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Brian Morgan ✍ In the history of the Northern Ireland Conflict, there were only two occasions when security forces were completely absent from IRA funerals. 

The first was at the funerals of the Gibraltar 3. The second was on 19 March 1988, when Corporals Derek Wood and David Howes drove at high speed into the funeral cortege of IRA volunteer Caoimhin MacBradaigh, in West Belfast. The 1988 absences remain suspiciously deliberate, the result of a questionable secret 'stand-off' agreement between security forces and the Catholic Church, brokered for the Gibraltar 3 funerals and for Caoimhin MacBradaigh after loyalist Michael Stone's murderous attack at Milltown Cemetery three days earlier.

Too much weight is given to any agreement made with the Church. In the history of IRA funerals, the Church would have considered it unthinkable to ask the security forces to stay away completely - they would have simply asked that they keep a respectful distance. The alleged claim of an agreement to a complete absence is not credible. Figure 1 above shows how close both the security forces and mourners could be to each other without incident.

What followed remains one of the most contested incidents of the Troubles: were two British soldiers simply lost, or were they engaged in a covert operation when they met their deaths?

I do not know the Corporals' full intention but their presence at the funeral was not an accident. I will show the official account to be false. I will also show there is more evidence that they left Woodbourne RUC Barracks and not North Howard Street Barracks.

By the 1980s, IRA funerals had become flashpoints. The RUC, increasingly given front-line roles in nationalist areas, regularly engaged in aggressive sectarian confrontations with mourners, often triggered by Unionist/Loyalist aversion to the sight of Tricolours. Michael Stone's attack on 16 March 1988, which killed three and wounded over fifty at the Gibraltar 3's funeral, changed the dynamic entirely.

Cyril Donnan, then RUC Chief Superintendent, had planned the security operation for the Gibraltar 3 funerals, involving both RUC and Army personnel. In The Funeral Murders (BBC, 2018), he recalls: after his plan for the Gibraltar 3 had been approved, he was later told there was to be no security force presence.[1] This was the first time in the history of the Conflict where there would be no security force presence at an IRA funeral. Donnan says he was shocked by the decision.

The security forces agreed to stay away from the funerals in exchange for an IRA agreement not to fire volleys over the graves. When and with whom was this agreement made, and why was it not made with the senior officer responsible for the planning, Chief Superintendent Donnan?

Someone agreed to unprecedented conditions Donnan did not like. Donnan confirms he was operating under strict orders not to deploy after the Corporals launched what looked like an attack on the funeral.[2] Sight of a weaponised car, mounting the footpath and driving at high speed through mourners should have been all he needed to know. One occupant of the car firing a shot should have been enough to know. Donnan passively watched events unfold on a 10-inch heli-teli screen in real-time. His eventual intervention came too late and he would have known it.[3]

The heli-teli footage shows 12 minutes from start to execution. Father Alex Reid, who tried to intervene, later questioned: "There was a helicopter circling overhead and I don't know why they didn't do something, radio to the police or soldiers to come up."

The Chief Superintendent watched a speeding car drive directly into mourners, but did nothing. He watched the moment Wood fired a warning shot, but did nothing. He saw Wood being tackled to the ground and unarmed, but did nothing. He saw both soldiers being taken into Casement Park, but did nothing. He watched as both soldiers were stripped and thrown over a wall, but did nothing. He watched both soldiers being bundled into a black taxi, but did nothing. I assume he watched both soldiers being executed; he arrived afterwards and the IRA killers had long escaped.

One explanation for the Chief Superintendent's inaction: whoever told him not to intervene already knew what the Corporals' intentions were. The Chief Superintendent would have been astute enough to know, when he relayed the events to his superiors and was still told not to intervene, that it may have been a sanctioned operation.

Donnan claims he defied orders to deploy,[4] but only after fatal delay. The timeline conclusively confirms observation without intervention. Who told a Chief Superintendent with operational command on the ground not to intervene?

The Ministry of Defence maintained that Wood and Howes were Royal Corps of Signals communications technicians who had left North Howard Street base. They were supposed to drive along the M1 motorway to Lisburn. The story: Wood was 'showing around' his new colleague Howes, took a wrong turn from North Howard Street Military Base, and accidentally drove into the funeral. They should have turned left onto Westlink from North Howard Street but they turned right instead.[5]

Even the BBC would know that the claim that they could not access the motorway from the alleged route they took is false. After turning right (if they did leave North Howard Street), multiple other routes existed: Grosvenor Road, Broadway Road, Donegall Road, and Kennedy Way.

Traffic on the Falls Road would have been significantly reduced that day. Once they were past Kennedy Way roundabout there was zero traffic. Both Wood and Howes would have been acutely aware of their surroundings and what was ahead of them.

Donnan questions the official route.[6] He stated that the soldiers would have known the area was out of bounds, that they would have been compelled to find out what areas were off-limits, and that checking routes was "like pulling a shirt on in the morning."

Former RUC officer 'Noel' adds:[7] "The army are good at routes, so when something happens they know where they are, plus they would have been warned going out the gate."

The Funeral Murders captures a critical revelation at [43:58].[8] An RUC inspector from Woodbourne Barracks told Chief Superintendent Cyril Donnan that the Corporals were driving "one of my unmarked patrol cars."

This contradicts the North Howard Street origin story entirely. The soldiers were initially identified by the RUC by a commanding RUC officer in Andersonstown because they were driving one of his unmarked cars from Woodbourne Barracks.

The implication is significant. They were already inside the republican heartland, having approached the Andersonstown Road from Kennedy Way, not ‘straying’ into it from the Falls Road direction.

Even after mounting the footpath, the Corporals could still have escaped had they turned up Slemish Way. Instead, they drove across the junction and continued to drive into mourners. They stopped when they drew parallel to Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness but were separated by a steel pedestrian barrier on their left. They immediately reversed, driving across the junction of Slemish Way further than they needed if escape had been their intention. The car seems to straighten to make a repeat attempt to drive forward, this time keeping the barrier to their right. Two taxis moved forward to block their path.

Speculation among Republicans was that it was an assassination attempt on Adams and McGuinness - weaponising the car gave them a better chance than Stone's attack.

It was further speculated that the steel barrier's presence, visible at ground level but potentially missed on maps, suggests pre-planning that did not account for physical reality.

As an undercover car from Woodbourne, it was fitted with communication equipment. They could have made radio contact. Why didn't they receive radio warnings from the helicopter? Undercover operatives normally coordinate to avoid compromise.

The helicopter recorded the full 12 minutes of real-time events without intervention. Chief Superintendent Donnan was watching everything on his monitor. His "strict policy not to intervene" strains credibility given the live feed. They watched the soldiers being beaten, stripped and driven to waste ground before being killed.

Former Joint Communications Unit - NI technician Seán Hartnett, in his memoir Charlie One (2016), makes claims that are not credible.[9] He states: 

There was no special mission, no clandestine operation, and no cover-up, as has been suggested by some. Howes and Wood were the architects of their own demise.

Hartnett further claimed that the Corporals' car was civilian-registered and unflagged in police systems, creating fatal identification delays.[10]

Hartnett is not a first-hand witness and is repeating rumours he has heard. His claims are discussed in turn below.

