On 24 September US President Trump gave his third address to the United Nations General Assembly. It was menacing, littered with lies and delivered in a contemptuous monotone. Any country defying the US was threatened. To ensure that everyone got the message, Trump started by putting his guns on the table: ‘The US after having spent over two and half trillion dollars since my election to completely rebuild our great military is also, by far, the world’s most powerful nation. Hopefully, it will never have to use this power.’
There followed boasts about the US economy; containing as much substance as froth, and denunciations of those the US state deems to be illegal immigrants. Specific attention was given to China, with Trump crowing about placing ‘massive tariffs on more than $500bn worth of Chinese-made goods’, resulting in supply chains ‘relocating back to America and other nations, and billions of dollars being paid to our Treasury’. Trump made a virtue of the US-launched trade war, disregarding evidence that it is pushing the US and world economy into recession.
Trump then turned the victim into the criminal: ‘Iran’s leaders are fuelling the tragic wars in both Syria and Yemen… [They have] a fanatical quest for nuclear weapons…No responsible government should subsidise Iran’s bloodlust.’
Particular vehemence was directed at Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua: ‘The dictator Maduro is a Cuban puppet, protected by Cuban bodyguards, hiding from his own people while Cuba plunders Venezuela’s oil wealth to sustain its own corrupt communist rule.’ With capitalism in crisis, the socialist alternative to poverty, racism and imperialist wars was excoriated with lies: ‘One of the most serious challenges our countries face is the spectre of socialism. It is the wrecker of nations and destroyer of societies. Socialism and communism are about one thing only: power for the ruling class.’ If this was not incredible enough, the billionaire Trump proceeded, ‘In the last century, socialism and communism killed 100 million people.’ Approximately 60 million people were killed in the Second World War, 26 million of whom were Soviet citizens who died defeating fascism.
President Trump now faces possible impeachment proceedings after the House of Representatives’ Democratic Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, launched a formal impeachment investigation. A CIA officer alleges that Trump ‘is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 US election’. After circling their prey for over two years, the Democratic Party, with sections of the US military-industrial complex establishment, reckon now is the time to strike. Trump is accused of making a call in July to his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, to get Zelensky to investigate his potential Democrat presidential election rival, the former vice-president Joe Biden, and his son Hunter. Joe and Hunter Biden are accused of conspiring to stop an investigation into a Ukrainian gas tycoon. Hunter was a director of the tycoon’s company, Ukraine’s largest private gas producer. Trump apparently delayed authorising the release of $391m of military aid to Ukraine to force Zelensky to comply. White House officials are said to have used a classified storage system to hide the transcript of Trump’s call to Zelensky.
Impeachment of Trump is not adequate; he represents one faction of the US ruling class. That entire capitalist class must be confronted and overcome to stop the corruption and prevent fascism from rampaging again.
Trevor Rayne
