An essay about modern society

Trumpian slugs, MAGA rotters, Bibi, social media, AfD and antisemites

Hans du Buf - 27/10/2026

NOTE: Occasionally I must use the word moron in the sense of imbecile or idiot, scoundrel also fits

Email: dubuf AT ualg DOT pt

I was born in Venlo, The Netherlands, in 1951, six years after the end of the second world war. Venlo is very close to the Dutch-German border. In Venlo there are the Keulse Straat (Cologne street) and the Keulse Poort (Cologne gate), since mid-14th century one of the main gates of the city. In Cologne there is the Venloer Strasse (Venlo street). There is film footage of how the Americans, in 1945, fought their way into Cologne following the long Venloer Strasse.

When I was about 10 years old, my friends and I often went to play on the destroyed German military airfield, with bomb craters still visible. We also played around destroyed German and American tanks. Along with the temporary post-war housing of my family, that was the only link with the war. My youth and upbringing were peaceful, and during a big part of my life I was not much confronted with wars. Until Vietnam. Vietnam was far away, American republicans supported it although there were also nine republican congress members of all 35 senators and representatives who opposed the war. I cannot find how many democrats supported the war, but “bipartisan” generally means that all democrats were against the war. It was about 1968, with many student protests, but also with a very popular film and TV series called MASH (mobile army surgical hospital), which I still like to see, with Hawkeye and Hotlips, but that did not play in Vietnam but in Korea. It was a sarcastic persiflage, a banter, with a democratic crew. If it had played in Vietnam, the republicans would have found a way to kill the series. Not only Nixon played dirty games.

After the 2nd world war, the cold war started, the west against the east, or, USA against USSR. Anti-communism became widespread in the USA, a perfect ground for the McCarthy clique in their hunt for communists in the 1950s. Best known is the Hollywood blacklist. I have Dashiel Hammett's biography in which he writes that he refused to cooperate in the McCarthy circus and he spent therefore time in prison. He was treated as a hero by his fellow inmates. But on a much larger scale, the USA started to fight communism, even as far away as in Vietnam. The French had lost the battle of Dien Bien Phu against the Viet Minh, and the republicans in the USA, strongly against communism, believed in the domino theory: if one country becomes a victim of communism, the neighbouring countries are also in danger. And so the USA supported South Vietnam and started to fight the communist North. We know how it ended. Alas, this was not the first nor the last time that the USA asumed the role of an international police force. Afganistan, Yemen, Philippines, Lybia, Uganda, Niger, Bawean (Indonesia), Pakistan, Somalia, Iraq, Kurdistan, Syria, Nigeria, Ukraine(?), Gaza(?), Lebanon(?), Venezuela, and now also Iran.

In 2004, the American rock band Green Day released the album American Idiot. It was some sort of modern “opera” inspired by disasters like 9/11, the Iraq War, and certainly Bush Jr. I am still waiting for a new album inspired by all shit that Trump and his brainless slugs caused, not only in America but in the entire world. I've got a good title:

Below I write more about the USA and Trump - not very positive. But now, before the midterm elections of November 3, 2026, I am fed up. Trump is a [expletive] asshole, a liar, a sexist, a moron, a fascist, a traitor, a criminal, a swindler, a bastard and a psychopath. In one word, a complete scumbag. He blames Zelenski for the rising diesel price, forgetting that he himself started the Iran war with predictable consequences (Hormuz). Even his MAGA rotters know this damn well. He said mid-October that Putin was behaving well against the Ukraine, and a week later or so he said he had struck a deal with Putin to buy some insignificant amount of Russian diesel that won't lower US diesel price. GOP senator Thom Tillis, who is not running for re-election and can speak freely, said that Russia is playing Trump like a “fiddle.” After visiting Ukraine and witnessing the ongoing slaughter, he said that Trump is a murderer with blood on his hands. No, sorry, he said that of Putin, but when Trump betrays Ukraine and is toady to Putin, he is not less a murderer. Well, maybe Trump and his brainless lackeys are too busy chasing enemies. That is, democratic opponents who say what they think, also about Trump, and who are therefore seen as enemies by the [expletive] psychopath Trump. People like Mahmoud Khalil, or now Ilhan Omar, Democratic congresswoman. Her house was raided by Homeland Security in search for false naturalisation declarations of her and even of her deceased (!) father. Read the article of Michelle Goldberg in the NYT of 17-18 October “Attempting to deport Ihan Omar is beyond the pale.” She ended by citing Hannah Arendt about the denaturalisation of Jews by the Nazis. The NYT took this a step further. The Editorial Board found Trump's behaviour so shameless that it published the article “Revoking citizenship is a tool of tyrants,” NYT 24-25 Oct. The group listed the infamous examples Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Romenia under communist rule, Chile under Pinochet, Greece in its military dictatorship, Germany under Hitler, Italy under Mussolini and Nicaragua. So now the USA can be added to this list, and psychopath Trump is not bothered that he is named a tyrant who destroys USA's reputation in the world. I probably write more about the USA after the midterms. By the way, if you don't understand [expletive] then substitute a word that starts with fu and ends with king.

