Wiley's War With The Jews
/For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my own people, my kindred according to the flesh — Romans 9: 3
Not many newspapers seem to be interested in the fact that Wiley was in Rotterdam at the end of July. In fact, the only newspapers that are still interested in Wiley or his stay in Rotterdam are the Jewish Chronicle and the Jerusalem Post. The seemingly bewildering fact that anyone in Jerusalem should be interested in the summer sojourn of a 41-year-old grime artist from London becomes somewhat less mystifying when one learns that Wiley’s stay in Holland accounts for the fact that the police in England have dropped an investigation into Wiley’s alleged anti-semitism. As the Jewish Chronicle reports
It is one of the loopholes of the internet that a British person can post so many anti-semitic tweets and posts, clearly intended for a British audience and doing so much damage to community relations in this country, but because he was not in the UK at the time he can’t be prosecuted here.1
The apparent lack of wider media interest in Wiley’s avoidance of prosecution is in stark contrast to the media frenzy which erupted when the said “anti-semitic tweets and posts” first appeared on Twitter and Instagram at the end of July. I don’t think it’s too much of an exaggeration to say that at the time it was difficult to work out which pandemic was more of a threat to the well-being of the nation and indeed the whole world, such was the consternation and outrage which Wiley aroused. The corona virus pandemic had some precedents – from the Black Death to the Spanish flu – to which all have been looking for insight and perspective. The historical context in which to place the Wiley episode is that long-running, largely American saga known as the Black-Jewish alliance.
In this UK episode, the Jewish parts were played by everyone from the current and former Chief Rabbis to a whole host of Jewish media and culture personalities, as well as Jewish defence organizations and hashtags, the existence of which, I’ll wager, most English people have never even heard. Having said that, I doubt if most English people have ever heard of the Black-Jewish alliance. Having said that, this English episode contained many of the essential ingredients that have characterized the alliance and its subsequent collapse. The Jewish part was also taken by just about every other person in England who has a computer, including every musician and singer, not least many of the friends and fellow grime artists of the Black protagonist. All social media platforms took the Jewish part. The Black part was played by Wiley.
Having read the Wiley Tweets which generated the central conceit upon which all the action turned, it’s clear that Wiley himself has a somewhat rudimentary understanding of the Black-Jewish alliance, and of that, it’s clear that he is more attuned to the alienation and antagonism which have characterized the alliance, than to any of its merits. Nevertheless, the potential benefit of the Black-Jewish alliance for her son had long been apparent to Wiley’s mother, as explained by Wiley’s Jewish ex-manager John Woolf:
It was 2007, and we met in Hoxton. When I met him, the first thing he said to me was that his mum had told him that he needed a Jewish manager.2
Wiley duly appointed John Woolf as his manager. And now, having sacked and rehired John Woolf a dozen times, it would appear that Wiley has some serious “beef” not just with his ex-manager (it looks like it’s really over this time) but Jews more generally. On Friday 24th July, at 11:28pm to be precise, Wiley tweeted: “When I war with the jewish [sic] community I do not lose trust me [sic] … ask John Woolf3” John Woolf responded the next day: “Following Wileys [sic] antisemitic tweets today we at @A_ListMGMT have cut all ties with him. There is no place in society for antisemitism.4”
The “anti-semitic” Tweets in question include at 11:28pm: “Jewish people you think you are too important [sic] I am sick of you5” And at 11:39pm: “If you work for a company owned by 2 Jewish men and you challenge the Jewish community in anyway [sic] of course you will get fired6”… and at 11:43pm: “In prison Jewish people get looked after differently too [sic] other people and in hospitals and police stations7”
I have no idea how Jews get treated in prison, but I’m certain that Wiley should be arrested without delay by the grammar police and sent to punctuation prison – a life sentence for repeated violations of the Offences Against the Sentence Act with additional hard labour for serial spelling violations.
