Extremism makes strange bedfellows. The Jewish Defense League is trying to rally Toronto Jews to protest against the city’s Pride parade committee by comparing gay people… to Nazis.
Ironically — as the Forward reported in January — a right-wing fanatic named Scott Lively had floated the notion that Nazis were “a homosexual, pagan cult” in a widely discredited book.
This time around, Toronto lesbian/gay newspaper Xtra reports, the JDL is using the comparison to lure Toronto Jews to a demonstration at Pride Toronto’s offices. JDL’s Facebook invitation asserts, in part, that “during the Nazi era, many high-ranking Nazis were gay,” Xtra reports.
Fifteen years after Tupac Shakur’s murder, the FBI has released documents showing that the rapper received death threats from the Jewish Defense League as part of an extortion scheme.
The papers reveal an FBI request for additional time to investigate the matter, with the organization interested in determining “whether the extortionate activities … are in furtherance of the social and/or political goals of the JDL.” They show a scheme in which the League notified the rapper of alleged death threats, then provided “protection services” while working out a “deal” with the supposed threat maker. After receiving money from the musician, the JDL would announce an agreement with the would-be killer, allowing Shakur to return to normal life. The papers don’t show any connection between the JDL and Shakur’s unsolved murder, which occurred in Las Vegas in 1996. Rumors since that time have focused on the so-called East Coast-West Coast rap rivalry of the 1990s, which claimed the life of Shakur rival the Notorious B.I.G. the following year.
Copyright © 2013, Forward Association, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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