Two crucial aspects of American Exceptionalism under Donald Trump are (1) the conviction that obligations entered under international treaties are mere suggestions and can be disregarded at will, and (2) the United states can always make and discard it’s own rules at will.

This incredibly powerful and deadly accurate speech[1] was delivered in the French Senate on March 4, 2025 by French Senator Claude Malhuret[2]. This may some day take its rightful place alongside the best of Sir Winston Churchill and President John F Kennedy.

“President, Mr. Prime Minister, Ladies and Gentlemen Ministers, My dear colleagues,
Europe is at a critical turning point in its history. The American shield is crumbling, Ukraine risks being abandoned, Russia strengthened.

Washington has become the court of Nero, a fiery emperor, submissive courtiers and a ketamine-fueled jester in charge of purging the civil service.

This is a tragedy for the free world, but it is first and foremost a tragedy for the United States. Trump’s message is that there is no point in being his ally since he will not defend you, he will impose more customs duties on you than on his enemies and will threaten to seize your territories while supporting the dictatorships that invade you.

The king of the deal is showing what the art of the deal is all about. He thinks he will intimidate China by lying down before Putin, but Xi Jinping, faced with such a shipwreck, is probably accelerating preparations for the invasion of Taiwan.

Never in history has a President of the United States capitulated to the enemy. Never has anyone supported an aggressor against an ally. Never has anyone trampled on the American Constitution, issued so many illegal decrees, dismissed judges who could have prevented him from doing so, dismissed the military general staff in one fell swoop, weakened all checks and balances, and taken control of social media.

This is not an illiberal drift, it is the beginning of the confiscation of democracy. Let us remember that it took only one month, three weeks and two days to bring down the Weimar Republic and its Constitution.

I have faith in the strength of American democracy, and the country is already protesting. But in one month, Trump has done more harm to America than in four years of his last presidency. We were at war with a dictator, now we are fighting a dictator backed by a traitor.

Eight days ago, at the very moment that Trump was rubbing Macron’s back in the White House, the United States voted at the UN with Russia and North Korea against the Europeans demanding the withdrawal of Russian troops.

Two days later, in the Oval Office, the military service shirker was giving war hero Zelensky lessons in morality and strategy before dismissing him like a groom, ordering him to submit or resign.

Tonight, he took another step into infamy by stopping the delivery of weapons that had been promised.

What to do in the face of this betrayal? The answer is simple: face it.

And first of all, let’s not be mistaken. The defeat of Ukraine would be the defeat of Europe. The Baltic States, Georgia, Moldova are already on the list. Putin’s goal is to return to Yalta, where half the continent was ceded to Stalin.

The countries of the South are waiting for the outcome of the conflict to decide whether they should continue to respect Europe or whether they are now free to trample on it.

What Putin wants is the end of the order put in place by the United States and its allies 80 years ago, with its first principle being the prohibition of acquiring territory by force.

This idea is at the very source of the UN, where today Americans vote in favor of the aggressor and against the attacked, because the Trumpian vision coincides with that of Putin: a return to spheres of influence, the great powers dictating the fate of small countries.

Mine is Greenland, Panama and Canada, you are Ukraine, the Baltics and Eastern Europe, he is Taiwan and the China Sea.

At the parties of the oligarchs of the Gulf of Mar-a-Lago, this is called “diplomatic realism.”

So we are alone.

But the talk that Putin cannot be resisted is false. Contrary to the Kremlin’s propaganda, Russia is in bad shape. In three years, the so-called second largest army in the world has managed to grab only crumbs from a country three times less populated.

Interest rates at 25%, the collapse of foreign exchange and gold reserves, the demographic collapse show that it is on the brink of the abyss. The American helping hand to Putin is the biggest strategic mistake ever made in a war.

The shock is violent, but it has a virtue. Europeans are coming out of denial. They understood in one day in Munich that the survival of Ukraine and the future of Europe are in their hands and that they have three imperatives.

