Trump's threat to Greenland is an emergency, and it must be treated as one.

This is not just a territorial dispute. It is a deliberately chosen test of whether coercion can be normalised and then repeated to spread an empire in a way and for an aim that can only be described as evil.

This video sets out:

• Why Greenland is symbolically massive.

• Why diplomatic understatement now is denial of the political reality of this moment

• Why propaganda and intimidation are central tools of authoritarian expansion.

• Why democracies must regain moral clarity and plan countermeasures now.

The question is not “can we negotiate?” The question is: will we resist, and in time?

This is the audio version:

This is the transcript:

If you are not worried about the world at this moment, do you really know what's going on?   Are you aware that Donald Trump is threatening to take Greenland by force? And let's stop pretending that this is just Donald Trump being Donald Trump.  Greenland is not the whole story right now, important as it is, and real as the threats are. It isn't   the whole story because it is only the opening chapter in a bigger saga.

Greenland is the pretext, but what is happening is bigger, darker, and far more organised than a threat to Greenland alone. We are watching the early stages of an imperial project that is going to be rolled out by Trump, called the Donroe Project, and the consequences for you, for me, and for everyone else are going to be mighty serious.

Let's be clear about what is happening.  Trump is, of course, threatening Greenland, and he is saying he must have it, and he is saying that nobody will stand in his way,   but this is not just about a territorial dispute, even though that is what it looks like. Too many people think that this is the whole story, but it isn't. This isn't even just a mad bargaining tactic or a publicity stunt. It is part of a pattern, and it's a consistent pattern, and that is a pattern of expansion of the USA, which is being justified by intimidation.

He's already gone for Venezuela.

He's talking about Cuba.

He's threatening Greenland, and we'll see, the story does not end there.

What Trump is doing is setting out a plan to create a North American Empire. This is a Western Hemisphere doctrine, as it is called, which is something that was set out in 1823 by  US President James Monroe; long dead, long gone,   but unfortunately not forgotten by Donald Trump.

What Monroe said right back then was that  Europe should not interfere in what he called the Western hemisphere, which he described as the USA and its hinterlands, including all the states around it.   He said that if Europe left the US to dominate that sphere of influence, then the US wouldn't meddle in Europe.

Basically, this doctrine held true for a century. It was why, in fact, in 1914,  the USA was so reluctant to come into the First World War because the   Monroe Doctrine still held, and now, a century later, Donald Trump is reviving it.

What he says is that he wants to dominate North America and maybe the South as well because, let's be clear, it doesn't seem that we know how far his territorial ambitions go, and he wants us in Europe to stand back and let him do what he wants, including taking Greenland, which, as far as he's concerned, is American and not European when frankly, the whole issue is open to dispute because it's really in geophysical terms, not a part of either. But the point is, he isn't looking for partners, he's not looking for allies, he's not looking for friends in the whole of the Americas. What he's looking for is territory to be dominated, and that is the whole basis for this "Donroe" Doctrine.

Steve Bannon made this clear over the last weekend. He   told a UK newspaper, The Daily Mail, but it doesn't matter which, that Canada is next. His framing was very clear. What he said  was that Canada could be attacked by anyone, because it cannot defend itself, because it is too big and it has an arctic border, which it is leaving undefended, which is open to Russia and   therefore it must be defended by the USA who must now take control of it, and that is his justification for the US apparently annexing what has been an independent state for as long as the US has been.

The comparison is crude, and it's also crude in the sense that Bannon aligned Canada with Ukraine. What he said is that Canada is available to be pressured , just as he obviously thought that Ukraine was available to be pressured by Russia in its conflict with a broader Europe. This implies that he simply sees Canada as a piece in a game, and the game that he's talking about is not one of normal diplomacy; it's that he thinks that Canada is the next piece to be taken in the  creation of this empire that he, Trump, and Steven Miller, who is the assistant chief of staff in the White House, want to create.

This is predation as geopolitics. It's how Empire justifies itself. Empire always needs a story after all, and it says "we must act before others, because we have the might to do so". Then it claims "we are defending", even though they're actually expanding. It uses fear as a cover for its actions. What it does is rebrand aggression as a necessity to defend a homeland, which it believes is vulnerable, and we have, of course, seen as policy far too often.

It was that of Germany in the 1930s.

It was that of Russia after the Second World War.

It has   been the policy of nations for centuries, including to some degree the UK when it came to the creation of empire, because that is what this is about. It is about seizing territory to be exploited as empire to defend failing policy at home, and to maintain incomes in the base location of the state where the emperor wishes to live at the time when they would otherwise be depleted by their actions overseas, with the exploitation of the acquired overseas territories being used to placate the domestic audience for the actions of this so-called president, or emperor, as they would now be as a way to buy domestic support for the policy that is being delivered.

The real target here is sovereignty, and subordination is the whole point. Greenland is not valuable because of its people. The 56,000 people who live there do not matter to Donald Trump; let's not pretend that they do. He couldn't give a damn about them. He values them because he wants to break the principle of sovereignty of Denmark over Greenland, and then make the world accept his coercion as normal.  He's picked a small state for this reason, very deliberately. It isn't   chance that Greenland is first on the list that he wants to acquire, because when he normalises domination through coercion, he believes that he can spread the policy into Canada and onwards. Mexico, wait, your turn. The rest of South America, Donald is on his way.

