Take a good look, America.
As Trump routinely tweets attacks at his rivals that are then seen by his 6 million Twitter followers, others take it further: Ganging up, harassing and threatening his critics online and in person for weeks and months on end. They adopt Trump-like insults — his critics are often "losers" — and routinely publish and circulate private information, just as Trump did last summer when he read rival candidate Sen. Lindsey Graham's cell phone number aloud on live television.
According to NBC, the harassment by Republican Trump supporters has in many instances taken a markedly Anti-Semitic tone. Conservative (and Jewish) blogger Bethany Mandel, who criticized Trump in a series of blog posts, is now regularly on the receiving end of death threats and anti-Jewish venom from Trump’s hateful base of support. As she told MSNBC, “This is what life will be like under Trump:”
She said she was called a "slimy Jewess" and received death threats sent to her private Facebook account. Mandel reported it to her local police department, who she said didn't take it very seriously.
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Many interviewed for this story, Jews and non-Jews alike, said the harassment has often referenced the Holocaust gas chamber. Mandel, who is Jewish and open about her faith online, said she's not surprised the backlash has been anti-Semitic in part.
One Trump supporter told Mandel she “deserved the oven.”
Another conservative columnist, Cheri Jacobus, who criticized Trump’s performance in the debates, was subjected to similar anti-Semitic hate:
They distort my face where it looks like it's melting off … they put a pair of balls on my chin. They put me in a gas chamber and Trump is in a Nazi outfit pushing the button to gas me," Jacobus told MSNBC. "That's what happens when you oppose Trump. He set the tone for this."
The article describes other victims of harassment by Trump supporters who have been threatened with “beheading” and received rape threats directed to their children, which would appear to confirm that some Trump supporters have more in common with ISIS than they do ordinary Americans. And of course Trump has deliberately fanned the flames of hatred against Hispanics and African-Americans all through his own efforts, earning the admiration and support of white supremacists who harbor identical feelings of antipathy towards Jews. While threats on the Internet are seldom acted upon by those doing the threatening, one theme seems to run noticeably, consistently and repeatedly among many of his followers—a seemingly pathological need to vilify Jews, and particularly Jews who criticize Trump:
"When the mob comes after groups of people, it always ends up at the Jews," Mandel said...[.]
Dean Obeidallah, writing for the Daily Beast, says the anti-Semitism of Trump's followers has, with few exceptions such as Dana Milbank of the Washington Post, largely been ignored by the media. Milbank, a seasoned columnist for the Post, was so stunned by the anti-Semitic hate he received after criticizing Trump, he felt compelled to write an article titled “Trump Brings Bigots Out of Hiding.” Obeidallah interviewed Daniel Sieradski, the founder of “Jews against Trump,” who has never seen such an outpouring of virulent anti-Semitism in this country as that displayed by Trump’s followers during this election cycle:
As Sieradski explained to me, “It’s astounding that so many Trump supporters are completely unabashed in their anti-Semitism and that Trump himself has done absolutely nothing to condemn it or even acknowledge.” Sieradski detailed some of the anti-Semitic garbage he has received from Trump fans, from slurs to sending him “memes about pushing Jews into ovens.”
The media’s coverage on this issue has focused on Trump himself, tending to emphasize his past business ties to the Jewish community and his oft-expressed support for the state of Israel. This, however, sorely misses the point of anti-Semitism. It matters less what Trump says than what his followers perceive as an “opportunity” to openly demonstrate their hatred. Obeidallah:
If you think that the Donald Trump supporters who hate Muslims love other minority groups, you have no idea how hate works. I’ve never heard a person say, “I really hate Muslims, but I love black people.” Nope, haters hate. It’s truly a mental disorder that causes them to hate people who don’t look, sound, or pray like them.
While Trump has steered clear of anti-Semitic rhetoric, often touting the fact that his daughter recently converted to Orthodox Judaism, that hasn’t deterred his followers from expressing their feelings about Jews. In fact it is particularly ironic that this barrage of Trump-fueled anti-Semitism comes at a time when the Leader himself is pandering for Jewish support at AIPAC:
[A]s many witnessed on Twitter over the last two days during the AIPAC convention, Trump’s anti-Semitic fans are out in full force. I’m talking jaw-dropping, vile anti-Jewish bigotry that is as bad as, if not worse than, the anti-Muslim garbage we have seen from Trump’s fans.
Sieradski believes that “[T]he common link between Trump’s anti-Jewish supporters and white supremacist supporters is Islamophobia,,” and that Trump has succeeded in uniting both Anti-Semites and anti-Muslim bigots, a singular achievement. But that irony aside, the behavior of Trump’s supporters at this stage of the election season presages the sick kind of acts we could expect if Trump were actually elected President and thus “legitimized" their views. As Obeidallah notes, this issue has thus far been off the radar of most major corporate media:
The media have not pressed Trump on this issue. And the worst part is that this anti-Semitism we are seeing from some Trump fans is nothing new. It’s just that the media have for the most part has ignored it.