An RUC Inspector identified the car as one of his. It was not a military car as Hartnett alleges, nor did it go unidentified because it was unmarked. If the helicopter crew relayed the car's registration to the control room, that would be even more damning for Donnan - because it would mean an RUC Inspector had confirmed to him that they were two soldiers as events were still unfolding. When Donnan makes that revelation in the documentary, a fire crew is extinguishing the burning car. Viewers are led to assume that the RUC only identified the car from being present at the scene while it burned.

Hartnett makes an additional unfounded claim regarding the magazine of Wood’s gun:[11]

As the vehicle was surrounded and Wood was being dragged out, he produced his pistol and fired a single warning shot in the air. While his restraint was admirable, it ultimately proved to be fatal. If you look closely at the image on the screen you can see that the magazine housing is empty. Either Wood had been sitting on his pistol for quick access while driving around and accidentally sat on the magazine ejector switch, or it was ejected during the scuffle to get him out of the vehicle. Either way, when he went to fire a second shot all he got was a dead man's click.

This account is contradicted by direct evidence. First, the IRA used the soldiers' own guns to kill them - Wood's gun was loaded. Second, and conclusively, I personally searched the driver's side of the car, including under the seat, and found no magazine.[12] Hartnett's account amounts to uninformed speculation or repeating rumours.

One would expect the passenger side window to be open if, Republican speculation was true, and Howes was to shoot Adams and McGuinness from the car. However, the footage shows a mourner smash the window to disarm Howes after his gun jammed. That the gun jammed follows Howes having attempted to fire through the closed window.

Within hours, IRA sources claimed the Corporals were two SAS members. Howes' ID was marked ‘Herford’ - a British Army base in Germany. This was allegedly misread as ‘Hereford’ - SAS headquarters. That may be true, but it is also possible the British authorities did not want the apparent attack associated with the same regiment that had unlawfully killed the Gibraltar 3. Regardless, as members of the Signals regiment with the Joint Communications Unit - NI, the Corporals were support personnel to the SAS.

Why were they using a local RUC unmarked car from Woodbourne? As an undercover vehicle, it was fitted with communication equipment from which they could have made radio contact. The absence of any communication like this, combined with the absence of any radio warning from the helicopter to the Corporals, remains unexplained on the official account. One explanation might be, undercover units practice radio silence at crucial moments of operations.

Why the Corporals Wood and Howes drove at speed into mourners has remained unresolved for nearly four decades. The official narrative - that two soldiers simply got lost - does not survive scrutiny. The Woodbourne vehicle identification places them already inside the republican heartland, in an unmarked RUC patrol car from a local barracks, approaching from a direction wholly inconsistent with a wrong turn from North Howard Street. The route analysis eliminates accident as a credible explanation. My first hand account directly contradicts the central factual claim advanced by Hartnett regarding the magazine from Woods gun. The behaviour of the vehicle - continuing past escape routes, drawing parallel to Adams and McGuinness, reversing and seeming to realign for a second pass - contradicts the actions of lost soldiers attempting to extricate themselves. Chief Superintendent Donnan’s inaction to a deadly incident he personally watched, sustained across 12 minutes of live overhead surveillance despite multiple observable triggers for intervention, is more consistent with prior knowledge than with institutional inertia alone. Taken together, the weight of the evidence supports the conclusion that the Corporals were sent. I do not know what their intentions were, but they were determined to achieve something.

References

[1] The Funeral Murders (BBC, 2018), [16:26]

[2] The Funeral Murders (BBC, 2018):

[3] The Funeral Murders (BBC, 2018), [43:26]: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=n2AX4zm6R10

[4] The Funeral Murders (BBC, 2018), [41:00]

[5] The Funeral Murders (BBC, 2018), [51:57]

[6] The Funeral Murders (BBC, 2018), [52:33-53:18] 

[7] The Funeral Murders (BBC, 2018), [53:20] 

[8] The Funeral Murders (BBC, 2018), [43:58] 

[9] Hartnett, Seán, Charlie One: The True Story of an Irishman in the British Army and His Role in Covert Counter-Terrorism Operations in Northern Ireland, Merrion Press, 2016, pp. 45-46.

[10] Hartnett, Seán, Charlie One, Merrion Press, 2016, p. 45.

[11] Hartnett, Seán, Charlie One, Merrion Press, 2016, p. 45.

[12] Hartnett, Seán, Charlie One,, Merrion Press, 2016, p. 45.

Additional Sources:

Irish Times, 'The funeral murders that changed Northern Ireland forever' (16 March 2018): 

Belfast Newsletter, 'Corporals' murders: I was operating under a policy not to deploy, says RUC commander' (11 March 2018):.

Two Corporals 🪶 19 March 1988 🪶 Did They Stray Or Were They Sent?

Tommy McKearney ☭ There may be a temptation on this side of the Irish Sea to regard as entertainment the recent scandals among the upper echelons of Britain’s ruling class. 


This would be a mistake, if only for the reason that what is happening within Britain’s governing Labour Party and its monarchy has the capacity to impact Ireland, on both sides of the border. Clearly, the Six Counties—which remain within London’s jurisdiction—are directly affected. Yet so too is the southern state, as a consequence of its connection with certain dark elements of the British establishment.
Let’s be clear: the outworking of the Epstein scandal cannot be dismissed as confined to the proverbial “few bad apples” syndrome. For Keir Starmer, who spent five years as the UK’s Director of Public Prosecutions, to claim that he simply accepted Peter Mandelson’s assurance that he had nothing to hide before appointing him ambassador to Washington is not credible. Is he attempting to say that his intelligence agencies failed to inform him of their mandatory vetting and due diligence findings?

Nor is the fact that Starmer’s advisor, Morgan McSweeney, could have been unaware of the real situation remotely plausible, if only due to the fact that Mandelson had previously been dismissed from cabinet positions on two occasions for malpractice. The only tenable explanation is that the prime minister and his team were either indifferent to the sleazy reality or viewed it as affording them leverage over the wretched individual in question.

And if there is a stink hanging over Downing Street’s incumbents, the stench emerging from the monarchy is stifling. From sharing sensitive and restricted financial information with the Epstein network, to an extremely disturbing relationship with underage girls, to flagrant misappropriation of taxpayers’ funds, the recently demoted Prince Andrew has behaved reprehensibly. He would surely be in prison were it not for his position within the monarchy.

A major point to bear in mind about the Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor story is that his toxic behaviour was undoubtedly well known—and indeed recorded—by the reigning monarchs and the state’s intelligence agencies for years before being publicly exposed. As a senior member of the royal family, Andrew had a round-the-clock security detail affording him close protection. His security detail would have been charged with a serious dereliction of duty had it failed to rigorously check the identity and background of every person in close contact with their charge. Doing so would have required the involvement of many members of the intelligence agencies and, undoubtedly, the maintenance of records.

What other explanation could there be for the monarchy paying a multi-million-pound sum to settle out of court with Virginia Giuffre? Nor should we be misled by the apparent impartial and rigorous application of the law with the arrests of Mandelson and Mountbatten-Windsor. They are now the scapegoats. Moreover, being well aware of the rules of the game, they will be expected to “take a hit for the team” and say nothing.

When viewed in the round, it is obvious that there is a prevailing policy of deliberate obfuscation about how affairs of state are managed. Not only that, but there is an absence of transparency as to from where and by whom power is ultimately exercised in Britain. In practice, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the deep state exercises more influence than will ever be admitted.

