Trump Vs The World

The American Resistance is not alone

In the bitter cold of the Swiss dusk, ten residents of Davos climbed the slopes of the Rhaetian Alps on a mission to communicate with the world. Four hundred and fifty torches were lit to spell a message which glowed through the growing dark.

No Kings.

The slogan of the resistance to Trump in America shone over the town in defiance of the US President who was coming there to speak at the World Economic Forum the following day. This protest was driven partly by European fury at Trump’s stated desire to seize the territory of Greenland from Denmark. But it had another raison d’être too: a clear message to brothers and sisters in America.

You are not alone

The US is an insular country and many are not aware of the tidal forces of opinion beyond its shores. If they did, they’d realise that Trump is loathed almost everywhere. Polling shows that in many nations, a greater percentage oppose him than they do in America itself. And there’s a reason for that.

Trump is a global threat.

The world has seen that in Venezuela, in the intimidation of Greenland and Canada, in the interference in elections in Honduras and support for Bolsonaro in Brazil. His poison spreads everywhere. The damage he does is not confined within America’s borders.

Trump, Vance, Musk and others are working hard to extend their power and influence across the West. Support and cash for Far Right parties flows out of the US, for Reform in the UK, for the AfD in Germany, for Orban’s Fidesz in Hungary and others. They’re building their own global alliance.

But the resistance is organising globally too.

Built in to the message of those blazing torches was the recognition that such a threat can only be defeated by a nation-spanning alliance. US citizens face a tough fight on their own when Trump has access to the brutality of ICE and the firepower of the military, never mind an electoral system corrupted by money, gerrymandering and, very probably, interference in the very counting of votes.

But Everything is Connected. A defeat for Trump in his plans to seize Greenland weakens him at home. A defeat in European courts for the companies of his gruppenfuehrer Musk undermines Trump himself and the global game that’s being played by the shadowy forces that back him.

The American Resistance should take heart from those torches shining over Davos. There is strength in numbers and this peacetime alliance against rising fascism is as widespread as the one that fought in the twentieth century. Information can be shared. Voices can be amplified. Foreign governments can be coerced into playing their part to take Trump on.

That is all happening now.

This is not about US politics, though it’s easy to understand why many in America think it is — they’re living on the sharp end and watching the destruction of the society they believed in by a man of their own making.

This is about the kind of world we want to live in.

Trump and the movement that’s been created around him is strengthened if the West’s liberal beacons are extinguished one by one. Conversely, if their light shines brighter it can dispel some of the shadows in the US. In that case, Trump looks less like the colossus of the coming age and more like the aberration fuelled by narcissism and psychological weakness that he is

That weakness was on display during his rambling, confused speech to the World Economic Forum under the light of that No Kings message. What had been planned to be the voice of authority telling Europe and the world how things were now going to be turned into a wheedling, backpedaling drone of grievance.

America didn’t get the respect it used to have. Neither did he. NATO undermined him. Europe was working against him. The fantasy he had created was punctured and he sounded baffled.

Europe’s unyielding resistance to his insistence that Greenland would become part of the US forced him to back down, as all bullies do when challenged. He was compelled to say he would not seize the country militarily. Those were the only real cards he had, the one thing that worried European leaders who knew they did not have the resources for an armed confrontation with a military superpower.

Trump called for negotiations on the future of Greenland, but European leaders won’t give any credence to that. All he can do is threaten more tariffs and the response from the EU will harm America more than it harms them.

His retreat undercut all his bragging about being the strongman who can achieve anything he wants. Indeed, throughout his speech he seemed weak, tired and old.

The fight continues, but Americans should take comfort that it is being waged on multiple fronts, often far from the homeland. Trump simply doesn’t have the ability to conduct war on all those levels. A blow will come here, a blow will come there, until he won’t know where to look. Eventually he’ll be wounded and brought to his knees

Always know you have allies everywhere ready to offer support. As Martin Luther King Jr said, “There is power in unity and there is power in numbers.”