NO ONE HATES JUST MEXICANS:

Infowars host and chief conspiracy theorist Alex Jones warned on Sunday's show that "foaming-at-the-mouth Black people" would wage war on white populations after they flee "race-specific bioweapons" attacks in Africa later this decade. Jones issued these racist predictions while declaring himself a "vessel" of God.

"They intend on making the world so hellish in the build-up to 2030 that everybody will just 'wink, wink' when they release the race-specific bioweapons starting with Africa that are gonna wipe that continent absolutely out. And you'll be under such invasion from the refugees of the economic warfare in Africa that you will quietly, while you're playing cards with your buddies say, 'well, it had to be done.' And when you go along with that metaphysically, spiritually, culturally, the devil's got your soul," said Jones.

"So I don't like the big giant African hordes being brainwashed against us and the left programming brown people to hate white people. It's all part of a plan, folks. It's all part of a very sophisticated plan and I don't just study history. I don't just study the New World Order," Jones continued.

I want to tell you a story about Black History. I sublet Jack Whitten's loft on Broome Street in Soho during the summer of 1969. I knew he was an artist, but when I first climbed the stairs and walked into his loft, I didn't know what to expect. The door opened into his painting and sculpture studio at the front of the loft where four big windows poured light down on the paint-stained floor. The first thing I saw was a big piece of wood carved roughly from a tree trunk sitting in the middle of the floor. It was thick and dark-colored and must have been four or five feet long and three feet high, and into it, Jack had driven what looked like a thousand four-inch nails. Works of art are said by many artists to speak for themselves. Although I did not see it in this way at the time, that piece of art spoke in the unmistakable voice of Black History. It spoke of violence, but it was not about the violence of hammering nails into the wood. Jack Whitten's sculpture told the story of having the nails hammered into him.

What happens to you when you confront a great work of art? Well, it changes you. Great art speaks to you. It teaches you. It tells you what it means.

Listen to Muddy Waters sing "I got my Mojo Working," or Slim Harpo sing "I'm a King Bee," or Howlin' Wolf sing "Meet me in the Bottom." You are listening to Black History. Listen to the right hand of Thelonious Monk picking out the discordant notes and off-chords of "Round Midnight," or stand before Alison Saar's life-size sculpture of a Black woman in a long dress on a plaza in Harlem and witness the power of Black History.

I was thinking last week that maybe I should write something for Black History Month, because during the last year Black History has constantly been in the news, and not in a good way. Black History has been turned into a political issue by racists who are afraid of it. Ron DeSantis in Florida and Republican legislatures around the country are attempting to censor the teaching of Black History. They want to erase the history of slavery and the oppression of Black people under Jim Crow and the struggles of the Civil Rights movement. They want to deny the contributions made by slaves, Black human beings who were not even recognized as citizens, and yet who toiled to build dams and roads and bridges and even the same U.S. Capitol building that racist insurrectionists assaulted two years ago.

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