President Trump Is Right, Again

President Trump was roundly criticized for failing to call out neo-Nazis or the KKK by name in his first statement on the tragic violence in Charlottesville last weekend. Even many others in the GOP, including Marco Rubio and Orrin Hatch, indicated that the President should have been specific.

Yet the fact that the planned rally turned into a very two-sided violent melee is undeniable. And here’s what the President said:

We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides. It’s been going on for a long time in our country. Not Donald Trump, not Barack Obama. This has been going on for a long, long time. It has no place in America. What is vital now is a swift restoration of law and order and the protection of innocent lives. No citizen should ever fear for their safety and security in our society.

The words others found offensive were: “on many sides.” Why, they demand, didn’t the President immediately condemn the neo-Nazis and the KKK by name? When pressed on this, the President replied:

“What about the ‘alt-left’ that came charging at, as you say, the ‘alt-right’? Do they have any semblance of guilt?”

The President is right. The presence of odious hate groups on one side does not excuse violence by hate groups on the other. But the left prefers to pretend that left-wing hate doesn’t exist, rather than addressing it.

Maxine Waters responded to the President by tweeting, “No, Trump. Not on many sides, your side.” This is both factually wrong and profoundly dangerous.

The problem with condemning the Nazis or KKK is that it is simply too easy. Just days earlier, a friend and colleague criticized a particular organization as being so weak that it could make no public comment on any issue “except to condemn Hitler.” The only people who don’t regard Nazis as evil are other Nazis.

The question which we should be asking is: why is the left whitewashing Black Lives Matter (BLM) and Antifa?

Of all these groups, the Neo-Nazis, the KKK, BLM and Antifa, which one called for violence against police, which manifested itself in shootings of law enforcement officers in Texas and Louisiana? Which of these groups threatens free speech on college campuses in this country, violently preventing students from hearing opposing views?

I don’t know about you, but I consider policies and procedures that facilitate the disproportionate murder of young black men to be racist. And although every police force must police itself and remove racism from within its ranks, BLM’s hateful agitation has not only led to murdered police officers.

In Baltimore, the death of Freddie Gray in April 2015 led to riots and the politically-motivated prosecution of six officers (half of whom were black themselves) for following what was standard procedure at the time. This led to police being afraid to do the aggressive work necessary to get illegal guns off the street before they are used.

The results can only be described as horrific. 2015 was the most murderous year per-capita in Baltimore history, with 2016 coming in second. 2017 is on track to exceed both. And in all three years, young black men have been hugely overrepresented among the victims. A 10-month-old baby nearly died in her car, which remained locked following the murder of her 26-year-old father in May—until a police officer heard her cry.

The fact that the officer was white shouldn’t even deserve mention. The killing fields of Baltimore are a violent white supremacist’s dreamland, thanks to BLM.

But the media won’t talk that way. The left prefers to imagine that BLM is a civil rights movement, solving a real problem. And this is hardly the only example of left-wing “human rights” causes serving as convenient cover for anarchy, hatred and violence.

If we are going to tear down hateful monuments, we should not start with statues of Robert E. Lee, whom most historians consider to be no more racist than many Northerners of his day. We should start with the Arch of Titus in Rome, celebrating the military victories of that Emperor. After all, the Arch focuses specifically upon the plunder of Jerusalem, and the desecration of the treasures of its Holy Temple. It is an indisputable celebration of ethnic cleansing and genocide.

But that is exactly why it should not be removed. We need to remember our history, in order to avoid repeating it.

Which of the following statements has incited more murders in 2017: “Heil Hitler” or “Free Palestine”?

Again, the answer is obvious. Everyone knows that Hitler was a Nazi. But all too many people forget that “Palestine” is the name given to the land of Judea by the same hateful invaders who built that Arch, in an attempt to sever the connection between the land and those whose home it truly is. Forget that Palestine is a name birthed from barbarism and ethnic cleansing, forget that it was nothing more than a distant province to its Arab rulers, none of whom possessed it within the past 500 years (save for a brief period of Egyptian control in the 1830s), and you can make “Free Palestine” sound like a civil rights movement.

