Black Lives Matter advocate and Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver DeSean Jackson, is under fire for posting a series of antisemitic posts on social media. However, such antisemitism is widespread among the Black Lives Matter movement.
Jackson began deleting the posts on Tuesday after news broke of his admiring quotes of Adolf Hitler’s attacks on Jews and his posts featuring notorious anti-Semite Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.
The Eagles finally spoke about Jackson’s posts and claimed to have “spoken” to the player and told him his actions are “offensive, harmful, and absolutely appalling.” The team has said they will take “appropriate action” in response to the posts.
— Philadelphia Eagles (@Eagles) July 7, 2020
The Eagles have indulged many BLM causes. After the death of George Floyd for instance, team Owner Jeffrey Lurie posted a long statement about how the team hoped to help “fight hate.” The statement supposedly came after a “powerful meeting” with the whole team at which Jackson was presumably in attendance.
Regardless, Jackson has been a big supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement from its beginning. He even claimed to have designed special cleats to honor George Floyd, the Minneapolis man whose police-involved death spawned dozens of destructive riots across the country.
But the antisemitic content of Jackson’s posts fit in very well with the hatred for Israel and Jews that runs deep throughout the Black Lives Matter movement, of which Jackson has been a big booster.
There are a growing number of examples of Black Lives Matter supporters liberally salting their march chants with anti-Semitic messages. During the July 1 BLM march in the U.S. Capitol, for instance, BLM activists alternated chants of Black Lives Matter with “Palestinian Lives Matter,” and attacks on “Zionism.”
In a video of a D.C march, chants of “Israel Murders Children Too” can be heard.
It was only a matter of time before the DC protests turned anti-Semitic. pic.twitter.com/YTbwwGuOYh
— Nic Rowan (@NicXTempore) July 1, 2020
A Black Lives Matter group in the UK was accused of antisemitism after posting a mural featuring hateful anti-Semitic tropes. One image included obvious Jewish cartoon figures sitting around a Monopoly-like game board festooned with money.
In another case, a manifesto presented by an alliance of Black Lives Matter groups included language accusing Israel of “genocide” against the so-called Palestinians.
Though there’s some dispute over whether the perpetrators were actual members of Black Lives Matter, several synagogues were vandalized in Los Angeles during recent riots of which BLM was a part
After being called on the carpet, Jackson tried to apologize for his now-deleted posts by claiming he was just posting stuff other people sent to him.
“I post a lot of things that are sent to me. I do not have hatred towards anyone. I really didn’t realize what this passage was saying. Hitler has caused terrible pain to Jewish people like the pain African-Americans have suffered. We should be together fighting anti-Semitism and racism. This was a mistake to post this, and I truly apologize for posting it and sorry for any hurt I have caused,” he wrote on Tuesday morning.
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