The New York Times on Saturday published an op-ed piece glorifying Louis Farrakhan’s Million Man March and failed to mention the Nation of Islam’s anti-Semitism, prompting former staffer Bari Weiss to condemn the newspaper for presenting him as a “gentleman” and for ignoring “Jew hate.”
“Today the New York Times ran an oped about the Million Man March and Louis Farrakhan. If you read the oped and knew nothing about Farrakhan, you would think he was a gentleman,” Weiss, a former editor and writer for the NYT’s op-ed page, tweeted.
“When The Times ran the infamous anti-Semitic cartoon, the issue was not that editors were hardened anti-Semites. It’s that they didn’t even *notice* it. This shouldn’t surprise. It’s part of a worldview in which Jew hate does not count,” she said, referring to a cartoon published last year showing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a seeing-eye dog leading a blind President Trump.
The Times eventually capitulated to pressure and acknowledged that the graphic contained anti-Semitic tropes.
Weiss went on to quote some of Farrakhan’s anti-Semitic vitriol.
“Pedophilia and sexual perversion institutionalized in Hollywood and the entertainment industries can be traced to Talmudic principles and Jewish influence. Not Jewish influence, Satanic influence under the name of Jew,” Farrakhan said last year.
The op-ed coincided with the 25th anniversary of the Million Man March, in which Farrakhan delivered a two-and-a-half-hour address.
CNN anchor Jake Tapper also retweeted Weiss, noting, “The late great John Lewis didn’t participate in the Million Man March because Farrakhan had made comments that were ‘divisive and bigoted.’”
Columnist Ira Stoll points to previous Times editorial page editor, James Bennet, who was fired after publishing an op-ed from Senator Tom Cotton calling on President Trump to “Send in the Troops” to quash the riots plaguing the U.S. in June. In that case, a Times editors’ note confessed the piece “should not have been published” and that the paper “failed to offer appropriate additional context — either in the text or the presentation — that could have helped readers place Senator Cotton’s views within a larger framework of debate.”
“Where is the “additional context” about the Million Man March or its leader? It’s absent, other than in the tweets of former Times editorial page employee Weiss,” Stoll writes.
He goes on to note the Times‘ hypocrisy for publishing an editorial a day before the Farrakhan one denouncing President Trump for “toxic rhetoric” and “vile language” and “crude insults.” The editorial declared, “Mr. Trump doesn’t just mock his enemies. He demonizes and dehumanizes them.”
Stoll writes: “The same could be said of Farrakhan, but when he does it, the Times headline writers cheer him on for his ‘great feat.'”
Weiss quit the New York Times in July, accusing the newspaper of deferring to Twitter as its ultimate editor.
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