But what does it really stand for? Consider that there are dozens of unquestioned occupations around the world, in places like Tibet, Chechnya, and even Northern Ireland. But only one call for “justice” is used to justify the murder of children.

There is hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides. It is easy to recognize the hate of 50 years ago; it takes discernment to recognize the hate of today, especially when the left is deliberately masking the hate groups in their midst.

The President should have named all of the hate groups involved, or none. The President was right the first time.

An earlier version of this article was first published in American Greatness, and discussed on the editor’s radio program.

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53 Responses

  1. Reb Yid says:

    “I condemn all of the violence and hatred from this Kristallnacht, on many sides”

    You call yourself a Jew? Still think that Trump is the best President ever for the Jews?

    Elul is coming. Never too late to do teshuva.

    • Yaakov Menken says:

      So you just compared violent thugs who came armed with bats and makeshift flamethrowers, none of whom lifted a finger to help Jews going to synagogue and who are part of movements dedicated to disrupting Jewish activities on campus and support of terrorists, with innocent Jews who did nothing.

      To say that this is a disgraceful and odious comparison would be an understatement.

      As far as Trump and the Jews, which President would you imagine to be superior? Obama, who spouted anti-Semitic canards at the UN and then allowed a virulently anti-Semitic UNSC resolution to pass? Trump sent a frum Jew whose own daughter just made aliyah to be ambassador to Israel, put in an Ambassador to the UN whose primary goal is to combat the double standards and anti-Semitism of that organization, and put two Orthodox Jews in charge of MidEast negotiations. The very suggestion that Trump is a closet anti-Semite or unfriendly to Jews is the best evidence yet that liberal Jews have divested themselves of any semblance of Jewish knowledge or awareness.

      • Reb Yid says:

        David Duke supported Trump’s comments. Now you make #2.

        These are folks marching down the street with Nazi flags yelling epithets at Jews and the folks in the local shul were absolutely petrified to step outside.

        Yet you deign to conflate them with others. Unbelievable

        You have vilified the previous occupant of the White House for matters so much more trivial in comparison.

      • Yaakov Menken says:

        If you wish to claim that I am somehow “aligned” with David Duke, then you support the murder of Jews. You supported candidates preferred by the Rev. Wright, who incites Jew hatred; Al Sharpton, who incited the murder of Yankel Rosenbaum; Mahmoud Abbas, who names schools after murderers and pays them stipends… and Hamas. There is no one supporting Trump as dangerous as those who supported Obama, Bernie and (grudgingly) Hillary, with the possible exception of Putin, so I don’t encourage you to make quite such an offensive and dumb comparison again.

        And of course, let’s not forget that Obama said regarding the HyperCacher attack in Paris that “zealots” had “randomly shot a bunch of folks,” which his Press Secretary explained by saying “There were people other than just Jews who were in that deli.” In that instance, there were no thugs on the other side. So your lack of criticism for Obama in that instance, coupled with your condemnation of Trump here, reveals an appalling double-standard when it comes to those with whom you disagree politically.

        Did you notice how the violent thugs of Antifa and BLM did absolutely nothing to defend the synagogue, while they made fights with the Neo-Nazis elsewhere? That’s because they oppose the Nazis with regards to blacks… and are their allies with regards to Jews. And, again, the BLM folks are inciting far more murders today than any neo-Nazis. I suggest you start realizing who is the danger today instead of living in the past. Trump was right to condemn bigots on all sides.

        If you think condemning BLM along with neo-Nazis is somehow worse than supporting anti-Semitic resolutions at the UN that lead directly to Arab murders of Jews, then I am forced to remember wise advice I was once given about arguing with the irrational.

      • Rafael Quinoaface says:

        In Boston this past weekend, a pro-Trump supporter wearing an Israeli flag was attacked by “anti-fascist” forces. Why do you think that is?

      • Steve Brizel says:

        The previous occupant would have been impeached for his illegal use of the IRS if his name was Nixon

      • mycroft says:

        Proof please. Show where Obama ordered individual audits on anyone.