How this set-up affects Ireland may be difficult to see at first. However, the deliberate concealment of state-tolerated criminality is hardly a revelation for anyone following news reports from the Six Counties. Indeed, the charging of a tiny number of British Army veterans may now be viewed as a cynical strategy to deflect attention from the dark hand of the deep state. Only the age-old call to break the Union will allow for this threat to be definitively addressed.

In relation to the Republic, the situation is somewhat different but disturbing nonetheless. Plans are currently afoot in Dublin to align the southern state’s defence within the armed forces of Britain, France, the EU, and NATO. There will not be a referendum on this crucially important issue. The decision to do so will be taken by the coalition cabinet without any wider consultation with the electorate.

Worryingly, therefore, Ireland’s place in the world may now be decided—not even by English parliamentarians, but by faceless actors in Britain operating in concert with other forces acting in the interests of imperialism.

There may be some temporary amusement to be obtained from the spectacle of these one-time pillars of the British establishment under arrest in the back of a police car. But before enjoying their plight, just bear in mind that nothing has changed in relation to the underlying power structure in Britain. It is best that we always remain aware of how that system operates in order to preserve its power, because only by understanding this can we hope to overcome its destructive potential.

Tommy McKearney is a left wing and trade union activist.
He is author of The Provisional IRA: From Insurrection to Parliament.
Follow on Twitter @Tommymckearney

The Rotten Ruling Elite 🪶 Epstein Was Just The Tip Of The Iceberg

Dixie Elliot ✊To deny what everyone already knows is a sure way to keep others digging for the truth.
 
Gerry Adams could simply have said, when he was first asked about being a member of the IRA, that 'for legal reasons he could not admit to having been a member of the IRA,' and kept on repeating it every other time it was put to him.

He wouldn't have been admitting he was a member of the IRA nor would he have been denying it.
However Adams continues to not just deny having been a member of the IRA, he categorically denies it.

Giving evidence in the case against him Adams said: 'I was never a member of the IRA or it's Army Council, and I never held any role or rank within the IRA.'

This statement from the veteran journalist John Ware just about sums Adams' denials up:

. . . In his statement, he continued: “It clearly grated with many of them that when Adams said that he strongly supported the armed struggle, his denial of actual Provisional IRA membership allowed him to avoid taking personal responsibility for their actions.
Adams seemingly elevated himself to a higher moral plane than the Provisional IRA, when it was they who were sacrificing life and limb – as they would see it – for a cause Adams was leading.
In short, they saw Adams’s denial of Provisional IRA membership as insufferably hypocritical.

Denying the past only ensures that others will continue to dig into it until they uncover the truth.

Thomas Dixie Elliot is a Derry artist and a former H Block Blanketman.
Follow Dixie Elliot on Twitter @IsMise_Dixie

In Denial

Caoimhin O’Muraile  ☭ Ever since the collapse of the USSR, deliberate as it was and engineered by various internal forces led by Boris Yeltsin who was, some argue, assisted by none other than Vladimir Putin and encouraged by the West, all fifteen states, now countries, of the former Soviet Union are in a mess. 

The capitalist experiment has not worked to any greater extent than it works anywhere else. Its faults are just masked in other countries like the USA and Britain. Russia, the largest state of the former USSR, is governed by gangsters, drug barons, prostitution is rife, and a President who lays claims to territory some of which frankly since the fall of the Soviet Union is not his. His armed forces are in disarray and are not performing brilliantly against a surprisingly strong enemy in Ukraine. The US President, Donald Trump, equally as negative as Vladimir Putin appears to be holding back* possibly because he wishes to have the power held by Putin himself in the US. It is arguably for this reason he is chipping away at the checks and balances which copper-fasten US liberal democracy. Could it be Trumps hope that by the time he is due for re-election he will have eroded these checks and balances sufficiently to allow him to suspend elections and impose a Putin style dictatorship in the USA?

On Tuesday night 24th February on BBC2 I watched a documentary; The Front Line: Inside Russia’s War, which painted a picture even by Western reporting biases of an army ill disciplined, badly officered, very low on morale - and men who did not want to be there. They don’t see this war as “saving the motherland” as they are constantly told it is. If they dare say so, the frontline is a pointless ‘meatgrinder’ with them and the Ukrainians as the meat. Putin may have had a point about the de-Nazification of Ukraine – one of his reasons for invasion – as Azov neo-Nazi troops are now incorporated into the regular Ukrainian armed forces and needed weeding out. Unlike their predecessors, the Red Army who trounced Nazi Germany, the Russian armed forces have not weeded out these Nazi troops of Azov active in Ukraine. This then gives rise to question Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian President who claims to be Jewish, why is he allowing Nazi troops into his armed forces? He is either not Jewish at all, it’s a lie, or he has no power or control over who fights for Ukraine? 

Putin had a problem and has made a right pig’s arse of sorting it out. In Ukraine, Russia controls parts of Luhansk Oblast, Donetsk Oblast, and parts of Zaporizhzhia Oblast and the Crimea. Of these only the Crimea arguably belongs to Russia – the Crimean War (1853-1856) was fought between the forces of the Russian Empire taking on those of Britain, France, and the Ottoman Empire, making the Crimea arguably Russian even though they lost. Putin claiming people of the Donetsk Oblast and other regions are Russian speaking holds little water. Was this not the excuse Hitler used for annexing the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia in 1939, the population were ‘German speaker’s’? This is Putin’s argument, among others, an argument fuelled by the mindless attacks on Russian speakers by the Azov Nazis! If Zelensky cannot bring his fascist troops to heel then perhaps the Russian forces should remain! The Azov Regiment and these eastern regions should be part of any peace-deal surely. 

There is no doubt about it the Azov expanded regiment are a problem, one which Starmer and his cronies trying to use the Ukraine to make a name for themselves as world powers, which they are not. Why does Starmer never mention the presence of neo-Nazi troops, Azov, who model themselves on the Waffen SS ‘Das Reich regiment’ (their description of themselves), when discussing Ukraine? Him and his second rate; “coalition of the willing”, only mention Russian atrocities and never those of Azov - why? Could Starmer and his mob see an opportunity to exploit Ukraine for its natural resources after the war? Could this be why Starmer wants “boots on the ground” after the war is over, to protect British capitalist interests?

The problem here is and as bad as Azov are, the Russians are certainly no better. They bully their own men into fighting a war they do not want to be in. The officers are very bad at earning respect in commanding their troops and strategically appear clueless! The treatment of civilians is very bad. One girl in Russia who dared to protest against the war and Putin was thrown in prison, similar to the USA when demonstrators protested against Vietnam, protestors were even shot in the US! The documentary, using secret footage, showed Russian soldiers at the front line stripped naked and humiliated for showing signs of cowardice in the eyes of their officers. The Russian officers do not lead by example - they send men into battles they themselves will never have to fight in. This is very bad officering of the worst order, a bit like the British in WW1 giving orders from thirty miles behind the lines. I suppose the British could argue some officers did go ‘over the top’ but not good old Dougie Hague!! However, I’m deviating, the Russian troops at the front are regularly bullied and humiliated according to the documentary, filmed in areas not internationally recognised as Russian with men who had deserted or gone long-term AWOL. They painted a very grim picture of tortured Russian troops whose only wish is to be home with their wives and girlfriends.

