Donald Trump, ‘Follower’ of the British Far Right

The president of the United States re-tweets propaganda videos from a far right British group with 500 members, irritating the government of British Prime Minister Theresa May.

Donald Trump also suggests that an American TV star murdered an intern.

For 70 years, the “special relationship” between Great Britain and the United States has been at the heart of world politics. In 1963, Charles de Gaulle vetoed the United Kingdom’s entrance into what was then the European Common Market, claiming in a press conference that it was the United States’ “Trojan horse” in Europe. It’s not as if the British needed membership in the Common Market. They were sharing intelligence with the United States through the Echelon electronic espionage network, and they even carried out nuclear testing in Nevada.

Now, though, the British are all alone. They’re leaving the European Union, and the United States, under Donald Trump, makes little effort to hide its disdain for Great Britain. The president of the United States has decided to directly interfere in British politics. If any other political leader said about the United States what Trump says about Great Britain — and about practically all countries, except for Russia and Israel — he would be immediately accused of “deep anti-Americanism.”

The latest blow came on Nov. 29 when the president of the United States, who had a very “Tweety” morning, posted on that social network several messages from the British far-right leader Jayda Fransen, who, a year ago, was found guilty by the British authorities of insulting a woman wearing a hijab. Fransen is the deputy leader of the far-right British party Britain First, a 500-strong organization with no representation in Parliament, and which, in 1992, defined itself as the British version of fascism and Nazism. “Fascism was Italian. Nazism was German. We are British. We will do things our own way; we will not copy foreigners.”

Trump’s retweets show one Muslim man destroying a statue of the Virgin Mary, and another one lynching and throwing a young man off a rooftop. A third retweet is accompanied by the image of a Muslim immigrant beating up a Dutchman on crutches. In reality, the attacker is neither an immigrant nor Muslim.

The United Kingdom didn’t accept such a Goebbelsian explanation. “Britain First seeks to divide communities by their use of hateful narratives that peddle lies and stoke tensions,” a spokesman for Theresa May said. “British people overwhelmingly reject the prejudiced rhetoric of the far right which is the antithesis of the values this country represents, decency, tolerance and respect.”

The retweets weren’t the only instance of the American president’s online savvy that day. In another tweet, Trump called for an investigation into the former Republican congressman — that is, someone from his own party — and current MSNBC journalist Joe Scarborough, who he accused indirectly of having murdered an intern 16 years ago: a conspiracy theory dismissed by the police to which, paradoxically, only the far left has paid attention.