The grammar police are the least of Wiley’s worries, now that he has felt the full force of the Internet police and has just avoided further investigation by the Metropolitan Police, which must come as something of a disappointment to members of the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, a spokesman for whom explained at the time:
Our crime unit has reported this matter to the Metropolitan Police Service as we consider that Wiley has committed the offence of incitement to racial hatred, which can carry a substantial prison sentence.”8
I’m not sure if Wiley has cancelled any of his other holiday plans, but he now knows all about what it means to be “cancelled.” And I mean cancelled as no man, with the possible exception of E. Michael Jones, has been cancelled in the short and ignominious history of cancel culture. Not satisfied with dynamic silence as a response, the Jews have seen to it that Wiley has been on the receiving end of an all-out, land-sea-and-air, thermonuclear cancelling, which has seen him denounced by everyone from the Prime Minister and the Chief Rabbi to the lowliest of Wiley’s fellow artists. Wiley has been banished from every social media platform known to man and, as someone tweeted at the height of the drama, “by the end of the week Wiley will be lucky if he can still send a text message.”
Even the Black newspaper, The Voice – “a campaigning newspaper since its inception: tackling race inequality and social injustice for the Black community”9 – published an article on July 29 which asked if “within his [Wiley’s] ranting were there any salient points?”10 only to remove the said article on July 30. It was on July 31 that I discovered that the offending article had been removed, the news of which I found, not in the Voice, but in Jewish News11 and in the Jewish Chronicle.12 In fact, The Voice has so distanced itself from the article – in which it had already quite strictly socially distanced itself from Wiley and his “rant” –that a search for the article brings you to a statement on the Voice website which does not even mention the offending article, but explains that “It saddens us deeply that persons have implied that we are anti-Semitic.”13 Who these persons are, it does not say. The statement ends: “We are in conversation with Jewish leaders and have given them the right of reply.”14
Wiley - the Jamaican connection
Wiley – real name, Richard Kylea Cowie – included in one of his Tweets a classic Afro-centric meme, arising from the Black-Jewish alliance/antagonism repertoire:
I don’t care Cos Israel is ours what about that…Listen to me Jewish community Israel is not your country I’m sorry…15
This assertion relating to claims about the rightful occupants of the Holy Land reveals a good deal about Wiley’s background. We Catholics, of course, have an overriding concern for the salvation of the Jews which arises from ongoing – and now in some cases Catholic – confusion about the existence, not of a Jewish homeland, but the purported existence of a Jewish covenant with the Almighty:
Those today who insist the Jews still have their Old Covenant thus doom the Jews to eternal damnation, since the Old Covenant cannot save a single soul (Heb 9:9-10).16
Wiley, on the other hand, was repeating a charge against the Jews that arises from an aspect of the Black historico-political imagination, which has itself infused and in a certain way nourished the Black-Jewish alliance, the formal commencement of which is usually associated with the establishment in the U.S. of the NAACP in 1909,17 and is characterized, at least in some respects, by the mutual identification of the one group with the suffering of the other. Reflecting on the role of early 20th century organizations like the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League, Jewish historian Murray Friedman explains:
It is significant, however, that Jews did not just organize for their own defense; they also rallied to the defense of blacks, who faced even greater terrors. Why did Jews do so? Possibly it was because, as a pariah people themselves, they easily identified with another group of even more oppressed outsiders. They were no doubt also encouraged by the implicit moral imperatives of Judaism18
When it comes to manifestations of the Black-Jewish alliance in the world of popular music, no-one renders more forcefully the sense of Jewish identification with Black suffering than Jerry Heller, the Jewish co-founder of Ruthless Records and manager of N***as With Attitude,19 who explains the struggle he faced when choosing a title for his auto-biography:
I wanted to call this book Nigga 4 Life, but the f***ing corporate gangstas who’ve taken over the bookselling dodge in this country wouldn’t support it if I did. I’ve always been an anti-establishment kind of guy, and the idea of having to cave in to the dictates of superstore goons galls me to hell. Because, yeah, I make that claim. I’ve always been a n***a 4 life. I say that knowing full well the awful freight that the N word carries with it. I was a n***a on the streets of Cleveland when I was growing up, only they pronounced it “kike”20
Wiley, from the Black UK perspective, was expounding a central strand of Rastafarianism and, by a process of osmosis, of wider Caribbean culture: the idea that Black people are the real chosen people, the real Jews. In Wiley’s case this has come through his Jamaican heritage.