1. Accelerate military aid to Ukraine to compensate for the American abandonment, so that it holds, and of course to impose its presence and that of Europe in any negotiation. This will be expensive. It will be necessary to end the taboo of the use of frozen Russian assets. It will be necessary to circumvent Moscow’s accomplices within Europe itself by a coalition of only the willing countries, with of course the United Kingdom.
2. Second, demand that any agreement be accompanied by the return of kidnapped children, prisoners and absolute security guarantees. After Budapest, Georgia and Minsk, we know what agreements with Putin are worth. These guarantees require sufficient military force to prevent a new invasion.
3. Finally, and this is the most urgent, because it is what will take the most time, we must build the neglected European defence, to the benefit of the American umbrella since 1945 and scuttled since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

It is a Herculean task, but it is on its success or failure that the leaders of today’s democratic Europe will be judged in the history books.

Friedrich Merz has just declared that Europe needs its own military alliance. This is to recognize that France has been right for decades in arguing for strategic autonomy.

It remains to be built. It will be necessary to invest massively, to strengthen the European Defence Fund outside the Maastricht debt criteria, to harmonize weapons and munitions systems, to accelerate the entry into the Union of Ukraine, which is today the leading European army, to rethink the place and conditions of nuclear deterrence based on French and British capabilities, to relaunch the anti-missile shield and satellite programs.

The plan announced yesterday by Ursula von der Leyen is a very good starting point. And much more will be needed.

Europe will only become a military power again by becoming an industrial power again. In a word, the Draghi report will have to be implemented. For good.

But the real rearmament of Europe is its moral rearmament.

We must convince public opinion in the face of war weariness and fear, and especially in the face of Putin’s cronies, the extreme right and the extreme left.

They argued again yesterday in the National Assembly, Mr Prime Minister, before you, against European unity, against European defence.

They say they want peace. What neither they nor Trump say is that their peace is capitulation, the peace of defeat, the replacement of de Gaulle Zelensky by a Ukrainian Pétain at the beck and call of Putin.

Peace for the collaborators who have refused any aid to the Ukrainians for three years.

Is this the end of the Atlantic Alliance? The risk is great. But in the last few days, the public humiliation of Zelensky and all the crazy decisions taken in the last month have finally made the Americans react.

Polls are falling. Republican lawmakers are being greeted by hostile crowds in their constituencies. Even Fox News is becoming critical.

The Trumpists are no longer in their majesty. They control the executive, the Parliament, the Supreme Court and social networks.

But in American history, the freedom fighters have always prevailed. They are beginning to raise their heads.

The fate of Ukraine is being played out in the trenches, but it also depends on those in the United States who want to defend democracy, and here on our ability to unite Europeans, to find the means for their common defense, and to make Europe the power that it once was in history and that it hesitates to become again.

Our parents defeated fascism and communism at great cost.

The task of our generation is to defeat the totalitarianisms of the 21st century.

Long live free Ukraine, long live democratic Europe.”

1. Source: La Semaine de l’Allier, The Atlantic[↩]
2. Claude Malhuret, born 8 March 1950 is a French physician, lawyer and politician who has served as a member of the Senate since 2014, representing the department of Allier. A member of Horizon, he has presided over the centre-right The Independents – Republic and Territories (LIRT) parliamentary group in the Senate since 2017.[↩]

Vor einigen Tagen, am 4. März, hat der französische Senator Claude Malhuret die folgende Rede vor dem französischen Senat gehalten — eine kraftvolle Rede mit shr präzisen Aussagen, die sich in die besten Reden von Politikern wie Churchill und Kennedy einreiht.[1]

„Herr Präsident, Herr Premierminister, meine Damen und Herren Minister,
meine geschätzten Kolleginnen und Kollegen,

Europa steht an einem kritischen Wendepunkt seiner Geschichte. Der amerikanische Schutzschirm bröckelt, die Ukraine droht im Stich gelassen zu werden, Russland wird gestärkt.

