The Trump campaign defended the incorporation of an insignia once used by Nazis in its recent advertisements, which have since been removed from Facebook.
The ads, which attacked what the Trump campaign described as “Dangerous MOBS of far-left groups,” featured a red inverted triangle with a black border. This insignia was first used to identify communists in the 1930s, and it was also used to mark Social Democrats, liberals, and Freemasons, according to the Washington Post. It was also used by Nazis to designate political prisoners in concentration camps.
The advertisements garnered nearly a million impressions on the president’s personal, verified Facebook page and about half a million impressions on the ads posted on Vice President Mike Pence’s Facebook page and have since been removed by the platform.
“We removed these posts and ads for violating our policy against organized hate. Our policy prohibits using a banned hate group’s symbol to identify political prisoners without the context that condemns or discusses the symbol,” a Facebook spokesperson told the Washington Examiner.
This is an emoji. ?
It’s also a symbol widely used by Antifa. It was used in an ad about Antifa.
It is not in the ADL’s Hate Symbols Database. pic.twitter.com/RSzvNT0SrC
— Trump War Room – Text TRUMP to 88022 & get the APP (@TrumpWarRoom) June 18, 2020
The Trump campaign defended the use of the insignia and claimed it was used by antifa, a loosely based group of anti-fascists who occasionally resort to violence.
“The inverted red triangle is a symbol used by Antifa, so it was included in an ad about Antifa,” Tim Murtaugh, director of communications for the campaign, told the Washington Examiner. “We would note that Facebook still has an inverted red triangle emoji in use, which looks exactly the same, so it’s curious that they would target only this ad. The image is also not included in the Anti-Defamation League’s database of symbols of hate. But it is ironic that it took a Trump ad to force the media to implicitly concede that Antifa is a hate group.”
Despite it not being in the ADL’s database for hate symbols, the group noted that such triangles are “practically identical to that used by the Nazi regime to classify political prisoners in concentration camps.” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt took to Twitter to call the campaign’s use of it “highly offensive.”
“The Nazis used red triangles to identify their political victims in concentration camps,” he tweeted. “Using it to attack political opponents is highly offensive. @POTUS’ campaign needs to learn its history, as ignorance is no excuse for using Nazi-related symbols.”
