Posts on Jesse Lee Peterson

I wrote a post about Jesse Lee Peterson of the Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny (BOND) last month, noting that he has managed to carve out a rather unique niche for himself as a black right-wing activist who defends racists while accusing other black leaders of being sell outs and race-baiters. 

And so I guess it comes as no surprise that he is weighing in on Barack Obama’s historic election by proclaiming that black preachers who supported Barack Obama have not been called by God, have no relationship with God, and are consequently leading their congregations straight to hell: 

"Ninety-six percent of black voters supported Barack Obama and the majority of these voters were influenced by black preachers to put race ahead of their country and their faith," said Rev. Peterson. "How can ministers who are supposed to lead their flock to Jesus Christ instead lead them to a socialist like Obama? The truth is that most black ministers don't have a real relationship with God and they are leading their congregations to hell. These blind leaders helped elect their black 'Messiah'. This 'Messiah' happens to be the most left-wing member of the U.S. Senate," said Rev. Peterson.

…

Rev. Peterson added: "For the past eighteen years I've said that most black preachers are not called by God, but instead are called by their mammas. If there was ever a time that this was the case, that time is now. In order for black Americans to turn around, they must drop their anger, and find the truth within themselves, not from corrupt, racist preachers or from a false black Messiah."

You just know that when Jesse Lee Peterson of the Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny (BOND) releases a statement, it is going to be something ridiculous ... and once again he doesn't disappoint:

According to BOND ACTION, Inc, Founder and President, Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, the Obama campaign and its surrogates have knowingly used race as a wedge issue to scare black voters and mischaracterize Republican positions on the issues. Rev. Peterson said today, "If the McCain campaign doesn't start aggressively combating these false allegations it will cost them the election" ... Rev. Peterson said, "Democrats are using the same racially charged scare tactics used by white segregationists in the past to antagonize the races. This is shameless and dangerous, and we have a moral duty to point it out."

Peterson, a right-wing African American activist, has built an entire career out of calling African American Democrats racists while defending white people who are actually ... you know ... racist, like Michael Richards:

By not allowing whites to express themselves, it only drives the problem underground and forces people to keep these emotions bottled up -- in essence, the politically correct culture is helping to create people like Michael Richards!"

And Duane Chapman:

Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, Founder and President of BOND, the Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny, issued the following statement today congratulating Duane “Dog” Chapman and his fans on the news that plans are in the works to resume production of the hit show “Dog The Bounty Hunter.” A&E suspended the show on October 31 after a tape of Duane using a racial slur to describe his son’s girlfriend was sold to the Enquirer. Since the incident, Duane Chapman has worked closely with conservative black organizations such as BOND and CORE to reach out to the black community.

The following is Rev. Peterson’s statement about this developing story: “Congratulations to Duane Chapman and his family. Duane is not a racist. We’re happy to learn that A&E is planning to resume production of ‘Dog The Bounty Hunter,’ which should have never been suspended.

Back in 2005, Max Blumenthal wrote a good profile of Peterson that explains the role he plays in the right-wing movement:

In late February, inside a sterile conference hall at Washington's premier conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation, a crowd of no more than seventy took off their snow-flecked coats and settled in for an afternoon with a group of speakers billed as "The New Black Vanguard." Perched on a platform above the audience, the speakers promptly launched a barrage of attacks on the civil rights establishment and "the entertainment-industrial complex." At first the audience seemed disengaged, even a bit overwhelmed by the cacophony of blustery rhetoric. Then the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson piped up. "W.E.B. Du Bois was a communist, socialist pig," Peterson crowed. A few of his fellow panelists blanched at his overheated language. But once the shock subsided, laughter rippled through the previously mute crowd, followed by vigorous applause.

It was vintage Peterson. Throughout his fifteen-year career as a right-wing evangelical minister, Peterson has never shied from bombastic assaults on targets ranging from civil rights leaders to liberal Democrats to undocumented immigrants. But while Peterson's strident style may be unique, with his extremist politics he is merely playing the role of front man for a murky, well-funded network of white nationalist activists and right-wing Beltway operatives. By deploying Peterson to gatherings like the Heritage event and into the media, this coterie of conservatives have been able to apply a bold veneer of blackness over the brand of bigotry they find increasingly inconvenient to espouse on their own. Peterson has no professional or political accomplishments to speak of, beyond directing a small inner-city aid ministry and hosting a radio show syndicated on a handful of AM stations across the country. To his sponsors, though, that's irrelevant; it is his immunity from charges of racism that matters.

With John McCain seemingly poised to emerge from Super Tuesday as the de facto front runner in the Republican primary, the question will become just how much he intends to try and make nice with the Religious Right base that does not much like him.

As the McCain campaign admitted last year, his previous efforts to win them over were entirely half-hearted and purely political, but now that he might very well become the nominee, it looks as if some on the Right might be starting to warm up to him out of political necessity:

Republican presidential candidate John McCain today publicly thanked two prominent conservative Christian leaders who have rallied to his defense in recent days.

