It's come to this: A Donald Trump supporter leaving a rally for the candidate in Cleveland yelled "Go to Auschwitz" at protesters while raising his arm in what looks like the Nazi salute.
Watch: Trump supporter yells “Go to fucking Auschwitz” at protesters
Libby Nelson is Vox’s policy editor, leading coverage of how government action and inaction shape American life. Libby has more than a decade of policy journalism experience, including at Inside Higher Ed and Politico. She joined Vox in 2014.
"Go to fucking Auschwitz," the man, in video posted by Kyle Bogden on YouTube, repeats, while other Trump supporters file past, chanting "Trump!"
The video captures other back-and-forth, much of it caustic, between protesters and supporters. The supporters call the unseen protesters "losers." Another supporter yells that the protesters are trying to protect their "government checks."
Trump opponents have been comparing him to Adolf Hitler for some time now. And incidents where it seems that supporters are, too, are getting more publicity. Friday night, a Trump supporter in Chicago was photographed making a Nazi salute:
Trump cancels Chicago rally amid security concerns https://t.co/LVEGWkrAQ7 #Chicago #DonaldTrump photo by @ejwamb pic.twitter.com/tF1NTu8qui
— Chicago Trib Photo (@ChiTribPhoto) March 12, 2016
The woman, Birgitt Peterson, who was born in West Germany, told the New York Times she was offended by a poster depicting Trump as Hitler and was trying to make the point that the protesters didn't understand what they were talking about.
But protesters at the scene dispute that. One, Michael Garza, wrote on Facebook that she was making the gesture at him as he tried to clear a path for her after Trump's canceled rally:
This woman is a human being and although I don't share her views, I start yelling "I will respect my elders. Please. Leave." and a few other great folks and I start to clear the path. I walk right up to her and say "Ma'am we have listened to you. We understand this is all a little wild but we have cleared a path for you to leave *my right hand was constantly swinging in motion, showing her the path out we made for her, as shown in the photo*"
She goes, and I quote "Go? Back in my day, you know what we did-"
Bam. Hail's Hitler.
When Trump asked his supporters to pledge to support him by raising their hands at a rally on March 5 in Orlando, Florida, the resulting image looked a lot like people giving the Nazi salute. "I don't know about the Hitler comparison. I hadn't heard that," Trump said when CNN asked him about it. "But it's a terrible comparison. I'm not happy about that certainly."
Go deeper:
- In December, "Trump stood in front of an audience of Jews and told them that they were all about money and making deals."
- Trump has continually urged his supporters into confrontations with protesters and implicitly condoned violence, Dara Lind wrote Friday.
- Even Vox's Matt Yglesias can't be a contrarian about Donald Trump anymore: "The implications of this for what President Trump might do in the White House are terrifying and go well beyond any dispute over public policy," he wrote.
