Donald Trump Isn't the Only One in His Campaign Interested in What White Supremacists on Twitter Have to Say
Individual instances of Donald Trump’s (seemingly ambivalent) embrace of Twitter’s white supremacist community have been well documented. However, according to a report from Fortune, Trump’s affinity for right-wing social media accounts goes beyond intermittent retweets.
Freelance reporter Ben Kharakh and Fortune editor Dan Primack partnered with social media analytics firm Little Bird to generate a ranked list of just under 2,000 #WhiteGenocide “influencers.” They found that Trump has retweeted at least 75 users who follow at least three of the top 50 #WhiteGenocide influencers, and a majority of the accounts Trump has retweeted are, in turn, followed by more than 100 such influencers.
“The retweets are based solely on the content, not the personal views of those individuals as they are not vetted, known or of interest to the candidate or the campaign,” campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks said.
(Others—like Andrew Anglin, editor of white supremacist blog The Daily Stormer—have a different theory. “Our Glorious Leader and ULTIMATE SAVIOR has gone full-wink-wink-wink to his most aggressive supporters,” Anglin wrote in January. “Where as the odd White genocide tweet could be a random occurrence, it isn’t statistically possible that two of them back to back could be a random occurrence. It could only be deliberate.”)
It’s not just Trump, though: Katrina Pierson, his national campaign spokesperson, who is black, follows the account @Genophilia, which topped Little Bird’s list of #WhiteGenocide influencers.
Pierson also follows #WhiteGenocide influencer @Trumphat, who has tweeted that he looks forward to seeing people “swing from lampposts” on the #DOTR, which stands for Day of the Rope ― a seminal event in the racist Turner Diaries novels that inspired Timothy McVeigh.
