The Trump Psychosis

What if Donald Trump wins? The whole world is anxiously awaiting the outcome of the American presidential election, which today pits the controversial Republican candidate against the Democratic rival, Kamala Harris, who has come to the rescue of Joe Biden, defeated by his advanced age. The billionaire’s often delusional remarks do not bode well for the world in general and for Arab and Muslim nations in particular, as his exacerbated Zionism and customary excessiveness are likely to bring about the worst-case scenario.

First of all, such an outcome would have the gravest implications in the Middle East, where the extremist Benjamin Netanyahu is waging a genocidal war against the Palestinian people and is aggressively attacking the peoples of Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iran. During his term in the White House, Trump demonstrated his radical support for Zionism, moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and forcing normalization onto several Arab states, including King Mohammed VI’s Morocco.

Suffice it to say that he does not care about wreaking havoc in an explosive Middle East where the Islamic Republic of Iran represents Zionism’s nightmare, as well as in the Maghreb, where there is an increasingly marked Israeli presence. In addition to the fact that he will seek to indulge in his pet project of seeing Saudi Arabia join the cohort of normalized states, a goal shared by the Democrats; one can imagine that tensions with Iran will increase until reaching their climax. Similarly, the standoff with China, through Taiwan, would resume with renewed vigor, given the economic war the two powerful competitors are waging, while allied countries like Japan and South Korea would experience a new hotbed of crisis in their border dance with North Korea. Unpredictable in his outbursts and brutal in his retorts, the Republican candidate is not the most reassuring for his Western allies, particularly the Europeans, who remember his thunderous demands regarding NATO.

He had then called for more investment from them for the defense of these allied countries, going so far as to warn that the United States could, if necessary, abandon them to their fate in the face of adversity. The prospect of Trump’s return to the White House provokes, for the United States as well, a fear that all the dangers he warned of, should his Democratic opponents “steal the victory” from him, will come true.

The storming of the Capitol in 2020 is still fresh in everyone’s minds, and the provocations and even the incidents that multiplied during the election campaign confirm to everyone that the risk is not a figment of the imagination, but very real. This is evidenced by the barricades erected in New York and Washington and the mad rush to arms by supporters of both camps, anticipating the frenzy that would inevitably occur if a defeat, contested and denounced in advance by Trump, were to emerge. Harris, called all sorts of names and at times even insulted in the crudest terms by Trump, has only to call for “turning the page on a decade with Donald Trump” as her ace card, as she attempts to block the path to the White House from a “fascist” and a “vengeful spirit.” But the U.S. is a melting pot where disparate communities mix and collide, and Trump plays at will on these differences, haranguing the cowboys about the “white woman” to preserve the “virtues” of a rural America that he says must remain “pure.”

And that’s a well-known refrain whose meaning and consequences are strongly rejected by Latino, African American and Arab social sectors.