How Donald Trump is pushing a right-wing version of cancel culture on his country – and ours
Donald Trump should stay out of UK politics or questions about whether the US is an ally or an adversary will grow
A week is often cited as a long time in politics but in Donald Trump’s world each one seems like an eternity. Last week was no exception. A dark and soulless speech to the United Nations suggested a broken escalator and teleprompter were the real issues.
The US President also took the time to claim London mayor Sadiq Khan was about to introduce sharia law in the city and warn the General Assembly that “your countries are going to hell”.
However, this was the week when his rage and retribution seemed mostly focussed on James Comey, the former head of the FBI who participated in the investigation into possible ties between Trump’s campaign and Russia’s efforts to help him win the 2016 US election. Comey has been charged with making false statements and obstruction of justice over his testimony about the affair to the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2020.
Love is the answer to hate
It was, however, the memorial service following the tragic murder of Charlie Kirk which provided the most revealing moment about the future of free speech in America. In courageous and emotional remarks by Kirk’s widow, Erika, she forgave the person who killed her husband, saying that “the answer to hate is not hate... [but] always love”. Trump then waded in with the opposite message, saying: “I hate my opponents.”
There is no doubt that this was a watershed moment in the politics of America. Here we have a US president acting as if he has the divine right of kings to rule, casting a shadow over free speech, and raising the prospect of total obedience from his ‘subjects’, not voters.
This was followed by the suspension of late-night TV host Jimmy Kimmel for his remarks about Kirk’s death. This decision represented a major onslaught on free speech and led to a fresh wave of vilification of those who simply disagree with the president.
In CNN’s Global Briefing, journalist Fareed Zakaria asked “what happened to checks and balances?”, the supposed bedrock of America’s constitution that limits the power of any one branch of government, warning that Trump was “playing fast and loose” with many of the constraints on executive power.
Harvard political scientist Steven Levitsky, who spoke on the same broadcast, said: “American exceptionalism has blinded us to weaknesses in our constitutional and political system.” The US, he said, had “no memory of democratic collapse or authoritarian rule” – unlike countries such as Poland and Brazil – and implied America was closer to this than some might think.
Trump’s appetite for revenge
Trump has embarked upon a wide-ranging crackdown of mainstream media institutions and political opponents. Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent for The New York Times, wrote: “For him, it’s not about hate speech, but about speech that he hates, namely, speech that is critical of him and his administration.”
Free speech is the victim, truth is negotiable, and the mood is one of fear, with some of Trump’s political goals easily seen as acts of revenge.
The right to free speech is contained in the first amendment to the US constitution. It was a key belief of the Founding Fathers and a much revered aspect of the Bill of Rights, ratified in 1791, which is regarded as fundamental to the proper functioning of US democracy.
Franklin Roosevelt, in his famous State of the Union address in 1941, made freedom of speech and expression the first of his “four freedoms”, alongside freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear of war.
The push towards Orwellian autocracy
Trump’s recent onslaught against free speech should be seen as part of a wider war on democracy, with voter-suppression in Republican states, the gerrymandering of congressional district boundaries, the purging of liberals from voter lists, and the banning of books that focus on issues of gender, race and slavery from US libraries. Great institutions such as the Smithsonian are being asked to rewrite history in a manner sympathetic to the right in American politics and to the President himself.
We should be alarmed. The Trumpian assertion that political violence is a liberal problem and not a conservative one only serves to illustrate how the push to autocracy is proceeding at pace.
Before the US election, the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank, drew up ‘Project 25’, a 900-page right-wing wish list for Trump’s second term, based on ultra-conservatism and a vast expansion of presidential power. Trump, the ideal front for such a project, is exceeding all their expectations with the speed, efficiency and brutality of its implementation.
George Orwell, exploring the relationship between truth and authoritarianism in his novels 1984 and Animal Farm, explained how totalitarian regimes manipulate reality through propaganda, censorship, historical revisions and the suppression of the truth to control public perceptions and suppress dissent. In his 1941 essay, the Lion and the Unicorn, Orwell wrote that the totalitarian idea is “that there is no such thing as law, there is only power”.
Trump trying to help Farage?
Despite Trump’s warm embrace of Keir Starmer and King Charles, the UK continues to be the focus of a relentless US assault on our politics and democracy. But why Britain? Trump used his UN speech to attack this country with more vitriol than he uses against totalitarian ones.
Is this a new punishment clause in our “Special Relationship”? Or, more cynically, is it part of a trans-Atlantic ‘brothers in arms’ strategy to assist Nigel Farage in his quest to move Britain in a similar direction to the US under Trump? This poses the question, is America our ally or an adversary?
Starmer must ask Trump and his free-speech absolutists to keep out of British politics. This could be a popular move. On migration, international law, freedom of speech, renewable energy, North Sea oil, Gaza and especially our democracy, Trump’s meddling is without precedent.
Cancel culture is fast becoming the provenance of the right. Britain needs to wake up. Truth and free speech don’t fit with fear and autocracy.
Henry McLeish is a former First Minister
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