In The Spectator, Brendan O’Neill explains that President Donald Trump is fighting real fascism, Islamo-fascism, and should be given credit for his success. He writes:
Tell me: who has done more for the cause of anti-fascism? Real anti-fascism? Those masked momma’s boys of the antifa movement for whom “fighting fascism” means little more than hurling abuse at blue-collar workers who voted for Donald Trump? Or Donald Trump himself, the man they love to loathe, who today accomplished the miraculous feat of liberating 20 Israelis from the anti-Semitic hell of Hamas captivity? It’s Trump, isn’t it?
As of today, following the soul-stirring emancipation of the last living Israeli hostages, whenever I hear the phrase “anti-fascist” I will think of Trump. Forget those sun-starved digital radicals who bark “Fascist!” at every politician on the right, or the snotty lefties whose “anti-fascism” entails yelling at working-class mothers protesting against illegal immigration. Those people have sullied the noble cause of anti-fascism by appropriating it as a mask for their bourgeois sneering.
No, it was Trump who took the fight to fascism. He has cornered – we hope – a brutal organization that was founded with the express intention of killing Jews and destroying the Jewish state. He has freed 20 men whose only “crime” is that they were Jews in the Holy Land. He has landed a spectacular blow against the forces of Islamo-fascism and helped to fortify the beleaguered Jewish nation. Give me that over the am-dram activism of antifa’s balaclava bores any day of the week.
Today should be the day that Trump Derangement Syndrome is laid to rest. No one has to agree with everything the US President says or does – that would be weird. But we should acknowledge that he has achieved something extraordinary. He expertly deployed both threats and talks to drag Hamas to the table. And, in the process, he made good on the 20th-century cry of “Never Again” by securing the release of Jews from the limbo of Islamist cruelty.
Read more here.
