(JTA) — Police in Whitefish, Montana, are conducting extra patrols after a white supremacist website called on readers to “take action” against Jewish residents there.
Police are reviewing emails and social media posts sent to the Jewish people mentioned in the post, which appeared on the Daily Stormer, a white supremacist website, last week, according to the New York Times. Police have also involved the FBI in the investigation.
“We have had issues in the past with racial discord but not at this level and most definitely we are taking it seriously and we’re looking at everything that comes in and making sure that those involved, that their safety is most definitely important to us,” Whitefish Police Lt. Bridger Kelch told KTVQ, a local station.
The Daily Stormer post included the names, phone numbers and addresses of Jewish Whitefish residents — in addition to the Twitter handle and photo of a child.
The post also included photos of Jewish residents of Whitefish emblazoned with yellow stars, like those used to indentify Jews in Europe during the Holocaust. Along with using a number of anti-Semitic slurs, the post warned readers against using “violence or threats of violence or anything close to that.”
The post claimed that Jewish residents were “threatening” the mother of Richard Spencer, a white supremacist leader whose mother lives there.
Spencer is president of the National Policy Institute, a white supremacist think tank. Last month, he spoke at a white supremacist event in Washington, D.C. celebrating President-elect Donald Trump’s victory. At the event, Spencer said “Hail Trump!” and was greeted by Nazi salutes.
The local government of Whitefish, which has 6,000 full-time residents, has rejected Spencer’s ideas. Recently, the Whitefish City Council reread an anti-discrimination ordinance passed unanimously in 2014 that supports “the dignity, diversity, and inclusion of all of its inhabitants and visitors, and condemn ideologies, philosophies and movements that deny equality of human rights and opportunities and challenge our Constitutional freedoms granted by the United States and the State of Montana.”
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