      • Steve Brizel says:

        Like it or not-the far left and far right equally deserve our contempt. However, between those two extremes, most if not all conservatives welcome the opportunity to discuss with anyone interested whether we are best served by the ever expanding welfare state and social changes engineered by the media, courts and administrative agencies and whether the same are in the best interest of free minds and free markets and their impact on religious liberty and what role the absence of traditional families has on crime rates, both in the inner city and elsewhere, as the obviously increasing problems of single parent families, drug abuse and violent crime-none of which are caused by policing or white racism.

      • Steve Brizel says:

        Why? Obama was a post Vietnam post modernist radical disguised as a Democrat. No adminstration was less transparent, intent on social change without the approval of Congress and the abuse of the IRS in particular against conservative groups was an offense that should have sent him waving goodbye from a helicopter after he was impeached. The decline of health care and its replacement by what passes for the same in the UK where you have to wait on line for surgery if you are deemed worthy and the Iran deal were ignominious disgraces. Such a critique should be responded and debated rather than rejecting the same as mere vilification or racist in nature. HTC’s comments about what she thought about Trump also fail to serve as a response to the fact that she lost on the rejection of the Obama agenda which was rejected by those who live between the East and west Coasts of this great country.

      • Ben Tobias says:

        “none of whom lifted a finger to help Jews going to synagogue”… So, you’ve talked to Jews in Charlottesville? I have and this untrue (like basically everything else in your disgraceful piece.) Where did you get your information?

      • Yaakov Menken says:

        If you can be more specific I would be very interested in learning more. But we have heard from the President of the synagogue providing a detailed account of what transpired, including how armed neo-Nazis threatened the synagogue — yet no mention of anyone from Antifa or BLM coming to push them away. On the contrary, the synagogue hired an armed guard, while Antifa was too busy fighting the Nazis everywhere else. No one who understands “intersectionality” could find this surprising.

      • mycroft says:

        There was an Orthodox ambassador from US to Israel,Danny Kurtzer.He had a child going to gap year in Israel what does religion of Ambassador have to do with how they’ll treat Israel.

      • Yaakov Menken says:

        There is an obvious correlation between a person’s Jewish observance and how he or she treats Israel, which statistical outliers do not disprove.

    • Steve Brizel says:

      Obviously, we should all reject both the alt right’s elements that are obviously white supremacist but we should also reject the call of the left that all politics is rooted in identity politics and the concomitant self righteous pose of being a victim without responsibilities.

  2. BTG says:

    There is no equivalence between those who support racist, anti-semitic and fascist views on one side, and those who oppose them. That’s like saying because of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, there was violence on both sides during WW2. I continue to be amazed at the cognitive dissonance of Republicans Jews.

    • Rafael Quinoaface says:

      Except that that many of the ones who oppose those racist, facist views are themselves antisemites. Your blindness to the spread and normalization of antisemitism, or using “antizionism” as a shield to pretend that they they are not antisemitic, and their embraces of Islam, in all of its forms, is just as scary. You hold on to this now false bogeyman that the Right is the source of the worst antisemitism, when its not.

  3. Heshy Bulman says:

    Rabbi Menken,
    You are not correct re: the absolute necessity of calling out the white supremacist movement, a.k.a. neo-natzism, and more particularly by the President under whose banner they – AND TENS OF THOUSANDS OF THEIR HIDDEN SYMPATHIZERS ACROSS THE FRUITED PLAINS – have crawled out from beneath their rocks. I invite you to peruse various hate filled comments filling the “Comments” sections of various blogs and newspapers.
    While it is all too obvious that the Left can be equally violent, equally racist, and EQUALLY ANTI-SEMITIC, it still couches its animus in Ant-Zionism. This is an important distinction for us Jews. I do not believe that President Trump is anti-semitic in any way, but in view of the scum who have cast their lot with his presidency, it is incumbent upon him to call them out whenever and wherever he can. We Jews don’t just pay with our loss of dignity when the true vicious variety of Anti-Semitism is emboldened – we pay with our Blood.

    • Bob Miller says:

      If you have a point, it’s that communists since Marx have been craftier than, say, Nazis or Islamists in cloaking their true intentions. All the totalitarian groups have sorry track records of mass murder, still ignored or covered up by their successors and fellow travelers today. Read the works of Jean-François Revel.

