Trump’s alt-right trolls have subjected me and my family to an unending torrent of abuse that I wouldn’t wish on anyone.
I distinctly remember the first time I saw a picture of my then-seven-year-old daughter’s face in a gas chamber. It was the evening of September 17, 2015. I had just posted a short item to the Corner calling out notorious Trump ally Ann Coulter for aping the white-nationalist language and rhetoric of the so-called alt-right. Within minutes, the tweets came flooding in. My youngest daughter is African American, adopted from Ethiopia, and in alt-right circles that’s an unforgivable sin. It’s called “race-cucking” or “raising the enemy.”
I saw images of my daughter’s face in gas chambers, with a smiling Trump in a Nazi uniform preparing to press a button and kill her. I saw her face photo-shopped into images of slaves. She was called a “niglet” and a “dindu.” The alt-right unleashed on my wife, Nancy, claiming that she had slept with black men while I was deployed to Iraq, and that I loved to watch while she had sex with “black bucks.” People sent her pornographic images of black men having sex with white women, with someone photoshopped to look like me, watching.
When we both publicized some of the racist attacks — I in National Review and Nancy in the Washington Post — things took a far more ominous turn. Late the next evening — while Nancy was, fortunately, offline attending a veterans’ charity event in D.C. — the darker quarters of the alt-right found her Patheos blog. Several different accounts began posting images and GIFs of extreme violence in her comments section.
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Of course, no story would be complete without a truly ominous threat. The moment we landed back at home after I declined to run for president, she turned on her phone to see an e-mail from a Trump fan, a veteran who informed her that he knew the business end of a gun and told her directly that she should shut her mouth or he’d take action.
We contacted law enforcement, she got her handgun-carry permit, and life returned to the new normal of daily Twitter harassment, until the day this month when an angry voice actually broke into a phone conversation between my wife and her elderly father, screaming about Trump and spewing profanities. My wife was on her iPhone. Her father was on a landline. That launched a brief, anxious search inside my father-in-law’s home for a potential intruder and yet another call to law enforcement.
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But I’ll be honest: It’s miserable. There is nothing at all rewarding, enjoyable, or satisfying about seeing your beautiful young daughter called a “niglet.” There is nothing at all rewarding, enjoyable, or satisfying about seeing man after man after man brag in graphic terms that he has slept with your wife. It’s unsettling to have a phone call interrupted, watch images of murder flicker across your screen, and read threatening e-mails. It’s sobering to take your teenage kids out to the farm to make sure they’re both proficient with handguns in case an intruder comes when they’re home alone.
The misery is compounded when longtime friends and allies dismiss my experiences and the experiences of my colleagues as nothing more than the normal cost of public advocacy. It’s not. I have contributed to National Review for more than ten years now, and have been deeply involved in many of America’s most emotional culture-war battles for more than 20. I’ve never experienced anything like this before.
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So, no, things have not “calmed down,” and I’m always amused when people tell me that I belong to Never Trump because it makes me feel good about myself. There’s nothing that gives me pleasure about this election season. But if I can do anything to expose and oppose this latest debasement of our politics and culture, and to defend my wife and daughter, then at least I will have purpose.
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A must-read by my friend @DavidAFrench https://t.co/o9q6r4vxhh
— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahNRO) October 21, 2016
It’s the price you pay for speaking the truth. Unfortunately because he is in the public eye he and his family are big targets. This is an attempt to silence the opposition. It’s sleazy, it’s crazy, immoral…it’s DONALD TRUMP!
I remember talking about how liberals were the ones who always acted this way. A real conservative would never behave in this manner. But leftist cult members will. What does that say about Trump supporters? This is the type of people he attracts. Nothing good can ever come from anything this man touches.
I work in a large prison in Florida, a psyche camp. What I see on the inside mirrors what we read in the news.
Pray for righteousness to be restored and for the peace of Jerusalem
The people Trump attracts are not conservatives. They are godless liberals, and these liberals have no respect for human life. They are not above hurting or killing anyone who disagrees with them.
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