Damning Trump As A Racist Or As An Anti-Semite Damns Me

Are there anti-Semites?  Of course, it seems they will never go away.  The same goes for racists.  But, it's nothing like it was in the days of Arthur Godfrey.  Hotels no longer exclude Jews, or for that matter African-Americans.  Thank goodness.

But, David Duke and proponents of Nazism remind us that the virus is never entirely wiped out.  So how are we to deal with it?  Can we end hate speech by prohibiting it?  Experience tells us no.
To end the virus of religious hatred, of race hatred, we must offer lessons of tolerance.  And, I submit that in many ways Americans have been doing exactly that.

However there are times when we relapse.  When does that happen?  When people express themselves through violence.  In matters large and small, violence sets us back.  Whether it is Crown Heights or Ferguson, the lessons of tolerance find themselves under attack.  Remove the violence and you can begin to make progress.  Skokie is an excellent example of that.

And now we come to Charlottesville where violence rose to the level of murder by an unhinged racist.  Some time earlier, the attack on Republican Congressmen playing ball in a park in Washington DC resulted in extremely serious injures to a number of the Republicans and their two guards.  But the outrage over this incident died down rather quickly.

It must be said; the media makes a far bigger noise reporting on violence by crazies on the right than they do when it's the left that acts violently.  Remember the Trump rallies, back when Trump was running for the presidency?  Remember, seeing on TV, members of the left attacking, with their sticks, cans, and pepper spray, Republican  families lined up for Trump rallies.  The media treated it as not much of a big deal.  But show a protestor being led out the door, and the press will cry out how the protestor was manhandled.

The Right has their bully boys.  But so do the Liberals.  You hear of the Nazis and the skin heads, but you hear very little of the Antifas, those who use violence to suppress the voice on the Right.  (Antifas is a relatively new term used to describe those who present themselves as people who are against fascists.  Get it?   Antifas . . . . anti-fascists . . . . )  Why the fancy name?  Why not simply refer to these ruffians as "violent liberals."  It's like referring to Islamic terrorism as simply "terrorism."  Abstract terrorism seems far more attractive to the politically correct than the more honest label; namely, Islamic terrorism.

This is not to say that all liberals engage in strong-arm methods.  And, for that matter, neither do all people on the right, even those on the far right, engage in violent confrontations.  And that was the situation in Charlottesville.  We all know about the deranged right-wing driver who killed a woman protestor against the statues of southern generals.   But we hear almost nothing of the behavior of the violent leftists.

Trump spoke against the fascist demonstrators, as well as against the racists.  But he also noted the presence of violent people on the left; namely, the antifas people.  For this he was pilloried in the press.  The police, often targets of violent liberals, were keenly aware of who was attacking them.  They may well have included white supremacists.  But, it also included violent liberals.  It was, of course, politically incorrect to point this out.  When Trump did so, the press piled on.  He was called a racist and an anti-Semite.

The media will play their game, but I stand with the truth.  I stand with Trump.