In responding to Rabbi Mark Smilowitz’s email, I find it necessary to clear up some factual errors before addressing the more substantive issues.
The first error is the belief, as stated by President Trump, that the group demonstrating against the Nazis and white supremacists did not have a permit. And that therefore, according to Rabbi Smilowitz, they were in the wrong and deserve to be blamed for what transpired.
The reality is that they did have a permit. See Snopes here [
www.snopes.com]. It was not an illegal counter protest. So we don’t have to argue about whether not having a permit would have put them at fault for the violence. The president lied. (Remember that he claimed to have waited a few days before making a statement because he needed to have all the facts. So it was an intentional lie.) Some people still believe whatever he says. But it has been shown to be a lie.
A look at the timeline of events will show that the car murder occurred 2 hours after the Nazis and other white supremacists were ordered to leave the park where they had gathered. The police had in fact separated the groups. And they had in fact gone to different places. The driver came back to attack the group of protesters long after the altercations had stopped. See the Washington Post timeline here [
www.washingtonpost.com].
WaPo also notes that the police had instructed the alt right demonstrators to use only one entrance to the park where they were gathering, in order to avoid direct confrontation with the protesters. The Nazi group decided to ignore the police and when they met up with a line of demonstrators blocking the entrance to the park, they charged at the line of demonstrators. So the alt-right instigated the fighting.
About the statues: Look at the posters from the Unite the Right rally here [
www.google.com] and here [
www.google.com]. Where is there any mention of statues? On the Friday night march through the University of Virginia when did any of the marchers even once mention statues? They chanted “Blood and Soil†and “Jews will not replace us.†The rally was billed as “Unite the Right.†Not “Save Confederate Markers.†So the entire conversation about statues is a convenient subterfuge to evade the real purpose of the weekend-long rally: to terrorize Jews and people of color.
So much for setting the factual record straight.
Rabbi Smilowitz further contends that there might have In fact been some nice people mixed among the Nazis. To bolster his point, he suggests comparing the group in Charlottesville to the Million Man March which was organized by Louis Farrakhan, a rather vile person in his own right. Certainly we would not say that everyone who attended that march was a member of the Nation of Islam.
No we wouldn’t. Because the purpose of the march was not to support the Nation of Islam. I looked at hundreds of images of the gathering. There were no visible Nation of Islam posters or other markings. Nor were there people in full military gear sporting all sorts of weapons. It was a gathering to promote responsibility in the Black community. The organizer was not a nice person. But the event was not about him or his beliefs.
The same holds for the women’s protest march. Are the organizers people I’d invite to speak in shul? No. But the march was not about them. It was not about their personal beliefs. It was about women protesting the vulgar man who was sworn into office. So there can be no assumption of acceptance of belief simply for attending.
The Unite the Right rally was a gathering in support of Nazis and white supremacists. That was its stated purpose. So if someone was there, there is every right to assume that the attendee bought into the philosophy being rallied.
Or as my wife put it, “If you go to a picnic and they are burning crosses, and you do not leave, then you are now part of the KKK.â€
So there were no “nice people†on both sides as the president put it. (I am not discussing whether everyone demonstrating was nice because that is not the point. That is evading the point.)
To Rabbi Smilowitz’s assumption that isn’t it obvious the president was not defending Nazis: the simple answer is no. Not only is it not obvious that he wasn’t defending them, it was blatantly obvious that he was defending them. That’s how the Nazis and white supremacists saw it. They cheered the president for his words. Because he not only defended them, he legitimized them to the public. And that’s how the alt right sees it!
The president's peers in industry all abandoned him, to the point that he had to hurriedly disband two advisory boards before they could all resign on him. Here [
www.nationalreview.com] is what the National Review said about the president’s comments. This is the headline: Donald Trump Just Gave the Press Conference of the Alt-Right’s Dreams. Commentary magazine blasted the president even before his infamous Tuesday news conference. This [
www.commentarymagazine.com] was their reaction to his comments on Saturday and Monday.
Does anyone still think it was not obvious that the president was defending the alt-right?
So the media was not blowing this out of proportion. It was merely showing how grossly unfit the president is for office. And Republicans in Congress are starting to say as much too. Noticeably absent is the religious right. The evangelical council set up by the president only had one person resign (A.R. Bernard).
Is it wrong to call the president a Nazi? Absolutely. Is it wrong to call him a sympathizer? That is no longer clear.
As an aside, but to the point, the president had a rally in Arizona last night. He read the statement he made on Saturday, August 12, to show how the media has maligned him. Except he did not read the entire statement. He omitted the key words where he said there were bad actors “on many sides, on many sides.†He intentionally left off the inflammatory words. So that he could charge up his base to agree with him that he is being unfairly treated. Yet again, lying to the American people.
Is there room to discuss the horrors of the left? Certainly. And it is an important discussion. Intersectionality has come to many to mean anti-Semitism. They call it anti-Zionism. But it is really anti-Semitism.
But that might be changing. The uproar that surrounded the March for Racial Justice being scheduled on Yom Kippur and the organizers response [
www.m4rj.com] is hopefully a start to addressing the issue.
But these are separate discussions. Juxtaposing them against the president’s supportive comments of the Nazis and white supremacists is wrong. There is no comparison. However evil one sees BDS and the more radical elements of BLM, their stated belief is not the total annihilation of every man, woman and child of Jewish extraction or person of color. That is the white supremacist and Nazi belief. That stands alone.
My father told me a story about a rebbe in his school many years ago who, in his pre summer exhortation to his class, railed against mixed swimming, equating it to chillul Shabbos. The rebbe came to my father with pride to tell his boss how he had charged his students. My father replied, “You think you assered mixed swimming? You were just mattir chillul Shabbos.â€
Comparing anything to Nazism only makes Nazism more acceptable.
The Nazis in America understood this. And they celebrated the president for doing just that.
We should be horrified.
Eliyahu Teitz
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/25/2017 05:05AM by mlb.
