Trump paints himself as great white hope in racism-drenched Davos speech
Donald Trump turned up in Davos wielding an insult bazooka,He mocked Emmanuel Macron’s aviator sunglasses, chided Mark Carney (“Canada lives because of the United States”), asserted that the Swiss are “only good because of us” and had a dig at Denmark for losing Greenland “in six hours” during the second world war,But beyond the fractious rhetoric, the US president brought a deeper message on Wednesday that sought to unify the west rather than divide it,It was his most dark, insidious and sinister project of all,Trump surmised: Yes, we might have our internal squabbles, but I am bringing tough love because we are all in this together.
We are the standard bearers of western civilisation,We must resist the barbarian hordes,We must save the white man,The ageing president, who in 2024 complained, “We got a lot of bad genes in our country right now,” told the World Economic Forum that he was “derived from Europe”, namely: “100% Scotland, my mother; 100% German, my father,And we believe deeply in the bonds we share with Europe as a civilisation.
”He lamented that “certain places in Europe are not even recognisable, frankly, any more”, blaming culprits that included “unchecked mass migration”.Trump said: “It’s horrible what they’re doing to themselves.They’re destroying themselves, these beautiful, beautiful places.We want strong allies, not seriously weakened ones.”What came next was pure racism as Trump reflected on immigration to his own country, where he has made the Somali community a special target of his deportation rhetoric after recent government fraud cases in Minnesota in which a majority of defendants had Somali roots.
“We’re cracking down on more than $19bn in fraud that was stolen by Somalian bandits,” he said,“Can you believe that Somalia – they turned out to be higher IQ than we thought,I always say these are low-IQ people,How did they go into Minnesota and steal all that money?”Then he got to the heart of the matter: “The situation in Minnesota reminds us that the west cannot mass-import foreign cultures which have failed to ever build a successful society of their own,I mean, we’re taking people from Somalia, and Somalia is a failed – it’s not a nation.
Got no government, got no police, got no nothing,” (Somalia does, in fact, have a government, though not democratically elected,)He launched a bitter tirade at Ilhan Omar, a Somali-born Democratic congresswoman who is a US citizen,Then he insisted: “The explosion of prosperity and conclusion and progress that built the west did not come from our tax codes,It ultimately came from our very special culture.
“This is the precious inheritance that America and Europe have in common, and we share it.We share it but we have to keep it strong.We have to become stronger, more successful and more prosperous than ever.We have to defend that culture and rediscover the spirit that lifted the west from the depths of the dark ages to the pinnacle of human achievement.”Trump’s speech had the fingerprints of Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff and architect of his draconian immigration policy, all over it.
It chimed with an entire discourse of white identity politics festering on the US right,It is there in the “great replacement” theory, a conspiratorial notion that demographic change is engineered to replace white majorities with non-white populations, undermining traditional culture,It is there in Trump’s decision to grant asylum to white South Africans because of a fictitious “white genocide” said to be taking place in their country,It is there in the rabid ideology underpinning Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) thuggish assault on immigrants in Minneapolis,It is also there in Miller’s worldview, which has long promoted racist fears of demographic replacement of white people and civilisation decline.
He has become the editor who turns Trump’s pub chatter into “Make America great again” scripture.Speaking at the rightwing activist Charlie Kirk’s funeral last year, Miller said: “Our lineage and our legacy hails back to Athens, to Rome, to Philadelphia, to Monticello.Our ancestors built the cities.They produced the art and architecture.They built the industry.
We stand for what is good, what is virtuous and what is noble,”Only Miller could have spent last Christmas watching a Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra family TV show from 1967 and had this takeaway: “Imagine watching that and thinking America needed infinity migrants from the third world,” he tweeted,(There was an instant backlash from X users noting that both Martin and Sinatra were the sons of immigrants,)Elon Musk, a white man born in apartheid in South Africa and now the richest person in the world, has amplified such ideas,His feed on X, the social media platform that he owns, is still replete with dire warnings of white civilisation under siege.
Earlier this month he retweeted with a “100%” endorsement a post declaring that: “If white men become a minority, we will be slaughtered … White solidarity is the only way to survive.”Trump’s far-right allies have been worrying of late that he has become distracted by global conquest – Iran, Venezuela, Greenland – and losing sight of his creed of “America first”.On Wednesday he may have been addressing the wealthy elites in Davos but, as ever, his true target audience was the one back home.The message: I am still the great white hope.
