Malik Shabazz of the New Black Panther Party called FOX’s Sean Hannity out. According to Jason Linkins on The Huffington Post, Hannity asked Shabazz:
“What I don’t think you’re understanding here, Malik, is that when you hear the minister of him for 20 years, when you hear the associations with Louis Farrakhan, one of the biggest racists and anti-Semites in the country, what you’re not understanding is, America hears extremism at its worst.”
To which Shabazz responded:
“Let me ask you this. Are you to be judged by your promotion and association with Hal Turner?”
Linkins reports that Hannity replied:
“I don’t know anybody named – this is nonsense. I don’t…”
As you can see on the YouTube clip, Hannity talked over Shabazz, waved his hand around, at one point said they’re running out of time, and, seconds after denying that he even knew Hal Turner, said:
“Sir, sir… That was a man that was banned from my radio show ten years ago, that ran a Senate campaign in New Jersey.”
Max Blumenthal reported in The Nation that Hal Turner was a North Jersey organizer for Pat Buchanan’s 1992 presidential bid. But Hal Turner is more than that. According to Blumenthal, Turner posts bomb-making instructions online and advocates for the killing of illegal immigrants. Turner was a frequent caller to Hannity’s WABC-AM talk show under the moniker “Hal from North Bergen,” and, Blumental says, talked off-air with Hannity about his struggle to overcome his cocaine habit and his homosexual yearnings.
Linkins records more of Hannity’s exchange with Shabazz on his Huffington Post blog:
Hannity said, “I’m not running for president.”
“A neo Nazi, you backed his career,” Shabazz said.
Hannity answered, “That is an absolute, positive, lie and you’ve been reading the wrong websites…, my friend. Good try.”
Sean Hannity, who comes on WABC-AM in the afternoon, did in fact provide “Hal from North Bergen” the WABC-AM secret telephone number so that he would have no trouble calling in to his talk show. Hal Turner was also a frequent caller to the Bob Grant talk show on the same New York station, sister station to WPLJ.
Bob Grant was a pioneer of racist and inflammatory talk radio on WABC-AM from 1984 to 1996, the year Grant was fired for making controversial remarks about the death of US Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown. Grant returned as a guest host in July 2007.
Blumenthal calls Grant “a hysterical racist” who, in March 1995, took the call of “a promoter for the neo-Nazi group National Alliance who billed his mission as the ‘support of European males.’ ‘I don’t have a problem with the National Alliance!’ Grant twice declared. Less than one month later, the Oklahoma City Federal Building was blown up by a white supremacist who said he was influenced by the plot of National Alliance founder William Pierce’s pulp novel, The Turner Diaries. Grant insisted on his show for days afterward that Arabs were responsible for the bombing.”
Of course, clean-shaven Timothy McVeigh was responsible for the Oklahoma City Federal Office Building domestic terrorism tragedy that killed 168 people.
WABC-AM’s roster includes Curtis Silwa of the Guardian Angels, Rush Limbaugh, and, since December 2007, Don Imus.
Thanks to my husband for the Huffington Post link.