Inside the March: Farrakhan is King

...Louis Farrakhan in Houston in June was informed of the conference and we asked him whether it would be okay to have it on the weekend of the Million Man March and he approved us...

...The Million Man March is his power play, the way he intends to prove to traditional black leadership and to the world of white devilry that he is the man to see...

...Little Jews were being turned into soap, while big Jews washed themselves with it...

...Deviant sexual habits...

...We must have several hundred black churches, and friends of mine came back and said the pastors, quite frankly, were afraid to come because Farrakhan has such strong support among their congregations...

...Shabazz is traveling solo today, without the African Warrior Staff he often trots out when he wishes to put the fear of Allah into the hearts of onlookers...

...He may be prone to torch one if it gets in the way, as an article in the March 29 issue of his sect's newspaper, the Final Call, put it: "In this day and time, opposition to the establishment of Islam will be totally and completely destroyed...

...Charles Cohen, Marion Barry, Michael Jackson . . . Judge Alcee Hastings, Rev...

...Even in a forum as mainstream as This Week With David Brinkley, Farrakhan offered only the most limp-wristed deflection when Sam Donaldson asked about the meaning of his comment, "Little Jews died while big Jews made money in World War II...

...A close look at the Program would be enough to give pause to Smith or anyone else with even a soup?on of prudence...

...Historically, Jewish money has fallen on black politicians like manna, but no longer...

...But when Phil Donahue forewent the usual whiffleballs and asked the minister if any speakers will ask the marchers to actually do something- pay child support, or go home to their families in a community where half the households are headed by single mothers-Farrakhan started speaking of factory flights to the suburbs and the need to harness some of the $433 billion in expendable American income to help men pay for their children's education...

...Bennett Smith of the Progressive National Baptist Convention also declined, saying, "We have difficulty marching under the banner of any other name than Jesus Christ...

...It's Mayors Archer of Detroit, Schmoke of Baltimore, and Rendell of Philadelphia (a Jew, yet...

...And will anyone buck up while Farrakhan surveys his troops in his mack-daddy imported silks, and realize that they are legitimizing the Tom Metzger, the George Lincoln Rockwell, the Adolf Hitler of the Maryam Mosque...

...First, if you are a black politician, you don't want ideas like "We will tar and feather them, we will hang them from the highest limb, we will chop off their heads and roll them down the street"-spoken by somebody who means it, somebody with followers-gaining a foothold among the constituents back home in the district...

...We want freedom for all Black men and women now under death sentences...

...If the Million Man March even reaches 500,000, it will still double the size of the "I Have a Dream" March on Washington in 1963...

...And before the United Snakes government is allowed to fulfill this death plot against the black family and particularly the black man . . . the black man is ready to rise up and take his place...

...We're not with no more Uncle Toms and we're getting tired of those who cannot be behind the brothers on the street, and the brothers in prison have been neglected too long...

...The march even seems to be dedicated to advancing what Nation of Islamites call the Muslim Program (a program that would not make much sense to the 600 million people around the world who practice Islam in the traditional sense...

...He suffered a very public rebuff by the two million-member Progressive National Baptist Convention and the 8.2 million-member National Baptist Convention headed by Henry Lyons...

...After all, the CBC is made up of people who have garnered tens of thousands of votes at the ballot box and who have therefore laid fair claim to leadership...

...Brother Ronald Moten of the aforementioned "Cease Fire" eventually gets down to business: "Any black man who speaks out against the Million Man March, I don't care if you're Christian, Muslim, whoever-we gonna start stepping to you," he says...

...Along with ousted NAACP leader Ben Chavis, his co-director, Farrakhan has deemed this "a holy day of atonement," lifting irony-free the name of the holiest day in the faith he so ecumenically described as a "gutter religion...

...Farrakhan recently atoned for this statement by telling Phil Donahue, "I never believed that Mike Tyson actually raped her...

