.@GideonResnick @OKnox Oh, I thought this one reminding me to swallow my diamonds was from you! pic.twitter.com/Ri6tZsyHXx
— Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) April 28, 2016
Journalist Julia Ioffe has experienced this kind of harassment before: in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. n the 24 hours since her profile of Donald Trump’s wife, Melania, appeared in GQ magazine, the Russian-American journalist has received a torrent of antisemitic, vitriolic and threatening messages from supporters of the Republican frontrunner. In the deeply disturbing response to her piece, Ioffe said she sees a frightening future of what freedom of the press - and the country - might look like under President Trump…. “What happens if Donald Trump is elected?” Ioffe said. “We’ve seen the way he bids his supporters to attack the media, his proposal to change libel laws to make it easier to sue journalists.”
It would be easy to label Donald Trump an anti-Semite, but since I can’t get into his head (for which I’m beyond grateful), I’m going to limit myself to ruminating on his accommodation of those of his supporters with unabashedly virulent racist and anti-semitic views. It’s been said by someone far wiser than myself that if you don’t denounce hatred and bigotry, you’re implicitly supporting it. While it’s possible to debate the philosophical truth behind that statement, I believe it to be true. In this case, Trump is not alone in tacitly condoning racism, homophobia, and anti-semitism. It’s become the de facto policy of the GOP to tolerate those within their midst who in another day and time may have worn brown shirts in Germany.
In the case of Ms. Ioffe, who from firsthand experience knows from anti-semitism, faced the online wrath of Internet trolls for having the temerity to write a profile of Melania Trump, The Donald’s wife. While she’s careful to not directly link the anti-semitic backlash directed at her to Donald Trump, there’s little doubt that, in her words, he’s “fomented a culture of violence at his rallies, encouraging supporters to retaliate against protesters.”
From my inbox. Subject line: "They know about you!" pic.twitter.com/zp3v2GjTeI
— Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) April 28, 2016
Donald Trump put the matches to the pyre. That it’s still burning should surprise no one.
Much of Trump’s appeal has been built on appealing to those whose driving emotion is rage- not merely anger, but an antipathy to The Other- those who differ in terms of culture, religion, skin color, ethnicity, etc., ad nauseam, ad infinitum. He’s been very careful to parse his words in a manner that allows him plausible deniability when it comes to responsibility for those of his supporters who act out reprehensibly.
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!”….
“It’s unsettling,” she said on Thursday night. “I started the day off having a sense of humor about it but by the end of the day, after a few phone calls like this, with people playing Hitler speeches, and the imagery, and people telling me my face would look good on a lampshade, it’s hard to laugh.”
That Mrs. Trump didn’t like Ms. Ioffe’s profile is hardly surprising. Having a thin skin seems to be a Trump family trait. Melania Trump clearly seems to be cut from that cloth, using a Facebook post to register her displeaure: “yet another example of the dishonest media and their disingenuous reporting.” Neither Trump seems to understand that it’s not the role of a free press to function as the campaign’s unofficial propaganda arm.
Mrs. Trump complained that her parents are private citizens and “should not be subject to Ms Ioffe’s unfair scrutiny.” That, of course, depends on one’s definition of unfair, which in TrumpWorld, seems to be “anything that doesn’t paint us as shining examples of human perfection.”
There’s nothing in Ms. Ioffe’s profile of Melania Trump that could be considered controversial or demeaning. If Mrs. Trump takes offensive at what truly is a fairly benign portrayal of her, what will she do when other journalists take her to task for any number of perceived shortcomings? Is she really that thin-skinned? Beyond that, what does her reaction, as well as the general demeanor of her husband, to anything even faintly redolent of criticism say about their attitude towards a free press? And does their intolerance of criticism communicate to certain members of Donald Trump’s base implied permission to attack a journalist “guilty” only of doing her job?
That neither Trump has condemned the virulent anti-semitism directed at Ms. Ioffe can and probably should be taken as implicitly condoning such hatefulness and bigotry. The question Americans should be asking themselves is if this is the sort of America they want to help create? Are they OK with a candidate willing to tolerate the aggressive abridging of free speech and expression? Are they really willing to elect a President who’s on more than one occasion made his antipathy for the press clear?
Even more importantly is the reality that Trump seems willing to countenance the rage and virulent anti-Semitism directed at Ms. Ioffe, which is not at all surprising given the malevolent atmosphere at many of his rallies. As much as I hate to risk invoking Godwin’s Law, there is a historical parallel for this sort of anti-democratic behavior…and it’s not something we should ignore.
Julia Ioffe had the courage to speak out about the vitriol and malevolence directed at her for simply doing her job. Are we going to have to wait for a journalist to be killed or injured by a Trump supporter before we wake up and smell the cat litter? We’re talking about a very basic freedom, one guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. Are we OK with the idea of electing a President willing to blithely abrogate the Constitution simply because he doesn’t like what’s being written or said about him?
These aren’t rhetorical questions; we’re talking about basic constitutional rights being willfully violated by someone who will take an oath to uphold that same Constitution. Once we head down that road, it may well prove difficult to turn back.
As easy as it is to describe a Presidential election as “the most important election in our history,” there’s little doubt but that this time around may well represent a referendum on our constitutional rights.
One choice leads us to virtual dictatorship and suppression of constitutional right; the other to continued commitment to corporatism and the dismantling of the middle class and our constitutional rights. Pray that we have the wherewithal to choose wisely.
