Friday, October 28, 2022

Cultural Appropriation Dep't.

1620ET:
Jon Blistein / Rolling Stone:
Kyrie Irving Boosts Antisemitic Movie Peddling ‘Jewish Slave Ships’  —  The video is based on a venomously antisemitic book which asserts that “many famous high-ranking Jews” have “admitted” to “worship[ing] Satan or Lucifer.”  —  HOURS BEFORE ANOTHER Brooklyn Nets loss on Thursday, noted “free-thinker” and basketball player Kyrie Irving took to Twitter to boost a movie and book, Hebrews to Negroes, stuffed with antisemitic tropes.

The 2018 film was directed by Ronald Dalton, Jr., and based upon his 2015 book of the same name. A description for the film states that it “uncovers the true identity of the Children of Israel,” while a similar one for the book reads, “Since the European and Arab slave traders stepped foot into Africa, blacks have been told lies about their heritage.” Both suggest Hebrews to Negroes espouse ideas in line with more extreme factions of the Black Hebrew Israelites, which have a long history of misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, Islamophobia, and especially antisemitism.

The Black Hebrew Israelite movement is fairly broad, comprising organizations that (per the Anti-Defamation League) “operate semi-independently.” The movement generally coalesces around the notion that Black people are the real descendants of the ancient Israelites, with more extreme factions claiming that Black people have been “robbed of their identity as being ‘God’s chosen people'” (via the Southern Poverty Law Center).

It’s those extremist sects that have often parroted “classic” antisemitic tropes, like claiming European Jews (often referred to as the “synagogue of Satan”) wield outsized control over society, especially in industries like banking and the media. They’ve also pushed antisemitic claims that Jews are responsible for slavery and the “effeminizing of Black men.”

The broad Black Hebrew Israelite movement, as the Southern Poverty Law Center notes, has its roots in Black Judaism, which began in the South during the late 1800s. The movement’s popularity and influence can be tied to its key tenets of “self-empowerment and economic independence,” while rhetoric “emphasizing the biblical theme of an oppressed nation being led to a promised land, informed black activist thought right up through the speeches of Martin Luther King Jr.”

[...]

The SPLC goes on to note that while the belief that Black people were descended from the ancient Israelites was always part of Black Judaism, that didn’t necessarily mean that “other people deserved condemnation or attack.” Nevertheless, the movement (like many movements) had its extremists, who paired those original messages of self-empowerment with more hateful and antisemitic rhetoric as the Black Hebrew Israelite movement evolved during the 20th century.

As for Irving, long before tweeting out Hebrews to Negroes, he appeared to tweet something in line with Black Hebrew Israelite thinking back in March 2021. The statement wasn’t overtly antisemitic, rooted more in that core notion that Black people are the real descendants of the Israelites. “You better stop playing with History,” he wrote. “You better stop lying to your people Europe and America. You better stop feeding BS to the innocent children of God. The Original people are returning, and this time God will intervene at every corner of the Earth.”
2310ET:
Jon Blistein / Rolling Stone:
Has everyone in this shithole nation lost their fucking minds?

1 comment:

Ten Bears said...

Yes. Except us of course, though I'll not gamble on that ...