NOT MY pres drumpf / trump, NOT MY vice-pres pence, the leadership of the republican party and to many republican politicians (with some democrats) tolerate, promote, encourage, and create racism, bigotry, xenophobia, fear , and fascism and so are responsible for the violence of the magabomber and the mass shooting of the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh on 27 OCT 18. America has the opportunity to reject the fascist authoritarianism of the gop (greed over people) / republican party. We do not have to wait until 2020 to end this national nightmare, the Midterm Election is Tuesday, 6 NOV 18 so VOTE BECAUSE OUR COUNTRY'S FUTURE REALLY DOES DEPEND ON IT!!!!! GO TO ROCK THE VOTE , VOTE.ORG or the National Voter Registration Day Website to make sure you are registered to vote or to register to vote as well as information about voting in your state. GO TO Ballotpedia for information on candidates for office and ballot issues in your state. DEMOCRACY IS NOT A SPECTATOR SPORT! GET REGISTERED AND VOTE!!!!!
That time Melania and Donald's followers threatened a Jewish reporter with "ovens".
There have been three terror attacks over the past few days. They all seem to have been sustained and emboldened by Trump’s rhetoric.
In the coming days, you will hear a lot of pieties from Trump, his family and his supporters. Ignore their pretenses. The Trumps, and the Republican party know exactly what they have been doing for three years straight during his presidential campaign and presidency, and for decades before that. He stokes racism and hate to attack those who challenge him.
In 2016, Julia Ioffe published an unflattering article about Melania Trump in GQ.
She began to receive calls from Trump supporters 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. When asked about it, both Melania and Donald said the reporter had brought the attacks upon herself.
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." [...]“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. “These death threats that have followed these anti-Semitic,” Blitzer pressed Trump. “Oh, I don’t know about that. I don’t know anything about that,” said Trump. “You’ll have to talk to them about it. I don’t have a message to the fans." — www.haaretz.com/...
It starts with anti-Semitic trolls and coded language and it ends in violence. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Two and a half years ago. haaretz.com/world-news/mel…
This is why you should never accept “both sides” bullshit from handmaidens of the right. This wasn’t the only time Trump trafficked in anti-semitism. The Israeli paper Haaretz listed six other instances where Trump stoked or supported hate directed specifically at Jews:
On April 24, 2013, Trump seems to go out of his way to highlight the “Daily Show” host’s Jewish background, tweeting: “I promise you that I’m much smarter than Jonathan Leibowitz — I mean Jon Stewart @TheDailyShow. Who, by the way, is totally overrated.” [...]In a major speech designed to unveil his prospective foreign policy agenda, Trump declares, “’America First’ will be the overriding theme of my administration.” The theme carries echoes of the America First Committee, which lobbied hard against America’s entry into World War II and whose most prominent spokesman was aviator Charles Lindbergh, an avowed anti-Semite.William Johnson, leader of the white supremacist American Freedom Party, is among the list of delegates the Trump campaign submitted in California ahead of the state’s May 9 deadline. After news organizations begin reporting about the controversial delegate, the Trump campaign blames Johnson’s inclusion on its list as a “database error.” Johnson then says he is resigning as a delegate and will not attend the convention. — www.haaretz.com/...
It’s not just Trump, other senior Republican leaders are also trafficking in racist conspiracy theories, including anti-semitic ones that seem to have influenced the terrorist who attacked a synagogue today.
Even worse, an actual neo-Nazi, Steve King, is a Republican congressman:
The eight-term congressman, up for re-election next month, talked to Caroline Sommerfeldof the Austrian far-right propaganda site Unzensuriert (which means “uncensored” in English). Sommerfeld is a prominent intellectual in Europe’s neo-fascist identitarian movement, which has deep connections to America’s so-called alt-right.The interview, published in September, came to HuffPost’s attention this week. In his conversation with Sommerfeld, King discussed his belief in the superiority of European culture over others. He talked fearfully of falling fertility rates in the West and spoke at length about his belief that Europe and America are threatened by Muslim and Latino immigration. [...]The interview is remarkable, capturing a sitting U.S. congressman completely fluent in modern white nationalist talking points just weeks before an election he is favored to win. — www.huffingtonpost.com/...
You can do something over the next 10 days to put this racist, white supremacist out of office. Help his Democratic opponent, J.D. Scholten.
— @subirgrewal
'I just want to kill Jews:’ Documents detail the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre and name the dead
A gunman opened fire at a Pittsburgh synagogue Oct. 27, killing multiple people and wounding six, including four police officers.
Authorities have named the 11 people killed Saturday when a man armed with three pistols and a semiautomatic assault-style rifle attacked a synagogue in Pittsburgh — the deadliest attack on Jews in the history of the United States.
