Messrs Mobutu, Suharto, Xi Jinping, Ceaușescu, Gorbachev, Mugabe and Putin have all ruled different countries at different times, which explains important distinctions among them.
However, one notices certain things they all have in common. Although variously despotic, they’re all tyrants. Although variously homicidal, they’re all murderers. Although variously contemptuous of liberties, they all abuse them.
And, the most salient similarity in the context of this article, they all paid state visits to Britain with nary a protest. Fair enough, during Ceaușescu’s visit a few Romanian malcontents unfurled a slogan or two outside Buck House. But that could hardly be classified as mass outrage.
It’s in this context that the psychotic reaction to the proposed visit of President Trump is particularly interesting.
Thousands of protesters have come out, led by such intellectual giants as Gary ‘I-hit-it-first-time-and-there-it-was-in-the-back-of-the-net’ Lineker. More than a million have signed a petition demanding that Mrs May cancel the invitation she had extended to Mr Trump. The heavily tattooed Times columnist India Knight has called for Trump to be assassinated (imagine a Times columnist sporting a shoulder tattoo 100 years ago, and you’ll see progress in all its grandeur).
Labour MP Dennis Skinner has appealed to Boris Johnson’s memory: “Will the Foreign Secretary just for a moment try to recall, along with me, as I hid underneath the stairs when two fascist dictators, Mussolini and Hitler, were raining bombs on towns and cities in Britain. Now this government are hand-in-hand with another fascist – Trump.” Mussolini didn’t do any raining, but let’s not be pedantic.
Now Trump isn’t everyone’s cup of bourbon. I for one await with apprehension further developments in his love affair with the aforementioned Putin. I’m worried about his understated commitment to collective security. I find most of his ideas, even those that have merit, to be simplistic. His economics seems dubious to me, his jingoism childish. I deplore his vulgarity of manner and most lamentable lapses of taste.
However, any sane person must see that on the scale of human goodness Trump is closer to Mother Teresa than to Hitler, Mussolini or indeed any of the gentlemen mentioned above. That’s conventional wisdom.
But according to the unconventional wisdom of the 1.3 million petitioners, Trump’s crimes are much worse than, say, Gorbachev’s (who ordered special forces to fire at peaceful demonstrations in Vilnus and elsewhere).
Moreover, most of those protesters aren’t bothered by things that bother me about the president. I doubt, for example, that Gary Lineker et al. have pondered deeply Trump’s views on economics or collective security. No, what in their minds makes Trump as bad as Hitler and worse than Ceaușescu is his meek, positively timid attempt to protect America from Islamic terrorism.
Trump’s order has put the general refugee programme on hold for 120 days and the admission of Syrian refugees indefinitely, suspended for a mere 90 days all entry visas from six particularly objectionable Muslim countries. Persecuted Christians from those places are exempt. Freely admitted are British Muslim subjects (which to me is a mistake – enough British-born Muslims have murdered enough people not to warrant a special treatment).
Not quite the final solution, you’ll agree, and not even the wholesale assault on every human liberty launched by Trump’s friend Putin. So why the mass hysteria?
Clearly, reason, that faculty in whose name modernity was adumbrated, plays no role whatsoever. Surely everybody can see that half the world’s population of 7.5 billion would rather live in the West than in their native countries? Since accommodating them all is obviously impossible, some immigration curbs are inevitable.
And surely Muslim immigration should be the first to be curbed? As anyone with eyes will see, Muslims en masse don’t adapt easily or willingly to Western ways. Surely even a sporadic newspaper reader knows that most terrorist acts in the world are committed by Muslims? Surely such a person will know that many such acts are committed by jihadists infiltrated into the West under the guise of refugees? Surely it’s no secret that thousands of mosques openly foment seditious hatred of the West, calling for jihad?
Yes, some of Trump’s measures have been executed clumsily and without due attention to detail. But, staying within the realm of reason, one can’t see offhand how these palliative, temporary steps can excite so much deranged, venomous indignation.
They don’t. Lineker et al. don’t have sleepless nights crying over those Muslim millions, in addition to the millions already here, who have to suffer living in Muslim lands. They respond not with their minds but with their viscera.
Their knee-jerk reaction isn’t caused by Trump’s affront to the notion of free movement of people. It’s caused by Trump’s blasphemy against the dominant cult of modernity, of which multi-culti rectitude is but one manifestation.
The pig’s head sitting atop the modern totem pole is worshipped not because it’s a particularly beautiful pig’s head, and not because it inspires love. It’s worshipped because it’s the only embodiment of modernity’s metaphysical cravings.
People can’t live without such cravings – ‘not by bread alone’ was a prophetic insight. Having abandoned God, modernity created its own glossocratic idol, and modernity is prepared to sacrifice everything at the foot of its totem pole.
What we’re observing is a shamanistic dance, not a reasoned response to some policies. People always display greater vehemence when protecting their cults than in defence of anything else, including their lives. When true ideals have been discarded, false idols fill the void.
This particular false idol is a man-eating ogre, but somehow such monsters inspire great devotion among our neo-pagan throngs. That’s where a parallel with Hitler would be valid:
Trump doesn’t resemble him at all, but the marchers are typological twins of the SA screaming Sieg Heil!!! in the visceral worship of their secular deity at a Nuremberg rally.
1. Temporary ban on certain countries until things can be sorted out.
2. Trump is a fascist? That word is being used too liberally. Most using that word could not even define in a cogent maanner.
3. Kill Trump? That too has now become acceptable for various flakes to spew. A felony in many cases. NOT a joke or frivolous. A foreign national making such a statement should be banned from visiting the U.S. FOREVER.
HM also had to meet Begin, Makarios and Kenyatta. But we made her do it. I hope they threw out the crockery afterwards. She famously drew the line at the dog some despot had brought along after bringing it into the country illegally. Adams and McGuinness were already British so a State visit was not necessary. However, they were lucky enough to be allowed to remain in the country.
Meeting with persons that have a dubious or disreputable reputation is of itself not bad.
President Obama met with Al Shapton at the White House at least three dozen times. That did surprise me. Al is evil in my opinion. I would like to think the President talked with Al and gave him a stern lecture on the proper behavior on an influential [for better or worse] man. Somehow I doubt it.
Charles as I recall met one time with Idi Amin Dada. So I guess we all must make sacrifices to some extent.
I remember when the then PM, James Cameron (no relation to – err – you know) flew to Uganda to secure the release of a certain Mr Astles (who, no doubt, got a severe wigging on his return to London).
James Callaghan! And he was foreign minister at the time. No doubt I deserve a wigging.
I am constantly stunned at the affection and verbal embracing both the press and public have for Muslims. There is a stern belief that they are being picked on rather than the fact that the reverse is occurring. In Australia, at last count, there were 32 people behind bars convicted of terrorist actions. Of that 32, 32 just happen to be Muslim; no Sieks, no Buddhists no Christians. And it was undeniable evidence that locked them up not here-say. Thus, Trump is not presumptuous in singling out Muslim countries as starting places of possible future catastrophes. After all the Koran has not a special edition for terrorists and an edited version for the other followers. There is only the obedient or the yet to be obedient to the call for “striking terror” into the non-Muslim.