Eighty years ago, British PM Neville Chamberlain went to Munich for a summit meeting with Adolf Hitler. By 1938 Hitler had built himself a mighty army, navy and air force. He had already published his testament, outlining his disdain for democratic rule, and his disdain for anyone who was not part of his ‘Master Race’.

Trump-Kim, same old fraud

Chamberlain was convinced that he could make a deal with Hitler. He went to Munich to secure “peace with honour for our times”, and came home clutching his piece of paper – the biggest fraud of the 20th century, costing 100 million lives over the next seven years.

The similarity between Donald Trump’s gushing endorsements of Kim Jung-un and Vladimir Putin this past weekend is vintage appeasement. Trump’s crass disdain for the suffering millions, who live under rule-of-law violating regimes, in North Korea, Russia, Syria, China, Turkey, Hungary, and his bullying of the people of Canada (“I’ll make Canadians pay for the words of their PM”) is not fake news, but harsh reality.

It’s identical to how Chamberlain threw the people of Czechoslovakia, Eastern Europe, and the democratic resistance in all of those countries under the bus in 1938, thereby emboldening the fascists to violent attacks on their opponents everywhere. Kristallnacht, the first step to the massacre of the Jews, was launched in November 1938 by Hitler.

Trump’s public support for petty tyrants throughout the world, and his scorn for his democratic allies, who are now fighting for survival in dozens of places, and especially in Europe, is a stunning development, because the threat to justice, the rule of law and sustainable economic development effectively has the support of the United States.

Donald Trump and his bullies are acting according to their own logic. They are fully at home on a playing field that rejects fair play, where strong-arm tactics and the use of deceptive language dominate. This is why Trump is tougher on Trudeau than on Putin, why he will never confront China, and will sacrifice the entire Western Alliance if he’s allowed to do so and realign America with the authoritarian tide sweeping across the world.

He uses the language of the evangelists, but strictly for tactical purposes, to get out of the traffic jam on his way to his bank. He will not back regime change in the direction of Western liberal values, because that is counter to his interests.

He’ll offer a protective umbrella to any fly-by-night authoritarian wannabee, because they are the “tough cookies” he understands, they are the ones he can wheel and deal with in the same way he wheeled and dealed with the sharks in the New York real estate market, intimidating his suppliers, not paying his bills, ripping off anyone he could along the way.

America and the world reached a crossroad in Singapore. It is last call for the defenders of justice, the rule of law and those who want to save the planet from the wrecking crew that looks upon fact-based political discourse, fair-trade and sustainable economic development, as a sick joke. It is time to find new leaders and form new political alliances.

Adapted and abbreviated from source: András Göllner on SocialEurope.eu