In a post to this site in response to my comments on the assassination attempt on Trump that I treated as spam and which did not, as a result, appear on the blog, this was said:
Richard in your post on 28th June you stated that trump is
… a rapist, a fascist and an outright opponent of democracy who clearly wishes to dismantle the US
Do you still stand by these words?
Of course I do, is my response.
Facts have not been altered by what happened to Trump over the weekend.
Trump has been found guilty of rape in a court of law.
He is widely and reasonably (in the literal sense of the word) considered to be a fascist.
And he unquestionably tried to overthrow the state on 6 January 2021.
He has also promised a bloodbath if he does not win this time.
We can already see how the attack on Trump by a person whose motives are not known is going to be used. Reports, already commonplace, are suggesting that the blame for this attack should be laid at the door of the Democrats in the US because they have pointed out facts of the sort I note above. The suggestion is that the Democrat's comment supposedly fermented the sentiment that gave rise to the assassination attempt, although we will never actually know as the culprit is now dead.
These claims by those on the Right are Goebbelian. The idea that the Democrats created hate by pointing out what Trump has actually done or is doing is absurd. Goebbels' advice was always to accuse your enemies of that which you were guilty of, and I have no doubt that this is exactly what the Republicans in the US and the far-right here are doing. I am also sure that this will become ever more commonplace.
I will continue to say what I think to be true of Trump, as I will of others. No one can know what the price for doing so might be, but if we are forced into indifference or even silence for fear of the consequences of telling the truth, the price that we will pay will be very high indeed.
Fascism threatens us all.
We have to say so.
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100% agree. Which leaves an open question: how best to combat it.
There was a video of some US imbecile claiming that the UK, under Labour, would become the first nuclear armed Islamic nation
( https://x.com/60sJapanfan/status/1812967311500058991)
Of course this skated over the fact that Labour lost votes amongst muslim communities due to Gaza.
But facts don’t matter. Perhaps attack the fascists with their own coin?.
Use the Lyndon Johnston approach: “my opponent f..s pigs” (yep he really said it).
Whatever – but gentle jesus meek & mild ain’t going to cut it.
But Labour’s own approach to these MPs is profoundly worrying – and appears deeply anti-Islamic to me. The claim is that Labour candidates lost and others did so because of intimidation from Muslim candidates. I do nit believe that. People made a choice to reject Labour’s stance, most especially on Israel. It is very worrying that Labour is distorting the truth on this.
I think it is far worse than that. The claims by Woodcock, amplified by the Israeli shill Akehurst, the abominable Ashworth, rent-a-gob Phillips and now Cooper are consistent with the method employed in the false ‘antisemitism’ campaign used against the left. This is wilful and coordinated, classic smear tactics, and you don’t have to be paranoid to detect the driver for this; there is a history of Israeli involvement, Zionist finance of the Labour right wing, and Starmer continues to have a former Mossad agent in HQ employment (apparently involved in the social media trawls and monitoring). Couple this with existing law, and I suspect there will be sanctions imposed on pro Palestinian groups under the Police Act 2022, to add to the already existing Prevent mechanism.
I see a worrying pattern in all this as well
Mike -the Imbecile is J D Vance the Vice-Presidential nominee.
It just gets worse.
Sadly, JD Vance, now confirmed as Trump’s VP running mate, is a canny operator. He knows exactly what he’s saying and who his audience is. This is a good introduction to him and his ominous ‘solutions’ to some real world problems.
https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-45/politics/j-d-vance-changes-the-subject-2/
Thank you
He is ultra-right
Given that the shooter appears to have been seen as a right wing loyalist by his classmates, it is possible that he saw Trump as a threat to the long-term acceptability of right wing opinions in the US.
Who knows what happens next?
We do not know what he thought
Why speculate? It doesn’t help.
Indeed. Thanks to the shoot-to-kill policy of American law-enforcement, we have no chance of finding out what the shooter’s mindset was. We can’t even be sure he was actually aiming at Trump!
We have to tackle the issues that have led to the rise of the right and the cult of the “strongman”. Unfortunately, we don’t have the politicians who will do that.
It means addressing some very fundamental issues such as poverty and inequality, uninspiring work experiences, poor housing, the proliferation of conspiracy theories and “alternative facts”, immigration and much much more.
Most politicians seem to be part of the problem, only interested in “growth” and cosying up to assorted billionaires, hypocritical in their dealings with rogue states and international law and ignoring climate change.
I fear that unless we can recruit politicians whose main concern is the welfare of all citizens then things are only going to get worse until we are hit by one of Scheidel’s horsemen (of the apocalypse).
