My 350 on Donald Trump: on remembering November 8, 2016

2016 has seen the advent of an era of
fear and hate. It has seen a resurgence of populism and white supremacism. Yesterday
with Brexit, today the election of a misogynist, racist and homophobic Donald
Trump as the 45th President of the United States, and the fear tomorrow, of a
victory of the far right in France. 2016 is definitely not the best year for
democracy. At least for democracy as it is now ideally conceived: power to all
people, so they will never see their rights denied again by a privileged few.

Reading
Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s 1988 comic V for Vendetta – or watching
James McTeigue’s adaptation on screen for the laziest – has perhaps never been
more appropriate than today. V for Vendetta tells
the story of the fight by a mysterious anarchist terrorist against the
fascist state of a dystopian future Britain. The two authors’ idea was
based on their “political pessimism” regarding Thatcherism, whose authoritarian
aspects they extrapolated into an imagined fascist neo-Conservative Britain.
When the film was released in 2006, parallels
were drawn with George W. Bush’s administration, including by director
James McTeigue: “We felt the [graphic] novel was very prescient to how the
political climate is at the moment. It really showed what can happen when
society is ruled by government, rather than the government being run as a voice
for the people”. Now that Trump has been elected president of the United
States, V for Vendetta has become more than ever a global story.
 

There are
a number of things that V for Vendetta can help us remember. The
beginning of the story – the ascension to power of Chancellor Sutler/Susan (Adam
Sutler in the film; Adam Susan in the comic) sounds awfully familiar:

“Our
story begins as these stories often do, with a young up-and-coming politician.
He's a deeply religious man and a member of the Conservative party. He's
completely single-minded and has no regard for political process. The more
power he attains, the more obvious his zealotry, the more aggressive his
supporters become. The true goal of his project is power. Complete and total
hegemonic domination.”

In V
for Vendetta, all those who are ‘different’ disappear. Homosexuals, people
of colour, Jews, Muslims; everyone who is not white and straight gets deported
to concentration camps. In real life, a homophobic, anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim,
xenophobic, misogynist and racist Trump has threatened to deport all
illegal immigrants, which could include putting them in
concentration camps while they wait to get shipped out of the country. Vice
president-elect Mike Pence supports gay conversion
therapy. And these are only two examples of how far a far right,
ultra-Conservative government is ready to go. From here to V for Vendetta,
is the road that long?

This is
why I encourage everyone to read the comic and/or watch the film to remind us
how easy it is to get accustomed to a normalised anti-democratic government, to
stop fighting and accept the most atrocious things as banal.“The truth is
that there is something terribly wrong with this country” ,V tells the
people when he hijacks the state propaganda system to broadcast his message on
every TV screen. And there is something terribly wrong with Donald Trump, a
white supremacist bigot, becoming president of the United States. Now the
unthinkable has occurred – what no one but a few
thought possible – how long will it be before we are normalising hate and fear,
and ceasing to fight? Moore and Lloyd’s V reminds us that we are responsible for our own
freedom or oppression:

“We’ve
had a string of embezzlers, frauds, liars and lunatics making a string of
catastrophic decisions. This is plain fact. But who elected them? It was you!
You who appointed these people! You who gave them the power to make your
decisions for you! All you had to say was ‘no’. You have no spine. You have no
pride.”

V is only
an idea, the powerful idea that people have the power to rebel against
authoritarianism. But there will be no V to come save us all (French people,
like me, or Americans, or anyone else whose country is or might be falling into
the hands of fascists). In the end, when detective Finch (Stephen Rea) asks
Evey (Natalie Portman) who V was, she answers:

 “He was Edmond Dantes. And he was my father…
and my mother. My brother. My friend. He was you. And me. He was all of us.”

“People
should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of
their people” Gordon
(Stephen Fry) wisely reminds Evey in the movie. So let’s not sit back and ‘wait
and see’. Instead, let’s unite, and let’s make an effort to remember, each and
every day, that this is not normal.