Donald Trump has a white supremacist problem. The only question is whether he will ignore it, deny it or do something about it.

Trump has changed a lot of the rules in the campaign game, but one law he hasn’t broken is this: When you say divisive, nasty things, you empower divisive, nasty people.

Organizations that track hate crimes against Jews and others have been following what we can call the Trump Effect for the past year, and have compelling evidence that it is real.

White nationalist leaders including Jared Taylor and former Klansman David Duke have endorsed Trump. On Vanguard News Network, the largest white supremacist website, Trump is regularly referred to as “Glorious Leader.” Bloggers compare him to Hitler, treating him like the Second Coming of the Third Reich. In January, William Johnson, leader of the white supremacist American Freedom Party, paid for a series of robocalls in Iowa in support of Trump. Johnson convened a 2015 white power political event in Bakersfield at which Matthew Heimbach of the Traditionalist Youth Network gave a speech blaming Jews for destroying the white race.

“Donald Trump’s demonizing statements about Latinos and Muslims have electrified the radical right,” Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote in his group’s 2015 report.

Instead of distancing himself from such supporters, Trump has retweeted their hate posts — then denied knowing he did so. He has used neo-Nazi statistics on black-on-white hate crime as his own, and has cited bogus polls by anti-Muslim hate groups, like ACT for America, claiming that a quarter of American Muslims support violent jihadists.

Jonathan Greenblatt, executive director of the Anti-Defamation League, put it to me as judiciously as possible.

“It’s very worrisome to see the convergence of that crowd and a mainstream candidate,” he said.

Yes, of course, Trump’s popularity extends far beyond the fringe. He has support among great numbers of fairly mainstream Tea Party types — something that is no less frightening. And there are plenty of people who disagree with his hateful statements but love his non-P.C. approach, or just find him entertaining. They don’t care whether Trump has the answers, they just care that he has the attitude.

All that is scary enough, but understandable in the context of an electorate on both the left and right that is fed up with politics as usual.

But what’s beyond the pale are the truly sick, dangerous forces Trump has unleashed, the poison he has uncorked.

http://www.jewishjournal.com/rob_eshman/article/donald_trump_has_a_white_supremacist_problem