Trump's fascist agenda continues to progress. There were more signs over the weekend.
First, there was discussion of a 100 per cent tariff on foreign-made films being shown in the USA, because they are a 'threat to national security'.
No one knows precisely what this threat is meant to mean.
No one quite knows why US-made films shot outside the USA should be a threat to national security.
No one, of course, knows whether anything of this sort will actually emerge from the cesspit of corruption that is the Trump White House.
But then, none of those things are what this is all about. The idea behind this announcement is to suggest three things.
The first is to divide. What is not American is bad is the suggestion, blatantly implying that something is only of value if it is American. This is tribal nationalism, a blatant fascist agenda.
The second is about trustworthiness: only what the administration says is reliable is reliable. This is part of a propaganda war.
The third is to, of course, 'other' the rest of the world and its ideas. I strongly suspect that when this tariff emerges (as it probably will), it will be independent, art house and cultural films that will be hit by it. The aim will be simple: you will be able (for now) to see films that the administration does not approve of, and you can exercise your right to free speech if you so wish, but there will be a literal price to pay for doing so, meaning many will not.
The aim is to, as a result, make the foreigner, the person deemed 'woke', and the whole process of thinking the enemy of the American people, by deeming it un-American. Things do not come more fascist than that.
The continuing attack on US universities embraces the same themes. The attack on Harvard and other Ivy League universities is driven by Trump, but it has ramifications. As the Washington Post has reported:
A bruising battle over academic freedom is being waged in Texas, where the legislature is poised to give the state power to screen faculty, programs and courses in one of the country's largest public university systems, and experts say the outcome could reverberate for higher education nationwide.
The claim being made by the Texan authorities is that universities should be free from ideological bias and that higher education should be about teaching students how to think, not what to think. The implication is obvious. It is that, right now, universities are teaching students to be left-wing, and that has to stop. That makes the claims made by Texan politicians completely Goebbelsian, of course. The whole point of their effort to sanitise state universities of left-wing thinking is, in fact, to ensure that students are taught what they should think, rather than to think for themselves. The claim made for this programme is the exact opposite of the truth. That is what a Goebbelsian programme is all about.
The idea of freedom is being so rapidly eroded in the USA that it is hard to keep pace with it, but what is clear is that the idea of thinking is being outlawed. That is precisely what the Trump administration will not tolerate.
The administration wants just one type of person in the USA. They want people who will act as automatons in the production of profit, whether as producers or consumers, with that profit then enhancing the massive wealth of the tiny elite that the regime serves (Trump's administration cannot be called a government, because it is not). Deviance from this requirement is, first of all, to be discouraged. Then it will be punished, which fate is already on the cards for those in the faculty at Texan universities who do not comply with the demands of the Texan state administrators. This is, of course, an entirely fascist programme.
Three thoughts to conclude.
The first is, when does the exodus of those who realise that the US is now a toxic place to live begin? There was such an exodus of Jews from Germany in 1933 before it became impossible to leave. Will the intellectuals, the creators, the teachers, and those likely to be persecuted try to do the same from the US now?
Second, who will welcome them? Remember that the UK was, overall, a far from welcoming place for Jews who fled Germany in the 1930s, and the media (and most especially the Daily Mail) was very opposed to their arrival. Will that happen now as well?
Third, how long will we be free of the same issues? With the rise of Reform, which I consider promotes an agenda akin to that of Trump, when will we see this happening here? Let's not be naive about the possibility; it is very real.
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When I researched a talk for our Western Front Association branch, i went through some old newspapers. The Daily Mail vilified the Jews arriving in the early 20th century to escape the pogroms in Russia.
Today their list is quite long. Their present anti- Semitism is a stick to vilify the Palestinians. Same process, different target. Like Reform, they can’t see a minority without wanting to kick it.
Thank you for a relevant, properly disturbing article.
“The Trump approach is tragicomic, so seemingly bizarre, so brazen so transparent. So lunatic, so out to lunch yet at the same moment so dangerous. They view reality as whatever those in power can bludgeon people into accepting and they intend to do so no matter how extreme.”
[From https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/05/06/the-language-of-fascism/
“when does the exodus of those who realise that the US is now a toxic place to live begin?”.
It’s partly underway already. I follow a forum for anglophones in France, and there is a notable increase in enquiries from people in the US, both retired, but also those who have a significant slice of their working lives in front of them.
And just yesterday the EU announced a €500million program to attract US researchers, with €100million coming just from France. The University of Aix-en-Provence jumped in a couple of months ago to offer 20 funded posts for US researchers and got 300 applications within days.
Of course these programmes are aimed at top flight scientists, it’s not a general “welcome with open-arms” policy. But things are moving, and from what I can tell there is a lot of anti-Trump feeling in France, and little hostility to the idea of attracting researchers.