@ Geejay
“I fear that unless we can recruit politicians whose main concern is the welfare of all citizens then things are only going to get worse …”
And there very precisely is the rub as Shakespeare would say. Since welfare is caring, much of which is expressed through government spending, we have the very sorry situation of most voters failing to understand the connection between democracy and how a fiat monetary system works! It would appear their country has to become deeply impoverished or the planet close to no longer offering life support before these voters will make the effort to do the joined-up thinking!
Call me old-fashioned but there’s a fundamental problem with certain people – and there seems to be quite a lot of them – who have an inability to understand what facts are. They appear to think that facts are a matter of interpretation.
They need a dictionary.
Facts are chiels that winna ding.
My daughter uses the phrase “full on fascist”, I suspect Trump is one notch below full on. What is unclear is whether he will ‘restrict’ or ‘eliminate’ opposition political parties. If so, he’ll be full on, but of course he won’t talk too openly about any such plans.
Just as in 1930s fascist Europe some of the elites are fearful and turning Trumpian. Why has Elon Musk now come out in full support? Does Musk think X will follow TikTok’s demise if he supports another, or would his business industrial complex be at risk without Govt contracts?
A Trump presidency is truly alarming as we don’t know what part of his rhetoric might be his full on actions.
Agreed
All seems about blame with no responsibility for reactions to their actions or lack of them, it seems to me. Eg Labour blaming Islamists for their defeats , Republicans blaming democrats for shootings, Israel blaming Hamas for the genocide, no doubt Democrats will blame Islamists and Leftists for not being able to hold there nose firmly enough when they don’t vote for Biden and Trump gets it which is looking, unbelievably, an almost certainty.
“Leftists for not being able to hold there nose firmly enough when they don’t vote for Biden”
No “Leftists” in the USA will vote for Trump.
Why does one need to “hold your nose” in order to vote for Biden?
Because he is full on supporting genocide
In that case don’t vote for Biden and enable the election of the other guy.
The one that Benjamin Netanyahu described as the ‘best friend Israel has ever had in White House’.
That should enhance the plight of the oppressed.
Richard, what you say is not becoming of a man who claims such a lofty intellectual high ground. Regardless of what you think of trump, your words do not reflect well on you and your self proclaimed lofty status.
As you say you don’t fear the consequences.
I have forwarded your words to all the institutions who you often claim you represent. And those you use to bolster your ego. Including Sheffield university, radio 2, the bbc in general, the Green Party amongst many others.
My words were correct.
Those institutions will all know that.
And, for the record, I work for Sheffield University, have no links to the Green Party, n invited onto Radio 2 at their choice and not mine, and all you reveal yourself to be is a very petty man with a fascist agenda of oppression to promote.
Martin Smith. Please can you specify, with reasons, which of Richard’s words are untrue. They appear totally valid to me.
The epithet ‘fascist’, like many descriptors is used too casually and like the words ‘genius’ and ‘brilliant’, far too often.
As regards Mr Trump, it is true that he appeals, by design, to factions of the American public that espouse fascistic views, but Trump’s genuinely held views probably fall far short of ‘full on’ fascist.
I believe that Trump can be described by the ‘f word’ but that word is fraud.
Trump is a fraud.
How can he be a fraud when 70 million US voters were willing to elect him and despite all his travails he has a fair chance of being reflected?
That’s the PhD thesis, not why is Trump a thin-skinned, vengeful narcissist, but how does a person with huge character flaws and few, if any real world solutions, persuade a large section of the public that they can fix the big problems?
I’m not suggesting I can complete the thesis in this blog but I can propose the title of a section.
Instinct.
Trump’s instincts, so far, have served him pretty well. There have been some missteps but the base has been held together through some fairly difficult events, by Trump’s instincts. Not his intellect. It is that instinct that tells him to court the favour of the extreme right wing. There are signs that he will not be able to please all of those in his coalition but until now it’s holding.
That a man can arrive by private 757 jet and empathise with those with grievances about most things in life and give them hope is testimony to his instinct. He does it by expressing those same grievances for hours on end, over and over, until the audience believes he feels the same pain and desperation. It’s not what Simone Weil meant when she proposed that “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity” but taken at it’s simplest, it’s close.
In the end all fraud is revealed for what it is. I have no doubt whether Trump wins or loses in 2024, at some point the fraud will be exposed. However Trump’s instincts have nurtured a cult that is highly resistant to accepting that they have been conned. For me, that is where the danger really lies. Trump is probably not a fascist but he is a fraud and with 70 million deluded cult followers.
I think he is fascist
I have explained why many times
I haven’t had the blog emailed to me since 16th July. Checked and it hasn’t gone into spam. Please could I be put back on the recipient list? I really miss reading it, I find it reassuring in a worrying world.
I will check what is happening…
Thanks for telling me