Newsmax host and serial plagiarist Benny Johnson was so mad that “Lift Every Voice and Sing” was performed at this year’s Super Bowl that he demanded the hymn—often referred to as the Black national anthem—be made “illegal.”
The right-wing edgelord was grateful, however, that other conservatives were just as upset as he was about the “woke culture” on display at the big game, specifically praising GOP gubernatorial loser Kari Lake for refusing to stand when the song was played.
Johnson, who also serves as chief creative officer for MAGA student group Turning Point USA, devoted a good portion of his Monday podcast to railing against the NFL’s decision to play the song, which was performed by actress Sheryl Lee Ralph. (Her performance preceded both “America the Beautiful” and “The Star-Spangled Banner,” which was sung by country star Chris Stapleton.)
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“Sports is woke culture, and it's really repugnant to me, and so I don't follow sports super closely,” Johnson exclaimed on The Benny Show, as first flagged by liberal media monitoring group Media Matters. “That being said, I do watch the Super Bowl for cultural moments like the Black national anthem being sung. How the hell is this even a thing?!”
He continued: “What a repugnant, degenerate thing to do, to split up a national anthem by race. That is antithetical, of course, to America. It should, quite frankly, be illegal. You shouldn't be able to do that. Is there a white national anthem? I'm not sure anyone would be very happy with that being sung.”
The right-wing culture warrior, meanwhile, brought up Lake performatively sitting down at State Farm Stadium while Ralph sang. “Kari Lake was in the event last night in the stadium. She refused to stand for the Black national anthem; good for her,” he proclaimed about the election-denying provocateur.
“Nobody should stand for the Black national—,” Johnson added before catching himself. “There shouldn't be a Black national anthem because America is a country that is founded upon all of us being created equal, regardless of the melanin amount in your skin or where your ancestors were raised.”
Outside of Lake and Johnson, other right-wing figures made a point of complaining loudly about the playing of the song, which is over a hundred years old and was first dubbed the “Negro national anthem” by the NAACP in 1919. (The song saw renewed national prominence in mid-2020 amid the nationwide protests following George Floyd’s murder.)
Michael Knowles, host for Ben Shapiro’s conservative media empire The Daily Wire, wondered if the performance of the song meant that liberals are “calling for a race war.” MAGA congresswoman Lauren Boebert blared that there is only “ONE NATIONAL ANTHEM” while claiming the NFL is “trying to divide us” with “wokeness.”
While Johnson is currently saying that there needs to be a law against a century-old song for supposedly being racist against white people, he has also been relentlessly portraying himself as a free speech absolutist.
“We should value free speech for ALL sides of the aisle,” he posted on Instagram last April, for instance. “Free Speech will win,” Johnson declared in a November tweet.
