Nation of Islam Conspiracy Theory

Example 39: 'Nation of Islam' conspiracy theory:

The Nation of Islam (NOI) is a US-based African-American political and religious movement founded in 1930 by Wallace Fard Muhammed, and now under the leadership of Louis Farrakhan. Politically, it tends towards not just black pride but black separatism. Religious beliefs are based on Islam, but its particular theology states that black people are the original people, and white people were created from them by a scientist, Yacub, through eugenics. White people then caused trouble in the Middle East and were expelled into Europe. This later evolved into a belief that Israel originally belonged to black (and Palestinian) people, and links into the political idea that Israel was created by white Zionist colonialism. (We have dealt with related misconceptions about Jewish ethnicity in the section).

Nation of Islam has published three volumes of The Secret Relationship between Blacks and Jews. The first, in 1991, asserts that Jews dominated the Atlantic slave trade (a thesis which has been debunked generally by historians); the second volume makes conspiratorial assertions about Jews controlling the US economy and promoting ideas of black racial inferiority, and the third volume states that Jewish businessmen masterminded the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan. Other antisemitic ideas propagated by Farrakhan or by other NOI preachers include that Jews are the ‘synagogue of Satan’ and have their ‘tentacles’ around the US Government; that rich Jews financed Hitler and betrayed poor Jews; that Jews deserved to be targeted by the Nazis because they usurped the Germans; holocaust revisionism; that diaspora Jews hold dual loyalty to Israel; and that Jewish doctors inject Blacks with the Aids virus.

In this first example, Jackie Walker, who is of Black and Jewish heritage, was suspended from the Labour Party for actions including a Facebook conversation where she stated, in a discussion about the Holocaust, that ‘many Jews, my ancestors too, were the chief financiers of the sugar and slave trade’.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-36236332

Second example: grime artist Wiley issued a string of tweets where he generalised his anger with his Jewish manager to statements that Jews control the music industry, put down black people and are linked to the KKK; and that (regarding Israel) ‘Israel is ours’. He was widely condemned and as a result was banned from Facebook, Instagram and, eventually Twitter.

https://inews.co.uk/news/uk/wiley-tweets-anti-semitic-what-say-twitter-grime-artist-explained-563487

https://ajn.timesofisrael.com/calling-out-antisemitism-on-twitter/

Third example is rapper Ice Cube, who referenced Nation of Islam beliefs when he tweeted a picture of ‘Hebrew Israelite slaves in Ancient Egypt – Clearly they are a black people’.

https://twitter.com/LasagnaGarden/status/1270774343145066496/photo/1

It is very regrettable that the history of Jews standing alongside black people in the US civil rights movement or in anti-apartheid struggles is being erased. Jewish people are not, of course, devoid of anti-black racism, but nor are they particularly implicated in it.

It's also important to note that being black does not preclude you from being Jewish. There are large numbers of Jewish black people and Jewish POC all over the Jewish world. Much of the Jewish community around the world and more than 50% in Israel are Jews of colour (being from the Middle East and North Africa). There are Jewish tribes from Africa (notably Ethiopia) and India. Judaism is not white.

Nadine Batchelor-Hunt, who is black and Jewish, is one writer to follow. https://www.glamourmagazine.co.uk/article/black-lives-matter-antisemitic-tweet.

We also recommend reading Tribe Herald a platform by and for Jews of Colour and their allies.