Dear John,
What happens when a government decides it alone defines truth? When it demands to know your private conversations before you can cross a border, and bans those who would challenge the official party line?
It’s not some remote dystopia, but increasingly the reality of Donald Trump’s United States. The U.S. is becoming a ‘papers, please’ type of society, a controlling, censorious and deeply ideological surveillance state.
Just this week, Trump announced:
That incoming tourists would be required to submit their social media accounts, email, phone number, and even family history upon entering the US. Ostensibly to curb ‘national security threats,’ it’s likely to single out anyone critical of Trump’s regime or his allies.
That fact-checkers and online content moderators would have their access to work visas restricted. The administration seemingly wants to keep the truth far from America’s shores.
And that’s just the latest. Trump has repeatedly weaponised his immigration troops – as well as the US National Guard – against peaceful protestors. He’s attacked journalists, media institutions, charities, and universities. He’s banned hundreds of words he doesn’t like from government websites and documents. He’s dismantled the nation’s public broadcaster, PBS. And he’s defended his comrades as they banned books in schools across the country.
It’s tempting to point out the hypocrisy – Trump and his allies routinely portray themselves as vigorous defenders of free speech. But that’s missing the point.
Trump and the fraternity of billionaires that surround him see truth as something they can build (or buy). Not something that exists independent of them. Facts, in their world, are simply set by those with the assets and the power to assert them. It’s a dog-eat-dog world they live in.
Here in the UK, Nigel Farage is no different. Yes, he jumps up and down and yells that ‘free speech is under attack’, and he whines about the BBC and arrests of anti-migrant thugs and racist rioters. But you’ll never, ever catch him defending the free speech of Palestine protestors, trade unionists, lefty college students, or anyone he remotely disagrees with. He doesn’t champion free speech; he wields it like a weapon.
Farage, like Trump, has a single-minded project: secure a grip on power, and ideally make a ton of money in the process. He’s become the UK’s avatar for that same fraternity of billionaires, those with the arrogance to carve out their own truth,
and the wealth to buy up democracy and impose it on everyone else.
You can bet that any Farage-led Government would follow an eerily similar path to Trump’s, offering us only our own little backwards surveillance state.
But here’s the thing: their project only succeeds if the rest of us stay quiet. If we stop challenging them. If we start doubting our ability to push back.
In the United States, freedom and democracy are not dead, and they won’t ever go quietly. Here in Britain, we’ve got a chance to turn this all around.
It starts with finally restoring balance and fairness to our democracy – giving ordinary people who care about the truth the power to speak over that tiny minority looking to impose their own reality.
Look at what’s happening across the pond, and remember: we don’t have to choose that.
