XPost: alt.politics.trump, alt.politics.usa.republican, or.politics
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From: i_got_some@hillaryclinton.com
Bob Duncan wrote in
news:so3ijm$ild$31@news.dns-netz.com:
> Jonathan wrote
>
>> She should have her skull flattened with hammers.
Few US presidential candidates have been disliked as much as Donald Trump
and Hillary Clinton. But attacks on Clinton in particular have sometimes
crossed a line, displaying open hatred. Why?
Emily Longworth, 25, grew up in the southern state of Georgia discussing
politics around the dinner table with her father and grandfather, both
staunch conservatives.
Working as a weapons repair specialist in the US military, she had to be
careful what she said about America's politicians.
But since leaving the military for an office job three years ago, she
doesn't hold back - especially when it comes to Hillary Clinton.
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"She is a lying, manipulative, narcissistic woman who deserves nothing
except to be put in jail for life," she says.
Media caption,
Emily Longworth: It may be unjustifiable with other people - it's not with
us
Longworth's expletive-laden tirades have been attracting hundreds of
thousands of viewers on Facebook and YouTube.
In one video, addressing Clinton and her "diehard feminist Nazi fans",
Longworth describes her "disgust" at having to listen to "that painful
scratching noise that you like to call intelligence spew from your mouth
like typical Clinton diarrhoea".
She is also spokesperson for a group that sells T-shirts and merchandise
carrying the slogan "Hillary for prison" - Clinton deserves a prison
sentence, they argue, for episodes such as the Whitewater property
controversy in the 1990s, the deadly attack on the US diplomatic compound
in Benghazi in 2012 while she was secretary of state, and her use of a
private email server while in office.
Many Americans might agree that Clinton - the first female nominee for
president from a major political party - is tainted by her role in these
controversies, and this may help explain her unfavourability rating of
more than 50%.
But most critics would not resort to the kind of extreme language that has
seen Longworth blocked by Facebook for repeatedly violating its "community
standards".
So why does she do it?
"If you have controversy… you strike conversation," she says.
"Unfortunately, it's the way society works… You do strike up conflict, but
it promotes business and promotes the cause.
"This may be rash and unjustifiable with other people. It's not with us."
Longworth is part of a small but noisy radical tendency on the fringes of
the Republican Party.
At Trump rallies, pockets of supporters shout "Lock her up!"
Some wear T-shirts saying "Trump that Bitch", and there are those who
describe Clinton as "the servant of Satan" or use hashtags such as
#Killary on social media.
Donald Trump campaign event, Ambridge Philadelphia
IMAGE SOURCE,AFP
Image caption,
Campaigning in Philadelphia on Monday, Trump clapped along as supporters
chanted "Lock her up!"
Trump is also the focus of contempt, and worse - he's been likened to
Adolf Hitler and accused of having a personality disorder.
"I've seen both candidates attacked based upon physical characteristics,
both attacked based upon personality traits, both attacked based on past
decisions," says Jennifer Mercieca, a historian of American political
rhetoric.
"The one element that separates that two is that Clinton is also attacked
for being a woman, and Trump is not attacked for being a man.
"Perhaps, since she is the first female presidential candidate, people are
ill-equipped to criticise her about anything else, or in any other way,
than via gendered and misogynistic slurs."
Misogyny can be obvious, she says - as in the use of the word "bitch" - or
it can be hidden.
Republican Convention 2016 - man with Lock Her Up! banner
IMAGE SOURCE,REUTERS
Many of the barbs directed at Clinton revolve around her husband's well-
publicised sexual transgressions in the 1980s and 90s.
Last year, Trump himself retweeted the comment, "If Clinton can't satisfy
her husband, what makes her think she can satisfy America?" though he
later deleted it.
But some critics focus on her alleged role in the scandal, as a co-
ordinator of attempts to keep the women involved quiet and to blacken
their character.
In a recent film, Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic
Party - the top-grossing documentary in the US this year - conservative
writer Dinesh D'Souza even argues that Hillary Clinton encouraged her
husband to sleep with other women.
"She orchestrated all of this!" he says, in the film's narration. "She
used his addiction to make him dependent upon her!"
This attack and others like it show a determination to cast Clinton as a
"co-perpetrator" in her husband's wrongdoings, says columnist and author
Michelle Goldberg.
"It also reinforces the idea that she is so power-crazed that she's
unmoved by normal human drives like love, loyalty and jealousy."
The Clintons in 1992
IMAGE SOURCE,GETTY IMAGES
In the decades that the Clintons have been in the public eye, US politics
has become increasingly polarised - a process partly fuelled by the
proliferation of radical voices on talk radio and the internet. The
election of Barack Obama - the first black president, and one of the most
liberal for decades - also proved to be a red rag to some, including
D'Souza.
In one of a series of controversial books and films, the man described in
the liberal media as "America's premiere conservative troll" argues that
the president wants America to be "downsized" as punishment for the "sins
of colonialism".
In his latest film - alluding to the Clintons' ability to turn political
success to financial advantage - he goes so far as to accuse Clinton of
being a gangster who plans to "steal America".
But Donald Trump himself has also done much to put about conspiracy
theories regarded by many commentators as devices to whip up hostility
towards Obama and Clinton.
He began his journey to the Republican nomination by reviving the long-
debunked "birther" claim that Obama was not born in the US and is
therefore ineligible to be president, only to disavow it last month.
He has warned the November election could be "rigged" in Clinton's favour,
and alleged that Clinton and Obama were co-founders of the so-called
Islamic State group.
Obama, he has long suggested, is Muslim, and in Sunday's debate he
referred to Clinton, not for the first time, as "the devil".
According to Alexander Zaitchik, author of Gilded Rage: A Wild Ride
Through Donald Trump's America, Trump's candidacy has made conspiracy
theories "shockingly accepted" among people who believe mainstream
politics has failed.
"He's promoting stuff that never would have been promoted up until now by
the Republican Party," Zaitchik says.
Of all the Hillary haters, one of the most vitriolic is Texan radio host
and Trump supporter Alex Jones, described by the Southern Poverty Law
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