Born in 1979, Wiley, having been reared from the age of two by his grandmother in Kent, south of the capital, was taken back to London at the age of 11 to live – at Wiley’s own request – with his father, Richard Cowie, a Jamaican, whose love of reggae music had a deep and abiding influence on his son and their relationship. Richard Sr. is a reggae musician:
It was just me and him. And we had our disagreements, just like anyone else. We got into little wrestling matches or whatever, but we would never argue for long. Deep down, our bond had always been about music. We’d listen to music together, make music together, and talk about music for hours on end21
The idea of Africans and those of the African diaspora being the real Jews, a tenet of already extant Ethiopiansim, was grasped at in the 1930’s by men like Jamaican preacher Leonard Howell, and Prince Hall Freemasons Joseph Hibbert and Archibald Dunkley,22 the founding fathers of Rastafarianism, the spirit and tenets of which infused the emergent musical genre known as reggae:
In 1935, Jamaican preacher Leonard Howell published the tract The Promised Key which explained that Emperor Haile Selassie (Ras Tafari) was the Messiah, that Black people were the chosen people, and they would soon be repatriated to Ethiopia and experience political and economic prosperity. The tract is the founding document of Rastafarian belief and marks the move from seeing Haile Selassie as merely prophetic to “the divine Messiah.”23
Wiley’s inspiration for his assertion that the Holy Land itself, rather than Ethiopia, is for Africans, may come from more recent sources, ranging from Louis Farrakhan to the Black Hebrew Israelites:
The group began in Chicago in 1967 under the leadership of Ben Ammi Ben Israel, an African American whose birth name was Ben Carter. Ben Israel appointed 30 disciples and in 1967 moved the group to Liberia before embarking for their final destination in Israel. The Black Hebrew Israelites’s claims of Jewish heritage provoked substantial debate in Israel. Israeli law offers citizenship for all Jews throughout the world, but the Black Hebrew Israelites could produce no evidence to substantiate their Jewish heritage. After much investigation, the Chief Rabbinate of Israel thus decided that the Black Hebrew Israelites were not really Jewish and were not entitled to citizenship.24
Whatever about the source of Wiley’s assertion that “the star of David is our ting [sic],”25 his animus towards the Jews is part of an established pattern – and the pre-Covid resurgent wave – of Black antipathy to the Jews in the U.S. The media in the U.S. tried to explain the pre-lockdown attacks on Jews in the U.S. as just the latest manifestation of “white” racism. This attempt to frame the narrative in terms of “white” racism ignores the reality of the situation:
If we look into what has been happening in New York City lately, we discover that the details reveal a completely different story, primarily because all of the perpetrators of anti-Semitic violence so far have been Black. The Jersey City attack which left four people dead was perpetrated by a bizarre religious sect known as the Black Hebrew Israelites26
Something tells me that Wiley threw in the thing about the rightful occupants of the Holy Land to show that he was prepared, now that the war of words had begun, to use every anti-Jewish weapon he could muster. Imagine if you will, a WWF wrestler grabbing a conveniently placed chair to add the finishing touches to the demolition of his opponent, and you get some grasp of Wiley’s on-stage and online style. The excessive name-calling and bad language, an unfortunate aspect of his style of engagement, is rather more redolent of the playground than any serious effort at debate. This all-out war mentality, expressed in the intensity and belligerence of the vocal style of grime, is reflective of a good deal of urban music which arises, in vocal terms, from its two engendering genres: rap originating in the U.S. and ragga originating in Jamaica. Wiley is the “Godfather of Grime” the uniquely London sub-genre, the creation of which at the dawn of the millennium Wiley is largely and almost exclusively credited:
Nobody in this music is in a perfect situation, you know, otherwise it wouldn’t be called ‘grime’. Why did this music come about? Anger, aggression, frustration – at life in general, at people, at mums and dads. At maybe not having a perfect life.27
[…] This article is just an excerpt from the January 2021 issue of Culture Wars Magazine. To read the full article you may purchase a download of this month’s issue, or you can subscribe!
