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Former Governor Sarah Palin speaks during the 'Climate Hustle' panel discussion at the Rayburn House Office Building on April 14, 2016 in Washington, DC.
Sarah Palin was accused of promoting white supremacy on Friday after sharing a post on social media that referenced a neo-Nazi slogan.Her post, shared on her Twitter and Facebook accounts, is a link to an article on the right-wing blog Young Conservatives paired with the caption "Trump Gives Speech to the People of Poland, Says 14 Words That Leave Americans Stunned."
The caption jumped out to several social media users, who pointed to the popular white-supremacist slogan known as the "Fourteen Words" - "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children." The phrase is often shortened to the number 14.
The Young Conservatives article summarizes President Trump's speech in Warsaw, Poland, on Thursday, which contained heavy nationalistic overtones and was well-received by an eager audience.
The article makes use of several of Trump's quotes from the speech, some of which contain strings of words that are 14 words long. (For example: "Let us all fight like the Poles. For family, freedom, for country, for God.") However, the article makes no mention of the phrase "fourteen words."
So where did Palin get her caption from?
The answer lies in the code of the Young Conservatives website, as one Twitter user discovered. As it turns out, the site has been built so that any time someone shares the article on Facebook, the caption is automatically populated with the caption containing the "Fourteen Words" reference.
"And those familiar with Sarah Palin's social-media habits know that her Facebook musings automatically post to her Twitter, hence the neo-Nazi caption being shared on multiple platforms," The Daily Beast reported.
Honest mix-up on Palin's part or not, the tweet enraged several Twitter users.
Trump Gives Speech to the People of Poland, Says 14 Words That Leave Americans Stunned https://t.co/8iKHEQemn9
- Sarah Palin (@SarahPalinUSA) July 7, 2017Very clever Sarah. Totally slipped that one by us Sarah. Nobody will notice Sarah. WINK WINK.
oh by the way you still have your hood on
- Gray (@gray) July 7, 2017So @SarahPalin is baldly Tweeting white-supremacist trash now? (Hint: Google "14 words"). How these people look in the mirror is beyond me. https://t.co/HXzrgoiSzt
- Tom Zeller Jr. (@tomzellerjr) July 7, 2017so the argument is that sarah palin isn't a white supremacist, she just frequents and shares content from websites that are
- John Whitehouse (@existentialfish) July 7, 2017Sarah Palin's dog whistling drops pitch into the audible range. pic.twitter.com/6W00tgfiMU
- ANTHONY OLIVEIRA (@meakoopa) July 7, 2017