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Well, I guess it was only a question of time before the ADL condemned Dave Chappelle and SNL more generally for "popularising" anti-Semitism.
Chappelle had a SNL monologue a few days ago where he walked a tightrope between supposedly condemning Kanye and Kyrie before slyly signal-boosting some of their talking points. Kanye comes across as crazy and Kyrie as plain dumb but Chappelle is neither, so this is arguably bigger news. Of course, Chappelle has been courting controversy before, such as his perceived anti-trans comments or complaining about college kids being too sensitive these days.
So I am not sure if this is some kind of cultural shift where black entertainment elites are more willing to criticise Jews or if it is simply Chappelle running towards controversy in order to stay relevant. Maybe it is both. Nevertheless, I think the ADL has by and large been enormously inefficient and self-defeating during these past 6 weeks. It seems even some Jewish publications agree.
I think most white Americans would be quite surprised to find out how many black musicians and athletes are into what are typically characterized as fringe religious views - Black Hebrew Israelites, Five-Percent Nation, Nation of Islam, and so on. Even among people that are aware of guys like Jay-Z repping these groups, I think most whites don't realize just how deeply weird and racist these religions are. For example, Five-Percenters on race:
When you start flipping through the Wikis, you find some pretty aggressive claims. The Black Hebrew Israelites are particularly antisemitic, but they're not all that picky about who they direct racism at. If you ever get a chance to hang around outside the basketball arena in DC, these guys are out there preaching, and they are wild. They insult whites, they insult Asians, they even insult black people that associate with whites. If you ever want to see what "hate" looks like in person, these guys are the perfect embodiment of it.
Anecdotally, I've had a surprising number of black folks mention these sorts of things offhandedly - not that they've fully bought in and not that they're personally hateful or anything, but just stuff like, "hey, did you know that black folks were actually the original Jews?". A black guy at a dive bar that was chatting with my (Asian) wife and I had some odd ideas about the ancestry of Asian people. Occasionally you'll hear an athlete mention something like this.
The only thing unusual about Kyrie is that he's stubborn enough to be blunt, open, and refuse to take it back. There's usually a gentleman's agreement to just not poke at people's weird beliefs too much, but I guess it's just too tempting with Kyrie and Kanye.
What the hell? I always thought this was a joke made up by 4chan. It just feels so dumb and arbitrary. Why Patmos? Why 6000 years ago? What happened to all recorded history before that? Why specifically a "big headed" scientist?
I wonder if it's a coincidence that the Young Earth Creationists believe the Earth itself was created 6000 years ago? Or is there some Bible verse or something that lends itself to the number 6000 that both of these theories are tying into? As you allude to, 6000 seems an arbitrary number to pick out - the fact there are 2 different sets of crazies that picked it seems interesting.
YEC’s get their number(s, technically- the usher chronology might be the consensus among YEC’s today, but it’s not universally agreed upon) by adding up the ages in the Bible until they reach an event they think they know the date of. There are literally dozens of versions of this, and the most prominent and common is called the usher chronology, after an Anglican bishop in the 1600’s who did precisely that. It’s popular for using the KJV translation as opposed to the vulgate, and gives a 6000 yr figure.
It’s very possible that Elijah Mohammed/Wallace Fard copied the 6000 yr figure from the Usher chronology.
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The 6000-year-old earth is, I believe, derived from the math done by Bishop Usher. He basically started at Year 0 and worked backwards using the ages of given for various Biblical characters like Adam, Noah, Jacob, etc. No idea where the Black Israelites are getting their number from.
It’s going by the jewish calendar, supposedly going back to the creation of the world in genesis 5783 years ago.
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