By Sam Kestenbaum June 7, 2017

Jewish journalist Julia Ioffe found herself at the center of a Twitter firestorm over a six-year-old post in which she repeated a racial slur for black people.

Ioffe, a staff writer at the Atlantic who is known for her liberal politics, initially thought her account had been hacked before realizing the 2011 tweet was actually a quote taken from someone she was interviewing, not written in her own voice.

“I should’ve used quotes,” Ioffe wrote. “I’m sorry for any confusion and offense. So bad.”

The controversy comes on the heels of Bill Maher using the same racial slur on his late night show.

Ioffe found herself bombarded on Twitter by those who found the language offensive, although some backed off after realizing she was repeating a question posed to her. Meanwhile, far-right accounts celebrated the controversy.

Richard Spencer (who has sparred with Ioffe in the past) joked that she was a “violent extremist” — even too far right for him.

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