Rock guitarist and NRA board member labels Jewish politicians with Israeli flags, calls them evil for stance on gun laws
Rocker and gun rights activist Ted Nugent took flak from Jewish groups on Monday for a Facebook post labeling Jewish politicians with Israeli flags and singling them out for their position on gun control.
Nugent shared a graphic on his Facebook account Monday showing a number of American Jewish politicians, including Senators Diane Feinstein (D-CA) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, branded with Israeli flags beneath the words: “So who is really behind gun control?” The graphic has previously appeared on anti-Semitic websites.
Know these punks,” Nugent wrote. “They hate freedom, they hate good over evil, they would deny us the basic human right to self defense & to KEEP & BEAR ARMS while many of them have tax paid hired ARMED security! Know them well. Tell every1 you know how evil they are. Let us raise maximum hell to shut them down!”
Nugent, a veteran rock guitarist and right wing political activist, is a board member of the National Rifle Association, and a supporter of the Republican Party. His remarks were lambasted by Jewish hate speech groups Anti-Defamation League and Simon Wiesenthal Center for what the latter called “anti-Semitic bigotry.”
“Ted Nugent has every right to advocate against gun control laws. However he won’t be getting a free pass for his anti-Semitic bigotry,” Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Wiesenthal Center, said in a statement. “There are Jews on both sides of the gun control controversy and Nugent knows it. He owes our community an apology. He can start by removing the offensive graphic and if he won’t we urge Facebook to do it for him.”
The ADL’s CEO Jonathan A. Greenblatt issued a statement condemning the post as “conspiratorial anti-Semitism.”
“Ted Nugent has a long history of being an equal opportunity offender,” Greenblatt said. “Regardless of one’s views on gun control, this kind of scapegoating of an entire religious group is completely unacceptable and completely divorced from reality.”
“Nugent should be ashamed for promoting anti-Semitic content, and we hope that good people on both sides of the gun control debate will reject his tactics and his message. We hope that Nugent will have the good sense to remove this share immediately so that it does not spread virally across the internet,” he said.
As of the time of publication, Nugent hadn’t removed the post.
As reported by The Times of Israel