Another Munich? Or a deal to remind us of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact?
Fascism of a most American kind
Why is anybody surprised? It’s possibly because we were once told to take Trump seriously but not literally. Big mistake if you fell for that one. As many have noted, the menu of policies laid down by Project 2025 (the ultra-conservative plan for the world) is being implemented in a big hurry.
A slew of actions taken by President Trump during his first month in office bear the fingerprints of Project 2025, the right-wing blueprint for overhauling the federal government… The New York Times found more than 60 major moves that Mr. Trump and his administration have made in his first 23 days, including executive orders and agency memos, that align with proposals in the blueprint.
Think about this statement: Trump is aligning the US with Putin. If that merely amounts to ‘just’ appeasement, then we have a historical echo of the infamous 1938 Munich conference where a British Prime Minister appeased Hitler. World War 2 quickly followed.
J D Vance, the Vice President of the United States made a speech, in Munich, last week full of cant, hypocrisy and lies. As I have said many times, his gang of mobsters always wrap their lies around kernels of truth. Yes, Europe should spend more on its defence and not rely on the US. This simple truth does not mean that anything else Vance says bears any resemblance to objective reality. A man who supported the January 6th attempted coup against the elected government of the US now lectures Europe about democracy.
Is the better comparison with the 1939 Ribbentrop-Molotov pact that aligned Germany with Russia and carved up Poland? Ukrainians could certainly be forgiven for thinking so. That pact ended up in the same place as the original Munich agreement. 70-85 million deaths.
We are in the grip of a cult. One of the founding fathers of that cult has clashed with various people over his rewriting of religious doctrine. A piece of revisionsim that Stalin would have approved of.
Kelly’s piece is worth reading in full. Here is the conclusion about the cult’s adoption of a version of god:
Let’s label the cult MAGA. It is spreading beyond the borders of the US. Its core tenets and beliefs. - perhaps these are the new commandments:
Immigration is wrong
So is free speech
So is the rule of law
Most, if not all, government functions are unnecessary
Vaccination is a terrible idea
Racism is ok
Expertise is despised
Putin is a good guy
Climate change is hoax
Fairness is for wimps: DEI in all its guises, even when it merely asks for fairness, is to be crushed
Pro cancer
Readers may baulk at some or all of these. Number 11 for instance. Here is one piece of evidence:
On free speech, the Musk-Trump-Vance administration is targeting “unfriendly’ media organisations with politically motivated judicial investigations. Journalists who refer to the ‘Gulf of Mexico’ are to be barred from the White House. And so on.
On the rule of law, here is one recent Trump statement:
He who saves his country does not violate any law.
Not every person on the right is joining the cult. There are several examples of conservative-on-conservative clashes about all of this. Here is Julia Hartley-Brewer having a go (shredding actually) Farage disciple Richard Tice:
But many rightists are signing up to the cult. People who probably describe themselves as classical old-fashioned liberals say this sort of thing:
As an aside, another core belief of the new right is about Brexit. Hannan, like the rest of them, is an arch Brexiteer.
The cult-like behaviour of these sorts of people means full sign-up to the new commandments. And, of course, once you know that somebody believes any one of them, you know they believe, passionately, in the rest. Try it, it’s a great dinner party game that will end in a fist fight.
250 odd years ago, the authors of the US Constitution knew about human frailty. And our capacity for wickedness. So they wrote a document designed to hold evil in check. Clearly, that document is no longer fit for purpose.
The EU exists as a peace project, something very necessary after WW2. Its founding documents echo the sentiments and beliefs of the original US Constitution. The EU exists to keep our worst instincts in check. And it has worked. Peace has prevailed in Europe in a way never before seen in history.
The EU is not an economic project. It exists to stop us killing each other. Yes, it has many flaws. That’s another J D Vance truth around which he builds his edifice of lies.
All the post-WW2 institutions, rules and regulatory frameworks were put in place to stop us killing each other. A good beginning for peace is shared prosperity. So even the World Trading Organisation should be seen as a peace project. Yes, some things have gone wrong. But to conclude that the whole system therefore needs tearing down is to adhere to a neo-Maoist or Trotskyite style of thought.
Imagine, for a second, that all of the rules, laws and regulations that exist within a country are to be torn down. Within ten minutes we would all be living behind 20 foot walls, topped with razor wire, employing 24/7 armed response teams. As in, say, current Johannesburg. Expect something similar when the rules that govern behaviour between countries are torn down. Start measuring your sons for their uniforms ( That’s not a sexist remark: Trump-Vance-Musk won’t allow women anywhere near the front line).
I've been reading and listening to Noah Smith of Noahpinion. He's been saying for quite a while that the US wants out of Europe and the The EU needs to put its big boy pants on and take care of itself.
To the utter dismay of Uncle Sam, the EU seems to prefer have Uncle Sam protect it from the baddies that do anything proactive. Except the Baltic states, they've understood the risk.
Getting all bothered about Vance is a waste of time, the message is clear. Uncle Sam just told us he needs to focus on China, and the EU needs to take care of itself and Russia.