That brought me to question, not only politicians, but the entire society. I understand that many people are conservative, they don't like changes, especially the rich and the powerful. They cling to their power, as does the moron Orban in Hungary, as does the moron Netanyahu in Isreal, and his witch or bitch Sara (you must see Alexis Bloom's documentary The Bibi Files), as does the moron Trump in the USA. Orban blocks EU help to the Ukraine because he is a friend of the other moron Putin, Netanyahu bombed Gaza to please the Israelites, and then he tricked Trump into a war with Iran. They all are afraid of upcoming elections, so they please their people as much as possible, and Trump is also motivated to divert all attention away from the Epstein files. Trumpty Dumpty (see below, Further reading), and his conmen, carefully selected yes-men without brain and spine, also known as slugs and invertebrae, is a traitor. He does not help Zelinski because he only likes so-called big leaders, like Putin, so he and his slugs spend more rocket money in Iran than they ever gave to defend the Ukraine. Ukraine is a European problem, so the Europeans should buy American weapons to deploy them in Ukrainian defense. If you ask me, we Europeans should also offer weapons to attack more targets in Russia, and there should be very soon a European militairy industry to become independent from Trumpty Dumpty and his invertebrae. No more money to the US military industry.

Latest news (14/4/2026) one moron less: Orban! And Trumpty Dumpty started to insult Pope Leo, so his evangelical MAGA fans run away! 26 Oct: Lula won from Bolsonaro in Brasil, and the Student Movement won from Vucic in Serbia!

Trump won the presidential elections twice. Both times he inherited a bustling economy, a bull market in which, grosso modo, stocks went up. The last time it was passed on by Joe Biden. And both times, in no time, Trump managed to turn the bull market into a bear market. Trump has absolutely no idea of economics. The only thing he has learned from his father was (1) you invent very rosy and promising projects, (2) you attract investors who lend you their money, (3) you spend all the money until nothing is left, and (4) you file for bankruptcy and say sorry, no money to give back. That's how he amassed his wealth.

For Trump it was a total surprise that Iran blocked the Strait, although everybody else, even his brainless slugs, expected it, and Iran was well prepared. But in the meantime, what Bibi and Trump not realised was that the Strait is one of the most important gas and oil routes, and their impulsive behaviour has consequences for the entire world economy. That Iran would attack critical oil and gas processing sites in neighbouring countries is also no surprise. Trump is desperately looking for an exit strategy, because his MAGA fans are starting to feel uncomfortable. They voted for Trump because he promised a better economy, but also to be a peace president, no war president, and then he named the Department of Defense the Dept of War, with that other yes-sayer Hegseth. But Netanyahu is not looking for an exit strategy. Iran has declared to eliminate Israel, so Bibi wants to eliminate Iran. The Middle East watches, the entire world watches, how two narcissists cannot be stopped.

Bibi and the Palestinians

Right after Trump went into office, I said that MAGA should be MAWA: Make America White Again. The rural and suburban populations, the rednecks and hillbillies, the soybean and corn farmers, the coalminers, they are all struggling to survive. The American dream does not exist anymore. Either you are very rich, and the (rich) politicians will protect or even promote richness by maintaining favorable taxation loopholes. Or, you are a loser and you belong to the working class, the proletariat. On top of this economic divide is the racial split. In good ol' times, the black knew their position. The white were superior racists, even the poorest skunks were. That rabble still is. But then, the KKK had a huge support, no black would ever dare to provoke a white. They knew the consequences. You can find the blues/jazz song Strange Fruit by Billie Holiday from 1939. Alas, lynching blacks is not allowed anymore, it never was, but it happened, and the police, mostly in the rural south, was not overly active.

