,” we wrote, “but while the Koran for­bids the enslave­ment of fel­low Mus­lims, in this coun­try race out­ranks reli­gious doc­trine. These peo­ple are chat­tel: used for labor, sex, and breed­ing. They may be exchanged for camels, trucks, guns or mon­ey. Their chil­dren are the prop­er­ty of the mas­ter.”

In Sudan, Africa’s largest coun­try, we report­ed that slav­ery was “mak­ing a come­back, the result of a 12-year-old war waged by the Mus­lim north against the black Chris­t­ian and ani­mist south. Arab mili­tias, armed by the Gov­ern­ment, raid vil­lages, most­ly those of the Din­ka tribe, shoot the men and enslave the women and chil­dren. These are kept as per­son­al prop­er­ty or marched north and sold.” We based our reports on gov­ern­ment doc­u­ments, human rights pub­li­ca­tions  and a stun­ning inter­view with a UN offi­cial .

The op-ed shocked many. We were encour­aged to launch the Amer­i­can Anti-Slav­ery Group (AASG) which would doc­u­ment a mod­ern day slave trade around the globe, but would focus on Sudan and Mau­ri­ta­nia as the worst case of slav­ery, and the most con­tro­ver­sial, and there­fore least like­ly to be cov­ered by oth­ers.

PBS’s Tony Brown Show, the most pop­u­lar Black news pro­gram at the time, invit­ed Mohammed and me to speak about slav­ery. Imme­di­ate­ly after our appear­ance, we were attacked by Farrakhan’s spokesman  who denied that Blacks served Arab mas­ters in Sudan or – worse from NOI’s point of view, that Black Mus­lims served Arab Mus­lim mas­ters in Mau­ri­ta­nia. Farrakhan’s “call­ing,” after all, fund­ed in part by Arab dic­ta­tor Muam­mar Khadafy,  was to break the Black/Jewish civ­il rights alliance while teach­ing Amer­i­can Blacks that Islam was their path to free­dom. Not in Sudan and Mau­ri­ta­nia it wasn’t!

NOI was seri­ous about shut­ting us up.  Samuel Cot­ton, a black reporter for the City Sun, NY’s sec­ond largest black paper con­duct­ed a thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion that result­ed in a five part series. “Arab Mas­ters, Black Slaves”  screamed across the front page in NYC’s news kiosks. NOI warned Sam. They fol­lowed and men­aced him when he spoke in Chica­go, not far from their head­quar­ters. Sam’s book, Silent Ter­ror, has become an under­ground clas­sic.

At a press con­fer­ence in D.C in 1996, Far­rakhan was asked about reports of slav­ery in Sudan. Accord­ing to the NY Times , he angri­ly chal­lenged them: “If slav­ery exists, go … to Sudan, and come back and tell the Amer­i­can peo­ple what you found.” The Bal­ti­more Sun sent two reporters to Sudan. They found and lib­er­at­ed slaves and pub­lished a spe­cial four page insert in the paper’s week­end edi­tion. Far­rakhan refused their request for an inter­view — and pret­ty much went radio silent on slav­ery issues… until fair­ly recent­ly. . . .

COMMENT: “Calyp­so Louie” (as Far­rakhan used to call him­self) has gone out of his way to stig­ma­tize the black African vic­tims of con­tem­po­rary slav­ery for the col­or of their skin and their kinky hair!!

“Geno­cide and Slav­ery in the Sudan: The Far­rakhan Con­nec­tion” by Sabit Abbe Alley; www.iabolish.org; p. 56.

EXCERPT: . . . This was clear­ly demon­strat­ed dur­ing his Sav­ior Day address on Feb­ru­ary 25, 1996, and in sub­se­quent speech­es, where the Min­is­ter graph­i­cal­ly described the peo­ple of South Sudan as being very, very, very . . . very dark with kinky hair as com­pared to the brown (white!) North­ern Arabs, who accord­ing to Far­rakhan, looked exact­ly like him! He used the adverb -very- 15 times to empha­size his col­or prej­u­dice against the South­ern Sudanese. . . .