• WE MUST ACT.
Trump is its spiritual leader, and democracies must stand up to him
The president of the United States has been asked to unequivocally condemn the neo-Nazis who are tearing his country apart; he’s declined. The Speaker of the House has been asked to unequivocally condemn the neo-Nazi sympathizer who is destroying the Republican party; he’s declined as well.
Perhaps we should not be so surprised then, that when world leaders are asked to condemn the fascist who leads the country that purports to lead the world, they too take a hard pass. Still, it’s jarring. The prime minister of the country that vowed to fight Nazis on the beaches, on the landing grounds, in the fields and in the streets, saying the neo-Nazi inclinations of the man with whom her office is meant to have a “special relationship” were “a matter for him,” and when the British people made it clear that his matter would become her problem, musing only about the general importance of condemning fascism rather than daring to herself confront the urgent threat posed by the world leader who fascists lionize.
The chancellor of the country that knows Nazis best because it created them, and that is thus in the best position to raise the global alarm about their latest incarnation, and that happens besides to lead the democracies of Europe by both example and determination, saying her country needs to focus on itself rather than the American heirs of the white supremacist ideology it bequeathed to them.
The president of the country that was not only attacked but occupied by Nazis, boasting about his greatest act of resistance against the world’s most powerful neo-Nazi darling, that act being to shake his hand with vigour.
And of a country that sent and lost thousands of men to defend borders that weren’t even theirs, our prime minister: tweeting, something about how racism is bad and we can be racist, too. Nothing about the world’s most dangerous racist next door.
Theresa May of the United Kingdom; Angela Merkel of Germany; Emmanuel Macron of France; Justin Trudeau of Yours Truly. It’s not so hard to take names. So why, you have to wonder, will none of them make a point of singling out Donald Trump while innocent people are attacked in the name of the violent, racist philosophy he supports in word, deed and White House hiring practices — indeed, attacked in his own name?
They must believe themselves to be protecting their respective countries’ interests. Fine. But the interests of democracies are not so narrow as to exclude the necessity of protection from a global neo-fascist movement that has found a spiritual leader in the president of the strongest democracy on Earth.
Nazis are no more respectful of national borders today than they were in the 1940s — they’re just not armed with much more than garden lamps, yet.
Condemnation of fascism, when it’s swift, specific and unequivocal, is the first line of resistance against attacks on those things that aren’t protected by legislation so much as by people’s belief that they matter and are worth fighting for. Respect for non-violent political opposition. Civility. Truth.
The resistance begins with the plain and simple assertion that Nazis past and present are bad. The leaders of western democracies can scarcely bring themselves to say that, let alone to unite and say that it is intolerable that the president of the United States looks like one, talks like one, behaves like one and very well may be one.
For 70 years, polite society has wanted to believe that it couldn’t happen here because we wouldn’t let it.
Yet, here it is and here we are.
Fascism has come to the great democracies, and the only thing for the world to do is call it what is and tell it to get the hell out.
Shannon Gormley is an Ottawa Citizen global affairs columnist and freelance journalist.