IT'S not often the Sunday Herald agrees with Ruth Davidson. To date, it seems the Tory leader and this newspaper have disagreed on just about everything – apart from enthusiastically backing same-sex marriage. However, today we have another piece of common ground to share: fear and loathing of Donald Trump.
Davidson, as we report today, says the US billionaire, who is all but assured now of winning the Republican Party nomination for a run at the White House, is a danger to the world. We'd go further: Trump is a divisive demagogue. His flirtation with racism, extremism and even fascism – how else do you describe vowing to build a wall along the Mexican border, or the promise to ban all Muslims from America, or the whiff of thuggery and intimidation that follows him – should make the world recoil in horror. He trades on pitiful bullying, mocking those weaker than him at every opportunity, and misogyny is in his DNA. He is a liar and a hypocrite – he presents himself as a self-made man battling Washington elites, when in fact he is the privileged child of a millionaire who inherited his wealth and influence.
Trump is an American nightmare. In an age of anti-politics, a man who believes in nothing but the acquisition of power and wealth is playing to the worst values of a swathe of white America. He is attempting to reduce democracy to bumper sticker slogans empty of all meaning – just as his speeches are empty of any policy, and contain nothing but braying rhetoric, non sequiturs, and cheap sloganeering.
Here in Europe, we need to be careful, though, not to make the same mistake as the Republican Party and see Trump as only a joke, until it is too late. There have been plenty of demagogues throughout history who were thought of as a clown and then took the reins of power from beneath the noses of those who laughed at them – spelling disaster for their people and the rest of the world.
So, Trump must be called out at every turn by every right-thinking political leader. His brand of politics needs attacked and destroyed. Everyone in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – in fact every right-thinking person across the planet who believes in democracy and decency – should warn America: if you value our friendship then don't vote for Trump.
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