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Ellison's
Extremism Wrong for the DNC
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 In recent days it has been widely
reported that Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., is being considered as the new
head of the Democratic National Committee. Ellison is appealing to his
supporters for several reasons. Not only is he a staunch progressive, but
he is also black and the first Muslim elected to Congress. In the eyes of
his supporters, he is a living rebuke to the president-elect, Donald
Trump.
As appealing as the symbolism may be, Ellison is still a
problematic choice. He has a long history of actual extremism that ought
to make him unfit for the position.
Ellison's deep
ties with Muslim communal organizations, including several that are linked
to the Muslim Brotherhood, are not a surprise — nor do such ties
necessarily reflect poorly on him, by themselves. It is natural for
Muslim organizations of any stripe to support the first Muslim in
Congress; and one might imagine that Ellison would hesitate to distance
himself even from objectionable organizations, so as not to give in to
"Islamophobic" pressure.
However, there is a difference between the failure to
condemn extremist activity, and active endorsements of it. Ellison has
crossed that line frequently.
In his early days, Keith Ellison was an active
supporter of Louis Farrakhan, the racist and anti-Semitic leader of
the Nation of Islam. This stretched at least from Ellison's time in law
school in the late 1980s until 1995, when Ellison was an organizer of the
Million Man March. During this period, Ellison wrote a column for Insight
News describing Farrakhan as "a role model for black youth."
Youthful radicalism can be repented of and forgiven, and during his
2006 campaign for Congress, Ellison wrote
a letter disavowing his connection with the Nation of Islam. However,
in that letter he claimed that his association had only been for the 18
months surrounding the Million Man March. This was not true. He also
claimed that he was unfamiliar with the NOI's racist and anti-Semitic
views. Neither claim stands
up to scrutiny, and this seems less a case of genuine repentance than
of a politician trying to airbrush his past.
Ellison's early radicalism only continued after he was in office. In a
July
2007 speech, he called for an investigation into the 9/11 terrorist
attacks and explicitly compared them to the 1933 Reichstag fire — in
which Nazi agents burned down the Reichstag themselves in order to
justify seizing dictatorial power. At that same speech, Ellison called
Vice President Cheney a "totalitarian" dictator.
Rep. Ellison is a regular speaker at events organized by the Council
for American-Islamic Relations. CAIR was founded
in 1994 by three officials of the Islamic Association of Palestine, a
Hamas front group. Because of its extremist associations, the Obama
Justice Department banned
its personnel from working with CAIR in 2009. In 2014, the United Arab
Emirates designated
CAIR as a terrorist organization due to its links with the Muslim
Brotherhood.
In 2008, Rep.
Ellison spoke at the annual banquet of CAIR-Tampa. At that banquet, he expressed
his support for convicted terror financier Sami Al-Arian, the North
American head of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Al-Arian was no mere
community activist, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was a
major player who had set up several front organizations for supporting
terror activities; these included the Islamic Committee for Palestine,
which was in fact a key fundraising
arm for Palestinian Islamic Jihad's terror operations, and the World
and Islamic Studies Enterprise. Both of these organizations were shut
down by Federal investigators in 1995 for involvement in terrorism.
If Rep. Ellison's constituents in a safe Minnesota district want to
keep him in office, that's their business. But the Democratic Party
should recognize the potential harm to its own future (to say nothing of
to the country as a whole) in elevating him to lead the DNC.
Dr. Oren Litwin is the Islamist Money in
Politics research fellow for Islamist Watch, a program of the Middle East
Forum.
Related
Topics: Government, Lawful Islamism, Lobby Groups
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