Keith Ellison has a past in which he blatantly defended anti-Semitism and worked with a racist and anti-Semitic cult that believed Jews and all white people were devils who would be exterminated.
In 1995, Ellison himself organized a rally featuring Muhammad—still an outspoken racist and anti-Semite—at the University of Minnesota. Muhammad apparently brought his A-game to the rally, promising that “if words were swords, the chests of Jews, gays and whites would be pierced.”
In 1997, Ellison defended a member of the Minneapolis Initiative Against Racism who said that Jews are “the most racist white people.” In his remarks, Ellison also defended America’s most notorious anti-Semite. “She is correct about Minister Farrakhan,” Ellison insisted. “He is not a racist. He is also not an anti-Semite. Minister Farrakhan is a tireless public servant of Black people…”
In fact, Ellison continued to publicly defend Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam through at least the year 2000, by which time he was serving as a Minnesota state representative.
Keith Ellison's defenders have frequently lied and claimed that he merely helped organize the Million Man March. That's a lie. Their fallback position is that it's ancient history.
Except recent history has turned up Keith X. Ellison tweeting material calling Israel an "apartheid state" and a speech in which he claimed that Israel had mobilized the Jews to "do its bidding in America'.
The latter recording forced even the ADL, which had been backing Keith Ellison, to pull away and condemn his remarks. J Street vocally came out in support, its boss, Jeremy Ben Ami, normalizing anti-Semitism by claiming that there was nothing wrong with Ellison's views.
And troublingly, the Shalom Hartman Institute has chosen to bring Keith Ellison to its "Conference on Jews and Muslims in America" alongside Jeffrey Goldberg. Like J Street, the Shalom Hartman Institute is normalizing anti-Semitism with its invitation to Keith Ellison.
Its tag for the conference reads...
In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies,
but the silence of our friends.
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
There is some truth to that. Keith Ellison's words and acts of hate will pass. The silence and complicity of those Jews who aid his political ambitions at the expense of normalizing anti-Semitism and hurting Jews will be remembered. Evil ultimately destroys itself. It is those who are complicit in it who are most tested by it.