Julia Ioffe is a political journalist, a regular contributor to Politico and a columnist at Foreign Policy. Last week, GQ published a lengthy profile of Melania Trump by Ioffe, revealing some details of her life that the wife of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee would have probably preferred to have left unrevealed.
Did I mention that Ioffe is Jewish?
Well, she is, which means that shortly after her profile of Melania T. went up the most predictable thing in the world, at least in this current political season, happened.
Can you guess what that is? I’ll give you a hint: I didn’t have any trouble finding horrendous memes to feature for Memeday this week.
Yep. Ioffe was treated to a wave of viciously anti-Semitic abuse from Trump’s Nazi-est fans, unleashed by Trump enthusiast Andrew Anglin of the Daily Stormer, who kicked the whole thing off with a post bearing the lovely title “Empress Melania Attacked by Filthy Russian [deleted] Julia Ioffe in GQ!”
Note: the word I’ve deleted there is a not-terribly polite reference to Ioffe’s Jewishness.
Naturally, the Daily Stormer troll army immediately got to work, defending their immigrant “Empress” by sending Ioffe an assortment of wildly anti-Semitic memes, including some they custom-made just for the occasion.
Here, for example, is Ioffe’s face photoshopped into a historical photo.
This one, for some reason, has a Britney Spears theme.
Happy #HolocaustRemembranceDay day to me! pic.twitter.com/Gajo3bMIPA
— Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) May 5, 2016
This one, posted on the Daily Stormer, offered a lazily photoshopped homage to the notion that the Nazis used the skin of their victims to make lampshades. (It’s not clear if this really happened.)
Ioffe was sent numerous other memes that, while not personalized, were certainly jarring.
From my inbox. Subject line: "They know about you!" pic.twitter.com/zp3v2GjTeI
— Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) April 28, 2016
At least they're fluent in 80s pop culture? pic.twitter.com/4pTTfa7jhE
— Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) April 28, 2016
This vicious harassment campaign against Ioffe — which also, she says, included threatening phone calls — has been covered in a number of media outlets. So what has The Donald had to say about this appalling behavior on the part of his “alt-right” fans?
Nothing. Less than nothing, really. When Wolf Blitzer asked him about the harassment on CNN, Trump pointedly refused to condemn it, instead going on about how “nasty” Ioffe’s article allegedly is, even though he claims he hasn’t read it.
Trump doesn't condemn fans threatening reporter @juliaioffe "I don't have a message" to fans https://t.co/95d0SnGj2c https://t.co/MI3lx1xVrD
— The Situation Room (@CNNSitRoom) May 4, 2016
By attacking Ioffe instead of condemning the literal Nazis sending her abusive messages and death threats (and pasting her head onto a lampshade), it seems pretty clear that Trump is offering tacit support — a wink and a nod — to the hate campaign against the journalist.
If that was indeed the message Trump meant to send his Nazi fans, it was received loud and clear by the Daily Stormer’s Anglin, who wrote
The Jew Wolf was attempting to Stump the Trump, bringing up stormer attacks on Jew terrorist Julia Ioffe. Trump responded to the request with “I have no message to the fans” which might as well have been “Hail Victory, Comrades!”
Such is the state of politics today.
As I’ve noted before, there are still some out there who who dismiss the vicious racism and anti-Semitism of the alt-right as a big goof, and not the primary motivating factor that it so obviously is. Breitbart’s Milo Yiannopoulos, who has been doing his best to cozy up to the alt-right, dismisses the anti-Semitic harassment of Jewish journalists as little more than the work of “mischievous, dissident” trolls who don’t really hate the Jews, as he gamely tried to argue in one recent interview.
When someone sends a picture of a crudely caricatured Jew being shot execution-style to a Jewish journalist, that’s not just a bit of good, old-fashioned fun. That’s hate speech.
Ahhh yes, this is what I was thinking! Emphasis on the easily revocable part of course.
And he didn’t defend them. I mean his own fucking grandkids. I’ve no love for most Republican’s politics, but at least some stick with their fucking family. Even Sarah FUCKING Palin would probably freak out if someone talked shit about her family. Maybe she should be VP just to keep him in line. (/s) Isn’t family supposed to be one of Conservatives core values? Donald isn’t even a good Republican! He’s just a pure scumbag. I hope his family sees what an absolute snake he is when this is over. But I also want to spare them them any backlash from these horrible people, since it isn’t their fault!