...Citing an experience Farrakhan claims to have had where he was beamed aboard a spacecraft and told by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, founder of the Nation of Islam, that Ronald Reagan was plotting genocide for the black community, Shabazz bore witness: "We stand today by clear and convincing evidence, by the drugs being poured into the community, by the men being locked up, by the lack of education and destruction of the inner cities, that there is a war being planned against black youth...

...We believe that we must Atone for, and establish positive solutions to, the abuse and misuse of our girls...

...They assume their places on the stage in wrist-clamped Panther stances, making sure their faces broadcast the proper radical menace...

...Indeed, that seems to be his tagline these days- defender of the race...

...Numbers are hard to come by, especially from the Nation, but the one million thing sets the bar a bit high, considering one-fifteenth of all black men in America will have to show...

...Moten knows a thing or two about the latter brothers-he spent the last four years with them for selling drugs...

...For it is this very mix of metronomical oratory, scorched-earth paranoia, and penchant for Caucasian genocidal punchlines that has made Farrakhan the preeminent leader in the black community today...

...America must taste how it feels when her ex-slave is not in her midst...

...Jesse Jackson said publicly that Lyons supported the march, and Lyons, Jackson's former campaign manager, responded by calling his assertion "an absolute lie...

...Stallings gingerly deflected criticism of Farrakhan's leadership role at a September church rally by saying, "What do you want, some milquetoast sissy faggot to lead you to the promised land...

...The Congressional Black Caucus, under Kweisi Mfume's leadership, struck a "covenant" in the fall of 1993 with Farrakhan, patching up relations and further legitimizing him despite his frequent anabases into bogs of lunacy...

...Malik'll do just fine as one of Farrakhan's young ambassadors...

...It's not just Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, though they'll be there...

...He derives his appeal less from moral authority and clear thinking than from tapping pure, unfettered rage...

...Conceding only that it was a "collaborative effort," Sister Angela said speakers are made known to the march's National Planning Board, but not necessarily all speakers and not necessarily all members of the committee...

...district...

...Farrakhan describes the march as follows: "We believe that, as men, we must recognize and unconditionally Atone for the absence, in too many cases, of the Black male as the head of the household, positive role model and builder of our community...

...Everybody assumes we will, but maybe we won't...

...And the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish group that is one of his most vocal opponents, doesn't carry much weight with Maxine Waters's South Central L.A...

...They say they support the march's goals...

...And though the buzzword "ecumenical" began to circulate as fast as Jesse Jackson could square up to a microphone, it would appear from Farrakhan's original tenets that he too might be reluctant to endorse another's banner...

...We want the government of the United States to exempt our people from ALL taxation as long as we are deprived of equal justice under the laws of the land...

...But they seem afraid to do it...

...Muhammad later got a standing ovation at Howard University, the black school in Washington where most recently law students burst into hysterical cheers upon hearing of O.J...

...Inside the March: Farrakhan Is King By Matt Labash Amidst metal chairs and rec-center acoustics in a frat house basement along a roughneck patch of northeast D.C., an alliance of Washington-area groups called the Youth Organizers Committee is about to announce its solidarity with Louis Farra-khan's Million Man March-his invitation for black men to "straighten their backs" and pledge their troths to family and community...

...Which buttresses the dirty little secret of black politics-that surrogate anti-Semitic buckshot never hurt anyone's street credentials...

...And that's when it's most incumbent upon responsible leaders to step in and say, this [is] not the way to go- this guy is dangerous, this guy is wrong, this guy is evil...

...But still, this doesn't seem to deter the likes of Congressional Black Caucus chairman Donald Payne, who like many has attempted to divorce Farrakhan from the march and seems blissfully unconcerned that the minister is the one setting the agenda, driving the news-the be-all, the end-all, the whole march in himself...

...Simpson's release...

...The truth is, Farrakhan can fill the Washington Convention Center a lot faster than, say, Maryland Rep...

...The highlights are laid out in every issue of the Final Call...

...Thus, it will be entirely up to the Minister and his flock whether the program features, say, "Farrakhan's flamethrower," Khallid Muhammad...

...And added that if his daughter went to a man's room in the midnight hour, "and she were raped, well, it would be a little different with us, but I would certainly punish my daughter...

