We hear arguments that if Donald Trump is imprisoned, this will only galvanise his base all the more, and make a martyr of him. Look at Hitler! He was in prison, wrote a book, and came out stronger than ever (though he had a cruisy time in gaol thanks to well-placed supporters and he was in his 30s – if Trump went down, he’d come out in his 80s).
“America is finished!” we hear from Trump’s supporters. Because to them/him, Trump is America, and America is Trump, L’etat c’est moi. “I am a political prisoner!” he exclaims with the voice and platform no political prisoner ever gets.
The far-right
He’s already a martyr. That’s what the far-right are, they’re the ultimate in persecution-complexes. He’s a martyr because he exists. And their biggest beef is when they win, they do it ‘bigly’ and against the odds; when they lose (and both in 2016 and 2020 he lost the popular vote by millions), it’s all rigged, a set-up, elitist deep-state powers bringing down the billionaire crook champion of the people, and that applies in elections, wars, business, even in court, where evidence and truth are what count, not the loudness and viciousness of the tirade.
Now were any fears of Trump emerging on a gold-plated crucifix of his own making from prison actually sway any move to jail him, then his supporters would be absolutely right – the courts are politicised, justice is to be controlled and meddled with by his foes no less. Even if you’re found guilty, so long as people fear what might happen, you’re not going to go to prison, and in this case, you’re free to springboard back into the White House and turn your own country and the world into some racist gulag, and continue beating down actual free speech protest by its own at the behest of a client state.
The far-right, who love free speech and protest when it’s them doing it, but crush it when it’s not, love to tell liberals, lefties, commies and anyone they think is to the left of them (which to be fair is everyone who isn’t them) and they say have taken over every vestige of power in the state, education, media that it’s hypocritical and illiberal and intolerant of the supposedly tolerant to be intolerant of the far-right’s intolerance. Well, as Karl Popper put it, the trouble is, you can tolerate so much so long as it doesn’t threaten you, and ultimately these intolerant types will just kill you after they’ve done everyone else. That’s how Nazis work. And the structure requires defending against such existential threats and not have its occupants waste time being skewered on the horns of a paradox.
Trump has to go down. Like Bolsonaro may well. Like Putin, and Netenyahu, and the leaders of Hamas, all with international arrest warrants, ICC or ICJ, on their heads.
The far-right in the UK
And yet their far-right aiders and abetters in the UK remain at large, plotting to build on their Brexit success by leaving the European Convention on Human Rights and lighten themselves of any accountability, and Britain’s citizens of any protection. They’ll be running the warrens of the UK’s offshore banking system, beavering away to bring down the post-war international order that the UK did so much to set up to prevent Nazis and their ilk taking power or evading justice.
Will we see Nigel Farage give up his plans to help his American chum? He’s already promised to forego doing much in our own election to go help Mr America First (that’s America, not Britain, but America – guess who he’ll come for first) who’s already been had up for rape, among other things, and impeached. As we saw with our own ex PM Liz Truss sharing a panel with Steve Bannon, done for his role in the 6 January uprising.
Or have our own home-grown extreme right-wingers evaded the justice systems their forebears founded because Brexit hasn’t unleashed a revitalised Colossus back upon the world, but rather a vicious, bitter little cabal of hangers-on, who the world would rather ignore, and actually, mostly, does.
CLICK HERE TO DONATE TO OUR CROWDFUNDER
HELP US BECOME STRONGER SO THAT WE CAN CONTINUE TO DELIVER POWERFUL CITIZEN JOURNALISM!
