Louis Farrakhan’s lawsuit against the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) might be the biggest one in recent history. The Nation of Islam leader is suing the Jewish civil rights group for $4.8 billion in Manhattan Federal Court, accusing them of falsely labeling him as an antisemite.
The court papers read, according to the New York Post, “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.”
Farrakhan counsel further claimed he “has never harmed a hair on the head of any Jewish person or even advocated for such” and shared that 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.”
The only problem is that Farrakhan does have a long history of saying some extremely hateful and discriminatory things about Jewish people.
Like Kanye West, Farrakhan has some positive feelings toward infamous Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. According to the Washington Post, during a 1984 radio sermon, he said, “Here, the Jews don’t like Farrakhan, so they call him Hitler. Well, that’s a good name. Hitler was a very great man. He wasn’t great for me as a black person, but he was a great German, and he rose Germany up from the ashes of her defeat by the united force of Europe and America after the First World War.”
No, Hitler was not a great person. He committed mass genocide and is responsible for the deaths of millions of people.
Previously, he has referred to Jewish people as “satanic.” Most notably, during the 20th anniversary of the Million Man March, Farrakhan said, “The satanic jews control everything and mostly everybody.”
He’s also called them “termites,” saying during a 2018 speech, “When they talk about Farrakhan, call me a hater, you know how they do – call me an anti-Semite. Stop it, I’m anti-termite!”
Despite the insane dollar amount, the ADL does not seem to be too worried about the suit, telling the New York Post it “has no merit.”