MYTHICAL MONSTERS, REAL DEMONS — THE TRUMP REICH BEGINS #NoBanNoWall
As I listen to Pamela Geller waxing lyrical on international news tonight, it’s clear she’s in utter denial over the fact her movement, her allies and supporters across the world, are fuelling and driving a return to a new fascism.
Geller needs to feign ignorance over definitions of fascism to create an ideological landscape where her 'far right' ‘alt-right’ ‘populist’ contingent don’t qualify as fascists. Geller does this as many of my far right TV debate opponents have done; by claiming Nazism was a facet of the political Left. She defends Trump and his hardening policies of division. Geller predicts Geert Wilders will soon be leader of the Netherlands. She makes sure she we hear her emphasise “Kheert”. On that matter however, only, we might agree. Wilders is a real risk to European stability and in the proportionately representative system in the Netherlands, he and Le Pen may trigger a return to fascism in Europe that may also see the end of Merkel in Germany. However, on Nazism and fascism, Geller is friend and ally to the EDL, Pegida, UKIP, FN, Freedom Party and as inspiration to Anders Breivik, she reminds us why she’s banned from entering the UK.
Fascism is based - whether on the extreme Left or Right - on the idea of an existence of an Untermensch, a less than, sub-human category of people. People to whom human rights and civil liberties don’t apply. People who are dehumanised. Kettled. Assumed evil. Detained. Disproportionately harshly treated. This is migrants. This is Muslims. This is Mexicans. This is refugees. This is the poor. This is women. This is people of different sexual identities. This is disabled people. This is the new fascism. And this has to change.
Last week, Trump’s inauguration saw press freedoms in the US under attack as journalists reporting on the anti-Trump protests were detained, imprisoned and charged. Even when they had produced press credentials and their organisations had tried to intervene. You might be mistaken for thinking we were talking about the tyrant dictator al Sisi in Egypt, who took power through a US sponsored coup d’etat and immediately arrested and condemned to death thousands en masse when he took power. We have nothing less than a Middle Eastern mafia family now installed as the first family and at the helm of the USS-FUCKYOU.
Trump has ushered in, with no greater effort than a flick of his Presidential pen and a guffaw into the White House camera, a new era of American promise to the world. It is no longer a place for the poor and hungry, for the needy yearning to be free. It is the promise of jobs and economic recovery. It is stump speech promises made real. It is the promise of fascism.
Trump has placed a temporary ban on refugees and a ban on visas for citizens from Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Sudan. These are all Muslim majority nations and it is a de facto profiling on race and religion. Refugees aren’t the terror threat. In particular, refugees fleeing countries which the US have bombed, are currently bombing, or otherwise involved in or sponsoring to bomb, aren’t the threat to life and liberty being used to justify the increasing mass surveillance and securitisation of the state. Each of these countries has been ravaged and decimated by Western and US policy. Yemen which is currently undergoing wide scale UK backed Saudi bombing operations, massacres and war crimes; Wikileaks revelations showed that the US had been disarming the natives of their surface to air missiles (SAMs) before waging their air campaign. These things are not by chance. Not one.
Lest we forget 85% of North Korea was destroyed by the US two generations ago. Buildings. Infrastructure. Everything. And we wonder with curiosity why North Korea is a little odd today. Who are the mythical monsters, who are real demons? The US lead invasion of Iraq cost $40bn, 2 million lives, and upto 1 million may have died as a result of a decade of sanctions - disproportionately children. Only after the country was in total ruin, did the US invade. Illegally. The US-backed Ba’athist Saddam was removed and instead the Iraqis were given US lead Abu Ghraib torture camp, war crimes of Fallujah, a city razed to the ground, the inhumanity of ISIS, constant war and more or less hell on earth including the destruction of one of the oldest civilisations on earth. The US have invaded more than 90 nations since WW2. They don’t get to wash their hands of the horrors in the world which they have created.
Trump is hell bent on building the Mexican Wall. To keep out native Americans. From North America. So decided the white son of European immigrant (probably Nazi). It’s almost as bizarre as WASPs kicking up a fuss over immigration in Australia, a nation where 90% of the indigenous inhabitants were all but wiped out. It’s white privilege. Exceptionalism.
Had The Donald really cared, he should be more concerned about the 400,000+ US domestic gun violence deaths that have taken place since 9/11. Americans are literally blowing themselves away in the street. School children being massacred. No amount of terrorism can hold a candle to that horrific body count. Unless perhaps we are counting state-sponsored terror. This is now the nation whose Executive branch denies climate change, is considering bringing back waterboarding and torture, denies women's reproductive rights, gender identity equality and is targeting Muslims to be put on lists and banned from entry.
There is one certainly: Trump's chickens will come home to roost. The war and division isn't overseas. It is at home. He better get used to dealing with it.
#NoBanNoWall
First published 26 January 2017: Medium