      One review: http://www.hoover.org/research/revels-uncommon-insight

  4. dr. bill says:

    To say I disagree is an understatement. It is clear that neo-Nazis, KKK members and other alt right groups deserve distinct and unabashed condemnation for what they represent. Full stop. Not ISIS or Antifa or the reverends Sharpton, Wright and Farrakhan or others of their ilk need occupy space in the same sentence, thereby lessening the message.

    OTOH, the latter set of groups and their fellow-travellers – BDS, BLM, the PC culture, etc. – are actually much more threatening to us both as Jews and Westerners. The threat is a more critical point to get across. I do not fear the neo-nazis; i fear BDS.

    Those are two independent messages. Conflating them weakens both. Had the President addressed them separately, his message would resonate with a much broader audience, besides being more precise and actionable. Would he be attacked? he is if he breathes. Would a broader group come to his support? undoubtedly.

    perhaps with bannon gone, better advice will be forthcoming. in fact, he is now finally surrounded by people with saner demeanors and more rational ideas.

    • Steve Brizel says:

      Absolutely correct-the question remains why the ADL has persistently failed to make its otherwise vocal presence made on these issues-Perhaps the ADL is still looking for swastikas in bathrooms and viewing gun control as the panacea to the problems that afflict the US when the evidence is out there that the breakdown in the family as a social institution has led to latchdoor families with children who are protected in the wrong ways from society by their helicopter parents but permitted to be so absorbed in their phones that they are isolated from society, oblivious to pedestrians and passing traffic, and engage anti social behavior,

  5. Charlie Hall says:

    Regarding the offenses of the Left:

    I have been calling out BlackLivesMatter for years (and just did so earlier today in a different forum). I have been calling out Sarsour, particularly loudly in her being invited to give a public health commencement address as my doctorate is from a different public health school. My disgust with Soros that I have expressed goes beyond his politics. I have almost been banned from dailykos for defending Israel against anti-Semites there (most of whom eventually got banned themselves or left; as a Jew I know that simple survival is a victory). I used to blast Michael Moore but he has semi-retired. And I was strong in condemning the riots in Berkeley and Middlebury. (The one in Middlebury was particularly sad — Charles Murray is #NeverTrump!)

    But none of these folks are as bad as Nazis or Confederates, who came to Charlottesville with AR-15s. The idea that there are “Very Fine People” who march with such groups is one that every Jew needs to condemn without qualification. Leaders from all spectra of the Orthodox world have been loud in issuing statements of condemnation, as they should. You are absolutely on the wrong side here.

    • Yaakov Menken says:

      Charlie, no one who listened or read the Trump transcript can possibly defend the claim that he said the “very fine people” were associated with the Nazis. It’s simply a lie. Meanwhile, you are claiming that “confederates,” people who don’t want Lee’s statue torn down (but had nothing to do with hate groups or violence), are worse than left-wing anarchists with bats and aerosol flamethrowers who favor the “right” of Arabs to kill Jews in Israel. I don’t think I need to rebut that.

      • dr. bill says:

        actually you might. if so-called “confederates” stood by while nazies shouted their standard garbage, which is best one can claim, and did not leave not wanting to be tainted by association, i would worry about them as well

    • Steve Brizel says:

      All fine and well-but those who prevent Charles Murray or Heather McDonald or other conservatives from speaking deserve the strongest possible condemnation and response-by insisting that freedom of speech includes the right to speak but never the power to suppress that which is uncomfortable to your own POV but rather debate and see which POV has merit or the lack thereof. When conservative ideas on culture, academia and gender are being discussed with the same fervor as the advocates of identity politics then we will know that our civil liberties are indeed robust.

      • Steve Brizel says:

        I like the fact that I can decide who to vote for, what newspaper , magazine or news reports I can buy watch, and read and what books I can read on any issue. For that reason, I would and readily trade the NYT with its far left op ed page ( except for Brett Stephens) for the excellent op eds editorials, letters and cultural coverage of the WSJ. That is my choice. No “you might like this” on a computer screen can tell me what to read, see or watch.