Washington ist zum Hof Neros geworden: ein feuriger Kaiser, unterwürfige Höflinge und ein ketaminbefeuerter Hofnarr, der die Verwaltung von unbequemen Beamten säubern soll.

Dies ist eine Tragödie für die freie Welt, aber vor allem ist es eine Tragödie für die Vereinigten Staaten. Trumps Botschaft lautet: Es lohnt sich nicht, sein Verbündeter zu sein, denn er wird dich nicht verteidigen, er wird dir höhere Zölle auferlegen als seinen Feinden und dir mit der Beschlagnahmung deines Territoriums drohen, während er gleichzeitig die Diktaturen unterstützt, die dich überfallen.

Der „King of the Deal“ zeigt, was die „Kunst des Deals“ wirklich bedeutet. Er glaubt, China einschüchtern zu können, indem er sich vor Putin niederwirft – doch Xi Jinping beschleunigt angesichts dieses Schiffsbruchs wahrscheinlich die Vorbereitungen für die Invasion Taiwans.

Noch nie in der Geschichte hat ein US-Präsident vor dem Feind kapituliert. Noch nie hat jemand einen Aggressor gegen einen Verbündeten unterstützt. Noch nie hat jemand die amerikanische Verfassung so mit Füßen getreten, so viele illegale Dekrete erlassen, Richter entlassen, die ihn hätten aufhalten können, den Generalstab auf einen Schlag abgesetzt, alle Kontrollinstanzen geschwächt und die Kontrolle über soziale Medien übernommen.

Das ist keine illiberale Tendenz mehr – es ist der Beginn der Konfiskation der Demokratie. Erinnern wir uns: Es dauerte nur einen Monat, drei Wochen und zwei Tage, um die Weimarer Republik und ihre Verfassung zu Fall zu bringen.

Ich habe Vertrauen in die Stärke der amerikanischen Demokratie, und das Land protestiert bereits. Aber in einem Monat hat Trump den USA mehr Schaden zugefügt als in vier Jahren seiner letzten Präsidentschaft. Wir waren im Krieg mit einem Diktator – nun kämpfen wir gegen einen Diktator, der von einem Verräter unterstützt wird.

Vor acht Tagen, in dem Moment, als Trump Macron im Weißen Haus den Rücken tätschelte, stimmten die Vereinigten Staaten in der UNO mit Russland und Nordkorea gegen die Europäer, die den Abzug der russischen Truppen forderten.

Zwei Tage später erteilte der Wehrdienstverweigerer im Oval Office dem Kriegshelden Selenskyj Lektionen in Moral und Strategie, bevor er ihn wie einen Diener abfertigte und ihn aufforderte, sich zu unterwerfen oder zurückzutreten.

Heute Abend ging er noch einen Schritt weiter in die Schande, indem er die Lieferung versprochener Waffen stoppte.

Was tun angesichts dieses Verrats? Die Antwort ist einfach: ihm entgegentreten.

Zunächst dürfen wir uns keine Illusionen machen. Die Niederlage der Ukraine wäre die Niederlage Europas. Die baltischen Staaten, Georgien, Moldawien stehen bereits auf der Liste. Putins Ziel ist es, nach Jalta zurückzukehren, wo die Hälfte des Kontinents Stalin überlassen wurde.

Die Staaten des Südens warten den Ausgang des Konflikts ab, um zu entscheiden, ob sie Europa weiterhin respektieren oder es nun mit Füßen treten können.

Was Putin will, ist das Ende der Weltordnung, die vor 80 Jahren von den USA und ihren Verbündeten geschaffen wurde, deren zentrales Prinzip das Verbot der gewaltsamen Aneignung von Territorien war.

Diese Idee war der Grundgedanke der UNO – wo heute die Amerikaner für den Aggressor und gegen das Opfer stimmen, weil Trumps Vision mit der Putins übereinstimmt: eine Rückkehr zu Einflusszonen, in denen die Großmächte über das Schicksal der kleinen Länder bestimmen.

