What a strange world we live in.
In private, amongst our own kind (or in the privacy of our never mouthed thoughts) we find it all too easy to describe peoples of other nations and races, strangers – and especially those we believe threaten us in some way – with dismissive and denigrating mixtures of words. Words such as barbaric, racist, bigoted, inhuman, prejudiced, uneducated, unreasonable, irrational, cruel, uncivilised, plain wrong, primitive, deplorable, stupid, lying, selfish, greedy and unfair are from the ‘milder’ end of the extensive lexicon at our disposal.
Words that once lived at the taboo end of the animosity scale hardly shock anymore. Their increasing use in social media and by ‘influencers’ of all kinds has legitimised their spread from the ‘under-classes’ into mainstream everyday exchanges. And spread they have.
Scum, retard, bullies, animal, subhuman, a variety of ‘skin colour’ words- and even fuck (once one of the two big ‘shock’ words in English) now regularly feature in the patios of comedy shows through to dialogue in dramas on TV.
‘Fuck You’! ‘Get Fucked’! ‘Fuck me’ (used to express shock or surprise) or ‘Fucked’meaning wrecked. The meaning varies depending on the context in which it’s used. When sprayed on the walls of a synagogue its meaning is unambiguous. So too are the words ‘sub-human’ when used to describe an armed Palestinian.
Words help us articulate our prejudices towards, and stereotypes of others; those tropes we mostly unconsciously absorb from the time, place and circumstances in which we grew up.
As a society. we’re becoming more relaxed about letting such stereotypes surface as tensions between ethnic groups increase, partly because overdone wokeism is triggering a backlash against itself, partly as the habit of resorting to quickly and poorly informed opinions has supplanted rational and informed debate……….,but most of all because the media and politics has become ever more responsive to mass/mob populism.
We’re living in an age of growing political populism right now. In fact we’ve reached the point where liberal democracies are under threat, not only from the outside but also, and more worryingly, from within.
America (that self-proclaimed shining light of democracy) is at a tipping point. If Trump has his way bye bye American pie – hello crony authoritarianism. Government for the people by the people looks at risk of becoming government for the few by the few .
For twelve years now fair-minded people have tried to underplay, or explain, why Trumpism is but a temporary phenomenon – an aberrant blip in the history of the Nation, a cancer that will soon disappear back into the primeval bog from which it came – and so enable America to reassert itself as the true standard bearer of democracy.
It might have been OK to believe that in 2016, but not now.
Time to stop pussy footing around and call a spade a spade.
The rise and rise of Trump in America parallels the rise and rise of Hitler in Germany, to a surprising degree.
USING DISCONTENT TO WIN POWER
After WW1 Germany was on its knees. Morale was low, unemployment high, ordinary Germans felt betrayed by its leaders, undermined by Jewry and humiliated by the Treaty of Versailles. Then the Great Depression hit. Everything got worse, much worse. Parliamentary democracy proved impotent. Discontent soared. Already poor living standards collapsed. It looked like there was no future for most Germans. Things had to change. The nation was open to any hero who could lead them into a world of milk and honey – and restore pride.
The rise of Hitler had begun.
After the disappointment of the Obama years (where the inspiring ‘Yes We Can’ catchcry turned into a depressing ‘Sorry, No We Can’t ‘reality), enough American workers found economic globalism had worked to boost the profitability of major corporates by moving their jobs overseas, to countries with far lower labour costs. As a consequence the factories they’d worked in closed down, wages dropped and communities started dying….the rust belts of America grew.
To add insult to injury, millions of ordinary Americans saw their chances of realising the American Dream rapidly receding while the wealth of the billionaire class grew to obscene levels that even eclipsed the days of the Rockefellers, Carnegies, Vanderbilts, Fords et al.
Working Americans – the forgotten people – needed a hero to save them. Hillary Clinton ( who, in a weak moment, referred to intending Trump voters as the ‘deplorables’) could never become heir champion.
The rise of Trump had begun.
SURVIVING THE WILDERNESS YEARS
It took Hitler many years to position himself as De Fuhrer, the leader, the saviour of a great nation – the man who would make Germany great again. His wasn’t an effortless, upwards ride. He spent time in prison (where he wrote Mein Kampf), was played with and sometimes outfoxed by the establishment, lost elections, survived assassination attempts and internal factional fights within his Party. He used this time to hone his message as to how he would restore Germany to its proper position in the sun – and exact revenge on those who had treated Germans (and him ) so badly.
In the beginning his message was simple, emotionally delivered and focused on blaming others for trying to subjugate the volk. He, the big, theatrical rally man, made the underdog ‘feel’ good again, empowered. Goebbels’ propaganda machine spread that feeling throughout the country.
Trump’s path to populism differed from Hitler’s in detail, but not so much in form.
At home Trump promised to make America great again by clearing the swamp of its political and bureaucratic elite; his foreign policy was/is to stop other countries – friend and foe alike – from lazily and unfairly living off America’s teats .
He blamed others for all America’s ills .
