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Candidate racism, bigotry, should make voters recoil

By Staff | Mar 30, 2023

To the editor:

There has actually been a rise in anti-semitic hate speech and violence lately. The Anti Defamation League arrives at a huge increase last year of Anti-Semitism, citing 3,697 acts. Some of their “incidents” made their grade because the ADL conflates legitimate complaints of Israel for their political and physical attacks on Palestinians. But the rock under which hatred abides has allowed Anti-Semitism to crawl out into the public view. It is a trope best left in the dustbin of history.

Sadly, the concern of rising hate mongering is real. Last year has been more than Kanye frothing at the mouth of the internet. Our own city police are investigating as a hate-crime the attack on our local Chabad this month. This should be a concern of all of us, and I wish our police godspeed in finding this criminal. Normalizing evil is a mistake.

When a former government official, screeds complaint of the New York district attorney as “Soros” financed, calling the DA “an animal,” we should all recoil. This hate speech should be below the dignity of any candidate for public office, even those anticipating indictment. George Soros is the Hungarian immigrant who survived the holocaust in Europe and now lives in the U.S. In this latest tweet-feast of self pity, connecting Soros name to the Afro-American DA is supposed to be a dog whistle for the anti-Semitic (Soros was born Jewish, but was hidden by a local Catholic family from Nazi extermination.)

My friends, we are better than this. We should and can take the time to speak out against all hatred sowing against our fellow citizens. Has our collective discourse become so bizarre that we really need to say out loud that someone is not an “animal” because he is Black? Really? My mother had a general rule of thumb with her voting. If a candidate race baited during his campaign, she would vote for the other one. Even if she had initially wanted to vote for the hater. Using such language would disqualify him from her vote.

There will be many others running in the Republican primary. If you are a registered member of the Grand Old Party. Feel free to follow mom’s protocol and pass along my horror with your vote in the primary.

Ellen Starbird

Cape Coral