Strange Bedfellows: American Nazi Party & Nation of Islam

Strange Bedfellows
Some American Black Muslims make common cause with domestic neo-Nazis and foreign Muslim extremists

In 1961, Elijah Muhammad, founder of the black supremacist Nation of Islam, met with Ku Klux Klan leaders at the Magnolia Hall in Atlanta. Although they had different ideas about the skin color of the master race, they shared the belief that blacks and whites should stay separate. The following year, Muhammad invited American Nazi Party chief George Lincoln Rockwell to address a Nation convention in Chicago, even though Rockwell had often called blacks "the lowest scum of humanity." Flanked by a dozen storm troopers in swastika armbands, Rockwell told an audience of 5,000 Nation devotees that he was "proud to stand here before black men. " Elijah Muhammad is the Adolf Hitler of the black man."

Sporadic contacts between Black Muslims and white supremacists continued after Louis Farrakhan set up his own branch of the Nation of Islam in 1975. Klan leader Tom Metzger was so impressed with Farrakhan's anti-Semitic bombast that he donated $100 to the Nation after a Farrakhan rally in Los Angeles in September 1985. A month later, Metzger and 200 other white supremacists from the United States and Canada gathered on a farm about 50 miles west of Detroit, where they pledged their support for the Nation of Islam. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend," explained Art Jones, a neo-Nazi militant from Chicago. "I salute Louis Farrakhan and anyone else who stands up against the Jews."

The Nation's contacts with non-black extremists has not been limited to domestic neo-Nazis and Klansmen. During his international travels, Farrakhan has been officially welcomed in a number of countries, including several repressive Arab states. The Final Call, Farrakhan's newspaper, describes one such globetrotting expedition in 1986, when he visited Libya for discussions with Col. Muammar Ghaddafi, who had given Farrakhan a $5 million interest-free loan the previous year. After Libya, Farrakhan ventured to Jeddah, where he conferred with top Saudi Arabian officials before paying a courtesy call to Idi Amin, the exiled Ugandan despot. Farrakhan was also warmly received by General Zia-ul-Huq, the military dictator of Pakistan, whose abysmal human rights record coincided with efforts to impose a harsh Islamic fundamentalist regime in his country.

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