Porter’s Pensées

Of course the suggestion that it was Israel which was behind Trump’s attack on Iran fits in with a venerable anti-Semitic trope – the one that attributes all the world’s wars to ‘the Jews’ – and is likely therefore to encourage accusations of Judenhetze against anyone who voices it. We sympathetic but still critical philo-Semites have become used to that over the past few years, whenever for example we raise the issue of Palestine. But this ‘weaponisation’ of anti-Semitism (see Asa Winstanley’s 2023 book of that title) should not discourage us from pointing out Israel’s – or its leaders’ – crimes when we think we see them. The latest of those crimes is the IDF’s murderous bombing of Lebanon over Easter, at the very moment when a cease-fire was agreed in the US-Israeli/Iran war, which had been widely assumed to cover the Israel/Lebanon conflict too.

The evidence that it was Netanyahu who dragged Trump into the war ‘by the nose’ is not conclusive, and won’t be until historians are given access to the diplomatic records in many years’ time. But enough has already been revealed to back up this case, including some fairly authoritative press reports (e.g. https://www.irishtimes.com/world/us/2026/04/10/from-netanyahus-persuasion-to-vances-concerns-how-trump-took-the-us-to-war-with-iran/; and https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/iran-war-israel-trump-netanyahu-peace-unlikely). To this we might add that Israel’s motives for the war are far more understandable – they’re to defend the state of Israel from a close hostile neighbour – than are America’s. To which might be added the consideration that the Jewish religion – judging by the Old Testament (or by my reading of it) – is more open to extreme violence in the cause of Judaism, than is the New Testament (or at least the four Gospels) in the cause of Christianity. That’s not to say that all Christians are or have ever been loyal to the pacifism implied in the Gospels (at least, again, by my reading of them); as is evidenced by the religious wars of the Middle Ages, especially the Crusades, and the tribal and faux Christianity that inspires the actions of so-called ‘Christian Nationalists’ like Pete Hegseth – now self-styled ‘Minister of War’ – in the USA. Hence the present row between the American President and the American Pope; on this issue the more Christian of the two.

PS. If Trump is as good at ‘The Art of the Deal’ as he boasts he is – it was his major electoral selling point – why hasn’t he conducted the negotiations with Iran and Lebanon personally, instead of leaving them to numpties, who have clearly failed? Was it because he knew they would fail, and wanted to avoid the opprobrium?

A lot of people are asking this now. It could be grounds for his removal from office. Personally, I can see a certain perverse logic in his statements and actions up to now, and even a fairly sane explanation for them in ‘late-stage capitalist’ terms. But his war against Iran hardly seems consistent with this, looking as it does like being a disaster in so many ways, even if he ‘wins’ it, or can present it as a win; and accompanied as it is by a rhetoric which is certainly undiplomatic, and appears extreme, wild and possibly counter-productive. ‘Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP’. A little later he warned that Iran’s millennia-old ‘civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again’ unless Tehran capitulates. It would be bombed ‘back to the stone age’.

I don’t imagine that Trump has the slightest appreciation of the glorious achievements of the Persians in pre-Roman times, never – by all accounts – having read a book, even his own; but he probably wouldn’t be deterred by that in any event. He’s the very embodiment of a xenophobic idiot, self-obsessed, possessed by irrational hatreds, and probably insecure personally; who under any other political system, and in almost any other age, would have been kept safely away from high political office. Americans will have their work cut out to further amend their much admired Constitution – whose separation of powers was supposed to prevent this kind of thing – in order to ensure that someone like Trump can’t rise to the top again.

Whether this makes him ‘mad’ is a question for the medical and psychological experts. But ‘unbalanced’, certainly.

We have about four hours to go before we know whether he has indeed blown Iran back to prehistoric times. It’s 10.30 p.m. now in Sweden (4.30 p.m. in Washington DC). I won’t be waiting up.

That date this year will mark the 250^th anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence – as every educated American knows. That is, apart from today’s American President; who has a copy of it hanging in his Oval Office, but seems entirely ignorant of what it means. (See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrIw2tmzMFE.)