Meins ist Grönland, Panama und Kanada. Deins ist die Ukraine, das Baltikum und Osteuropa. Seins ist Taiwan und das Chinesische Meer.

Auf den Partys der Oligarchen in den Golfclubs von Mar-a-Lago nennt man das „diplomatischen Realismus“.

Also sind wir allein.

Aber die Behauptung, dass man Putin nicht widerstehen kann, ist falsch. Trotz der Propaganda des Kremls ist Russland in schlechter Verfassung. In drei Jahren hat die angeblich zweitgrößte Armee der Welt nur ein paar Krümel eines Landes erobert, das dreimal weniger Einwohner hat.

Zinsen von 25 %, der Zusammenbruch der Devisen- und Goldreserven, der demografische Niedergang – all das zeigt, dass Russland am Rande des Abgrunds steht.

Die amerikanische Hilfe für Putin ist der größte strategische Fehler, der jemals in einem Krieg gemacht wurde.

Der Schock ist heftig, aber er hat eine Tugend: Die Europäer wachen aus ihrer Verleugnung auf. Sie haben in einem Tag in München verstanden, dass das Überleben der Ukraine und die Zukunft Europas in ihren Händen liegen.

Sie haben drei dringende Aufgaben:

1. Die militärische Hilfe für die Ukraine beschleunigen, um das amerikanische Versagen auszugleichen.
2. Garantien für die Rückkehr entführter Kinder, Gefangener und absolute Sicherheitsgarantien einfordern.
3. Die vernachlässigte europäische Verteidigung aufbauen, die seit 1945 dem amerikanischen Schutzschirm überlassen wurde.

Es ist eine Herkulesaufgabe, aber an ihrem Erfolg oder Scheitern wird sich bemessen, wie die heutigen Führer der demokratischen Welt in die Geschichtsbücher eingehen.

Doch die wahre Wiederbewaffnung Europas ist seine moralische Wiederbewaffnung.

Wir müssen die öffentliche Meinung überzeugen – gegen Kriegsmüdigkeit, Angst und vor allem gegen Putins Handlanger von rechts und links.

Gestern haben sie in der Nationalversammlung wieder argumentiert – gegen die europäische Einheit, gegen die europäische Verteidigung.

Sie sprechen von Frieden. Was sie nicht sagen, ist, dass ihr „Frieden“ Kapitulation bedeutet – die „Friedenslösung“ der Niederlage.

Ist das das Ende der Atlantischen Allianz? Die Gefahr ist groß.

Aber in den letzten Tagen haben die öffentliche Demütigung Selenskyjs und all die verrückten Entscheidungen Trumps endlich die Amerikaner wachgerüttelt.

Die Umfragen fallen. Republikanische Abgeordnete werden in ihren Wahlkreisen von wütenden Menschen empfangen. Selbst Fox News wird kritisch.

Die Trumpisten sind nicht mehr unantastbar.

Doch in der amerikanischen Geschichte haben die Freiheitskämpfer immer gesiegt.

Das Schicksal der Ukraine entscheidet sich in den Schützengräben, aber auch in den USA – bei jenen, die die Demokratie verteidigen wollen.

Und hier, in Europa, hängt es von uns ab: Ob wir Europäer uns vereinen, unsere Verteidigung aufbauen und Europa wieder zu der Macht machen, die es einst war.

Unsere Eltern haben Faschismus und Kommunismus mit großen Opfern besiegt.

Die Aufgabe unserer Generation ist es, die Totalitarismen des 21. Jahrhunderts zu besiegen.

Es lebe die freie Ukraine, es lebe das demokratische Europa!“

1. Quelle: La Semaine de l’Allier, The Atlantic[↩]

A friend of mine posted on Facebook[1] that “All I am saying is give war a chance” is the message of “the left” and of all others who are opposed to President Trump’s approach to Russia’s war in Ukraine. Those who used to sing “All I am saying is give peace a chance” have lost their way, and it’s just because they hate Trump.

