Still not clear to me, maybe I’m slow. I know that it was intentional. I’ve known that the whole time. What you are saying is that the picture coming from a white supremacist Web site does not prove its anti semitism - only it’s intent to be antisemitic. I do not understand why this is materially important.
Maybe you can approach it from a different angle and explain to me, a Jew, the parameters for **proving **that a thing is anti-Jewish.
I think it depends on what you mean. Imagine just that image as tweeted by Trump, but in an alternate world where Trump created the image himself using a stock, six-sided star from MS Word. Now, to answer the question, “Is this anti-Jewish?”, is it important to determine whether Trump made an innocent error or if he intended it as a dog whistle to anti-Semitic groups? If the answer is that it doesn’t matter, then in that sense, I, as a non-Jew, don’t think I have any valuable opinion to offer you as to whether or not you should feel offended and demand an apology.
But to me, in the larger context of the election, the questions to me are is the image anti-semitic, what was intended by its creators, what was intended by Trump’s campaign in retweeting it, and has the campaign acted appropriately? And the answers are yes, anti-semitism, I don’t know, and no.
I try to avoid the argument, “if the other guy did this, then so-and-so would throw a fit.” But, really, wasn’t Obama browbeaten into repudiating anyone who said anything vaguely controversial within his earshot? “You must reject the ideas of this guy whose book you read as an undergrad!” or whatever. Remember that? Good times.
But Trump can take source material from a fucking white supremacist, and as long as he deletes it and pretends it didn’t happen, that’s cool? Really? He doesn’t have to even say, “Oh geez, that was a major screw up! Sorry!” Even the hated non-apology (“I apologize if you were offended”) would at least be an acknowledgement that people were offended. But, nope! He just ignores it and moves on to embracing Saddam Hussein and accusing the Attorney General of accepting bribes.
The person that made the image *intended *it to be anti-Jewish. However, the image itself isn’t necessarily so.
Trump’s people just searched for anti-Hilary messages. They only saw the anti-Hilary sentiment in the image, and distributed it as such. The intended anti-Jewish message went over their heads.
The alphabet would go over their heads.
Maybe if they looked at the site they were stealing the image from, this sort of thing wouldn’t happen.
When you whoosh upon a star…
Small point, maybe lost already. I recall reading that somebody altered the image after the fact to replace the star with a circle. (Just as GIGO noted, there has to be enough room inside the image for words.) Who did that, and allegedly why?
Bah, everyone knows the posts on this message board are funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Inanities.
Shit, is it Pledge Week again? Already?
Given that the guy who did it, Trump’s social media director, used to be his golf caddie, I think that it went over his head is a good bet.
However the more interesting question is why the guy was surfing racist sites, except maybe to tell them to stop supporting the candidate. (snicker) Or maybe the content of the site went over his head also.
Just shows what a great job Trump does in finding talent.
I have a challenge for the Trump-apologists:
Find a political poster/graphic that has these two characteristics:
[ol]
[li]Like the Trump tweet, it’s an attack ad on an opponent and contains no “vote for me” content (only “my opponent is awful” content, as in the Trump tweet)[/li][li]Like the Trump tweet, it contains a star. It can be six-sided, five-sided, seven-sided; whatever.[/li][/ol]
Notice that in our culture, stars are used to connote something positive. “Vote for ME” posters/graphic are quite likely to contain stars; “my opponent is awful” posters/graphics (that contain no additional ‘vote for ME’ content) are highly unlikely to contain stars. I don’t think any Trump apologist will be able to find a verifiable example.
Use of a star connotes approval. So the argument that the star in the anti-Hillary graphic could have had any number of points–the argument that the six-pointed star has no significance and was chosen randomly–is absurd. You don’t put a random star in your anti-Hillary graphic, because a star connotes something positive and commendable.
But you put a star in your anti-Hillary graphic if it’s a type of star that has a meaning OTHER than ‘this is positive and commendable’–if it, let’s say, has a meaning that evokes Jewishness. And, of course, if you want to imply that Hillary is associated in some disreputable way with people you know your audience hates/fears/despises.
There is no way a star would be used in an anti-Hillary graphic unless it had this special meaning. A random star would imply approval of Hillary. But a six-pointed star is a message to your fellow hatemongers.
The campaign’s story is that they got it from a relatively innocuous anti-Hillary source, which in turn presumably got it from an obviously antisemitic source.
Remember, the campaign first claimed that it was made in-house.Then CNN tracked down it’s origin from 10 days before Trump retweeted it.
It’s no different than how some white people will tell black people that a racist image isn’t racist. Or how sexists will always insist that a given sexist example isn’t sexist. It’s always people being too PC, or too sensitive, or looking for trouble.
Bigots have have finally grasped that bigotry is wrong, so they twist themselves into knots to find some way to cast doubt on the accusation. And of course, it’s always supposedly the fault of the people who call them on their bigotry, for being reverse racists or man-haters.
You see it in this thread, with people going out of their way to give Donald the benefit of the doubt, that maybe he’s not personally an anti-semite, in his heart of hearts - like that excuses his unapologetic dissemination of anti-semitic stuff.
It’s sickening. The only thing to do is just keep speaking the truth.
Yes.
Is believing that the image in question came from a white supremacist website part of Trump Derangement Sydrome? How about that many more of Trump’s tweets and images have come from white supremacist sources?
https://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.zombietime.com%2Fzomblog%2Fwp-content%2Fimages2009%2Fgeorge-w-bush-wanted-2.jpg&imgrefurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.zombietime.com%2Fzomblog%2F%3Fp%3D621&docid=iWIA-fdNcXEOpM&tbnid=8TQQkd_ebVtSIM%3A&w=500&h=611&itg=1&bih=508&biw=884&ved=0ahUKEwjuz5bE_9_NAhWCfhoKHSlcBT0QMwhHKCIwIg&iact=mrc&uact=8
Not that I’m apologising for him in the first place. Just saying, I find it believable that they failed to notice the anti-Jewish message in the image.
The star is clearly a photo of a Texas Ranger’s badge. It’s not a clip art Star of David.
it can’t possibly be mistaken for anything else.
Certainly they don’t. A sheriff’s badge, for instance, is not a Star of David. Its six points come directly from the center.
Rather than, as I am sure you know, having a straight line along the top of the two points below the top point, and a straight line along the bottom of the two points above the bottom point. Which is a Star of David.
Are you high? Or on drugs? Or what? What the fuck is wrong with you?
“it contains a star. It can be six-sided, five-sided, seven-sided; whatever.”
[Also, this:](it contains a star. It can be six-sided, five-sided, seven-sided; whatever.)