``I was very pleased to see comments made by people like Tony Perkins and Dr. Richard Land,'' McCain told reporters after a rally in Nashville, Tennessee. ``I appreciate the words that they have been using.''

Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, a conservative public policy group, and Land, a leader in the 16- million member Southern Baptist Convention, have criticized McCain in the past. Perkins told the New York Times that he has ``no residual issue with John McCain,'' while Land told the newspaper McCain ``is strongly pro-life.''

But even in accepting this praise, McCain went out of his way to make it clear that it was not he who did the reaching out :

“I will continue to reach out to all parts of the party but I did not call anyone,'' the Arizona senator said today. McCain's acknowledgement that he is not proactively reaching out to conservative leaders comes a day after he told reporters that he doesn't listen to conservative Rush Limbaugh's radio show.

Should he win the GOP nomination, McCain will undoubtedly change his tune on this issue – but quotes like this won’t be easily forgotten

McCain seems distinctly uninterested when asked questions concerning abortion and gay rights. While campaigning in South Carolina, he told reporters riding with him on his bus that he was comfortable pledging to appoint judges who would strictly interpret the Constitution in part because it would reassure conservatives who might otherwise distrust him.

"It's not social issues I care about," he explained.

Thus, it comes as no surprise that right-wing activists who care only about social issues are attacking him, such as BOND’s Jesse Lee Peterson, Faith and Action’s Rob Schenck, Janet Folger’s RoeGone front group, and various others:

"Most Texans I know think that McCain is the second-least desirable candidate" among all those who ran this year and with Rudy Giuliani out, he's now officially the worst, says Cathie Adams, head of Texas Eagle Forum. "McCain's policies are awful."

…

"He is no conservative. Yes, maybe on the war, although many of us are not happy about the war," said Mitt Romney supporter Paul Weyrich, president of the Free Congress Foundation and a founder of the conservative Heritage Foundation and the Moral Majority. "McCain hates strong conservatives. McCain hates the religious right. Thus far he has made no overtures to us."

When it comes down to it, McCain needs the Right if he hopes to win the presidency – and some of the Religious Right’s political leaders seems to realize that they might have the upper hand at the moment, with Tony Perkins saying that what happens between McCain and the Right going forward entirely "depends on how bad he wants to be president. Really it does."

Few constituencies were more surprised by Barack Obama’s win in last week’s Iowa Democratic caucus than the right-wing media—Clinton obsession has been its bread and butter for over a decade. Nevertheless, the Right is doing its best to prove it will pull no punches no matter who the Democrats nominate.

The Right has hardly refrained from attacking Obama—remember his visit to Rick Warren’s church over a year ago? Or last summer, when the National Clergy Council declared “Obama's Christianity [to be] woefully deficient”? But the last few days have seen a seeming uptick in the number of anti-Obama articles: For example, Human Events editor-at-large Terence Jeffrey warned that the Democrat is “the most pro-abortion presidential candidate ever.” A CNSNews piece surveyed African-American religious-right activists on the candidate, such as Rev. Clenard Childress of Blackgenocide.org, who implied that abortion is worse for blacks than was lynching, and Jesse Lee Peterson of BOND, who said, “For Barack Obama to support abortion shows a lack of love for the black community and especially for the unborn."

But the Illinois senator’s faith seems to be the most appealing target of the Right. Newsmax correspondent Ronald Kessler offers a menacing warning that Obama attends a black church whose pastor propounds the “thesis that blacks in America are oppressed.” “At the least,” writes Kessler, “Obama’s membership in [Rev. Jeremiah] Wright’s church suggests a lack of judgment and an insensitivity to views that are repugnant to the vast majority of white Americans who are not bigots.”

(In particular, Kessler objects to the “Black Value System” on the church’s website. “One can only imagine the outrage that would erupt if a white presidential candidate like Romney subscribed to something called the White Value System,” he writes. One can only imagine what Kessler would think if he knew about the Religious Right’s “Black Contract with America on Moral Values.”)

But if Kessler wants to present Obama as a radical Christian, he’s going to have a lot of competition from those on the Right who want to present Obama as a radical Muslim, a (needless to say, inaccurate) smear that continues to be distributed as an e-mail forward. Daniel Pipes (nominated by Bush to the U.S. Institute of Peace) wrote an article for David Horowitz’s FrontPage Magazine purportedly “confirming” the senator’s secret Muslim past.

Kessler concludes his report on Obama’s pastor with a bizarre comparison:

But media bias or not, if Obama is his party’s nominee, his Republican opponent will rightly be able to make use of Rev. Wright and his radical teachings as effectively as supporters of George H.W. Bush used Willie Horton’s furlough to help Bush win the presidency.

The 20-year-old Horton ad would hardly be the first campaign strategy to come to mind, unless Kessler were recalling the ad’s widespread reputation as a crypto-racist attack on Michael Dukakis. In that sense, comparing it to these insinuations about the black church may be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Jesse Lee Peterson, Founder and President of the Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny, declares that Dog the Bounty Hunter is not racist and announces a book signing: "The Los Angeles based nonprofit organization BOND, the Brotherhood Organization of A New Destiny, will host a Book Signing for Duane "Dog" Chapman's book 'You Can Run But You Can't Hide', as well as a Christmas toy giveaway for kids on Saturday, December 15, at 11:30a.m.PST."