The white are still racist, it's in their genes. You must look carefully and everywhere, and you will see it. Many blacks moved to big cities, which generally are progressive with democratic mayors. But in rural areas many whites refuse to work with blacks. Trump is openly racist. After he became president again, he and his conmen made a list of how to annoy blacks. Very high on his “cost saving” agenda was the elimination of all subsidies to museums etc which spent attention to black culture and slavery. Many people want to wipe out slavery and thus also the role of the whites from American history (see below for the German AfD and the holocaust). In New York, the slogan “Black Lives Matter,” which was painted with big letters on the street, was removed. Even in the Netherlands, where there is an American cemetery with soldiers who died in the liberation of the country, a special sign honoring black soldiers was removed. Nowadays the white have even found a new business model: private prisons. In a country where the upper class feasts on coke, drugs are officially forbidden. But even a small quantity of marihuana, for example, is a perfect reason to lock blacks up. The big majority of inmates is black. And the USA is the proud country with the highest number of inmates. Big business!

Europe does not import US coal. China does not import US soybeans. Many Europeans, like me, read labels on supermarket items. I refuse to buy anything “Made in USA.” Even products from producers which have been bought by one of the biggest internationals, Mondelez, I won't touch. I am also wary of products which mention Nestlé or Unilever. I do not like to contribute to the profits of companies which are owned by rich investors, whose only goal is to earn even more money. The Gini coefficient, about the economic gap of income, wealth and consumption, is way too big. It is ridiculous that the richest 1% own about 50% of US stock. I am sorry, but I refuse to contribute to the profits of big investors. This will not help the poor, white hillbillies and rednecks, who voted for Trumpty Dumpty, and who are now being squeezed by the commercial system.

The internet promised to be some sort of new, contemporary village-green or pub where people could meet, talk and discuss, have a drink and have fun. Instead, it has become the village's sewage system. There are several problems. One is anonymity, which allows to hide identity. People are free to disclose their identity. Many do, like Trump on his “Truth Social.” In his case, truth is a lie, social is a lie, and thus truth social is the third lie. Chapeau! But others abuse the freedom of speech to send disinformation or threats to others they dislike. Social media have become the preferred habitat of what in Germany are called “Querdenker,” who did not agree with the lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. It literally means lateral thinkers, in English contrarians, but now we speak of conspiracy theorists (instead of theorists they are more morons). In the beginning it were anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers. Later they were joined by state denyers, and of course antisemites. The latter are always ready to jump on any bandwaggon to spread their poison. More on this and holocaust denyers below.

Of course, conspiracies are not new. There still are many people who think that 9/11 was an FBI job, there was pizzagate which involved the Clintons, and, again, holocaust denyers. But the new threat comes from the technology behind social media: algorithms. These are designed to make people dependent, like drug addiction. Once an algorithm has detected that you watch certain information, it will promote websites etc with similar information. Even worse, your profile is compared to people with similar profiles, and their preferences will then be presented to you, even things that you yourself have not thought about. This is called data mining.

Mind you: the researchers who developed the algorithms ban their own children from social media, because they know that these are addictive, they made them addictive. Big tech is lurking in Trumps circles, because they hope that Trump will block any attempts to hold them accountable, what already plays in Europe. People finally started to question what an excessive browsing addiction does with childrens' brains. When harmless games turn into deadly games, when innocent children are approached by adults, mostly men, who pretend to be children and who might try to blackmail them once they made a crucial mistake. Young children can have access to hard porn so they have no idea about normal social and sexual behaviour. How is that possible? Who is responsible? How can we ever get out of this mess? First: block social media for children under 16. Then: introduce an infrastucture which allows to check any person's age. Even better, abolish anonymity altogether, so that any message is tagged by a sender's real identity. For example death threats of politicians, of anybody, can be easily sued. Of course, many people will say that this is too Orwellian. I am afraid that this is the only way that total idiots, who think that they can shout anything without consequences, can be corrected. I, like many, prefer total freedom, but many people cannot handle it. They feed the new sewage system.

I have read many books about the 2nd world war, about Germany, the Nazis, and the holocaust. I have seen many documentaries, also films, like Alain Resnais' Nuit et brouillard (Night and fog) from 1956, and Claude Lanzman's Shoah from 1985. In fact, both are documentaries. It appears that the Germans, the Nazis themselves, have documented and filmed quite a lot of things. From pogroms in Poland, Ukraine and Latvia, to mass shootings in Russia and all eastern countries, to even the functioning of the concentration and death camp Auschwitz in Polen. Until in the most horrible detail that was shown on German television: Das Dritte Reich (The third empire) from 1960/61, a 14-episode documentary. Episode number eight, Der SS-Staat was devoted to the persecution of the Jews and the “Endlösung” (final solution). Many historians found that the entire documentation was not critical enough about the Nazi time. Later, many more critical documentaries have been produced, often showing original photographs and films. See also Further reading below: Kogon's book Der SS-Staat.

