Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Only this president could Trump WW3
IMAGINE if the second worst thing you did in a week was to threaten starting a world war. The second worst thing. You declared you were prepared to bring an inferno of biblical proportion upon the world, like the world has never seen before – and you actually have the power to do that. But it wasn’t even the worst thing you did that week.
Would be quite a feat to top. But Trump managed it.
After his frankly terrifying boast, he trumped it by refusing to condemn Nazis on the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia. He proclaimed there were guilty, aggressive parties on both sides. But only one side got in a car and ploughed into counter protesters, killing a 32-year-old civil rights activist called Heather Heyer. That was a Nazi who did that.
Trump knows this but still he refused to condemn them and their actions. He is a man content to have white supremacists and Nazis on the streets of America. He is a man who knows that sort of person supports him. He is a man who knows that his words and actions give them licence to be what they are. When he describes Mexicans as racists, when he tries to ban muslims from entering the United States, he is sending out a very clear message about where his sympathies lie.
And his sympathies lie with the heavily armed fascists who marched through the streets of Charlottesville, the sort of people whose allegiances are closer to Hitler than America. The sort of people who forget America and the rest of the world fought against Nazis in WW2 and stopped them spreading their hatred and mass genocide on a global scale. illions lost their lives at the hands of the Nazis and many more died fighting them. It’s not possible to be a Nazi and an American at the same time. At least not the America it claims to be, mould-
Med by its constitution, it’s declaration all men are created equal. Trump doesn’t even believe that. He believes some are born with better genes than others. It’s known as the Racehorse Theory, that if you come from parents who have certain superior attributes, these will be passed down to you. Trump believes his family have superior genetic make up that has been passed on to him, making him more intelligent and more of a “winner” than most. In fact, he said some people are born “winners” and some “losers”.
His deluded logic is all too familiar – it is the language of the white supremacy. That’s why racists, fascists and white supremacists like him so much. The see an ally in the White House. There has been a rebrand of white supremacists and Nazis of late, they are now known as the alt-right. Here’s the thing, though – if you carry a swastika and make the Sieg Heil salute, you are not altright, you are a Nazi, plain and simple. If you hold racist or fascist views, you are not alt-right, you are a white supremacist. If you have a hatred of gay people, you are not alt-right, you are a homophobe. Let’s not dress it up. Call it out for what it is. t home, there’s been another suppression of human rights. Not only do we still not have an equal marriage Bill but a marriage in the UK or Republic is not even recognised here.
So this United Kingdom we belong to permits same-sex couples to marry but we don’t recognise it. What exactly are we as a country?
There are those who want to be part of the UK but not share all its laws. It’s ironic that parties most passionate about being part of this Union only seem to want bits of it.
If the Union is that strong and worth fighting for, surely you embrace all of it, not just the bits that suit?
Why this even needs to be pointed out baffles me.
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