The dead include a 97-year-old woman, a husband and wife, and two brothers — all of whom were at services inside the Tree of Life synagogue when Robert Bowers allegedly burst in through an open door, screaming anti-Semitic slurs and shooting. The 46-year-old Pittsburgh resident is also accused of wounding six other people, including three police officers shot during a firefight, and faces a raft of assault, homicide and hate crime charges.
“They’re committing genocide to my people,” the suspect told a SWAT officer after being shot and captured, according to a federal criminal complaint released Sunday. “I just want to kill Jews.”
Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto called the attack the “darkest day of Pittsburgh’s history” after the victims' names were read out Sunday morning. The mayor also disputed President Trump’s suggestion that the synagogue should have had armed guards.
“The approach we need to be looking at is how we take the guns — the common denominator of every mass shooting in America — out of the hands of those looking to express hatred through murder,” Peduto told reporters.
The shooter targeted a congregation that is an anchor of Pittsburgh’s large and close-knit Jewish community, a massacre that authorities immediately labeled a hate crime as they investigated the suspect’s history of anti-Semitic online screeds.
A man with Bowers’s name had posted anti-Semitic statements on social media before the shooting, expressing anger that a nonprofit Jewish organization in the neighborhood has helped refugees settle in the United States. In what appeared to be his final social media post hours before the attack, the man wrote: “I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.”
The FBI said Bowers was not previously known to law enforcement before he drove to the synagogue on Saturday morning, as three different congregations celebrated the Jewish Sabbath inside.
He allegedly walked through an unlocked door at about 9:45 a.m., armed with a Colt AR-15 rifle and three Glock .357 pistols — all four of which fired, police said, as he moved around the large building, screaming about Jews.
“There were casings everywhere,” said Allegheny County chief medical examiner Karl Williams, whose team spent Saturday night inside the synagogue identifying the dead.
“This is the most horrific crime scene I’ve seen in 22 years with the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” said Robert Jones, the FBI special agent in charge of the case.
The three men and eight women killed include Rose Mallinger, a 97-year-old resident of the predominantly Jewish neighborhood; and Cecil and David Rosenthal, two brothers in their 50s and the youngest of the victims; and Bernice Simon and her husband Sylvan, both in their 80s. Also killed were Joyce Fienberg, 75; Richard Gottfried, 65; Jerry Rabinowitz, 66; Daniel Stein, 71; Melvin Wax, 88; and Irving Younger, 69.
Two other worshipers were wounded in the initial shooting spree, which might have lasted about 15 minutes.
Two police officers arrived ten minutes after the shooting started, and stopped the gunman near the synagogue’s entrance.
“He had finished and he was exited the building,” Jones told reporters. “Had Bowers made it out of that facility, there is a strong possibility that additional violence would have occurred.”
Instead, authorities say, Bowers exchanged gunfire with the two officers, shooting one in the hand and injuring another with shrapnel. He allegedly fled back inside the synagogue, and a small SWAT team assembled to pursue him and try to rescue the wounded inside.
Bowers shot two more officers multiple times during a brief standoff on the building’s third floor, according to criminal complaints. The final toll was 11 people killed and six wounded, including the four officers.
The suspect was also shot several times himself before he finally surrendered. He remained in fair condition and under federal custody on Sunday.
Two of the wounded officers remained in stable condition in a hospital on Sunday morning. As they recovered, Jewish leaders along with local, state and federal officials detailed what happened in the shooting’s aftermath, and what is still to come.
Tammy Hepps, from left, Kate Rothstein, and her daughter Simone Rothstein, all of Squirrel Hill, read from a religious text and embrace on the intersection of Shady Avenue and Northumberland Street after multiple people were killed at the Tree of Life Congregation synagogue in the Squirrel Hill section of Pittsburgh. (Alexandra Wimley/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette via AP)
Authorities have closed off the synagogue and much of the surrounding area, and worked through the night to identify the bodies and process what Jones called “a large and complex crime scene.”
As news of the shooting spread, police locked down nearby synagogues in the heavily Jewish neighborhood. “It could have just as easily been our congregation,” said Rabbi Aaron Bisno of nearby Rodef Shalom. “We don’t know what motivated the shooter, but when something like this strikes, the randomness of it terrifies.”
Police also raced to synagogues in Washington, New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles to provide additional security.
Meanwhile, Bowers’s home and car was were due to be searched, and investigators have begun to scour his reportedly extensive social media feeds. These may include a since-deleted Gab account in which a user with Bowers’s name compared Jews to Satan and complained that President Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement cannot succeed so long as Jews “infest” the country.
Investigators have not said what their searches have revealed, but they do not believe the suspect had accomplices.
Bowers is expected to have his first court hearing on Monday. He faces at least 23 state charges, including homicide, attempted homicide and aggravated assault against police officers. He faces an additional 29 federal charges accusing him of civil rights and hate crimes.
