“There are Neville Chamberlain’s in every generation,” said the writer George Monbiot on BBC’s Question Time last night, a programme I have not watched since Robin Day was the host. He was addressing his comments towards Nigel Farage’s Reform UK Ltd business, which masquerades as a political party and their attitude towards Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. What he meant, in case you were wondering, was that Farage is regarded by many as a Russian asset and effectively supports a policy of appeasement towards fascist president Putin, in a worse way than Neville Chamberlain was towards Hitler before World War Two. It’s worse because at least Chamberlain was trying to prevent a war. Farage and his pal Donald Trump actively support appeasing Putin as they edge towards selling out the Ukrainian people during a war.
What is astonishing is the politics of all this. Many people thought it would be the left who caved in to genocidal dictators and to be fair there is some evidence that supports that thesis. The former Labour ‘leader’, the wretched Jeremy Corbyn, is believed by many to be a pacifist, condemning for example the west’s support for Ukraine’s fightback against the fascist invader next door. Now it is the far right across the world that appears to be appeasing Putin.
How else can you explain Trump’s phone call to Putin to end the war on Ukraine and his spokesman admitting that the areas captured by Russia would be retained by them and Ukraine agreeing to not join NATO? You can’t. If it was 1939, you can just imagine a Trump or a Farage saying that Hitler’s invasion of Poland was none of our business and we should come to an agreement basically allowing Stalin to retain Poland.
In America, it was the Democrat government of Joe Biden that led the support for Ukraine, along with EU countries and the UK. Europe, although increasingly under the grip of the far right, still supports Ukraine. Trump far less so.
If you don’t believe in fascist dictators seizing sovereign land from another country, than you are not just an appeaser, you are actively supporting fascism. If America sells out Ukraine, as I am sure it will, fascism will have won. Who will be able to tell the difference between Putin’s Russia and Trump’s America?
Trump now says he wants to dramatically cut defence spending, by as much as half in the coming years. Can you imagine what right wing commentators would have said if the words had come from Joe Biden? They’d have slaughtered him and quite right too, but this America is different. Democracy is in retreat and the tech bros are the new leaders.
We are about to witness the worst capitulation to a fascist aggressor, perhaps in our lifetimes, and it’s happening now, right in front of our eyes. Where this ends, who knows? We may not be near the end of the world, but we may be at the end of the world as we know it. And it can’t end well.
