On Thursday, Ioffe answered a phone call from an anonymous caller who played a Hitler speech. She received another call from “Overnight Caskets”. On Twitter, users posted photos of her face superimposed on a mug shot from Auschwitz. The Daily Stormer, a white supremacist site, attacked Ioffe in a blogpost titled: “Empress Melania Attacked by Filthy Russian Kike Julia Ioffe in GQ!”
Earlier in the story:
The harassment from Trump supporters is not directly linked to the candidate. Yet he has fomented a culture of violence at his rallies, encouraging supporters to retaliate against protesters. He once offered to pay the legal fees for a man who sucker punched a protester at his rally. He also failed to immediately disavow former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, who said he supports Trump’s candidacy. His campaign has been contacted for comment.
Not directly linked? Like okay, the call isn’t coming from inside the house, but certainly he’s paying the phone bills. What would “directly linked” even look like here? What would it mean? Donald Trump writes a letter to his supporters saying, “Please call this woman and say vile things to her?” Does he even have to do that at this point?
The Washington Post described the threats Ioffe was receiving as evidence of “The Trump Era,” which NO. NO. NO. There is no “Trump Era” which is just happening right now, like a calendar page got turned and we are now in the Paleo-Republican period. There is a candidate for office inciting violence on purpose. Calling threats of violence a sign of “the Trump Era” makes it sound like this is the weather, and not the deliberate actions of some meatsticks who are taking their cues from their leader.
You can actually hear the creaking right now as everybody strains to pretend this is all normal. It’s not normal. It’s profoundly fucked up, and the longer our institutional media choose to use bloodless language to describe bloody things, the more fucked up it all gets.
A.