As for the Ukrainian forces, much smaller but appear dedicated on the surface, they are not much better off. They too are forced into situations they have no wish to be in but at least they can say they’re defending their homeland. Could this be the reason so many young men of fighting age are leaving Ukraine at their first opportunity? The documentary did not show the state of Ukrainian forces but with the exodus of young males from the country we may assume it is not great. The global ruling-classes, including modern shit heap Russia, are good at doing what they always have done, sending working-class people to fight their wars! Remember less than forty years ago the Russian and Ukrainian troops were part of the same armed forces! The formidable Soviet Red Army comprised of Russian, Ukrainian, Georgian in fact troops from all fifteen former Soviet states so little wonder the Ukrainians are putting up such a fight.

Through bad planning, low morale, bad officers, terrible political leadership Russia are not winning this war. At very best a stalemate in Eastern Ukraine could be claimed with only the Crimea safely in Russian hands. It is my belief the peninsula should remain Russian with the sovereignty of the regions in the east being points of a negotiated ceasefire. One major question Ukraine must ask in the event of talks taking place; who will control the power supply in East Ukraine if the Russians are given these areas? Perhaps for this reason Zelensky must hold out for regions which provide power supplies for his country! The Ukrainians have their faults at the front but compared with the barbarism meted out by Russian officers on their young soldiers, soldiers who should be nurtured and guided, the Ukrainians appear the better option. Remember this documentary was shown on BBC2 perhaps with a Western bias so must be regarded as pro-Ukraine. Any progressive aspects within the Russian command, if there are any, may have been airbrushed out possibly on British government orders.

The Western media and governments have made no secret of their support for Ukraine against Russia. They are not reporting objectively and the BBC2 documentary may be regarded as the best of a bad bunch by the standards of reporting this war. This does not make the BBC neutral and it should be noted the programme did not show any of the faults in the Ukrainian military or government. They are conspicuous by their silence about the presence of the self-confessed neo-Nazis, the Azov regiment. Not a word! They are also very quiet on the issue of Ukraine joining NATO, something Putin is adamant will not happen. From his point of view it is easy to understand why Russia cannot afford any further incursions eastwards by NATO. Would Trump, or any other US President, allow Mexico to join a military alliance hostile to the US? Of course not, they would at very least threaten Mexico and, at worst, invade and occupy the country militarily! 

All things considered and given the slow progress Russia are making in Ukraine it might be time for Putin to cut his losses while still in a comparatively stronger position than Zelensky and sit round the negotiating table. He might not hold the eastern provinces for ever! It might be time for Putin to call a ceasefire and give negotiations a chance with a view to pulling out!! Call in your chips Vladimir, roulette is a funny game especially ‘Russian Roulette!!

* Trump maybe wary of Putin because although the Russian ground forces have not exactly set a blaze of glory in Ukraine, the last time the US were up against a credible enemy was Vietnam and they lost to the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong. The US troops were very good at fighting in Iraq against a militarily weaker armed force and with the help of the original ‘coalition of the willing’ but the Iraqis were not a credible enemy. Perhaps Trump, mad as he may be, does not want another humiliating defeat at Putin’s hands? Another factor dictating why Trump may be weary of Putin is the Russian has the largest nuclear arsenal on earth of any single country at his disposal and he, like Trump, being deranged, may just use them should ‘Mad Dog’ Donald Trump upset him!

Caoimhin O’Muraile is Independent Socialist Republican and Marxist.

Should Russia Negotiate?💣 Is It Time For Putin To Cash In His Chips While He Still Can?

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of One Thousand Nine Hundred And Fourteen

 

A Morning Thought @ 3090

Jim Duffy ✍ There must be some relief that Micheal Martin's meeting with Trump went OK in so far as any meeting with Trump is ever OK.
 
Countries in normal times value access to the White House, and the smaller a country is the more important that access is. The trouble is that America has elected a complete nutter as president. He knows nothing. Reads nothing. Understands nothing. Drowns in his own prejudices and cluelessness. Often he can for no good reason turn on a visitor and attack them. So countries want the meeting, but dread meeting him. They long for the days when the US actually had an intelligent knowledgeable president, not a complete uneducated imbecile.

Trump typically went off on another of his crazy clueless rants but this time the target wasn't the visitor but bullshit about supposed 'windmills'. (He is so stupid he don't know their actual name. They are wind turbines.)
 
He also thinks they are all built by China (they aren't) and that China doesn't use them. China in fact is the number one user of wind turbines. It is slashing its use of coal and oil and switching to wind turbines. Its production of electricity by wind turbines exceeded 600 GW by late 2025. Of course, being clueless, Trump knows none of that.
 
He even thinks wind turbines causes cancer. They don't. Thinking they do shows he has no idea what cancer even is or how it is caused.
 
Martin must have been so relieved to know that Trump was off on another stupid clueless rant, and that clueless rant wasn't about Ireland or Martin. Trump really is the epitome of complete and utter stupidity. People used to mock George W Bush for being stupid. He was not stupid. He wasn't at the same level as most presidents in terms of intellect, but people who dealt with him noticed that he spent his presidency reading intensely. On occasion he shocked staff by reading seriously intellectual stuff.
He made mistakes and admitted it, unlike Trump. He consulted widely with experts. He listened. He questioned. He never sent people to war lightly, and frequently had nightmares over mistakes he made.

All presidents but Trump found sending people to war weighed heavily on them, causing sleepless nights, and nightmares. In contrast, Trump frequently skipped going to receive the remains of dead soldiers so he could go to play golf. That is well documented. He even talking about bombing a target that would cause deaths "for the fun!" No sane leader ever takes actions that would cause deaths "for the fun" unless they are a complete sociopath. But then Trump has long been defined by mental experts as both a sociopath and malignant narcissist.
 
Successive presidents literally had nightmares where a mistake they made had caused a nuclear attack on the US. Trump tried to cancel a critical early warning system in South Korea that would alert the US if North Korea launched nuclear weapons on the US - giving them enough time to shoot the missile down. He told his national security adviser "I don't care. It costs too much." When explained that North Korea could hit California with a nuclear missile within 19 minutes, he response was a chilling that he didn't care what happened to California as it did not vote for him! He wasn't joking. His Chief of Staff found it chilling.
 
He also kept asking the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff why he couldn't just use nuclear weapons, at least to blackmail countries in trade deals. The chairmen repeatedly struggled to make him understand that nuclear weapons are not to be used that way. In fact they are not intended to be used at all. They are there for deterrence to stop someone using one against you as they that even if they destroy you, you can destroy them - hence mutually assured destruction. The aim is for them never to be used. But Trump couldn't comprehend that. They were like some sort of macho toy to him.
 
G.W. Bush, like every predecessor, and like Obama and Biden, would not dream of going to war in Iran because all of them realised the nightmare of the Strait of Hormuz. If it was blocked, and with Iran having a perfect line of fire on every inch of it (it would inevitably be,) it could cause not just a worldwide recession but potentially a worldwide depression. They all knew that you just could not risk that, ever.
 
