Donald Trump Is Mainstreaming Anti-Semitism and White Supremacy
This article from earlier in July offers an excellent primer (complete with links to other sources) on Trump’s mainstreaming and legitimizing of the previously unthinkable:
It should come as no surprise that Donald Trump tweeted an anti-Semitic image of Hillary Clinton over the weekend. Nor should it come as a surprise that the image originated in the putrid swamps of the online alt-right, a group of anti-Semites, white supremacists and others who gather to indulge their various obsessive hatreds.
That’s because Trump, despite occasional tepid demurrals, has spent the last year making his campaign a safe space for these groups. A study published in Fortune back in March showed that 67.5 percent of the most influential tweeters of #WhiteGenocide – a hashtag favored by white supremacists – follow Trump. (By comparison, 17.7 percent followed Ted Cruz, and 5.7 percent followed Clinton.)
While candidates can’t help who supports them, they can help how they respond. And Trump has responded with something between a secret handshake and a warm embrace. He regularly retweets white supremacists. He hesitated to denounce support from Klan leader David Duke. And he has accrued a substantial collection of his own racist quotes about Muslims, Mexicans and African-Americans. He favors racist policies, too – everything from his Muslim ban to his openness to internment.
Will this hurt the Trump campaign? That’s hard to say. But it’s also the wrong question. The better question is will this help mainstream the alt-right and all it stands for? And so far, the answer is a troubling yes.
The article also goes on to explain the significance of the ((( ))) phenomenon and also addresses a point that’s been made on LGF for years:
And political journalists, who have cataloged the many incidents of racism and anti-Semitism in the Trump campaign, now face a tough choice. Because Trump is the nominee, there is going to be tremendous pressure to air “both sides” of these controversies in order to appear balanced. CNN, for instance, gave former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, who it has hired as a commentator, airtime to call criticism of Trump’s Star of David tweet “political correctness run amok.”
If that’s the kind of coverage that dominates this campaign season – rank anti-Semitism met with largely unquestioned “on the one hand, on the other” reporting – then the mainstreaming of prejudice will continue unabated over the next several months. And if that happens, win or lose, Trump’s legacy will be secure: making America hate again.
I would strongly advise reading the whole thing, and forwarding it to anyone you know still “on the fence”, afflicted with apathetic “both-siderism”, or otherwise in denial about how dangerous Trump’s campaign really is.