...Albert Wynn, whose very name causes most African Americans across the country to say, "Who...

...Like the Black Caucus, many of the march's endorsers seem to be devoid of critical thought...

...Peter King has battled Farrakhan for two years over the estimated $15 million the Nation of Islam has earned from federal contracts...

...Next up is Malik Zulu Shabazz, founder of Unity Nation...

...The articulated plan is as follows: One million black men (no women invited except Maya Angelou, Rosa Parks, and the widows of slain civil-rights leaders, including one whose demise Farrakhan is long rumored to have played a part in) are to descend on the Mall in Washington...

...Where once Medgar Evers urged economic boycotts in Jackson, Miss., with a clear-cut goal of racial integration, Farrakhan is urging all non-attending blacks to stay home from work and school and make sure to keep all their money away from Mister Charlie: "Since so many of you love to be all white, then be all white, it's all right...

...Another article in the same issue said, "Minister Louis Farrakhan has stressed that the march will be unlike any other because it will bring Black men to the fore and put the 'Muslim Program,' a wide-ranging plan for independence and self-determination, to America's leaders...

...Caucus members have proposed reparations bills over the years...

...The organizers, from groups with freshly minted, oddly conjugated monikers such as Cease Fire Don't Smoke the Brothers, are skull-capped and kufi'ed...

...As the University of Chicago's National Black Politics Study revealed in 1993-94, 69 percent of blacks surveyed thought Farrakhan represented a positive viewpoint as opposed to being a dangerous extremist-this on the heels of the publicity crush surrounding the 1993 Kean College speech delivered by his associate Khallid Muhammad, who gained headlines for his pithy characterization of Jews: "Why do you not understand my speech, Jew...

...Remember 1985's "It is an act of mercy to white people that we end your world" or 1988's "The Jews cannot defeat me, so I will grind them and crush them into little bits...

...Farrakhan told Larry King last December: "We are tending to look at the black male as a criminal...

...As if signing away the Great Basin isn't penance enough, here's the rider: "We believe that our former slave masters are obligated to maintain and supply our needs in this separate territory for the next 20 to 25 years...

...Even because you cannot hear my word...

...Simpson...

...You are of your father, the Devil...

...Figures obtained by the Center for Responsive Politics show that in the 1993-94 cycle, pro-Israel PACs gave only $58,350 to the entire Black Caucus, while Farrakhan's lecture fees can top $20,000 in an inner-city theater...

...A flier back in March urged African-American males to "realize our political strength, recognize our economic power, mobilize the men in our communities in unity" by coming to the march...

...It's not as if the black congressmen are strangers themselves to some of his more radical agenda items, such as reparations-the idea that white America should pay the descendants of slaves for the indenture of their ancestors...

...Not at all: "They were defended by your champion and the defender of the Black nation in America today-the Honorable Louis Farrakhan...

...George Stallings, who left the Catholic Church to start his Imani Temple after being accused of molesting altar boys...

...This is the same minister who told a 1992 rally for Mike Tyson, after the boxer was convicted of raping Desiree Washington: "You bring a hawk at the chicken yard and wonder why the chicken got eaten up...

...Well, these days his strains are a bit muted, lacking perhaps the old red-meat pithiness, but just as hateful nevertheless, with conspiratorial flow charts connecting all heinous acts to whichever Jewish financier comes to mind...

...Earl Hilliard of Alabama piped up this past July, "I believe in reparations to truly make the playing field level...

...Lest anyone think Farrakhan's ambitions are getting in the way of the old inflammatory rhetoric, there is only a slight difference between now and the greatest hits of yesteryear...

...Those numbers help explain why the march has been sanctioned by a sobering array of mainstream American political figures...

...Where Martin Luther King's marches aimed for the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Farrakhan is taking public what should be private: "As the sons of a proud people, we are coming together and moving forward to chart the course for our families...

...Farrakhan's aims reveal a gaping moral abyss in the world of black leadership...

...The Rev...

