Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who for decades has spouted off about “Satanic” Jews who control the government and Hollywood and once called Hitler a “great man” — is claiming his venomous reputation is a “false narrative” pushed by the Anti-Defamation League.
Farrakhan, 90, has filed a $4.8 billion Manhattan Federal Court lawsuit against the civil rights group, accusing it of interfering with his First Amendment rights by wrongly labeling him an antisemite.
“This lawsuit is to ensure that the abuse, misuse, and false use of the terms ‘anti-Semite,’ ‘anti-Semitic,’ and ‘antisemitism,’ as falsely charged by the [ADL] is permanently barred from being a tool to defame [Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam] and stifle the exercise of constitutional rights,”‘ he contends in court papers.
Farrakhan contended he “has never harmed a hair on the head of any Jewish person or even advocated for such,” and boasted he “honors, respects, and even admires many members of the Jewish community, including his boyhood idol and one of the greatest violinists, Jascha Heifetz, who was a Russian Jew, and his own Jewish violin teachers.”
Farrakhan, 90, has filed a $4.8 billion Manhattan Federal Court lawsuit against the civil rights group, accusing it of interfering with his First Amendment rights by wrongly labeling him an antisemite.
“This lawsuit is to ensure that the abuse, misuse, and false use of the terms ‘anti-Semite,’ ‘anti-Semitic,’ and ‘antisemitism,’ as falsely charged by the [ADL] is permanently barred from being a tool to defame [Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam] and stifle the exercise of constitutional rights,”‘ he contends in court papers.
Farrakhan contended he “has never harmed a hair on the head of any Jewish person or even advocated for such,” and boasted he “honors, respects, and even admires many members of the Jewish community, including his boyhood idol and one of the greatest violinists, Jascha Heifetz, who was a Russian Jew, and his own Jewish violin teachers.”