This comes from the Mail, yesterday afternoon:
President Donald Trump is preparing to counter Chinese influence in Canada as his 'Donroe Doctrine' for the Western Hemisphere expands beyond Latin America, his former campaign architect Steve Bannon has told the Daily Mail.
'The next big thing is going to be Canada. Canada is the next Ukraine because they can't defend their northern arctic border and China is going to come take a bite,' former White House chief strategist Bannon said. 'They can't defend it and Trump is going to come in hard on Canada.'
This "policy" of Trump's is not just about Greenland: it is very clear that it is about creating a North (and maybe South) American empire. This is what Trump wants as his "legacy", and there are people like Bannon, and White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Steve Miller, who are more than willing to use him to advance their own desire to create a white, male-dominated, supposedly evangelical Christian theocracy in the USA, and beyond.
Despite this, European leaders are still pussy-footing around, pretending that diplomacy can still work. Naivete comes in many forms. This is it at its most dangerous. Saying 'please' nicely won't work with Trump: the counter-narratives and measures I have been discussing here have to be on the table now. If that does not happen, the cost could be very high indeed.
And there is something else required as well: the enemy must be named.
This requires that we call out Trump's fascism.
And it means that his misogyny, prejudice, racism, and straightforward thuggery must be named.
There is a battle with what can only be called evil to be won here: let's not pretend otherwise. That cannot be won without calling out what exists, and what Trump wants to impose on the world.
That's why I welcome those now openly calling him a fascist, from Robert Reich onwards. They're a bit late to the game, but they've got there, and they're right to do so. Trump is a fascist: that has to be said, time and again.
And it is why I also welcome people like the News Agents podcast calling ICE "Gestapo-like", because that is exactly what they are.
Part of this battle requires that our politicians explain why the issue of Greenland is much bigger than a dispute over a massive island with a population of 56,000 people. It is very, very much more than that. The battle with Trump is about defeating fascism, again. Unless that is said, how can our politicians expect to win support for what is happening?
So far, they have not even begun the propaganda war against Trump. It's time they did.
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Camus: “The Pest” – it never goes away. If governments screw enough of their population for long enough (I’m looking @ both the Repubs and Dixecrats) then there is a reaction. Trump is that (fascist) reaction. The USA is much weaker than is imagined. It needs Europe to project force (why all those military bases). Without those bases – no force projection. In the same way that part of the “solution” to Russia is break-up of empire (which is what it is), one could make a similar the argument wrt the United States – one view of which is two coast and “fly-over territory” (a phrase I have heard more than one American use). All that said, the gathering climate disaster will deliver “interesting” results both for Europe and the USA.
If a society still has elections, courts, and some institutional independence, then I feel the safest way to end authoritarian leadership is boring, legal, collective, and, I’m afraid, slow.
It requires patience, coalition-building, and an acceptance that democratic defence often feels inadequate right up until the moment it succeeds.
That might not be morally satisfying, but it’s the best, most effective route.
And it does mean we, and our Government, should all be calling out what Trump is and what he’s doing, so that we give clear support to US citizens and institutions who want to mobilise for change. Louder and louder.
Cliff B
Interesting word at the beginning of your post, “If”. Trump looks likely to cancel the mid-term elections, and can probably do so with impunity if the country is at was, either with itself (reason for ICE’s appalling actions) or with Europe.
You have a valid point, Clive. The ‘if’ is not to be ignored of course.
I have a friend in Florida, former US Navy and cop, now an engineer. He wrote this today on my Facebook page
“This one out of the 325M Americans would like to apologize to all of our allies, that many of our countrymen thought it was a grand idea to place a demented egomaniacal moron in the most powerful seat in the nation.”
He is not alone. I distinguish between the people and the government.
Interesting article by Nesrine Malik in the Guardian on how authoritarianism developed in the US and the creep towards it here in the UK.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/19/ice-crackdown-britain?CMP=share_btn_url
Our government should be calling out Trump…but we should also be calling out our own government.
Agreed. Nesrine Malik is very good.
UK has a long history of violent crackdowns on dissent, partisan courts and partisan media. I worked in a coalfield area during the Miners Strike and was subject to frequent stop and search, and in one case, removal of interior panels and seats of my car, which were thrown on the verge. Orgreave, where the BBC transmitted reversed sequences of the police charge, and the courts were set up to try pickets en masse, until the real evidence was revealed. Th e longstanding arrests of dissidents over the Gaza complicity and the escalating law changes reveal a society on the cusp of repression, commanded by a cabal of Zionists and funded by the uber-rich. Lefties have been warning of this drift for a long time, and are now losing the battle.
We lost the battle long ago – when Thatcher was re-elected despite everything she had done and was promising to do. Too many people wanted cash, not a caring society.
The NATO and/or UN leaders standing against Trump need to have the guts to collectively and publicly state that they do not think Trump is joking about the threats, that they represent high crimes against international law and order, and call upon the US government to protect the USA from becoming a parish.
Perhaps also a leaked briefing about evaluations of Trump’s health.
One problem is obviously that Vance has been supporting these moves, too, so he would need to do an about face or be impeached as well.
For Greenland read Palestine, for Americans read Zionists and if European NATO forces militarily resist Trump then they will, of course, be ‘terrorists’ in the style of Hamas. The identical scenario of expansionism and failure of appeasement is playing out as it did in 1939.
When Chamberlain declared war it will have been with a heavy heart because he will have known that many Allied lives were going to be lost. Similarly those that enlisted to fight will, on some level, have recognised that too many of them would not be coming home. They bravely stepped forward because there was no other way to stop the evil that was festering and metastasising in Germany.
This makes it all the more disappointing that this evil is now being nurtured and enabled anew in ‘the land of the free’. It has been spawned by neo-liberal capitalism, the cult that declares ‘f**k everyone but me’, where the ‘me’ in question are corporations that have been gifted the rights of individuals and who have then have gone on to distort and poison our politics.
This unholy mess has been made by man…. and it can be unmade by man.
Unlike most of the rest of the planet the US has been fortunate not to have suffered really profound consequences for the violence of its numerous wars, regime changes and subversions. If they’d had ICBM’s raining down on a few of their major cities they’d maybe approach things a little differently.
Well-worth a read, Richard. https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2026/01/greenland-and-irrational-responses-to-the-crisis-of-capital-accumulation.html
Thanks, and agreed, worth reading. It exposes all the lies.
It’s time that journalists asked the question “do you think Greenland and Canada would be less vulnerable protected by US standing alone than they are currently as members of NATO?” The bullshit that US is trying this for “security” reasons needs to be called out.
The only way to deal with bullies like Trump is to consistently and steadfastly stare back at them. Carney told him “never, never, never” and so should all European leaders.
It seems Canada is already moving business away from with the US, towards China. Probably not the effect Trump was hoping for…
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm24k6kk1rko
And why he is getting stroppy and why we must be robust, including in supprting Canada.