UK government rocked by Trump’s fascistic twitter postings
By
Robert Stevens
2 December 2017
The planned visit of President Donald Trump to Britain early next year has been cancelled by the US, deepening a rupture with Prime Minister Theresa May over his retweeting of videos from the fascist organisation Britain First.
According to a Daily Telegraph report, “US diplomats have dropped plans for Donald Trump to conduct a visit to Britain in January amid a war of words between the two countries’ leaders.”
Trump was set to arrive on a “working” visit, including formally opening a new London embassy. This was envisaged, said the Telegraph, as a “scaled down version of a state visit with no meeting with the Queen… intended to allow Mr. Trump to come to the UK while avoiding the mass protests a full state visit would likely trigger.”
On Wednesday, Trump retweeted three anti-Islamic videos originally posted by Jayda Fransen, deputy leader of Britain First. The small fascist group specialises in “mosque invasions” and “Christian patrols” in urban areas with large Muslim populations. During the Brexit referendum campaign last year, Thomas Mair shot and stabbed to death Labour MP Jo Cox while shouting “Britain First”.
Trump openly associating himself with Britain First is part of a deliberate political strategy aimed at inciting and encouraging far-right and fascist forces. His tweets provoked a wave of denunciations in the UK, and Downing Street responded with a statement that they were “wrong.” Sir Kim Darroch, the UK’s ambassador to Washington, lodged a formal protest with the White House.
Trump countered with a tweet to May stating, “Theresa May, don’t focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place…