Trump sees to have boundaries of what is appropriate, no wonder the online harassers love him.
I need some more baby animals now, and maybe just stop thinking about Drumpf for a while.
http://static.boredpanda.com/blog/wp-content/uuuploads/cute-baby-animals/cute-baby-animals-9.jpg
http://static.parade.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/grab-bag-11.jpg
She’s in good spirits, or at least she’s trying to be… Small victories, ya know?
Nitpicky meme dissection, cos I need to focus my bad thoughts:
Preeurdy? Seriously? It’s pretty or purdy. Choose
Back to the oven? So she gets baked, then flayed, then baked again? That’s terribly inefficient
Why is Julia 2 different people at Camp Trump? Do Jooz have clones, now. Is that the seekrit banksta conspiracy?
Most KLs were named after their hometown (ie. Auschwitz in Oswiecim, Poland). I don’t doubt for a moment Trump wouldn’t break tradition and slap his name on it, if he had one built. Big letters over the Arbeit Macht Frei
Fuckin Nazis, man…
@Mike Hisandry
And yet these brave champions of freeze speech don’t lift a finger when activists they disagree with are genuinely stiff-armed into silence through threats and intimidation. Funny how that works.
In my opinion, the internet has not helped free speech. It has only threatened it. We have to bring law and order to this godforsaken series of tubes, and do whatever it takes to bring these trolls to heel.
Baby animals?
http://images.animalpicturesociety.com/images/04/white-tigers.jpg
http://cdn.pcwallart.com/images/baby-white-tigers-wallpaper-1.jpg
Although, when I Googled baby snow tiger, one of the first things that tried to autopopulate was “baby snow tiger for sale” and that was just fucking depressing. I’m really not cool with the buying and selling of exotic pets. Tigers don’t fucking belong in your backyard, people!
I hate it too. It’s not even that OT, because it seems like the kind of thing Trump might do/condone. But, they are so cute. 🙂 I love the one with the orange and white one hugging.
http://mindbodysmile.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/snow-leopards.jpg
These are snow leopard cubs.
JFC American politics are awful.
My Otter and I have serious plans to move to the US (in her case, move back). In the unlikely event that Trump wins the election, there’s just no way we could move. :/
Something I saw on my FB feed a few days ago
What happens when a bully runs for president:
https://www.splcenter.org/news/2016/04/13/splc-survey-presidential-campaign-leading-widespread-fear-bullying-schools
Regarding Ivanka: I think that anti-Semites who love Trump convince themselves that she’s not really a Jew — otherwise they wouldn’t be able to handle the cognitive dissonance. As to Trump, I think he’ll say something mild about it after he has paused long enough to convince the neo-Nazis (wink, wink) that he’s really on their side.
I think that young Neo-nazis on the internet tend to make a disproportionate amount of noise — that there really aren’t as many of them as there seem to be. I associate this sort of thing with white male entitlement — dudes of all ages who feel that they are getting cheated out of their rights of heritage. For over 30 years, the Republican’t Party has been whispering to them that if they are not doing as well as they think they ought to, it’s not due to the policies of the elites but to unearned favoritism for Those People — PoC, immigrants, and women. Trump has merely come along and claimed those dudes by shouting what used to be whispered.
I’m very concerned about the possibility of Trump becoming President, but I think that to win he’s going to have to do a lot better with women than appears to be the case at the moment. When he plays footsie with the neo-Nazis and their ilk, he’s solidifying his status with his base but probably not helping himself with the people he needs to attract that aren’t already on his side. I don’t think he can stop himself from saying nasty things about Hillary that will hurt him with women. (One of his supporters on another blog, in his attacks on Hillary, never fails to comment on what he regards as her overly large butt. Another calls her “Grandma Pantsuit,” as if being a grandmother or wearing pantsuits is somehow disqualifying. That is not, IMO, the sort of thing that is likely to induce women to change their minds about Trump.) By the way, Hillary has a long, positive record on civil rights — I think she’s a lot better than Bill, whom I found very disappointing in that regard.