This is what this is all about, and Europe is making a fatal mistake in the face of this; its naivete is deeply dangerous at present.  It seems as if European leaders still think that they are involved in a negotiation with Donald Trump. They   still think that polite diplomacy will work, and they still think that careful wording is power, but this is no longer a rules-based game. Why? Because Donald Trump isn't taking part in the game anymore.

He's not trying to win by negotiation. He's simply seeking domination in plain sight, and therefore, the idea that diplomacy can work, which is based upon the assumption that shared rules apply, is simply not true now.  Authoritarians do not accept restraint by treaty. Instead, they set out to exploit weakness. They use a delay as a weapon, and they escalate while others negotiate.

Donald Trump will be delighted at what Europe is doing at this moment. He will be particularly delighted by the actions of Keir Starmer, who seems to be fence-sitting as ever. But the fact is, whilst they prevaricate, he is making progress, and the rate of progress is phenomenal. It's frightening. Bluntly, I used that word wisely. We're seeing the world change before our eyes. We have to wake up every morning and say, "Are international boundaries what they were yesterday?" It is that mad.

The problem with European understatement is that it is delaying action. The language of concern that is being used by European leaders is not enough. The language of dialogue is not enough. Understatement is no longer an indication of maturity and seniority in the process of negotiation.  Understatement is now a denial of the reality of the situation we face. It postpones resistance until it's too late,   and the fact is that the enemy must now be named.

This is fascism that we are talking about here. There is one thing we must do if we're serious, and that is name the opponent that we face. We can't soften the fact that we're talking about fascism. We can't euphemise it, we can't normalise it, we must name it. And in this context, fascism looks like misogyny, racism, and thuggery.

It isn't just populism;  it is misogyny, the hatred of women turned into power, and   that is undoubtedly a key driver of everything that Trump does.

It is prejudice turned into state policy,  and we can see that in action on the streets of the USA now.

And it is racism turned into border violence.

What is more, thuggery is now an instrument of government in the USA, when  people can't literally walk the streets without fear of being killed by US troops in their own domestic cities.

This is what fascism looks like, and if you don't describe it, you can't defeat it. People will not resist what they cannot see. The public will not be mobilised around euphemisms. If leaders can't say fascism, they can't confront it. Silence is not neutrality. Silence becomes surrender.

And there is a point here too, because surrender is a keyword to use because we are talking about the use of violence in the USA, and that is clearly going to expand. All of those countries living in fear of being taken over by the USA have good reason to literally be in fear because what we're seeing is a Gestapo-like operation on the streets of the USA.

The ICE, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency in the USA, is quite literally now behaving in a Gestapo-like fashion. It is dragging people out of their cars. It is shooting people in the streets,   and when force becomes routine policy, something changes. When fear becomes governance, something changes. When intimidation becomes administration, something changes. This is, of course, the authoritarian method, and it spreads if it is allowed to succeed, and that is what Europe is permitting at present by not calling this out.

Let's go back to the point. Greenland isn't small. It is symbolically massive. It might only have 56,000 people, but it matters because it's a test of principle. If coercion works here, it will be used elsewhere, and even everywhere. Empire spreads in this way.

The required propaganda war in response hasn't even started. Authoritarians use propaganda constantly. They lie, they repeat, they normalise, and they win by narrative before force is needed.

Democracies must answer that propaganda with truth and moral clarity, but nonetheless, they must be pumping out their message now.  Democracies must persuade. Democracies must tell the truth. Democracies must speak plainly. Democracies must not pretend that both sides are the same in this dispute, because very clearly they are not.

Donald Trump, let's spell out the words is 'evil'. There is no other way to describe him and his regime. These are the forces of darkness.   Use whatever metaphor you wish; these people are literally threatening humankind, and democracy must regain the moral confidence to say things like that.

We must, of course, still be planning the countermeasures. There are counter-narratives to promote , but we must also be looking at the same time at the pragmatic measures that must be taken now to ensure that Europe and other countries can survive the challenges being faced. There must be trade sanctions. There must be the closure  of US bases if that becomes necessary, because why should we be hosting hostile US forces in our countries?   Intelligence and defence sharing must end. There must be a realignment, and much more.

This is going to be painful, even difficult, and costly because the US is going to retaliate, but it must be planned now, and the fact that it is being planned must be made known because the USA must know this before it escalates the dispute. It's no good doing this after capitulation. It must be done now while choices remain open, and that's what leaders must do: they must lead with language.

They mustn't leave the public floating, wondering what is going on. They must shape opinion by leadership, and leadership begins with naming threats. If you can't explain what's happening, then you can't win consent for the action. If you can't name fascism and say you're opposing it, you will not win the consent of people to defend a real democracy, and you must ensure that you promise that it is a real democracy that will survive this conflict.

We must not, in other words, normalise evil, which is what we risk doing.

What's going on right now in the world is something very real and very dangerous. We are fighting against authoritarian expansionism by the USA in a way that is unprecedented in the lifetimes of anyone now on this planet. We are fighting fascism again.

Let's not beat around the bush.  We are where we were roughly a century ago. We've   defeated it before, but only when we stopped pretending it wasn't there. We have to stop pretending it isn't there now. Fascism is alive. It's functioning in the USA. It has mimics in Europe. It has people who want to import it here.

We have to oppose the far right, and what they wish to do to oppress people across the USA, and in its neighbouring states, and in Europe, and beyond, or all we will all suffer enormously.

That is the challenge we face. That is the challenge that our political leaders must rise to. That is the leadership crisis that they aren't yet addressing, and it's time they did because we need them to do so right now.

What do you think? There's a poll down below.

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