Trayvon Martin Case Evokes Reaction from Extremists, White and Black

The killing of Trayvon Martin has aroused the passions of extremists on both sides of the racial divide, with some blaming civil rights leaders and the media for the controversy – and black separatist leaders suggesting vigilante justice for the neighborhood watch volunteer who shot the unarmed 17-year-old in Florida.

Joseph Farah at WorldNet Daily, the archconservative website that has tirelessly attacked President Obama’s citizenship, dismissed the activism surrounding the African-American teen’s killing as bald opportunism. “[W]hen the race hustlers like Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and race hustler-in-chief Barack Obama started exploiting, I began to think we were being conned once again, by (the) vicious, biased, America-hating, leftist-controlled press,” Farah wrote on Sunday.

Farah went on to cite the case of a white teen set on fire by two black teens last month in Kansas City. “This is a real hate crime,” Farah said, “the kind you won’t likely see reported on the national media and the kind you won’t likely hear race hustling politicians like Sharpton, Jackson and Obama talking about.”

White nationalist Kyle Rogers, a board member of the white nationalist Council of Conservative Citizens, also attacked the media. “Almost all of the news items about George Zimmerman and Trayvon contains [sic] a combination of false statements, opinions presented as facts, transparent distortions, and a complete absence of some of some of the most relevant details,” Rogers wrote on Saturday. “Is the media really reporting the news, or is this classic agitation/propaganda to advance a political agenda?”

Civil rights leaders also were criticized by Jesse Lee Peterson, a black, anti-gay preacher who once thanked God for slavery. He said their actions are not about justice. “It’s about getting even with whites and gaining political power,” he wrote in a March 22 news release. “This is black hatred of white people and a result of more than fifty years of brainwashing by racist civil-rights leaders.”

Meanwhile, Louis Farrakhan, head of the Nation of Islam, said in a message to his followers on Twitter, “Where there is no justice, there will be no peace. Soon the law of retaliation may very well be applied.”

Even more bluntly, New Black Panther Party leader Mikhail Muhammad announced over the weekend he was starting a “Wanted: Dead or Alive” campaign to bring justice for Trayvon. He offered a $10,000 bounty for the capture of George Zimmerman, the Hispanic man who shot Martin, according to the Orlando Sentinel.

When asked whether he was inciting violence,” Muhammad replied, “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.”

The shooting in Sanford, Fla., occurred on Feb. 26 after Zimmerman spotted Martin wearing a hooded sweatshirt returning from a store to buy Skittles and iced tea. The Orlando Sentinel reported today that authorities say witnesses have corroborated “much of” Zimmerman’s claim that he was left bloody and battered after Martin punched him and slammed his head into the sidewalk.