Former Classmate: Keith Ellison Would Rant About Jewish Slavers, Called Jews ‘Oppressors’

According to a former classmate of Keith Ellison, the Democratic Minnesota Congressman and DNC Chair Candidate used offensive rhetoric about Jews while a student at the University of Minnesota.

That anecdote is buried in an otherwise complimentary profile of the congressman from Mother Jones. Ellison recently came under renewed scrutiny for his past defense of anti-Semitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan in the student paper, and for inviting Stokely Carmichael to give a speech on campus in which he accused “Zionists” of collaborating with the Nazis.

One of the campus critics of Ellison (who then went by ‘Keith Hakim’) was an editor of the Minnesota Daily, Michael Olenick. Olenick told Mother Jones that in their conversations Ellison argued that blacks and other oppressed groups “could not be racist toward Jews” because “Jews were themselves oppressors.”

“‘European white Jews are trying to oppress minorities all over the world,'” Olenick said Ellison would tell him. “Keith would go on all the time about ‘Jewish slave traders.'”

Another Jewish student told Mother Jones that Ellison didn’t understand the controversy over Zionism. “What are you afraid of?” Ellison told him. “Do you think black nationalists are gonna get power and hurt Jews?”

[Image via screengrab]

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