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.
Okay, I hate to admit it, but that lampshade one made me crack up laughing… Because that’s the worst fucking ‘shopwork I’ve ever seen, even compared to other MRA “Memes.” Bloody hell.
(I know, small potatoes, but I’m concentrating on the quality over the content because I don’t drink.)
This is some loathsome crap.
I usually like to type out a snarky retort to the utter fail of the horrible humans covered on this site, but this is too disgusting for snark.
I’m horrified. Special hugs to any Jewish readers, especially those who might be families of survivors. You shouldn’t have to read stuff like this.
On-topic-ish: This article in the New Yorker about the alt-right is naive and hand-wavey enough to be concerning in and of itself: http://www.newyorker.com/news/benjamin-wallace-wells/is-the-alt-right-for-real
@SFHC
http://www.lifenews.com/2016/05/04/new-law-stops-rapists-from-getting-custody-of-child-when-a-raped-woman-rejects-abortion/
Some good news for you. I feel you might need it because I feel the media won’t attack Trump on his support of anti-semites.
@ScarlettAthena
Well, I cope with snark, so:
Stormers: Horrible human beings, actual nazis, and in serious need of a dictionary.
So I read the original article in GQ, and… I seriously can’t understand what’s got these guys so het up. The headline was a bit clickbaity, but the actual story was not merely fair, but favorable. The closest it got to a critical approach was when it said that her father had been investigated by the Yugoslavian government for tax evasion, which she denied.
I mean, serioulsy, it would be hard to make a more deliberate fluff piece.
Damn, these shitfuckers are fragile
Re: the lampshade shop work — I also like the fact that Toni Morrison’s “A Mercy” is on the end table with the lamp. What Neo-Nazi reads Toni Morrison?
@Freemage
Everyday I am reminded that Holocaust survivors are rapidly passing on, and these neonazis are still around to propogate their hate.
“I didn’t read the article, but I think it was nasty, so I’m not going to say anything to my fans and just let them do what they want.”
And this is the man they want for president? Someone who can’t be fucking bothered to read something before attacking someone?
If his ego’s this fragile, we’re most likely looking at WWIII should he win. The last thing we need is to give someone with that fragile of an ego the power to declare war on other countries.
Trump would be declaring war because he assumes someone’s talking shit about him. (And I’m not sure he’d stop with other countries, but would declare war on people in the US who disagree with him too.)
@PI
They run on hate and being a bully. Of course they would revolve around the most boisterous of them all.
I would like to think the military would refuse to listen ot Trump’s orders. Hopefully.
“Empress” Melania?
EMPRESS???
Holocaust Remembrance Day had me also thinking about the Jewish Federation shooting in Seattle. And I was surprised to realize that was already 10 years ago. It seems so much more recent. These anti-Semites are not harmless. They are dangerous, and they are being emboldened by Trump’s tacit approval.
And do these people ever say anything about Ivanka and her kids? I don’t want them to say anything about Ivanka or her kids, but I just don’t understand that kind of cognitive dissonance. Is she an okay Jewish person because she’s on Trump’s side?
Soooo, they like images eh? Well here’s one of my cat summarising how this had made me feel:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v517/falsehead/zomgevilkitteh.jpg
I notice they slapped Ben Garrison’s name on the “Back to the Ovens” cartoon. I wonder if the posters believe he actually believes that, since he is a slavering Trump fan, or if there’s still people actively trying to drag him despite him otherwise being an ally of theirs?
@Womdering
“One of the good ones”
Anti semites are willing to try anything to further their desires of genocide.
@PI:
That’s what I’m afraid of, actually. I mean, on top of all of this, the man filed for bankruptcy a lot, so what makes him think that he could run an economy?
I really, really do NOT want this guy to be President.
@varalys the dark what a beautiful kitty!
@RosieLa: Thanks! That’s him when he was much younger and grumpier, he’s way more chill now he’s eleven. I was trying to have a nice photo of me patting him on the head and he went RAEG!!!1 on me :p
Wow. Usually meme day makes me giggle, but this is just awful.
I just hope someone in the Clinton campaign is social media savvy enough to notice this story and turn it into a scandal. As awful and bigoted as Americans can be, the vast majority of people, including conservatives would not find this kind of “humor” anything other than deeply offensive.
@leftwingfox
I assume the use of Garrison’s name is a version of the meme over on 4chan’s /pol/ of editing his conspiracy ridden libertarian cartoons into conspiracy ridden nazi/white supremacist cartoons. Which often doesn’t take that much work. I’d say most of them, at least the ones originating from 4chan itself, are probably made by people fully aware of the fact that he doesn’t support the views expressed. It’s been a running conflict and his anger over it has only made the trolls more delighted to slap his name on that sort of thing.
Wouldn’t surprise me if there are a lot of people out there by this point who associate him more with the shops than the originals at this point though.
The whole Trump thing has made some odd bedfellows of parts of the right that usually hate one another (or at least pretend to.) Though in this case I bet the “back to the ovens” picture predates the Trump campaign.
Been reading some of the stuff that gets dumped into that garbage can of a website for years now, and when I read those “articles” a few days ago I wasn’t even surprised. Sometimes I wonder if they aren’t some extremely elaborate Poe’s… but then I see the literal nazis with their swastika tattoos commuting with me and any semblance of hope disappears.
Just a bit off-subject : this too might be a tired meme by now, but I may as well reiterate. ‘cuz when America sneezes… y’know. So… as a foreigner (from socialist misandrist pinko commie gay-agenda-pushing France) I’m scared crapless of the idea of a President Trump. And from what I’ve heard, you folks kinda agree with us on that (truly that man is the last hope of humanity, if he managed to make our two countries agree on at least one thing). So… yeah. Moral support. ’tis all I can give ya. Haven’t set foot in NA for a good two years, and from the looks of it I’m going to stay put for at least another 4, god forbid 8.
On the flip side, google the 2002 French elections, and what happened with that horrible guy called Jean-Marie “One-Eyed” Le Pen – fingers (and every other bodily extremities) crossed that’s what happens with Trump over there. When you compare the two guys, and the two countries… well it’s roughly the same situation in the end, the only big question is how will your political right handle it.
Should the worst happen, I guess you can still rely on support from a lot of us foreigners, for what it’s worth. Also I run a bed-&-breakfast with my family but I don’t think there’s a 4-8 year vacancy, heh.
Drumpf didn’t bother to read an article about his own wife?
He truly doesn’t give a shit about anyone except himself, does he?
…and this, folks, is why, if I can’t leave America after Trump wins, I plan to arm myself just in case these fuckers have any ideas. If they’re gonna kill me, I’d like to drag some of ’em to Hell with me.
And I refuse to apologize for that sentiment.
@Dal
Or you can just leave America. Seriously. Getting guns and shooting back sounds awfully like EXACTLY the kind of “ideas” they have right now. Don’t indulge.