This week, Broadstairs writer and KentOnline columnist Melissa Todd considers the end of inclusion and equality in Trump’s America – and if this “anger, hatred and resentment” could soon reach our shores…
Capitalism is reaching its final stage. Capital is no longer being distributed remotely equitably, but instead hoarded by a handful of men who choose to shoot it in the sky playing space invaders.
The right are not making economic arguments that will benefit ordinary people. So if they are to win a following, they must engage in culture wars instead. In this country, we worry about immigrants, Muslims and the Trans community invading ladies’ lavatories in terrifying packs; in America they worry about all of the above but add ‘Wokeness’ and ‘Diversity, Equality and Inclusion’ (DEI) as equal dangers to American values. Having invented threats, the people cry out for a strong man to save them from it. Enter Trump.
Culture wars appeal to the heart, not the head. Projecting the word ‘BELIEVE’ onto the White Cliffs of Dover is the perfect example: it won’t make any of us a penny richer, nor likelier to see a doctor this side of Christmas, but its symbolism yanks nonetheless at the heartstrings of a certain demographic. Meanwhile, in the US, Trump has moved on from winning hearts to smashing worlds.
Since his election, the civil rights division of the Department of Justice has closed, ending decades of anti-discrimination legislation. The US military has banned transgender people. This new way of thinking has rippled far beyond the White House, with Meta, Amazon and McDonalds also ditching DEI policies. Even Columbia University, until recently one of the wokest of the woke, has agreed to let the government police its curricula. Words such as bias, women, advocacy, marginalized and LGBTQ are being banned from federal research and documents. Academics are self-censoring.
What sickens me about Trump’s war on DEI is its brutality, cruelty and dishonesty. He’s using DEI to pry open institutions that stand in his way and to destroy them. Like all climate skeptics, he’s always had a thing about NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and he and Elon Musk are now using the rooting out of DEI to purge its staff. Similar purges are going on at USAID, State, Education, and in fact across the board. They’re destroying the careers of thousands of civil servants, lots of them dedicated people who could have earned a lot more in the private sector but wanted to serve their country. Even in the days when they were mostly semi-sane, Republicans have always been obsessed with undoing the New Deal, and now Trump is actually doing it.
These are terrible times. Much as we Britons grumble about Starmer, and used to grumble about Sunak, at the last election we did lurch back from the precipice of right-wing populism. The US have jumped right over the edge. I fear that where America leads, Britain will dutifully follow, to the bottom of the abyss.
How can we avoid this fate?
I’m told that if you’re ever attacked by a lion, you need to run towards it, shouting. I wonder if that might be sound advice with the far-right, too. It’s too easy to cower away and refuse to face their vicious insanity, their confected self-serving grievances. So far UK companies have retained their DEI policies, with the Equality Act continuing to protect against discrimination; but away from the law and on the street, are attitudes here changing nonetheless? My friends’ trans child was beaten to a bloody pulp this week. Anger, hatred and resentment are spilling into every sphere. Many young people I know express fears that Trump’s policies will mean an end to inclusion and brotherhood, not only in the US, but here in Kent too.
Let’s run at the lion.