“This was the single most lethal and violent attack on the Jewish community in the history of the country,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO and national director of the Anti-Defamation League. “We’ve never had an attack of such depravity where so many people were killed."
Coming less than two weeks before a midterm election and hours after a man was arrested and accused of mailing pipe bombs to prominent Democrats, the Pittsburgh massacre is likely to intensify a national debate over bigotry and hatred in American politics — not to mention gun control.
Anti-Semitic incidents rose more than 50 percent in 2017, according to the ADL, with nearly 2,000 documented events. The previous deadliest anti-Semitic attack, the group said, was a case of mistaken religious identity that killed four non-Jews in 1985.
While it anti-Semitic nature is uniquely horrifying, the Pittsburgh massacre is only the latest of many mass casualty events that take place more frequently in the United States than almost every other nation in the world.
Once again the suspect was a man armed with a semiautomatic assault-style weapon — as was, for example, the gunman who killed 49 people in Orlando’s Pulse nightclub in 2016. Once again the crime scene was a house of worship, a classic “soft target,” as was the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Tex., where a disturbed gunman hoping to kill his mother-in-law slaughtered 26 people during a Sunday service last November.
And once again the victims were members of an ethnic or religious minority with a long history of persecution — as were the nine African American worshipers killed three years ago when a white supremacist invaded a Bible study session at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C.
The recent spate of mass shootings led Tree of Life Rabbi Jeffrey Myers to write on the synagogue’s blog, lamenting the lack of national action to address gun violence in the wake of the Parkland school shooting.
“Unless there is a dramatic turnaround in the midterm elections, I fear that the status quo will remain unchanged, and school shootings will resume,” Myers wrote. “I shouldn’t have to include in my daily morning prayers that God should watch over my wife and daughter, both teachers, and keep them safe. Where are our leaders?”
Law enforcement officers check possible entrances to The Tree of Life synagogue where multiple people were killed and others injured in a deadly shooting on Saturday in Squirrel Hill section of Pittsburgh. (Alexandra Wimley/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette via AP)
For months and years before the shooting, President Trump’s critics have accused him up fueling bigotry, hatred and potential in his speeches — in which he, variously, encouraged violence against protesters and supporters; defended people who took part in a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville; and lately slammed “globalists” — a term that is commonly used as code for Jews in anti-Semitic circle, and which Bowers appears to have adopted in his online messages.
Trump has strongly condemned the synagogue attack. He ordered flags flown at half-mast at public grounds until sunset Wednesday in “solemn respect” for the victims. He has denounced the massacre in multiple speeches, including a political rally Saturday evening.
“This evil anti-Semitic attack is an assault on all of us,” the president said. “It’s an assault on humanity. It will require all of us working together to extract the hateful poison of anti-Semitism from our world.”
As a solution, Trump proposed brining the death penalty “into vogue” and said the massacre could have been prevented if the synagogue had armed security guards — as he has suggested after other mass shootings.
At a news conference on Sunday morning, Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto was asked about the president’s response, and partially repudiated it.
“We will not try to rationalize irrational behavior,” Peduto told reporters. “We will work to eradicate it. We will work to eradicate it from our city, and our nation, and our world. Hatred will not have a place anywhere.”
Members and supporters of the Jewish community come together for a candlelight vigil, in remembrance of those who died earlier in the day during a shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, in front of the White House in Washington, DC on October 27, 2018. - A heavily armed gunman opened fire during a baby-naming ceremony at a synagogue in the US city of Pittsburgh on October 27, killing 11 people and injuring six in the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in recent American history. (Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP)ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP/Getty Images
Kellie B. Gormly reported from Pittsburgh. Amy B Wang, Deanna Paul, Devlin Barrett, Wesley Lowery, Abby Ohlheiser, Kristine Phillips, Mike Rosenwald and Katie Zezima contributed to this developing story.
Read more:
Robert D. Bowers, who authorities said attacked a Pittsburgh synagogue during Saturday morning services, appears to have targeted Jewish people on a social media account rife with anti-refugee, anti-Semitic and white supremacist posts.
The postings, which were listed under Bowers’s name on the social media site Gab before the account was deactivated Saturday afternoon, could offer the clearest window into the mindset of the 46-year-old, who police say stormed Tree of Life synagogue shouting anti-Semitic slurs and firing an assault rifle in an attack that left 11 people dead and six wounded, including one in critical condition.
Gab, a social media site similar to Facebook and Twitter that is popular with white supremacists and other far-right figures, confirmed that it had deactivated an account in Bowers’s name following the shooting.
The account, which appeared to have been started in January, included a bio that reads: “jews are the children of satan.” His background photo was a radar gun that reads “1488,” a number that combines two codes — the “14” referring to a 14-word white supremacist slogan and the “88” being a neo-Nazi symbol meaning “Heil Hitler.”