This now seems ironic, in view of Trump’s current one-man rule – by ‘executive order’ – which transgresses so many of the principles we have learned to associate with American constitutional democracy; with the object – in effect – of returning the country to the pre-1776 age of ‘Kings’. (Actually George III wasn’t a ‘king’ in this sense. But let that pass.) This is what all the impressive anti-Trump – ‘No Kings’ – demonstrations going on in the US just now are warning of, and with good reason. Trump’s undermining of Congress, the Judiciary, universities, the armed forces, the history taught in schools, America’s immigration rules (remember ‘send me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free’?!), even ‘truth’ itself, and now her electoral practices (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/31/us/politics/trump-mail-in-ballots-voting-executive-order.html) – are clearly heading the country in an authoritarian, almost Orwellian, direction; often by quasi-fascistic means.

When (or if?) King Charles III visits the USA later this year – the date chosen, I imagine, in recognition of the anniversary – most of his ‘subjects’ in Britain and the Commonwealth are hoping that he will refer to this significant counter-revolution that Trump is currently effecting in American policy and identity, at least as critically as the conventions of diplomacy allow.

The Sweden Democrat Party (Sverigedemokraterna), far to the political Right, vigorously anti-immigration, and until recently publicly cold-shouldered by all the other parties, has now been allowed into the Centre-Right coalition government, with its leader, Jimmie Åkesson, landing the post of Minister for Migration – of all things. Kajsa is helping to arrange a meeting/demonstration in Stockholm soon, with the slogan Utan invandrare stannar Sverige (without immigrants Sweden stops). Perhaps the UK and the USA could adopt a version of that.

(To declare an interest: I of course am an immigrant here too.)

NATO is a defensive alliance, not an offensive one. Trump should be aware of that, before chiding the other NATO nations for not supporting his war of choice against Iran.

I’ve just turned 85; about 35 years longer than I ever imagined, based on the fact – irrelevant of course – that my father died in his fifties. I’ve been going through obituaries in Dagens Nyheter to see what age most of the people celebrated there were when they died. The answer turns out to be an extraordinary cluster around the mid-eighties for men – that is, for Swedish men. (A bit more for women.) Of course Swedes are generally healthier than Brits, and I’ve been a Brit for most of my life, and only dual-Swedish for about seven years of it; so that mid-80s average probably doesn’t apply to me. But in any case I must be due to die quite soon. Various little infirmities, and drops in appetite, confirm that. I’m also aware that I’m not writing as well as I used to. The poor old body and brain are wearing out.

I’m not at all worried by the prospect of death; only of dying – the process. ‘Libera me, Domine’ (from Fauré’s Requiem) is one of the pieces I’d like to be played at my funeral. I’ve always found living rather stressful, despite all the privileges I’ve had; which make me feel guilty for not appreciating them more. And I’m fascinated to know what – if anything – is to come. I’d like to believe in a Hell, for people like Trump and Farage; but it seems rather mean and petty – you might even say ‘Trumpian’ – to think like that. My own two guesses about any afterlife are (a) that we simply repeat our same lives over again without realising it, which in my case would be Hell; or alternatively (b) a tour, in spirit, of the universe, like the one described in Olaf Stapleton’s great 1937 Sci-Fi novel Star Maker. That would satisfy my thirst for knowledge. If, that is, we retain the same thirsts after death.

I’m sorry for this personal and rather maudlin post; but it is coming up to Easter, which even for a lapsed Christian like me encourages such thoughts. I hope to be back to life, and to present-day politics, soon. In the meantime, we’ve the Easter day roast lamb to prepare, and Easter eggs for the grand- (and bonus-) kids.

You don’t have to be good to be famous in history. (Obviously.) Which is encouraging news for Donald J Trump, if his universally acknowledged narcissism stretches that far into the future. One wonders whether Hitler would be altogether disappointed with his present-day historical reputation as the ultimate villain of the twentieth century, meaning as it does that he hasn’t been forgotten, at least. (That’s not of course to compare Trump to Hitler in every respect.) And of course Hitler still has his champions today. Elon Musk may be one of them, if his favourite salute – Nazi fashion – is any guide.

