I've been looking into the DeSean Jackson story this morning, and let me tell you, it is even more bizarre than you might imagine. I wrote about it here: https://apocalypsesports.net/boy-this-desean-jackson-story-is-plenty-weird/ It's behind a paywall, but I'll do a quick thread to give you the gist.

The background: DeSean Jackson, whose previous worst thing was that punt return against the Giants, posted an Instagram story in which he shared this quote from, um, Adolf Hitler:

"[white Jews] will blackmail America. [They] will extort America, their plan for world domination won't work if the Negroes know who they were."

As you can imagine, the bulk of the coverage has been about the blatant anti-Semitism on display. Which, fair.

Just blatantly posting a Hitler quote, much less one about the Jewish people, pretty much shows where Jackson's head is at.

But man, it gets so much weirder.

If you're like me, your first thought, after the surprise wore off, was, "wait...that really, really doesn't sound like a Hitler quote. Right?"

After all, Hitler—like most white supremacists—was famously and explicitly not a fan of black people. More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_black_people_in_Nazi_Germany

so I googled it. And this is where shit got weird. Turns out, it comes from a book called: "Hidden Treasure That Lies in Plain Sight 4: The day of the Lord and the End of America." Which is not, surprisingly, a home movie that Mac makes on It's Always Sunny. It's a real book.

Here's the cover

you can find it on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Treasure-That-Plain-Sight/dp/1524673625 and in the bio section for Jeremy Sharper, the author, you find this

now I'm going to talk about the Black Hebrew Israelite movement, which is delicate, so let me just say up top that I have no opinion about the merits of this faith. My opinion on EVERY religious belief system that goes beyond "God might be real" is: "seems unlikely." Same here.

anyway, you can read about the Black Hebrew Israelites (BHI from now on) here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_black_people_in_Nazi_Germany The basic gist is that the movement started in the late 1800s, and the central belief is that there's biblical evidence proving that...

African-Americans "are the descendants of the ancient Israelites." I.E., under this belief system, the true children of God. According to the Anti-Defamation League, many are "outspoken anti-Semites." The SPLC classifies some as "separatist hate groups"

again, take all of that for what it's worth. But that's the philosophical terrain DeSean Jackson is treading on here with Shorter's book. So let's get back to "The Hidden Treasure That Lies in Plain Sight" etc etc

In this book, which, again, was written in 2018, Shorter includes foreword by...

you guessed it...

Adolf Hitler. That's quite a get, because I'm told the Fuhrer doesn't do many intros these days, or even jacket copy quotes. Anyway...

as you might guess from a religious movement which uses the bible as a ventriloquist dummy to say what it wants (note: this is most religious movements), the author does the same exact thing here with Hitler. It takes the form a dialogue between the Fuhrer and a soldier.

Here's the first graf:

Couple red flags. First, that Hitler refers to a potential "World War 3," which is kinda funny historically. So is the "Free Mason" and Illuminati references. Hitler was apparently Q-Anon before its time. It gets better:

Let's skip the idea that Hitler used the word "Jews" in an even vaguely positive context, and get to the concept that he considered black people "the jewels of God." Here's what he actually believed, courtesy of Wikipedia:

Is it possible that he had a major change of heart before his death? No, it's not. And in Germany, though there wasn't a policy of mass extinction for black people, they faced discrimination, sterilization, anti-miscegenation laws, and black POWS were sometimes executed

Anyway, the book goes on from there, and Sharper writes (in Hitler's voice) that "white Jews know that the Negroes are the real children of Israel," and then gets into the quote that DeSean Jackson put on his Instagram.

So, it's propaganda. And there's undoubtedly some bleak humor in anyone believing that Hitler said any of this. To put a fine point on it, he didn't, and the whole "foreword" is purely the invention of the author.

Why did Shorter want to use Hitler, of all people, as his mouthpiece? Maybe it's the bond of anti-Semitism, an "enemy of my enemy" thing that allowed him to ignore the truth of what Hitler believed and did to black people. But it leaves a few linger questions for DeSean Jackson:

1. Is he a member of the BHI movement, or just someone who quotes them in support?

2. Did he really think those Hitler quotes were legitimate?

3. Assuming yes, why on earth would he think it was cool to use Hitler as a mouthpiece for ANY views, much less his own?

DeSean Jackson's response was this:

"Anyone who feels I have hate towards the Jewish community took my post the wrong way. " have no hatred in my heart toward no one!! Equality. Equality."

There are two conclusions here. First, in regards to Jackson's response:

Bullshit.

Second, as always:

This is a weird fucking country, man.

/thread