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March 2, 2023 2:00 pm
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Ticketmaster Slammed for Keeping Nation of Islam Leader Farrakhan on Platform

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avatar by Dion J. Pierre

Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan speaking at a memorial service for rapper DMX on Sunday, April 25. Photo: Screenshot.

Jewish leaders are calling on Ticketmaster, a marketplace for ticket sales, to stop giving Louis Farrakhan, the antisemitic leader of the Nation of Islam (NOI), access to its platform.

Farrakhan held an event on Feb. 29, selling tickets for it on Ticketmaster’s website. During his remarks, he defended Kanye West (Ye) and Kyrie Irving, calling West “a genius” and “young god,” and accused Jews of controlling Black celebrities.

“Four decades of non-stop vicious Jew-hatred from Louis Farrakhan has born poison fruit in the mainstream of our society,” Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center said on Wednesday. “Indeed, access to this year’s speech was handled by Ticketmaster, at a time when American Jewry is reeling from violent antisemitic hate crimes. Farrakhan has rarely been held accountable for his serial Jew-hatred and in 2023, Ticketmaster and others have monetized his hate and expanded the reach of his hatred.”

Cooper also called on all to “reject his hate” and “commit to strengthen our relationships for the betterment of all Americans whatever their color, creed, or orientation.”

Earlier this month, Creative Community for Peace (CCFP), a nonprofit that promotes interracial and interfaith harmony in the arts, urged Ticketmaster to dissociate from the Farrakhan event, noting that Farrakhan has called Judaism a “gutter religion,” called the Jewish people “Satan,” and blamed Jews for everything wrong in the world, from pedophilia to sex trafficking. As part of their campaign, CCFP circulated a petition signed by 120 members of the entertainment industry.

Ticketmaster did not respond to their complaints, however, and the event went as planned.

“Louis Farrakhan’s annual ‘Saviour’s Day’ speech was a 3 hour attack on the Jewish people filled with antisemitic incitement,” CCFP tweeted on Wednesday. “Ticketmaster would rightly refuse to sell tickets to a KKK rally, but to our deep disappointment, they knowingly enabled Farrakhan’s dangerous antisemitic hate.”

Born in 1939, Louis Farrakhan is one of three infamous Nation of Islam figures — the other two being Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad — who emerged in the 20th century as radical alternatives to the civil rights movement led by Black integrationists such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Farrakhan’s antisemitic incitement has a long history and became a public controversy for the first time in 1984, when, as reported by The New York Times that June, he said, “Israel never has had any peace…because there can be no peace structured on injustice, thievery, lying, and deceit and using the name of G-d to shield your dirty religion under His holy and righteous name.” The next year, at a Nation of Islam rally at Madison Square Garden, he said, “And don’t you forget, when it’s God who puts you in the ovens, it’s forever.”

At an event in Detroit in 2013 nearly twenty years later, he took aim at President Barack Obama, saying that he had “surrounded himself with Satan…members of the Jewish community.”

Kanye West’s antisemitic rants, coming near the end of 2022, appear to have momentarily revived interest in Farrakhan’s ideology. The two men publicly feuded, however, in November when Farrakhan commented on West’s losing an estimated $2 billion in net worth.

“I don’t take no disrespect from nobody [sic],” West responded. “I don’t care who you are. I ain’t taking no slights from nobody.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

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