Trump of course has many more supporters currently than Hitler – almost 50% of the American population, if opinion polls are to be believed. But they seem to be a declining number, and we still have the remaining Epstein files to add – presumably – to the debit side of his reputation; as well as the damage that his latest fiscal and foreign adventures may be shown to have done. These could be the aspects of his two presidencies that future historians will focus on, when defining his ‘legacy’. – But I don’t know. I’m not likely to last long into that retrospective period; and historians should not try to predict the future in any case.

Of course any assessment will depend on how the final years of his presidency turn out, both for him personally, and for the United States. If his policies are successful – measured against either his original promises, or the very different objectives that seem to have replaced them: ‘no more foreign wars’ is an obvious one that has changed – then he will probably be credited with that; or debited with it if their longer-term effects are thought to be less positive. And that in turn will depend on what kind of country the US becomes over the next decade or so. Will it be the quasi-fascist autocracy that many of Trump’s critics are fearing, in which case he’ll be seen as the Great Leader that brought it about? Or alternatively, will it return to the democratic principles enshrined in its Constitution; in which case the Trump years will be regarded as simply an interregnum, or an unfortunate blip? There are seeds of both these outcomes showing in the country’s condition just now; and also in its 250-year previous history, which exhibits a few proto-fascist features, even before Trump. (Slavery, for a start.) The suppression of the ‘Radical Left’ may be the next stage, if Trump himself is to be believed: https://www.facebook.com/FoxNews/posts/greatest-enemy-president-trump-torches-the-radical-left-democratic-party-as-the-/1345000207489838/. This is what his ‘legacy’ will depend on, and hence his ‘place in history’.

In any event, there can be little doubt that Trump’s time in office has seen some pretty major changes – ‘ruptures in the world order’, as Canada’s Mark Carney famously characterised them recently at Davos – whose repercussions are still being sorted through. They include a couple of wars in the Middle East which could crucially reorganise that region, with Israel – who started them – being radically affected one way or another as a result. Then there’s Trump’s global trade war, of a kind and virulence that has never been seen before; the collapse of the decades-long alliance between the US and its immediate northern neighbour, and consequently of the transatlantic relationship in its old (NATO) form; liberal Canada joining Europe (in spirit) against the USA; the latter becoming everyone’s enemy, apart from Russia’s and China’s; Russia left free to (re-)gobble up poor Ukraine, and possibly going on to conquer or dominate other eastern European countries too; regime-change in Venezuela; a US conflict with little Denmark over icy Greenland, of all places; and beyond all this – but more vaguely – the end of what used to be called the ‘new world order’, in favour of a return to the ‘Realpolitik’ rivalries and hostilities of the past. Back in the USA it could undermine that nation’s much-celebrated ‘democracy’, turning the country into something much closer to a ‘dictatorship’, through the powers – previously and constitutionally shared with the Legislature and Judiciary – currently being overridden by the Executive branch. Lastly, there’s the Orwellian patina that is covering all this: ‘alternative facts’, lies, propaganda: claims made purely for their appeal to unthinking voters (‘they’re eating the cats, they’re eating the dogs…’), rather than based on reliable knowledge; and diplomacy by insult and blackmail rather than by calm negotiation: the ‘Art’ (so-called) of the ‘Deal’. These are some of the changes we can attribute to Trump’s two sessions as Commander-in-Chief – if he isn’t toppled or corrected before the end of the second one.

They clearly (in my view) define Trump; but whether they make him, personally, the only (or main) begetter of this potentially seismic revolution in American and world affairs must be open to doubt. As a historian of a certain kind, I’m loath either to credit or to debit him, as an individual, with any of this. I’m an ‘underlying factors’ kind of bloke, not the ‘Great Man Theory’ type (that’s my prejudice); and am more likely therefore to regard him as expressing or exemplifying broad trends in modern American history, than as someone who took hold of history by the scruff of its neck and turned it around. His own clear lack of any thought-out policy or theory behind his actions, but simply instincts and prejudices – and, as is often charged against him, whatever was said to him last by one of his sycophants – bolsters this idea. He is of course, relatively uneducated, and even breathtakingly stupid on most subjects; which makes it all the more likely that he soaks up prevailing prejudices uncritically. That gives ‘underlying factors’ even more purchase on his mind; and should do more to explain the United States’ current predicament than his biography alone.

