Antisemitic mural resurfaces at March on Washington 2020

Two protestors were photographed wearing shirts with the image of an antisemitic mural, championed by former British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn.

By DONNA RACHEL EDMUNDS
Protestors near the White House at the 'March on Washington 2020' wearing shirts bearing an antisemitic mural. Washington DC, USA, August 28, 2020 (photo credit: COURTESY JENNIE TAER / THE SARAH CARTER SHOW)
Protestors near the White House at the 'March on Washington 2020' wearing shirts bearing an antisemitic mural. Washington DC, USA, August 28, 2020
(photo credit: COURTESY JENNIE TAER / THE SARAH CARTER SHOW)
A mural which gained prominence as the subject of a row over antisemitism within the British Labour Party two years ago has seemingly been taken up by black equality activists in America.
Two protesters at the March on Washington 2020 were photographed on Friday wearing t-shirts depicting the image first painted as a mural in London by the artist Mear One. The image depicts Jewish bankers playing a game similar to monopoly on the backs of people of color, underneath the masonic Eye of Providence.
The image on their shirts was flanked by the phrase: "All we have to do is stand up and their little game is over."
The mural gained prominence in the UK in 2018 when a row broke out in the Labour Party over whether then-leader Jeremy Corbyn was wrong to voice support for the artist behind it. The mural was scrubbed from a wall in London in 2012, prompting the artist to protest on the basis of freedom of speech. Commenting on the mural's removal, Corbyn wrote on Facebook: “Why? You are in good company. Rockerfeller [sic] destroyed Diego Viera’s [sic] mural because it includes a picture of Lenin.”
When his comment came to light, Corbyn apologized, and the Labour Party issued a statement saying: "the mural was offensive, used antisemitic imagery, which has no place in our society, and it is right that it was removed.”
However, though long scrubbed from London brick, the mural has not fully disappeared.
On June 6, rapper Ice Cube tweeted a photograph of the mural with the slogan added. He later denied being antisemitic, tweeting in late July "No matter how times I tell some people I hate Antisemitism and Racism they still wanna keep this narrative going for some strange reason."

It was the version posted by Ice Cube that appeared on the shirts of the protesters at Friday's march, marking 57 years since Martin Luther King's 'I Have A Dream' speech.
The photograph was taken by Jennie Taer of SaraACarter.com, who wrote: "The day was mostly peaceful, but the rhetoric was certainly extreme. Protesters walked with signs and some were leading chants against law enforcement. ... But, I spotted a group wearing an image that I’m all too familiar with that stuck out in a sea of “Black Lives Matter” merchandise. ... The group’s shirts showed the caricatures of Jewish businessmen playing the world as a game of Monopoly. And, in the image, the board game was supported on the backs of Black men."
The t-shirts are not the first time black equality activists have engaged in antisemitic messaging. A string of rappers and grime artists have made headlines in recent months for comments suggesting that black people are oppressed thanks to a Jewish conspiracy to run the world.
British rapper Wiley last week said: “A lot of what I’m going on about is institutional, deep-rooted, systemic, it’s in-place anyway… I’ve never had a problem with anyone in business other than with some of the Jewish community that I’ve worked with. The Jewish community does stick together.”
Links between the black equality movement and antisemitism were highlighted in a July article in The Jerusalem Post by Ted Lapkin, executive director of the Australian Jewish Association, who noted: "On the night of May 30, a rabble bearing BLM placards ran amok through the heavily Jewish Los Angeles neighborhood of Fairfax, yelling “F**k the police and kill the Jews!” Five synagogues and three Jewish schools were defaced with antisemitic graffiti during the course of what amounted to a pogrom." The attacks prompted a local rabbi described the riot as “Kristallnacht all over again.”
Lapkin commented: "If there’s anything the Jews have learned from their blood-soaked history, it’s when someone says they mean to harm you, take them at their word. So to those who suggest that we should excuse the excesses of Black Lives Matter (BLM) for the sake of a greater good, my answer is simple: No.
"I say no because opposition to one form of racism does not confer immunity to criticism over other forms of ethnic bigotry."


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Anti-Semitism
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black lives matter