...If it cracks 600,000, it will eclipse the 1969 Vietnam War Protest to become the all-time top draw in the nation's capital...

...Considering that the march has no clear message and no real agenda, it's fair to say that the only real message, the only real agenda, is Louis Farrakhan...

...Peter King says it looks doubtful: "That's why I'm critical of the Black leadership, because it's very easy when people are in poverty, are living in dire circumstances, to fall prey to demagogues and that's what Farrakhan obviously is...

...When Farrakhan began heavily promoting the Million Man March last December, the Final Call reported that Arif Muhammad, the nation's mid-Atlantic minister and march coordinator, said "march plans are evolving but will emphasize points contained in the Muslim Program which range from social and economic justice to land and reparations...

...Al Sharpton, and now sister Quibilah Shabazz all have in common...

...And where African-American politicians are concerned, Farrakhan has successfully mau-maued the mau-mauers...

...But then he bemoans the omnibus crime bill and three-strikes-you're-out as if they're nouveau "slavery...

...As of press time, no speakers list had been issued, and when I asked Sister Angela 6X Bone, the march's national director and spokesperson, when they'd reveal who would be speaking, she defiantly said, "Who says we'll make it public...

...Thus, Farrakhan goes unchallenged by petrified legislators who have already lost a lot with his ascension to power, and must be fearful of losing more...

...New York Republican Rep...

...Chavis's assistant Gary Foster insists the Million Man March hasn't sanctioned the Black Holocaust gathering...

...But his solution to this last plank...

...We believe that our former slave masters are obligated to provide such land and that the areas must be fertile and minerally rich...

...And our march is to say we are not that...

...We have looked for too long for the government to solve our problems," Farrakhan recently stated, while comrade Chavis insisted, "We are not letting the government off the hook...

...Even the march's name, as the Washington Times noted, seems prone to schizophrenia: "Million Man March" or "Day of Atonement and Reconciliation" or "Day of Absence" or "Day of Positive Action...

...But it's not as if the garbled Farrakhan message gets in the way of his popularity...

...Conflicting messages abound...

...But Shabazz told me, "Mr...

...Under a "What The Muslims Want" headline, they state: "We want our people in America whose parents or grandparents were descendants from slaves to be allowed to establish a separate state or territory of their own-either on this continent or elsewhere...

...Oh, and don't forget rap group Public Enemy, the Brand Nubians, and those wacky gangs who make the streets safe for crack, the Bloods and the Crips...

...Even the Baptists look fairly serious about not getting out-Islam'ed in front of the media assemblage, and greet recurrent As-Salaam-Alaikums with right-back-at-you Alaikum-Salaams...

...And this: "We want freedom for all believers of Islam now held in federal prisons...

...That's an allegorical thing," Farrakhan said...

...Who would stand beside Farrakhan had yet be determined at press time, but the former "Calypso Gene" Wolcott will no doubt get an intro like the one he received not long ago at the Apollo Theater in Harlem: "What does Tawana Brawley, Mike Tyson, Geronimo Pratt, Rev...

...Such inconsistencies are troublesome-enough to have caused major schisms in what once looked to be a unified clergy front that could have given Farrakhan the religious cover he needs...

...There's also the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the National Council of Negro Women...

...even in a hostile Republican climate, Rep...

...The problem is that too many of the black leaders are reluctant to take Farrakhan on," King says, recounting a bipartisan press conference attacking Farrakhan in which he deliberately tried to include local ministers...

...Invite O.J...

...Still, why the blind acquiescence to Farrakhan...

...Khallid Muhammad will definitely be speaking at Malik Shabazz's two-day "Black Holocaust" right before the march, where he will mix with the likes of Leonard Jeffries of City College, who maintains that blacks descend from "Sun People" and whites from "Ice People," and the Rev...

...Those Howard students are not exactly vagrants and junkies, a fact that offers a glimpse into Farrakhan's remarkable popularity among upper-echelon blacks...

...The same arraignment dates...

...And the head-shaking fact is, he may deserve it...

...But this is a march originated and promoted by the Nation of Islam...

...What goals, exactly...