But there are darker clouds on the horizon. The French interior minister, Bruno Retailleau, is known for his hard line on migration and just yesterday announced tougher rules on naturalisation (higher standard of French, better cultural knowledge of France, more proof of adequate resources, etc). This follows tougher rules he set out in January for the regularisation of undocumented migrants. The extreme right seem to still be gaining ground.
“when does the exodus of those who realise that the US is now a toxic place to live begin?” already started – Immobiliers in france were innudated with enquiries from US citizens in Nov 2024 (for long lets or purchase). As for the “who will welcome them” the Nov 2024 people were rich – so no problems.
As for the supression of thought – this has kicked off and will probably intensify. Humans have been here before – Nixey’s “Heresey” gives pretty good account of what happened in Rome from Constantine becoming a christian (circa 312) through to 400AD – by which time there was generalised suppression of all other religions/philosophy & only “correct” thinking allowed (as defined by Christinas – natch). Trumpism (& mini-me Deform) will probably try to do the same using the tried & tested approach of lies & bullshit (= if you don’t look like us & think like us you are QED against us)..
The sun is shining but my blood runs cold. I’m trying to hold on to hope, and read with interest the article by the journalist who covered the rise of Erdogan, which I was sure I had found the link to on here. I should have bookmarked it. Can anyone help please?
Ece Temelkuran? She wrote a book called ‘How to Lose a Country’.
Ece Temulkuran, ‘How to Lose a Country’. Is that the one?
It’s already happening here, not just in the rise of Reform. If you look at what Starmer now preaches and compare it to the manifesto he put forward in his bid to become leader, it is night and day.
Starmer spent his 4 years as leader of the opposition doing essentially nothing, except purging the party which is supposed to represent the left/centre-left in the UK of any left thinking, in any form.
Witness the extraordinary agenda Labour has pursued in its disastrous first ten months in office – it makes something from the era of, say, John Major look like Jeremy Corbyn.
This is scarily following the track of the film with Christian Bale Equlibrium.
And what is not mentioned is that this is happening in the uk too only covertly.
Our protest law is illegal, as well as the increase malaise and malcontent mis information the poverty and inflation is keeping us downtrodden and unwilling to speak. Not at the speed of American but at a speed to which it is a creeping reality. Britain’s is more dangerous as we are just rolling with every blow emalgamting every deduction in our rights and humanity, accepting every scandal but by bit drip by drip we are becoming what we fear of America. America at least you can see it coming.
What I don’t get is people partied for VE Day yesterday it screams to me the irony we a celebrating a day that marked the end of facist tyrany a huge day and a vow to not let it return yet here we are 80 years later ,facist is back and we are welcoming it as it’s wearing a new T-shirt. As the saying goes same shi’r’t different day.
I thought the same when I saw an article from LBC lamenting that only a third of 18 to 24-year-olds knew VE Day’s significance. We have three major political parties tripping over themselves to repeat the mistakes of 1930s Germany, and a media landscape normalising fascism. Can you blame today’s youth for being confused?
Yes, I was struck too by the irony of the UK’s (over the top) celebrations of VE day at time when fascism or it’s near relatives are advancing in the UK and elsewhere.
Apparently the Reform ‘free speech’ lovers are now to decree only the Union flag, England flag and local county flags will be flown by their councils. Does this apply to the hapless residents of these council areas I wonder?
If you fly an EU flag will they demand you take it down? Goerbellian hypocrites.
Slightly tangentially, I listened to an interview about the non-dom regime this morning on Bloomberg Radio with the head of the private client practice at the Mishcon De Reya law firm in London. Apart from admitting that the majority of his clients who have left or are leaving have done so or are doing so for reasons other than tax, he also said he was getting a lot of enquiries from American families interested in moving here, including many who he termed Republican.
Thanks Ralph
Very few people move for tax, as we both know
@ Richard,
How do you feel about the US’s approach to personal taxation?
As far as I’m aware, their citizens are liable for tax, wherever they are and wherever their income comes from; less what they’ve paid locally. Boris Johnson, for example, opted to give up his US citizenship, rather than pay tax to the IRS on profits from a house sale.
Want to move to Monaco for tax purposes, fine; but you’d better get yourself Monegasque or another citizenship if you want to avoid tax, in the meantime here’s the bill. Seems eminently sensible to me.
I approve of it, and have said so publicly for 20 years.
I call it a passport based tax.
“No one quite knows why US-made films shot outside the USA should be a threat to national security.”
So much for the Star Wars franchise!!! I wonder if this will apply to TV Shows? Will their be a tariff on 2024’s excellent series “Mr. Bates vs. The Post Office”?
“No one, of course, knows whether anything of this sort will actually emerge from the cesspit of corruption that is the Trump White House.”
Trump is losing his ‘Swing Base” were quickly and the hard core “MAGAt Base” is progressively eroding so he has to say attempt anything do anything that will rouse the attention of these voters and keep them in the Trump boat.
