Trumpmustturnhisire on far right: Dershowitz

DONALD TRUMP has not done enough to distance himself from the ‘alt-right’ and neo-Nazis who voted for him, according author and academic Alan Dershowitz.

“He says he disavows them, but we know how angry he can get when he really disagrees. He has not shown the kind of courage needed,” he told the this week. While he believed Mr Trump waspersonallyopposedtothesegroups with the same degree of anger that he has shown his own enemies, said he had failed to make his position clear in public.

Mr Dershowitz has previously called on Mr Trump to reject these groups, telling the Jewish Broadcasting Service: “I want him to say as president, ‘I want no part of you. You are not part of ‘real America’. I want to disassociate myself from you completely and totally. And if I run for re-election I hope you won’t vote for me.’ I believe he owes an obligation to the American centre to be as strongly opposed to the hard right as he is to the hard left.”

He also had strong views on Steve Bannon, Mr Trump’s chief strategist whose positions on a variety of issues are a cause of concern for many liberal American Jews. “He is anti-Muslim and anti-woman, and he shouldn’t be in the White House,” said Mr Dershowitz. “But just because he is bad on those issuesdoesn’tmeanhehatesJews.From everything I’ve seen, Bannon is not an antisemite.”

In any case, the issue is much wider than any one individual, said Mr Dershowitz. There is dangerous phenomenon whereby fringe political views that include hatred of Israel and disdain for Judaism and Jewish culture are becoming increasingly acceptable to the mainstream. The danger came as much from the left as the right, he warned. Appointing Keith Ellison to head the DNC would be “just stupidity”, he said, dismissing Mr Ellison’s disavowal of Louis Farrakhan — “an antisemite and anti-Israel, he was also ve h e ment l y anti-American” — as too little, too late and too conveniently timed to be taken seriously.

Mr Dershowitz’s criticism of left and right means that he himself is attacked by both. He is not deterred. “I think all of my criticism of Trump has been even more validated since the election — the things he has said and the appointments he has made. But America is resilient, and we can fight back.” When he spoke at the Oxford Union last year, making a liberal case against BDS, he won the debate. “There is still,” he said, “an audience for nuance, and I will continuetobehonestandexpressmyviews in a nuanced way.”

Fringe political views that include disdain for Judaism are becoming acceptable to the mainstream