Rev. Mitchell Ikenna Johnson, the newly appointed president of the Chicago Board of Education, has a lengthy history of posting inflammatory antisemitic, anti-Israel and pro-Hamas content on social media, according to a review of Johnson’s public and private Facebook posts following the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks last year. 

Johnson at one point considered himself an ally of the Chicago Jewish community. He attended events hosted by the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Johnson’s official Board of Education biography said he worked as a consultant for the Jewish fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi, but a former AEPi professional who worked with Johnson told Jewish Insider said that is not accurate. He spoke at a single AEPi event several years ago.

After the 2018 Tree of Life shooting in Pittsburgh, Mitchell added a banner to his Facebook profile picture that said, “Together Against Antisemitism.”

But since Hamas’ terror attack last year, which killed more than 1,200 Israelis, he has used Facebook to share dozens of posts praising the terrorist group, justifying the Oct. 7 attacks and slandering Jews who support Israel. 

“How can a group of people who have suffered from the Holocaust; today join with the Alt Right Community?” Johnson asked in a post last December. 

He continued to invoke the Holocaust in numerous posts that followed. 

“The Nazi Germans’ ideology has been adopted by the Zionist Jews,” Johnson wrote in February. “The Israeli government offers a renewal of Nazi language once directed toward European Jews, ‘savages, dogs, vermin,’” he wrote in March. 

Johnson’s posts did not just attack Israel and Jews. He routinely made clear his support for Hamas: “I have been saying this since October 2023. People have an absolute right to attack their oppressors by any means necessary!!!” he wrote in March. 

Last Christmas, Johnson shared a video showing Miko Peled, an anti-Zionist writer, defending the Hamas attacks as merely prisoners breaking out of their jail. 

“The single most direct video that has crossed my feed,” Johnson wrote. “I invite my once Jewish friends to respond to this video with honesty, integrity, and morality.” 

Earlier this month, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson appointed Rev. Johnson (no relation) to the Chicago Board of Education amid a turbulent time for the body. 

All seven members of the Board of Education resigned in early October after clashing with the mayor over budgetary and personnel issues. Mayor Johnson replaced them with a new slate of officers, including Rev. Johnson. He can remain as president in January if the mayor allows it. 

Mayor Johnson, a progressive, has clashed with Chicago’s Jewish community in the months following the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks. In January, he cast the tie-breaking vote on a contentious cease-fire resolution, making Chicago the largest city in the country at the time to back a cease-fire. In August, before the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, he called Israel’s war in Gaza “genocidal.”

Debra Silverstein, the lone Jewish representative on Chicago’s Board of Alders, declined a meeting with Mayor Johnson to discuss antisemitism in April, along with State Sen. Sara Feigenholtz and State Rep. Bob Morgan, both Democrats. 

“I do not feel that the Jewish community feels that he’s got our back,” Silverstein said of the mayor at the time. A spokesperson for Mayor Johnson did not respond to a request for comment about Rev. Johnson’s social media posts. 

“Rev. Johnson’s social media posts are antisemitic, offensive and dangerous.  Does Mayor Johnson think Jewish families will feel safe sending their kids to a CPS school whose Board Chair openly expresses hate and contempt toward the Jewish community?” Anti-Defamation League Midwest regional director David Goldenberg told JI on Wednesday. Rev. Johnson’s appointment as Board of Education president is “the latest example of Mayor Johnson elevating and surrounding himself with individuals with a history of enabling antisemitism and expressing views out of touch with the mainstream Jewish community. Troubling is an understatement.”

The posts — sometimes shared in bursts, with several on a single day — offer a window into the social media feed of a community leader who obsessively watched and bought into increasingly radical content. Johnson, now the leader of the public body that oversees the fourth-largest school district in the country, shared videos with no apparent regard for their source or integrity. The videos he shared came from sources ranging from viral anti-Israel social media accounts to the Russian propaganda site RT to conspiracy theorist Jackson Hinkle. 

Johnson posted at least five times on New Year’s Eve. 

“Let us go into 2024 with a commitment to change the narrative and force, yes force Israel to attone [sic] for its shameful attempt at genocide against the Palistinian [sic] people,” Johnson wrote. In another post, he shared a video of a Columbia University professor criticizing Israel: “This is why sane people must stand up and move away from supporting Israel. At present Israel is an occupying force and the world will support the oppressed.”

Later in the day, he made clear what he meant by “support[ing] the oppressed”: “I say again, stop blaming Hamas,” Johnson wrote. He did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday. 

The posts are a marked departure from Johnson’s prior history of posting in solidarity with the Jewish community — both in tone and in content. After the Tree of Life shooting, he authored a detailed post that drew from his religious tradition and connected the struggles of Jewish and Black Americans. In Jan. 2020, he described the relationship between the Jewish and Black communities as “historically rich and deep.” 

After Oct. 7, he dispensed with civility in his posts and frequently called out his “former” Jewish friends, asking them to personally explain Israel’s actions or apologize for supporting “genocide,” often alongside false or misleading content. 

“How long will the Jewish people in America stand for these crimes?” he wrote in October, atop a conspiratorial video that claimed Israel was responsible for bombing the Al Ahli Hospital in Gaza, a claim that had been debunked by American and Israeli intelligence officials who determined the rocket was actually fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad. 

On Nov. 1, a video that Johnson shared featured a caption saying that Zionists are not real Jews but actually “Luciferians” — Satan. “I would like to hear from my Jewish friend in reference to this post,” Johnson stated.

“My heart is broken in additional pieces when I consider people who I work with and considered my friends in the fight against antisemitism who today, not only defend Israeli ongoing acts of genocide but have told me to my face that I was ridiculous,” Johnson wrote in March. 

One of his posts took on a threatening tone: “My Jewish colleagues appear drunk with the Israeli power and will live to see their payment. It will not be nice and I care not how and what you call me,” he wrote in December. 

At times, his posts veered into dubious racial science. “I have been challenging the narrative since seminary. The DNA does not lie,” Johnson wrote in March. The corresponding video he shared featured a Jewish person displaying the results of a DNA test that showed them to have 88% Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry. The person in the video used this as evidence that Israel is “not my ancestors’ home.” 

Johnson seemed to recognize that his language could be considered antisemitic — but rather than reckoning with why Jews viewed his words as problematic, he doubled down.

“What can those who call me Anti-Semitic say about this occupation?” he wrote on Nov. 15, with a video teaching about “settler colonialism.” Two weeks later he asserted, “I am not Anti-Semitic [sic]. I am anti in Justice. [sic] Don’t attack me, consider the facts.” That statement was posted above a video by Norman Finkelstein, a controversial writer who has praised the Iran-backed militia Hezbollah and celebrated the Oct. 7 attacks. 

A longtime Chicago community leader, Johnson previously served as executive director of Developing Communities Project, an economic development organization on Chicago’s South Side that former President Barack Obama once helmed. 

Johnson attended a White House event billed as a “Faith leaders convening on climate, clean energy and environmental justice” in August. A White House spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.