BARACK OBAMA–MENTORED BY AN ANTI-AMERICAN, ANTI-ZIONIST BLACK SEPARATIST
Edwin Black
The Cutting Edge
rticle=365
March 17 2008
DC
In the end it was not the lies about his religion, but the truth
about his religion that may have irrevocably splattered the image of
Barack Obama.
Democratic presidential frontrunner Obama survived a malicious viral
email campaign that he was a Muslim. While under Sharia, he was in fact
born Muslim of a Muslim father; but Obama never lived as a Muslim in
any way. He survived a ridiculous blogospheric posting of a photograph
of him bedecked in a turban–Somali tribal apparel while traveling
in Ethiopia–equivalent to wearing a festive sombrero in Mexico. And
he handily survived the antagonistic Republican incantation of his
Muslim middle name, "Hussein."
But can Obama’s populist candidacy survive the truthful revelations
about his twenty-year relationship with spiritual advisor Jeremiah A.
Wright, the "black separatist" Christian pastor?
It is pivotal to understand that Obama’s potentially insurmountable
problem is not about his mere membership in Pastor Wright’s Trinity
Church, an affiliate of the nationally diverse United Church of
Christ. Obama’s problem is the deep-vein mentoring with Pastor Wright
himself. Obama was not just sitting in the pews for twenty years. The
two men were and are tight–very tight.
It was Wright’s charismatic "in your face" African-American activism
that first brought unaffiliated, young twenty-something Chicago
neighborhood organizer Obama into the Trinity Church as a practicing
Christian in the eighties. Obama became a regular attendee and took
Wright’s inspiration with him when away. While at Harvard studying law,
Obama morally tutored himself with tapes of Wright’s fiery lectures.
Wright was a moving force in Obama’s family as well. Pastor Wright
married Obama to his wife, Michelle, and baptized their two children.
The Pastor’s provocative sermon, "The Audacity of Hope," gave Obama
the title for his bestselling book of the same name. Obama even
huddled with his Pastor for spiritual guidance just before announcing
his presidential bid. Wright was given a prominent advisory role in
the campaign. Wright is more than an arms-length acquaintance. The
Pastor is precisely the mentor and close personal advisor Obama has
long declared him to be.
Wright explains, "When the Black radical liberals want support, they
come to the Black church because they know we have the numbers. We
pack the buses. Fifty buses with 50 people. For example, the Black
church sent hundreds of men to the Million Man March."
It seems too late for Obama to distance himself or condemn the recently
broadcast bigotry of Wright. The real question is how a man described
by many as a leading anti-American, anti-Israel, anti-white agitator
became Obama’s closest mentor for two decades?
Exactly what is the objectionable conduct of Wright? To begin, Wright
is a close confidant and supporter of Minister Louis Farrakhan. The
leader of the Nation of Islam has called Jews "bloodsuckers" who
practice a "gutter religion," and has ascended to the apex of virulent
anti-Semitism in the Black community and indeed worldwide.
Wright was among those deeply affected in the early eighties by
Farrakhan’s Southside Chicago activism. In 1984, Wright was one of the
inner circle that traveled with Farrakhan to visit Libyan strongman
Col. Muammar Khadafy. The ostentatious Farrakhan junket came at a
time when Khadafy had been identified as the world’s chief financier
of international terrorism, including the Black September group behind
the Munich Olympics massacre. By the time Wright and Farrakhan visited,
Libyan oil imports had been banned, and America was trying to topple
what it called a "rogue regime." In the several years after that,
Farrakhan was pro-active for Khadafy even as Libya was internationally
isolated for suspected involvement in numerous terror plots including
the explosion of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.
Farrakhan’s and Wright’s 1984 visit and subsequent support was done
precisely to openly ally themselves with a declared enemy of the United
States. Why? Because these two American men of the clergy–Farrakhan
and Wright–are avowed enemies of the United States.
The Farrakhan-Wright connection is no distant matter of the turbulent
eighties. Farrakhan, Wright and Wright’s Church have remained in close
esteem until this very day. As recently as December 2007, the Church’s
publication, Trumpet Newsmagazine, bestowed upon Farrakhan its highest
honor, the "Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr. Trumpeter" Award for Lifetime
Achievement. An interview with Farrakhan in the magazine concludes with
the words, "he truly epitomizes greatness." Wright himself described
Farrakhan in that article as "a 20th and 21st Century giant." Pastor
Wright is the CEO of the church publication, which is said to reach
200,000 readers across the nation. Members of Wright’s family act
as publisher and editor. As recently as this Palm Sunday, March 16,
2008, the church listed Farrakhan on its Prayer list in the weekend
hand-out at church services.
In the Farrakhan mold, Wright is a firebrand anti-American, anti-White,
anti-Zionist preacher. His pulpit statements, by now widely broadcast
on cable TV and across the Internet, have histrionically asked
followers to chant not "God Bless America" but "God Damn America,"
to denounce Israel and Zionism for "state terrorism," to hold
Washington responsible for creating the HIV AIDS virus as a weapon
against Blacks, and to recognize that America is controlled by "rich
white people." Immediately after the 9-11 attacks against the World
Trade Center, Wright waved his arms and almost danced, bellowing
that America had brought the crime upon itself. Nor is he shy about
publicly using the words "nigger" and "shit" even from the pulpit.