They also had advisers in the National Security Council to warn of the risks. Trump got thick in his first term because they kept telling him not to do stupid things he wanted to do. So when he took office in January 2025 he sacked all the advisers on the NSC. Every one. The skills built up since the days of Truman when the NSC was created, were wiped out. All institutional memory, gone. He surrounded himself by imbeciles in cabinet, appointed the ultimate know-nothing imbecile as Defense Secretary. Then he bungled into a war every other President since Carter knew never to do.
 
In fact, presidents often said that the very first thing they are told by their predecessor when they meet is "don't go to war with Iran. It will close the Strait of Hormuz and that will destroy the international economy. Never do it." Carter told Reagan. Reagan told Bush, though Bush already knew from being his Vice-President. Bush told Clinton. Clinton told George W Bush, who had also been told it by his father. Bush told Obama. Obama told Trump - who tried to ignore it until the NSC, and his entire team told him no to do it. Biden knew it, but was reminded by Clinton, Bush and Obama. It was literally the first thing they were told.
 
Netanyahu has been trying to get US presidents to go to war for years. Every US president had the cop-on to say "no!" But he found he was dealing with a full-on unread, unadvised, clueless imbecile.
A French retired general put it succinctly. Being asked now to defend the Strait of Hormuz in the middle of a war, when it has been mined, is akin to being invited onto the Titanic as it is sinking. Nobody would be that stupid.
 
Trump is now throwing a hissy fit that NATO isn't coming to his aid, showing that he doesn't even know what NATO is. NATO is a defensive alliance, not an offensive one. It never ever supports a member who has chosen to go to war with someone else. It did not do it with Turkey when it attacked Cyprus. When it was faced with Greece and Turkey going to war, and both were in NATO, it warned both that it would support neither.
 
It only ever supports a member state under Article 5 if Article 5 is triggered by a country that has been attacked, not one that initiated the attack. So NATO under its rules cannot support the US as the US started the war. It could only support the US if the US had been attacked, not the attacker. The rules could not be clearer.
 
But Trump, unread, ignoring all facts, surrounded by imbeciles, doesn't understand that - just as he doesn't understand wind turbines, cancer, how the economy works, how tariffs work, or pretty much anything. America has elected the stupidest president in US history who knows the least, and he has bungled into the world's stupidest war where he is likely to do catastrophic damage to America's and the world's economy, and he is now complaining that nobody is willing to be as stupid as he was.
He is the Basil Fawlty of international affairs. At least Basil had Sybil to get him out of trouble. All Trump has is the even stupider Hegseth.

⏩ Jim Duffy is a writer-historian.

Stupid And Stupider


Azar Majedi 🎤 delivers a speech on the situation in Iran at an activist conference in the Norwegian capital, Oslo. 

Watch Video

⏩ Asar Majed is the Chairperson of Organisation for Women’s Liberation.

No To War 🪶 No To The Islamic Regime

Seamus Kearney 🎤 'Rougher than death the road I choose, yet shall my feet not walk astray. Though dark my way, I shall not lose, for this way is the darkest way'.

With Brendan Hughes off the scene, Stakeknife and the other British agents inside the IRA's Internal Security Unit carried on regardless and with almost complete impunity. However, one thing had changed, and Freddie Scapatticci informed his handler of that change. Since the execution of Joe Fenton a year earlier on 26th February 1989, the IRA leadership had installed 'checks and balances' which meant the ISU had no authority to execute suspected agents until a senior figure within the IRA had personally interviewed the suspect. That role would entail whether the suspect had given information under duress, or had torture been applied to extract a confession. Scappaticci referred to this senior figure as the ' Lord Chief Justice'.

When Freddie Scappaticci told his military handler that the IRA had invited him in to interrogate Sandy Lynch, an IRA operative from the Ardoyne area of North Belfast, the handler passed this information on to the TCG at Castlereagh. The TCG decided to set a trap for the IRA and kill a number of birds with one stone using Sandy Lynch as bait. Firstly, they could capture the 'Lord Chief Justice' along with a number of senior IRA personnel, Secondly, disrupt the Stevens Inquiry as intelligence was telling the TCG that Scappaticci was about to be arrested by John Stevens. And thirdly, they could demonstrate in a show of strength that they had the Belfast IRA by the throat.

Subsequently, on Wednesday, 3rd January 1990 Sandy Lynch was summoned to a meeting with his Special Branch handlers, who informed him that the Internal Security Unit was about to arrest him. The handlers assured him that he would be rescued and to go along with the plan, as the people who would interrogate him were actually agents like himself. Once Lynch heard this he calmed down and agreed to go along with the ruse.

Shortly after this encounter Sandy Lynch arranged to meet two IRA officers in North Belfast on 5th January 1990, one of whom was a British agent code named 'Agent Shirley Temple'. This particular agent was attached to the military Force Research Unit ( FRU) and had already devastated the IRA's Ardoyne Active Service Unit since 1985.

Lynch was driven to 124 Carrigart Avenue in the Lenadoon area of West Belfast and was arrested there by Freddie Scappaticci and his former Marine colleague. Agent 'Shirley Temple' accompanied Lynch into the house and was present when Scappaticci produced a metal detector and began to run the scanner over Lynch's body. When the scanner began to bleep furiously Scapatticci realised someone in the room was wired and it wasn't Sandy Lynch. He then complained that the detector was faulty and removed the battery, pretending to check the device for faults.

Presently, Lynch broke under interrogation and admitted he was a British agent on Saturday morning, 6th January 1990. As was standard procedure, Scapatticci and his former head of the ISU both left the house together and reported back to their respective handlers. Agent 'Shirley Temple' vacated the address also and up dated his FRU handler accordingly.

On the evening of Sunday, 7th January 1990, an unmarked van entered the square and parked a short distance from the target house. A neighbour eagerly watched as masked and armed men disembarked from the van, seemingly military personnel. Seconds later a second unmarked van appeared with an RUC team disembarking from the van. The neighbour watched intently as both parties argued over who was storming the target house, with the military squad standing down and climbing back into their van before speeding off.

The house was stormed and everyone at the address arrested, with the relieved Sandy Lynch being ferried away from the scene.

Significantly, the former Marine went ballistic when he realised that a tube of psoriasis cream with his name on it was still lying on the bed at Carrigart Avenue. That evening he left for Dundalk in the Free State, never to return. Scappaticci soon followed him along with Agent 'Shirley Temple'. In a follow up search of 124 Carrigart Avenue CID discovered the tube of psoriasis cream with a name on it, but no charges were pursued in this case, possibly because Special Branch overruled the CID in favour of their agent. However, the metal detector was recovered by CID and a finger print discovered on the battery - the fingerprint was that of Freddie Scappaticci and that fingerprint would come back to haunt him until his dying day.

Seamus Kearney is a former Blanketman and author of  
No Greater Love - The Memoirs of Seamus Kearney.

Stakeknife 🕵 The Rise And Fall 🕵 Act X

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of One Thousand Nine Hundred And Fifteen

 

A Morning Thought @ 3089

Gary Robertson ⚽ As Gaelic Warrior stormed up the Cheltenham hill to land the Gold Cup for champion trainer Willie Mullins and jockey Paul Townend spring felt in the air. 

Spring when a young man’s fancy turns to love but in tennis love means nothing and nothing gets the heart beating faster than football. I dare anyone to disagree. I’ll be waiting over there 👉🏻 ….
 
Saturday and what looked on paper some intriguing matches. Potential for failure or the title race blown wide open and so it proved but not perhaps as many predicted.
 
