The day after Christmas I reported on a controversy that involved the renowned author Alice Walker, whose most famous work was the Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel The Color Purple. The controversy began when, in an interview with the New York Times about what books she was reading, Walker noted that one of them was And the Truth Shall Set You Free, by David Icke. Icke is a notorious anti-Semite and a total crackpot who thinks the world is controlled by giant alien lizards who are usually disguised as Jews. (He says he’s not anti-Semitic, just biased against Jews who are really reptiles.)
Now Walker didn’t just mention this book and let it be; it turns out that she’s been a fan of Icke and his crazy theories for years; and Walker’s anti-Semitism, also evident in her poems and prose, was called out by both Tablet and Vox.
This poses a dilemma for Leftists, who have traditionally fought bigotry against both blacks and Jews. But what do you do with a black author, like Walker, who hates Jews and suspects a reptile beneath their skins? Well, the Women’s March resolved a similar dilemma in favor of Louis Farrakahan as opposed to the Jews he hates, because, I guess, Jews are lower on the oppression scale than blacks. This saddens me, for, as I’ve said, Jews and blacks were once traditional allies, especially during the civil rights movement of the Sixties. Now prominent blacks like Walker and Louis Farrakhan are, with the approbation of their followers, attacking not just Israel but Jews.
It’s no surprise, then, that people are coming to Walker’s defense, either not having read her posts and poems about Jews, or having read them but deciding that the works’ anti-Semitism can be overlooked. One of Walker’s defenders is (no surprise again) Al Jazeera.
Reader J. J. has been closely following both Icke and the Walker controversy, and contributed her own thoughts to the issue, which I’ve put up here as a guest post (indented).
Regarding the WEIT post on Alice Walker, there have been a few new developments, including the tangential involvement of Angela Davis.
The first matter is that, concurrent with a second defense by Robert Cohen, Walker herself has mounted yet another clueless defense on her website, titled “Effort: helping to heal the world by making it more visible to one another” (huh?), with a note from the controversial Israeli professor and Palestinian rights activist Nurit Peled-Elhanan, who may be reevaluating her support for Walker—especially given that Peled-Elhanan comes from a Zionist family, albeit Leftist, and whose grandfather was a signatory to Israel’s Declaration of Independence.
Once again, Walker and Cohen use the same poem, this time “Conscious Earthlings” (at Walker’s link above), which she states is “about the necessity of separating Jews from Zionist Nazis” as a ‘proof’ that Walker isn’t an antisemite. Given the timing and content, I can’t but wonder if Cohen and Walker are orchestrating these defenses.
Further, the term “Zionist Nazis” is odious enough on its own, but the poem “Conscious Earthlings” must be read in the context of Walker’s adherence to David Icke’s teachings and world view. The title alone is a tip-off: “Zionist Nazis” means Rothschild reptilians [JAC: Icke thinks the Rothschild family are among the reptiles disguised as Jews], not “real” Jews. This poem, such as it is, is nothing but a coded piece of reptilian propaganda for Icke, and I doubt that either Cohen or Peled-Elhanan understand this. Or perhaps for personal and political reasons they’d rather remain willfully ignorant of the specifics of Icke’s demented ideas and Alice’s infatuation with them and with Icke.
How Walker and Cohen or any of her defenders imagine that her poetry or anything else she puts forward demonstrates that she’s not anti-Semitic is completely beyond my ken. It does precisely the opposite. She is her own worst enemy. Everything Walker and her defenders have written is ignotum per ignotius and simply mires her more deeply in the cesspool of hate that she plunged into headfirst long ago.
Her latest attempt at PR spin was to post a brief, seemingly innocuous video, which shows Icke and Credo Mutwa, a Zulu shaman, and several other Zulu adherents wearing blue and white uniforms, gathered out in the veldt at the site where Credo Mutwa intends to erect his “Temple of Peace.” Icke gives a boilerplate New Agey inspirational exhortation about peace and love and then the Africans begin singing. How peaceful and beautiful! What Walker didn’t link to is the “Reptilian Agenda,” six hours of video of Icke and Credo Mutwa in conversation, just two crypto-herpetologists jawing about reptilians. Credo Mutwa claims to have eaten reptilian flesh after mistaking one for bush meat. Perhaps that was before he was fitted with glasses.
