Kareem Abdul-Jabbar asks where outrage was for public figures’ anti-Semitic comments

Basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar wrote a column for the Hollywood Reporter this week lamenting the lack of outrage over recent anti-Semitic comments and messages spread by Eagles wide receiver DeSean Jackson and others.

“Recent incidents of anti-Semitic tweets and posts from sports and entertainment celebrities are a very troubling omen for the future of the Black Lives Matter movement, but so too is the shocking lack of massive indignation,” Abdul-Jabbar wrote. “Given the New Woke-fulness in Hollywood and the sports world, we expected more passionate public outrage. What we got was a shrug of meh-rage.”

Jackson had to apologize last week after posting a screenshot of a quote attributed to Adolf Hitler, which said in part that “Jews will blackmail America.”

Former NBA player Stephen Jackson, who has become involved in the Black Lives Matter movement and is not related to DeSean Jackson, defended the wide receiver and said, among other things, that the Jewish Rothschild family “own(s) all the banks.”

And entertainer Nick Cannon was fired by ViacomCBS after he refused to apologize for his own anti-Semitic comments on a podcast. He did later apologize, and will remain the host of “The Masked Singer” on Fox.

Writing that “No one is free until everyone is free,” Abdul-Jabbar condemned anti-Semitism and said people can’t be selective in their outrage when a group of people faces injustice.

“These famous, outspoken people share the same scapegoat logic as all oppressive groups from Nazis to the KKK: all our troubles are because of bad-apple groups that worship wrong, have the wrong complexion, come from the wrong country, are the wrong gender or love the wrong gender,” Abdul-Jabbar wrote. “It’s so disheartening to see people from groups that have been violently marginalized do the same thing to others without realizing that perpetuating this kind of bad logic is what perpetuates racism.”