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No Illusions

12 0
13.03.2025

Photograph Source: dsgetch – CC BY 2.0

When, at the beginning of the century, the great American writer Philip Roth rewrote the history of his country with his extraordinary novel ‘The plot Against America’, by having the legendary pro-Nazi aviator Charles Lindbergh elected President of the United States instead of Franklin Roosevelt, he probably could not have imagined that the political reality of today’s America would bear more than similarities to the one described in his book. A book of political fiction, yet described as “nightmarish”, set 85 years earlier, in 1940! Roth’s novel is indeed prophetic when it has a Lindbergh who, like Trump, promises peace, get elected. Or when, once in power, this same Lindbergh hastens to do what Trump is doing with Putin: conclude a non-aggression pact with Adolf Hitler… while he takes as his jack-of-all-trades minister a notorious Nazi, the great capitalist car manufacturer Henry Ford, where Trump has taken another capitalist who also makes cars, Elon Musk…

It is as if the demons of a past we thought had been buried continue to haunt our present. And this is not only thanks to the brilliant insights of Philip Roth. But also and above all because of the past and ideological background of those who are both the brains and the close protection detail of Trump: the triumvirate of Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and David Sachs as well as their protégé, Vice-President J.D. Vance. Less well known than Musk, David Sachs has been appointed by Trump as “czar in charge of Artificial Intelligence and cryptocurrencies”, , i.e. two of the most critical sectors of his administration, while Peter Thiel, who can boast of having ‘discovered’ and sensed Trump’s potential first, ideologically trained, financed and propelled J.D. Vance onto the political scene, before imposing him as........

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