In June, Pacifica Radio’s Los Angeles station, KPFK-FM, hosted a thirty-hour marathon of Dr. Kwaku Person-Lynn’s anti-Semitic ‘Afrikan Mental Liberation Weekend.’ It was the first time this once-annual program appeared for almost a decade. It had been banned by station management in 1993, after a long, hard-fought pressure campaign to remove it.
Afrikan Mental Liberation Weekend typically includes claims that the Jews disproportionately participated in the slave trade and persecuted blacks; in the past, Person-Lynn responded to criticism by calling the regional director of the Anti-Defamation League a ‘psychotic, idiotic, European Jew.’ He also has stated that Jews who were white weren’t really Jews but had stolen their Jewish identity from black men. He’s even allowed open calls for genocide on the air: When one caller suggested that ‘what’s going to happen to them [the Jews] is going to make what Hitler did to them seem like a party,’ the California State University instructor let that slide by unchallenged, thanking the caller for his insights.
It would be bad enough if only one bigot were returning to Pacifica, but Person-Lynn’s not the only one fighting to come back. Former programmer Ron Wilkins was fired from his show ‘Continent to Continent’ in 1995, for admitting three previously dismissed programmers to the studio and allowing them to rant about the evils of ‘white Left.’ One of these speakers, discussing relations between blacks and whites, said, ‘I am a firm believer that we are at war.’ Now Wilkins, a fervent African nationalist, is campaigning hard for a return to prime time.
Wilkins was always slightly more subtle than Person-Lynn – instead of referring directly to Jews, he talked incessantly about the ‘Westside.’ Wilkins dismissed any opposition to him as catering to the ‘affluent, Westside listener.’ But Wilkins isn’t just talking about the wealthy. What group has been especially concentrated on the ‘Westside’ in Los Angeles’ Jews. What group are black racists referring to when they refer to the ‘Westside’ Jews.
The only other group Wilkins dislikes more is the ‘paint-jobs,’ the blacks or Hispanics at KPFK-FM less prejudiced than himself. These Jew-bashers already have plenty of company at Pacifica, disguising themselves as impartial, cutting-edge public affairs broadcasters. Don Bustany’s been running an anti-Israeli show, ‘Middle East in Focus,’ since 1996, during which time he has turned ‘Focus’ into an exquisite outlet for Palestinian propaganda.
To his credit, Bustany occasionally – very occasionally – has a supporter of Israel on to present a pro-Israel viewpoint. Not so at another KPFK-FM radio show, Radio Intifada, whose host, Michael Shehadeh, is a long-time Palestinian activist whom the United States government has been fighting in the courts to deport.
The government says Shehadeh has a history of raising funds for the terrorist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. More recently, Shehadeh’s been cooperating with the communist Workers World Party in their latest front group, International A.N.S.W.E.R.
Although these leftists claim they are simply ‘anti-Zionist’ and have nothing against Jews or Judaism, even their fellow far-left broadcasters disbelieve them. In January 2002, the host of KPFK-FM’s ‘Feminist Magazine,’ Tricia Roth, was so disgusted by the imbalance she resigned from her show. As she put it, ‘[e]very time Israel so much as burps, Pacifica covers it extensively. Yet, when information exists that may give context to Israel’s actions, or could reflect negatively on the Palestinians, it’s normally absent from Pacifica’s airwaves.’
KPFK-FM supplements its bigotry against Jews with the presence of out-and-out cranks – for instance, Mike Ruppert, a former LAPD officer who now runs a small publishing company called ‘From the Wilderness Publications.’ His company specializes in publicizing unfounded conspiracy theories, e.g., claiming the CIA is secretly running a drug cartel; that Senator Paul Wellstone’s plane crash was a government-sponsored murder; that the president of the United States had advance knowledge of 9/11 and simply allowed it to happen, etc.