  6. Bob Miller says:

    In a sense, nazis and communists need each other. Each group uses the enemy presence to rally its own forces. Each is in many ways the mirror image of its radical enemy. Each is totalitarian socialist at heart, national or international, and anti-conservative.

    Nazis in America were down to a pathetic nothing but they had to be somehow tied to Trump and Republicans to advance the leftist agenda. So curious things happened in Charlottesville. A leftist operative formerly with Occupy Wall Street resurfaced as the instigator of the “white nationalist” rally (legally permitted by the way—who did that?). The anarcho-communist Antifa crowd (no legal permit for them) made ready, with customary getup, baseball bats and all. The leftist Mayor and Governor ingeniously managed to have their officers aim one warring group at the other against all policing and crowd control logic and then let the melee play out in its tragic way, so the propaganda war could ensue. Trump accurately pointed out that some other people in each crowd had no desire for violence.

    I sure hope the DOJ and FBI are reinvigorated enough to get to the bottom of this. Thinking Jews with backbone won’t be shamed into making false analogies.

  7. Charlie Hall says:

    “nothing more than a distant province to its Arab rulers, none of whom possessed it within the past 500 years (save for a brief period of Egyptian control in the 1830s)”

    Minor quibble:

    The last Arab rulers of “Palestine” were probably the Fatimids, who briefly took it back from the Seljuk Turks in 1098 CE and lost it to the Crusaders the next year. The Mamluks kicked the Crusaders out for good in the late 13th century and ruled until 1517 when the Ottomans took over, ruling for the next 400 years, with exception for the period of “Egyptian control” you mentioned. However, the “Egyptian” was actually Muhammad Ali Pasha, an Albanian.

  8. rwwp says:

    this is an important and cogent essay. it is shocking to see orthodox jews, who supposedly should have some insight into these matters, joining the chorus condemning trump for saying something that is self evidently true. the left is not only morally far worse, they are also far more dangerous. i understand that fear prevents many from expressing this, but they should at least express respect when someone else (the president) has the courage to say what we all should be saying.

    • Charlie Hall says:

      The alt-left and alt-right are equally evil but the alt-right is vastly more dangerous today. The alt-left is politically powerless and the alt-right has friends in the White House. (One less since last Friday.)

      And it is certainly not “self-evidently true” that “very fine people” march with Nazis.

      It is , however, “self-evidently true” that the leaders of the racists have interpreted Trump’s back and forth as endorsement and Trump has NOT made any statement nor taken any action that would convince them otherwise.

      • Yaakov Menken says:

        I disagree, of course, on both counts. First of all, Trump explicitly condemned the Nazis & KKK independent of anyone else, both Monday a week ago and during the campaign. So your claim that Trump has not made any statement to convince them otherwise is objectively entirely false, and I don’t see how one can assert otherwise.

        Furthermore, the alt-left is what is taking over campuses and making them a hostile environment for Jews. The “alt-right” has no friends at all in the White House to judge from every political decision made since Trump took office. You cannot find a single policy that is not more friendly to Israel and Jews than what came before, so again I don’t see where you get this information short of mythology. Note that according to current reports, Steve Bannon the “anti-Semite” said we shouldn’t talk to Abbas the terrorist and we must move the embassy to Jerusalem. Of such anti-Semites we need more!

      • Steve Brizel says:

        The alt left is yawned over by the mainstream media

      • Steve Brizel says:

        The alt left is fed by its support and sympathy among the mainstream media ( CBS, CNN, NBC, ABC PBS, NPR, NYT and WP) and the high priests of the false gods of culture and academia. AFAIK, there is only one news network that is conservative and a few influential newspapers and journals ( WSJ Fox, Manhattan Institute, Commentary, weekly Standard and National Review) that serve as an important counterbalance-all to the chagrin of the left which refuses to debate the issues because the left sees very little, if any value at all in conservative ideas.

