By Chandani Natalia (From Facebook)
With Yom haShoah – the main Holocaust remembrance day, marked by Jews, Roma and other victims alike – just around the corner, I felt moved to write about recent political events and the frightening lurch back towards fascism which is spearheaded by Donald Trump and his allies, notably Elon Musk, but which is by no means confined to the USA.
Born in the postwar “baby boom”, I grew up with first-hand knowledge of how the depredations of Nazism had damaged my family. My phurodad – maternal grandfather – died in a prison camp, as did many others in my extended family, and as a result life was especially hard for my phuridai and my mother, and remained so long after I was born in the early 1960s.
Although the world was terribly slow to recognise that a Roma Holocaust or Sàrmudaripen had even happened, I grew up believing that humanity had learned a painful lesson and that fascism would not be allowed to return. We fondly believed that democratic institutions had been strengthened so that it would no longer be possible for a rogue party to subvert a democratic system and turn it almost overnight into a dictatorship.
Sadly it seems that humanity’s collective memory is tragically short, and only eighty years after the defeat of Nazism, we are seeing a new fascism in the ascendant. Trump is by no means the only proponent of this movement; he has allies across Europe, including the openly racist Reform Party in Britain, Rassemblement National in France, Alternativ fur Deutschland (AfD) in Germany, LSNS in Slovakia, Fidesz in Hungary and numerous others.
Agenda driven by racism, homophobia, misogyny and authoritarianism
All have a similarly reactionary agenda driven by racism, homophobia, misogyny and authoritarianism, and all work closely together, supported by well-organised purveyors of disinformation and propaganda both in traditional media and in internet media.
And we should not in any way doubt that these people are fascists, implacably opposed to human rights and devoid of all morality. In just three days in power, Trump has revoked anti-discrimination laws dating back to 1965 so it is now legal (and in some cases compulsory) for employers to discriminate on the basis of being a woman, being non-white, being non-Christian, being any kind of LGBT+, being disabled, and so on.
He has set in motion a mass deportation campaign, placed someone who actually refuses to believe that microbes cause disease in charge of healthcare (and begun the process of taking America out of the World Health Organisation), ripped up all agreements aimed at curbing climate destruction, threatened to annexe Greenland and Canada and seize the Panama Canal by military force, and has already effectively seized control over much of the media.
And Elon Musk, scion of a family who became rich and politically powerful in Apartheid South Africa and who has a long history of openly expressing white supremacism, misogyny and homophobia, has been given an unelected position of great power – from which, within only four hours of gaining that power, he twice gave the Nazi salute on international TV even as he talked proudly about destroying human rights.
Bishop’s sermon was a rebuke to Trump
I also found it remarkable that the bishop who gave the sermon in the church service that formed part of the inauguration ceremony was so concerned about the future that she felt it necessary to deliver a stern reminder of Christian values and to implore the incoming administration to respect human rights, morality and the rule of law – and even more remarkable that Trump immediately turned on her for doing so and demanded that the churches must toe his administration’s line.
Again, I see frightening parallels with Nazi Germany: at a very early stage, that regime co-opted the churches to become part of the Party apparatus, and any churchmen who stood against the Nazis were purged.
Now we come to Trump’s war on immigrants. Trump already has blood on his hands from his previous presidency, in which he ordered ICE (Immigration & Customs Enforcement) to arrest would-be immigrants, and far worse, to remove children from their families and place them in privately-owned, profit-making, prison camps.
Needless to say, such an inhuman system could not provide adequate care and many died; the youngest victim was in fact a four month old Roma boy whose family had attempted to enter the USA via Mexico to join relatives there, after being denied entry by the official route by Trump’s racist policies. Trump has vowed an even more hostile campaign against immigrants this time around, and I fear greatly for the casualties that this will bring.
Another policy taken straight from the Third Reich’s playbook is that Trump has issued pardons to all of his supporters who were convicted of insurrection after they stormed the Capitol and tried to seize power in January 2021. Already the leaders have vowed retribution against the forces of law and order and against their political opponents.
Public servants resigned posts
Meanwhile, Trump has openly stated that he “wants to punish or execute” a variety of his opponents, and this has led to a number of public servants resigning their posts and being issued pre-emptive pardons by the outgoing Biden administration in order to try to protect them from Trump’s putsch. This is not democracy, but naked fascism.
Now we turn to the world outside the USA, and especially Europe. Already the European Union, which despite its faults has enabled an unprecedented state of peace and unity across Europe throughout my lifetime, is under attack from a concerted alliance of far-right organisations, and the catastrophe of Brexit is only the first piece of major damage.
Brexit was a direct result of the rather weak democratic system of the UK – weak because it relied upon honour rather than a constitution, but honour is conspicuously lacking from all fascists – being subverted by a well-organised cabal of far-right groups and bad actors, and it is being used to conduct a purge of immigrants by means of the hopelessly incomprehensible and manifestly unjust “Settled Status” scheme. It comes as no surprise whatsoever to me that people with obviously Roma names and appearance are being particularly targeted.
Meanwhile other countries are threatening to try to break away from the EU under control of their local far-right parties, and the human rights safeguards built into EU laws and treaties are being systematically abrogated or ignored. It seems to me that barely a week goes by when I don’t hear of some atrocity being perpetrated against one or another Roma group, either by racist thugs who are able to act with impunity, or even by the very organs of state that are supposed to guarantee the safety and rights of their citizens.
Just what happened in the Nazi era
And just as happened in the Nazi era, these various far-right parties and governments are working closely together as allies, while the EU is weakened to the point where it fails to oppose politicians who openly call for mass deportation or even imprisonment or extermination of “undesirable groups”, principally Roma and Muslims.
None of this is either coincidental or accidental. It is coordinated and well-organised. Elon Musk is openly (and probably illegally) funding the UK’s far-right Reform Party, closely supporting AfD and other far-right groups, and has turned the Twitter (now “X”) social network into a personal mouthpiece for his, and his allies’, far-right views and conspiracy theories.
It seems inevitable that TikTok will go the same way, because Trump has now offered it a reprieve from the ban that Trump himself set in motion some years ago, on condition that it is taken over by an “approved” US social media operator – by which he clearly means Elon Musk. Again, this policy of muzzling and controlling the media is straight from the Nazi playbook.
Meanwhile, even the internet media that are not directly under control of Trump’s allies are running scared and bowing to pressure to toe the party line: for example Facebook, which does not have a good record when it comes to allowing far-right material, has discontinued fact-checking under pressure from Trump and moreover, is now forcing US subscribers to follow Trump and some of his key allies, with no possibility to opt out, as well as “shadow-banning” anyone known to oppose the regime.
In three days of Trump 2.0, I believe we have only seen the merest tip of an extremely unpleasant and dangerous iceberg, and the next few years could prove very harrowing indeed. I fear very much for a Second Sàrmudaripen and indeed, the possibility of a Third World War. We here in Europe will not be by any means immune to it, and now is the time for everyone who opposes the resurgence of fascism to speak out, to organise, and to actively combat the forces of evil.
This is taken directly from the Facebook post of Chandani Natalia, and the original can be found here.
