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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks to a large crowd during a rally Friday, Feb. 12, 2016, in Tampa, Fla. | AP Photo Ex-ADL director: Trump pledge 'is a fascist gesture'

The former director of the Anti-Defamation League said that Donald Trump having his supporters raise their right hands and pledge to support him “is about as offensive, obnoxious and disgusting as anything I thought I would ever witness in the United States of America.”

Abe Foxman told the Times of Israel that the image created when a whole crowd raises their right hands resembles the “Heil Hitler” sign and Trump knew what he was doing.

“As a Jew who survived the Holocaust, to see an audience of thousands of people raising their hands in what looks like the ‘Heil Hitler’ salute is about as offensive, obnoxious and disgusting as anything I thought I would ever witness in the United States of America,” Foxman said. “It is a fascist gesture.”

“He is smart enough — he always tells us how smart he is — to know the images that this evokes. Instead of asking his audience to pledge allegiance to the United States of America, which in itself would be a little bizarre, he’s asking them to swear allegiance to him,” he continued.

During a Saturday rally in Orlando, Florida, Trump instructed members of the crowd to raise their right hands and pledge to vote for him during the March 15 Florida primary, where Trump has been working hard to beat Marco Rubio who is the senator for the state. Trump got the exact date wrong during his pledge.

“Raise your right hand: ‘I do solemnly swear that I — no matter how I feel, no matter what the conditions, if there’s hurricanes or whatever — will vote, on or before the 12th for Donald J. Trump for president,’” he said.

“Don’t forget you all raised your hands. You swore. Bad things happen if you don’t live up to what you just did,” he added.

Foxman found the threat at the end particularly telling.

“He even threatens that if they don’t, they will suffer and be punished. This is so over the top for a man who really doesn’t come out of the underground. He is a man of the world. Even though he proclaims he doesn’t know who David Duke was, or the other white supremacists, we know very well that he knows. So he’s playing to an image.”

Foxman wasn’t the only one offended by the message. After images of the event surfaced Saturday thousands of journalists, pundits and politicians allies retweeted it with comments about the image it had evoked.

When asked on Saturday if Trump was aware about the way the image could be portrayed, spokeswoman Hope Hicks responded to POLITICO: “What a disgusting thing to ask. A disgrace.”