It appeared that many soldiers and SS members had filmed and photographed a lot, until Goebbels realised that this material was often sent to families at home, so these were informed about what their beloved husbands and sons did in Russia and eastern countries. So he banned the practise, after which it was still done but not openly. Much of that material was later used to make the documentaries. I want to mention the author and historian Walter Kempowski. He was known for his books about a German family, before, during and after the 1000-year empire, which lasted 12 years, 3 months and 9 days. One book was Tadellöser und Wolff. Many people, not only Germans, knew that he was a collector of diaries, he had a huge collection. He published many diary excerpts in his book series Das Echolot. He then wrote another book: Haben Sie davon gewusst? (Have you known about it?). The reason was that many Germans pretended that they never knew about the persecution and the holocaust. Only later, after the war, they were informed about the practice and the scale, although all knew about entire families that disappeared, empty appartments that became available, and a lot of cheap furniture that could be bought. The overwhelming conclusion was: the Germans did know about it.

The Nazi time, the war and the holocaust are among the best documented episodes in German history. However, since the end of the Nazi regime on May 8, 1945, there grew an increasing army of holocaust denyers. Because the holocaust has been documented in overwhelming data and detail, all denyers are self-declared morons, but unstoppable zealots who now also thrive in social media. Antisemitism was not new. For example “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” perhaps the beginning of contemporary conspiracy theory literature, was produced by the Okhrana, the secret police of the Russian Empire, in the late 1890s or early 1900s. I cite the New World Encyclopedia about the Protocols: much text was plagiarized from an 1864 pamphlet by satirist Maurice Joly, “Dialogue in Hell between Macchiavelli and Montesquieu,” which did not yet include anti-Jewish text, but the Russians did include an addition to Dialogue written by Hermann Goedsche. The chapter “At the Jewish Cemetery in Prague” was about a Jewish conspiracy. But Hitler's “Mein Kampf” was not based on the Protocols, antisemitism was deeply rooted in many societies.

Now, with search engines and online information, one can easily find information that antisemites spread, in all cases false information, by self-declared antisemites like Jürgen Graf, Germar Rudolf, Carlo Mattogno and Wilhelm Stäglich. Despite the extremely well-documented SS-state and the holocaust, such people are publishing books, often with a semi-scientific pretense, with blatant humbug that is in stark contrast to the facts that have been proven. They themselves are shouting: look at me, I myself am proving that I am a moron! The holocaust-denyers' book list at Goodreads is long, but it contains only one book which is worth reading: Denying the holocaust: The growing assault on truth and memory by Deborah Lipstadt, from 1993. It is about the process that antisemite David Irving started against Lipstadt because “she was destroying his good reputation as a serious holocaust researcher.” This book debunks all false information that antisemites keep repeating. Irving lost the process because he had absolutely no idea about the fortified glass peepholes in gas-chamber doors and the openings on the roof with beneath an open metal column covered with some sort of chicken wire.

Conservative and right-wing politicians and fellow citizens are more prone to conspiracies and thus also to antisemitism. A recent development in Germany, and especially in east-Germany, the former DDR which was flooded with Russian propaganda, is the ascent of the AfD party, the alternative for Germany. Putin- and Orban-friendly, racist and sexist, and of course anti-Ukraine. Also anti-immigration, although there are almost no immigrants in east Germany. And of course antisemitic. Now some want to finish the “endless” confrontation with war crimes, the genocide and the moral guilt of the German people, the “indoctrination” of children at schools. About 75 years after the war, they find that it has been enough. So some started to play the blaming game in social media: German television is broadcasting too many programs about the war and the holocaust. This is a lie. Each week I buy a magazine with the programs of almost all German TV channels on the Astra satellite. Only occasionally, for example on the day when the war ended, or when Auschwitz was liberated, one channel may repeat some documentaries with factual information. Alas, the AfD is against factual information, many “querdenker” vote for the AfD, and the holocaust is only one aspect. You may not know who spreads this AfD information in the social media, but from the contents there is only one conclusion: antisemites.

So, in general, how can you recognize antisemitism? It is fairly simple.

1: The people. There are two types of antisemites, overt and covert. Openly antisemitic people say so, or write books, or spread their humbug in social media, often with semi-scientific humbug over the genocide and holocaust that can be easily debunked. Except when someone is really filled with hatred and is not sensitive to any reasoning. You cannot convince them, although you can try. True denyers use their real name, those who operate anonymously are cowards.

