Total hypocrisy in Donald Trump

In 2018, the right-wing majority of parliament in Poland made a pathetic effort to pass a fresh Act on IPN. The Law and the Coalition wanted to evidence in it a decision on fines or imprisonment of up to 3 years for each – a Pole and a foreigner – who in public space would attribute “the Polish Nation or the Polish State” a joint work for the crimes of the 3rd Reich or another “criminal crimes against peace, humanity or war crimes”.

An global scandal broke out due to the fact that the fresh law looked like a tool for censoring freedom of expression by threatening criminal sanctions against people who, for example, would point to the engagement of people of Polish nationality in the crimes of the Holocaust, specified as money-makers or residents of places like Jedwabne. Israel reacted primarily, but besides Ukraine (the provisions of the Act besides included, for example, the evaluation of the shares ‘Wisła’). However, Jerusalem's objections and Kiev's PiS would most likely have ignored in the name of the archetype “getting up off its knees” in global politics if the erstwhile had not received the unequivocal support of Washington. As the United States spoke for Donald Trump's first term, the Law and Justice immediately resigned from getting up from his knees, sometimes even falling at his feet.

The Pisov government and its parliamentary facilities – and this despite the fact that Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki visited Germany shortly before, to talk about the "Jewish perpetrators of the Holocaust" there – rapidly curled tails in criticism from the US and dulled the blade of the bill. It became clear that no 1 would go to the Polish prison for harsh and exaggerated anti-Polish criticism, and no 1 would be more likely to be punished by reliable technological texts or artistic content. 1 could get the impression that America – the homeland of unlimited freedom of speech – one more time stood up for fundamental liberal-democratic principles.

Today, this impression about Trump America is worth getting free of, alternatively of bowing down in a failed surprise over the full hypocrisy of the U.S. president and his administration made up of the people of the right. Just 7 years after the fight about the written law on IPN, the U.S. President's administration went on a warpath with higher education institutions in its own country and does precisely what he tried to implement in Poland the Law on Law and Justice – dictates what content researchers in the U.S. or from the mouth of local lecturers are not entitled to. Only in the function of a stick there is no bill, fine and prison, and the threat of cutting multi-billion-dollar backing from national funds.

Trump demands from universities – and in the case of Columbia has already achieved this – that they enter into their statutes and apply the definition of anti-Semitism adopted by the global Alliance of Holocaust Memory (IHRA), which blurs completely the boundary between real resentment or hatred towards Jews and criticism of the policy of the Israeli State (to which criticism is present peculiarly many very legitimate reasons). Trump's approach outlines the concept of alleged fresh anti-Semitism, which no longer has much to do with racist, cultural, or spiritual anti-Jewish stereotypes in the kind of the far right, and focuses on formulating charges of "demonising Israel" against left-wing environments and on the task of silencing its critics in public debate.

Trump addressed his threats to more than 50 universities, demanding that they take circumstantial measures to defend judaic students from “discrimination” and to suppress anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian protests and another student speeches. There are already widely known examples of arrests and deportations from a abroad country of students who have either participated peacefully in protests, or even "let themselves" compose about the war in Gaza publicist texts about anti-Israeli pronunciation. Both constitute an apparent attack on freedom of speech in a kind precisely copying the future intentions of the authors of the IPN Act in Poland.

Columbia concluded a circumstantial "conclusion" with the national government, and in return for the restoration of any of the co-financing agreed to incorporation with its statutory papers and meticulously adherence to the expanding definition of anti-Semitism in the IHRA version. The Rector's task will be to supply the national agendas with access to all files and individual data relating to academics, administrations and students, to enable the applicable government institutions to monitor and measure the compliance with the requirements of the university's "agreement" to combat anti-Semitism, and to let each associate of the academic community to submit applicable reports to another persons who are critical of Israel in their activities.

Trump's government strikes naturally not only freedom of speech, the foundation of all freedom, but besides freedom of research. The ‘agreement’ will yet prevent technological workers and researchers from doing their job. For example, the definition of IHRA excludes investigation into genocide in the form of comparative studies, as any comparison or comparison of Israel's policies in Gaza and its effects, e.g. with the crimes of the 3rd Reich, is in the light of the definition of anti-Semitism. Any free discussion about current events in Gaza with students is excluded. Retired prof. Rashi Khalidi so cancelled his lectures on the past of the mediate East in Columbia, indicating that it is not possible to implement the course in the IHRA definition regime, since it is essential to ignore the discriminatory Israeli laws that form 2 categories of citizens and lead to the actual apartheid. Marianne Hirsch (a judaic female and daughter of Holocaust survivors) points out that even teaching Hannah Arendt's thought, the declared opponent of Zionism, seems risky in light of Columbia's "conclusion" with the Trump government. Clearly, the administration forced the university to prohibit/disable/failure to preach views that are at the same time strictly protected by the US Constitution.

Especially curiosally, this situation is based on another Trump action against universities. The national administration threatened them with freezing or receiving support from national programmes besides as a punishment for the application of the DEI principles, i.e. "Diversity, Equality and Inclusion", including for calling for alleged "safe zones" (safe spaces) in which students who were in danger for identity reasons could avoid any factors (including the statements of those who are critical of them) that origin them individual anxiety. Demanding to destruct the approach taken from DEI doctrine towards all others, Trump at the same time demands that, as the only ones, DEI-style protection be counted on by students of judaic origin, whose sense of safety the universities are to take peculiar care of. Even now, critics of governments are trying to inform that the consequence may be that they will start to be seen as peculiarly privileged, which may even consequence in an increase in animosity and sentiment towards them.

Either way, Trump's hypocrisy is on the table. While Trump can deprive free speech and technological investigation of anyone he wants, others must get his approval to do so. The Polish government in the time of the Law and Justice did not, for example, receive specified a "luck".

Photo. Pau Casals ♪ Oh, yeah ♪ Unsplash