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Warnock’s Former Church Accused Of Hosting Antisemitic, Black Supremacist Professor

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OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.


A Georgians continue to vote early in the U.S. Senate runoff election, one of the candidates — incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock — is in hot water again.

Fox News Digital reported Wednesday that Warnock worked in his younger days as an assistant pastor of a church for 10 years “while it repeatedly hosted a former New York City professor who was ousted over antisemitic and black supremacist teachings.”

The outlet continued: “From 1991 to 2001, Warnock served as youth pastor for six years and then assistant pastor for four years under Rev. Calvin O. Butts at Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York City, several years before he went on to lead the same Atlanta church where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a pastor. From 1991 to 1998, Butts’ Abyssinian church hosted Leonard Jeffries as a speaker at least three times. Leonard Jeffries is the uncle of Democratic Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, who is poised to succeed Nancy Pelosi as the next Democratic leader in the House. The congressman said in 2013 that he remained close with his uncle but disagreed with his theories.”

When Leonard Jeffries first appeared at the Abyssinian church in 1991, he was heavily involved in a legal dispute to keep his position as the black studies department head at City University of New York (CUNY), according to Fox News Digital.

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Ultimately, however, he was dismissed from that post after a dispute that lasted for years regarding racist and antisemitic comments that included blaming Jews for the transatlantic slave trade and voicing support for black supremacist positions such as higher melanin levels mean that black people are superior to whites.

“Leonard spoke about the CUNY controversy during an October 1991 speech at Abyssinian Baptist Church after a student reporter with The Harvard Crimson alleged the professor had slammed the outlet as a ‘Jewish newspaper’ during their interview, threatened the reporter’s life and had a bodyguard physically seize the audio recording of the interview, The New York Times reported at the time,” according to Fox News Digital.

Though Warnock started working at the Abyssinian church in 1991 following his graduation from Morehouse College earlier that year, it’s not clear if he was there when Jeffries gave his October speech.

Jeffries also appeared at the church in February 1992, where he spoke about systemic racism and white-on-black crime. He appeared there again in July 1998, Fox News Digital reported, citing various media outlets.

The Anti-Defamation League, a Left-leaning organization, ripped Jeffries in 2017.

“Leonard Jeffries, the former head of the Black Studies Department at the City College of CUNY, and a professor there since 1972, has espoused racist and anti-Semitic views and theories since at least the early 1980s, when his comments – made while he was department head – began to attract public attention,” the ADL wrote in a report that addressed antisemitism on college campuses.

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“In the spring of 1988, a white student wrote an account in the student newspaper of his experiences in Jeffries’ class, Black Studies 101,” the report continued. “The student recounted numerous times when Jeffries constructed large parts of his class around anti-white arguments.”

Warnock’s campaign has amassed a war chest three times the amount of cash Walker has on hand, according to a Friday update.

Newsmax reported:

Warnock had more than $29 million in cash as of Nov. 16, having raised a 2022 midterms high of nearly $176 million, according to the Federal Elections Commission. Walker has just over $9.8 million cash on hand, having brought the highest-funded candidate to a runoff with less than $59 million, according to the FEC. In the month from Oct. 20 to Nov. 16 alone, Warnock’s campaign raised $52 million to Walker’s under $21 million.

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Despite Warnock’s major cash advantage, however, Walker was able to barely prevent the incumbent from reaching 50 percent of the vote in order to avoid the Dec. 6 runoff.

Democratic incumbents managed to outperform pre-midterm election polling, retaining their seats in Arizona and Nevada, and flipping a seat in Pennsylvania, due in part to major cash advantages. Republicans managed to recapture the House, however, and currently hold a 220-212 advantage with two races left to determine. Republicans hold narrow leads in both of them.

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