Pop-icon Taylor Swift broke her political silence on Instagram Sunday night by endorsing two Democratic candidates in Tennessee, and it came with consequences.
Swift, who will be voting in the Tennessee midterms this November, wrote, “In the past I’ve been reluctant to publicly voice my political opinions, but due to several events in my life and in the world in the past two years, I feel very differently about that now.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/BopoXpYnCes/?hl=en
Rather than endorse Republican candidate Marsha Blackburn, she told fans she will now support Phil Bredesen for Senate and Jim Cooper for House of Representatives.
The post as of Tuesday morning has received more than 1.8 million views. Of those 1.8 million a percentage is from Neo-Nazis and white supremacists.
Twitter users revealed anonymous conversations taking place on 4Chan saying that Jews were to blame for Taylor Swift’s post.
It's a rough day for 4chan Nazis who had convinced themselves Taylor Swift is secretly a huge racist Trumper pic.twitter.com/FtEL8I8iLI
— Wild Geerters (@steinkobbe) October 8, 2018
“Looks like the Jews finally broke her,” one anonymous person wrote. “Goodbye Tay we will miss you.”
nazis on 4chan starting to suggest that someone wrote Taylor Swift's endorsement for her pic.twitter.com/mBfcklt3Ao
— John Whitehouse+ (@existentialfish) October 8, 2018
Others followed.
“…she decided to use it to virtue signal on Instagram and get the jew media off her back,” another wrote.
“Their tweets already read as if some faggy Jew wrote it for them.”
Swift has been rumored to have a Neo-Nazi fanbase in the past. In 2016 the Vice blog Broadly wrote a piece about how Swift became a “Nazi Icon.” The singer-songwriter also had dozens of blogs written about her from the Daily Stormer (which no longer exists) where founder Andrew Anglinthey referred to Swift as their “Aryan goddess.” There is also an entire Reddit superfan page dedicated to Swift titled “r/ayangoddess.” The page, as the title suggests, is covered in anti-Semitism.
Last fall, Swift took legal action, in which ACLU got involved, demanding that all posts associating her with Adolf Hitler be removed. Her lawyers stated the posts were “‘harmful,’ ‘abusive,’ ‘ethnically offensive,’ ‘humiliating to other people,’ ‘libelous,’ and ‘otherwise objectionable.’” The ACLU sided with the bloggers on a First Amendment protection basis.
Though Neo-Nazis shared their disappointment, fans applauded Swift for coming out with support.
Bredesen thanked Swift on Sunday for the endorsement and hoped that many more people go out to the polls to vote.
“Thank you for the kind words @taylorswift13. I’m honored to have your support and that of so many Tennesseans who are ready to put aside the partisan shouting and get things done,” Bredesen tweeted Sunday. “We’re ready for it. Last day to register to vote is October 9.”
According to USA Today, “Vote.org had its second-busiest day of the year after Swift’s post with 155,940 unique visitors to its website, making it the site’s biggest day since National Voter Registration Day on Sept. 25, when the site saw 304,942 unique visitors, up from a daily average of 14,078 visitors.”
Republicans are absolutely terrified of Taylor Swift. They should be. Over 50,000 people registered, on one site alone, within 24 hours of @TaylorSwift13’s announcement. Thank you Taylor! We need anyone else with a loud voice to tell people to register to vote, and to #VoteDem.🇺🇸
— Scott Dworkin (@funder) October 9, 2018
