North Korea warns ‘instable’ Trump against reckless remarks
SEOUL — North Korea on Sunday warned Donald Trump against making “reckless remarks” as the US president began a marathon Asian tour dominated by the nuclear threat from Pyongyang.
Ruling party newspaper Rodong Sinmun said Americans were pressing for the president’s early impeachment because tough remarks by a “spiritually instable” Trump could bring about “nuclear disaster to the US mainland”.
After arriving in Tokyo yesterday, Trump warned that “no dictator” should underestimate the US, in a thinly veiled reference to North Korea.
Trump, who will also visit South Korea this week, has been engaged in an escalating war of words with the North’s leader Kim Jong-Un, trading threats and personal insults.
In his maiden address to the UN General Assembly he threatened to “totally destroy” the North if it attacked the US or its allies.
Rodong Sinmum cited Bob Corker, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and former officials as saying Trump was pointlessly escalating tensions with the North.
But the president has not come to his senses and instead is “seriously stimulating the DPRK (North Korea) by making foolish remarks”, the paper said in a commentary carried by the KCNA state news agency.
“If the US misjudges the DPRK’s toughest will and dares to act recklessly, the latter will be compelled to deal a resolute and merciless punishment upon the former with the mobilisation of all forces,” it added.
Tensions are high after the North’s sixth and most powerful nuclear test in September, along with a series of ballistic missile launches in recent months.
The North says it now has the ability to launch nuclear strikes on the US mainland.
Meanwhile, claims that left-wing activists and antifascists (also known as “Antifa”) planned to “behead white parents” and deploy “super soldiers” as part of a bid to launch a civil war turned out to be a series of modest anti-Trump marches in cities across the country.
Saturday’s demonstrations and marches, which took place in several US cities and largely passed without incident, had been billed by far-right websites as plans to carry out mass bloodshed and execute a coup against Trump.
RefuseFascism.Org, a left-wing protest group, called for the rallies to “drive out” the Trump administration, sparking a storm of far-right conspiracy theories about anti-fascists’ alleged plans to start a civil war in the country.
A day before the rallies, Fox News dubbed the events the “Antifa apocalypse”, while far-right forums claimed that leftists planned to indiscriminately murder white people on Saturday.
But the rallies were a far cry from the conspiracy theories that had gone viral on far-right websites, with some 300 people assembling in New York City and dozens rallying in places like San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin and Portland, among others.
Speaking at the rally, RefuseFascism.Org organiser Carl Dix said far-right websites and social media users spread rumours online because “they wanted to demonise what we’re doing”.
“They cooked up a conscious lie talking about violence,” he said. “We said from the beginning this was going to be a non-violent protest.”
Rally participants held signs and banners, reading “the Trump-Pence regime must go!”
“I am sexually attracted to indictments,” another sign said.
A handful of pro-Trump hecklers milled around the march, chanting back occasionally, and a brief altercation between a left-wing march participant and a counterdemonstrator was broken up by police.
Although RefuseFascism.Org considers itself an anti-fascist group, the organisation is linked to the relatively small Revolutionary Communist Party and is not tied to Antifa chapters and groups that have been clashing with far-right protesters.
The rumours surrounding the rallies first went viral after InfoWars, a conspiracy theory website headed by Alex Jones, published a story under the title: “Antifa plan civil war to overthrow Trump on November 4”.
After InfoWars ran that story, far-right websites claimed that Antifa “super soldiers” planned to take to the streets and wage chaos and bloodshed.
Gateway Pundit, a far-right website that supports Trump, published an article purporting that Antifa planned to “behead all white parents”, citing a satirical post by comedic Twitter account @KrangTNelson.
RefuseFascism.Org protest organisers said they subsequently received a torrent of hateful messages, including death threats.