I went to bed in my apartment in Bairro Alto convinced that Secretary Hilary Rodham Clinton would be the 45th President of the United States.
By the time I arrived at the Web Summit’s media village the next day, there were journalists from across the Pond visibly weeping.
In fairness, I should have listened to the Big Fella as he had told his Oul Da what counties would be crucial in specific swing states.
Like the Brexit vote the previous June, it was a triumph for the far right.
As is often the case with decisive battles, the victor has utilised some new technology.
The Brexit campaign had accessed the data profiles of around 3 million non-voting people in abandoned areas of post-industrial England.
If these folks could be energised around the idea of having agency in their lives, then all traditional polling (based on previous voting patterns) would be useless.
And so it proved to be.
The Brexit side won.
Sir James Goldsmith had launched the Referendum Party in the immediate Post-Maastricht period and had got a total of 17,000 votes.
On the same basic proposition, the Brexit referendum generated 17.4 million in 2016.
You did not need to over-reach to connect the seismic event of June 23rd, 2016 to what was being planned for the race to the White House later that year.
Both Brexit and Trump cannot be explained without having racism and xenophobia on the table.
The day this poster was launched, a white supremacist murdered the MP, Jo Cox.
Brexit wasn’t about fish; it was about foreigners, especially those of the dark-skinned variety.
Donald Trump’s campaign to be President had started many years before he had even sought the GOP nomination.
The entire “Birther” movement stated the critical truth to many in the USA that a black man in the White House could only be there if he were carrying out some menial task.
“Make America Great Again” was an entirely understood subtext that said, “Make America White Again”.
Of course, racism does not need to be about skin colour, and this Irishman from Scotland can attest to that.
Unfortunately the great and good in Official Scotland cannot still ring themselves to use the term “anti-Irish racism” to describe this graffiti in 2021.
The following November after Trumps’ triumph I was once more at the Web Summit in Lisboa.
There is so much to see in those frenetic days that you have to plan which presser you attend.
One that was my top priority was to get up close to Brad Parscale.
He was the chap credited with running Trump’s social media campaign in the 2016 election.
Like the Remain side in the Brexit referendum, it was clear to me as I listened to the American that the well-funded Clinton campaign had no clue about the new way of doing politics in the digital age.
When Trump tried for a second term, he was not without supporters on this small island.
Remember, this was after four years of an administration characterised by othering foreigners.
His presidency started with an Executive Order banning people from some predominantly Muslim countries.
There were also the appalling images of kids being put in cages on the border with Mexico.
Of course, there are many similarities between the Trump base and the “Ulster-Scots” who are the bedrock of the DUP vote.
This was a Famine Song presidency with racism at the core of the policy agenda.
No one should have been surprised after his four-year reign of error that the 45th President of the United States would not accept the election result.
Consequently, I was saddened but not shocked at the scenes on Capitol Hill yesterday.
The response of law enforcement to those who literally attacked American democracy was in stark contrast to how they face off to any protest by Black Lives Matter.
Yesterday in DC was White Privilege as performance art.
I have written here before that the Constitution of the United States is a creation of genius.
In every line, it exudes a deep understanding of how power corrupts.
Indeed, that 18th-century statement of the human condition was written to precisely deal with someone as dangerously narcissistic and as damaged as Donald J Trump.
He never did see his fabled border wall completed.
However, that wasn’t important; it was part of the narrative that won him the election in 2016.
Sadly, the long-lasting damage to the USA of his enraged base on the loose will be felt for many years to come.
The stability of any democracy relies on the loser accepting the outcome of a free and fair election.
Yesterday was the opposite of that.
Brexit will bring its own border problems in the months and years ahead.
It will make the once preeminent global power and home to the world’s biggest economy in the 19th century both poorer and less influential.
In both countries, any demonstrable economic problems will be blamed on the Othered by the mainstream media.
Both Trump’s base and the Brexit voters were radicalised in algorithmic villages redolent of the Famine Song choir.
I’m already taking a severe dislike to 2021.
