Larry Johnson, former Kansas City Chiefs running back, tweets anti-Semitic tropes

Marcy Oster
Published August 4, 2020

(JTA) — Another athlete is using Twitter to promote anti-Semitic tropes.

This time it’s Larry Johnson, a former running back who played seven seasons for the Kansas City Chiefs until 2009, when he was suspended for “conduct detrimental to the club” for a series of tweets using gay slurs. He was later waived by the team.

On Sunday, Johnson tweeted to his more than 147,000 followers that “African Americans overwhelmingly underperform in the area of: Human Trafficking, Sex Trafficking, Pedophilia, Ritualistic Child Torture, Perversion, Human Sacrifice/Murder…than the Jewish cabal @maxkellerman said don’t exist.”

The tweet is an apparent response to Max Kellerman, the host of ESPN’s “First Take,” who said on the air recently that “Jews do not have a plan for world domination,” according to the Forward. Kellerman was responding to social media posts by another NFL star, DeSean Jackson, who last month posted a quote he attributed to Adolf Hitler accusing Jews of having a “plan for world domination.” Jackson subsequently removed the post and apologized.

On Saturday, Johnson posted a video of Alan Dershowitz speaking to the pro-Israel organization Stand With Us in which the famed attorney said, in part, “We have earned the right to influence public debate, we have earned the right to be heard.” Johnson’s accompanying tweet accused Jews of seeking to conceal “a lucrative market in pedophilia, human trafficking, child sex trafficking & torture.”

Also on Saturday, Johnson tweeted: “All roads lead to Rome, with a layover in Israel…”

On Monday, Johnson noted the attention his tweets had garnered, posting: “I angered ‘Rabbis’ from here to Israel.”

Since February, Johnson has hosted the Sight to the Blind podcast, which its description says “explores the dark roots of our society and culture to expose deep secrets that remain untold.” An early July episode of the podcast is entitled “Anti-Semite.” The episode description reads: “This is not a war of races but a war of nations. If you don’t know who controls the propaganda in this war, how can you tell who is the real enemy? Those who are not a nation have conspired to keep the true nation of Israel asleep and will use race and Hollywood marriages like The Smiths to do it.”

Another podcast episode description reads, in part: “What is the true nation of Israel? Where does the bloodline really come from? What is Satan’s scheme in today’s world?”

Johnson frequently quotes Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who has called Jews “bloodsuckers” and “termites,” according to StopAntiSemitism.org. The website last month named Johnson its “Anti-Semite of the Week,” noting his “bigoted and violent behavior is nothing new and spans over a decade.”

 
 

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