Aberdeen under new boss, ex St Mirren man Stephen Robinson took the lead finally in the 73rd minute over a resilient Falkirk, and for a while (16 mins at least) it looked like the new manager was to start with a victory. However once again a young man mentioned before in this column, Falkirk's Barney Stewart, had other ideas and levelled in the 89th minute. A share of the points about right in my opinion.
 
Hibernian v Livingston. I want to tell you this was a great game full of action and controversy but it wasn’t. It was dull, very dull and 0-0 flattered both sides. Instantly forgettable and so let’s not spend too much time on it.
 
Watching Celtic at 3pm on a Saturday is something of a novelty in Robertson Towers as with Sky now dictating kick off times we often find ourselves playing midday Sunday or 2/3pm the same day so to enjoy Celtic playing at home against what I generally consider to be the best footballing team in the league, Motherwell, I made it clear to all necessary that unless there was a likelihood of an imminent nuclear explosion not to call me between 3 and 5. 

I settled back apprehensively and watched the two take the pitch. The pressure immense as a draw or defeat and it would be curtains for the season; a victory and the gap to Hearts would be closed to two points (at least for a few hours before they faced Kilmarnock at Rugby Park). Much to play for and for some especially a way to win back the adoration of the fans, myself included, after some lacklustre displays. Early opportunities for Nygren and Tounekti were dealt with by Well keeper Ward, Tounekti's shot going wide before a bullet from Oxlaide Chamberlain was touched onto the post and squirmed along the goal line without ever actually crossing it. Agony for Celts, relief for the Steelmen. Celtics pressure was relentless and for all the world it looked a matter of time. 

Then just when you’re thinking “it’s gotta pay off” you remember it’s Celtic you're watching, and a defensive mix up between Sinisalo and Hatate, the midfielder robbed of the ball and Elijah Just slotted past the big Fin to give Motherwell an early lead. 32 mins and Celtic were on the verge and no less than Motherwell deserved. Once again Celtic's defensive woes were there for all too see. However it wasn’t long before O’Neill's men bounced back and took advantage of some sloppy Motherwell defending and a shot from Yang just inside the 18 yard box slammed home hard past a furious Ward - and the teams were level once more. 

Both sides continued to create chances - as you’d expect from these two - Nygren hitting the post when it looked easier to score one of the early second half highlights. Then the controversy, again involving Ref John Beaton. Longelo of Motherwell clearly hauling Maeda to the ground, the ref initially awarded a goal kick. Bearing in mind he had a perfect view of this incident why we needed the intervention to award a penalty had many shaking their heads in disbelief. However eventually after a VAR check Beaton gave Celtic their penalty and a, in my opinion harsh, red card to Longelo. Cometh the man Cometh the hour and up stepped Ibrox hero Cvancara to fire the penalty past Ward into the net and Celtic fans onto cloud 9. A mere 7 mins later and a rejuvenated Yang latched onto a long ball that split the Motherwell defence and fired home for Celtic and a, in the end, comfortable 3-1 victory. The gap now two points as Hearts travelled cross country to Kilmarnock. Hopes high of restoring their lead to five points. Killie though weren’t just there to make up numbers, and so it proved.

 
Both sides had chances in this match. A shot in the 6th minute from Killies Curtis came crashing off the post much to the relief of the travelling fans. In the 13th minute it looked very much like Hearts' Braga had been clipped in the box but the Hearts striker, to his credit, maintained his balance and chased the ball. Costing his side a penalty perhaps,  I’m fairly certain Braga will be made aware there’s no room for sportsmanship in Scottish football by McInnes and you can rest assured, knowing next time he’s hitting the floor. Then the goal, the goal that blew the lid off the title race. An exquisite cross from the much underrated Kiltie was met by the onrushing Larsen, and Kilmarnock found themselves with an unlikely and unexpected lead in the 17th minute. Wave after wave of attack from both sides and superb goalkeeping, poor finishing and excellent defending meant the score remained 1-0 to the home side.

Kilmarnock probably should have had a penalty themselves in the 73rd min when Hearts captain Halkett pushed Kilmarnock's Curtis in the box. However, the offence was deemed to be just outside and that was pretty much that. The gap cut to 2 by Celtic, and Rangers now 6 points behind but with a game against St Mirren on Sunday: a chance for Rohl's men to brush off their Scottish cup disappointment and instead focus on a title challenge.
 
A Sunday lunchtime game for the boys in blue, I don’t think anyone will chastise me for saying this wasn’t a classic. Rangers did exactly what they had to do, nothing more nor less. An in-swinging cross from Raskin in the 32 min met by Rangers' Rommens bundled into the net gave the Gers, the three points needed to close the gap on the top two. It’s now in their own hands. Sinply put: whoever holds their nerve, keeps their discipline and grinds out results from here on in wins the title. Three separated by three points, Motherwell now looking out of it. The run in looks exciting.
 
To close the weekends fixtures we had the Dundee Derby. 11,000 plus of the city of discoveries finest descended on Dens Park. However the first half was another easily forgotten 45 mins. The highlight, the single highlight of the piece being a United cross that was headed over the bar otherwise let’s not waste ink talking about it
 
The second was a totally different kettle of wild haggis as within 5 mins of the restart United were awarded a penalty when the ball was adjudged to have struck the arm of Simon Murray. On reflection it was harsh in my opinion but rules are rules, I guess, and up stepped Fatah to fire the Arabs ahead. The away side were soon to find themselves two ahead when a bullet header from Lewis Stephenson hit the underside of the crossbar and into the net. A special mention to Will Ferry who’s ball in was top drawer and helped create the goal. 

It all looked like to be going swimmingly for United as they held onto their lead and with only stoppage time between them and victory what could go wrong? What indeed? I’ll tell you now this match finished 2-2 in the most bizarre circumstances possible. In 90 + 4 a scramble in the box, the ball squirms into the United net off the heel of Hay. Even then despite the commentator on Premier Sports going crazy it looked like a United victory was on the cards. However 90 + 6 and a free kick to Dundee swung into the box and headed home past the United Keeper Maynard - Brewer by tangerine shirted and red faced Graham and the points were shared.

And so closes another weekend of Scottish football and a three horse race to lift its premier prize. Before I go I have to mention Montrose and their crazy 5-4 victory on Saturday night over Alloa in League One. The home side could yet push for promotion. It’s still all to play for.

Til next time …

🐼 Gary Robertson is the TPQ Scottish football correspondent.

All To Play For

Barry Gilheany ✍In a recent cover story for the Observer New Review, the author and journalist Ian Buruma considers the proposition whether America is becoming a fascist state and, ergo, whether President Donald Trump is a fascist and the MAGA movement that is his base is a fascist movement.[1] 

The thesis is that the features which have characterised Trump’s second Presidency (and arguably his first) such as the ICE raids for undocumented migrants; the imperial aspirations to seize Greenland and Canada and ventures in Iran, Venezuela and the Caribbean; mass rallies; attacks on ‘elites’ and the dog whistle rhetoric aimed at racial and other minority out-groups constitute evidence that the USA is on the superhighway towards a fascist dictatorship. 