My own view of this would place ‘late-stage capitalism’ at the hub of those underlying factors, with Trump’s personal history and professional identity being a perfect illustration of this. What better representative of modern America could there be, than a dishonest, ignorant and amoral millionaire property developer and television game-show host, with the shallow values that those two occupations exemplify? There you have ‘the Age of Trump’, in a nutshell. He likes his name on things, so to have it attached to a period of history, no less, will doubtless please him no end – maybe even more than a Nobel Peace Prize. But it’s not his achievement alone. He’s merely the creature of his times.

It’s interesting to see how both the USA’s and the UK’s ‘Conservative’ parties seem to be collapsing today. That’s because the word ‘conservative’, literally and historically, must mean ‘conserving’ things – or keeping them roughly as they are; and neither American Republicans nor Britain’s Tory party want this any more. Both have members or rival parties that have turned radical recently, and are desirous of substantial change in a ‘Rightist’ direction – usually a reactionary one, rather than strictly conservative. In America they’re represented by ‘MAGA’ loyalists; in Britain by Farage and his ‘Reform UK’ party, which is beginning to attract old Tories across to it by the shovel-load. In both cases this shift reflects a general dissatisfaction with traditional politics, often for understandable reasons; as well as indicating the resurgence of ancient prejudices, or comfortable ‘certainties’ that people can clutch on to in changing and confusing times.

But the ‘Left’ is confused as well. Whatever else this development is, it’s clearly a wide-ranging phenomenon – probably an international one: we’re seeing it here in Sweden too; and likely to pose a challenge for the more Leftish parties in both the US and the UK. In Britain Starmer’s Labour government has chosen to meet it by veering to the Right on issues like social expenditure and immigration. Regarding America itself, I’m not sure how the Democrats are reacting, but only because I’m less familiar with the situation over there. (Here’s one analysis, however: https://theconversation.com/the-top-democrats-leading-the-fight-against-trumps-agenda-254869.) In Sweden the ‘Liberal’ Party is currently flirting with the extreme-Right – indeed, ex-Nazi – ‘Sverigedemokraterna’; which makes one wonder what was ever ‘Liberal’ about it. (You couldn’t imagine Ed Davey getting into bed with Farage.) The main issue here, as in most countries, is immigration. If I hadn’t secured my Swedish citizenship when I did, shortly after Brexit, I probably wouldn’t be allowed in here today.

I don’t know the answer to this. I’d like a return to the more ‘consensual’ and ‘wokeish’ politics of my youth, but don’t know how it can be brought about. There’s plenty of protest in Britain and the US against the new Right-wing politics – ‘No Kings’, for example – but it’s all rather negative. What we require instead are strong positive messages to re-invigorate both the Centre and the Left; and maybe new leaders to express them. The latter don’t need to have ‘charisma’. Britain has had enough of that, with the charlatan Boris. And the admirable Mark Carney in Canada shows how you don’t need to be flamboyant to be convincing and effective. So: what we need is another Carney, with the popular following among the young that Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders had, and with popular ‘progressive’ policies to push back the proto-Fascist tide. Is there such a man – or woman – in Britain, America or Sweden?

How many of you have been bombarded recently – once or twice daily, in my case – with reports on Facebook of 3i/Atlas’s progress through our solar system, artificially guided by someone or something, and on a mission that its latest messages have just revealed to us? That mission is to examine our planet in order to discover how its people are behaving, with a view to assessing whether or not they deserve to join a wider confederation of technically advanced worlds, in a galaxy far away. Apparently the verdict has now come down: excluding the Earth from the federation, on grounds that we might recognise – our continual wars and social inequalities. Our punishment, according to the denizens of 3i/Atlas, is to be banned from venturing beyond our solar system, and deprived of our memory of the science that has brought us thus far, so that we can’t try to repeat it.

