Koup Klutz Klan

 Koup Klutz Klan

By Ranting Panda, 13 June 2021

6 January 2021. The date that traitors stormed the US Capitol in an effort to usurp democracy and keep Donald Trump as President. Trump was resoundingly defeated in a valid election, but neither he nor his supporters could accept the truth. Even today, Trump still believes that he won the election. 

Trump's followers, gullible and gutless, refused to take responsibility for the insurrection, and instead blamed Antifa for it. The FBI, however, confirmed that it was Trump loyalists who staged this coup attempt (Anderson 2021, Sadeghi, 2021). Antifa isn't a threat to democracy. The real threat is the MAGA cult, with its inability to grasp truth, its willingness to rewrite 'facts' to suit its ignorance, its hatred of anyone who is different, its twisted religious fervour, and violent nationalism. They wanted to kill the Vice President during the coup attempt. They'd bought wrist ties & built a noose. These people are not right in the head.

There's no point arguing with MAGA cultists. It doesn't matter what facts are presented, they are so brainwashed that they can't accept truth, fact or reality. Just like cult-members, the MAGAs need de-programming, otherwise they stick with their self-pitying, paranoid, victimhood talking points that Trump cultivated and nourished. 

Trump deliberately attacks truth in order to create doubt about facts. He once admitted to a journalist that he attacks the media to, 'discredit you all and demean you all so that when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you' (Applebaum, 2020). This is one thing that Trump has been very successful at. His supporters lack the critical thinking skills to challenge Trump's blatant lies; they believe everything he says. The real danger of this is that despots are renowned for their propaganda, manipulation of media and use of falsehoods and fear to manipulate the populace. 

When Twitter purged its platform of Trump and many of his adherents because of their flagrant lies, conspiracy theories and hate speech, the MAGAs claimed it was an attack on their freedom of speech. However, freedom of speech doesn't mean that others have to listen to it. Twitter was cleaning house ... as anyone can if some racist fool comes into their house and starts spewing vitriol. MAGAs can get their own soapbox and head down to the local corner to spew their vile hate-speech, ridiculous conspiracy theories, and victim-mentality rubbish.  

Freedom of speech only goes one way for the MAGAs; the moment anyone has a contrary viewpoint, the MAGAs screech socialism and 'Reds under the bed' conspiracy theories. They believe that if someone challenges them, they are victims of 'cancel culture' ... yet, the MAGAS tried to cancel an election because they didn't get their own way. They only believe in freedom of speech for themselves, not for anyone else.

Stripe Inc ceased processing payments for the Trump election campaign because of the 6 January insurrection (Andriotis, Rudegeair, & Glazer, 2021). Ever portraying themselves as victims, the Pity Party MAGAs claimed it was yet another attack on their freedoms. However, the action by Stripe was similar to the action that financial institutions took in dealing with terrorism. And the Trump cult is a terrorist organisation, evidenced by their violent attack on the very heart of US government.

Trump was impeached for inciting the insurrection. It needs to be kept in mind, that he did nothing during this riot to quell it. He was hoping that the coup would succeed and install him for another term ... perhaps a perpetual term in which he never loses (Applebaum, 2020). Trump is anti-democratic and only interested in his own power. Despite significant evidence of Trump directly inciting the coup attempt, the Republican Party voted against convicting him at his second impeachment trial (Holpuch, 2021). This says a lot about how anti-democratic the Republican party is. They try to claim they are patriotic defenders of democracy, but they value power over free and fair elections. Republicans value authoritarianism over liberty.

During riots following Black Lives Matter protests, Trump big-noted himself by dog-whistling to his racist followers that 'when the looting starts, the shooting starts' (Burns, 2020). Trump incited violence with this tweet. A couple of months later, a gutless piece of shit named Kyle Rittenhouse, shot dead BLM protesters. Trump and his followers supported these killings (Wilson, 2021). Yet, when it came to the Capitol riots, Trump didn't threaten to shoot the protesters, instead, he supported them and even told them how much he loved them (Caldwell, 2021). Although he eventually told the rioters to go home, he did it under duress. Trump had an expletive-laced argument with House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, after McCarthy told Trump to call the rioters off because they were Trump supporters. Trump abused McCarthy, telling him that the rioters cared more about the election than McCarthy did (Gangel et al, 2021). Republican senator, Ben Passe, claimed that Trump was delighted that the Capitol was being stormed (Papenfuss, 2021). 

Prior to the riot, Trump gave a speech in which he told his supporters to 'fight like hell' or they would lose their country because, according to him (and in keeping with his admitted attacks on truth mentioned earlier), the election was corrupt. He then told his supporters to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol to 'try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country' (Blake, 2021). Trump directed conspiracy-theorist, Alex Jones, to lead the march that stormed the White House (Linge, 2021). It took six hours for the situation to be brought under control. This period revealed Trump's leadership to be paralysed, to be no more than a passive viewer who stood back as five people, including a police officer, were killed by his supporters (Parker, Dawsey & Rucker, 2021). 

Only weeks before the riot, Trump the Grand Traitor, directed the neo-Nazi Proud Boys to 'stand back and stand by' (Pilkington, 2021). Now we know what he was asking them to stand by for. 

This isn't the first time he has supported violence. In 2017, he condoned white supremacist violence that culminated in the killing of an innocent woman. He even went so far as to describe the white supremacists as 'very fine people' (Coaston, 2019). Throughout his presidency, he directly incited violence by white supremacist groups (Pilkington 2021). 

The traitors who stormed the Capitol included Nazis wearing shirts such as 'Camp Aushwitz - Work brings freedom' and '6MWE', which stands for Six Million Were Not Enough ... in reference to the number of Jews killed during the Holocaust. These are the extremist groups that Trump claims are 'very fine people' (Kessler, 2020).

Trump and his followers are white supremacists. They believe in fascism, not democracy. 

During the Covid-19 pandemic, there was a mass casualty event every single day of the final year of Trump's presidency, culminating in more than 420,000 deaths by the time he was finally removed from the White House. The deaths were directly caused by Trump's lies, inaction and incompetence. This puerile moron was more interested in shoring up his own power, while spreading lies, hatred and division, than in saving his fellow Americans. His incompetence was on a genocidal scale.

Republicans claim they are the 'law and order' party, yet they've let Trump get away with murder ... literally: around 420,000 deaths from his ineptitude in addressing Covid-19, five deaths during the insurrection he orchestrated, and several executions that he directed in the final days of his presidency (Honderich, 2021). They have let him get away with his threats and cheating over the election, such as when he rang the Secretary of State for Georgia and demanded more votes be found to overturn the election results (Morris, 2021). Does this seem like the leader of the free world, or the tyrannical dictatorship of a far-right murderous despot in a banana republic?

The Republican Party  condoned Trump's treason, by voting against holding an inquiry into the Capitol insurrection (Fandos, 2021). The Republicans are not defending democracy, they are defending the traitors within their own party. They are defending Nazism, white supremacy, and fascism. 

Nothing was done about the deadly 2017 white supremacist protests in Charlottesville ... and this culminated in the storming of the Capitol by Nazis. The Trump presidency wasn't the first time that white supremacists were incited to violence by a megalomaniac. Another leader also incited mobs to violence by using racist dog-whistling and bigoted fear-mongering ... and nothing was done to stop it! That leader was Hitler and we saw how that went. Many of the Capitol insurrectionists were Christians who believed they were doing God's will to keep Trump in power (Green, 2021). They claimed that God was telling them to 'let the church roar' (Posner, 2021). This has an eerie resemblance to Nazi Germany. Throughout his rambling manifesto, Mein Kampf, Hitler stated numerous times that he was doing the 'work of the Lord'. Not surprisingly, this galvanised Christians to support Hitler and incited them to violence and, ultimately, genocide. 

