Congressional Candidate Erin Schrode Subjected to Vicious ‘Fire Up the Ovens’ Online Abuse
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
A young Jewish candidate for Congress in California has been targeted with anti-Semitic abuse in the days before the state’s primary election.
Erin Schrode, 25, who has been featured recently by several news outlets, including JTA, for her underdog candidacy against incumbent Jared Huffman, has been hit with the abuse on social media and cellphone messages, she revealed in a Facebook post late Saturday night.
Personal information such as her phone number and email also were posted online.
Among the messages she has received, Schrode said, are “Everyone knows it’s TIME for America’s first evil retarded teen c— Congress kike!”; “Fire up the oven!” and “All would laugh with glee as they gang raped her and then bashed her bagel eating brains in.”
She called the messages “Indiscriminate hatred. Pure evil.”
On Sunday, Schrode told Buzzfeed that the FBI was contacted by several people on her behalf. Schrode said she was not filing a police report because local police confirmed that the FBI handles such threats. She also said she spoke to two police officers and that the police will do extra patrols in the area.
If successful in the June 7 primary and the November general election, Schrode would become the youngest person in the U.S. House of Representatives — and the youngest woman ever elected to Congress. She is running in the 2nd District, which stretches from the Oregon border to the Golden Gate Bridge.
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