Mike Signer Image by Twitter

By Sam Kestenbaum May 15, 2017

The mayor of Charlottesville, Virginia, was targeted by anti-Semitic tweets over the weekend after speaking out against white nationalists who gathered at a local park to protest the sale of a statue of Robert E. Lee.

“You’re seeing anti-Semitism in these crazy tweets I’m getting and you’re seeing a display of torches at night, which is reminiscent of the KKK,” Mayor Mike Signer told Reuters. “They’re sort of a last gasp of the bigotry that this country has systematically overcome.”

“I smell Jew,” posted a Twitter user with the handle “Great Patriot Trump.” “If so, you are going back to Israel. But you will not stay in power here. Not for long.”

Antisemitism Notebook

Your weekly guide through the news and the noise of how rising antisemitism and disputes over how to address it are shaping American Jewish life.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

Signer said in a statement that Saturday’s protest against the sale of a Confederate statute “harkens back to the days of the KKK.”

According to a CBS report, Signer was born in India but adopted by a family in New York and New Jersey and identifies as Jewish — a detail picked up on by anti-Semitic critics online.

“This is what the enemy looks like,” a post on the website Occidental Dissent read.

Email Sam Kestenbaum at kestenbaum@forward.com and follow him on Twitter at @skestenbaum

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

This year, we have stood together in strength and sorrow. Our Forward team has worked around the clock to help you find clarity amid the chaos.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

$36 $500

$120 $180 Other amount