Today's United States faces the same threat of Nazism that Nazi Germany did (Brenner, 2021). The Republican Party has links to many far-right extremist groups, including the Oath Keepers, Three Percenters, Proud Boys, and QAnon (Broadwater & Rosenberg, 2021).

No leader has damaged the US as much as Trump has. All the efforts by the Soviet Union during the Cold War to bring down the US never undermined democracy as much as Trump. It's not surprising then, that Trump is alleged to have been cultivated by Russia to undermine US democracy. An ex-KGB spy claims that Trump was cultivated as a Russian asset for 40 years (Smith, 2021). A book by journalist, Craig Unger, entitled American Kompromat, states that the spy alleged there were celebrations in Moscow as Trump parroted anti-Western propaganda (Smith, 2021). 

Trump did significant damage to US democracy, however, what may have saved it was Trump's mental instability and his complete ineptitude as a leader. This ineptitude however, killed more Americans than World War 2. 

Meanwhile, Republicans continue supporting Trump. There's even talk that he will run for president in the 2024 elections. This is a clear indication of just how morally bankrupt the Republican Party is, and by extension, the Christians who continue supporting and defending Trump in the face of significant evidence of his genocide, treason and white supremacy. 

In 1993, musician Frank Zappa, made the prescient observation, 'There's been an incredible rise in racist and fascist attitude here, most of them being helped along by the Republican Party' (Ouellette, 1993). 

Nothing has yet been done to hold Trump to account for the Covid genocide in the US, that is directly attributable to him. Nothing has been done to stop Trump inciting Nazis and conservative Christians to violence, so we have not seen the end of extreme right-wing blood-shed, insurrection, and treason. Allowing Trump to continue empowering these extremists could signal the end of democracy and the rise of fascism in the United States. 

References

Anderson, M 2021, Antifa Didn't Storm The Capitol. Just Ask The Rioters, NPR, 2 March, viewed 6 June 2021, https://www.npr.org/2021/03/02/972564176/antifa-didnt-storm-the-capitol-just-ask-the-rioters.

Andriotis, A, Rudegeair, P, & Glazer, E, 2021, Stripe stops processing payments for Trump campaign website, The Wall Street Journal, 10 January, viewed 12 June 2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/stripe-stops-processing-payments-for-trump-campaign-website-11610319116. 

Applebaum, A, 2020, Trump won't accept defeat. Ever., The Atlantic, 7 November, viewed 13 June 2021, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/trumps-forever-campaign-is-just-getting-started/617021/.

Blake, A 2021, What Trump said before his supporters stormed the Capitol, annotated, The Washington Post, 11 January, viewed 6 June 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/interactive/2021/annotated-trump-speech-jan-6-capitol/.

Brenner, M 2021, Pre-Nazi Germany tells us the fight to save American democracy is just beginning, The Washington Post, 9 January, viewed 6 June 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/01/09/pre-nazi-germany-tells-us-fight-save-american-democracy-is-just-beginning/. 

Broadwater, L, & Rosenburg, M 2021, Republican ties to extremist groups under scrutiny, Hartford Courant, 29 January, viewed 6 June 2021, https://www.courant.com/nation-world/ct-nw-nyt-gop-extremist-groups-20210129-fstili3spvea7fss3mdsobu5eu-story.html.

Burns, K 2020, The racist history of Trump’s “When the looting starts, the shooting starts” tweet, Vox, 29 May, viewed 6 June 2021, https://www.vox.com/identities/2020/5/29/21274754/racist-history-trump-when-the-looting-starts-the-shooting-starts. 

Caldwell, T 2021, Trump's 'We love you' to Capitol rioters is more of the same, CNN, 7 January, viewed 6 June 2021, https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/07/politics/trump-history-comments-trnd/index.html.

Coaston, J 2019, Trump’s new defense of his Charlottesville comments is incredibly false, Vox, 26 April, viewed 6 June 2021, https://www.vox.com/2019/4/26/18517980/trump-unite-the-right-racism-defense-charlottesville.

Fandos, N 2021, Democrats failed to get enough votes for an independent inquiry into the Jan. 6 riot, The New York Times, 28 May, viewed 6 June 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/28/us/politics/capitol-riot-commission.html.

Gangel, J, Liptak, K, Warren, M, & Cohen, M 2021, New details about Trump-McCarthy shouting match show Trump refused to call off the rioters, CNN, 13 February, viewed 6 June 2021, https://edition.cnn.com/2021/02/12/politics/trump-mccarthy-shouting-match-details/index.html. 

Green, E 2021, A Christian Insurrection, The Atlantic, 8 January, viewed 7 June 2021, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/01/evangelicals-catholics-jericho-march-capitol/617591/. 

Holpuch, A 2021, 'White supremacy won today': critics condemn Trump acquittal as racist vote, The Guardian, 14 February, viewed 6 June 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/14/trump-acquittal-white-supremacy-racist-vote. 

Honderich, H 2021, In Trump’s final days, a rush of federal executions, BBC News, 16 January, viewed 6 June 2021, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55236260.

Kessler, G 2020, The ‘very fine people’ at Charlottesville: Who were they?, The Washington Post, 8 May, viewed 12 June 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/05/08/very-fine-people-charlottesville-who-were-they-2/.

Linge, M 2021, Alex Jones claims he funded rally that led to Capitol chaos, The New York Post, 9 January, viewed 12 June 2021, https://nypost.com/2021/01/09/alex-jones-claims-he-funded-rally-that-led-to-capitol-chaos/.

Morris, J 2021, Georgia secretary of state's office launches investigation into Trump's phone call, CNN, 16 March, viewed 6 June 2021, https://edition.cnn.com/2021/02/08/politics/georgia-secretary-of-state-trump-investigation/index.html.

Ouellette, D 1993, Frank Zappa, Pulse!, August 1993, sourced from https://www.afka.net/Articles/1993-08_Pulse.htm.

Papenfuss, M 2021, Trump Was 'Delighted' His Supporters Stormed The Capitol, Says GOP Sen. Ben Sasse, Huffington Post, 9 January, viewed 6 June 2021, https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/ben-sasse-delighted-trump-capitol-attack_n_5ff93b1bc5b6c77d85e6df60.

Parker, A, Dawsey, J, & Rucker, P 2021, Six hours of paralysis: Inside Trump’s failure to act after a mob stormed the Capitol, The Washington Post, 12 January, viewed 6 June 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-mob-failure/2021/01/11/36a46e2e-542e-11eb-a817-e5e7f8a406d6_story.html.

Pilkington, E 2021, 'Stand back and stand by': how Trumpism led to the Capitol siege, The Guardian, 7 January, viewed 6 June 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/06/donald-trump-armed-protest-capitol.

Posner, S 2021, How the Christian right helped foment insurrection, Reveal News, 30 January, viewed 12 June 2021, https://revealnews.org/article/how-the-christian-right-helped-foment-insurrection/.

Sadeghi, M 2021, Fact check: What's true about the Capitol riot, from antifa to BLM to Chuck Norris, USA Today, 14 January, viewed 6 June 2021, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/01/14/fact-check-truth-capitol-riot-antifa-chuck-norris/6653343002/.

Smith, D 2021, 'The perfect target': Russia cultivated Trump as asset for 40 years - ex-KGB spy, The Guardian, 29 January, viewed 12 June 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/29/trump-russia-asset-claims-former-kgb-spy-new-book.

Wilson, J 2021, US police and public officials donated to Kyle Rittenhouse, data breach reveals, The Guardian, 16 April, viewed 6 June 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/16/us-police-officers-public-officials-crowdfunding-website-data-breach.

Sympathy for the Donald in the age of Trumpery

Sympathy for the Donald in the age of Trumpery

by Ranting Panda, 10 October 2020

When Trump was diagnosed with COVID-19, his gullible and deluded supporters expected the world to have sympathy for him. They were surprised and upset that few people cared about the health of their feckless leader.

