Virginia Jewish Mayor Trolled After White Supremacist Rally

Mike Signer Image by Twitter

By Sam Kestenbaum May 15, 2017

The mayor of Charlottesville, Virginia, was targeted by anti-Semitic tweets over the weekend after speaking out against white nationalists who gathered at a local park to protest the sale of a statue of Robert E. Lee.

“You’re seeing anti-Semitism in these crazy tweets I’m getting and you’re seeing a display of torches at night, which is reminiscent of the KKK,” Mayor Mike Signer told Reuters. “They’re sort of a last gasp of the bigotry that this country has systematically overcome.”

“I smell Jew,” posted a Twitter user with the handle “Great Patriot Trump.” “If so, you are going back to Israel. But you will not stay in power here. Not for long.”

Signer said in a statement that Saturday’s protest against the sale of a Confederate statute “harkens back to the days of the KKK.”

According to a CBS report, Signer was born in India but adopted by a family in New York and New Jersey and identifies as Jewish — a detail picked up on by anti-Semitic critics online.

“This is what the enemy looks like,” a post on the website Occidental Dissent read.

Email Sam Kestenbaum at kestenbaum@forward.com and follow him on Twitter at @skestenbaum

Sam Kestenbaum is a contributing editor and former staff writer for the Forward. Before this, he worked for The New York Times and newsrooms in Sana, Ramallah and Beijing. Contact him at kestenbaum@forward.com and follow him on Twitter at @skestenbaum and on Instagram at @skestenbaum.

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