We at JFREJ roundly condemn the Brooklyn Commons’ decision to host a known anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist, Christopher Bollyn, in their space this coming Wednesday. Bollyn, a former writer at the white nationalist American Free Press, has appeared on the radio show of former KKK Imperial Wizard David Duke, and has been referred to as a “raging anti-Semite” by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Despite having been notified by concerned community members last week, the Brooklyn Commons has yet to cancel the event in question. Instead, the most strikingly anti-Semitic language in the original Facebook event description has been lifted in favor of slightly less inflammatory rhetoric.
A cursory glance at Bollyn’s website reveal numerous references to “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” (a notorious anti-Semitic forgery by Czarist police in late Imperial Russia), as well as all manner of hateful speculations about “Jewish-Zionist cabal” workings behind global events, most notably 9/11.
As a Jewish organization committed to the liberation of all people, we cannot and will not take this issue lightly. We call on Brooklyn Commons to cancel the scheduled event immediately and to issue a full and complete apology to its community. We are deeply troubled that the Brooklyn Commons has yet to respond to this call for cancellation, given the regular use of the space for organizations committed to social justice.
We are proud to stand alongside our allies in the social justice movement against this anti-Semitic event, notably the organizations that work out of the Brooklyn Commons space: Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, Right to the City Alliance, Jacobin Magazine, Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory, FUREE, Marxist Education Project, The Indypendent, and WBAI. We call on the rest of the New York social justice community to join us and our vocal allies in rejecting Christopher Bollyn’s politics of hate, and to reaffirm our shared commitment to fighting against anti-Semitism, just as with all forms of bigotry and oppression.