To be filed under things you already knew but now there is independent confirmation, it turns out that yes, anti-Semitism is very much alive on Twitter. And it has a very particular character.
There was a significant uptick starting early this year, when the presidential campaign began to intensify, the [Anti-Defamation League] said in its report, to be released on Wednesday. More than 800 journalists have been the subject of anti-Semitic attacks on Twitter, with 10 of them receiving 83 percent of the total attacks.
The words appearing most frequently in the Twitter biographies of the attackers were “Trump,” “nationalist,” “conservative” and “white.”
Jewish journalists perceived as writing something negative about Trump can presume they will be targeted. And Trump's campaign—in the gaps between Trump retweeting anti-Semitic images or accounts himself, of course—has hardly been robust in their denunciations of the attacks.
After she wrote a profile of Mr. Trump’s wife, Melania, for GQ magazine, the journalist Julia Ioffe was deluged with anti-Semitic taunts on Twitter. When Mrs. Trump was asked about the controversy, she said Ms. Ioffe had “provoked” her attackers.
So there you go. Yes, Twitter promises to do something about it Real Soon Now. No, it's not clear whether this will decline after Trump gets his ass handed to him on Election Day or will just metastasize into something else.
Frustrated you don’t live in a swing state? Click here to sign up for a phonebanking shift with MoveOn. You’ll be calling voters in the swing states in no time.