The hidden antisemites are much more dangerous. They say that they themselves are not antisemitic, it never came up, they never thought about it. BUT, they recently came across some alarming information and, since you yourself must investigate and research all things that you encounter, you MUST for example read this or that book. They never debunk false information themselves, they spread it. And then I, or we, must waist our time with this nonsense. It is very much like the 9/11 conspiracy: the people who are convinced lean back, they cross their arms, and wait until someone else can, no must!, prove that they are wrong. It is like the English judicial system: in the case of the Irving process, he accused Lipstadt, but she had to prove that he was wrong. This is a sick system.

2: The distortion of historical facts. Holocaust denyers can have antisemitic roots, but they always look for easy arguments which make sense at first sight. They exploit fast thinking (Daniel Kahneman's 2011 book Thinking, fast and slow) because that is done more instinctively. It costs much less energy than fact-checking by slow thinking and reasoning. Nobody can think slow fast. Hence, for example, the number of victims can be downplayed. The holocaust was not so severe, it is largely exagerated, or the Nazis were not soo bad. Or, the claims of the conspiracy of the holocaust denyers can even be part of a larger conspiracy to vilify Nazis in particular and Germans in general. Or, the German guilt is played like a trump-card (no pun!) to promote Jewish interests.

3: The degree. Denial can be complete, the holocaust never happened. Or it is minimized, the scale was hugely exagerated (point 2). Or, the sickest policy, is blame shifting. The Jews themselves invented the holocaust in order to gain sympathy.

John Lithgow (2020) Trumpty Dumpty Wanted a Crown: Verses for a Despotic Age. On YouTube you can find the book read by famous artists, including Lithgow himself. The other books are Dumpty: The Age of Trump in Verse and A Confederacy of Dumptys: Portraits of American Scoundrels in Verse.

Eugen Kogon (1948, 1988) Der SS-Staat. Das System der deutschen Konzentrationslager. The naked truth as written by a camp-surviver. He thought several times about destroying his manuscript, because of its horrific contents with testimonies of many survivers, but finally decided that the world should know it all.

For a summary see this wikipedia information. For those who don't know: cyanide-based Zyklon B was reserved for the concentration and death camp Auschwitz. To give one example: after the Hungarian government gave up its resistance to the “final solution,” the Nazis deported some 440,000 Jews in less than two months, from 15 May to 9 July 1944, to mainly Auschwitz-Birkenau, where almost all were immediately gassed. 440.000 divided by 56 gives 7,800 victims per day. Adolf Eichmann was the mastermind behind the 151 dayly train transports. After the war he fled to Argentina, where the Mossad tracked him down. He was put on trial in Israel, and hanged June 1st 1962.

There were more camps, the most notorious were Treblinka, Belzec, Chelmno, Sobibor and Majdanek, all in Poland. These were not concentration camps but purely extermination camps. They only served to murder Jews right after arrival at the camp. They were killed with carbon monoxide (CO) produced by old tank engines. Before these camps became operational, mass shootings were practiced and the dead were buried in mass graves. It occured that local populations opened the mass graves, took out the (decaying!) bodies, and searched for gold teeth. Of course, the Jews were also stripped of all precious things like jewelry in the extermination camps, but that was done systematically and, ironically (!), by jews who were forced to do this by the Nazis.

Deborah Lipstadt (1993) Denying the holocaust: The growing assault on truth and memory.

Jonathan Littell (2006) Les Bienveillantes (the Kindly Ones). He won prizes, one is the prestigious Prix Goncourt, for this novel about an SS officer who analysed the languages of East-European villages. If it resembled Jiddish, all Jewish villagers were deported and murdered. This book counts more than 900 pages. I have the German edition, Die Wohlgesinnten.

Jonathan Littell and Antoine D'Agata (2024) An Inconvenient Place. This book began as a project about the “invisibility” of the Babi Yar massacre in the Kyiv ravine (Ukraine) where the Nazis killed 33,000 Jews in two days. He visited the place, which the Nazis “cleaned” by filling it with sand. A nice place, with a parc and monuments, but no traces of the massacre, except when bones are found at a construction site. This project went on in 2022, when Russia launched its invasion of the Ukraine and Russia's atrocities became known: the Bucha massacre. As for the Nazis in Babi Yar, the Russians “cleaned” Bucha in no time: no traces were left, hence another uncomfortable or inconvenient place. Photographs by D'Agata.

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