Perhaps there would have been more sympathy for Trump if he wasn't a fascist pig who corrupted American democracy, the rule of law and is directly responsible for the deaths of more than 210,000 Americans from COVID-19. The biggest damage of Trump's lack of leadership has been his failure to act on COVID-19, claiming it was a hoax, understating its severity, and promoting quack cures for it. A Cornell University study found Trump to be the single biggest driver of misinformation about the pandemic (Stolberg & Weiland 2020). More than 210,000 people are dead as a result. This pathetic excuse for a human, played partisan politics as people died by refusing to distribute personal protective equipment or increase testing in Democrat-led states, which enabled Trump to blame Democratic Governors for the virus (Sykes 2020). The Whitehouse blockaded PPE from states unless they swore allegiance to Trump. Trump even refused to increase testing for the virus because of his childish logic that 'When you do testing to that extent, you're going to find more people' (Sykes 2020).

He constantly calls Covid the 'China Virus', but for Americans, it is the Trump Virus'. 

Time Magazine cover - 19 October 2020 edition

The United States accounts for 4% of the world's population, but more than 20% of COVID-19 cases and 20% of deaths globally. 

In 2018 Trump scrapped the pandemic response team that Obama had established. Obama had previously stated that it was just a matter of time before America faced a pandemic, which would be its greatest threat. Trump, in his typical ignorant stupidity and hatred of Obama, axed the program. A program that could have greatly reduced the death toll from COVID-19. 210,000 people dead and we're supposed to feel sympathy because Trump has contracted the very virus that he claimed was a Democratic Party election hoax.

Trump ridiculed a reporter's disability and mocked Hilary Clinton when she suffered pneumonia in 2016, so it's a bit lame that Trump's supporters are demanding sympathy for this narcissistic buffoon (Fisher 2020). Just a few days before being diagnosed with COVID-19, Trump was mocking Joe Biden for wearing masks. Is it any wonder that people have little sympathy for Trump. He is a victim of his own stupidity ... he might recover, but sadly it's too late for the more than 210,000 Americans who died from COVID-19, even as Trump continued mocking the disease and its victims.

Time.com - 9 October 2020

When it came to immigrant families crossing the border into the US, Trump had children torn from the arms of their parents and held in cages. His pathetic, gold-digging wife, Melania, has repeatedly stated that she doesn't care about the children. This much is obvious from them both. In typical Trump fashion, he blamed Obama for the policy of family separations, however, it was yet one more Trumpian lie (Valverde 2019). The only time that children were separated from their families under Obama, was if the child was in danger. Obama's policy was to keep families together. 

Melania, a gold-digging migrant from Slovenia, was caught on tape mocking the very children her husband tore from their families because they dared to want a better life free from poverty and violence. One would think that Melania, being a migrant who wanted a better, would be more sympathetic. Her narcissism is on par with her husband's, so when reporters dared to ask her about the children rather than herself, she cracked with the retort: 'They said, "Oh, what about the children that were separated?" Give me a fucking break' (Pappenfuss 2020). 

Many of Trump's supporters claim that they are pro-life and pro-family, while Trump destroys families and is incompetent on a genocidal scale. (Did I mention more than 210,000 dead). Don the Con's incompetence & corruption are on a genocidal scale, so how about sympathy for his victims, and let's stop this narcissistic conman from killing any more. 

Then there's the little matter of the treatment that Trump received for COVID-19. The experimental drug had been tested using cells from an abortion (Regalado 2020). Abortions don't mean anything to Trump when it comes to his own health ... they're just collateral damage.

 

Trump destroys everything he touches. He inherited billions from his father and yet is more than $300 million in debt (Weber 2020). He refused to release his tax returns when elected, unlike every other president in the modern era. When the New York Times exposed his tax returns, we could see why. It revealed a history of business failure and tax avoidance. He payed no tax in 10 of the 15 years between 2000 and 2015, and just $750 in tax in 2016 (ABC News 2020). He is currently being investigated by the Internal Revenue Service over his tax, with an estimate that he could be responsible for a tax bill exceeding $100 million. This is a man who boasts that he doesn't draw a salary as president. Why would he? He has been fleecing the American tax system for years. Then there's the costs of his golf trips. These are estimated to have cost the American people over $130 million (Date 2020). So Trump not claiming the $400,000 per year presidential salary means nothing when his golf trips alone have cost more than 325 years of presidential salary. He criticised Obama's golf trips and swore he wouldn't spend a day on the golf course. At the same point in their presidency, Obama had spent 96 days golfing, whereas Trump had spent 266 (Dale & Lybrand 2020). Given the number of days he's absent from the job, Trump isn't the Commander in Chief, he is the Thief in Chief.

Trump has destroyed democracy in the US by subverting democratic processes, such as appointing Ruth Bader Ginsburg's replacement to the Supreme Court weeks before the election. He has falsely claimed that the mail voting process is corrupt and is already casting doubt on the validity of the election outcome. He has hinted that if he loses the election, he won't leave office.

Trump is responsible for empowering and emboldening violence from racists and bigots. Trump has consistently called on violence against Democrats and the left-wing. He retweeted that 'The only good Democrat is a dead Democrat' and 'When the looting starts the shooting starts' (Blake 2020). He denies being a white supremacist, but why is that all white supremacists gravitate to Trump's message. It says a lot about his supporters.

Trump is blatantly racist and many of his tweets and rambling speeches dog-whistle to his racist voter base. He has refused to condemn white supremacy. He has described Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis as 'good people'. He told the white supremacist incels, Proud Boys', to 'stand back and stand by', which the Proud Boys immediately adopted as their slogan, while they were encouraged by the President to commit violence against those they hate, such as leftists, black lives matter advocates, or other anti-fascist and anti-racist elements (Palmer 2020). 

In August violence erupted in Kenosha, Wisconsin, after police shot a black man, Jacob Blake, leaving him paralysed. A 17 year old boy named Kyle Rittenhouse, illegally armed himself and travelled from the neighbouring state of Illinois, to shoot the protesters. Rittenhouse shot three people, two of whom died. This gutless act of violence was not condemned by Trump, who went on to defend Rittenhouse's actions ... as did most Trump supporters. Department of Homeland Security officials were directed to defend Rittenhouse's heinous crimes (Brewster 2020).

These fascist are no different to the white supremacists who unleashed Kristallnacht in 1930s Germany, empowered and emboldened by Hitler. Trump is paving the way for another dictatorship, another Kristallnacht, another war between fascists and anti-fascists. 

When it was revealed that Russia had placed bounties on the lives of US soldiers in Afghanistan, the ever-tweeting Trump was strangely silent (Savage, Schmitt & Schwirtz 2020). He failed to raise the issue or to condemn Putin over it. He took no action. This is no great surprise. Trump has no respect for the military and has been caught stating that soldiers killed in battle defending the United States are 'suckers and losers' (Hirsh 2020). 

Former Trump aide, retired Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster states that Trump is aiding and abetting Russian president, Vladimir Putin, by failing to acknowledge Russia's misinformation campaign being waged in the United States (Sanger 2020).

So why do his followers continue defending him? They state that they are patriots, yet grovel at the feet of Traitor Trump as he destroys the nation they claim to love. 

To quote Forest Gump, 'stupid is as stupid does'. Trump is clearly a traitor to his own people. As millions of people were contracting COVID-19 and hundreds of thousands dying from it, he treated it as a joke and mocked those who tried to control it. In mid-September 2020, Trump stated that there would be a COVID-19 vaccine within three to four weeks (Marsh 2020). Three weeks later there was no vaccine in sight ... and Trump was diagnosed with COVID-19. 