The idea that undocumented immigrants are causing a crime wave in the U.S.—while not supported by evidence—has been a mainstay of anti-immigrant activists for decades. For example, in instituting ordinances against hiring or renting to immigrants, Hazleton, Pennsylvania Mayor Lou Barletta claimed that immigrants were “terroriz[ing]” the city. But defending the ordinances in court, Barletta could not back this claim up. “The people in my city don’t need numbers,” the frustrated mayor declared when confronted with the city’s own statistics showing the opposite.

Similarly, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) and Minuteman Project founder Jim Gilchrist have been touting phony numbers on immigrants and crime.

But if statistics don’t back up their claims, anti-immigrant activists can always latch on to anecdotes. A recent multiple-homocide in Newark, New Jersey has implicated illegal immigrants, and national activists quickly descended upon the city, claiming that the crime was linked to local police not questioning suspects’ immigration status.

Yesterday, a collection of extremist right-wing groups, including BOND and Repent America, along with former Navy chaplain and fringe-right folk hero Gordon Klingenschmitt, held a press conference at the U.S. Capitol to protest Senate hate crimes legislation. The event continued the right-wing’s on-going effort to falsely portray an upcoming Senate bill that would add sexual orientation, gender, and disability to the existing federal hate crime law, as an attack on Christianity.

BOND’s Jesse Lee Peterson puts the legislation into perspective:

“If Christians don’t wake up to what is happening, they will look around one day and realize that they cannot even mention the name of God or disagree with homosexuality.”

Klingenschmitt then more specifically describes the threat:

“If this bill passes, they will come into our churches, they will grab your sermon notes, they will go after your congregation if any pastor preaches against the sin of homosexuality and then a nut in the crowd later goes out and commits a crime. They will accuse him as a codefendant and charge him with a hate speech crime.”

Of course there’s no such thing as a “hate speech crime” in this bill or the existing federal hate crimes law, which targets only violent crimes that cause people bodily harm.  In fact, the “Hate Crimes Prevention Act” already passed by the House includes explicit language protecting the First Amendment rights that Klingenschmitt and his colleagues claim are being threatened.

Repent America’s Michael Marcavage says that the bill’s focus on violent acts is somehow part of a secret strategy:

“[Hate-crime legislation proponents are] doing this in a strategic manner because they say it only applies to violence or violent acts.”

Sure, the law may SAY it only applies to violent crimes, and sure, it may include clear protections for religious leaders and anyone else to speak out against homosexuality, but it’s all part of a slippery slope that will lead to preachers being dragged from their pulpits.

Ah, the old slippery slope argument. Remember then-Senator Rick Santorum insisting that overturning laws against sodomy would lead to acceptance of man-dog sex? Coincidently, this contention also happened to be presented during the press conference by Rev. Jonathan Hunter of LEARN:

“Pastors not only have a right, but an obligation to state emphatically that, according to scripture, a man or woman should not perform a sex act with a person of the same sex, nor with a dog, nor with a snake, nor with a hamster or any other creature.”

As we previously noted, even the urban legend website Snopes.com has debunked the Religious Right’s claims about the hate crimes law. And a group of religious leaders held their own press event in support of the law a day earlier.  But when it comes to portraying supporters of legal protection for gay Americans as enemies of religious liberty, right-wing leaders don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story.

BOND’s Jesse Lee Peterson, Star Parker, Mychal Massie, ex-Bush advisor Claude Allen – plus Brownback. Meanwhile: “Black Genocide” speaker attacks Obama.

Flushed with adrenaline after having grappled with those nebulous, non-existent forces that sought to “annihilate expressions of Christmas and Christianity” this Holiday season, some on the Right just cannot bring themselves to lay down their arms.

And the Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny’s Jesse Lee Peterson is no longer content to merely play defense and has gone on the offensive  - against Kwanzaa: 

On the observance of the 40th anniversary of Kwanzaa (celebrated Dec. 26 to Jan. 1) Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, founder and president of BOND, the Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny, is calling on blacks to abandon this “godless holiday.” Kwanzaa was founded by Maulana Karenga in 1966 to “help blacks get in touch with their African roots.” Karenga is a violent ex-con who served time in prison for torturing two women. He was also the head of the United Slaves Organization, a violent “black power” group …

Rev. Peterson said, “Kwanzaa was designed to separate blacks from Christmas and Christianity. Kwanzaa is anti-white and anti-American. Black Americans need to make a choice between the Prince of Peace and the Marxist Karenga.

The Right is apparently so committed to winning this fictitious “War on Christmas” that it had decided to launch its own counterattack.

It is ironic that the only perceptible victim to date in the “War on Christmas” appears to be Kwanzaa.

Jesse Lee Peterson of Brotherhood Organization for a New Destiny is a frequent right-wing speaker. More on Peterson.

Only “racist liberals” would think it’s racist, says Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, a frequent right-wing speaker.