Culture of Death Watch
The Blessing of Parkinson's Disease by David Fisher
Features
Wiley's War with the Jews by Sean Naughton
Reviews
Footnotes:
1 Lee Harpin (25th September 2020) The Jewish Chronicle retrieved from https://www.thejc.com/news/uk/police-drop-wiley-antisemitism-probe-after-learning-he-was-abroad-at-time-of-alleged-offences-1.507042
2 Rosa Doherty (23rd Nov 2017) https:/ree/www.thejc.com/culture/music/wiley-john-woolf-manager-grime-music-1.448626
3 Antisemitism UK (24th July 2020) https://antisemitism.uk/wiley-must-immediately-apologise-and-make-amends-for-antisemitic-rant-or-no-respectable-label-or-manager-should-ever-work-with-him-again/
4 John Woolf (25th July 2020) https://twitter.com/jrwoolfw
5 Antisemitism UK
6 Ibid
7 Ibid
8 Rhona Shennan (13th August) The Scotsman https://www.scotsman.com/whats-on/arts-and-entertainment/what-did-wiley-say-twitter-antisemitic-tweets-grime-rapper-explained-he-banned-permanently-multiple-social-media-platforms-2925134
9 Staff writer (30th July 2020) The Voice retrieved from https://www.voice-online.co.uk/entertainment/2020/07/30/statement-from-the-voice-in-response-to-wiley-article/
10 jack Mendel (31st July 2020) retrieved from https://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/black-newspaper-takes-down-wiley-interview-after-criticism-from-community/
11 Ibid
12 https://www.thejc.com/news/uk/the-voice-publishes-inflammatory-interview-with-wiley-1.502053
13 Staff writer (30th July 2020) The Voice retrieved from https://www.voice-online.co.uk/entertainment/2020/07/30/statement-from-the-voice-in-response-to-wiley-article/
14 Ibid
15 Antisemitism UK
16 Sungenis, Robert (March 2020) Catholic Zionism in Culture Wars, Volume 39 Issue 4, p29
17 Friedman, Murray. What Went Wrong? (p. 45). Free Press. Kindle Edition, p45
18 Friedman, pp 57-58
19 Heller Jerry Ruthless Gallery Books (2006) Kindle Edition
20 Ibid, p4.
21 Wiley Eskiboy Random House (2019) Kindle Edition, location 866
22 Dread Jesus, p14
23 Taylor Marshall (12th July 2018) retrieved from https://taylormarshall.com/2018/07/messianic-theology-bob-marley-conversion-ethiopian-orthodoxy.html
24 https://www.britannica.com/topic/Black-Hebrew-Israelites
25 Antisemtitism UK
26 E Michael Jones (April 2020) Gangs of New York in Culture Wars Volume 39 No. 4, p9
27 Eskiboy, location 1055
28 Ibid, location 407
29 Eskiboy, 2659
30 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grime_(music_genre)
31 Ibid, location 329
32 JTA (July 26, 2020) https://ajn.timesofisrael.com/uk-rapper-wiley-goes-on-antisemitic-twitter-rant/
33 Martin, Dr Tony The Jewish Onslaught Dover MA: The Majority Press (1993), p4
34 Cohodas, p 319
35 Sidran, Ben. There Was A Fire: Jews, Music and the American Dream (Kindle Locations 5536-5540). Unlimited Media Ltd...Kindle Edition, location 5536
36 Eskiboy, location 1952
37 Ibid, location 1983
38 Wexler, Jerry Rhythm and the Blues New York: Borzoi Books - Allred A Knopf (1993), p62
39 NWA (1987) from the album Straight outa Compton retrieved from Genius Lyrics https://genius.com/Nwa-a-bitch-iz-a-bitch-lyrics
40 Ibid
41 Ice-cube (1991) No vaseline https://genius.com/Ice-cube-no-vaseline-lyrics
42 Eskiboy, location 1991
43 Chuck D (Sep 2010) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwS3c7uPOo8, 2 min 55 sec
44 Sidran, 5572
45 Heller, p180
46 Jim Waterson and Ben Beaumont- Thomas (Wed 29th July) https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/jul/29/twitter-permanently-suspends-wiley-apologises-antisemitic-attack