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James Thomas… tut, tut, tut. UK PLC is facing a shortage of skilled workers, our ‘heroic’ NHS depends on several hundred thousand EU migrants, and our future economic prosperity depends on encouraging more, not less, immigration, particularly from those parts of the world where population is likely to grow (Africa, the Indian subcontinent and China, for instance).
It is ironic (LOL) that the racists who voted for Brexit effectively voted for a re-engagement with Britain’s strife-torn former colonies.
As for the continuing barracking of Gentle Joe Biden, and attempts to deride a president-elect who offers hope to those who protested the murder of George Floyd, this is as misplaced as equivocating over Trump’s call to arms. Biden is a few years old than Trump, and appears to have ducked Covid, to which the Red Bummer is apparently immune. Unlike the Donald, Biden is clearly fit for office, fit and raring to go!
Meanwhile, dear old Britain is likely to have more and more elderly in the coming years, and will need to attract more and more young migrants to service their needs. Yes, like many of our elderly, she will have to downsize (goodbye Scotland and Norn Irnland). I would therefore caution anyone with a democratic bone in their body against deriding the elderly… they are the silent majority now, on whose votes future independence will be called.
In the meantime, thanks Phil for an entertaining, thoughtful and considered commentary on 2020. Let’s hope 2021 will see a renewal of our shared faith in humanity.
PS: Feck off Donald, your time’s up!
Oh dear what is it about democracy you dont like Phil oh yes that’s it when the result is the opposite of your wishes.
As I’ve said before on here, I am not a supporter of Trump, but was delighted when the murderess Hillary Roden Clinton lost the election. She is nothing but a warmongering psychopath—witness the carnage she caused/is still causing in Libya . Who can forget her insane cackling re Gadaffi ” we came, we saw, he died.” Oh he died alright, but only after being sodomised by a bayonet which was wielded by one of the ‘freedom fighters’ sponsored by the US/UK’ and France . Had she been elected she would give imposed a no-fly zone in Syria, bring us in direct conflict with Russia. Trump is an arsehole, but he was an arsehole who was opposed to the many wars the US has started around the world.
My worry is that Biden proves to be Obama 2.0 . He inherited two wars and started five more. He also assassinated US citizens via drone strikes. Citizens who were killed because they had been accused of encouraging terrorists—-they were never given their constitutional right of due process. It was sufficient that they stood ‘accused’.
The Washington Polis looked like Glasgow apolis during an orange walk.
No quite sure whether they should police it or join in.
The world is truly beautiful place. Just ruined by selfish, ignorant, intolerant people. However there are many many amazing acts that humanity has done and will continue to do. I have a salient point, I’m 47, my youngest is 10. He will be seven years younger than me in the year 2050. Scary. What kind of environment will he be living in? I shudder to think. 30 years is just round the corner and we need to look ahead, forget the past unless looking at it for references on what mistakes were made and what worked to help us save our next generations and this planet or by the time my son is 80, living in 2090 the world could be dead. Oh and billionaires want to send people to Mars. Use this expertise, money, innovation to make the only planet we know that has life a better place. Bloody hell thats deep. Sorry,all the best for what’s gonna be a hard year and beyond for the majority of our population.
Trump did not create the problems in today’s America. He is, however, a focus, a vehicle through which the average working man can have his voice heard.
The country is split down the middle. One half has Big Tech, Social Media, Mainstream Media, and Wall Street on its side. The other half has Donald Trump.
That second half now believes it has had the Election stolen from them. The way to deal with that charge is complete transparency. When 18 States, led by Texas, tried to get the Supreme Court to investigate their allegations of fraud, the Court refused to even look at the evidence, and effectively told the 18 States to mind their own business.
The attack on the Capitol was a disgrace. But the attackers were a small minority of the estimated 250-300,000 protesters who had travelled there from all over the country, to have their voices heard.
The real question is not why the Capitol was attacked – if you can call it an attack – it’s what motivated hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans to travel in the first place. Until we listen to them and deal with their concerns, the country will remain divided, with one half of it voiceless.
