6 July 2016

Not all six-pointed stars are Stars of David

Donald Trump avers that as president, he’ll solve problems by hiring the smartest experts. His campaign’s handling of the Star of David controversy provides little reassurance that he practices what promises.

Over the weekend, Trump’s social media operation Tweeted an image of Hillary Clinton on a background of one-hundred-dollar Federal Reserve Notes. “Most corrupt candidate ever!” was in white letters inside of a red, six-pointed, star. It was not his campaign’s original artwork: it was an image copied from a right wing website notorious for its anti-semitic tendencies. Given the context, many observers concluded the star was the Star of David, and that Clinton was being accused of being bought and paid for by evil Jewish bankers.

According to Kevin Drum, at Mother Jones:

We got the arrestingly stupid sheriff’s star defense because an apology would have been politically correct. But the reference to the sheriff’s star does raise a valid point: a six-pointed star is not an anti-semitic symbol in and of itself.

The six-pointed star polygon, also known as the hexagram (Greek) or sexagram (Latin), is one of the oldest geometric objects, probably because of its ease of construction (one needs only a compass and straight edge). Most drawing applications, including those for creating advertisements, provide tools for creating stars, and various stars in the encapsulated PostScript format (.eps) are available in clip art libraries.

Trump’s Tweeter easily could have created a similar image using a six-pointed star and not generated a controversy. But instead of pushing the polygon button, he pushed the rip-off button, and gave Clinton’s social media warriors an opportunity to play Gotcha.