Trump’s first day in office centres the far right
United States president Donald Trump has sent a message to the far right that now is their time.
Tech boss Elon Musk gave a Nazi Sieg Heil salute twice during his speech after the inauguration ceremony. Some of the richest people in the world, including Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and the head of Google Sundar Pichai, were all there. They were given front row seats, sending a signal that Trump wants the mega rich at the centre of government.
Members of the cabinet had to sit behind them and some politicians, such as Florida governor Ron DeSantis, watched on a screen in the overflow room.
The assorted tech billionaires have been more than happy to align themselves with Trump’s racist and misogynist agenda. Argentina’s far right president Javier Milei and Italian fascist prime minister Georgia Meloni also attended the event. World leaders don’t usually get invites to the inauguration—but Trump wanted the international far right represented.
On the day of his inauguration, Trump unrolled a slew of executive orders that he said would mean a “complete restoration of America”. Trump promised to revoke birthright citizenship for children of migrants born in the US.
He said he would begin the “largest deportation programme in American history”, sending troops to the US-Mexico border. This could begin almost immediately. Migrants in the US are already meeting with lawyers and making plans for their children if they are deported.
He has pardoned 1,500 of the far right rioters who rampaged on the Capitol building on 6 January 2021.
Trump attacked trans+ people by making it official policy that there are only two genders. He gave orders that allow oil companies to start drilling in Alaska and began the process for the US to leave the World Health Organisation.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage was at the president’s huge victory rally in Washington at the weekend. Farage posted on X, “We are so back.” Trump’s victory will embolden the far right everywhere, including the thugs who held anti-migrant pogroms across Britain last summer.
Trump is terrifying. But he is not all powerful. The contradictions in his plans mean he won’t have free rein to get away with everything he wants. He will not be able to provide a solution to working class people in the US troubled by the state of the economy.
Anti-racists are the majority. But we need to get organised to oppose the far right forces Trump has unleashed.
This means countering the demonstration by fascist Tommy Robinson’s supporters on 1 February—and building a movement that can defend migrants and refugees and take on Reform UK.
Amid a severe popularity crisis, Labour is turning to Artificial Intelligence (AI) to dig itself out of a Keir Starmer-shaped hole.
Starmer recently announced he will “unleash” the potential of AI in public services. But now Labour wants to use AI to help it be better at politics.
A tool called Parlex is being developed to help MPs and civil servants gauge the popularity of policies before they are put to parliament. According to the government, Parlex “helps policy professionals gauge parliamentary sentiment towards specific issues, determining whether a policy will be well-received or face significant opposition”.
It’s essentially a policy “vibe check”, pitched as a tool to make politics more efficient by collating all the parliamentary data on a given topic.
But AI reproduces social biases. So allowing AI to influence policy proposals means all those biases—that people fight to change—could become baked into policies.
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