Melania Trump, the wife of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, on Tuesday suggested that journalist Julia Ioffe “provoked” the anti-Semitic abuse she faced from Trump fans after publishing negative profile about her.
“I don’t control my fans,” Melania said in an interview with DuJour. “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."
Ioffe, who is Jewish, received calls from people playing Hitler speeches, told that she “should be burned in an oven,” “be shot in the head,” and was sent photoshopped images of her in a concentration camp uniform.
In a statement released last week, ADL’s CEO Jonathan Greenblatt urged Trump to denounce the barrage of anti-Semitic comments by some of his supporters on social media. “The onus is now on Donald Trump to make unequivocally clear he rejects those sentiments and that there is no room for .. anti-Semitism in his campaign and in society,” Greenblatt said.
Trump refused to condemn his fans in an interview with CNN.
“You hated this article in ‘GQ’ about your wife, Melania. Julia Ioffe wrote it. Since then, some of your supporters have viciously attacked this woman, Julia Ioffe, with anti-Semitic attacks, death threats. What’s your message to these people when something like that happens?” Wolf Blitzer asked the presumptive Republican presidential nominee during an interview on Wednesday. “I’ll tell you, I haven’t read the article, but I hear it was a very inaccurate article and I heard it was a nasty article… They shouldn’t be doing that with wives. I mean they shouldn’t be doing that,” he responded. [...]
This is the United States. It's part of the "free speech" here to write articles in magazines about the families of presidential candidates. Even unflattering articles. And it's free speech for people to contact the authors of the articles with feedback. Even to disagree in a repugnant fashion.
ReplyDeleteIn that context, some people like to play the "Condemn Game". They say: maybe we can't use the police and courts to silence those we find repugnant in the way they express their feedback. But we'll use "moral force" to snub these critics who say and do things we dislike. And we'll dole out the same moral lashings to anyone who doesn't play the Condemn Game with us.
So these Condemners just lie in wait for incidents like that described in this post. Then they pop up like gnats after a summer rain and buzz and pick at those going about their legitimate business in the field.
Well, get this: I condemn the Condemners.