  9. Shaya says:

    Black Lives Matter is a catchall term for the movement to stop unjustified police shootings (and no single hierarchical organization speaks for it as a whole). It includes a lot of moderate people who simply want reforms in this area. The fact that they include some extremists, and that a few people were inspired by violence by that extremism, does not mean you can blame the whole movement, as if the whole thing is a radical, criminal, enterprise. You can embrace its basic moderate civil rights message while condemning extremism. Just as we don’t blame the Sierra Club for the Unambomber, we shouldn’t blame mainstream BLM members for the few examples of anti-police violence or the riots, which were instigated by a small number of people (some of them white anarchists…)

    It is reasonable for the president to criticize antifa violence, though the way he did it was inappropriate. The bigger problem is his unsupported claim that many of the protesters were not white supremacists and simply didn’t like taking down monuments. The fact is, the entire march was organized by white supremacist groups. Perhaps unwittingly, the president is giving them positive publicity by defending their effect and implying a moral equivalency between those who advocate genocide and those who are protesting against them.

    • Bob Miller says:

      In view of American realities today, I’d be very much for a movement to stop all shooting at policemen and all rioting, whether done in the name of BLM and its allies or not.

      • Reb Yid says:

        And I’d be in the mood for an immediate end of shooting young defenseless black males

        And I’d also be in the mood for finally convicting cops for the above offense. It never ever happens and that is beyond outrageous.

        That’s why BLM exists.

      • Charlie Hall says:

        BLM exists so that its leaders can hijack a legitimate concern (police shootings) to promote an extremist far left agenda that is clearly hostile to all police.

        Just to give another example of such, just a month ago an amazing black female police officer in the Bronx was doing surveillance at an intersection where there had been a recent triple shooting. She was murdered in cold blood, execution-style. BLM’s national org. had absolutely nothing to say. Black Lives Don’t Matter when they are trying to preserve other Black Lives.

      • Steve Brizel says:

        BLM is merely the Black Panthers for the 21st Century. . the question remains why the so called civil rights leadership of today fails to look at the root causes of violent crime which was and remains single family parenting. Without a strong two parent family structure. All too often policing in urban cities deals with violent crime that can be traced to the absence of a strong family structure.one wonders when we can expect the equivalent of cheshbon hanefesh from the supporters and apologists for BLM which is very anti Israel on this issue.

      • Bob Miller says:

        BLM exists to foment a violent revolution. All other details are incidental. They have rioted whether or not the black males in question were non-threatening and have ambushed policemen and policewomen with clean records.

        Since you’re a Yid, you ought to recognize that BLM has absolute contempt for Yidden.

    • Rafael Quinoaface says:

      BLM’s official platform embraces BDS and considers Israel to be an apartheid state. You can talk about moderates all you want, the official line of BLM is now antisemitic. That is why they are grouped in with Sarsour, antifa, and other violent and anti-zionist left wing groups, and why they have sullied their own worthy message against police brutality. If moderates don’t agree with this addition to BLM’s platform, they should quit and form their own organization. To further my point, if a teacher’s union votes for a boycott of Israeli post-secondary institutions (working with them and cultural exchange), if college professors remain members of that union, they cannot claim that they don’t agree. They should quit in protest or work to have the vote overturned.

    • Charlie Hall says:

      Actually Black Lives Matter is a far left racist hate group whose inspiration is a convicted murder of a police officer who is now living as a fugitive in Cuba and is on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorist list. The platform that they have endorsed is a rehash of every stupid nutty discredited far left idea from the past generation — BDS is not even the most offensive plank! Do you really support pardons for every convicted drug offender and and end to prisons? They need to be shunned. Now. (This has not been a popular position on some of the left wing sites on which I occasionally comment, nor was my strong support for Charles Murray being able to speak at Middlebury College.)

      What Rabbi Menken does not understand is that Nazis and Confederates are even worse, that nobody marching with either is a “find person”, and that Trump has been issuing dog whistles to both for years. David Duke, Richard Spencer, and his ilk correctly interpret Trump’s back and forth here. Rabbi Menken and everyone continuing to excuse Trump’s moral failure here is giving aid and comfort to people who want us dead.

      I grew up hearing Nazi songs sung by my classmates in junior high school. The clueless folks who think the Black Lives Matter organization is only about police misconduct are clueless. People know what Confederate and Nazi flags mean.

      And so do many Republicans including John McCain, Mitt Romney, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Cory Gardner, Ben Sasse, Larry Hogan, and Charles Baker. How is it that THEY were able to make unequivocal condemnations of the Nazis and Confederates and Trump wasn’t?