In the beginning he too offered a simple nostrum – remove the malignants and all would be good again. He was light on policy and avoided discussion of what he would do in power beyond inciting his ‘base’ to get rid of the ‘bad guys’ who rigged the 2016 election to keep him, the people’s choice, out of office.
Trump was successful in convincing ‘the ignored’ that he was their champion, the Big Man who’d tear down the system to ensure they got their just entitlements. Trump is another big rally man. His Goebbels is social media. His messages are simplistic (toward incoherent) but always vigorous and rousing in a kind of folksy way. YMCA, YMCA yea!
Both leaders would, and did, play the Pied Piper to win enough popular support to dethrone, and then silence, their opponents.
ONCE IN OFFICE
Once in office Hitler quickly undermined the democratic system that made him Chancellor. He systematically cut mooring lines to the legislature, judiciary, law enforcement and police.
He empowered his unelected henchmen to carry out his biddings. He ruled with an iron fist at home with his Brown Shirts, Gestapo and SS. Those few who stood in his way were quickly eliminated. His ‘clear Germany of Jews’ mantra swiftly moved from words to action. He alone stood on the bridge directing his fiercely competitive minions to get Jews and Bolsheviks out of positions of power, out of universities, out of the professions, out of business …..and finally, out of existence.
He became a Wagnerian like Wotan as he won easy success after easy success on the international front. Austrians cheered their reunification with the new Germany, Rhineland Germans likewise. He pulled off diplomatic masterstroke after masterstroke. The Non-Aggression Pact with Stalin, Peace In Our Time’ with Britain’s Chamberlain . He paralysed the Allies with his Blitzkrieg tactics of warfare. It wasn’t until 1943 that the tide turned. For a long time it looked he was going to pull it off.
It’s a very, very short time since Trump (in his eyes) became the anointed king of America – less than a month .
In that brief time he’s moved quicker than Hitler did.
Musk, his key domestic henchman (a non-elected civilian with but the vaguest and most secretive of missions and the most tenuous of ‘authorisations’ from Trump) has run amok. He and his people (rumoured to be mostly young tech-types with little or no experience of the highly complex areas they’ve been injected into) are making near instant and subjective decisions as to what programmes are and aren’t worthwhile, what staff numbers should be and who is fit to occupy those positions. In less than three weeks they have killed off USAID, conducted some sort of witch-hunt in the FBI, intruded into Treasury, OPM (Office of Personnel Management )and General Services Administration (a department which, amongst other things, handles Federal property leases). The speed of these ‘investigations’ smacks of crude attempts to both control everything – and seek revenge. Trump’s firing of Federal Inspector Generals, his cancelling of July 6 convictions for attacks on The Capitol, withdrawal from the Paris Accord on Climate Change, and WHO suggests this President believes his authority is absolute.
Within three weeks Trump has insulted and alienated Greenland, Denmark, Canada, Mexico, Colombia and Panama.
He has put forward a ‘brilliant’ solution to the Israel-Palestine war: (1) get rid of 2 million Gazans by having (ie forcing) them to resettle in ‘beautiful’ countries like Egypt and Jordan. (2) leave it to the IDF to clear the site of its inhabitants after which developers will move into the area to build a new Riviera which (3) will (somehow) be ‘owned’ by Uncle Sam at the end of the renovations.
Israel loves the proposal, American developers likewise (providing there’s no risk of a reinvasion by Gaza’s previous owners). Win -win for all but the people of Palestine. QED.
Next he’ll move on to proposing a solution to stop the Ukraine-Russian war. You can only be sure of one thing. Trump will bend his knee in favour of the biggest, strongest player – Russia. He’ll expect Ukraine to make the concessions by way of the loss of territory and commitments not to join NATO and/or the EU. Trump will expect the weaker side to pay the higher price. Ukraine will soon get use to its ‘buffer-zone’ status. Another win-win for Trump bought at the expense of the inconsequential.
These cases example American democracy working at its best (opines Trump with a confirming nod of the head from Netanyahu – and a wink from Putin). Crass, brutal ethnic cleansing says the rest of world re Trump’s Gaza Solution; a sell-out says the rest of the world if Trump pursues the path outlined for Ukraine.
Like Hitler, Trump doesn’t really see that other people have the same rights as people like him or those that show fealty to him. Morality and equality aren’t his goals, winning is. If you don’t win, if you don’t beat the competition, you’ve failed. Winning trumps everything else. There’s no point in boxing if you don’t win. You’re either The Greatest (a Muhammad Ali) ‘or nobody’
When autocrats like Trump and Hitler start losing ground they don’t recalibrate or seek compromise. They knuckle down and risk everything to win. They’d rather see their nation in ashes than suffer the personal humiliation of having to admit they were wrong, lose face or (worst of all) not be listened to. To be ignored is, for them, the worst fate possible.
We have to tell our American friends to wake up, that it’s already five minutes to midnight. Only the peoples of the world can stop this madman before he gains even greater momentum. The longer we leave it the harder it will be to stem the damage. Tempus fugit.
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