For non-USians, I recommend this article that shows how very difficult it will be for Trump to get a majority in the Electoral College. Remember, in the US, total popular votes is meaningless. (Al Gore beat Dubya by half a million.) We do it state by state — if you win the state, you win all its electoral votes. (There are two fairly insignificant exceptions, Maine and Nebraska.) Here’s the article with the map. Note that Trump can win a majority of the states and still lose the election. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/05/gops-impending-florida-apocalypse.html
@Imaginary Petal
Just so you know, every time you mention your ‘significant otter’, there’s a minute or so where I actually think you mean a real otter and get all jealous because otters are damn adorable.
Otters for everyone!
Oh for fuck’s sake…does anybody ACTUALLY give a shit about Melania Trump has to say about anything? She is a nothing-person. I don’t know whom I find more offensive, her or her husband. The only reason trolls are defending her is because they think she’s “hot” and she pretends to be “traditional” because that’s the role her husband pays her to play. I don’t know if it’s true or not but I do know if she broke character for even a second and had any purpose on earth or had anything interesting to say about anything, the same people attacking Ioffe would brand Melania a feminazi gold digging slut and attacking her instead. This article isn’t even critical! People who think this article is critical don’t know what a smear piece is (HINT: It’s not your underwear that you refuse to wash because washing them would appease feminazis).
Of course, now I’m a slut shamer because any and all criticism of her is slut shaming, doncha know?
-baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarfs forever-
If I may: I don’t think that would help anything at all.
What you’re asking for isn’t “law and order” but “silencing people I don’t agree with”, and I’ve seen you advocating for this on other threads too, with threats of violence and guns.
That’s not going to help anyone, least of all the rest of us who don’t agree with the bigots who back Trump.
Rather, strongarming them into silence will only feed into their Martyr Complex and tell them that they were right all along, and that they need to fight even harder to get the word out, and very likely escalate their tactics. Your plan would involve backing them into a corner, and might cause them to start taking their violence to the streets instead of just the internet.
These kinds of people literally believe that they’re the victims here, and will do anything to fight back.
I’d rather try to get the opposing word out and try to get to the root of the problems of bigotry, rather than just force said bigots into silence and thus convince them that they were right and that I (being a gender-questioning pansexual feminist) was the evil oppressor all along.
I get it, you’re angry, and I’m angry too, but forcing our opponents to submit won’t help anything, and will in fact, make it worse.
@Paradox
Well, by “law and order” what I meant was “actually enforcing antiharassment law”.
Other than that, you are correct, and I have been reacting a bit too harshly lately to stuff like this.
I think I need to take a break from viewing sites like this, it’s doing something to me.
http://evansheline.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/get-otter-here-490×700.jpg
@Mike Hisandry
Not at the voting booth.
Here are Exit Polls for several Republican primaries.
Virginia
Wisconsin
New York
Florida
While age demographics are playing a smaller role in the Republican primaries, Trump has done significantly better among older voters and, in fact, has continually lost younger voters to a variety of his opponents.
I don’t take much stock in National polls this early but his worst demos in Trump v Clinton polls include people under 30.
Woohoo, otters!
http://pbs.twimg.com/media/CW6H5TPWkAAobWO.png
http://i.imgur.com/0buXZ.gif
@Paradoxical Intention
The otter with the unstackable cups — story of my life.
And that otter is so cute trying to deal with that existential horror show!
FYI! Speaking of cute animals!
Here’s a live cam which is on during May — it is a rare (to the point of teetering on brink of extinction) Saimaa Ringed Seal, who uses this rock jutting out of a lake to shed its winter fur and bask in the sun.
http://wwf.fi/elainlajit/saimaannorppa/?endorseimage=8452#norppalive
It may not be there all of the time (and the camera is off during the night), since it is a wild animal, after all. But it enjoys sunshine so much!
Also! It has totally beach-ready bod, which is AWESOME. Let’s be happy in the sun like that seal. We all deserve it!
calm down
I’m not even sure this is necessarily the case. I believe the possibility exists that Ivanka actually has had her share of harassment but it’s being hushed up and possibly ‘looked into’ for the sake of the campaign.
Careful, folks. Always remeber: http://67.media.tumblr.com/e494331d06a3848c7a4833f350355e21/tumblr_mw5kmtIsCl1rjiopto1_500.png
Yay for all the otters! 😀