OK; it reads like science-fiction. One of the reasons I’ve been following the story is my life-long fascination with this genre, which I’ve mentioned before (see https://bernardjporter.com/2026/02/15/3i-atlas/). But if it’s true, then why aren’t the mainstream media making more of it? You would have thought it was rather more significant than most of the stories currently printed in the British press (it might be different elsewhere); warning as it does of an existential threat to us all. And the way it’s presented to us on social media, fronted by leading (I assume) astrophysicists like the American Professor Michio Kaku, and even our own Professor Brian Cox, looks convincing enough. But then so do the ‘genuine’ photos of Martian cities and creatures that are also featured on Facebook, which are obviously fake (aren’t they?). One can do a lot with AI these days. Brian Cox, as he’s portrayed in these videos, looks a bit ‘manipulated’ to me. It’s about time that he disowns them. Unless, of course, it really is him, and 3i/Atlas is an alien spaceship after all.

Incidentally, and for the little it’s worth (I’m no expert): I do believe there’s intelligent life beyond our planetary system. How could it be otherwise, in this vast universe? But it’s not necessarily humanoid; and unlikely to want to take a great hike to us in a lump of hollowed-out rock, just to make us better people. If it were, we might want to call it ‘God’.

Is this Trump’s war? Or Netanyahu’s? – It does seem to be more rational from the latter’s point of view, and in line with his thinking for many years. (Trump keeps changing his rationale, which suggests that for him the war’s main purpose is simply to give him something to boast about.)

For some time now we’ve been aware of the influence of ‘Israel lobbies’ in the USA and elsewhere, including the UK, driving support for the Israeli (or Zionist) cause among legislators and others; and to what appears to be good effect. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Israel_Lobby_and_U.S._Foreign_Policy.) Iran has long been in Netanyahu’s sights, for understandable reasons: its leaders’ extreme anti-Israel rhetoric, its military strength and very likely its oil. So the idea that it’s Netanyahu, not Trump, who is the leading figure behind the current war, dragging the US along behind him, isn’t to be casually dismissed. A majority of Americans might even agree. And anti-Semites are almost bound to.

That’s one of the problems. The idea that Israel is the one manipulating America into this war fits uncomfortably with the long-standing ‘conspiracy theory’, which places ‘the Jews’ at the centre of a vast international plot to control the world, no less, by various secretive and underhand means. (The classic version, of course, used to be this one: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Protocols-of-the-Elders-of-Zion; but it was also rife in Tsarist Russia and Nazi Germany, and on the British Far Right, until they opportunistically changed sides.) Anyone suggesting that the Israeli ‘lobbies’ are influencing American foreign policy to this extent can easily be tarred with the ‘anti-Semitic’ brush, even in the face of evidence of the Israeli government’s, and its secret services’, efforts, at the very least, to do just that (https://www.mossad.gov.il/en). You can see in Britain and the US currently the way in which pro-Palestinian marches and demonstrations are routinely accused of Judenhetze, even when anti-Netanyahu Jews are involved. It’s a difficult accusation to shake off.

It also obstructs attempts to discover exactly how and why Israel manages to exert whatever influence it has in the USA, when only 2.5 per cent of the latter’s population is Jewish or of Jewish origin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Jews). To that figure however we can probably add another 30-odd per cent of so-called ‘Christian Nationalists’ – supporting an American war in order to hasten the Jewish Apocalypse as a prelude to Christ’s Second Coming (https://prri.org/research/support-for-christian-nationalism-in-all-50-states/); which makes up a pretty hefty minority overall. To this extent we can probably put some of the blame – or credit – on the shoulders of two of the Abrahamic religions; with the third of them – Islam – of course sharing much (most?) of the responsibility, on the other side.

Alternatively, of course it might after all be God’s will. To which I can only react – not anti-Semitically, I assure you – with Hilaire Belloc’s pithy little verse: ‘How odd of God/ To choose the Jews’. It will be interesting to examine how this one minority congregation could have come to accrue such influence over present-day international politics. There are several possibilities. But in any case, it must illustrate the extreme danger of bringing dogmatic and tribal religions into politics, at any level.