Your thesis on Trump is extremely narrow minded, how do you explain the Blacks for Trump organizations or the fact that he got an increase in the black and Hispanic vote when he lost to Biden. Black unemployment has never been lower in the last 30 years , it’s quite ignorant to explain the rise of Trump simply on racism, Obama actually deported more illegal immigrants than Trump and it was the Obama administration that brought in separating children from their parents and putting them in “cages” , it was stopped by the Trump administration.
Every country has the right to secure borders and sovereignty I’m sure you’d agree as quite rightly you’ve been a proponent of Irish independence for many years. America welcomes over 2 million legal immigrants annually , it’s the illegal queue jumping immigration that’s a problem, conservative estimates put the total of illegals now around 20 million, that’s millions of workers arriving and competing with black and Hispanic citizens who have been in America for generations, these people voted for Trump not because they are anti immigration but they want it controlled to protect their ability to earn a living and take care of their families.
The Democrats didn’t care about the workers when they signed away millions of jobs under the disastrous NAFTA free trade agreement which decimated many prosperous areas of the country from Pennsylvania to Ohio, Michigan and up into Wisconsin and Minnesota , these areas once known as the steel belt and auto manufacturing zones became known as the Rust Belt.
I personally travelled through these regions and talked to many workers before and after plant closures, the sense of despair was palpable, a future of minimum wage, contract work lay ahead, these people in their hundreds of thousands lost everything and in America when you lose your job you lose your healthcare benefits for the whole family , contract work provides nothing except a wage that more often than not is hard to live on , hence the massive homeless crisis , the opioid crisis affecting mainly the blue collar states , drugs and alcohol addiction leading to record deaths and suicides . The United States is a mess but to call Trump and his supporters racist is way off the mark , undoubtedly some are but if you look at the origins of the Democratic Party and it’s history up until the late 60’s you’ll discover they were more hostile to desegregation and civil rights for minorities than the Republican Party , it was the Republican Party under Lincoln that advocated abolishing slavery and Americans fought a civil war to that end with the loss of over 500,000 citizens .
Trump’s tenure might be over but the conditions that brought him to office still persist and over 70 million people voted for him in November, a vast majority of these voters think the presidential election was rigged , they appealed to the law makers for an independent audit made up of Democrats and Republicans with an equal number of independents thrown in but at every turn they were denied .
The demonstrations yesterday in Washington were a result of frustration by people who no longer trust their election system, they genuinely feel their votes are no longer sacred which in a constitutional Republic is dangerous, the level of violence at the demonstration was nothing compared to the months of looting and burning, murder and mayhem by the Antifa fascists .
You might recall Kamala Harris actually set up a fund to bail out rioters and arsonists in Oregon and California and encouraged them to get back out on the streets, the levels of hypocrisy are staggering and as someone once said the moral high ground in Washington is measured in millimetres.
The “ basket of deplorables” unfortunately have no other recourse other than to demonstrate on the streets as trust in the democratic system is exhausted, anyone who thinks this is race based doesn’t understand the complexities or watches the BBC, CNN or reads the Guardian too much.
By the way as someone who loves football I think you need to put the pettiness aside and congratulate the Rangers players and Gerrard for the way they’ve dug in , I’m a Celtic fan first and foremost obviously but you have to give credit where it’s due .
Cheers Phil. https://youtu.be/8WPMy5yLv0s
You don’t half talk some nonsense on why we voted for Brexit. Change the record.
This piece overlooks the support Trump got from many Irish Americans.
In particular Republican congressman Peter King, the chair of the Irish caucus in congress. He opposed Trump’s impeachment and never hid his extreme right wing agenda.
He also hosted the political wing of the IRA and fund-raised for them while comparing NFL players who took the knee to Nazis.
Hi Phil,
Just wanted to say that the graffiti under the Kingston bridge wasn’t written in 2021 or even 2020, it was reported recently is all. That piece of xenophobic, racist shite has been there for many years, it has been covered over and re-painted many times, the longest I remember it not being there when there was ongoing structural work being done. It’s not new.
Anyway, great piece and hopefully Mike Pence and some others will have the courage to invoke the 25th Amendment and have that clown removed from office. I was sent a meme of Peter Griffin from family guy being stopped by a traffic cop who pulled out a colour chart with shades of white descending to black on the left with the top half being labelled”Scuffles” and the bottom half labelled “riots” a sad comedic yet prosaically true meme I’ve yet to see.
