'Moment of crisis': Expert links Trump to 'staggering' uptick in hate crimes

Donald Trump's dog whistle rhetoric has fueled a "staggering" increase in hate crimes in the U.S. that one expert warns has reached the point of crisis.

Sharon Nazarian, political science professor and board member of the Anti-Defamation League, told Salon Friday that Trump's rhetoric, such as when he described some of the white supremacists who marched at an infamous 2017 rally in Charlottesville as "very fine people," to a stark increase in anti-Semitic attacks.

"Trump continues to tell anti-Semites that it is fine to operate out in the open and radicalize people through their use of disinformation and misinformation on the internet," Nazarian told senior writer Chauncey DeVega. "We are in a moment of crisis."

Nazarian reveals the ADL's recent audit of anti-Semitic incidents found a 140 percent increase "year over year" in the U.S. with about 5,000 attacks between October — when the Israel-Hamas War erupted — and December.

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The report also found a global increase in anti-Semitic attacks with numbers quadrupling in France and Germany and raising a stark 589 percent in Great Britain, Nazarian reports.

"Trump and Trumpism have certainly been one of the factors at play here," she tells Salon. Nazarian cites as proof his commentary on the "very fine people" who attended a 2017 Charlottesville rally where, as she describes it, "terrible racists walked down the street chanting, 'Jews will not replace us.'"

Nazarian makes a deeper case for Trump as the root of the increase in anti-Semitism by comparing the problem to a dormant virus that flares up when the body is under stress.

As Trump and his MAGA followers attack democratic institutions at their foundations, the population processes its feelings of instability by turning to hatred, Nazarian contends.

"In times of relative peace and prosperity, when there is trust in government institutions and trust that the state can solve the problems its citizens face," Nazarian said, "anti-Semitism in Western culture tends to stay marginalized and live in the fringes and dark corners of our society."

DeVega also links Trump's authoritarian rhetoric and political strategizing to an increase in hatred, and more importantly, fear.

"Because fascism and other forms of authoritarianism and political personality cults such as Trumpism must always find new enemies to legitimate themselves and 'the movement,' these boundaries between the in-group and the out-group are contingent and shifting," DeVega writes. "The friend of today can and usually becomes the enemy of tomorrow. Members of the MAGA movement and other Trump loyalists, including the elites and other members of the aspiring dictator’s inner circle, would be wise to learn that lesson."