First appeared on FOX: Biden's White House adviser was employed for decades as the pastor of a Washington, D.C. church that has hosted several activists and religious leaders with long histories of anti-Semitism, including a Black activist who in a 2002 speech called for the murder of Israeli “Zionists” and their babies.
The Rev. Thomas Bowen, who is listed as Shiloh Baptist Church's social justice pastor on its website and has held several leadership roles at the church since 2002, joined the White House in February. White House Office of Public Policyaims to “work at the local, state and national levels to ensure that local leaders, diverse perspectives and new voices all have an opportunity to inform the President's work.”
Shiloh Baptist Church is a historically black church attended by Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband. Visiting at Christmas 2022is led by the Rev. Dr. Wallace Charles Smith, Shiloh's senior pastor and Bowen's longtime mentor. In a sermon before the Shiloh congregation last month, Bowen called Smith a “hero,” a “friend” and a “mentor … to whom I owe a debt that I can never repay.”
Bowen's social media Full of praise Pastor Smith has invited several activists with a long history of anti-Semitism into his church.
Left-wing activist who employed one of Farrakhan's 'top soldiers' visited Biden's White House seven times
Thomas Bowen serves as Biden's senior public policy adviser. (Instagram/Thomas Bowen)
In April 2018, Reverend Smith hosted the National Black Men's Conference at Shiloh Baptist Church. The conference was billed as a five-day summit aimed at “mobilizing and organizing our brothers for a better future for our communities” and opposing President Trump. Each day had a different theme, including reparations. Several of the speakers involved in the summit also had problematic histories of anti-Semitism and vulgar comments about white people.
A few months before the conference, Smith met at Shiloh Baptist Church with conference co-organizer Malik Shabazz, founder of Black Lawyers for Justice and former chairman of the New Black Panther Party, whom the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) describes as “a racist black nationalist with a long, well-documented history of violent anti-Semitic rhetoric and denunciations of the inherent evil of white people.” Posted a photo of him Shabazz posted a photo on Facebook of him embracing Smith and saying they had a “great meeting” together. He added that “Pastor Smith and other pro-black Christian preachers will be speaking” at the conference.
Shabazz posted a photo with notorious anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan in 2020 with the caption “I've been around the best people,” and last year called the Nation of Islam leader “one of the greatest influences in my life.” He also made multiple posts in the months leading up to the 2018 convention promoting Shiloh Baptist Church as the organizers of the convention, including a video showing Shabazz attending church events while Bowen was on the church's payroll.
The SPLC's website lists some of the vile comments made by Shabazz. Includes remarks from a 2002 speech In Washington, DC, he reportedly said, “Kill all the f**king Zionists in Israel! F**king babies, f**king old women! Blow up the Zionist supermarkets!” In another speech in the early 2000s, he also asserted the anti-Semitic trope that “Zionists” control the media and foreign policy.
Farrakhan-linked Democratic National Committee chairman tells Democrats to 'act right' until the election, then 'act crazy'
Nation of Islam Rev. Louis Farrakhan speaks at St. Sabina Church in Chicago on May 9, 2019. (Ashley Resin/Chicago Sun-Times via The Associated Press)
Earlier this year, Shabazz Posted a photo of him Farrakhan said he had met with former Israeli President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad since 2012 and that “my views are shaped by experience.” He said he had been invited to speak at a Nation of Islam publication by the now-deceased journalist, and that Farrakhan had attended along with dozens of imams. Ahmadinejad has repeatedly called Israel an “illegitimate regime” and called for its “elimination.”
When pressed by Fox News Digital about his relationship with Farrakhan and his long history of anti-Semitic rhetoric, he responded, “I have nothing to do with Louis Farrakhan. I am not an anti-Semite.” Fox published a photo of him and Farrakhan on social media, to which Farrakhan responded, “So, I have no association with Louis Farrakhan right now.”
