Donald Trump's anti-Semitism problem seems to be getting louder

Trump&#039;s policy proposals are extremely slippery.

(Image credit: Getty Images)

last updated 20 May 2016

Donald Trump does not hate Jews — his daughter Ivanka, he will tell you, is a convert to Orthodox Judaism, and surely Sheldon Adelson would not back an anti-Semite. But Trump clearly has a sizable following among people who do hold unfavorable views of Judaism, they aren't shy about it, and it's becoming a problem. It "has been clear for some time," says Eric Wemple at The Washington Post, "that criticizing Trump while being Jewish is a hazardous online activity."

Wemple points to complaints from CNN's Jake Tapper and a host of conservative commentators, including John Podhoretz and Ben Shapiro, but the prompt for the story is New York Times editor Jonathan Weisman, who spent much of Thursday retweeting vile anti-Semitic comments he got from people with Twitter handles like CyberTrump, HandsomeGoy4Trump, and Trump, God Emperor. You can read them at his Twitter feed. What prompted this wave of ugliness? He tweeted out an op-ed by Robert Kagan warning that Trump could bring fascism to America:

Trump can't be expected to answer for everyone who supports him — including proud white nationalists, KKK members, and his own longtime butler — but as Dean Obeidallah reasonably asks at The Atlantic, "Why won't Trump denounce his anti-Semitic supporters," even when given an explicit chance to by Wolf Blitzer? ("I don't have a message to the fans," Trump replied.) Julia Ioffe also famously was deluged with anti-Semitic threats and abuse after publishing a profile in GQ on Trump's wife, Melania Trump, and Melania Trump told Du Jour on Monday: "I don't control my fans, but I don't agree with what they're doing. I understand what you mean, but there are people out there who maybe went too far. She provoked them."

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In the same interview, Melania Trump also said of her husband, "he's not Hitler." Which is obviously true, but if he doesn't denounce this kind of behavior from supporters, he would appear to condone it. William Weld, the Republican former governor of Massachusetts and new Libertarian vice presidential candidate, told The New York Times on Thursday that when Trump proposes banning Muslims from America, "I can hear the glass crunching on Kristallnacht in the ghettos of Warsaw and Vienna when I hear that, honest." Weld wouldn't go so far as to call Trump a fascist, but he did say: "My Kristallnacht analogy does evoke the Nazi period in Germany ... And that's what I'm worried about: a slippery slope."

Robert Kagan did compare Trump to a would-be fascist dictator, and if you are disgusted or dismayed by the displays of anti-Semitism, one small act of protest might be to read Kagan's op-ed in The Washington Post.

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.