In 1977, Pink Floyd released an album called Animals. The lyrics from the song Pigs are extremely apt to Trump, so much so that Roger Waters used it in his 2017/18 world tour: 'Big man, pig man, ha ha charade you are'. Trump is a pig, gorging himself at the trough while America degenerates. Trump is a charade. There was another song on that album, called Dogs, whose lyrics are very descriptive of Trump: 'You have to be trusted by the people that you lie to, So that when they turn their backs on you, You'll get the chance to put the knife in ... And when you lose control, you'll reap the harvest you have sown'.

Trump is reaping what he has sown. He is the victim of his own stupidity, which tragically has killed more than 210,000 people and will likely kill many thousands more.

Trump is such a liar that many people doubted he had actually contracted COVID-19. He had been hospitalised and on oxygen according to his doctors, but within a few days of the diagnosis, he was back at work saying that COVID-19 was nothing to worry about. 210,000 dead people and their families would likely disagree with this cretin. It's easy for a simpleton such as Trump to tell people, 'Do not be afraid', when he has the best medical treatment that money can buy.

Trump by name, Trumpery by nature. 

Even with his pathological lying, hate-speech, snout-in-the-trough corruption, Don the Con's racist, sexist, misogynistic, white-supremacist snowflake supporters expect people to have sympathy for Trump and his racist wife, Melania, as they are treated for COVID-19.

That isn't going to happen. 

Sympathy for the Trumps?

How about sympathy for their victims.

References

ABC News 2020, 'US President Donald Trump paid no income tax for 10 years, says New York Times report', 28 September, viewed 5 October 2020, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-09-28/trump-paid-just-24750-in-us-income-taxes-in-20162c-2017/12709418.

Blake, A 2020, '‘The only good Democrat is a dead Democrat.' ‘When the looting starts, the shooting starts.’ Twice in 25 hours, Trump tweets conspicuous allusions to violence', The Washington Post, 30 May, viewed 5 October 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/05/28/trump-retweets-video-saying-only-good-democrat-is-dead-democrat/.

Brewster, J 2020, 'Report: Trump Officials Were Directed To Defend Kyle Rittenhouse Publicly, Documents Show', Forbes, 1 October, viewed 5 October 2020, https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackbrewster/2020/10/01/report-trump-officials-were-directed-to-defend-kyle-rittenhouse-publicly-documents-show.

Dale, D & Lybrand, H 2020, 'Fact check: Trump has spent far more time at golf clubs than Obama had at same point', CNN, 25 May, viewed 5 October 2020, https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/25/politics/fact-check-trump-obama-golf/index.html.

Date, S 2020, 'Trump’s 29th Trip To Mar-a-Lago Brings Golf Tab To 334 Years Of Presidential Salary', Huffington Post, 15 February, viewed 5 October 2020, https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/trump-golf-mar-a-lago-taxpayers_n_5e4712b9c5b64d860fcab86c.

Fisher, A 2020, 'Trumpworld delighted in cruelty. Now that Trump has COVID, it demands empathy', Business Insider, 3 October, viewed 5 October 2020, https://www.businessinsider.com.au/trumpworld-delighted-cruelty-trump-positive-covid-test-demands-empathy-coronavirus-2020-10.

Hirsh, M 2020, 'Trump Has Mocked the U.S. Military His Whole Life', Foreign Policy, 8 September, viewed 5 October 2020, https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/09/08/trump-mocked-us-military-troops-losers-whole-life/.

Marsh, P 2020, 'Donald Trump says a coronavirus vaccine could be 'three weeks, four weeks' away in ABC town hall interview', ABC News, 16 September, viewed 5 October 2020, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-09-16/coronavirus-vaccine-weeks-away-according-to-donald-trump/12669136. 

Palmer, E 2020, 'Video of Proud Boys Founder Encouraging Violence Resurfaces Following Trump's 'Stand By' Comment, Newsweek, 1 October, viewed 5 October 2020, https://www.newsweek.com/proud-boys-gavin-mcinnes-trump-video-1535594.

Pappenfuss, M 2020, ''This Is Not Who We Are': Twitter Rages Over Melania's Taped Remarks On Migrant Children', Huffington Post, 3 October, viewed 5 October 2020, https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/melania-trump-kids-in-cages-christmas_n_5f76903ac5b66377b27fca5e.

Regalado, A 2020, 'Trump’s antibody treatment was tested using cells originally derived from an abortion', MIT Technology Review, 7 October, viewed 10 October 2020, https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/10/07/1009664/trumps-antibody-treatment-was-tested-using-cells-from-an-abortion/.

Savage, C, Schmitt, E, & Schwirtz, M 2020, 'Russia Secretly Offered Afghan Militants Bounties to Kill U.S. Troops, Intelligence Says', New York Times, 26 June, viewed 5 October 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/us/politics/russia-afghanistan-bounties.html.

Sanger, DE 2020, 'McMaster, Mostly Silent Until Now, Says Trump Is ‘Aiding and Abetting Putin’s Efforts’', New York Times, 1 October, viewed 5 October 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/01/us/politics/mcmaster-trump-russia-election.html.

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Valverde, M 2019, 'Fact-check: Did Obama have a family separation policy before Trump?', Statesman, 25 June, viewed 5 October 2020, https://www.statesman.com/news/20190625/fact-check-did-obama-have-family-separation-policy-before-trump.

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Honour the victims, expose the perpetrators: monuments, statues and revisionist history

Honour the victims, expose the perpetrators: monuments, statues and revisionist history

By Ranting Panda, 28 June 2020

Statues across the world are being attacked, torn down or defaced by people protesting against the history of the person represented by the statue. Oftentimes, the statue represents some head of state or war-time leader, perhaps a founding figure for a particular city. In most cases, these people perpetrated or gave rise to abhorrent practices, such as genocide, slave trading, or racism.

Many people who are defending the statues do not even know who the statue represents, let why they have a statue or the terrible history of the person immortalised in stone. However, while we certainly should not revere people who committed genocide, such as Churchill, or who traded in slavery, such as Edward Colston, tearing down their statues may not be the best approach to raising awareness of their heinous histories. It's an educational opportunity lost to remove those statues.

Although, those who so vehemently defend the statues in the name of history, would have to then agree with replacing the statues with monuments, so the victims are honoured rather than the perpetrators. More on that later.

In relation to statues, it would be much better to add a plaque to the statue explaining that person's heinous deeds for all the world to see. This may prove a tad more educational that relegating them to the dustbin of history. At least this way, people can easily and quickly read a short summary of Tweet-length proportions which should reach those who won't ever go near a history book. Instead of tearing down statues, historian Max Barton believes it is time to 'educate not eliminate' (Parkes 2020).

Plaque added to John Batman statue in 1992 (CAMD 2017)

Critics allege that the protesters are rewriting history. Newsflash to the critics ... the protesters are not rewriting history, they are ACKNOWLEDGING it, unlike the critics who want to whitewash and deny the horrendous history behind many of those statues. If anyone is rewriting history, it is often the original plaques or inscriptions on those statues. Take John Batman for instance. Batman founded the Australian city of Melbourne. An inscription on Batman's statue at Queen Victoria Markets states that he founded the settlement 'on the site of Melbourne then unoccupied'. Unoccupied? This must have come as news for the thousands of Aborigines who inhabited the area for millennia. The history originally depicted on the statue is wrong. In 1992, Melbourne City Council added a plaque to the statue, which read 'When the monument was erected in 1881 the Colony considered that the Aboriginal people did not occupy land. It is now clear that prior to the colonisation of Victoria, the land was inhabited and used by Aboriginal people'.

In acknowledgement of history, keep the statues & add plaques that clearly state the true history, rather than the revisionist one that many statues depict.

Below are examples of statues that could do with being updated.

• Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister
• Responsible for the genocide of around four million people in Bengal during World War 2, after knowingly and deliberately exacerbating a famine by redirecting grain to British and other allied troops ... because their lives were more important than Indians, whom he described as a 'beastly people with a beastly religion' (Tharoor 2016, pp. 132, 158-160). Churchill's exacerbation of this famine was recently confirmed through a scientific study conducted into causes of famines in India (Mishra et al 2019, p. 2080). Churchill's policies included confiscating rice and boats to deny the Japanese from accessing them ... but the Bengalis were the ones who suffered (Safi 2019).
• Edward Colston, British businessman 
• Colston was a wealthy and influential merchant who donated much of his wealth to charity. He is recognised as one of Bristol's 'most virtuous and wise sons', however, part of his wealth was built through the transatlantic slave trade and exploitation (Parkes 2020). 
• Lachlan Macquarie, Governor of New South Wales
• while Macquarie had been relatively sympathetic to Indigenous peoples, he became frustrated with the ongoing violence between settlers and Aborigines. Macquarie ordered his troops to 'punish' local Aborigines, resulting in the mass murder of 14 men, women and children. Macquarie's principle aim was to 'strike the greater terror into the Survivors' by hanging the bodies of grown men from trees, which his troops complied with by hanging up the bodies of two men and one woman. Later, their heads were cut off and sent to Edinburgh University. Macquarie then lied to British authorities by claiming the group was given the opportunity to surrender, when they weren't. (ABC Fact Check 2017).  
• Robert Towns, businessman, mariner, founder of Townsville, Queensland
• Robert Towns was a wealthy businessman who founded Townsville and contributed to infrastructure projects in Queensland. He was also involved in 'blackbirding', which involved kidnapping South Sea Islanders from their homelands and trafficking them to Australia to be enslaved in forced labour on cane and banana farms (Haxton 2017). The South Sea Islander community is calling for the statue to include a plaque and a statue to pay tribute to the people who were trafficked to Queensland and forced to work in the canefields (Haxton 2017).

It's interesting that people get so upset about a statue being defaced or torn down, yet still don't care about the destruction of culture by government and big business. For instance, where was the outrage when Rio Tinto blew up two 46,000-year-old Indigenous sacred sites in June 2020. While Rio Tinto apologised for it, the fact is that the law allows this to happen with ministerial approval. Indigenous groups have long been requesting the legislation be amended to protect sacred sites (Smoleniec 2020).

It is understandable that people would want statues removed. Nancy Pelosi explained why she supported the removal of a statue of Christopher Columbus, 'Monuments to men who advocated cruelty and barbarism to achieve such a plainly racist end are a grotesque affront to these ideals. Their statues pay homage to hate, not heritage. They must be removed' (Macardle 2020).

It is a form of revisionism to ignore the history of a person who was responsible for abhorrent actions, such as genocide, slavery, war crimes, rape, racism. Those who defend the statues of such people while ignoring their heinous behaviours are no different to the societies of the time who empowered such people and who condoned such behaviours. Let's take the opportunity to correct this revisionism and ensure that people never forget the blood that was spilled, the lives that were destroyed by these 'heroes', often in the name of their countries and often while building their own wealth and power.

While tearing down statues is about acknowledging history, the banning or censorship of movies is about ignoring it, covering it up. For example, cancelling movies such as Gone With the Wind and Song of the South because of their racist content. WarnerMedia pulled Gone With the Wind from its streaming service, HBO Max, with the explanation that 'these racist depictions were wrong then, and are wrong today, and we felt that to keep this title up without an explanation and denouncement of those depictions would be irresponsible', and that it would return with a 'discussion of its historical context and a denouncement of those very depictions', while on its return, the film 'will be shown as it was originally created, because to do otherwise, would be the same as claiming these prejudices never existed'. The film has since returned with an introduction that places the film in its historical context and describing that 'when it is not ignoring the horrors of slavery, pauses only to perpetuate some of the most painful stereotypes of people of color' and that it sentimentalised 'a history that never was'. Jacqueline Steward, history professor, provides the introduction, and has stated that 'If people are really doing their homework, we may be poised to have our most informed, honest and productive national conversations yet about Black lives on screen and off'. (Blackwelder & Stone 2020).

Taking the opportunity to explain this is much better than banning it. If movies are banned, should we then ban the books they are based upon? We've seen where that level of censorship leads. It is a fascist act to ban art. If we want to ensure fascism never returns, then let's not start with a fascist act. 

Without a doubt, many movies are racist, but to bury this, ignores the injustices that were perpetrated against black people, or anyone seen as racially inferior. To purge art of everything that contains racist content would obliterate much of the historical record. Rather than eliminating history, we should be educating people about how such racist attitudes developed, why they were so wrong and what should be done to address the systems of racism that still exist today.

Sanitising history will not end racism or sexism, whether it be individual, systemic (institutional and structural), or casual. Far better to educate people on how poorly others were treated because of their race or gender, and then understanding why those behaviours were so wrong, and the importance of civil rights. Certainly, call out racism in all its forms; make it unacceptable.

It is understandable that people would want to ban movies that have racist content, but it is a band-aid solution that will not stop racists from being racist. Instead, it may well empower them as they argue about 'political correctness gone mad'. Far better to educate and highlight just how unacceptable and atrocious such attitudes are. 

Of course, when too much outrage is not enough, along comes the Murdoch press to inflame the situation. Australians from coast to coast were outraged ... apoplectic even ... when the Herald Sun reported that Aboriginal woman and Greens Senator Lidia Thorpe was 'demanding' that the state of Victoria should change its name so it is no long associated with 'someone who’s caused harm or murdered people'. This article did nothing but stir up racism and foment anti-Greens animosity. The story was a beat up. Lidia Thorpe had not called for Victoria to be renamed. Instead, the suggestion was put forward by the Herald Sun itself and she was asked to comment (Lewis 2020). When she said a name change could be considered, that was enough for the Herald Sun to twist that to sound like an Aboriginal Greens Senator was demanding that Victoria be renamed. And the predictable hate speech and vile attacks ensued, as the Herald Sun knew they would.

Better than maintaining statues to racists, mass murderers and slavers, would be to construct monuments that remember the victims. People who defend the statues and claim that tearing them down is to deny history, must surely be in favour of remembering history through such monuments.

An example of a moment that ensures the victims are remembered and history is not forgotten or revised, is shown in the preservation of the Nazi death camp, Auschwitz (Donadio 2015). More than 1.3 million people were murdered there, 90% of whom were Jewish, but Nazi victims also included dissenters, socialists, communists, the unhealthy, LGBTIQ+, and those who were considered 'racially inferior', which in addition to Jews, included Roma and people of colour.

The need to remember this history was highlighted recently, when President Donald Trump's campaign released an ad attacking Antifa by placing an inverted red triangle behind the word 'Antifa'. The Nazis had a classification system to identify demographics of its victims; the inverted red triangle was used to identify political prisoners (US Holocaust Memorial Museum n.d.).

Howtofightantisemitism.com (2020)

Revitalising a Nazi symbol of hate to promote President Trump demonstrates the need to ensure that history is not forgotten. This became even more pertinent when it was revealed that the Department of Homeland Security released a report on the greatest threats facing the United States. This report did not mention Antifa, however it did mention far-right extremists, such as the Boogaloo movement; but it was Antifa (which is an anti-Fascist ideology, not an organisation, by the way) that Trump and his campaign have targeted (Sargent 2020). It's disturbing that the Trump campaign resorts to Nazi symbols of fascism to demonise anti-fascists. Meanwhile, Trump's followers accept his growing fascism, hate-speech and racism, without challenge.

Not that this is the only Nazi symbol appropriated by the Trump re-election campaign. They are also selling 'America First' shirts with a logo that features an eagle with talons gripping an American flag in a circle, which bears a striking resemblance to the Nazi symbol that featured an eagle in a similar pose, whose talons were gripping a swastika in a circle (Elliott 2020).

