Be informed

Regular readers of this blog will already know my political philosophy. The election of Donald Trump as president of the United States of America is truly regressive. It represents not only an existential threat to liberals, people on the left and humanity more generally, but also a mortal threat to minorities, people of colour, LGBT, amongst others. In my lifetime, this is unprecedented. I grew up anticipating nuclear war – this was a time of Threads – in a bi-polar world of two ideologically-fuelled superpowers. But equally I grew up in a post-fascist world. This missing link, however, is about to be filled. Fascism has arrived.

The appeasement has started. With the noble exceptions in Europe of German Chancellor, Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande, world leaders waited for a call from Trump for an all-important opportunity to cosy up to him. The British Prime Minister, Theresa May, had to wait quite a while on Thursday – she was 10th on his list – to receive a call only to find that Nigel Farage, UKIP leader, got a very early selfie-opportunity (below left) to discuss “freedom and winning” with Trump in his eponymous tower.

The litany of regressive policy preferences for Trump is shocking. Trump is a climate change denier. To him, it is a hoax, despite all of the scientific evidence. Trump intends to pull out of the Paris Climate Change Accord that came into force on 4 November 2016 (but conveniently it was not ratified by the US Senate). This is an international agreement to hold global warming to no more than 2C above pre-industrial levels. It is a problem for Trump because his isolationist stance and job creation objectives require energy self-sufficiency through fossil fuels (oil, coal, gas and shale oil). The science points to a climate catastrophe involving fire, drought, desertification, flood, mass extinctions and rising sea levels. One man – and his like-minded cabinet – can render the planet uninhabitable even without nuclear weapons. Talking of which…

…Trump, in his election campaign, also asked – and I paraphrase – what the point of nuclear weapons is if they cannot be used. And similar to his belief in allowing guns into schools  counter-intuitively to prevent mass shootings, he believes in nuclear proliferation for the same reason. At the very least we might finally confirm that  Israel is a nuclear power and maybe it is time to expedite North Korea’s nuclear aspirations? Back to a Threads scenario, I think.

This  fascism has consciously crept into the UK. There is no better example than the Daily Mail’s front page after three lawlords interpreted British law – as they had been asked to do by a British citizen – and noted that, constitutionally, the Prime Minister does not have the power to invoke Article 50 (the leave the EU mechanism) without the approval of the sovereign parliament. This decision is being appealed by the Government and will be heard next month. But Brexiters – led by UKIP leadership candidate, Suzanne Evans given a platform on Today (Radio 4’s flagship news and current affairs programme) – that Judges are trying to impede “the will of the people”; namely leaving the EU. Nothing of the sort. But Evans believes, seemingly, that independent judges should be subject to control by the parliament (the very same one that the Government does not want to inform about Brexit conditions).

This headline has fortunately had quite an impact. Stop Funding Hate is pushing to get advertisers to abandon newspapers that propagate hate as a matter of course. These titles include also The Sun, The Daily Express and The Daily Telegraph. Last week Lego stopped advertising with The Daily Mail (see below). The current effort is to put pressure on the John Lewis Partnership, a supposedly ethical employee-owned high-street retailer, to do the same. Its  Christmas high budget mini film advertisements have become an anticipated festive season event in recent years. And they work. But some of the profit made goes into the pockets of these newspaper owners whose racist bile has undermined the fabric of British society’s values of tolerance, compassion and inclusiveness. John Lewis has so far responded with an anodyne statement (left) indicating that the company does not judge newspapers by their content. Fascist supporting, then? Customers need to know that. And we must stop normalising this thinking. They will come for us, too.

Finally, it is very difficult to enjoy comedy these days. Everything is beyond parody. Consistent throughout this US election campaign has been John Oliver. He tried hard to expose Trump’s fascism. His final show of 2016 screened on HBO on Sunday evening. Unfortunately it is not available in the UK to view. Some people have the means to Americanise their IP address. If you are one of these, I recommend. By the time the next series starts in 2017 he may have been deported (and HBO closed down).