Hope everyone is staying safe during these ever testing times.
It’s true the main part of Brexit was immigration but not all was about skin colour. Too many illegal immigrants, too many low skilled workers and too many bending the asylum rules also had a huge impact.
As for Hilary do you seriously believe she would have done better? Trump the clown was always a better option for the yanks. It’s the same with Biden, this dope couldn’t wipe his behind without help. Even worse are those in the back ground helping him to the big seat, as they have an agenda that will ruin America.
Both parties need to do better in the nominations they choose, but in the long run it’s for the people of America to choose who they want, just as the people of the UK decided to leave a corrupt money wasting cabal.
How can EU citizens be illegal immigrants when they entered under legal freedom of movement? Why would they need to seek asylum here when they had a legal right to come anyway? What exactly are the seeking asylum from? Show me the data on asylum seekers that indicates that large numbers come from EU countries. Yes there were many low skilled workers, but they were vital to things like the agri-food and other industries. Many of these people also work in the NHS and other sectors that are now helping to keep us alive, be that delivering food or social care to the elderly in care homes. You know, the ones that even jingoistic gammons were out clapping for. Don’t confuse low paid with low skilled and unnecessary. The great fallacy of Priti Clueless Patel’s Moronic immigration policy is that we need a mix of skills, not just the “brightest and best”, whatever that means on a practical level. Independent research shows universally that EU immigrants made a net positive contribution to both the public finances and the wider UK economy. Also, if these people are not needed, then explain to me why the data show that, as net EU immigration to the UK (the bit that Boris’ Brexit Taliban falsely claimed we had no control over) has receded, it has largely been replaced by net immigration from non-EU countries – the bit even they concede we have full control over.
James sounds like the sort of jingoistic brexiteer convinced of the existence of Scheodinger’s immigrant, you know, the ones who will simultaneously steal your job while lazing about doing nothing and sponging benefits off the tax payer.
I’m bloody fed up of the politics of othering, it’s like a particularly nasty game of three card Monte by those in power, conning people who don’t have much into blaming those with even less while the wealth divide keeps on growing.
I wonder who they will lay the blame on once the convenient target of immigrants is now longer there.
Bribhoy, The immigrants were NOT EU citizens but those who arrived from other countries. Under international law they were meant to see asylum in the first ” safe” country that arrived in, however many ,in fact huge numbers were not applying, and then crossed the channel in boats, then claiming asylum here. If you do not know this then you should maybe try keeping up with the news.
They were ditching their passports and other id’s then claiming to come from a war torn region. Many were even coming from Pakistan! How anyone can claim asylum when coming from Pakistan is a mystery.
I personally have no problem with controlled immigration, We should have a system similar to Australia where you have to have a skill the country needs to be allowed in.
Likewise with people fleeing oppression, if they are genuine then the UK should take their fair share, that’s a given, however we have more than our fair share, while countries like Saudi have not taken a single one.
Nail.
Head.
SMACK!!!
Oh dear, you sound upset, what’s wrong, are the sunlit uplands not looking too tempting after all?
Justin Thomas, the Brexit Ref was undoubtedly decided by a belief among many that there were too many non white immigrants. Doncha know that there’s 80m Turks just itching to invade Britain once Turkey gets into the EU which will happen very soon. This is the shite that Johnson and Gove told us then.
The rest of your post is just unsubstantiated slurs on Clinton and Biden. You’ll need to make better arguments than that.
“A corrupt, money wasting , cabal.”
A fine description of Old Etonian run Westminster.
As for your question about Clinton doing better than Trump? I think you could have walked into any slum area, in any city in the USA, scraped any drunk off the pavement and he or she would have done AT LEAST as good a job as Trump.
Trump is not a clown. He’s a dangerous, xenophobic, manipulative, demagogue who can quickly whip the hard of thinking into the kind of riotous mob the world witnessed on Wednesday.
Hitler was regarded by the rest of the world as a clown not much more than ten years before he plunged Europe and eventually the whole world into war.