Make Germany Great Again

If there’s one thing I thought we could all agree on, it’s that extreme nationalist politics in Germany is probably not something to encourage.

Enter our glorious leader of the free world, Mr. Donald Trump, who clearly didn’t get the ol’ Hitler memo, because far from condemning or ignoring the rise of Germany’s AfD party following their state election win last week, he went to Truth Social and congratulated them.

Now, lots of things to unpack here, from beginning his sentence in the same way I respond to my wife when she shares a TikTok video of someone who has turned an old bunker in their garden into a man cave, to his overuse of trying to make everything, everything, great again.

To which point, I would just like to offer the President, who I assume reads this newsletter, a convenient list of things that are already great, in the hope he will respectfully leave them the fuck alone:

and, of course…

But that one’s already too late, because Trump has decided the years of careful deliberation amongst an international panel of experts, was just not the best way to determine what a map of the world should look like.

He did some doodling and posted on Truth Social.

FYI Greenland and Iceland… you’re America now. And New Mexico, you’ve been renamed to New… yeah you guessed it.

I’m not sure his version is getting much traction with the UN, but I’ll keep you posted.

And in other news, historian Lonnie Bunch becomes the latest high profile civil servant to be forced out of his job, resigning from the Smithsonian after 38 years. He follows Fed Chair Jerome Powell and National Archivist Colleen Shogan, for no other reason than not being friendly enough with the President.

Three cheers to democracy!

Which brings us back to the AfD and the rise of far right politics, which is genuinely very concerning, and it all comes back to Trump, because it is very plausible to argue that without the MAGA blueprint and the total rewriting of the ‘How to Get Elected’ playbook, there would be no platform for parties like the AfD or Reform UK today.

And there will be many people out there who argue that it’s only fair and democratic to give these parties an equal opportunity to be heard, be seen, and be elected.

To which I would ask those people, and all of you:

Does free speech give you the right to demand the silencing of others?

Does democracy entitle those in power to strip democratic freedoms away from those who elected them?

Because the arguments for the election of these parties is based on an ideology that is distinctly anti-establishment. The problem, as we’ve seen from the Trump administration, is that when they find themselves in power, and when they are the establishment, the common enemy becomes us.

And the reason Germany have tried so hard to keep the AfD out of power is because history has taught us time and again that this ideology + a lot of power x by multiple countries = something very, very, bad indeed.

To discuss this and other headlines from the US, my guest co-host this week is Alyssa Royse, a writer, speaker and oyster lover from Seattle (that last bit is relevant, trust me).

Listen to the full episode right now on Apple, Spotify and all good hosting platforms.

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