I will not pretend that I like Donald Trump — but that is not the issue here.

President Trump’s approach to the war is equivalent to telling a home owner who has suffered a home invasion by the bully next door to stop resisting the invader and give up claim to the parts of the house the invader has occupied, with no guarantees that the invader will not push to eventually occupy the entire house.

At the infamous, disgusting “photo op” at the White House last week President Zelenskyj listed a number of ceasefires agreed between Russia and Ukraine which Putin’s Russia has broken, as the reason for Ukraine’s reluctance to enter into yet another ceasefire with the neighbor who 11 years ago “annexed” their front porch and who 3 years ago started the full scale home invasion that is still going on.

I will always be thankful for the American contribution towards ridding my homeland and all of Europe from the madman Hitler and his nazi henchmen; but I am afraid that if President Trump had been around in the 1940s he would have pressured Britain and France as well as all of the other countries occupied by the Germans to enter into a ceasefire that would have cemented the status quo, with the nazi hordes in control of most of Europe.

What President Trump and those who so enthusiastically support him fail to understand is that peace is more than merely the absence of killing; that yielding to the invader is not peace but appeasement and is an invitation to invade another neighbor.

And those of us bystanders who see Trump’s refusal to honor his country’s obligation under the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 to defend Ukraine’s territorial integrity have no confidence that he will honor his country’s obligation to come to the aid of its NATO allies or to honor its obligation to defend Austria under the 1955 state treaty. We see with increasing clarity that Trump is not a man of honor nor a man of his word, and that he does not feel bound by the contractual obligations of his country.

This is NOT the way to make America great again, and neither are the suggestions of his buddy, weathervane Vance, the way to make Europe great again.

1. Facebook Post[↩]

For eight years, I have made it no secret that I do not consider Donald Trump qualified to be the head of state and government of the most powerful nation in the Western world—primarily due to his character and temperament—and I have therefore been criticized by many of my American evangelical friends. They claim American politics is none of my business since I am neither a U.S. citizen nor a resident of the U.S. I have always disagreed—sometimes sharply—and insisted that I am very much entitled to have an opinion on U.S. politics and to express it because America, as the most powerful country (at least in the “Western” world), influences all our lives. I have also been a lifelong admirer of America, who has never forgotten that without the decisive involvement of the United States in World War II, I probably would not be living in a democratic country today. Additionally, I grew up in a home funded by the Marshall Plan, so the fate of this country is very dear to my heart.

Unfortunately, my enthusiasm and sympathy for the country have significantly diminished in recent years because I couldn’t understand how a country with around 300 million citizens, about half of whom are eligible to vote, could not find better candidates in the last three presidential elections than Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris—a real indictment. Other weaknesses have also come into sharper focus: the inability to curb the gun epidemic and the resulting mass shootings in schools and elsewhere, the inability to ensure an affordable healthcare system, especially for the poorer and more disadvantaged sections of society, and the increase in racially motivated attacks by police, to name just a few examples.

I have also become severely disillusioned about American Evangelicalism which has been a very formative influence in my life: It is incomprehensible to me how around 82 percent of American Evangelicals could, encouraged by many of their most prominent leaders, vote for a foul-mouthed serial adulterer who boasts of sexually harrassing women, demonizes his political and displays his dehumanizing disdain for people of color, women, the handicapped, members of the LGBT community, and immigrants.

Throughout it all, I never imagined that my very vocal opposition would have any effect on the outcome of the election, and sure enough it didn’t: Donald Trump won the election by a landslide, and if nothing unforeseen happens, he will steer the United States’ affairs as the 47th president for the next four years, thereby also exerting a great deal of influence on the rest of the world.

For a long time, I looked at Trump supporters among my friends, and especially among evangelical leaders, with great incomprehension, and in some cases, I was tempted to break off contact. However, I have since revised my stance on this, especially concerning ordinary voters—though I remain very disappointed and critical of evangelical leaders who brush aside Trump’s character deficits with sometimes bizarre theological arguments (it seems character only matters in political opponents, not in our own candidates).