47 https://metro.co.uk/2020/08/05/wiley-removed-youtube-mounting-pressure-following-anti-semitic-comments-13089678/
48 Ben Beaumont-Thomas (Tue 28 Jul 2020) Wiley’s Facebook and Instagram accounts deactivated after antisemitic remarks - retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/jul/28/wileys-facebook-and-instagram-accounts-deactivated-after-antisemitic-remarks
49 Jones, E Michael The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit South Bend: Fidelity Press (2015), p826
50 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Albert_Tindley
51 Charles Albert Tindley I shall overcome (1900) retrieved from https://hymnary.org/text/this_world_is_one_great_battlefield
52 Wexler, 227
53 Cited in Sidran, location 2251
54 Genius Lyrics, retrieved from https://genius.com/Otis-redding-these-arms-of-mine-lyrics
55 Sheen, p81
56 Ibid, p91
57 Jones, E Michael Dionysos Rising, p74
58 Norman Mailer (Fall 1957) The White Negro cited in https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/the-white-negro-fall-1957
59 Heller, pp 29-30
60 Wiley (2014) On a level https://genius.com/Wiley-on-a-level-lyrics
61 Ibid
62 Ibid
63 Eskiboy, location 109
64 Mark Ronson (30th July 2020) @markronson retrieved from https://twitter.com/markronson/status/1288776190531182592?lang=en
65 Wikipedia, retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Morris_Agency
66 Arden, Don Mr Big London: Robson Books (2004) p76
67 Ibid, p82
68 Sidran, location 482
69 Paul Lester interview with Mark Ronson (May 2014) The Jewish Chronicle https://www.thejc.com/culture/features/interview-mark-ronson-1.54777
70 https://www.jweekly.com/2020/07/27/thousands-join-48-hour-twitter-boycott-to-protest-antisemitism-on-the-platform/
71 The Chief Rabbi, Dr Ephraim Mervis (27th July 2020) Letter to CEO of Twitter Mr Jack Dorsey https://twitter.com/chiefrabbi/status/1287511129128828928
72 Chesterton GK, The New Jerusalem The G. K. Chesterton Collection. Catholic Way Publishing. Kindle Edition, location 11410
73 Cited in the E Michael Jones The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit South Bend: Fidelity Press (2015), p688
74 Jones, E Michael The Slaughter of Cities - Urban Renewal As Ethnic Cleansing South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, (2004)
75 Ibid, p962
76 Jonathan Joffe (sep 2017) The Music Industry’s Long History of Dividing Blacks and Jews
https://observer.com/2017/02/music-industry-history-dividing-blacks-and-jews/
77 Shakespeare, William The Merchant of Venice, Act 4 Scene 1 retrieved from http://shakespeare.mit.edu/merchant/merchant.4.1.html
78 Wiley (21st August 2020) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huGNn7bLqmQ, 11 mins 49 secs – 12 mins 49 secs.
79 Sidran, location 1018
80 Jones, E Michael Degenerate Moderns South Bend: Fidelity Press (2012), p16
81 Sexual Healing (1982) – lyrics by David Rita retrieved from https://www.lyrics.com/lyric/1214470/Marvin+Gaye/Sexual+Healing
82 Sidran, location 6668
83 Jones, E Michael The Catholic Church and the Jews South Bend: Fidelity Press (2016) Chapter 7
84 Daniel Halper (22nd May, 2013) Biden Talks of ‘Outsized Influence’ of Jews: ‘The Influence Is Immense’
Washington Examiner, retrieved from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/weekly-standard/biden-talks-of-outsized-influence-of-jews-the-influence-is-immense
85 Fahey, Fr Denis CSSp The Mystical Body of Christ in the Modern World (3rd Edition) Palmdale, California: Christian Book Club of America (first published in 1935, reprinted in 2012), p259
