Trump Pushing Rise Of Far Right

On April 6 former German president Christian Wulff observed the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp with a strong warning that, “Due to the brutalization and radicalization and a worldwide shift to the right, I can now – and this makes me uneasy – imagine more clearly how this could have happened back then.”

Wulff only had to look to Germany’s Feb. 23 elections for an example of creeping right-wing creeps. The Alternative for Germany party finished second among the various parties, gaining 20.8% of the vote [dominating the former East Germany].

The BBC reported, “In May 2024 a German court rejected an AfD appeal against a ruling classifying it as a suspected far-right extremist organization. Judges found that the AfD had ‘positions that disparage the democratic order and are incompatible with the principle of democracy.’"

“Disparage the democratic order … incompatible with the principle of democracy!” That’s worth repeating since U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance made a point of meeting with the AfD leader Alice Weidel just prior to the election. That’s where Donald Trump’s administration stands – with the farthest of the far right, those “incompatible with the principle of democracy.”

Though German conservative allies [Christian Democrats and Christian Social Union in Bavaria] won the election, they have formed a governing coalition with others because of an agreement among the major parties not to work with extremists.

They call it a firewall. Would that our Republicans had such reservations about working with klansmen, proud boys, active clubs and other far right groups – before their ideology of hatred usurped the mantle of the Grand Old Party.

The connection between the far right in Europe and Trump was shouted Feb. 7-8 at a “Patriots Summit” in Madrid where Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini cavorted with Marine Le Pen, then leader of the French National Rally, and their Spanish host Santiago Abascal of the ultra-right Vox party.

Dani Sánchez Ugart and Pol Marsà Dot of Barcelona’s 3Cat TV dubbed the summit as “the party that brings together one of the most reactionary factions in European politics.”

All present and speaking praised Trump and his influence and inspiration, many parroting Trump’s creed to “Make Europe great again.” Ironically, they share Trump’s vision [and Vladimir Putin’s] of a disorganized European community.

Tellingly, Le Pen cited Trump’s election as “a true global upheaval,” and not just “a simple alteration within democratic countries.” No, not an “alteration,” but an abolition of democratic principles with themselves in charge is their goal.

The 3Cat report added that homophobic speeches also shared the stage with “immigration and Euroscepticism.”

There was a brief moment of dissent at the fascist fete when “Venezuelan opposition figure María Corina Machado, an anti-fascist, activist burst in [w]ith her bare torso and the slogan ‘Let's make Europe anti-fascist again.’"

As the last bastion of Republican Spain to fall to Franco and his Falangists and suffering heavily during the 36 years of Franco’s dictatorship, Catalonia has a sad familiarity with fascism that one hopes the U.S. can escape.

Writing in Barcelona’s El Punt Avui, Toni Brosa observed:

“The Nazis are the zombie threat of our days. We had them dead and buried after turning the 20th century into a theme park of death, evil and terror to satisfy their anxieties, their phobias and, of course, for the loot.

“But they are back. They have left the tomb of history, just as they entered it, with a bloody mind, an arm raised and the same promise of destruction.

“They did not do enough with the tens of millions of victims they left along the way. Men, women, children; millions of stories that should wallpaper the walls of the civilized world and do not do enough.”

Brosa told the story of a young Hungarian Jewish soccer player who starred with Barcelona in the early ‘30s before being captured and subsequently murdered at the Birnbaum extermination camp, “one day before the Russian army liberated that camp, seven days before the end of the war.”

Brosa pointed out definitively what American commentators seem reluctant to admit:

“When I see Elon Musk or Steve Bannon, raising their arm, deploying their plan to arm Donald Trump or fueling the neo-fascist and pro-Nazi parties of old Europe, I see the SS officer ordering the execution of that young footballer who had played on the field of Les Corts ... And then, absolutely aware that we have not done enough, I wonder if we still have time to prevent the zombie apocalypse.”

“Why won’t the U.S. corporate media call a nazi salute a nazi salute?” Pete Tucker of Common Dreams wondered after Musk’s sieg heil.

Even the European far right recognized what Musk and Bannon were doing. Jordan Bardella, who replaced Le Pen as National Rally leader after she was convicted of embezzlement, canceled his scheduled appearance at the Conservative Political Action Committee convention in February when he learned of Bannon’s salute:

"Yesterday, while I was not present in the room, one of the speakers out of provocation allowed himself a gesture alluding to Nazi ideology. I therefore took the immediate decision to cancel my speech that had been scheduled this afternoon.”

Yep, that’s how far into fascism the Republican right has fallen. And don’t give a pass to Republicans who acquiesce to these hooligans. Those who collaborate with evil are no better than those committed to committing it.

Weather permitting, I put my flag out every day. It gives me a specific time to remember my dad who helped put an end to the genocidal ways of the nazis of his time and put them into “the tomb of history” whence Donald Trump has helped to resurrect their ideologies to infect not only this country, but the world.

Holocaust Remembrance Day has been established as Jan. 27, the date in 1945 that the Russian army liberated the Auschwitz extermination camp in Poland. But, as evidenced by Wullf’s warning, there were other camps and other liberations.

Last Friday, April 11, was the 80th anniversary of the arrival of my dad’s Third Armored Division at the Nordhausen concentration camp in Germany. Back then the United States was united in its anti-fascism and we can be sure that neither Franklin Roosevelt, who died the next day, nor Harry Truman, who succeeded him, would have ever designated people chanting nazi slogans “very fine people.”