Website targets Jews in white supremacist’s town
A white supremacist website has called on its readers to “troll” Jewish residents of Whitefish, Mont., home to white supremacist leader Richard Spencer.
The Daily Stormer on Friday urged people to “take action” against Jews in Whitefish by writing and calling them with anti-Semitic messages. The website published the names, phone numbers and addresses of Jewish Whitefish residents and photos of Jewish residents emblazoned with yellow stars. The post warned readers against using “violence or threats of violence or anything close to that.”
The post claimed that Jewish residents — there are about 100 out of around 6,000 full-time residents — were “threatening” Spencer’s mother’s business. Spencer is president of the National Policy Institute, a white supremacist think tank (“dedicated to the heritage, identity, and future of European people in the United States and around the world”).
One of the Jewish residents targed by the Daily Stormer, Francine Green Roston, was a Conservative spiritual leader in New Jersey before moving to Whitefish with her family in 2014. “Whitefish is way bigger than Richard Spencer,” she told CNN.
Until now, Roston said her family had not experienced any anti-Semitism in Montana — just curiosity.
“He’s not powerful,” she said. “He’s just spreading a message of hatred. And we have to keep calling that out, and showing that that is not representative of this country, certainly not representative of this community.” Roston is a member of Love Lives Here, a local anti-discrimination group.
The local government of Whitefish has rejected Spencer’s ideas. Recently, the 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.”
Colleagues of Roston’s from around the country have deluged her Facebook page with expressions of support.
“Dear Friends, thank you for your messages of love and support,” she responded Monday. “I’m moved to tears easily these days and I am incredibly moved by our friends standing up to hate.”
Roston moved with her husband and two children to Whitefish to get a break from the rigors of pulpit life in a large congregation.
Living as a committed Jew in Whitefish is not without its challenges, she told JTA in 2015. For one thing, there’s no kosher meat or chicken in Whitefish, so Roston has visitors bring her supplies whenever possible or she splurges on shipments from Grow and Behold, the Brooklyn-based supplier of pasture-raised kosher meat.
There are other differences to living in Montana. Nobody honks — ever. Roston recalls that her husband was backing up once and a pickup truck gave him a gentle warning beep. The driver then got out of his vehicle to apologize.
As for her children, Roston says Whitefish has been good for their Jewish identity.
“What I’ve tried to say to myself and my kids is this is more what the larger world is like,” Roston said. “We talk a lot about what they believe in and if they stand out and how to speak up for Israel and negotiate their identity in the larger, non-Jewish world. I’m happy that’s happening when my husband and I are with them rather than the first time they leave the bubble and go to college.”
