Yesterday, the New York Times delivered a comprehensive excoriation of the Women’s March, penned by Bari Weiss.
Although the Women’s March’s unsavory past has largely flown under the radar in the mainstream media, Weiss’s article is a welcome corrective, detailing in full the backgrounds of movement’s organizers, who have been celebrated by Time magazine and New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand, among others.
Weiss, far from a Trump supporter, admits that she found the initial opposition to Trump’s rhetoric and policies heartening. But as she learned more about the March’s architects, including the anti-Semitic Linda Sarsour, Weiss began to reflect on the March’s public celebration of Assata Shakur, a cop-killing terrorist and one of the FBI’s Most Wanted:
“There’s no doubt that Ms. Sarsour is a regular target of far-right groups, but her experience of that onslaught is what makes her smear all the more troubling. Indeed, the idea that Jake Tapper is a member of the alt-right is the kind of delirious, fact-free madness that fuels Donald Trump and his supporters. Troublingly, it is exactly the sentiment echoed by the Women’s March: ‘Our power — your power — scares the far right. They continue to try to divide us. Today’s attacks on #AssataShakur are the latest example.’
Since when did criticizing a domestic terrorist become a signal issue of the far right? Last I checked, that position was a matter of basic decency and patriotism.”
Weiss clearly did her research in detailing the indecent, anti-American pasts of not just Sarsour but also March organizers Tamika Mallory and Carmen Perez.
According to Weiss, Mallory — deemed a “leader of tomorrow” by Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett — “put up a flurry of posts when [Fidel] Castro died last year. ‘R.I.P. Comandante! Your legacy lives on!’ she wrote in one. She does not have similar respect for American police officers. ‘When you throw a brick in a pile of hogs, the one that hollers is the one you hit,’ she posted on Nov. 20.”
Weiss notes that Mallory and Perez have both expressed an admiration for cop-killers and tout Louis Farrakhan as a social-justice hero, before detailing why an association with Farrakhan is nothing to celebrate.
“Mr. Farrakhan is also an unapologetic racist. He insists that whites are a ‘race of devils’ and that ‘white people deserve to die.’
Feminists will find little to cheer in his 1950s views of gender: ‘Your professional lives can’t satisfy your soul like a good, loving man.’ Recently he told Jay-Z that he should make Beyoncé put on some clothes. He also opposes gay marriage.
If that wasn’t enough of a rap sheet, Mr. Farrakhan also loves Scientology and believes 9/11 was a false flag operation.”
In her article, Weiss asks, how can a movement that, by extension, embraces the sexist subjugation of the most influential black woman in art alive today call itself feminist? How can a movement which smears Jews and Israelis as born sinners call itself a proponent of civil rights? And how can women who celebrate the murders of those charged with maintaining law and order claim “ending violence” as their primary mission?
Weiss’s call to the progressives may fall on deaf ears in the furthest wings of the Left, but those who truly wish to espouse liberalism would be wise to listen in earnest.