Marching With Hate

Only people tortured by a terrible thirst could have been assembled in such numbers at the behest of so detestable a demagogue as Louis Farrakhan, the white-bashing, Jew-hating, violence-threatening, sexist, homophobic leader of The Million Man March.

The thirst is understandable. It’s a thirst for leadership, and for hope of breaking the cycle of poverty, despair, and self-destruction that so disproportionately afflicts African-Americans.

But how much hope can be derived from an event at which (according to a Washington Post survey of 1,047 people) 87 percent of the participants queried had a "favorable" view of Farrakhan? This is a man who just days before had bared his fangs by smearing Jews as "bloodsuckers," a man whose history is littered with the vilest kind of hate speech and visions of violence against Jews and other whites.

And how much reconciliation and atonement can be derived from an event at which souvenir stands did a brisk business in T-shirts celebrating the acquittal of a black man who (the overwhelming evidence shows) had viciously murdered two white victims?

To understand the void now being filled by the ascension of Farrakhan, we might start with a look at President Bill Clinton’s speech on Oct. 16 (Farrakhan’s big day). While making some reasonable (if pallid) points about the need for interracial understanding, the president displayed the sort of pious hypocrisy that has stripped him of any standing to exercise moral leadership when he lamented "unequal treatment" of black people by the criminal justice system:

"[B]lacks are right," Clinton declared, "to think something is terribly wrong…when almost one in three African-American men in their 20s are either in jail, on parole, or otherwise under the supervision of the criminal justice system…And that is a disproportionate percentage in comparison to the percent of blacks who use drugs in our society."

All true. But such sentiments ring hollow coming from a president who has cynically pursued partisan political advantage by making the problem he has now belatedly recognized worse, not better.

This is a president whose attorney general, Janet Reno, has followed White House marching orders by repeatedly opposing efforts to ease the obscenely excessive mandatory minimum sentences that have condemned thousands of young black men (and others) to long federal prison terms, often for nonviolent roles as bit players in small-time drug deals. This is a president whose political consultant, James Carville, has publicly suggested that in seeking re-election, President Clinton should boast that this is "a better America" because "more people [are] in prison cells than on the day I took office." This is a president, in short, whose policies have wrecked the lives of more black people than one racist cop like Mark Fuhrman ever could.

And whose approach to other racial issues calls to mind black scholar Shelby Steele’s insight that "affirmative action…ostensibly exists to solve a social problem but actually functions as an icon for the self-image people hope to gain by supporting the policy." President Clinton bolsters his self-image of racial sensitivity by wooing our nation’s more fortunate black people with the corrupting promise of preferential treatment, while pursuing policies that consign less-fortunate blacks to prison cells.

Most Republicans, meanwhile, slam affirmative action while exuding indifference to the fact that millions of blacks still live on "a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity," in the words of Martin Luther King Jr.

So it’s no wonder that public-spirited black people look within for leadership. And it’s no wonder that they find little inspiration in the tired nostrums of people like Jesse Jackson, who nestled into a new role at The Million Man March: Farrakhan’s lap dog.

But why is it the wealthy, high-living Farrakhan who has successfully parachuted into this vacuum of failed leadership? The attractive part of his message-that blacks should lift themselves up, care for their families, rebuild their communities, respect themselves and their neighbors-is indistinguishable from what black moderates and conservatives have said for generations. And Farrakhan’s constant resort to the cult of victimology does not distinguish him from black liberals.

So what gave Farrakhan the clout to summon 400,000 black men to Washington? While most seemed to be decent people, it’s hard to avoid the inference that Farrakhan’s mass appeal owes something to his distinctive brand of victimology unchained: hale speech, mixed with dreams of some racial Armageddon in which the victims will rise up and exact vengeance from the white devils.

