I just wanted to jump on to say a HUGE thank you to those who responded to my emotional outburst to JD Vance’s speech in Munich on X yesterday. My Substack had 5 subscribers last night and today the last time I looked, I had nearly 400!! The response has blown me away. This month was sort of a soft launch, so I could feel my feet here, but now that’s all changed.
I have a passion for politics and social justice, but much more than that, I have a real love of writing. I’m more than aware that as a writer I’m rough around the edges, but I hope I make up for my deficiencies with my passion and enthusiasm. Every day is a learning day and I hope you will bear witness to my slow improvement moving forward.
So why am I here? I hate injustice and I am of the firm belief that no child should go to bed hungry and no family should be left behind. In addition to my writing and political commentary, I produce short films on subjects close to my heart. To date, these have been focussed on the preservation of democracy in the United States. You can find a library of my efforts here My content should provide an insight of who I am and what I believe.
I am not arrogant enough to think I am anything other than a grain of sand on the beach of the news cycle., but we all have to start somewhere.
To be clear, I never expect anyone to agree with me. Indeed, I would fiercely defend your right to disagree. The problem arises when so called ‘free speech’, becomes abusive and punctuated with threats.
My argument in my post yesterday, was not the suggestion by Vance that reform is required in the EU. That’s a given. As an economic and political union of 27 countries which operates a single market, allowing the free movement of goods, capital, services and people between member states, strains are inevitable.
Many of us would find it difficult to even agree around the dinner table. Let alone amongst 27 nation states. Making a case for reform is not difficult. As a citizen of the UK, we tried and failed in 2016. Much to my disgust, conservative voices led a deceitful campaign that led to our catastrophic exit from the union. A move that has costs us between 3 and 4% of GDP annually.
The case for reform is different for every nation, but the common position is, it is needed. Having said that, wrapping up reform in a free speech argument is frankly ludicrous. Much more than that, it’s dangerous. Elon Musk could not give a damn about the people of Europe, he merely wants a permissive regulatory environment to exploit the European market and he’s prepared to invest effort in supporting political parties like the AFD and Nigel Farage’s Ltd Company, Reform, to do it. Let us not forget, Musk is the same man that bought the White House for Donald Trump.
The hard right in the US, long developed a careful strategy to seize power. This did not happen overnight it’s taken decades of taking control of state legislatures and Appointing Republican judges in key posts in federal and appellate courts. The icing on the cake arrived in Trump’s first term, when he created the current Republican majority on the Supreme Court.
This structure meant that states could challenge laws they didn’t like at state level. The intention being, to circumvent federal lawmakers by eventually passing decisions to the Supreme Court to rule on. This is how Roe v Wade fell after being law since 1973.
Once all the pieces were in place, the subversion of democracy became the priority and this relied on creating a culture war. Their main target? Immigrants. They were the boogeymen on which to blame all the problems in America. They became the ‘invaders’, accused of ‘poisoning the blood of the nation’.
To those living in Germany, this was not new, they had seen it before in the 1930s. For ‘immigrants’ replace ‘Jews’. The term ‘mass deportation’ was the next natural step in the same playbook’
Republicans have waged war on everything and everyone not white and male. They have targeted the LGBTQ community, Muslims, the disabled and shockingly women, removing their right to reproductive healthcare.
Their Christian Nationalist propaganda machine, has been so effective they are now exporting it around the world. The oligarchs finance their march to autocracy, because they want to disrupt the rules based order. Europe has long been in their sights, as we have seen with the rise of right wing parties. These parties primarily use immigration to frighten their population. The free speech argument is merely a front for demonizing the ‘other’.
Trump has long been a fanboy of Putin, and he sees a win in carving up Ukraine to the benefit of Putin All while excluding Zelensky from the process, demanding US access to Ukrainian mineral resources as his sweetener for delivering peace. This is reprehensible. But then to add insult to injury, he abdicates responsibility for NATO. The people of Ukraine have suffered too much to be betrayed. Europe will NOT turn their backs.
In part 2 of the post to follow, I’ll discuss what my thoughts are on the U.S. abdicating their responsibility to NATO and what steps Europe needs to take to mitigate against a now untrustworthy ally.