Is it any wonder, that many of Trump's followers claim to be Christian? It was Christians who empowered Hitler, his white supremacy and his genocidal fascism. German Pastor Martin Niemöller blamed Christians for Hitler, which he highlighted in this speech (Niemöller 1947). This quote is disturbing on so many levels, given the parallels with Trump and his Christian followers, their attacks on black people, on leftists, and even on dismantling public health systems which 'cost the state money'.

'When Pastor Niemöller was put in a concentration camp we wrote the year 1937; when the concentration camp was opened we wrote the year 1933, and the people who were put in the camps then were Communists. Who cared about them? We knew it, it was printed in the newspapers. Who raised their voice, maybe the Confessing Church? We thought: Communists, those opponents of religion, those enemies of Christians - "should I be my brother's keeper?" Then they got rid of the sick, the so-called incurables. - I remember a conversation I had with a person who claimed to be a Christian. He said: Perhaps it's right, these incurably sick people just cost the state money, they are just a burden to themselves and to others. Isn't it best for all concerned if they are taken out of the middle [of society]? -- Only then did the church as such take note. Then we started talking, until our voices were again silenced in public. Can we say, we aren't guilty/responsible? The persecution of the Jews, the way we treated the occupied countries, or the things in Greece, in Poland, in Czechoslovakia or in Holland, that were written in the newspapers. … I believe, we Confessing-Church-Christians have every reason to say: mea culpa, mea culpa!'

Let's not forget our history, let's not deny our history.

A common adage repeated ad nauseam by many conservatives is that 'people should stop living in the past'. This is usually directed at people protesting racism. The people who say this, are also often the same ones vehemently defending statues of some long-dead genocidal, slave-trading, rapist racist. They obviously don't see the irony. They also don't understand that racism is still alive and destroying lives today. They don't understand that today's systemic racism exists because of the systems established years ago by these 'heroes' they defend and the revisionist history they believe. This is why we must never forget the past and it musts be used to help destroy existent systems of racism and discrimination that perpetuate the pain and suffering of victims here and now! Racism is built on the past and it is present in today's systems and in the attitudes of many people who clearly do not understand the harm it causes.

Honour the victims, expose the perpetrators.

References

ABC Fact Check 2017, 'Fact check: Was Lachlan Macquarie a mass murderer who ordered the genocide of Indigenous people?', 10 November, viewed 22 June 2020, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-27/fact-check-did-lachlan-macquarie-commit-mass-murder-and-genocide/8981092?nw=0.

Blackwelder, C & Stone, M 2020, ''Gone With the Wind' returns to HBO Max with intro detailing historical context', Good Morning America, 24 June, viewed 27 June 2020, https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/culture/story/gone-with-the-wind-returns-hbo-max-commentary-71171554.

CAMD 2017, Melbourne’s John Batman statue, Council of Australasian Museum Directors, 1 September, viewed 20 June 2020, https://camd.org.au/melbournes-john-batman-statue/.

Donadio, R 2015, 'Preserving the ghastly inventory of Auschwitz', The New York Times, 15 April, viewed 27 June 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/16/arts/international/at-auschwitz-birkenau-preserving-a-site-and-a-ghastly-inventory.html.

Elliott, J 2020, 'Trump 2020 campaign accused of ‘ripping off’ Nazi eagle logo', Global News, 2 July, viewed 4 July 2020, https://globalnews.ca/news/7130932/trump-nazi-eagle-logo-america-first/.

Haxton, N 2017, 'South Sea Islanders say statue of Townsville founder 'whitewashes' slave history', ABC News, 24 August, viewed 21 June 2020, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-24/townsville-statue-whitewash-slave-history-islanders-say/8838984.

HowToFightAntiSemitism.com 2020, 'Trump campaign uses Nazi concentration camp symbols in Facebook ads', 17 June, viewed 27 June 2020, https://www.howtofightantisemitism.com/timeline/trump-campaign-uses-nazi-concentration-camp-symbols-in-facebook-ads.

Lewis, C 2020, 'Anatomy of a News Corp beat up', Crikey, 22 June, viewed 25 June 2020, https://www.crikey.com.au/2020/06/22/anatomy-of-a-beat-up-news-corp-lidia-thorpe/.

Macardle, M 2020, 'Columbus Statue to Be Removed from California State Capitol after 137 Years', National Review, 17 June, viewed 27 June 2020, https://www.nationalreview.com/news/columbus-statue-to-be-removed-from-california-state-capitol-after-137-years.

Mishra, V, Tiwari, AD, Aadhar, S, Shah, R, Xiao, M, Pai, DS, Lettenmaier, D, Drought and Famine in India: 1870-2016, Geophysical Research Letters, 28 February 2019, Vol.46(4), pp.2075-2083.

Niemöller, M 1947, 'Of guilt and hope', analysis by Harold Marcuse, University of South Carolina Beaufort, 17 September 2004, viewed 27 June 2020, http://marcuse.faculty.history.ucsb.edu/projects/niem/Niem1946GuiltHope13-16.htm.

Parkes, P 2020, 'Who was Edward Colston and why is Bristol divided by his legacy?', BBC News, 8 June, viewed 21 June 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-bristol-42404825.

Safi, M 2019, 'Churchill's policies contributed to 1943 Bengal famine – study', The Guardian, 29 March, viewed 21 June 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/29/winston-churchill-policies-contributed-to-1943-bengal-famine-study.

Sargent, G 2020, 'Leaked document makes Trump campaign’s use of Nazi-era symbol look worse', The Washington Post, 20 June, viewed 27 June 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/06/19/leaked-document-makes-trumps-use-nazi-era-symbol-look-worse/.

Smoleniec, B 2020, 'After blasting 46,000-year-old Indigenous caves, Rio Tinto backs calls for changes to WA heritage laws', SBS News, 5 June, viewed 25 June 2020, https://www.sbs.com.au/news/after-blasting-46-000-year-old-indigenous-caves-rio-tinto-backs-calls-for-changes-to-wa-heritage-laws.

Tharoor, S 2016, Inglorious Empire: What the British did to India, Kindle edition, Scribe Publications, London, UK.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum n.d., 'Classification system in Nazi concentration camps', Holocaust Encyclopedia, viewed 27 June 2020, https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/classification-system-in-nazi-concentration-camps.




Updated 4 July 2020

Facts, alternative facts & the psycho-ceramic-crackpot-in-chief

Facts, alternative facts & the psycho-ceramic-crackpot-in-chief

By Ranting Panda, 25 February 2020

Trump is a Psycho-Ceramic.

What are pyscho-ceramics? They are 'the cracked pots of mankind' ... as described in Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which went on to observe that 'perhaps the more insane a man is, the more powerful he could become, Hitler for example'. Trump is testament to this. He is mentally deranged & morally derailed, yet holds the most powerful office in the world ... meanwhile, the increasingly desperate, delusional & degenerate right-wing continue making excuses for him, justifying him and completely ignore the truth.

Take Senator Lindsey Graham for instance, who bizarrely stated that Trump shouldn't be removed from office, because 'he did nothing wrong in his mind' (Moye 2020). So what if his mind is a cracked pot.

There's a lot wrong inside Trump's mind ... If the right tolerate this behaviour, what will they tolerate next?

Trump is a demagogue: he appeals to his voters through manipulating their fears and prejudices, rather than by making rational arguments. His speeches are devoid of facts, heavy on lies and barely more than an incoherent, rambling, alphabet soup of puerile insults and bigotry.

In One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Kesey goes on to observe, 'mental illness could have the aspect of power, power'. Now, this isn't an attack on people with mental illness, it is questioning whether Trump's particular mental illness makes him unsuitable to lead a nation. Psychologists from all ideological persuasions have determined that Trump has 'narcissistic personality disorder' (Psychology Today, n.d.).

