Far-right political commentator Candace Owens said, in response to the U.S. capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on Jan. 3, that “the CIA has staged another hostile takeover of a country at the behest of a globalist psychopaths [sic].” She added, “That’s what is happening everywhere. Zionists cheer every regime change.”
Not long ago, she launched a public attack on conservative media personality Ben Shapiro that quickly metastasized into something darker. Brandishing a notorious antisemitic book, she accused Jewish people broadly of controlling the slave trade and claimed Jews view non-Jews—particularly black Americans—as subhuman. She urged her audience to “learn what’s in the Talmud,” recycling centuries-old slanders that have incited violence across continents and generations.
Owens, 36, has become the new Louis Farrakhan, the 92-year-old leader of the Nation of Islam.
For much of the 20th century, the alliance between black and Jewish Americans was a symbol of American progress. They worked together to overcome prejudice. Jews helped establish, finance and lead the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). Julius Rosenwald, the son of Jewish immigrants and president of Sears, built more than 5,000 schools for black children across the Jim Crow South. He educated untold numbers of black children by giving them the gift of literacy. He played a leading role in helping to uplift the descendants of slavery. Who in America even knows his name?
Another key figure worth mentioning is Saul Alinsky, a community activist and political theorist who contributed to black America by developing and teaching community-organizing methods that helped neighborhoods build local power to fight segregation, housing discrimination and economic neglect. Through the Industrial Areas Foundation, he trained black clergy and community leaders and helped launch organizations like Chicago’s Woodlawn Organization, which successfully pressured institutions and city officials for investment and protections. His ideas influenced generations of black organizers by emphasizing grassroots leadership, collective action and direct pressure on those in power.
Jewish people marched in the South and fought shoulder to shoulder with the black community for equality for years. But that alliance has been badly tarnished in the 21st century, particularly after the 2020 Black Lives Matter Movement marches in major cities across the United States, especially in New York City.
Antisemitic incidents there are at record highs. Orthodox and Chassidic Jews in Brooklyn, N.Y., have been assaulted on sidewalks, in subways and outside their homes. And while national conversations fixate almost exclusively on white supremacists, an overwhelming share of physical attacks against visibly Jewish New Yorkers are being carried out by members of the black community. Naming this reality is not racism. It is recognizing a reality, and ignoring it is negligence.
For decades, Farrakhan was a main agitator of antisemitism, comparing Jews to animals, vermin and more. And yet, he seems to be welcome in many black circles, as evidenced by his prominent seating at the funeral of Aretha Franklin in August 2018, when he was next to social activities and politician Jesse Jackson and former President Bill Clinton.
When influential voices tell struggling young people that their pain is caused by “the Jews,” they incite people to violence. That is how hatred migrates from podcasts to pavement. Somewhere along the line, educators decided to whitewash the honorable deeds that Jewish people engaged in to support black people and promoted lies about the slave trade and about the exploitation of black people.
Something has gone terribly wrong—not with communications with black Americans, per se, but with those in power who allow historical lies to replace education. This is the manipulation of people to believe that their enemy lies with the Jewish people. It does nothing to help them deal with whatever their challenges and opportunities may be.
To investigate why this has happened is a much deeper discussion. But it needs to stop.
This is where non-Jewish Americans must step up by calling out antisemitism when it appears in front of them. Reject conspiracy theories masquerading as activism. Demand that leaders, educators and media figures stop disguising hatred as social commentary. Protect your Jewish neighbors—not after the next attack, but now.
The black-Jewish alliance once helped redeem America. Letting it collapse under the weight of lies and cowardice would be a historic failure.