Despite his extremism, Wright is no fringe member of the
African-American mainstream. He is a giant in the Black community.
Wright built the Trinity Church from an 87-member congregation in
1972 with a $30,000 annual budget to a Black megachurch said to
boast as many as 10,000 members–the largest in the United Church
of Christ–operating on a more than $9 million annual budget with
its own $2 million credit union, donating its own $100,000 check to
Hurricane Katrina relief, and selling advertising in its house organ
for $5,000 per page. In 1993, Ebony Magazine listed Wright among its
top 15 pastors. In March 2007, Wright was honored by a resolution of
the Illinois House of Representatives.
The wide Black acceptance of Wright’s damning hate rhetoric points up
a complete racial disconnect with White America that still lies just
below the surface. Angry African-American leaders such as Wright see
the Black church as a place of confrontation that continues to serve
that historical role. Before the Civil War, not a few slave revolts
occurred, Wright has said, after getting "worked up" in church. He
adds, "The church gave us the strength to fight to end slavery."
The angry world of Pastor Wright is the embittered experience that
most Americans either don’t know or would rather forget. That bitter
legacy includes slavery until the Civil War and Jim Crow after,
segregation and social torment in the 20th Century, thousands of
lynchings in almost every state of the Union from Minnesota to
Mississippi continuing into the post-WWII era, and a voting rights
law that did not pass until 1965.
On Chicago’s Southside, where Wright and Obama knew their formative
years, "blockbusting" was a real estate term for fear mongering about
Black families moving into a neighborhood to induce "white flight."
Being arrested for a DUI in Chicago was "driving under the influence,"
but being arrested for a DWB was "driving while Black."
The Black family on Chicago’s Southside suffered as a shattered
concept subjected to inferior schooling, inferior health care and
often abysmal living conditions.
Most Americans probably think the Black "middle passage" refers to
a paragraph of text. Obama and Wright do not. The Middle Passage
was the mass murder of millions of Africans during their heinous
transport to slavery across the Atlantic in ship hulls, a torturous
trip that killed almost as many as it delivered for servitude. Slaves
and their underpaid emancipated descendants helped build this country
for a pittance. Rage at the pulpit resonates for many within the
African-American community as Black America understandably carries the
credentials of oppression in their vest pockets–out of sight but close
to their heart. They never leave home without it–nor would anyone.
Jews don’t forget the Holocaust, Armenians remember the Turkish
genocide, and Native Americans know who tried to exterminate their
people.
Yet, the Black church is vastly more than a caldron of inspiration
via rage. It is also a place of exhilaration for a better way, a
new way. Obama says he represents that new way; he is the apostle of
"change" and a torch of the new politics. Yet, revelations about his
infusion with Pastor Wright represent his tie not to the new century
but to the decades-old politics of bitterness, rage and hate.
In a political defense that now ranks with Bill Clinton’s assertion
that he "never inhaled" and "never had sex with that woman," Barack
claims he was never in the pews when Wright expressed his hateful
sermons. Not a few in the media are now scouring Pastor’s Wright’s
video tapes to spot Obama’s face in the rollicking crowds, or those
much-loved audio tapes Obama so passionately studied to detect
bigoted language.
Obama’s defense that he did not know of Pastor’s Wright bigotry is
opposed by the record itself. More than a year ago, Obama suddenly
uninvited Pastor Wright to offer the invocation at a major campaign
event. Wright told The New York Times in March 2007, "Fifteen minutes
before Shabbos I get a call from Barack… One of his members had
talked him into uninviting me." Wright pointedly chose the Yiddish
term Shabbos to refer to the Friday night time of the call.
Wright told The Times, "When his enemies find out that in 1984 I
went to Tripoli with Farrakhan, a lot of his Jewish support will dry
up quicker than a snowball in hell." He added, that Obama advised,
"You can get kind of rough in the sermons, so what we’ve decided is
that it’s best for you not to be out there in public."
For Obama it seems like a "lose-lose" situation. Either he has
repeatedly lied to the nation about his knowledge of Pastor Wright’s
bigotry, or for 20 years he was ignorant of his own mentor’s views
even as they were broadcast worldwide every Sunday.
Many critics have long self-censored on Obama’s hate links, even among
the Jewish community where sensitivity to any connection Farrakhan
runs high. For example, the Anti-Defamation League recently issued
a press release that it was satisfied that Obama had disavowed
Wright’s race hatred and anti-Zionist fervor. But now, in a weekend
interview, ADL national director Abraham Foxman says his view is
different. "More is now known," says Foxman. "It is not a casual,
one-way way relationship with Pastor Wright." Foxman has joined the
growing chorus of disbelief about Obama’s ignorance. "It is very
difficult to believe that throughout these years, Obama has been
unaware of the conspiracy, bigotry, and anti-Zionist views."
While most in America are worried about playing a race card, Barack
Obama has shown he is still carrying around a full deck.
Edwin Black was the first Jewish journalist to interview Minister
Louis Farrakhan while on assignment for the Washington Post as part
his broad investigation of the Nation of Islam.