Bryan Sharpe, who uses the moniker “Hotep Jesus” online, has acquired overnight support from right-wing media, but on the author page linked to his Twitter account, Sharpe, who is black, has aligned himself with the racist alt-right movement, expressed anti-Semitic beliefs and argued that “black culture is sure to create nothing but failure.”
On Sunday, Sharpe entered a Starbucks coffee shop to demand a free drink in response to outrage after two men were arrested at a Starbucks in Philadelphia after a manager called the police. The men were reportedly waiting for a business associate to arrive, did not order drinks, and had refused to leave when asked. In response, Starbuck announced it would close 8,000 stores in the United States for a day for racial-bias training.
Since Sharpe posted the video, it has been shared by conservative media sites like Drudge Report, Infowars, Independent Journal Review, TheBlaze, talk radio host Rush Limbaugh, WorldNetDaily, and Milo Yiannopoulous’ site Dangerous. Conservative commentators boosted the video because they believe it proved, as right-wing writer Ian Miles Cheong states, “the foolishness of Starbucks’ virtue signaling and white guilt.”
Absolute genius. @VibeHi walked into a Starbucks to demand a free coffee for reparations (and to prove the foolishness of Starbucks’ virtue signaling and white guilt) and got one. https://t.co/fHAGtf8VgD pic.twitter.com/RAkkXlCBHQ
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) April 18, 2018
But none of these outlets mentioned Sharpe’s anti-Semitic views, his affiliations with white nationalists, or his belief in insane conspiracy theories.
In blog posts on his Hotep Nation website, Sharpe has aligned himself with the white nationalist alt-right movement. In a blog post last year, Sharpe wrote that the alt-right was “tired of hearing blacks cry about racial oppression,” adding, “You know it’s bad when I’d rather align with a racist white than a cry baby black.”
Later that year, after the white supremacist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last year that resulted in the violent murder of Heather Heyer, Sharpe wrote in an update to that post that he believed the alt-right was “now under the control of the ‘deep-state’ or whomever is also controlling Black Lives Matter.” The post claims that “Hotep Nation does not and has never had an official alliance with Alt-Right,” yet also states that it “did not (still does not) have a problem with White Nationalists.”
Last year, Sharpe appeared on Red Ice TV, which is the video offshoot of a white nationalist radio station. On air, he told host Henrik Palmgren that he blamed Jews for promulgating the idea of white supremacy, which he believes is a myth.
“The only thing that makes white supremacy a thought in people’s minds is the media, and the media is controlled by who? The only thing that makes white supremacy a thing is music, and it’s controlled by who? The movies, Hollywood, who controls that? Black people don’t control that. White people don’t control that. Our banking system, when we talk about ‘people got sold out, banks got bailed out,’ well who controls these banks?”
He added, “The minute you say, ‘gay, trans, Jew,’ it’s off limits. So I already know that my country, United States of America, is going to become an Islamic, Jewish, LGBT dominant state. So I’m out of here. I’m going back to Africa.”
After the white supremacist Unite the Right, Sharpe wrote about the rally:
The African American community is in a frenzy. They’re crying about racism, slavery and everything else they can pull out of their toolbox of victimhood.
But what they do not realize is that this is not a demonstration against blacks. This is a dispute between right and left – Liberal versus Conservative. Maybe even White vs Jew.
Blacks are so far removed from reality and misled by fake news, they don’t see this. The demonstration was called “Unite the Right”, not Unite the White. Lol
[…]
The truth is, Alt-right is the victim here. These people chose to exercise their freedom to assemble and they were viciously attacked by ANTIFA goons. This group ANTIFA is probably being funded by the same people that were funding Black Lives Matter.
Why would an outside entity fund ANTIFA and BLM? To keep the race war going. To keep the United States people divided by race instead of class.
In another blog post, he blamed Heyer’s murder not on violent extremists, but rather the fact that counter-protesters showed up at the event:
If we take a look at Charlottesville, we’ll see clear examples that support my theory. Firstly, if there was no anti-protest there would have been no clash. Deandre Harris wouldn’t be hurt and Heather Heyer wouldn’t have been murdered. Fact!
On November 13, Sharpe wrote a blog post titled, “Can my children be friends with black people?” In the article, he wrote:
What will my child learn from another African American child? They’ll probably learn something destructive which was taught by liberal media.
My child will quickly become a dream liberal case study and experiment when surrounded by African Americans. They’ll learn to hate Donald Trump without any evidence to support this feeling.
[…]
When my children say they have a white, Asian, African, or Caribbean friend I let out a sigh of relief.
[…]
Discipline side-steps the American Negro.
In another post, Sharpe writes that “black culture is sure to create nothing but failure”:
As a so-called black man in America, I’m supposed to believe that white people have some sort of advantage over me. I’m supposed to believe that they enjoy a privilege I don’t.
Well, I haven’t seen it. What I have seen is a difference in culture.
I see that the values within a culture that bring anybody some sort of privilege is baked into so-called white culture and not black. Black culture is sure to create nothing but failure.
