Fergus Finlay: Europe must tell Donald Trump there's a line he can't cross
French President Emmanuel Macron visits the Danish frigate F363 Niels Juel in Nuuk, Greenland, last June. Outside the US it is long past time that the rest of the democratic world came together in a single gathering to call out America's fascism for what it is. Photo: Mads Claus Rasmussen/Scanpix via AP
I have a suggestion for Donald Trump, because I think he may have missed a trick.
A famous politician in the past (his name was Adolf Hitler) died a very rich man. And he got rich in all sorts of ways — the usual sorts of thing — gifts from rich people who wanted to curry favour, personal ownership of State property, a huge art collection, enormous royalties from an awful book that loyal Germans were all forced to buy — all that sort of stuff.
But he also insisted that the State put his face on every coin and every postage stamp produced in the country, and he charged a royalty every single time his image was used. It is estimated that by the time of his death that decision alone had made Hitler a millionaire many times over.
So there you are Donald. All you have to do is change the law (no bother), flout a couple hundred years of tradition (again, no biggie) and bob’s your uncle.
All you have to do is figure out how to demand a royalty when your face replaces that of Lincoln and Washington on the dollar bill and the five dollar bill. And why not? Sure aren’t people forever telling you that you’re a much better president than either of those old guys?
Now look. I know it’s not considered acceptable to make comparisons between living figures and Adolf Hitler, so let me say I’m not calling Trump Hitler. However, (and I know I’m not a professional historian) I do believe that if you want to find the lasting danger represented by Trump, it’s not unreasonable to look for comparisons in the emergence of the Third Reich.
And by the way, it’s also true that one of the reasons Hitler wanted his face on everything (apart from the money) was because he regarded himself as an unrecognised genius, and guess what? So does Trump.
Trump is not a fascist. His entire political career has been devoid of any ideological characteristics. He is marked exclusively by personality traits, notably his bullying narcissism and his monetary greed.
But like a second-hand nag bought at an auction and stuffed full of steroids, he is owned, trained and ridden by fascists. They facilitate his personal corruption. He lets them run the country, and acts as their spokesperson and stooge. And as a result America is now in the tight grip of a fascist regime. At home and abroad.
By every account available, Renee Good lived up to her name. She was a good and kind woman who never wished anyone ill or wanted to bring harm to anyone.
Her killing in Minneapolis, shot at point blank range, would be seen in any democratic country as a potential crime — actually an atrocity — that would require the arrest of a suspect and a thorough police investigation.
But there will be no investigation. In blatant denial of the evidence of everyone’s eyes, the completely innocent victim of a crime was painted, all weekend long, as the cause and perpetrator of her own death.
And it is done by leading members of the administration. That’s straight out of a Third Reich playbook.
At the end of the Second World War, the American Office of Strategic Services published a detailed psychological profile of Hitler. It contained this paragraph, now widely available and often quoted:
“His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.”
That’s not a fascist principle — it’s a fascist technique. And the application of that fascist technique by the Trump regime — I almost wrote the Trump Reich — means that the man who shot an innocent woman in the face will go unpunished, while her name will be traduced.
That’s fascism, but it’s only part of the story. One of the other founding characteristics of the Third Reich, apart from its racism and antisemitism, was territorial expansion. They were going to conquer the world.
There was little enough sign of that in Trump’s first term — essentially because there were restraining influences in the White House then. But empire-building has been given full rein in the second term.
Of course it has a unique Trump twist. The empire being built is all about making money for Trump and his family. It’s not about America’s interests, despite the rhetoric. It’s about his.
There is, of course, another defining Third Reich characteristic. Total power. The absence of opposition. The suppression of dissent.
In the 1930s the Nazi Party was in the minority in Germany. There was no obvious reason they should have been in a position to form a government, let alone a dictatorship.
The Socialists and the Communist Party were in prime position — if they could agree to support one another.
But they hated one another, and that hatred, coupled with the arrogant stupidity of Hitler's enemies on the right, enabled the Nazi leader to come through, and immediately begin the wholesale slaughter and imprisonment of every element of the opposition.
Trump doesn’t seem to need a night of the long knives in the US. If there is any political opposition in the United States it’s chaotic to the point of being pathetic.
It’s long past time that the Democratic Party properly nailed its colours to the mast by organising a national convention and choosing, at least for now, a leader of the opposition.
But instead the Democrats are actually facilitating the copperfastening of American fascism by their indolence. Instead of still licking their wounds over the last election, they should be in prime position to fight the next one.
But there’s still not even a sign that they know how to roll out a unified campaign for the mid-term elections later this year. It’s as if they expect to win the mid-terms by default, when in fact it’s likely to be one of the most vicious contests seen for years.
And outside the US it is, of course, long past time too that the rest of the democratic world came together in a single gathering to call out this fascism for what it is.
Next week it may be Iran, and the world will find itself welcoming that. Then maybe Colombia, and the rest of the world will be perplexed. Eventually maybe it will be Greenland and the rest of the world will be powerless.
But the rest of the world has to stop cowering.
As a first step, the entire democratic leadership of Europe, including Ireland, needs to gather in Nuuk (which most of us have only just discovered is the capital of Greenland) and assert, as a matter of fundamental principle, the right of the people of Greenland to determine their own future.
At last we have to tell the bully there’s a line he can’t cross.
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