Trump “Swing Base” is defined as people who voted for Obama and Biden and then swung to to Trump 2.0 in 2024.
Well, if you want my opinion, it is this: the sanitisation of the Left has already been achieved – New Labour was Thatcher’s greatest creation – so I think she said.
The English – with their good manners and evil subtleties – I think have already done it, taking their time, drip, dripping the poisoning of anything to the Left. Even now, I have people in discussion coming across as very scared of the Left even though we never had anything as close to what happened in Eastern Europe. The left as ‘bogeyman’ is still alive and kicking despite all all our problems being resourced from the Right.
And look what happened to the Left as it became emboldened more recently – or what just labelled itself as ‘the Left’ – Corbyn – and his ‘anti-Semitism’ – though unacceptable, it was blown out of proportion in my view and still needs to be unpicked when you consider the casual racism of the Tory party and elsewhere in our society that was ignored. The lesson being that the rich – whether Christians, Jews, Muslims, whatever, will always be prepared to play their identity politics cards when necessary in order to protect what they have in common with each other – their premium status in society brought about by their wealth.
The Left is no longer a ‘big idea’, it is now just one of many smaller ideas, and the only big idea now is ‘TINA’.
Where to go?
No idea, but look, fairness, empathy and the awareness of what wealth does to the human psyche (pleonexia) and consequentially human societies (inequality) has been around since Adam was a lad. So the label ‘ the Left’ is very modern. So, my view is that this alternative narrative ALREADY embedded in human history needs a rebrand. The Left ‘discovered’ the better side of human nature rather like religion did and claimed – somewhat unjustifiably – the better human traits for itself.
So for me, fairness, empathy etc., are not political constructs. They always were pragmatic, interconnected reactions to survival by human beings I suspect before we even had language.
It is the rich who, engorged with resources, have turned their backs on needing anyone else and sell this to us as ‘independence’……but the thing is, they DO need others to help them along too in the form of corruption – of/by accountants, bankers, lawyers and politicians etc., in the ecology of money. As we know, the rich love to rewrite history as much as the Soviets and as much as those English Kings who subjugated Wales and Scotland.
So, a rebrand is what is needed to describe this culture you have described as ‘caring’. That’s a big ask. But, the ideas behind whatever it becomes are sound and make sense for the majority of people, because its based on a shared notion of survival.
David Cameron was/is so thick, that when he said ‘We’re all in it together’ he was absolutely right but did not realise what he was really saying, how true that actually is even though since 2010, the rich have got a hell of lot richer.
“Third, how long will we be free of the same issues? With the rise of Reform, which I consider promotes an agenda akin to that of Trump, when will we see this happening here?”
I think Nigel Farage is always 6-9 months behind Trump because he watches for the USA public reaction to Trump’s actions and mistakes that Trump makes then course corrects. Lord Farquhar is many things but he is NOT stupid.
Interesting encounter: Last Saturday I was in the staffed checkout lane at Target because I had several bulky items. The dumb dude in front of me made a MAGA type comment about immigrants (read people of color) clogging up the checkout line. The smart dude behind me called out this MAGAt person by telling him directly the problem was target not having enough staffed checkout lines open. He then finished the dumb dude off by telling him that ‘Immigrant” dollars are just as green as the dollars in his wallet. I loved every minute of it!
I feel that the UK has already moved much further to the right.
Various regulators have been captured, as have the BBC and the Mainstream media.
The Labour Left wing has been neutered.
The right to protest is now an arrestable offence.
Expressing the wrong opinion on social media is also an arrestable offence.
Tariffs on foreign-made films will hit the UK hard. Although successive governments have let our domestic film industry wither on the vine in terms of British-produced cinema, our film and TV industry (like many of our industries) benefits from American money. If it stops being cheaper to produce movies here, then that’s another blow to this tiny vassal state and our “special” relationship.
So why don’t we deny them permission to build the much-hyped Universal Theme Park in Bedfordshire (that Labour was recently crowing about) as a tit for tat? It only offers environmental destruction, tens of thousands of poorly-paid jobs and an injection of yet more American fantasy consumerism into the fabric of our society.
The Labour Party is already purged of the left.
I really don’t know what it’s for anymore.
If I was being kind, I would say Labour is now on a par with the 2010 coalition government, and it could well be worse than that.
This is interesting in the context of the observation that the left is in a more promising position to answer the big questions we are facing, in particular, how to tackle climate change, biodiversity loss, income and wealth inequality, excesses of corporate power, and the threats posed by AI.
I would say having a labour cabinet that is just as right-wing as anything the Tories came up with (lettuce included), plus their insistence on lying to the UK in order to further cement Neoliberal thinking means the UK is further down the path than the US is.
Over the pond there’s still a very vocal group of politicians who dare call out Trump’s madness. I don’t see the same in the UK.