Confirmed: Trump’s Antisemitic Attack on Hillary Clinton Originated With White Supremacists
Today Mic’s Anthony Smith reports that he discovered the antisemitic “Star of David” meme tweeted yesterday by Donald Trump at… wait for it… a section of the 8chan message board frequented by “alt-right” neo-Nazis and white supremacists, posted on June 22.
The thread in which the graphic was posted no longer exists, but it’s available at archive.is. Here’s a screenshot:
Notice the filename of the image: hILLhISTORY.jpg, with the two h’s in lower case. This is a variant on the common neo-Nazi trope of using two h’s as code for “Heil Hitler.”
The graphic appears even earlier on Twitter, posted June 15 by the person who apparently created it (his Twitter account name is on the lower left of the image):
NEWS ALERT!Hillary Finally Achieves Something…#HillaryForPresident #CorruptHillary pic.twitter.com/IKeJ9r4cv1
— FishBoneHead (@FishBoneHead1) June 16, 2016
This Twitter account has now been deleted, so here’s a screenshot of the tweet (it’s still cached at Internet Archive):
That user’s timeline on Twitter is packed with all kinds of racist and right wing extremist memes, of course. This is one of those wingnut weirdos who seems to spend all day every day doing nothing but posting hatred on Twitter.
Several members of the LGF community speculated that the image probably originated with Trump’s white supremacist base; now we know that to be true. And we also know that either Trump or someone on his staff is deliberately browsing these sewers, looking for things that will appeal to Trump voters. Again we must point out: this is far from the first time Trump or someone on his staff has used memes from the alt-right fever swamp.
And interestingly, the image posted by Donald Trump seems to have the creator’s Twitter name erased or cropped out— perhaps to hide its origin.
One of CNN’s resident Trump apologists, Jeffrey Lord, is trying to say the meme contained a sheriff’s star, not a Star of David. Lord isn’t the only one; lots of Trump supporters are using this excuse. But while you may be able to find some law enforcement badges that look slightly similar to a Star of David, by far the most common type of sheriff’s badge looks like this: five points, with small globes on the tips of the points.
Keith Olbermann responded to Lord’s tweet on this a little while ago:
.@realJeffreyLord Dear Moron,THIS is a sheriff’s star. Small globes on the points. Trump’s Star of David had none https://t.co/7IF3Q21r98
— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) July 3, 2016
But if this was really just an innocent coincidence, why did Trump delete his original tweet and re-post it with the star replaced by a circle?
The racist Twitter account @FishBoneHead1, where the antisemitic graphic originated, has now been deleted.