Al Sharpton’s Jihad
The potential presidential candidate inspires death threats against a Post writer.

By Kathryn Jean Lopez, NRO Executive Editor
September 7, 2001 12:50 p.m.

eware of your opinions. They could be hazardous to your life.

That's not from 1984, or a warning to the citizens of a tyrannical country. It's more like a word of caution to any journalist who might consider commenting on a black American.

Witness what is happening to Rod Dreher, a columnist for the New York Post and an occasional contributor to National Review Online.

Last week, the spectacle outside a New York City church for the funeral of R&B singer Aaliyah was Princess Di-like, to say the least. There was a horse-drawn carriage, a release of doves, and a throng of teenagers bawling away. Dreher said in print what most of New York has been saying on the streets: Who was she, anyway?

Maybe you know who she was. And, of course, as Dreher wrote, her death was a tragedy. But the trappings of her funeral seemed out of proportion. In a newspaper column in the city where all this happened, Dreher made this point. And now, he's a "racist" — one who fears for his life.

Dreher's column appeared on August 31. Over the Labor Day weekend, Al Sharpton held a press conference condemning Dreher for criticizing the scene around Aaliyah's funeral. The Reverend categorized the column as "abysmal, shocking and racist." He asked, "What do you mean horse carriages shouldn't be used, doves shouldn't fly?" And he concluded, "What you really mean is you should have a nice little Negro funeral."

In the New York Post's own news story on the press conference, Sharpton is quoted as saying, "We will bring down anybody who tells us how to mourn our own."

"We will bring down anybody . . ." These are not words to be taken lightly. They come from a man with presidential aspirations, and a master demagogue. Sharpton's was a potent volley in a new war against a respected writer who was caught telling it like it is. After Sharpton's attack on Dreher, the New York Post phone lines reached a near standstill. The legions, it seems, have been awakened. Sharpton's corner of New York wants Dreher's head.

Dreher should take these threats — and Sharpton — seriously. His incendiary skills have proven fatal before. In an unrelated piece in Friday's Post, Fred Siegel reminds readers of Sharpton's role in the burning down of Freddy's Fashion Mart in Harlem a few years ago. After describing a softball interview Chris Matthews held with Sharpton this week, Siegel writes:

Matthews, like some of the New York press, seems unaware of a far more egregious example of Sharpton's malevolence and his skill at insulating himself from the consequences of his demagoguery — the 1995 killing of seven people at Freddy's Fashion Mart on 125th Street.

Sharpton and his National Action Network turned a dispute between a Jewish tenant who rented the space for his store (Freddy's) from a black church and his black subtenant into a racial hailstorm. Sharpton set up pickets outside the store, led by his lieutenant in the National Action Network, Morris Powell.

Powell was an intimidating figure to many on 125th Street. An escaped mental patient who had thrice been accused of attempted murder, he had long threatened that "there will be war" against white merchants and "this street will burn." His protesters, sometimes joined by Sharpton, shouted racial epithets like "Jew bastards" and "the bloodsucking Jews," while referring to other whites as "crackers" and black customers as "traitors."

One of the protesters, a man who called himself "Shabazz," forced his way into the store shouting, "I will be back to burn the Jew store down." He didn't, but a man named Abubunde Mulocko did.

Apparently angered by the mistaken assumption that the store had hired Hispanics instead of blacks, Mulocko, a man with a long criminal record, his "paranoia goosed by the protests," burned the store down.

Armed with a .38, he shot three whites and a Pakistani in cold blood (he had mistaken the light-skinned Pakistani for a Jew) and then set the fire that killed five Hispanics, one Guyanese and one black, the security guard who the protesters had taunted as a "cracker lover."

A compliant press never asked Sharpton tough questions in the wake of the massacre. He denied that he knew what his own lieutenant was up to. Instead, having thoroughly intimidated people in Harlem who might criticize him, he was allowed to resume his pose as a "civil-rights leader."

What makes matters worse, for both Dreher and the cause of truth and justice, is that the writer's own New York Post has taken a vow of silence on the matter. Too bad Rod Dreher, whose mug appears alongside each of his Post columns, can't hide as easily.

Before Dreher joined the Post's cloister (he declined comment for this piece), he told the New York Observer that his editors requested a follow-up column, one that would peek at the ridiculous and threatening responses he's received. But the column did not run. The Post's one comment on the Aaliyah matter has been from editor in chief Col Allan, who wrote, "I stand by Rod Dreher. He had a right to express an opinion."

Let's hope so. Here is a writer who was doing his job — faithfully, accurately. But the silence has turned damaging, for both Dreher and the Post. If the newspaper truly stands by Rod Dreher, it should say so — loudly. The threats he has received should be announced in headlines. These are not critics, of course. These are thugs, Sharpton's thugs.

As has been reported elsewhere, one caller told Dreher in a voicemail: "Look, white bitch, you're not answering your phone, but you can't hide forever. One of us is going to be waiting for you outside your building, and you're gonna be thinking you're going home. But we're gonna step out and choke yo' muthaf***in' neck."

All this in America. In Rudy Giuliani's New York. If the Sharpton regime is this powerful now, just wait until it goes Mark Green.