Donald Trump will soon return to the White House. Since his election, he has already been sowing chaos everywhere.
He threatens Canada with imposing customs tariffs of 25% and annexing it “economically” to make it the 51ste American state. He evokes military force to seize Greenland and the Panama Canal. Etc.
In short, Trump will be a president not only vulgar, xenophobic and misogynistic, but also hegemonic, authoritarian, without the slightest regard for international law. The version yankee of his great friend Vladimir Putin.
In the big capitals, once the initial phase of kissing the hand to try to coax him had passed, we slipped into denial before hitting the wall of reality. The reality of a new world order that is threatening, destabilizing and unpredictable.
No need to elaborate on our own case either. Canada being led by a weakened government, a leader of the official opposition incapable of playing as a team in the name of the national interest and provincial premiers acting in dispersed ranks.
At least, until now. Because by playing the big bad wolf, Trump risks awakening the survival instinct in more and more heads of Western governments.
Let’s call this the “boomerang effect”. To be continued…
Annexation delirium
In the land of Wilfrid Laurier, with his delirium of annexation and his nightly insults in social media, is Trump even awakening a certain Canadian patriotism, long dormant?
Now, is all this jumble, as important as it is, not the proverbial tree that hides the forest? Because beyond the fire that he spits, there is the installation in Washington of a presidency which, without complexes, will nest on the extreme right of the political and ideological arena.
And no, the far right is not a creation of the left. It has indeed existed for a long time. The worrying news is that it is now arriving in America, at the top of the world’s leading power.
It also permeates Donald Trump’s court. Among others, with his right-hand man, the multi-billionaire Elon Musk. At the head of the X network, he has already made it a formidable propaganda tool for the hard right as far as Europe.
Bowing down to Trump, Mark Zuckerberg, big boss of the Meta empire, has just purged the latter of any fact-checking. For the Trumpist clan, the facts would only be “censorship” or a dark conspiracy by the “woke radical left”…
For the remaining skeptics
For remaining skeptics, Politico also reports that President Emmanuel Macron would not be invited to Donald Trump’s inauguration ceremony, but that Éric Zemmour, fallen guru of the French far right, would be with Sarah Knafo, an MEP right-wing, admiring of Trump.
Ditto for the muse of the Italian far right, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Without perhaps also counting his Hungarian traveling companion, Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
Without even having stale his presidential booty in the Oval Office, Trump is showing more and more of his true face. The face of an extreme right enthroned unchallenged in Washington.
Some say we must keep a cool head in front of Trump. Maybe so. The reality, however, is that this new world order, fueled by a mega propaganda machine run by its court of multi-billionaires, is blood-curdling.
To face it, Western leaders, at least the democrats among them, will have to work together like never before. The situation is serious.
With Donald Trump, the strategy of appeasement or futile angry tweets is not a viable option. Strong political leadership sought.