Then, several days ago, Al Jazeera published an opinion piece, “In defense of Alice Walker“, by Susan Abulhawa, who came out with guns blazing, blasting Walker’s critics with a take no prisoners, shoot-first-ask-questions-later style.
The author of this hit piece delegitimizes herself from the get-go by making an injudicious admission and stating two false assertions.
First, Abulhawa hubristically declares that she hasn’t read Icke and, what’s more, she doesn’t need to. She then states that Walker does not endorse Icke’s ideas: she simply had his book on her bedside table.
Abulhawa apparently hasn’t read much Alice Walker, either, especially not her blog posts, or she’d know that not only does Walker have a history of making egregiously anti-Semitic statements (and professes to be baffled when she’s called an anti-Semite), Walker has said and written that she considers Icke to be a genius—brilliant. She believes in the literality of Icke’s abominable fantasies about reptilian aliens and hybrids in the guise of “Rothschild Jews” (and a few gentiles), and Walker believes that what Icke says is true with the same fervor that Christian and Muslim fundamentalists believe in the literal truths in their holy books.
Walker proselytizes Icke’s gospel, and she has been doing so since 2012 or 2013. Faithful disciple that she is, she even made a pilgrimage to see her guru guy, touch the hem of his garment and bask in his vibes. The charming couple had a photo taken to memorialize the occasion.
https://twitter.com/davidicke/status/780821818970034176
Abulhawa also repeats Walker’s false assertion that she’s called an anti-Semite, “slandered” and condemned solely because of her support for Palestinians and BDS, and that Icke is also slandered by this accusation. Walkers’ assertion, though, is nothing but a red herring waved around to distract attention from the vile doctrines and myths that Icke propagates and that Alice Walker avows are real—that is what precipitated this particular eruption of outrage against Alice Walker, not her support for BDS and the Palestinians.
Some who have sympathy for the Palestinian cause—and BDS in particular—would not take kindly to Alice Walker if they realized she believes in the “reptilian agenda,” the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and Holocaust revisionism, so it’s best to obfuscate that. Now Abulhawa has swooped in to defend Walker at all costs, truth be damned. Abdulhawa is good at practicing tu quoque; but what Abdulhawa doesn’t examine are the facts with respect to Alice Walker.
All of this takes on added significance because just a few days ago, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute decided against conferring the Fred Shuttlesworth Human Rights Award on Angela Davis because of her support for BDS and accusations that she is an anti-Semite. This, of course, is causing a furor. In my opinion, the matters of Alice Walker and Angela Davis should not be conflated. Walker, while also a supporter of BDS, has a raft of blatantly anti-Semitic statements to answer for that have nothing to do with BDS or Palestinian rights; and if she can link her case to that of Angela Davis, she can, I fear, successfully muddy the waters and deflect the discourse away from Icke.
To add yet another layer of ugly and ironic insanity, David Duke has given Walker a glowing endorsement, calling her a “courageous black woke womanist.” The notorious Holocaust denier David Irving even gives a tip of the hat to her in his newsletter, which reads thus:
“Blacks don’t like them either: Alice Walker, answering backlash, praises the bravery of anti-Semitic author [David Icke]. Jewish groups including the Anti-Defamation League [ADL] have been monitoring Walker’s talks and writing for years.”
I’m sure that Irving included the comment about the ADL to cement Walker’s credentials as an anti-Semite, and he’s also cynically messing with her, just as David Duke did.
When Alice Walker protests that she and David Icke aren’t anti-Semites, but simply supporters of Palestinian rights who are being unjustly tarred and feathered, I’m reminded of what Andrew Gillum said to Ron DeSantis during a debate when they were running for Governor of Florida last year. To paraphrase Gillum: I’m not calling Walker an anti-Semite, I’m simply saying that anti-Semites believe she’s an anti-Semite.”
Finally, I find yet another screed on the Al Jazeera site that relates to all this: “The Zionist Fallacy of Jewish Supremacy” by Yoav Litvin, subtitled “Framing Zionism as Jewish and not white supremacy is a dangerous proposition,” which relates to a number of WEIT posts on the nature of Zionism, most recently this one.
