La Causa, KPFK’s anti-Semitic radio show, gets suspended

Last week, Roberto Loiderman of The Jewish Journal exposed the anti-Semitic outbursts of the KPFK radio program “La Causa.” It’s not secret that Latinos, as a group, are the most likely to harbor anti-Semitic attitudes, and “La Causa” host Augustin Cebada is no exception.

Loiderman wrote:

Cebada, co-host Rafael Tlaloc and their callers draw parallels between Latinos in the United States and Palestinians in the Middle East: Just as American descendants of Europeans “should go back to Europe,” so, too, the descendants of European Jews in Israel should leave the Middle East and go live in Europe.

Though it presents itself as a program by and for Latinos, “La Causa” spends a lot of time on the subject of the Middle East, all of it fiercely critical of Israel. Referring to the recent military actions in Gaza, the show’s hosts characterize Israelis as perpetrators of “genocide,” “massacre,” “slaughter,” “war crimes,” “ethnic cleansing” and “atrocities.”

Cebada and Tlaloc have said Israelis are “acting like Nazis.”

A sampling of recent comments on “La Causa”:

“Rahm Emanuel is a Trojan Horse making sure that Obama does not push for peace in Palestine that would free the people of Gaza.” Emanuel was “forced” on the Obama administration by “certain interest groups.” (Dec. 17, 2008)

“Israel controls the media here; Jewish AIPAC controls the media, so the only real news we can get is from Al-Arabiya….” (Jan. 7)

“The U.S. doesn’t get to see the horrible things taking place [in Gaza], bombing of schools and hospitals. [Israelis] kill a lot of children; they don’t care….” (Jan. 14)

“This whole thing about Israel being a democracy is a farce. Total BS….  A charade….  And our tax dollars pay for the slaughter.” (Jan. 14)

“[Gaza] is total imprisonment, a concentration camp…. The Nazis would have been envious of the Israelis at this time….” (Jan. 14)

Augustin Cebada

Cebada did not respond to repeated requests from The Journal for an interview. He has said on air that he’s 46 and has been a teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District. (The LAUSD has no record of anyone with the name “Augustin Cebada” ever having worked as a teacher or in any other capacity.)

Photos and audiotape of Cebada from a 1996 appearance at a July 4 pro-Chicano rally in Westwood can be found on the Internet. Dressed in a Brown Berets uniform and presenting himself as “information minister” of the group, Cebada told his listeners, “We [Chicanos] are not going to be pushed around…. We are the majority, and we claim this land as ours….”

Maybe that’s because Augustin Cebada’s given, and I believe legal, name is Chris Eichwald. Chistopher—as in follower of Christ—is hardly a Jewish name, but Eichwald’s father was named Aron. And well …

Anyway, apparently KPFK program directors either don’t know Spanish or never bother tuning in, but they said they would take the allegations seriously. To their credit, the station did—and today KPFK suspended “La Causa.”

Of course, that action is being blamed on the Jews. Gustavo Arellano, the genius behind Ask a Mexican! and someone who was glad to see some attention being paid to Cebada, explains:

Oh, happy day! KPFK-FM 90.7 management has suspended the anti-Semitic hatefest called “La Causa” for six weeks for the obvious reasons, a week after the Jewish Journal published a devastating exposé of the program. I didn’t find out from a KPFK statement or the JJ, though; rather, the people to break this news was the Jew-bashing, gay-trashing La Voz de Aztlan. And if there was any doubt of a connection between this piece of Internet caca and “La Causa” host Agustin Cebada, that La Voz published this information before anyone else proves it because La Voz is to reputable news gathering what a piece of shit-smeared toilet paper is to a Picasso*.

“Zionists force KPFK radio to suspend ‘La Causa,’” screams the La Voz headline, and isn’t it so precious that sole writer Hector “His Last Name Has Jewish Roots” Carreon continues to blame the Jews for everything? He goes on a diatribe about how “Zionists” threatened to turn KPFK over to the FCC and the IRS. “The Zionists have great influence with the FCC now that Rahm Emanuel runs the White House and Timothy Geithner runs the IRS as Secretary of the Treasury,” Carreon writes. “Both Emanuel and Geithner are Jews.”

Tee-hee! Congrats to the Jewish Journal for making the most fevered conspiracies of Carreon and Cebada come true! And congrats to KPFK management for not tolerating hate of any kind, even if it comes from Chicano dinosaurs.

What’s best about this episode is that the defenders of “La Causa,” rather than take the high road and argue for the beauty of free speech, have proven themselves to be the Tan Klan that they are.