How Donald Trump Uses Anti-Semitic Rhetoric Against Hillary Clinton

Over the summer, a writer for the “alt-right” website Breitbart News called Hillary Clinton a communist. What’s striking about the accusation is certainly not its source, nor its target, and definitely not its content. What’s striking is that the article appeared side by side with a web advertisement for Stephen Bannon’s film “Clinton Cash.”

The juxtaposition pairs two contradictory views of Clinton: that she hates money, and that she loves it. The article claims she has a communist wish to destroy the legal basis of private capital, while mere screen inches away the ad insinuates that she cozies up to moneyed interests and treats government office like her personal yard sale. The pairing makes little sense, and yet somehow it’s hauntingly familiar.

Bannon, who was the executive chairman of Breitbart News and is now Donald Trump’s campaign chief, would surely blame the inconsistency on Clinton herself. If lies are her métier, “Crooked Hillary” could easily be a communist one moment and a capitalist when convenient. To illustrate her alleged moral bankruptcy, her enemies often point to her marriage. Bill Clinton’s “predatory sexual acts,” another Breitbart writer suggests, have found a “willing co-conspirator” in his wife.

Elaborately secretive and manipulative; corrupt and greedy; has communist sympathies; a native of the high-finance cabal; venal traitor and agent of dark and foreign moneyed interests; sexual deviant. We’ve seen this particular portrait before. And there’s a familiar ring to “Crooked Hillary,” too, isn’t there?

There’s really only one other name besides “Hillary” to which the epithet “crooked” has been affixed so regularly, and it’s the name not of an individual, but of a people. That name, of course, is “Jew.” ...