Mayor of Virginia city targeted by anti-Semitic tweets after criticizing marchers
The mayor of the Virginia college town of Charlottesville was the target of anti-Semitic tweets on Sunday after speaking out against white nationalists who converged on a local park carrying blazing torches the night before.
Mayor Mike Signer said two protests led on Saturday by Richard Spencer, a leader of the "alt-right" movement, came on the same day the city held its annual Festival of Cultures event, which celebrates diversity in the home of the University of Virginia.
"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," Signer, who is Jewish, said in a phone interview. "They're sort of a last gasp of the bigotry that this country has systematically overcome."
Signer issued a statement on Saturday criticizing the torch-carrying marchers as either "profoundly ignorant" or aiming to instill fear.
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-virginia-monuments-nationalists-idUSKCN18A13X