This may explain some of his more concerning behaviours, such as gas-lighting, compulsive lying, distortion, disregard and denial of facts, erratic and contradictory statements, paranoia and his snowflake sensitivity to criticism. Most concerning is how this plays out in the lives of innocent people. He has not only imprisoned people seeking asylum in the United States, but torn their children from their arms and separated them from their families. There are at least 26,000 children, many of whom will never be reunited because Trump did not have plans for recording the children's details before separating them (Blitzer 2019). This is the man who represents 'family values' to his followers.

Trump was impeached for extorting Ukraine to provide dirt on one of his political opponents. The Republican-dominated Senate was so sure of his innocence that they refused to allow new witnesses and evidence to be presented. One of the religious nutters who supports Trump, called for an 'angelic army with flaming swords' to protect Trump  from impeachment (Hamilton 2020).

Trump was accused of colluding with Russia in fixing his 2016 election win. Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange, is currently fighting extradition to the United States on espionage charges. In 2016, Wikileaks published emails that were damaging to Hillary Clinton's election campaign. The lawyer acting for Assange has asserted in court, that Trump offered Assange a presidential pardon if he stated that the emails were not leaked by Russia (Borger 2020).

These are not the actions of an innocent man.

It's not just that Trump is a crack-pot. He is a dangerous crack-pot. He has unbelievably managed to herd Christians behind his corrupt, bullying, abusive agenda. He has done this through the equivalent of slapping a 'fish' sticker on his car. In this case, the fish sticker is his abortion policy, which blind, unquestioning Christians think makes Trump a good Christian, while excusing every other immoral, amoral, corrupt, deceitful, bullying action. All these people defending Trump and claiming he is a Christian, claiming he has family morals and values. Yet would they really want their children behaving like Trump?

Even more disturbing is the correlation of increased hate crimes since Trump's election. The FBI reported attacks against Latinos was at a 16-year high (Hassan 2019). Furthermore, a study examining hate crime trends since 1992, concluded that not only was Trump's election win associated with a 'statistically significant surge in reported hate crimes across the United States, even when controlling for alternative explanations', but that this increase was most evident in counties that voted for Trump (Edwards & Rushin 2018). The report was comprehensive and concluded that it wasn't just Trump's 'inflammatory rhetoric throughout the political campaign that caused hate crimes to increase', but that Trump's election 'validated this rhetoric in the eyes of perpetrators and fuelled the hate crime surge'. Further to this, Trump's influence as holder of the most powerful office in the world, has normalised racism globally and legitimised the rise of far-right political parties and their policies of intolerance, prejudice and discrimination (Giani & Meon, 2019).

Then there's Trump's so-called 'peace plans' for Israel. This particularly appeals to Zionist Christians, and of course, Israel. Meanwhile, it legitimises Israel's war-crimes and ethnic cleansing in Palestine. Firstly, he relocated the US embassy from Tel Aviv to the contested area of Jerusalem. Trump stated, 'God decided Jerusalem was the capital of Israel more than 3,000 years ago during the time of King David' (Usher 2018). Meanwhile, Israeli soldiers were shooting Palestinian protesters, leaving more than 50 dead (Davis 2018). More recently, Trump proudly unveiled his 'peace plan', which has an uncanny resemblance to the apartheid of South Africa, of which Israel was the greatest contributing external party, providing diplomatic support, financial aid, military weapons, and other resources for building and maintaining the bantustans (Liel 2020). Trump's peace plan was developed without any Palestinian input. Instead of returning land to Palestinians, which had been illegally taken and occupied by Israel, Trump's plan will create enclaves in the West Bank for Palestinians. It is no different to the bantustans of South Africa. All of this plays into the hands of Israel and Zionist Christians who have white-washed Palestinians from history, claiming they don't exist and have no rights over the land. The very creation of modern Israel was based on the myth of a 'land without people for a people without a land'. The land did have people and they had occupied it for thousands of years (Brownfield 1998). Trump's rhetoric, actions and 'peace plan', legitimise the ethnic cleansing of Palestine from history and the land ... all in the name of God.

Trump claims to be a Christian, but the bible does state, 'by their fruits you shall know them'. Trump's fruit is racism, hate-speech, hate-crimes, apartheid, war-crimes and the justification of ethnic cleansing.

To quote the 1971 song 'One Tin Soldier':

Go ahead and hate your neighbor,
Go ahead and cheat a friend.
Do it in the name of heaven,
You can justify it in the end.

It is from the movie, Billy Jack. The song, One Tin Soldier, tells the story of an age-old battle for a buried treasure, and the blood spilled in pursuit of it. The song ends with the treasure being revealed. Rather than the treasure being gold, silver or jewels, it is simply a message: 'Peace on earth'.

This message reflects Carl Sagan's powerful, poignant, perceptive observation of the 'Pale Blue Dot'. Sagan describes the Earth as a 'mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam'. Sagan goes onto to poignantly observe:

'The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds'.

War has existed for millenia, with people fighting for power, for control, for land. Yet, underpinning the belief-systems of many of these warriors are religions that claim they want 'peace on earth'.

There are Christians who follow Trump, yet cheered him on as he took the world to the brink of war against Iran (Grant 2020). Christians supported President George W. Bush and the 'Coalition of the Willing' in their illegal invasion of Iraq that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. Christians supported Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush in their wars in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan. Christians supported the wars in Vietnam and Korea. Christians supported Adolf Hitler in the wars he waged and his persecution and genocide of Jews, communists, gypsies, unionists and many others.

Why is this so important? Because many of these same people will criticise Islam for being inherently violent because of terrorist attacks waged by Muslim extremists. Meanwhile, these Christians fail to understand that Christian-led wars have killed far more people than any other religion. This inability and unwillingness to self-critique provides a firm platform for Trump and his ilk to harvest votes from xenophobic messaging and politics.

These behaviours are described so eloquently by French philosopher, Blaise Pascall, when he stated, 'Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction'.

For many years, right-wing voters have been seduced by fear-mongering messages aimed at 'othering' to create division and hatred between people. The following message is similar to that presented by many right-wing parties across the globe. They create an enemy, they create fear, and then they use this to remove people's rights. It turns the people against each other, rather than against those people who promote hate and fear. And from this, war is justified, persecution of minorities is justified, authoritarianism is justified ... exactly what we are seeing with Trump.

'The streets of our country are in turmoil. The Universities are filled with students rebelling and rioting. Communists are seeking to destroy our country. Russia is threatening us with her might and the republic is in danger. Yes, danger from within and without. We need law and order. Yes, without law and order our nation cannot survive. Elect us and we shall restore law and order'.

By the way, that statement was made by Adolf Hitler, but it echoes the messages of politicians, such as Donald Trump and his ilk, which includes Australia's Scott Morrison. It is a message being reflected by right-wing parties across the globe, such as the German far-right party, Alternative for Germany, which has broken decades old laws about curtailing Nazism, in Spain there is the far-right Vox party, Austria's Freedom Party, France's National Front led by Marine Le Pen, the Sweden Democrats, Finland's Finns Party, the Conservative People's Party of Estonia, Poland's Confederation Party, Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban, the Slovenian Democratic Party led by former Prime Minister Janez Jansa, and in Greece there is the Greek Solution and the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn (BBC 2019). All of these parties and politicians have common messages and policies around anti-intellectualism, anti-socialism/communism, anti-unionism, anti-migration, stronger law and order. They do so through messages of fear that demonise Muslim refugees as terrorists and blame them for destroying the economy, or that socialism is infiltrating schools and universities through science, climate change, gender-fluidity, and political correctness.

Have we forgotten the lessons of Nazi Germany? The Germans in Nazi Germany did not realise just how far Hitler would take them, however, they embraced his message and did his bidding. We should be concerned when these parties are elected into positions of power.