Another co-organizer of the convention was the late Reverend Hashem Nzinga, who served as chief of staff for the New Black Panther Party until his death in 2020. According to the SPLC, Nzinga made several controversial statements, including that “everyone, white and Jewish, is born the devil.” In a 2016 interview with the Los Angeles Times, when asked about Shabazz's comments about killing Zionists, Nzinga admitted, “I still say it all the time. You have to kill before you get killed. … If someone harms us, we kill them.”
Biden Cabinet official poses with one of Farrakhan's “top soldiers” at Democratic National Convention
Malik Shabazz announced plans for a One Million Young People March on September 6th at Restoration Plaza on Fulton Street in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. (Todd Meisel/NY Daily News Archives via Getty Images)
“In addition, during the interview, Nzinga said that homosexuality is evil, that Jews control the media and are responsible for the September 11 attacks, that black people are God's 'chosen people' and that Jesus himself was black,” the Los Angeles Times reported at the time.
Archived conference dates reveal that Leonard Jeffries, the controversial uncle of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, also spoke at the event. Jeffries, who has a long history of anti-Semitism, is described on the conference's website as “a political scientist who gained national fame in the early 1990s for his historic comments about Jews,” highlighting that Jeffries has said that “Jews funded the slave trade, used the film industry to hurt black people, and gave Jews control over the White House.” [sic] Humans are the “people of ice” and Africans are the “people of the sun.”
Shabazz posted Jeffries' speech on his Facebook page, where Jeffries began by saying “Black power” and asking the audience to applaud Shabazz and Nzinga for organizing the rally. Jeffries also gave a shout-out to Farrakhan during his speech.
Another speaker at the convention was Dr. Boyce Watkins, author of the book “The 10 Commandments of Black Economic Power” and a vocal defender of Farrakhan. In a 2018 tweet, Watkins said: Defending Farrakhan He compared the Jews to termites and said, “Anyone who attacks the Jews should [Louis Farrakhan] “His comment about 'termite control' is probably about termites themselves,” he added. Anti-Semitic metaphors It's like saying Jews control Hollywood and the music industry.
“I love Farrakhan. End of story,” Watkins said in September 2023. And in a 2022 video, he bragged about being invited to the Nation of Islam's annual Savior's Day event, saying the Nation of Islam “is like a brotherhood to me. When I go there, when I get there, I get a lot of love from all my NOI brothers and sisters. I want to give them a shout-out right now.”
It's unclear whether Bowen, a former director of African-American strategy in Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser's office, was involved in planning the conference or attended it, but an archived version of Shiloh's website says he was one of five “associate pastors” at the time of the conference. Bowen did not respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.
A few years ago, in 2015, Rev. Smith hosted Farrakhan and dozens of other black community leaders at his church for an invitation-only meeting to discuss the 20th anniversary of the Million Man March. Farrakhan spoke at the private event, surrounded by Smith, Cora Masters Barry, and several members of the Nation of Islam, who came under fire this summer for the unearthed “Fuck White Women” video.
According to the Washington Infomer, a “woman-owned, multimedia news organization serving African-Americans” in the Washington, D.C., area, Farrakhan said in his Shiloh speech that he believes it's time for black people to “diffuse the pain” rather than just suffer.
President Biden attends the White House Creator Economy Conference in the Indian Treaty Room of the White House on August 14, 2024 in Washington, DC. (Yuri Grypas/Abaca/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Click here to get the FOX News app
Shiloh also hosted former President Obama's controversial pastor, Jeremiah Wright, that year. According to a tweet from Bowen: Wright has previously said he was “preaching” about “miseducating Palestinians.” He previously preached on the topic of “Fuck America,” and used an anti-Semitic trope to blame Jews for preventing him from speaking with Obama after his 2008 presidential victory. The comments drew strong backlash from the Anti-Defamation League at the time, who said Wright's comments were “inflammatory and false.”
“The notion, as expressed in Reverend Wright's statement, that Jews control the White House represents classic anti-Semitism in its most vile form.” An ADL spokesman said in 2009:“In one short, concise sentence, Reverend Wright has succeeded in classifying some of the president's closest associates solely on the basis of their religious beliefs and giving them greater authority than the president himself.”
The White House and Shiloh Baptist Church did not respond to Fox News Digital's requests for comment.
