jabberwonk

jabberwonk OP t1_irw0h4l wrote

>Mr. Mastriano, who promotes Christian power and disdains the separation of church and state, has repeatedly lashed Mr. Shapiro for attending and sending his children to what Mr. Mastriano calls a “privileged, exclusive, elite” school, suggesting to one audience that it evinced Mr. Shapiro’s “disdain for people like us.”
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>It is a Jewish day school, where students are given both secular and religious instruction. But Mr. Mastriano’s language in portraying it as an elitist reserve seemed to be a dog whistle.
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>This summer, Mr. Mastriano’s campaign came under scrutiny for paying $5,000 to the far-right social media platform Gab. The man accused of perpetrating the Pittsburgh shooting had posted antisemitic screeds on Gab, and Mr. Mastriano’s payment drew bipartisan condemnation. The platform’s founder, Andrew Torba, defended Mr. Mastriano and declared that “we’re not bending the knee to the 2 percent anymore,” an apparent reference to American Jewry.
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>Only after significant pressure did Mr. Mastriano release a statement saying that he rejected “antisemitism in any form,” appearing to leave the site and stressing that Mr. Torba did not speak for him.

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