In examining the case for the affirmative, Buruma does tick the relevant evidential boxes and convincingly fleshes out archetypal themes. But he also issues judicious cautionary notes around the definition of fascism, pointing out how some references to it are so catch-all as to put the mark of Cain on enemies who clearly do not fit the criteria. He acknowledges that fascism, like its antonym communism, is so often used as a term of cheap abuse by polemicists so as to lose its meaning. 

As well as its grotesque uses by Marxist-Leninist sects and regimes, think of the former GDR’s regime’s description of the Berlin Wall as the “The Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart”; there are also peculiarly American right wing takes on the term such as that by Michele Bachmann, the former Republican Minnesota congresswomen, who compared high tax rates with the Holocaust; or her Republican colleague from Ohio, Warren Davidson, who believed that a government mandate to get inoculated against Covid was like the segregation, persecution and the murder of the Jews. [2] Scarcely less obscene are the “neo-Nazi” slurs directed at President Zelensky’s government in Ukraine by their Kremlin aggressors. 

But does the Trumpian regime and kindred Alt-Right movements and governments across the globe fit more comfortably under another ideological canvass such as national populism rather than that belongs to a specific time period in history, namely the fascist movements of Europe of the inter-war years? Can the ideological genealogy and temporal circumstances of the Europe of the 1920s and 1930s really be mapped onto contemporary America? Because he is such as a recognisable American stereotype in his vulgarity, hucksterism and absolute worship of money and real estate, does any comparison between Trump and the fascist tyrants of yesteryear fit although certainly he shares with Hitler and Mussolini a love of the broadcast spectacle.[3]

At the outset, Buruma does acknowledge the difficulties in pinning down an exact form of fascism. For it has appeared in so many different manifestations: Mussolini’s quasi-Roman fascism; the racism and foundational antisemitism of German Nazism; the clerical fascism or National Catholicism of Spain’s Franco and Portugal’s Salazar; Japanese emperor worship; Romanian Orthodox Christian fascism; French anti-republican fascism; Flemish ethno-fascism and so on.[4]

But he does pull together common threads. For twentieth century fascist movements were cults whose members and adherents worshipped at the temples of speed, modernity, youth, revolutionary spirit, and a longing for an imaginary lost greatness. They are characterised by an almost eroticised love of force, rhetorical or real. Mussolini had his Squadristi; Hitler had the Brownshirts; the Romanians had the “death squads” of the Iron Guard; Franco had the Falange and within the British Isles there were the more transitory Blackshirts of Oswald Mosley and the Blueshirts of Eoin O’Duffy. 

As in most revolutionary movements, fascists saw a violence as a means to create a new order. The brutal experience of the First World War, and in Germany, the humiliation of defeat combined with the male camaraderie of the trenches to cement a loathing of parliamentary democracy which they viewed as a corrupt system run by soft, selfish, and dishonest elites cosseted by privilege and comfort. Political parties were just platforms for venal interests (or in the contemporary refrain, “they are all the same” or “they are just in it for themselves) and they hated bourgeois intellectuals, modern artists, international bankers, independent scientists or other emissaries of free enquiry which meant hatred of the Jews commonly associated with such “decadence” (incidentally the resemblance between this catalogue of hatreds and those of the “class enemies” of ultra-left movements like Mao’s Red Guards and the Khmer Rouge are quite striking). 

In place of the decadent, democratic order, would be a unified state, where class differences would be dissolved under the leadership of a charismatic strongman. Under fascism, as in totalitarian states generally, parties representing different interests and independent trade unions were banned and the individual was incorporated into a collective mass and reinvented as political soldiers loyal to their Fuhrer/Duce/Caudillo whose word was law. As Herman Goering put it: “Hitler is the law” and, in the words of his boss in the 1940s, “What am I? I am nothing but the spokesman of the German Volk.”[5]

Having sketched out on the canvass the broad outlines of fascism, Buruma acknowledges that comparisons with Hitler and Mussolini may not be helpful or appropriate as, regardless of his possible aspirations to be such, Trump is not a dictator. Nor has he committed acts of mass murder. However there are disturbing echoes of the fascist era around how the MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement orbits around what the Germans called, the Fuhrerprinzip, the cult of the leader. For without Trump’s personal hold over his followers and most of the Republican Party, MAGA would be confined to the rancid margins of social and political discourse. Trump luxuriates in mass rallies where his long, meandering speeches hit the spots of the fear, anger, and vengeful emotions of the crowd, convulsed by economic disparities and deindustrialisation and bewildered by global hi-tech. The MAGA crowds are not roused by ideas but by the promise of the restoration of the lost era when “America was Great” and by aggressive, threatening slogans like “Lock Her Up” and “Drain the Swamp.”

Buruma notes how Trump employs the classic strongman weapon of selecting specific groups for ill treatment. Migrants from “shithole countries” are denigrated as “animals;” they “eat pets;” they are “not human;” they are “drug dealers, criminals, rapists” (Mexicans) or “garbage” (Somalia). Such groups represent classic scapegoats for the fears and resentments of the most devoted of the demagogue’s followers. The invective directed at such out-groups serves as a prelude to their isolation and persecution as exemplified by the performative cruelty of Trump’s mass deportation programmes and their zealous implementation by his ICE shock troops, comparisons of which to Brownshirts may be, in Buruma’s words “an exaggeration but not much.” 

For the use of this state-sanctioned militia to effectively intimidate political opponents in Democrat-run cities and to project strength rather than the upholding of law based on consent is surely a replication of the acts of force majeure typically carried out in authoritarian states not in democracies which pride themselves on the rule of law and the separation of powers. The open embrace of violence is yet another blast from the past from the dark eras of history. At a rally in Pennsylvania, Trump said he “wouldn’t mind if someone were to “shoot through the fake news,” gesturing at reporters, whom he called “bloodsuckers.” [6] And, of course, the events of January-6-2021 illustrate the propensity for MAGA followers to engage in violence to thwart the outcomes of democratic elections in the successful manner of Franco in 1936 and Pinochet in 1973 and the failure of the French far right forces in their attack on the National Assembly on 6 February 1934 in the Veterans Riot which was intended to overthrow the leftist government democratically elected in 1934.

And the other parallel with European inter-war fascism is hatred of the elites: the afore mentioned universities, law firms, international financiers, and journalists. While not on the scale of the mass burning of books and the 1937 Exhibition of degenerate art in Nazi Germany, Trumpian America is becoming an increasingly chilly house for free enquiry academia and culture. For, as part of an anti-woke crusade, Trump in March 2025 signed an executive order targeting the Smithsonian Institute and the museums and memorials overseen by the Department of the Interior. The order directed Vice President JD Vance, who sits on the board of the Smithsonian, to eliminate “improper, divisive and anti-American ideology” from the museums and to work with Congress to keep from funding exhibits or programmes that “divide America by race.”[7] In this way kulturkampf has become a weapon of choice for Trump’s second administration.

