Trump Campaign Email Sparks Nazi Comparisons

Donald Trump is facing criticism over alleged antisemitic propaganda in recent campaign materials—following a long history of incidents in which he has been accused of emulating or, in some cases, replicating imagery deployed by Nazis in the 1930s and '40s.

In a fundraising email sent to supporters Wednesday, the Trump campaign depicted President Joe Biden as being controlled by a puppet master portrayed as Democratic megadonor George Soros, a Jewish philanthropist and a frequent bogeyman of the right for his support of liberal causes and candidates. In addition, he has regularly been the subject of political opponents' conspiracy theories.

While Soros has long been criticized by conservatives for his policy positions, portrayals of him in conservative media and by politicians who oppose him have often evoked images of a sort of string puller behind the scenes who is orchestrating a liberal takeover of American society.

Those depictions also evoke conspiracy theories on the right that blame a Jewish cabal for orchestrating machinations in the political, financial and media sectors. Such tropes date back to antisemitic literature published in the early 20th century and proved influential in the rise of Germany's Nazi regime.

Some on social media said the Trump campaign's email closely resembled Nazi propaganda distributed throughout Europe, from its imagery to its caption saying that Soros was "a secret shadow president behind the curtain pulling the strings."

"Criticising Soros isn't antisemitic, but this is because he is represented in antisemitic terms," Alex Hearn, a writer for several Jewish publications, tweeted in response to the imagery. "It is the fantasy of the evil Jew secretly running the world by undermining countries. That is why it looks so similar to Nazi propaganda."

"Same Nazi symbolism, different time," Elad Nehorai, another writer, wrote on Twitter.

Newsweek has reached out to the Trump campaign via email for comment.

The recent fundraising email is not the first example of a Trump political campaign being accused of using antisemitic or Nazi tropes. In 2020, Facebook removed a targeted advertisement from the Trump campaign that included a red triangle once used to designate political prisoners in concentration camps. That same year, the Trump campaign used the "puppet master" trope in an advertisement featuring Senator Bernie Sanders, who is Jewish, controlling Joe Biden.

And in July that year, Trump's campaign drew widespread controversy over a T-shirt, which was available on his website, that closely resembled Nazi iconography—a comparison a campaign official at the time dismissed as "moronic."

More recently, the Trump campaign gained national attention after a group purporting to be representatives of the antisemitic National Justice Party distributed flyers at a recent Trump campaign rally in South Carolina. The flyers called for a "2 percent ceiling on Jewish representation." (Newsweek could not independently verify the authenticity of the flyers.)

Wednesday's incident, critics said, was just another example of the Trump campaign perpetuating another harmful stereotype. It is the same iconography, the critics said, that helped fuel a surge in the number of reported antisemitic incidents in the later years of the Trump administration.

"We continue to see fundraising emails from the Trump campaign that feature language & imagery of George Soros controlling puppet strings and secret globalist cabals," the Anti-Defamation League told Newsweek in a statement on Thursday.

"This isn't just disturbing, it's indisputably dangerous and reprehensible," the statement continued. "Let's be clear, these are antisemitic tropes about Jewish power and are a gateway into hardcore antisemitic conspiracy theories."