A Farrakhan sampler: "We know you [Jews] are plotting against us…Our God…dares you to touch me. Come on, if you want to die…Your time is just about up" (March 19, 1995); "(P]oor Jews died while rich Jews were at the root of what you call the Holocaust…Little Jews [were] being turned into soap, while big Jews washed themselves with it" (March 19, 1995); "The Jews cannot defeat me, so I will grind them and crush them into bits" (May 21, 1988); "You [white people] are wicked…I say you’re sick and you need a doctor or you need to be buried" (July 22, 1985); "Some white people are going to live…but [God] don’t want them living with us. He doesn’t want us mixing ourselves up with the slave master’s children, whose time of doom has arrived" (March 11, 1984).

Then there are the more direct exhortations to murder whites, voiced most baldly by Khallid Abdul Muhammad, whom Farrakhan praised last year for "the truths that he spoke" even while suspending him (only temporarily) from a Nation of Islam ministry for "the manner in which those truths were represented":

"I love Colin Ferguson, who killed all those white folks on the Long Island train" (April 19, 1994); "Now is the time to stand up and fight back…. There are no good crackers, and if you find one, kill him before he changes" (Feb. 17, 1992). And so on, ad nauseam.

You may not have seen many of Farrakhan’s (or his disciples’) most inflammatory quotes lately. One reason is that he cleans up his act a bit when lie knows that civilized blacks and "white folks" are listening. Another is that some of the journalists covering Farrakhan are politically correct liberals fearful of offending his sympathizers.

As a Washington Post editorial complained on the morning of the march, many news reports have portrayed Farrakhan’s rhetoric as merely "controversial," and as offensive only to certain "critics." Two leading examples of such PC pussyfooting had, in fact, appeared in the very same newspaper the preceding day, on Page 1, above the fold. One article mentioned that Farrakhan had spoken "words that critics say demonize Jews and belittle Catholics, whites and homosexuals." The other noted that he "has for years been accused of racism and antisemitism"

"Critics say"? "Has been accused"? We’re talking about a man whose racist speech is as vile as that of the despicable (but far less powerful) Mark Fuhrman. But while Fuhrman’s hateful statements about black people brought universal condemnation, Farrakhan’s attacks on Jews, other whites, Asians, Christians, and homosexuals-and his subordination of women-are met with applause by large numbers of black people, and with palliation by much of the press.

So when Farrakhan managed to get through his 21/2-hour diatribe at the march-mixing lunatic ravings about the number 19; self-comparisons with Jesus, Moses, and Mohammed; and attacks on Lincoln, Washington, and Jefferson- without repeating his most hateful prior statements, some were inspired to write (as did Hugh Pearson of The Wall Street Journal) that "he preached a message of racial reconciliation" and that "it remains to be seen if he is still a charlatan."

Nothing remains to be seen about Farrakhan. It is all out in the open. He is an evil lunatic. Those who embrace him are embracing evil lunacy, whether out of ignorance or malice. It’s that simple.

The rising black racism manifested by Farrakhan’s new prominence also infused the gleeful celebration of the acquittal of O.J. Simpson, whose evil deeds exceed even Farrakhan’s evil words, and whose lethal brutality dwarfs anything Mark Fuhrman ever did.

"Reasonable doubt" and anger at Fuhrman’s lying and racism do not completely account for the giddy cheers for Simpson, or the tone sounded by people like the Farrakhan marcher who told the Post that the verdict was "just the chickens coming home to roost-what you are seeing is what you did to us for years." Such remarks stink of a baser sentiment: Even if he did kill those two white people, I’m glad he got away with it.

Amid all these depressing omens, is there any hope for race relations in this country? Perhaps. For one thing, while white racism (especially among police) has surely not been eradicated, it has receded dramatically, and no longer seems the major obstacle to black success that victimologists (including President Clinton) would have us believe.

As for that leadership vacuum, there’s one figure in America today whose ascension could hold the electrifying promise of preventing a downward spiral of black and white racism feeding on each other. And that may be reason enough to elect the first black president, Colin Powell.