Algemeiner’s Dovid Efune Slams Trump’s ‘Equivalency’

When it comes to condemning neo-Nazis, the KKK and other far-right groups, there is “no room for equivalency,” the editor-in-chief of The Algemeiner, Dovid Efune, said during an i24 News interview on Wednesday amid the ongoing controversy surrounding President Donald Trump’s response to last weekend’s violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.

“These people have to be hammered down to the margins of society,” Dovid Efune told “Clearcut” host Michelle Makori.

However, Efune pointed out, some of the criticism Trump has been on the receiving end of this week has been politically motivated.

Efune also called for greater scrutiny of the far-left, particularly “those that would like to deny the Jewish right to self-determination.”

“Having said that, I would not say that our goal here should be to diminish criticism of the far-right, but to raise our criticism of the far-left at the same time as criticism of neo-Nazi groups is…being escalated,” Efune concluded.

Watch the interview below:

32 Comments

  • The real nazis

    Antifa and the left are the REAL NAZIS! They want to (and have much power) to bring down the usa to naziGermany and/or Stalin type state.
    THEY provoked the reshoim on the right, who are not as dangerous these days as Antifa.
    Antifa, a socialist Nazi type organization ALREADY control universities and free speech on 90% of campuses in the usa. (Much worse than Germany 1933).
    Our president sees that, as he said, “who’s next? George Washington?”
    Do some research, google “Dinesh D’Souza”

  • Moishe

    Dovid Efune, by denying “‘Equivalency’ between violent communists thugs and Nazis you prove that you are a fool. From now on i will be very skeptical what i read in Algemeiner until you are gone from there.

  • Milhouse

    Trump (for a wonder) got it 100% right, and Efune should be ashamed of himself for joining the leftist bandwagon. Charlottesville was two bands of vicious thugs beating each other up, and there is no moral difference between them — except that one band showed up to peaceably assemble and express their opinion, while the other showed up for the express purpose of forcibly preventing the first from exercising their fundamental right to do so. So in this instance, if there’s a moral distinction to be drawn between the two sides, the nazis come out better than the black bloc. But ultimately they’re just as bad as each other, and Trump was right to say so.

    There were also good and decent people on both sides, and Trump was right to say that too. There were good and decent people who came to peacefully protest the statue’s removal, and there were good and decent people who came to peacefully express their disapproval of the nazis. Trump did not say there were good and decent people among the nazis, and it’s a damned lie to claim he did.

    • busy bubby

      It was a problem not to specifically call out the Nazis until he was forced to do so from a teleprompter and came off sounding a phony as he felt. He could have also mentioned the Antifa group by name, although part of the blame goes to the town’s law enforcement who didn’t want this Nazi march to begin with so they stayed on the sidelines. It is necessary to counter-protest Nazis but shouting out something is different than getting violent. If someone was invited by Unite the Right because they wanted to protest the removal of the statue, and they marched along with them, then they were, in essence, no different than the Nazis, KKK, etc. and therefore, lose their status as “good” people. Those who wanted to keep the statue but avoid marching with white supremacists could have called a town hall meeting to discuss the options for the statue. The counter protesters did have a permit, from what I read, but the police didn’t try that hard to prevent the two groups from getting violent.
      I would certainly hope that any city faced with a Nazi rally would do what they did in Boston; show up and counter protest.

    • Milhouse

      The rally was not just nazis and white nationalists; there were many others there, including good and decent people. The armed people were the Oath Keepers, who are not racist or antisemitic. If the violent people had been armed, then they would have to be admired for not firing a single shot, despite being viciously attacked!

    • busy bubby

      Look up what the Southern Poverty Law center says about the Oath Keepers. I realize that news, facts, history, etc today is either Liberal or Conservative and it is hard to find anything (other than maybe recipes) that is neither, but read what they say an try to keep an open mind.
      And regarding statues, I can understand the desire to connect to the history behind these monuments but sometimes the meaning behind those monuments needs to take into consideration the impact that it has today. There are a group of black women who are understandably demonstrating to have a monument of J Marion Sims, who did numerous surgical procedures on slaves who were given no ether, in order to develop the profession of gynecology. Other physicians of his time were critical of his methods of research because they were unspeakably cruel. So what should become of this horrid statue?

    • Milhouse

      Oy vey. If you’re consulting the Southern Poverty Law Council it’s no wonder you’re so deluded. SPLC is not a respectable organization at all. It is nothing but a fund-raising scam by which Mo Dees has made himself and a few of his cronies incredibly rich. Its business is inventing so-called “hate groups” that don’t even exist, and labelling perfectly respectable organizations as “hate groups”, in order to create the impression among its gullible donors that America is about to descend into the Third Reich unless they send money. That is all.

      What’s more, SPLC itself spreads more hatred than any group it targets. It has directly inspired at least one terrorist attack, and refused to apologize or remove the victims from its list.

