A.k.a. Maurice Woodside
A.k.a. Mikael Israel
A.k.a. Michael the Black Man
Michael Symonette is a Florida-based political … “figure”. Symonette is an outspoken supporter of Donald Trump, and best known for appearing at Trump’s rallies both before and after the 2016 election holding a “Blacks for Trump” sign. But Symonette has had a long and colorful career in various other cults and conspiracy groups (often with a different name) as well.
For instance, in the 1980s Symonette was a prominent member of the Yahweh Ben Yahweh cult, which was known for promoting the idea that blacks are the true Israelites (thus part of the Black Hebrew Israelites movement) and that Hulon Mitchell was a messiah sent to free black people from “white devils”, but even better known for committing multiple murders and mutilations, primarily of former members and victims of an initiation rite that involved killing a white person and giving one of their ears to Mitchell. The group is still active, insisting that there was no evidence of the crimes and referring to Mitchell’s arrest as “the crucifixion” and part of “a 25-year FBI practice of disrupting and discrediting black organizations” – indeed, Symonette himself has (apparently) written the article “Maurice/Michael explains Yahweh Ben Yahweh is Innocent and was Persecuted by Arab, East Indian, Ishmaelites. & U.S. Prosecutor Richard Shruggs was an Ishmaelite Arab Jew. who Prosecuted Yahweh Ben Yahweh” to prove it.
Symonette apparently played “a big role in the rise and fall of the Yahweh Ben Yahweh cult”, and was himself at one point charged with (though acquitted of) one count of murder and one count of attempted murder.
Until then known as Michael Woodside, Symonette subsequently started a radio station, BOSS 104.1 FM to express his obsessive hatred for Democrats (or, as he called them, “Demon-crats” and “slave masters”), who are ostensibly aligned with the KKK (he also labeled the (black) El Portal mayor Daisy Black a “devil” and called for her to be “set on fire”), before reinventing himself as “Michael the Black Man”. He briefly received some attention in 2008 when he accused Oprah Winfrey of being the devil and Barack Obama of being endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan at one of Obama’s speeches in Coral Gables. His group also displayed a banner proclaiming, somewhat inexplicably, that “Jessie [sic] Jackson hates Obama for federal child support act” – Symonette’s group has otherwise expressed little love Jackson, calling him for instance a “house negro.” Obama, however, is “The Beast” because he is an apocalyptic figure warned of in the Bible: for one thing, Obama is, according to Symonette, a proponent of infanticide and extreme partial-birth abortion but worse: Obama has defended child support, which Symonette considers “legal slavery” (Symonette himself unsurprisingly has a backstory of owing quite a bit in child support). Indeed, at one point Symonette was convinced that Obama could bring about virtual extinction of the free black male as soon as 2012. Oprah, though, is even worse: a “devil” and “hell-bound Jezebel” – “if Obama is elected,” said Symonette in 2008, “there will be an international, insane war, and nobody will survive. And Oprah knows that! She wants everybody to die with her black ass!” He also apparently believes that “one-third of the black women is the devil.”
Renewed attention was given Symonette when he spoke to the audience at a Rick Santorum campaign rally, saying that Democrats were “the worst thing that ever happen [sic] to the black man.”
He currently runs multiple conspiracy theory-promoting websites, including Gods2.com, which he frequently promotes on his shirt at Trump rallies. If you try to access the page, you’ll be redirected to honestfact.com, a website that might even make Alex Jones look calm and reasonable. Among Symonette’s claims on the site are:
- That the Cherokee Indians were “the real KKK slave masters”, not “White Gentiles who are Black Peoples Republican Emancipators!”
- That black and white people were in the Americas before the Native Americans and must unite against the Cherokee Indians. (A display of the Confederate battle flag is captioned “Cherokee Democrat Flag”.)
- That former President Barack Obama is a “shape shifting mason who acts Black but is Cherokee.”
- That Bill Clinton and John McCain are descended from the Cherokees, and that John Hawkins, born in 1595 to British parents and pioneer of the British slave trade, was Cherokee. (And as of 2020 “nine guys in the Republican Senate are actually Mormons” and “Mormons are mostly Cherokee” – the KKK is also is made up entirely of Cherokees.)
- That Hillary Clinton is secretly plotting with ISIS to kill all black and white women in America.
- That not only is Hillary Clinton linked to the Islamic State; she is also, somehow, linked to the crime gang MS-13, as well as – of course – to the KKK. Moreover, note that “Hillary’s last name is Rodham”, which means that “their family members are Rothchilds”. It doesn’t.
Symonette’s website also sports a long list of the standard, near-incomprehensible all-caps conspiracy jumble types of headlines like
- “ROCKERFELLER IS NIMROD KING OF THE CANAANITES & SAUD THE KING OF THE ISHMAELITES MASONIC ILLUMINATI TRILATERALIST BIG BANKS KKK”
- “PROTESTERS are PHONEY Black people & are really East Indians & Cherokees acting Black”
- “See Hillary & Puttin say that there will be nuclear war if Hillary becomes president: HILLARY WILL START WORLD WAR 3 JUDGEMENT DAY” TO KILL WOMEN OF AMERICA”.
- “WHITE MAN & BLACK MAN WAKE UP!! (ISHMAEL) (arabs & East Indians) are killing us (Americans BLACK & WHITE) all over the world on TV”
Apparently one factor linking things here is that all races in the world can be traced back to Noah’s sons, and whereas white people, along with Latinos, Asians, and Black people in America – but not Africa – have descended from Noah’s good sons, the descendants of Ham are evil, and include Canaanites and Cherokees. Suffice to say that the suggested linking factor, in addition to being derangedly insane, leaves some details unaccounted for.
Diagnosis: Completely deranged and probably dangerous. And he is apparently not alone either but seems to have a group of acolyte zombies following his directions. Scary stuff.