The account frequently reposted from others, including a cartoon referencing the phrase “zionist occupied government,” which white supremacists use to suggest that the government is controlled by Jewish people.
Police officers guard Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh on Saturday after a shooter killed at least 11 people and wounded six others. (John Altdorfer/Reuters)
It also posted photos of bullet-riddled targets at a shooting range from July. The text of that posting read: “anyone looking for a 9x19 striker fired handgun? i recommend you take a look at the walther ppq. amazing trigger.”
The user also made reference to President Trump and challenged his views.
“Trump is a globalist, not a nationalist,” the user posted after a rally this week in which Trump declared himself a nationalist.
Trump has repeatedly slammed “globalists” in his public rhetoric, despite warnings that the term is understood to mean Jews in anti-Semitic circles. “There is no #MAGA as long as there is a k--- infestation,” the user wrote, using a slur for Jews.
The postings, which law enforcement officials have yet to confirm as authentic, may offer the clearest clues available about what may have motivated the suspect, who appears to have lived near Pittsburgh for several years and otherwise had a limited presence online.
Robert Allan Jones, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Pittsburgh field office, said Saturday that “at this point, we have no knowledge that Bowers was known to law enforcement before today.”
Members of Bowers’s family could not be reached for comment, and it is unclear whether he had a job. One former neighbor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, remembered Bowers as unremarkable.
“He stayed to himself,” said the man, who said that he lived across the street from Bowers on Fieldcrest Drive in Pittsburgh . “He smoked out on the front porch all of the time, and then would go in without saying much.”
Bowers moved out of that house in 2015.
The attack on Tree of Life is the deadliest U.S. attack to target Jewish people, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
It is at least the third mass shooting in recent years in which an aggrieved white man wielding an assault rifle has threatened a house of worship.
In 2015, nine parishioners were shot and killed at a historically black church in Charleston, S.C., by Dylann Roof, a white supremacist who was sentenced to nine consecutive life terms.
Last year, 26 people were killed in a church in Sutherland Springs, Tex., in a shooting carried out by Devin Patrick Kelley, who later shot and killed himself.
And last week, police said Gregory A. Bush, 51, attempted to enter Jeffersontown First Baptist Church, a historically black congregation in Louisville. After finding the door locked, they said, he went to a nearby grocery store where he shot and killed two black shoppers. He has been charged with murder, and federal investigators are considering charging him with a hate crime.
The most recent postings on the Gab account believed to belong to Bowers specifically targeted the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, known as HIAS, which is one of nine organizations that works with the federal government to resettle refugees in American communities.
“HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in,” Bowers is suspected of writing hours before authorities said he opened fire at Tree of Life.
In one posting, which seems to have been published several weeks ago, the author appears to threaten participants in the HIAS’s National Refugee Shabbat project, for which more than 200 congregations across the country held celebration and worship services centered on refugees last week. The organization, founded in 1881 to assist Jews fleeing Russia and Eastern Europe, now works to resettle displaced people from around the world, including Muslim and Central and South American nations.
“Why hello there HIAS! You like to bring in hostile invaders to dwell among us? We appreciate the list of friends you have provided,” the poster wrote before linking to the Web page that lists all of the participating congregations.
“He clearly decided that HIAS was a Jewish agency and he was going to attack Jews,” said Mark Hetfield, president and chief executive of the HIAS, which has no formal relationship with Tree of Life synagogue. He said he was unaware of the threatening postings until after the shooting.
“Clearly, he hates both Jews and refugees,” Hetfield said. “Usually, people who hate others don’t just hate one group, they hate many.”
Hetfield said he was attending a bar mitzvah in the District when his phone began buzzing in his pocket with dozens of calls and messages about the shooting and the suspect’s alleged posts about the HIAS.
“Clearly, there is a lot of space and tolerance right now for intolerant speech, and that has to end,” Hetfield said. “No one should be looking the other way when they hear hate speech. We have to stand up to hate speech.”
Hetfield said that the HIAS has helped many refugees resettle in Pittsburgh, having placed 233 people in the region in 2016 and 122 in 2017. But the group managed just 42 placements this year after the Trump administration placed a historically low cap on the number of displaced people allowed to resettle in the United States.
“Our agency is the oldest refugee agency in the world, and we’ve seen some horrible dark periods in our time, and we’ve seen plenty of hate, and refugees by definition are fleeing hate,” Hetfield said. “But the United States is supposed to be a place of refuge, and a synagogue is supposed to be a place of refuge.”
Julie Tate, Abby Ohlheiser, Jennifer Jenkins and Alice Crites contributed to this report.
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Many of America’s most observant Jews refrain from using phones, television or the Internet on the Sabbath. On Saturday, it resulted in a shock.
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