Seth Meyers on Trump: ‘It shouldn’t be this hard to make sense of what the president says and does’
With most late-night hosts on holiday, Seth Meyers mocked Donald Trump’s secondhand Nobel peace prize and his incoherent logic for taking over Greenland.Seth Meyers returned to the Late Night desk on Monday evening – Martin Luther King Jr Day in the US, for which other late-night shows remained on break – with a quick rundown of yet another weekend of unfathomably stupid updates from the White House.In the past few days, Trump “threatened to invade Greenland, which is a part of Denmark, because he didn’t win the Nobel peace prize, which he thinks is decided by Norway, which it’s not”, Meyers said. “For more on this, it’s time for ‘Seth Rubs His Temples and Tries to Dissociate for 15 Minutes.’“The news has once again gotten dumber and more exhausting,” he continued
Mama Does Derby review – Virginia Gay’s Town Hall takeover is ambitious, entertaining and irresistibly warm
Sydney’s Town Hall has transformed into a tennis court and a beach for recent iterations of the Sydney festival; this year, it’s a roller derby rink, with a moving set and music stage, and a live band belting covers.Inside the ornate Victorian interior of Centennial Hall, an oval flat track has been installed; on either side are stadium-style seating banks. This is the set for Mama Does Derby, the new family dramedy from Adelaide’s Windmill Production Company, premiering in Sydney ahead of Adelaide festival.There’s something thrilling about seeing art in unusual spaces, and about seeing familiar places rendered strange and wonderful through art. This has become the bread and butter for city festivals over the past decade, offering the thrill of the catch-it-while-you-can live communal experience as a counterpoint to our increasingly isolated lives
The Guide #226: SPOILER ALERT! It’s never been easier to avoid having your favourite show ruined
Don’t be alarmed by the image above. I can assure you that this newsletter features no spoilers for the current season of The Traitors. We won’t be discussing the shocking departure of REDACTED, or the nefarious actions of EXPUNGED, or the fact that CENSORED is the wife/half-brother/hairdresser of NAME REMOVED. Relax, you are in a hermetically sealed Traitors safe space here.Indeed, what has gradually dawned on me while watching this latest series is how relatively straightforward avoiding spoilers has been
My cultural awakening: an Eddie Izzard routine inspired me to learn French – and get a job with the EU
Until the age of 13, I had never taken much interest in school French lessons. I had visited the country a couple of times, on family driving holidays to Brittany and Normandy, but my parents did all the talking and I didn’t see the point of learning le and la, soixante-dix or quatre-vingts. It was just something on the curriculum that I had to do.Then, one evening at home, in Stirlingshire, Scotland, with everyone else in bed, I sat on the sofa and put on a VHS of Eddie Izzard’s standup show Dress to Kill. My parents were fans and I’d caught a glimpse on TV and thought it looked funny
Hijack to Robbie Williams: the week in rave reviews
Idris Elba battles bad guys on the Berlin underground, while the former Take That star reconsiders his Britpop years. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviewsApple TVSummed up in a sentence Idris Elba returns for a second series of the thriller that sees him unfortunately ending up on a vehicle taken over by terrorists – this time, the Berlin metro.What our reviewer said “Another rollicking ride.” Lucy ManganRead the full reviewFurther reading Idris Elba knighted in new year honours list also featuring Torvill and DeanBBC iPlayerSummed up in a sentence This surprisingly moving documentary charts the strained relationship between Chris Eubank and his boxer son, Chris Eubank Jr, ahead of a fight between the latter and Conor Benn – the son of the elder Eubank’s great rival, Nigel.What our reviewer said “It really is enough to make you weep, as the camera unobtrusively captures these men so loved by each other trying to connect, to understand and make each other understand, watching them reach out and pass each other, missing only by inches
From 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple to A$AP Rocky: your complete entertainment guide to the week ahead
Another visit to the UK’s putrid zombie aftermath, and the polymath rapper returns after eight years with a collb-packed blockbuster28 Years Later: The Bone TempleOut nowIt would have been hard to imagine in 2002 that 28 Days Later would spawn something so different (and that’s probably a good thing; who wants identikit sequels?). The post-apocalyptic UK is now almost unrecognisable in this Nia DaCosta-directed, Alex Garland-scripted instalment, with violent tribes competing for scant resources.Rental FamilyOut now In this Japan-set drama from director Hikari, Brendan Fraser plays an actor hoping to land a decent role after appearing in a hit toothpaste commercial. He is hired by a company that provides family stand-ins for events, leading to some unexpectedly genuine connections.The Voice of Hind RajabOut nowUsing real audio footage, this Gaza-set film dramatises the death of six-year-old Hind Rajab, who was trapped on the phone for three hours in a car surrounded by six relatives killed by Israeli forces, only to be shot dead herself, after soldiers fired 335 rounds of ammunition into the car and the ambulance that came to collect the little girl, also killing two paramedics
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