Many like to highlight Donald Trump as a bully in the current presidential election race. Now it seems that he has gone a tad too far, as he tweeted an image of Hillary Clinton reading “Most corrupt candidate ever!” over a background of $100 bills and the text being displayed over a six-pointed star.
When the Republican candidate was questioned about the issue he defended the picture, claiming that it was not a Star of David. Even if he denied any relation between anti-Semitic propaganda and his choice of campaign material, the tweet was deleted and then replaced with a slightly less controversial one.
Defending the image
Shortly after being criticized, Donald Trump tweeted: “Dishonest media is trying their absolute best to depict a star in a tweet as the Star of David rather than a Sheriff’s Star, or plain star!” Clinton’s campaign officials issued a statement and condemned Trump’s blatant use of imagery, even if he disregards the relation between the symbols in the picture.
The six-pointed star is one of Judaism’s most recognizable symbols as it appears on the flag of Israel. It is also a fact that Jews have a stereotypical relation to money, which is often used as an anti-Semitic denigration.
Jonathan Greenblatt, chairman of the Anti-Defamation League stated to CNN: “I get tweeted pictures like this all the time from anti-Semites and racists and white supremacists. Does this look familiar to me? Absolutely.”
Many are calling for a conscious concern regarding Trump’s ongoing campaign endeavors. Although he is entitled to all of his acts, people are highlighting him as the beacon of anti-immigration and culture segregation. Trump’s aides stress that “not every six-pointed star is a Star of David,” but it seems that in this particular case it was meant to be a religious symbol.
The origin of the image reveals its significance
The image was first posted one week before Trump did, on a thread on 8chan, specifically on the subsection known as ‘/pol/’, where anonymous users share political ideas and are able to express their views, no matter how radical they are. The image was posted by a user whose Twitter name is @FishBoneHead1, the thread was teeming with white-supremacist posts and messages.
The creator’s Twitter account posted frequent conservative and white-supremacist memes, which may indicate how Donald Trump supporters got acquainted with the controversial image featuring the Democratic presidential candidate. But the account’s owner acted quickly and deleted its account and its most radical tweets.
Usually, Trump’s campaign team credits whoever made the image, but it appears that they specifically did not want to be linked to @FishBoneHead1, as they also removed the watermark from the bottom part of the image.
Not the first, probably not the last.
Trump has already received some fire because of “unknowingly” supporting propaganda created by white supremacists. Back in November 2015, he retweeted an image showing fake statistics about the rates of murders by black and white people against black and white people. The actual statistics, as stated by the FBI, show that people are more likely to be killed by members of their own race.
Even if Trump is not a direct supporter of racism, it is a very concerning fact that his views do correspond to those of white supremacists and neo-nazis. Trump has often talked about using intelligence and databases to identify Muslim citizens and to keep them under vigilance, he also gained some momentum on that subject thanks to his infamous plan of expelling 11 million undocumented immigrants from U.S. soil.
Many argue that Trump is an entertainer, but in reality, he is a strong candidate for the most powerful position in the Western hemisphere. Many states support him and Hillary Clinton still has work to do in order to rally support and have the certainty of defeating the Republican candidate.
Trump denies being a voice for racism, although people says he is.
Donald Trump has received a lot of support from white supremacists. He refused to disavow David Duke’s support, a “grand wizard” of the Ku Klux Klan known for his views towards Jew conspiracy theories. But Trump saw that it was more heat than he could handle and disavowed the support, but he argued that it took some time to decide because of a “faulty earpiece.”
Directing the blame on others, Trump highlighted the media due to the uproar caused by his latest and most controversial tweet: “Dishonest media is trying their absolute best to depict a star in a tweet as the Star of David rather than a Sheriff’s Star, or plain star!”
Trump’s campaign team has done everything in their power to derail the flames on each of his controversial statements. For instance, campaign adviser Ed Brookover stated on CNN that “there was never any intention of any anti-Semitism.There’s no anti-Semitism in Mr. Trump’s body, not one ounce, not one cell.” He leaned on the fact that “not every six-sided star is a Star of David,” even if the image’s original purpose was to be posted on a white-supremacist thread on a politically incorrect website.
Source: CNN