      Also, for your information, in the 1840s when he discovered how to repair fistulas, ether was newly discovered and was not the standard of care. Sims did not use it at the time for any patients, black or white. Even as late as 1857 Sims was still not using it for fistula operations, considering the risk greater than the benefit. If you are really a bubby then you owe Sims a great debt of gratitude for pioneering the science that has preserved your life and health, and those of your daughters and/or daughters-in-law.

  • The kangeroo

    The far left is more dangerous to Israel vis a vis to the Jews than the idiotic people that claim to be nazis .The far left not only wants to destroy Israel but claims a moral duty to do so.It took great political courage from President Trump to draw attention to far left.You are doing a great disservice to klal Israel by you comments.

  • Enemy of our enemy

    The enemy of our enemy is not always our friend. At least the far right is openly cloaked in hate, whereas the far left is cloaked in peace. Which enemy is more dangerous?

    • Mendy

      Are you misinformed? Or just making up stories just like the mainstream media??
      Open up your eyes before daring to say such a stupid untrue comment that “the far left is cloaked in peace”!!!!

  • Left/Right hate

    At the end of the day, the far left and far right all meet up at the same cesspit!!

  • i actually dont agree

    the issue is that there is blame on both sides
    some of the most anti Semitic comments I have received in the US are from individuals that are part of the Afican-American community, and it has happened several times not just once
    I do realize that this does not reflect the whole community
    but these are people who believe in killing cops, hating whites and whomever they deem are bourgeois, and when a “black” person kills another “black” person then they are nowhere to be found in terms of shouting how wrong that is
    make no mistake there is major blame on BOTH sides and people lusting for murder and discrimination on BOTH “sides”

  • Moishe

    Question to Dovid Efune: Whose side should we support AlQeida or ISIS? Or does he prefer Hamas to Hezbollah?

  • It's astounding

    that on this site there are actually comments that allow for the equality of Nazis marching – while Jews were cowering in their synagogue, escaping through the back door! – Nazis armed to the teeth with arms raised in the Nazi salute, shouting :Jews will not replace us…that these are actually said in the same breath of ANY OTHER group on earth! There is something especially unique about NAZIS – and to equate them with anyone else at all is to give them legitimacy. Gevaldt, Yidden, please don’t go to these lengths just to defend your choice of president – what’s abhorrent to everyone is abhorrent. Period.

    • Milhouse

      No, there is nothing unique about nazis. There is no moral difference whatsoever between communists and nazis, and if you claim there is then you are probably a communist sympathizer.

    • Chaim

      Try going to an Antifa rally wearing a IDF or I love Israel T-shirt, stand in the middle of the march….now tell me the difference between Antifa and the Nazis?

    • busy bubby

      Milhouse, I was listening to Dennis Prager today and he does say that there is a moral difference between those who commit genocide and those who enslave. In other words, Nazis are morally more evil.

    • Milhouse

      Communists killed more people than Nazis did. “Genocide” is a made-up crime; mass-murder is mass-murder. It makes no difference at all whether it’s predicated on race, wealth, education, religion, or sheer bloody-mindedness; the victims are just as dead. If Prager thinks otherwise then he’s wrong.

  • Chaim

    Remember when Obama made a deal with Iran and gave them millions upon millions of dollars.
    Iran and Antifa are a REAL threat, Nazis only got attention because of the media, they have no real power.

  • Chaim

    The liberal left is much more dangerous to our Yiddishkit than Neo-Nazis (who count 6,000 in America, which is nothing).
    Whose behind all the laws that try to band Bris?
    Whose always attempting to infiltrate and destroy the frum (religious) communities?

  • jdf007

    I don’t understand.
    One side are a bunch of creeps playing dress up, posting online about white nationalism.

    The other side is a bunch of creeps screaming about how they want to kill all white people (to them this includes Jews fyi), beating people up, rioting, and killing cops.

    And the former is worse than the latter?

    The quicker people realize that dangerous people are more dangerous than just the outrage of the day, and maybe even listening to the President instead of reading opinion pages for facts, the better off we’ll all be.

  • busy bubby

    Part of the problem is that everyone is so entrenched in their various ideologies, that they can’t come together on anything. There are solutions to the issue of Confederate statues but the very left wants to vandalize them and the very right considers them to be sacred and will allow no changes whatsoever to be made. In between, with some amount of compromise, is that new statues could be put beside the old, or plaques with apps explaining the meaning of the statues could be placed, or the statue could be moved to a museum or historic spot. In one case in Ky, this actually increased tourism because the new spot was a place where some civil war action had taken place and the old spot was near U of L. But if we are all so deeply entrenched in our ideologies as is the angry left or the alt-right, we can’t come together with solutions and then chaos and anarchy takes over.