Mandela Barnes, the Wisconsin Democrat challenging incumbent Senator Ron Johnson, took a tweet from Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei slamming the United States’s handling of racial issues on New Year’s Day 2015 to be a good omen for the year to come, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
After Khamenei, who stands at the head of a regime whose legitimacy is marred by its fondness for torture, murder, censorship, and other human rights abuses, asserted on January 1, 2015 that “the issue of US govt oppression against blacks is a 100s year-old issue #BlackLivesMatter 395 Years a Slave!”
Barnes liked the tweet and replied, “The first tweet of 2015 from @khamenei_ir is #BlackLivesMatter. Let that sink in. May This be a most wonderful year for you and yours.”
The first tweet of 2015 from @khamenei_ir is #BlackLivesMatter. Let that sink in. May This be a most wonderful year for you and yours.
— Mandela Barnes (@TheOtherMandela) January 1, 2015
Excepting Barnes, Khamenei, who took power in 1989, has rarely been touted by human-rights advocates as a model leader. Khamenei has boasted that “It is the mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to erase Israel from the map of the region,” and called its “Zionist Regime” a “cancerous tumor.” He’s also suggested that “the Holocaust is an event whose reality is uncertain and if it has happened, it’s uncertain how it has happened.”
Prior to the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979, around 80,000 Jews were believed to have lived in Iran. Now, estimates peg the country’s Jewish population at 8,500.
Homosexuality in Iran is punishable by death, and the government is currently engaged in a violent crackdown against women protesting against their being required by the government to wear hijabs in public, among other indignities.
Khamenei is also a sworn enemy of the U.S. government that Barnes is seeking to become a high-ranking official of. Ironically, Khamenei shouted ‘death to America!’ on March 21, 2015 while addressing a crowd in celebration of the Persian New Year.
Barnes has previously expressed support for redirecting law enforcement funding away from the police and abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he currently trails Johnson by 2.8 points in the RealClearPolitics polling average.