With both of Georgia’s U.S. Senate seats set to be decided during the state’s runoff elections on January 5th, national attention has been directed at the two races which continue to rage weeks after the November 3rd election. In the first race, incumbent David Perdue will be looking to fend off his challenger, Democrat Jon Ossoff, whom he beat on Election Day by over 88,000 votes.
In the second race, incumbent Kelly Loeffler — who was appointed to the U.S. senate by Georgia Governor Brian Kemp after Sen. Johnny Isakson resigned — is seeking to defeat Raphael Warnock. Warnock, who is senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, received the largest share of the votes during November 3rd’s special election, but far short of the 50% required to avoid a runoff. Loeffler will be looking to consolidate her 1,273,214 votes (25,9%) with the 980,454 votes (20%) Republican Doug Collins received in order to flip the balance in this race.
If both Perdue and Loeffler fail to hold their seats, the Democrats will achieve a 50 seat split in the U.S. Senate. This would effectively hand the Democrats a Senate majority, with presumptive Vice President Kamala Harris casting the deciding vote. Control of the U.S. Senate is truly hanging in the balance and, as a result, tensions are high.
On Sunday, Loeffler held a debate with Warnock, and members of the Left reacted with disbelief and scorn when Loeffler described the pastor as a “radical liberal.”
Sen. Kelly Loeffler: "Radical liberal Raphael Warnock has called police gangsters, thugs, bullies, and a threat to our children. When I gave him a chance to apologize…he declined." pic.twitter.com/ecWdBCsX58
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) December 7, 2020
The Left often mocks such statements as part of a larger attempt to label — whether accurately or not — every Democrat as a member of a dangerous socialist wave. In this case, however, Loeffler is absolutely correct. If anything, she’s understating Warnock’s radicalism, which is far from “liberal.”
Warnock refuses to renounce his praise of Marxism.
Warnock has repeatedly praised Marxism, including the following excerpt from his 2013 book “The Divided Mind of the Black Church:
“To be sure, the Marxist critique has much to teach the black church. Indeed, it has played an important role in the maturation of black theology as an intellectual discipline, deepened black theology’s apprehension of the interconnectivity of racial and class oppression and provided critical tools for a black church that has yet to awaken to a substantive third world consciousness.”
When asked whether he would “renounce socialism and Marxism” by Loeffler, however, Warnock quickly evaded the question by saying that he “believes in our free enterprise system” and that his “dad was a small business owner.”
If such claims are true, presumably the answer to “will you renounce socialism and Marxism” is simply, “yes.”
Warnock believes you cannot serve God and the military.
During an April 2011 sermon titled “When Truth Meets Power,” Warnock stated that “nobody can serve God and the military,” and that “You can’t serve God and money. You cannot serve God and mammon at the same time.”
WATCH: @ReverendWarnock said "nobody can serve God and the military."
His radical values speak to his loyalty to @chuckschumer and liberal, out-of-state Democrats. Georgians want no part of it. #GASen #gapol pic.twitter.com/pL78WG1VGS
— The Senate Majority (@NRSC) November 18, 2020
With radical members of the Democratic party openly calling for defunding and deconstructing the United States military, Warnock’s position is arguably even more extreme. His argument clearly posits that serving your country and serving God are mutually exclusive, standing as a direct attack on the faith of countless active and past members of the military.
Warnock also avoids criticizing Fidel Castro.
One of the attacks launched by Loeffler’s campaign on Warnock relates to communist dictator and mass murderer Fidel Castro, who visited a church in Harlem 25 years ago where Warnock was working as a youth pastor. While much of this “controversy” is politically manufactured, making the somewhat unsubstantiated claim that Warnock supported Castro’s invitation, it’s important to acknowledge Warnock’s repeated attempt to avoid criticizing the brutal authoritarian.
While CNN made an open partisan effort to defend Warnock — describing him as a “capitalist and a Christian” without any journalistic interest in Warnock’s rhetoric — when questioned by CNN’s own Jake Tapper on whether he understood why people view Castro “as a murderous tyrant and not someone to be celebrated,” Warnock responded by accusing Loeffler of “trying to change the subject.” Many would ask, and understandably so, why a “capitalist” would try and avoid Tapper’s question.
Warnock said that (some) police Officers are “gangsters and thugs…”
With the Black Lives Matter movement central to much of the Democratic party’s “progressive” platform, and countervailing positions becoming central to much of the Republican party’s efforts, Warnock’s past statements on the subject of “police brutality” have come under heavy scrutiny. For example, Tucker Carlson criticized Warnock during a segment on Fox News, saying that the pastor had called police officers “thugs” and compared them to “violent street gangs.” Loeffler’s campaign released a statement in response, echoing Carlson’s condemnation.
“For months, Democrats have fueled the anti-police sentiment in this country – villainizing our police officers, attempting to defund our police departments, and organizing anti-police rallies in our streets. But for years, Raphael Warnock has railed against the police from his pulpit – calling them gangsters and thugs, claiming they endanger our children, and dismissing them as bullies on the street.”
FactCheck.org criticized Loeffler’s supposed lack of context, saying that she ignored that Warnocks comments “were specific to the circumstances surrounding the death of Michael Brown, a young black man who was shot and killed in 2014 by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri,” and that “his campaign said he wasn’t referring to all officers.”
With familiar irony, FactCheck.org’s “fact check” itself lacked context, given that Michael Brown’s shooting was — according to Barack Obama’s own Department of Justice — justified.
Warnock praised the anti-Semitic and anti-American Jeremiah Wright.
Warnock has stirred controversy for his praise of Jeremiah Wright — an anti-Semitic and anti-American former pastor of Barack Obama who said “America’s chickens are coming home to roost” shortly after 9/11 and that “them Jews” in the Obama administration were preventing Obama and Wright from talking to one another. Warnock described Wright’s controversial “God Damn America” sermon as “very fine.” This “very fine” sermon included the comparison of America to al-Qaeda, the suggestion that “the U.S. government distributed illegal drugs in America’s cities,” and that HIV was invented by the U.S. government “as a means of genocide against people of color.”
Warnock pushed an anti-Semitic blood libel, comparing Israelis to ‘birds of prey.’
Warnock has also been heavily criticized for promoting an anti-Semitic blood libel during a 2018 sermon:
“We need a two-state solution where all of God’s children can live together. We saw the government of Israel shoot down unarmed Palestinian sisters and brothers like birds of prey … It is wrong to shoot down God’s children like they don’t matter at all. And it’s no more anti-Semitic for me to say that than it is anti-white for me to say that black lives matter. Palestinian lives matter.”
Alongside other religious leaders, Warnock also issued a joint statement in 2019 which likened Israel to apartheid South Africa and Communist East Germany:
“We saw the patterns that seem to have been borrowed and perfected from other previous oppressive regimes. The ever-present physical walls that wall in Palestinians in a political wall reminiscent of the Berlin Wall. … The heavy militarization of the West Bank, reminiscent of the military occupation of Namibia by apartheid South Africa.”
***
Given that Warnock has not renounced socialism or Marxism, has praised anti-Semitic and anti-American rhetoric, and is an advocate for policies which are in line with other radical members of the Democratic party, Loeffler’s assessment that Warnock is a “radical liberal” seems spot on.
Ian Haworth is host of The Ian Haworth Show and The Truth in 60 Seconds. Follow him on Twitter at @ighaworth.
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.