This weekend saw the Nazi equations shift from the Republican front-runner to his supporters, who were recorded in violent and provocative situations at various campaign rallies.
Donald Trump’s fans aren’t helping him move past the recent Hitler comparisons.
This weekend saw the Nazi equations shift from the Republican front-runner to his supporters, who were recorded in violent and provocative situations at various campaign rallies.
Video contains graphic language.
A Trump rally was shut down Friday night in Chicago after some of his supporters clashed with protestors. Video of a Trump supporter punching an African-American man made headlines, and comedian Bill Maher played it on his HBO show that night.
The day took a Nazi-esque turn with the circulation of a photo of a woman named Birgitt Peterson giving what she admitted was a “heil Hitler” salute outside the rally. She said she meant the gesture as a counter-protest.
“They said Trump is a second Hitler,” Peterson told The New York Times. “I make the point they are demonstrating something they had no knowledge about.”
On Saturday, a Trump supporter explicitly invoked the Holocaust in a confrontation with a protestor outside a Kansas City rally.
“Go to Auschwitz,” said an unidentified man in a Yankees T-shirt. “Go to f—ing Auschwitz.”
Not surprisingly, the Internet had a lot to say about that.
Some commentators on Twitter tried to add a little humor to the situation.
https://twitter.com/JeffreyGoldberg/status/709129954894565376
Others weren’t in a joking mood.
I'm still pondering just how dark your soul has to be to shout "Go To Auschwitz!" at a political rally.
— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) March 13, 2016
The incident also spurred references to previous Trump controversies, like the one surrounding his hesitance to disavow the support of former Ku Klux Klan leader and notorious anti-Semite David Duke.
One Twitter user even suggested hijacking Trump’s upcoming speech to AIPAC.
https://twitter.com/NC_Prime/status/708830311422042112
Trump has called the comparisons of him to Hitler “ridiculous,” but not all his supporters seem to have gotten the memo.
A surrogate for Donald Trump said Bernie Sanders was an atheist who needed a “come to Jesus” meeting.
Pastor Mark Burns, a televangelist, was warming up a crowd Monday at a rally for Trump in Hickory, North Carolina, a day before primaries in that state and four others.
“Bernie Sanders, who doesn’t believe in God, how in the world are we gonna let Bernie … really?” Burns said as the crowd waited for the arrival of Trump, the front-runner in the Republican presidential race. “He gotta meet Jesus, he gotta have a coming to Jesus meeting.”
Burns did not respond to a query from JTA on Twitter about whether he knew Sanders is Jewish. He later told CNN that his remarks were not aimed at Sanders’ Judaism.
Sanders “is most definitely not a religious-minded individual,” he said. “Obviously, if he was ever elected president he would be the first non-Christian, and that’s not an issue that he is not a Christian, so to speak, so this is not anything bad about the Jewish people.”
Burns said he wanted Sanders to “talk more about the importance of faith. Talk about the importance of religious liberties. Obviously he’s Jewish, he could talk about his Jewish heritage.”
Sanders, the Independent senator from Vermont who has mounted a strong campaign for the Democratic presidential nod, has said he embraces a “spirituality” of helping those who are suffering, although he stops short of outright saying he believes in God.
A number of conservative critics have cited Sanders’ embrace of social democracy, a system prevalent in Western Europe that allows for an expansive social safety net, as being a form of “communism.”
Via JTA