      And how is it that Naftali Bennett, who isn’t even a US Citizen, was able to?

    • Steve Brizel says:

      One should never confuse BLM with MLK Jr and the pioneers of the civil rights movement.

  10. Yossi says:

    What about BLM and AntiFa? What does that have to do with Charlotesville? Right now, there is a dead person because of the white supremacists who were also chanting about the Jews. That should be condemned because it’s relevant. And like someone who cursed someone but then the other guy pulls a fun and kills him, sometimes, once you escalate you lose your moral high ground and you can’t even defend- “but he called me a name.”

  11. Steve Brizel says:

    Extremists of the sky left and alt right both should be viewed as beyond the realm of what passes for proper political discourse. The events of the PC driven left have lead to the events after the election of 2016.

  12. Avraham says:

    I guess we are now left with a choice: We can agree with the Orthodox Leaders of Lakewood, Agudath Yisrael, the RCA, Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard, Rich Lowery of the National Review, Charles Krauthammer of Fox News, and Julies Krein the founder and editor of American Affairs (the last four being leading Conservative intellectuals) who all criticized President Trump for his false moral equivalence or we can agree with Yaakov Menken, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity that he got it just right. That does not seem like much of a choice.

    • Bob Miller says:

      I prefer to check the relevant facts as best I can before making a political judgment. Good idea, no? If, at the end of the day, I find that some prominent people agree or disagree with me, so what? I could point out where the political judgment of those you rely on has been wrong at times, and I could point out which heavies now agree with Rabbi Menken, but these things doesn’t really concern me.

  13. dr. bill says:

    i heard why i believe is a brilliant observation from prof. dershowitz. he argued if politicians on the right, condemned those right wing misfits who might be thought to support them and those on the left did the same, we would all be better off. obama attacking the alt-right and trump the alt-left does not take an iota of political courage.

    yes the press gave obama a pass and hounds trump; that does not excuse trump acting poorly.

    • DF says:

      Agreed with dershowitz, but I see it as obvious, not brilliant.

      Disagreed on the last assertion. In the first place I don’t think Trump acted poorly at all, as Yaakov Menken shows rather clearly. But it more general terms, that the press ignored Obama’s myriad problems does give Trump license to act as he pleases. Obama might have ignored his critics because he thought he was smarter than them. Trump conceivably thinks the same (tho I doubt it) but has the moral high ground because he also knows that any criticism of him is pure hypocrisy. I too wish it were otherwise, but one has to live in the real world, not in fantasy.

  14. Rafael Quinoaface says:

    Noam Chomsky, no lover of Israel, criticizes Antifa to the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/noam-chomsky-antifa-is-a-major-gift-to-the-right/article/2631786.

    Seems like some on the radical left acknowledge the havoc Antifa can wreak.

    • Charlie Hall says:

      It is rare that I ever agree with Chomsky on anything but he is right here. Antifa is great news for the alt-right. Their rioting in Berkeley created a backlash in favor of their hero Milo Yiannopoulos.

  15. Rafael Quinoaface says:

    When I look at the the one common denominator that both the radical Left and Right share, namely hatred for Jews, validate my feeling that Jews are both now targets of the Left and the Right, and of large swaths of the Muslim world as well. I truly wonder if the Charlotteville march and rally had been focused on the State of Israel, and Zio (both left and right use this epithet commonly) control of government organs to further the Zio agenda, would we have seen Antifa there to oppose? Charlottesville was not only about Jews, but if it had been, I believe the way things would have played out that day would have been much different.

  16. Arthur says:

    I heard on a legit radio program, only once and days after the rally, that the ACLU handled all the permitting for the supremacist side to allow them to demonstrate. Was that “fake news”? If not, is this being hushed up? Why isn’t it part of the dialogue?

  17. Shimon says:

    Finally! Rabbi Menken thank you so much for having the guts to go against the trend and point out in this vital piece what should be obvious to any honest person.

    • Bar-Chaiim says:

      I also applaud this courage to go against the political grain to call out violence and antisemitism in all forms.

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