The Trump Campaign’s Lies and Use of a Nazi-Era Symbol

Far right extremists, not Antifa, are the number one threat per DHS.

While Donald Trump may be ignorant of many historical facts and what is common knowledge to a majority of Americans - per John Bolton, Trump did not know the United Kingdom is a nuclear power - his campaign is not.  Thus, the recent use of a Nazi symbol that caused Facebook to take down Trump ads cannot be written off as mere ignorance.  The use of the symbol - a badge worn by Nazi political prisoners in concentration camps was no doubt used to send a message to the Neo-Nazis and white supremacist who make up the core of the Trump base of support (along with white evangelicals who belong to historically racist denominations). The other troubling aspect of the use of the symbol was that it was used to attack Trump's mythical boogeyman, Antifa, when the Department of Homeland Security's own documentation shows that neo-fascists - the antithesis of Antifa - is what posed the largest threat to law and order.  In short, the Trump campaign sought to deflect blame from its own base and blame a different group when the facts simply do not support the claim.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the use of the Nazi symbol and the active lying being advanced by the Trump campaign.   Here are excerpts:

President Trump’s campaign is under fire for employing a symbol once used by Nazis in a new batch of Facebook ads — a red inverted triangle that appeared alongside a warning about the dire threat posed by “antifa,” a loose motley group allied against neo-fascist activity.

An internal Department of Homeland Security document — which I obtained from a congressional source — makes the Trump campaign’s use of this symbol, and its justification for it, look a whole lot worse, by undercutting the claim that antifa represents any kind of threat in the first place.

After Facebook removed the ads amid an outcry, the Trump campaign continued to defend use of the image — which was used by Nazis to identify political prisoners — by claiming it’s a “common Antifa symbol.”

Meanwhile, Trump and his top officials have continued to blame unrest and violence at protests on antifa, to cast the violence more broadly as primarily left-wing in orientation.
But the DHS document I obtained undercuts this series of claims.

The [DHS] document — which is an assessment of ongoing “protest-related” threats to law enforcement dated June 17 — makes no mention at all of antifa in its cataloging of those threats.

The DHS document states that “anarchist and anti-government extremists pose the most significant threat of targeted low-level, protest-related assaults against law enforcement.” It bases this assessment on “the observed ideologies of recent attackers and the body of reporting of tactics noted by violent opportunists used over the last two weeks.” Thus, as of this week, “anarchist and anti-government extremists” pose the most serious ongoing threat, according to Trump’s own Homeland Security department.

The document defines “anarchist extremists” as:

groups or individuals who facilitate or engage in acts of unlawful violence as a means of changing the government and society in support of the belief that all forms of capitalism and corporate globalization should be opposed and that governing institutions are unnecessary and harmful to society.

Not only does this document not name antifa, this description of generic “anarchist extremists” does not remotely describe what we’ve come to understand “antifa” to be. While there might be some loose and occasional overlap between antifa and anarchists, antifa isn’t even a group, and adherents are characterized by specific resistance to perceived neo-fascist movements, which is wholly different from this definition of what motivates anarchist extremists.

This document shows that the government itself does not view antifa as a significant threat in the homeland,” Juliette Kayyem, a former DHS official who reviewed the document at my request, told me.

“The document shows how absurd the Trump campaign’s justification for using the symbol really is,” Kayyem added. “It undercuts their defense.”

The Anti-Defamation League has harshly criticized the Trump campaign for employing a symbol that “is practically identical to that used by the Nazi regime to classify political prisoners in concentration camps.”

The document also notes that “overall protest-related violence" has been "decreasing significantly during the last week,” which also undermines continued Trump fearmongering.

Notably, the continuing threat to law enforcement has been thrust to the forefront by the charging of Steven Carrillo for the alleged killing of one security officer and the wounding of another. Carrillo is an alleged adherent of the “boogaloo boys,” an extremist movement trying to exploit protests to incite race war.

The DHS document actually does cite the “Boogaloo movement” as a threat in this context. It notes that Carrillo is likely associated with it, defining it as “a term used by some violent extremists from a variety of movements who seek to incite a race war or the collapse of society.”

And yet, according to CNN reporter Marshall Cohen, Trump has yet to mention this as a threat, even though, as Craig Timberg demonstrates, it’s increasingly obvious this threat is becoming a serious one.

Similarly, another leaked intelligence document earlier this month assessed the greatest threat as coming from “lone offenders with racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist ideologies,” not from antifa.

The new DHS document shows that the non-assessment of the threat of antifa hasn’t changed — even as the claims about antifa continue.

The broader story here, as Isaac Stanley-Becker details, is that the continued fearmongering about antifa by Trump and many top officials seems designed to distort the true nature of these multiracial, largely peaceful and broadly representative national protests in a very fundamental way.

If Trump or his campaign says something, assume it is a lie until documented otherwise.