How much responsibility does Trump bear for the synagogue shooting?
By Julia Ioffe
October 28 at 10:06 AM
In the hours after the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, President Trump’s allies were at pains to point out that Robert D. Bowers, the alleged shooter, was in fact anti-Trump. Never mind that the Bowers disliked Trump because he felt he was too soft on “the k--- infestation,” he wrote online, using a slur for Jews. “Trump is a globalist, not a nationalist,” Bowers wrote on one of his social media accounts. But to the president’s defenders, this was a hopeful moment, one they could use to separate Trump from the carnage at Tree of Life. There was an important difference between “a shooter who hates Trump,” wrote conservative writer David French, and the man who loved Trump who sent Trump’s critics all those pipe bombs. Conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt pointed out that anti-Semitism “transcends the left/right divide.” In these defenders’ minds, this absolves Trump of any guilt.
It doesn’t.
... During the campaign, he joked at a meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition that it wouldn’t support him “because I don’t want your money.” A campaign-era tweet about Hillary Clinton superimposed a Star of David over dollar bills. He said the white-supremacist marchers at Charlottesville last year were “fine people.” After I published a profile of Trump’s third wife, Melania, that displeased her — and his supporters — the alt-right deluged me with anti-Semitic insults and imagery, culminating in clear death threats — such as an image of a Jew being shot execution-style or people ordering coffins in my name. When Trump was asked to condemn these attacks by his supporters, he said, “I don’t have a message” for them ...
... Trump’s tune has become a deafening roar. The closing ad of his campaign reprised the kind of anti-Semitic tropes that populated “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”: “It’s a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities,” Trump’s voice said, as pictures appeared of then-Federal Reserve Board Chair Janet Yellen (a Jew), billionaire progressive donor George Soros (a Jew) and then-Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein (also a Jew). The ad was called “Donald Trump’s Argument for America” ...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2018/10/28/how-much-responsibility-does-trump-bear-synagogue-shooting-pittsburgh/?utm_term=.759cf0c5e6cb&wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1
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I don't know enough of the historical details to know if Hitler himself ordered the attacks by the Brownshirts, Kristallnacht, etc., or if they took it upon themselves to carry them out assuming it was in their movement's interest and Hitler would approve. 
Reminder: November 9-10 is the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht.
