We Don't Have Time For This

Donald Trump and his supporters plunged to new depths yesterday in a show of racism in which the crowd targeted Democrat Representative Ilhan Omar with chants of “send her back” in a response to the war of words between Trump and the so-called “Squad” of progressive Democrats challenging his hateful rhetoric. What is chilling is not the ugly discourse that we have grown accustomed to from Trump over the past few years, but the zeal with which a room full of people took up the disgraceful chant.

Further evidence of America’s deadly slide towards fascism comes from reports that Trump’s approval rating rose amongst Republicans after a string of racist Tweets in which he told the “Squad” to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came”. Every congresswoman he targeted in this Tweet was born in the US with the exception of Ilhan Omar, who has been a US citizen for 19 years, incidentally longer than Melania Trump. One wonders what could possibly cause Trump to believe that Omar, born in Mogadishu and a practicing Muslim, should leave the US whilst having no concerns about his white, European wife. One might even suspect that his obvious links to the increasingly vocal white supremacist movement in the US might potentially have something to do with it.

But this isn’t about Trump. This is about the fact that whilst many people have stated their support for Ilhan Omar and vehemently condemned the President’s words, many more actively and vocally support them. This is about the population of the most powerful country on Earth proudly embracing racism.

There are already plenty of people talking about the current state of populist politics not just in the US but across the world, and many concerned voices trying to halt the tide of fascism that is currently gripping democracies across the west. The potential catastrophe that such identity-based politics can cause should be clear enough to anyone with any basic knowledge of history. We’ve done this before, a million times.

But this time is different. Not because the hate and the vitriol are any worse than we’ve seen before (though we’re only starting our slide down the slippery slope, so we’ll see what happens), but because whilst humanity appears ready once again to duke it out over whether we really think fascism is bad or not, this time the hamster wheel we’re spinning on is heading towards a cliff edge.

As Trump spews his bile and is applauded for it, and Boris Johnson receives cheers for his bold assertion that “there will be clean water and adequate supplies of glucose” regardless of what kind of Brexit deal is pulled together, we teeter on the brink of a climate disaster from which we will be unlikely to recover.

As the Extinction Rebellion protests ramp up again around the world, and the School Strike for Climate marches continue, we are gently reminded of the IPCC report that gave us just twelve years to drastically overhaul our economies and social systems in order to prevent climate breakdown. After last month was declared the hottest June on record globally, it has now also emerged that July is on track to become the hottest month ever. A further “truly alarming” sign of the exponentially warming climate was discovered in an “unprecedented” lake formed from a melting glacier in the Alps, at an altitude of 11,000 feet. Climate conflict is already a reality, and we can expect it to get worse.

But rather than coming together to really try to fix this mess that we have caused, we’re descending back into playground politics that pits ordinary people against one another. As we strive to build a sustainable and peaceful new world, we are being dragged back down into the mud by a hateful belief system that refuses to die.

We can choose to follow the racist, misogynist, white supremacist President down a path of distraction and infighting until it’s too late to do anything about the biggest threat to humanity of our time. Or we can push back against this with everything we have right now and shut it down so we can get on with what needs to be done to tackle the climate crisis.

We know what the outcome of this is. We know that this abhorrent display puts everyone who participated firmly on the wrong side of history. We know that left unchecked these words will turn to actions, and that people will be hurt and that people will die. We know that we must fight back against this aggression everywhere in order to prevent the worst of our history repeating itself. Those of us who stand with Ilhan Omar know that we are right.

Now more than ever, we need to recognise the humanity and the commonality between each and every one of us, and resolve to leave that which divides us in the past where it belongs.

We don’t have time for this shit.