(JTA) – As Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden prepared to meet Thursday with the family of Jacob Blake, the Black man shot by police last week in Kenosha, Wisconsin, right-wing websites alit with scrutiny of social media posts by Blake’s father.
Jacob Blake Sr. made a slew of anti-Semitic and anti-white posts on Facebook in 2018 and 2019, including comments that refer to “the Jewish controlled media” and insinuate that Jews in Pittsburgh were warned before the shooting at a synagogue there that killed 11 worshippers. He also expressed support for Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader whose rhetoric includes virulent antisemitism. The posts, which are publicly visible, were first reported Wednesday, hours before Biden left for Kenosha, where he was scheduled to have a private meeting with Jacob Blake’s family, including his father. Reports about the posts emerged across conservative media Thursday morning. Before updating his followers last week that his son was alive after being shot by police, Blake’s most recent public post suggested that he had tired of Facebook. “How to log off for good I forgot how,” he wrote in May 2019.