War is Peace.
– 1984, George Orwell
Trump’s trumpet, always cacophonic, unpleasant and jarring, is now turning bloody red. Unpredictably so.
An extreme Right-wing, racist, white supremacist, real-estate capitalist fanatic, he inflicted no war on the world, unlike almost all the presidents of the United States, backed by the arms industry, and their insatiable blood lust, including Barack Obama. Surprisingly, and ironically, he was bestowed the Noble Prize for Peace much too early in his tenure — and one which he never really deserved. As was proved later.
Now Trump is celebrating the dead in far-away Yemen, a tiny and defiant country, unlike the American stooges spread all over in the Middle East. Women and children, scores of them are dead, and injured. Predictably, they always end up killing innocent, unarmed, defenseless citizens, as Benjamin Netanyahu has done yet again in Gaza, killing 400 people in one go, yet again claiming that it was Hamas he was targeting with “full force”.
Indeed, as BBC and other media reports have categorically stated, Israel has said multiple times that the Americans were duly informed about the latest bloodbath, following obviously the typical Trumpist declaration that “all hell will break lose”. “We have made incredible achievements up until today,” said a proud Netanyahu. “Together we are changing the face of the Middle East.”
Indeed, they are. A face soaked with human blood.
Since a long time now, it has been transparent like hell that Netanyahu, on a weak wicket inside Israel, and disliked by a huge chunk of people who are not orthodox, blood-thirsty, retrograde fanatics, that he never really wanted a deal on the release of the Israeli hostages in custody of the Hamas. He dilly-dallied, did U-turns, turned his back, promised but retracted, played footsie, but he never really cared a damn for his own people. He knew, that as long as they are trapped somewhere in those dingy and dark tunnels in the ravaged landscape which the Israelis could not enter despite one year of relentless bombing, he can continue to satisfy his blood lust and kill thousands of Palestinians. This was his ‘Mission Ethnic Cleansing’ — so as to finally capture and conquer the mythical holy land — which never really belonged to them, not before the two world wars, and never ever after 1945.
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum in Israel have condemned the bombing by air: “The Israeli government chose to give up the hostages.” Israel has violated the ceasefire which was patronised by the US, post-Trump. Around 59 hostages still remain out there, waiting for freedom. Now, their fate seems to have been sealed.
Meanwhile, Mahmoud Kalil, a pro-Palestine activist from the prestigious Columbia University in the US has been detained only because he was campaigning against the genocide in Gaza. In a viral video, he was handcuffed and taken away, even while his wife, an American citizen, ran after the officers, pleading again and again that at least tell me, where are you taking him, really, you don’t have to do it this way. His detention, apparently with no legal validity, is a clear indication, that the witch-hunt in the new Trump era has finally begun, perhaps this time more brutal and nasty than the witch-hunt during the Cold War against dissenters, peaceful rebels, Leftists, artists, filmmakers and writers.
Something, which is a staple of most dictators, almost of them buddies of Trump — from Vladimir Putin to Victor Orban. A reminder of the relentless narrative ongoing in India since the summer of 2014.
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Playright Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, written in 1953, uses the historical similarity of the ‘Salem witch-hunts’ in 1692, in the backdrop of alleged witchcraft, to make a sharp comment on the Cold War witch-hunts in the US. Trump, with Elon Musk of the Nazi salute fame, and a dubious past record of inherited fascist ideology in South Africa, is now leading the witch-hunts upfront. Writes Miller in the thin book: “We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law!”
George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, writes counterpunch in a recent article (Operation Newspeak, March 18, 2025), is a warning about political repression, historical revisionism, mass surveillance, propaganda, censorship, and the State’s total control over truth. In the novel, which is set in an imagined future where war is perpetual, the dictator, Big Brother, and his government, ruled by the Party, dominate the superstate, Oceania…
“Newspeak is the Party’s official language, designed to prevent dissent, obstruct critical thinking, suppress rebellion, and control the perception of reality, which is achieved by eliminating words and manipulating language. “We’re destroying words—scores of them, hundreds of them, every day. We’re cutting the language down to the bone,” says Syme, a character who works in the Ministry of Truth and oversees the compilation of the latest edition of the Newspeak dictionary… “Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller.”
Published in 1949, the book expresses a similar narrative as in Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times, released in February 1936. The tragic story is that of an industrial worker trapped in the relentless, mechanical motions of a ruthless machine age in an oppressive factory always under surveillance, and who finds solace and hope with a homeless young woman.
Counterpunch says that the New York Times ran an article about words that are discouraged at Federal Agencies under the new Trumpist administration. A total of 172 words appeared printed in red: Native American. Women. Black. Immigrants. Disability. Gender. Advocacy. Mental health. And, of course, any phrases or expressions having to do with diversity, equity, and inclusion: diverse backgrounds, diverse communities, diverse groups, diversified, diversify, diversifying, enhancing diversity, increasing diversity, inclusiveness, inclusive leadership… These words are all to be purged from websites, grant proposals, class curricula, without delay.
Undoubtedly, Trump’s Make America Great Again in in full play in fast forward. An America which perhaps wants the slave trade back, where all Afro-Americans must be shackled and turned into slaves, sold like cattle in open markets, and their women turned into sex slaves. An America where gender justice is abolished, so is women’s rights, the rights of immigrants, now shackled and chained and forcibly deported, students, dissenters, artists, writers and filmmakers, and those of the LGBTQ communities.
A 1984 dystopia stalks America, originally a land of immigrants, while the first white settlers conquered native land by enacting a million genocides of the indigenous communities who lived in their homeland since centuries. A Make America Great Again born in the quagmire of massacres and blood lust, constantly resurrecting its vicious past, here, there and everywhere, now in Yemen and Gaza.
And, yet, we need to hold on, dig in, write graffiti on the walls and inside our soul, notes of dissent, make meaningful films against all odds, like No Other Land, refuse to succumb or compromise, and peacefully continue an infinite struggle, with a thirst which can never be quenched — like the brave people of Palestine.
As Toni Morrison wrote: “There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”
