The closest reference is a description of Jewish eyes by a Nazi-trained child contained in a story in an anti-Semitic children’s book published by Julius Streicher, the founder of Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer.
Is it anti-Semitic for President Trump to call Chuck Todd ‘sleepy eyes’?
This week, some Twitter users posited a troubling explanation: “Sleepy eyes” might be an anti-Semitic slur that Trump uses to target Todd, who is Jewish. Others said it is unlikely Trump or any of his advisers know about the slur, which is uncommon.
In Nazi Germany, propagandists listed physical characteristics that differentiated Jews from Aryans. While some characteristics were far more often mentioned, such as large noses and curly hair, drooping or “sleepy” eyes occasionally made the list.
For example, according to the German Propaganda Archive at Calvin College, Nazi politician Julius Streicher (the publisher of the notoriously anti-Semitic newspaper Der Stürmer) wrote a children’s book listing a litany of supposedly Jewish traits, including the drooping eyes stereotype.
White supremacists today have carried forward many of those Nazi stereotypes, including the reference to “sleepy eyes.” Internet users searching neo-Nazi websites for traits of Jews might come across the reference. For example, on the website Gentile Nation — which bills itself as a Satanist website and includes a page titled “A True Hero: Hitler” — a 26-page document full of photos, of both Jewish celebrities and ordinary Jewish children pulled from Jewish organizations’ websites, teaches readers “How to Identify a Jew.” The document says that one of three types of eyes common to Jews is “the sleepy and sometimes bulging eyes, the sad sack eyes,” illustrated with photographs of “the Jewish ‘sleepy-eye.’ ”
But did Trump know about the history of the term “sleepy eyes” when he started applying it to a Jewish NBC reporter more than five years ago?