This lengthy process of changing my attitude is difficult to describe and is probably still incomplete, but on the Monday before the election, and then three days afterward, I came across a few articles that reflect my thoughts better than I could describe them myself and that have also given me further food for thought.

First, there was a lead article in the news magazine profil on Monday by Robert Treichler titled “America Wants to Dream”(4), in which he describes Trump’s appeal to voters:

What is Kamala Harris’s great promise? No, I don’t mean a list of proposals from all kinds of fields, but a big idea that can deeply resonate with 150 million people.

I fear there isn’t one. The only issue Harris addressed in an emotionally stirring way during the campaign is the right to abortion. But that’s not an overarching idea for the entire nation.

Trump has such a promise: “Make America Great Again.” This simple slogan, with which Trump has campaigned for a third time, embodies many motives that create a political sense of identity. The desire for strength, a return to old, disreputable ideas, a commitment to ruthlessness toward opponents, and defiance of moralistic objections…

Trump intertwines his slogan with his numerous character flaws. But the vow to make America great again apparently still outshines all the unspeakable things.

In the same issue, Siobhán Geets and Robert Treichler answer 47 questions about the U.S. presidential election in an article titled “Do You Understand America?”. It begins:

Would you vote for a black woman or a man convicted of sexual abuse, who is also suspected of attempted election fraud and inciting an uprising? You may not have to think long. The trickier question is: Why does the above-mentioned convicted felon—you’ve recognized him by now, it’s Donald Trump—have a good chance of being elected the 47th president of the United States next Tuesday?

Trump’s ongoing popularity and political success are baffling. But there are explanations: It is a fact that Trump recognized the problem of illegal immigration early on and made it a political megatopic, similar to right-wing parties in Europe. In his unique style of grotesque exaggerations, he demonizes migrants as murderers and rapists, even going so far as to claim that immigrants from Haiti “eat other people’s pets.” Nevertheless, even though Democrats have since imposed restrictive measures against illegal immigration, a large portion of the population grants them no credibility on this central issue.

Additionally, the politically charged question of identity politics comes into play. Democrats fight for diversity, LGBTQ rights, and abortion rights. John Della Volpe, director at Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics and a former advisor to Joe Biden, warns that they are neglecting men in the process. These men increasingly turn to the Republicans, who promote a carefree role model with limited tolerance for patriarchal and sexist behaviors. It’s entirely normal for one half of the population to want something different than the other half.

However, the problematic aspect is that the two halves no longer seem to meet on any level—not even figuratively. Trump supporters believe the 2020 election was rigged, dismiss court rulings, ignore warnings from his former associates about Trump being dangerous or even fascistic. Thus, all accusations from the other side fall flat.

Although Trump himself says outrageous things, such as wanting to use the military against “enemies from within”—meaning his opponents within the U.S.—his supporters dismiss these as typical exaggerations. Meanwhile, the other half of the country shudders in horror.

Similar reflections to these during the past year have led me to try to understand ordinary Trump voters better and to approach them with more tolerance.

Finally, three days after the election Jonah Goldberg’s newsletter titled “Stop Bashing Democracy!” arrived in my inbox. He writes:

And that, in a nutshell, is the grave error people are making. People vote for candidates—any candidate—for lots of different reasons. If you think Trump is a fascist, fine. We can talk about that. But just because you think he’s a fascist doesn’t mean someone who voted for him agrees with you and voted for him anyway. I know dozens of people who voted for Trump. None of them are idiots or fascists or fascist idiots.

This argument works every bit as much in the other direction. You may think Kamala Harris is a “communist” or “Marxist,” etc. Whether she is or not is a debatable proposition in the sense that it can be debated. But if you want people to agree with you, you need to make the argument, not just hurl the accusation. If you’re sure she is a communist, no one can deny you the right to say so—but saying so doesn’t mean everyone has to agree with you. Very few of the 68 million people who voted for Harris did so because they thought she was a Marxist or a communist.