Furthermore, Trumpland’s culture war is fought on perverse and contradictory terms. Arrests of and threatened deportations of pro-Palestinian student protests and the harassment of liberal professors on Ivy League campuses are carried out on the rationale of the protection of Jewish students from antisemitism while at the same time a Trump campaign ad pushes the openly antisemitic trope of Jewish control of world finance by featuring the prominent Jewish bankers George Soros, Lloyd Blankfein and Janet Yellen, portraying them as part of an international conspiracy to plunder American wealth and rob American workers.[8]

Writing admittedly near the end of Trump’s administration in 2019, David Renton urges caution to be exercised around the articulation of ideas that suggest Trump is a potential tyrant or that he veers towards fascism.[9] He invokes ‘Godwin’s Law”, an invention of online discussion moderators whose maxim is that the longer an online discussion continues the greater the likelihood that one or other of the participants will compare someone to Hitler. The point of the rule is to guard against hyperbole; to warn against the cheapening of the term “fascism” to simply to describe somebody or something one does not like. In his refutation of the description of Trump as a ‘creeping fascist’ by the British left-wing historians Neil Faulkner and Sam Duthi, Renton argues that it is the most loaded of terms, associated with different kinds of experience; with a political party characterised by top down leadership and a one-party state, with the suffering of millions of people, and with broader notions of intolerance. In the model of Faulkner, Duthi and other leftist polemicists, the fascism of the past was a tool to destroy a rising socialist movement; its counterpart today arises out of the confidence of the right.[10]

Renton contests this narrative by asserting that many of the characteristics attributed to fascism, for example, that it is a middle-class protest movement map do not merge seamlessly onto the circumstances of today. Part of Trump’s base, certainly at the point of emergence of the Trump movement, has been a generation of underemployed male internet warriors who grew out of the gaming world and who in cyberspace congregated around the website Breitbart. This cohort of young men are college-educated and compete for a narrowing pool of professional jobs, often while depending on the bank of Mum and Dad to cover the costs of their student loans. Sociologically, comparisons with the social layers that comprised interwar fascist movements hardly stacks up in Renton’s analysis. He cites Gramsci’s account of how the Italian state was maintained at a lower level by military bureaucrats chosen from a caste of wealthy landowners who had sound reason to fear for their privileges in the event of a Communist revolution, while in Germany, students, teachers and junior civil servants were also committed to the maintenance of their status difference from the mass factory proletariat. In both countries, the fascists found their first recruits among such occupational strata, rather than industrial workers, who were immunised by a sub-culture of workers’ clubs and socialist unions and newspapers. Everywhere in Europe, university students were a major social basis of fascism.[11]

By contrast in MAGA land, the alt-right has attacked the universities, not because it expects to win recruits there but in the same vein that Italian fascism once attacked the socialists their trade union halls – to intimidate its most resolute enemies in the spaces where they should feel strongest and most secure. Eighty to ninety years on from the era of European fascism, the American state does not depend on the support of a caste of aristocrats. [12] Nor can the left claim to have the same organic link to the working classes as it enjoyed prior to fascism for a myriad of reasons including deindustrialisation, class and electoral dealignment, the long-term decline in trade unionism, the migration of class signifiers from the occupational to cultural milieux and the insecure, precarian nature of work. In many respects, the tragedy of Trump and the global Alt-Right is the distancing, if not disassociation, of the forces of labour from the forces of social (woke?) progressivism.

Having drawn out the sociological contrasts between classic fascist movements and the landscape of Trump and MAGA, a closer examination of the ideological complexion of the Alt-Right is required in order to come to a verdict as to whether Trump is a fascist or not. |A coherent description of contemporary Alt-Right ideology is given in Bloomfield and Edgar’s booklet The Little Black Book of the Populist Right who develop the concept of national populism and its overlap and divergence from classical fascism. National populism on their account is an amalgam of a multiplicity of right-wing forces who coalesce to exploit the failings of the neo-liberal establishment and its economic orthodoxies. Former fascists have remerged from the shadows; ‘post-fascist’ parties seek to sanitise their image; new right-wing populist parties have emerged; some existing conservative (the GOP certainly and the British Conservative Party in real danger of it) have been infiltrated and taken over.[13]

National populism shares a number of political characteristics with fascist parties to its right: nationalism, xenophobia, glorification of an idealised national culture, an identified threat from an excluded ‘other,’ an anti-global conspiracy theory and a charismatic leader (for example Nigel Farage, Mario Silvini, Marine Le Pen). National populists have popularised a new lexicon of terms to stigmatise the ‘luxury beliefs’ and ‘virtue signalling’ of the ‘new elite.’ National populists have been major beneficiaries of the mythology that the ‘will of the people’ is being thwarted by a ‘woke’ establishment that is stoked by powerful press barons. National populism focuses on issues of culture, tradition, and identity but, in public at least, eschew the explicit racist and antisemitic themes of past fascist movements. However, demagogues like Trump, in their simple and intoxicating narratives about national decline and ‘American carnage’, do draw upon disturbing themes of pre-war far-right rhetoric -  and Muslims and immigrants have become objects of fear and loathing. Just as Mussolini’s fascists chanted “God, fatherland and family’ (“Dio, patria, e famiglia”), a slogan which Prime Minister Georgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy uses today, so in a 2017 speech in Warsaw, Donald Trump spoke up for “family, for freedom, for country and for God”.[14]

While Bloomfield and Edgar note the ideological affinities between fascists and national populists and acknowledge that many of the latter parties are successors to the former, they also caution that they are not the same. Casting the definitional net of ‘fascism’ so wide so as to encompass all that is unpleasant or dangerous on the right risks the failure to recognise the real thing when it emerges.[15] However, the popularity of the Great Replacement Theory and Soros and Rothschild theories within the New Populist Right and the capacity of social media algorithms to radicalise millions of the disaffected online poses real potential for the racial conflicts and worse in the near future as their roles in the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar, the Buddhist extremist incited pogrom against Muslims in Sri Lanka and the anti-immigrant riots in England and Northern Ireland in the summer of 2024 illustrate.

Lastly on whether it matters if Trump is a generic fascist or not; the outworking of Project 2025, the transformative Heritage Foundation plan for permanent conservative revolution, in the wake of his 2024 PE victory offers plenty of raw material for a study of a proto-fascist USA. As does the progressive neutering of America’s democratic guardrails and Trump’s uniquely erratic style of rule in which the truth and reality become daily shape shifting phenomena in a manner that George Orwell would recognise. Perhaps the major caveat is that fascism took root in fairly homogenous nation states whereas the USA is not a European style nation state but rather an ideal meant to transcend ethnic and religious divisions. If Trump 2.0 is the harbinger of the end of this ideal; it could well be in a post-Civil War fracturing of the Union into mini states and territories.

References

[1] Ian Buruma, Is America Becoming a Fascist State. The Observer New Review. 1 March 2026 pp.8-11

[2] Ibid, p.9

[3] Ibid, p.9

[4] Ibid

[5] Ibid

[6] Ibid

[7] Jennifer Varasco and Elizabeth Blair. How will Trump’s executive order affect the Smithsonian. NPR Culture. 30 March 2025

[8] Buruma, p.10

[9] David Renton. (2019) The New Authoritarians, Convergence on the Right. London: Pluto Press p.103

[10] Ibid, p.104

[11] Ibid, p.105

[12] Ibid, pp.105-06

[13] Jon Bloomfield and David Edgar (2024). The Little Black Book of the Populist Right. London: Byline Books p.10

[14] Ibid, pp.10-11

[15] Ibid, pp.11-12

⏩Barry Gilheany is a freelance writer, qualified counsellor and aspirant artist resident in Colchester where he took his PhD at the University of Essex. He is also a lifelong Leeds United supporter.

Is Donald Trump A Fascist And Does It Matter?

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