Trump Campaign Uses Nazi Concentration Camp Symbols in Facebook Ads
On Wednesday, June 17, the Trump reelection campaign ran advertisements on multiple Facebook pages — Donald J. Trump, Mike Pence, Team Trump — featuring an upside-down red triangle, the same symbol the Nazis forced political prisoners and anti-fascist dissidents to wear in concentration camps.
The paid advertisements read, “Dangerous MOBS of far-left groups are running through our streets and causing absolute mayhem” and links to a page on the Trump campaign website entitled “Stop Antifa.” A post on the official Team Trump Facebook page sharing the same link and image encouraged readers to “stand with your President and his decision to declare ANTIFA a Terrorist Organization.”
A 1936 German illustration of the labels Nazis used to identify their victims.
On the left, a paid Facebook advertisement from the Trump 2020 presidential campaign. On the right, a post on the official Team Trump Facebook page.
The ads were listed as paid for by the Trump Make America Great Again Committee, which is a joint fundraising committee composed of Donald J. Trump for President, Inc., and the Republican National Committee (RNC). Exactly 88 ads were run. “H” is the eighth number in the alphabet, an white supremacists commonly use the number 88 as code for “Heil Hitler.”
This was not the first time Republican campaigns have utilized antisemitic imagery in electoral material and advertisements. In 2016, Trump himself tweeted an image of then-candidate against a backdrop of cash, with a Jewish Star of David labeling her the “most corrupt candidate ever.” In the 2018 midterm elections, the Republican Party paid for multiple advertisements using racist and antisemitic imagery and messages.
UPDATE as of June 18, 2020:
The morning after going up, the ads were either deleted, or their images were changed to display “stop” and “yield” signs. The Trump campaign’s “war room” Twitter account replied with the same flimsy excuse to verified accounts posting about the ads. The response claimed that the inverted red triangle is “an emoji,” falsely asserting that it is widely used by anti-fascist activists and sharing an image of an inverted triangle with the word “ANTIFA” written across it. When asked from where the image originated, the campaign’s war room account provided a link to purchase an image of the poster on Spreadshirt, a custom t-shirt printing company. The poster’s seller, Jevaz, was listed as living in Spain, and appeared to have joined the Spreadshirt site only two weeks prior.
The mass reply repeatedly put out by the Trump campaign’s “War Room” account
NBC News journalist Brandy Zadrony asks where the image originated
The link the Trump campaign provided goes to this page
The spreadshirt account selling the poster is listed as being in Spain.
There are symbols widely used by antifa groups in the United States. Down-pointing red triangles, however, are not one of them. Among the images that are most widely used in the United States is one of black and red flags. Incidentally, the ADL’s hate symbol database includes the anti-antifa symbol: the black and red flags slashed out. The database also includes symbols widely used by members of the Trump campaign, like Pepe the Frog, of which Donald Trump Jr. has shared).
By the afternoon June 18, Facebook removed the ads, citing a violation of their policy against “organized hate.”