In the United States, Trump ran a similar message in his electioneering and was installed into the highest office in the land. He is not articulate, his messages are rambling and irrational, but while they lack substance, they appeal to his supporters. This is not unlike Hitler, who was also rambling and irrational. In Australia, it is very similar with Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who has no substance to his policies, but continues the irrational and rambling messages of his predecessors, such as Tony Abbott and John Howard. The messages of each of these appeal to the masses because they invoke fear and hatred of the 'other'. They demonise minorities and blame them for economic ills, while providing greater freedom to the wealthy who continue to exploit minorities and the poor.



In the opening scene of the movie, Billy Jack, Billy confronts the sheriff for trying to shoot horses on Indian land. The sheriff declares 'We have the law here'. Billy Jack retorts, 'When policemen break the law, then there isn't any law; just a fight for survival'. This could be modernised to reflect Trump's approach to the law. He has consistently broken it, then criticises police for investigating it, while pardoning criminals with connections to him (Baker et al, 2020).

Ironically, those who support the idiocracy of Trump, claim they support democracy. They don't understand that democracy has died through the division of society, through turning the people against each other, through making some people less human or less deserving of rights than others. Dare I quote Padme from 'Star Wars - Revenge of the Sith', when she stated, 'So this is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause . . .'


The hate-speech of the far-right is often masked in neo-liberal economics, which argues for free-market trade, deregulation, privatisation, small government, user-pays systems for health and education, and no welfare. The victims of neo-liberalism are the poor, so it is inherent in neo-liberal strategies to turn the population, including the poor, against a common enemy. That common enemy should be the neo-liberal politicians and big businesses who are only interested in profit over people. However, the common enemy becomes minorities in western countries, such as refugees, LGBTIQ+ people, Muslims, and even the poor themselves. Neo-liberalism is intimately entwined with neo-fascism, neo-Nazism and racism.

Why are these simplistic messages of hate so powerful? Abbott and Morrison both used three-word slogans, such as 'stop the boats', 'lifters not leaners', 'debt and deficit', 'axe the tax'. (Quiggin 2015). These slogans had no substance, no explanation, and were aimed at spreading fear and division. Most people did not go beyond the superficial messaging. Trump is the same. He spreads a simple message of hate. He declared that all Mexicans are murderers and rapists (Jacobs 2018). He continues to wage prejudicial campaigns against Muslims, declaring that 'Islam hates us'. He banned all Muslims from entering the USA. Following the mosque terrorist attacks in New Zealand that killed 51 Muslims and injured many others, he tweeted a link to far-right site Breitbart that had declared Muslim refugees were 'rapefugees'. Trump has retweeted hate speech videos by neo-fascists who wage campaigns of violence against Muslims while claiming to be Christians (Klaas 2019). While Trump claims he isn't racist, his language and actions have empowered Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacists (Simon & Sidner 2019). Hitler also used these simplistic, rambling messages of hate, fear and division. Hitler claimed he was doing the 'work of the Lord' in attacking communists, Jews and others. Each of these leaders wrapped their messages in Christian beliefs to mask their terrible agendas while seducing Christians into thinking they are defending moral values.

The common theme in these simplistic messages of intolerance and fear is absolutism.

Right-wing politicians will deplore 'moral relativism'. Yet the opposite of relativism is absolutism. Relativism looks at context and nuance. Absolutism does not. Absolutism fails to recognise the differences in people, societies, cultures, perspective. It rejects science because science requires relativism. Absolutism finds fertile ground in religion, because it is easy to manipulate the religious into a superstitious fear of judgement and condemnation by their supreme being if they dare to question. For example, Trump appointed a spiritual adviser, Paula White-Cain, who proclaimed that 'To say no to President Trump would be saying no to God' (Thomas 2019). Wow! Talk about feeding the superstitious fears of the gullible.

Staying with the Star Wars quotes, Obi Wan Kenobi stated 'Only a Sith Lord deals in absolutes. I will do what I must'. Ok, we don't have Sith Lords, but we do have powerful politicians claiming they are doing the work of the Lord. We have politicians dealing in absolutes, because that makes it easier to demonise and divide. It makes it easier to control the gullible to do their bidding. The key though is fear. Send the message that there is an attack on their freedoms, create an imaginary enemy, and the gullible are ripe for manipulation.

Truth and facts? Nah. What use are these when being told what to believe by Trump or other clowns.

Remember when Press Secretary Sean Spicer grossly inflated the attendance numbers for Trump's inauguration? Counsellor to the President, Kelly-Anne Conway decided to cover for him by declaring that these were 'alternative facts'. Chuck Todd, of Meet the Press, explained to Conway, 'Alternative facts are not facts. They are falsehoods' (Blake 2017).

For instance, when politicians or commentators are called out for racism or bigotry, they will either deny it or gaslight it. There may be video footage of the exact statement and they will say that they never said it. Or, they will indignantly declare that their freedom of speech is being attacked by politically correctness 'gone mad', by socialist snowflakes. It is reminiscent of Orwell's dystopian novel, 1984, 'The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command'.

Another great quote from Billy Jack, is when Billy states, 'It's funny isn't it? Only the white man wants everything put in writing. And only then, so he can use it against you in court. You know among the Indians, a promise is good enough'. 

Trump throws even this on its head. It doesn't matter whether it is in writing or there is video evidence of what he has said, he will blatantly lie and deny. It's not just that he is corrupt, but that he treats people with contempt and knows that his supporter base are so gullible, they will defend him no matter what he does. He is the embodiment of corruption and his supporters are complicit, easily-led and ... suckers.

Unbelievably, his supporters will deny facts simply because Trump tells them to. Speak to the brain-washed Trump fans and they will claim he is an amazing president who has turned the economy around. Many of the economic indicators show that Trump has just continued on Obama's trajectory without staging any miraculous economic recovery. For example, the following chart shows unemployment rate by racial and ethnic category. Apart from the dates, can anyone show when Trump took over and 'turned this around'? Of course not. Obama had already established policies that had reduced unemployment following the highs of the Global Financial Crisis which occurred under President George W. Bush.

Source: Jacobson 2020

Clearly, truth does not matter to Trump or many of the other right-wing politicians on the international stage. When people defend Trump or Morrison or any of the others who propagate a culture of deceit, hatred, fear, and division, they are taking their respective nations down a slippery slope that we have seen leads to fascism, authoritarianism and gross human rights abuses.

Trump is a crack-pot.

A dangerous neo-liberal, narcissistic crack-pot.

So how do we counter this threat to democracy?

The left-wing needs to mobilise and unite. Instead of factional in-fighting, it needs to fight against the horrid policies and behaviours of the intolerant right-wing. While Trump and many of those on the right-wing are sensitive to criticism, this shouldn't stop anyone challenging their racist, irrational, damaging politics. Realise that they will attempt to gas-light, they will claim they are victims of political correctness 'gone mad'. Hold them to account for their shallow policies, ask them to explain them and what evidence they have. Sadly, as we have seen, evidence and truth plays no part in their rationale, but they still must be challenged. Identify alternatives to their intolerance and absolutism that still address moral issues, such as caring for the persecuted, creating jobs and establishing living wages. This may be difficult, as many on the right have a warped sense of morality, thinking they are already defending family values and the morals of the bible, and sadly see any assistance for the poor or marginalised as socialism.

It can be discouraging and demoralising trying to hold a rational discussion with the irrational far-right. There could be a case for not holding these discussions. After all, as some anonymous pundit observed, 'Arguing with an idiot is like playing chess with a pigeon. It'll just knock over all the pieces, shit on the board, and strut about like it's won anyway'.

Nonetheless, the less anonymous Martin Luther King provides an explanation of why it is so important to challenge the intolerance and harmful politics of neo-liberals, neo-fascists and the far-right. 'In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends'.

Let's not be silent in the face of fascism, intolerance, hatred, fear-mongering and bigotry.

Stand up against bullying by the likes of Trump and challenge the irrational claims of the far right.


References

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Updated 29 February 2020