The Pittsburgh massacre was not "unimaginable". It was inevitable.

"This heinous act of mass murder is purely diabolical, hard to believe and, frankly, unimaginable," President Trump said of the carnage that occurred Saturday in a Pittsburgh synagogue where worshipers congregated. were gathered to celebrate the dawn of a new life. .

Unimaginable?

If only that was true.

The massacre that took place at the Tree of Life synagogue seemed not only imaginable but also inevitable to anyone who paid attention.

This was not inevitable simply because anti-Semitic activity, including hate crimes in schools and bomb threats against Jewish institutions, soared – a rise unprecedented 57% last year, according to the Anti – Defamation League. That's the symptom. The cause is a climate in which the feelings of white nationalists and other hate groups are no longer repressed.

Hate groups feel emboldened to show their faces in public, as they did when they paraded in Charlottesville last year chanting, "The Jews will not replace us". This too had a deadly result. But the President of the United States insisted that there was a moral equivalence between the neo-Nazis and those who had protested to protest: "There are two sides to a story. I thought what had happened was a horrible moment for the country, but there are two sides to a story. "

In the Trump era, people who should be avoided are welcomed and become virtually mainstream. Some who call themselves our political leaders are even trying to do it. This month, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) ventured into Canadian politics with the endorsement of Faith Goldy, a marginal candidate for white supremacy and Toronto mayoral candidate:

He then stated that he was not aware of his white nationalist sentiments, which included a recommendation that his followers read a 1937 book calling for the elimination of Jews.

But King was the same man who made a free trip in August to visit the Holocaust sites in Poland, and managed to meet a right-wing Austrian party with historical ties to the Nazis. Mike DeBonis of The Post reported:

In an interview with a party-related website, King (R-Iowa) said that "western civilization is in decline", talked about the replacement of white Europeans by immigrants and criticized Hungarian American financier George Soros, who supported liberal groups. around the world.

King was entrusted to the Unzensuriert site on August 24 in Vienna, a day after concluding a five-day trip to Jewish historical sites and the Holocaust in Poland, including the camp of the death of Auschwitz-Birkenau. The trip, including airfare to and from Europe, was funded by From the Depths, an international non-profit group that seeks to educate lawmakers about the Holocaust.

What was the reaction of other Republicans to this? Silence.

Once again, Trump himself set the tone, returning to the way he had campaigned for the presidency in 2016. As my colleague Dana Milbank observed in the final days of this election season:

Donald Trump and his substitutes have been playing with American neo-Nazis for months: they tweet their memes, retweet their messages, appear in their radio shows. After the October 13 speech in which Trump had warned Hillary Clinton "was meeting secretly with international banks to plot the destruction of US sovereignty" and that a "world power structure" was conspiring against ordinary Americans, the Anti-Defamation League urged Trump to "Avoid speeches and tropes that have always been used against Jews."

Trump has just given his answer. On Friday, he published a closing announcement of his campaign containing the offending remarks of this speech, illustrated this time by images of prominent Jews: the financier George Soros (accompanying the words "those who control the levers of power" ), Fed Chair Janet Yellen (with the words "global special interests") and Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs (following the quote from "The World Power Structure"). The advertisement shows Hillary Clinton and says she associates "with those people who do not care about you."

Of course, none of this is a license for what happened Saturday in Pittsburgh. But it's a dangerous game to play. Now, what Trump claims to have been unimaginable really happened under his watch. He is right to denounce such a vile act – but he and the other members of his party must stop giving hatred the oxygen and sunlight they need to grow.

Read more:

Max Boot: What's going on in our country?

Jennifer Rubin: US antisemitism: the situation gets worse

The point of view of the post office: refuse to get used

Colbert I. King: losing him after Pittsburgh

Dana Milbank: Antisemitism is no longer a nuance of the Trump campaign. It's the melody.