In a recent meeting I attended of abortion rights advocates in Europe, someone commented that they did not get the impression there was as much pushback against Trump et al on abortion as in his first four-year term. Have I inadvertently contributed to that impression here, because I had decided to say nothing about Trump for as long as possible? Why? Because so many of the media and so many activists, with different intentions, have been talking about nothing else but Trump!! He and Musk are getting constant publicity everywhere you look. A fascist, an idiot, a madman and a clown, take your pick which is which. They’re putting forward outrageous policies like six-year-olds, to see if the world approves, and then (sort of) withdrawing them a few days later if people don’t approve. But mostly their duo act is an endless “look-at-me-me-me-me-me” thing.
But seriously, there is a lot of opposition in the US, and there is also a lot of positive action for change going on too. In this newsletter, I’ve tried to share reports from the US about the activism that is taking place and I’ll do that more often. Moreover, I think Trump and Musk are already making some big mistakes. UK Channel 4 TV (6 Feb 2025, 9pm) just showed an hour’s programme of Musk making a complete fool of himself, and a range of public figures expressing concern about where both he and Trump are going. And today Al-Jazeera was reporting the rapidly growing refusal of many countries to accept Trump’s most outrageous proposals — about Gaza, for example, and about the US imposing tariffs on other countries, about closing down USAID, and about leaving WHO.
But we can’t just be an audience for them, or for the media, either. We need to put pressure on our own governments and our own media not to give them endless publicity or bow to them or even make us laugh at them, but to take them very seriously. They may be the US president and vice-president, but they are not kings of the universe, let alone anyone’s saviour. They are crazy, scheming, power hungry and very dangerous men.
Marge Berer, 6 February 2025