The Ellison elision, cont’d

Minnesota Fifth District Rep. is an old-time race hustler straight out of the Nation of Islam. He was a self-identified member of the Nation of Islam as recently as his first run for office in 1998. I wrote about his extensive and thoroughly discreditable race hustling background in the Weekly Standard article “Louis Farrakhan’s first congressman.” I posted copies of some key sources in “Keith Ellison for dummies.”

Ellison shuns candor in discussing his background. He whitewashes it. In his recently published memoir, he not only omits his background as a race hustler and advocate of the Nation of Islam, he presents himself as a critic of the Nation. I added back some of what he has left out over the years in the Weekly Standard article “The Ellison elision and in the Star Tribune column “Ellison remembers to forget.”

Minneapolis is of course a Democratic preserve. It is now convulsed in one aspect of the civil war on the left that Steve Hayward has documented at length here. But for my interest in Ellison this would be part 25 of the series Steve has so nobly advanced. The police shooting of Jamar Clark has pitted the Democratic mayor and police chief against disruptive Black Lives Matter protesters and others at the Fourth Precinct and elsewhere around the city.

Ellison has now entered the fray as a power broker. The Star Tribune reports on Ellison’s contribution to the political fallout in Ricardo Lopez’s “U.S. Rep. Ellison emerges as key political leader amid Jamar Clark protests.” Let me simply note that it is the kind of puff piece to which Ellison has grown accustomed in the course of his service in office and that it is simply nauseating in light of Ellison’s history in Minneapolis.

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