A case in point would be the Trump supporter who last month left an obscene voice mail for Rina Shah, the campaign manager of independent presidential candidate Evan McMullin and was damn proud of himself for doing so.
Another example of deplorable behavior is how Trump supporters, specifically those from the so-called alt.Right (let's call them what they are: racists, anti-Semites, white supremacists, neo-Nazis, etc.) targeted NRO writer David French and his family. Today, French has written an account of the torment has family has gone through over the past year or so. To wit:
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.
Click on a post and scroll down and you’ll see pictures of black men shooting other black men, close-up images of suicides, GIFs of grisly executions — the kinds of psyche-scarring things that one can’t “unsee.” Had I not deployed to Iraq and witnessed death up close, the images would have shocked me. I quickly got on the phone with Nancy, told her not to look at her website, and got busy deleting comments and blocking IP addresses, but in the meantime a few friends and neighbors had seen the posts.
Click on a post and scroll down and you’ll see pictures of black men shooting other black men, close-up images of suicides, GIFs of grisly executions — the kinds of psyche-scarring things that one can’t “unsee.” Had I not deployed to Iraq and witnessed death up close, the images would have shocked me. I quickly got on the phone with Nancy, told her not to look at her website, and got busy deleting comments and blocking IP addresses, but in the meantime a few friends and neighbors had seen the posts.
The next Sunday, friends from church approached, expressing concern not just for our safety but for theirs as well. We live in a community where most of the streets have similar names, and it’s common for UPS drivers, FedEx deliveries, and friends to end up at the wrong house. They interpreted the images as threats, and they didn’t want anyone to drive into our neighborhood, looking for the Frenches, intent on turning image into reality.
It took days — and hundreds of IP blocks and Twitter reports — but things finally calmed down. The racist images slowed from a flood to a trickle, I relaxed a bit at night, and life returned, I thought, to normal. I was wrong. Our “normal” had changed. This wasn’t the beginning of the end of our troubles, but rather the end of the beginning.
Things got worse for David French. Much worse. Perhaps the worst is yet to come.
All things considered, I've been fairly fortunate. My opposition to Trump hasn't resulted in threats of harm to myself much less my family. Knock on wood. Sure, I know the comments section in my old American Spectator articles and blog posts were pretty nasty. But that was always the case. Over time, even before Trump threw his hat in the ring, I seldom heeded it my attention. In the rare times I did look at my comments it only served as a reminder of why I stopped looking at them. There was nothing of value for me to read.
Of course, I have since stopped writing for The American Spectator. The circumstances of my departure were on my own terms and at no time did I fear for my safety. Nevertheless, The American Spectator was unwilling and unable to respect nor tolerate my dissent. Yes, I understand they abhor Hillary Clinton. So do I. But this standard wasn't applied to Mitt Romney against Barack Obama four years ago. I and other American Spectator contributors criticized Romney after he won the Republican nomination especially his 47% comment. So what makes Trump so special?
But like it or not, Trump is special to a great many people. So special that all criticism must be suppressed by any and all means and a subset of Trump supporters are prepared to show their devotion by committing acts of cruelty. In the grand scheme of things, I am not surprised that Trump supporters would exhibit such cruelty. They are, after all, acting in the image of their man - a word I use in the loosest possible terms. Conor Friedersdorf's recent article in The Atlantic on Trump's callow behavior towards everyone in his path is essential in understanding Trump's nature. If cruelty is Trump's modus operandi then it is not a stretch of the imagination to conclude that some of his supporters would emulate it. If that it isn't deplorable then nothing is.
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