Now you know the answer

Europeans tend to ask themselves: “What would I have done if?” Well, if you’re American, now you know the answer.

What would I have done if our country’s leader began threatening our neighbors with annexation?

What would I have done if people were being kidnapped off the streets and sent to a prison run by another country with no due process and held there, unable to talk to their lawyers?

What would I do if people received the death penalty without so much as a fair trial?

What would I do if my neighbors were getting shot in broad daylight by masked thugs?

Whatever you would have been doing, is probably whatever it is you’re now doing.

I’d like to ask the Americans: Do you think Dutch people knew the people kidnapped by the German occupiers would be murdered? Of course not, they were told they were taken to camps to protect them from the righteous wrath of the population.

You only find out afterwards how horrifying it all really was. In the meantime you’re fed lies.

The Dutch were starving when the Jews and the Roma were taken to prison camps. They had no guns. Yet even under those circumstances, there was actual resistance, the data center that housed the entire country’s national identification database was blown up. If they had managed to blow up the second center too, nobody would have had any way to prove who is a Jew and who is a Christian.

There is some resistance from within the system today as well. Rand Paul has pointed out that those “drug boats” would have to refuel more than twenty times to reach the United States. There is no clear evidence these men were guilty of anything. They don’t even know their names. As the son of Ron Paul noted, these strikes go against all our tradition.

At every step along the way, they disrespect the rule of law.

What you really need are people like Rand Paul and Marjorie Taylor Greene. People within the system who choose to defect from Trumpism. You need to offer right wing conservatives some dignified alternative to Trumpism.

Now I realize most people are too far gone by now to change their mind, drenched as they are in irony. Irony becomes a tool of the oppressor, it allows you to deny your acts and take responsibility at the same time. In Germany they had this expression “Wenn das der Führer wüsste”, meaning “if the leader knew”. It was generally said ironically, emphasizing the perfection of Hitler in an ironic way whenever something bad happened. A cult of personality easily begins ironically.

What the Trump regime engages in is a form of irony called post-irony. It’s a way to say or do something you genuinely mean, while pretending that you’re not serious. That’s why you get post-ironic propaganda like this:

This Christmas, our hearts grow as our illegal population shrinks. pic.twitter.com/uyH80btbRQ

— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) December 20, 2025

It’s fascist rhetoric hidden behind a thin veil of “you’re just too uncool to get it”. But fascism is always like this. It’s emotional and hysterical, devoid of reason. It’s based in feelings of anger, resentment and humiliation.

I know this is not very edgy or cool to say. But it’s the reality you’re dealing with, the reality we’re all dealing with right now. My own country is busy preparing for a scenario in which Greenland is invaded by our former ally.

The most important thing you have to do, is to avoid falling into this left-right division. Half the population is just conservative and you need to accept that they will want conservative leadership. The problem is Trumpism, a modern form of fascism with plutocratic, kleptocratic and kakistocratic characteristics.

The worst possible thing leftists can do is to generate the impression among conservatives that they “have no other choice” than Trump. Harris understood this, but she made the dumb decision to get up there on stage with Cheney, failing to realize the conservative working class actually hates neoconservatism.

Hopefully, people can get out of their echo boxes and respectfully agree to disagree on many different topics. In a healthy culture, someone like Trump could not emerge. He could only emerge because the United States is already an extremely polarized society. If you can’t address that polarization, it will end in cruelty and bloodshed.