I still believe I am correct in my assessment of Donald Trump, and that Trump’s supporters are mistaken, but I now understand them better, especially since Kamala Harris (just like Hillary Clinton eight years ago) was only a marginally less problematic candidate.

Now, lets jump back across the Atlantic to my country, Austria. Much of what Robert Treichler and Siobhán Geets write can be applied almost one-to-one to our situation, where Herbert Kickl, in my opinion a completely unsuitable candidate, won the most votes in the parliamentary election. Fortunately, he did not receive a governing majority, and no one wants to form a coalition with him, so there is a good chance we will have a coalition government, possibly involving the ÖVP, SPÖ, and perhaps NEOS.

But one thing is clear: if the new government continues with “business as usual”, Kickl will garner even more votes in four years, and perhaps even an “absolute majority”, enough to govern. Blaming it on stupid voters won’t help then either. Because the problem here, as in America (and many other countries), is the same: a political class, an aspiring elite too committed to their own interests and ideological pet issues to care about the concerns and fears of ordinary citizens. It may take different forms in America and here, but at its core, it’s the same.

Footnotes:

• • Note 1: These figures are estimates from 2020 ↩️
  • Note 2: Robert Treichler was born in 1968 in Graz, studied French and philosophy, and has been a journalist with the news magazine profil since 1997, serving as deputy editor-in-chief since 2021. In 2024, together with Gernot Bauer, he published the book Kickl und die Zerstörung Europas (Kickl and the Destruction of Europe) with Zsolnay. ↩️
  • Note 3: Siobhán Kathleen Geets, born in 1984 in Vienna, studied cultural and social anthropology at the University of Vienna with a focus on gender studies, international development, philosophy, and religious studies. She completed her thesis on ladyboys in Thailand and was awarded her degree in May 2008. From October 2008 to September 2009, she attended a course at the Vienna School of Photography. In January to February 2008 and February to March 2009, she conducted field research in Thailand, interviewing ladyboys for her thesis and a radio feature for Ö1. Since 2020, she has been part of the foreign affairs team at profil. ↩️

The Austrian Broadcasting news portal ORF Online reports that Qatar has asked members of the terrorist organization Hamas to leave the country, reportedly at the urgent request of the United States.

The report includes this paragraph:

«The recent U.S. decision was partly influenced by the execution of American-Israeli citizen Hersh Goldberg-Polin and five other hostages by Hamas at the end of August, according to a U.S. official speaking to the ‘Times of Israel.’»

In the German original the word here translated “execution” is “Hinrichtung, which like “execution”, describes, in its narrow, original sense, the carrying out of a legal death sentence.[[Regardless of what one thinks of the moral status of capital punishment there is a big difference between a sentence being carried out after a trial an a verdict by lawful authority on the one hand and the wanton killing by criminals and terrorists (not that I think there’s much difference between these two categories) on the other.]]

I consider it very problematic that these two terms, “Hinrichtung” and “execution” is regularly used to describe the illegal killing of people by criminals and terrorists. In reality, this is murder. The killing of hostages is nothing but cowardly murder.

Describing such acts as “executions” gives both the act and the perpetrators a veneer of respectability and legitimacy they do not deserve.

The language we use, as well as the words we choose, is very important.

Peter Wehner, senior fellow at the Trinity Forum and a former Republican speechwriter points out some inconvenient facts and asks disturbing questions, but I doubt somehow that this will sway many of Trump’s followers.

If I were an American I could not in good conscience vote for either Trump or Harris come November, and in the absence of a credible and viable third party candidate would simply not vote, but I don’t really have a problem with those who would vote for either one of the candidates as the lesser of two evils–that is a legitimate prudential judgement.

My issue is, rather, with those of my fellow evangelicals (and Christians of other traditions) who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and/or 2020 because they consider abortion the most significant of all issues, and did so while holding their noses with respect to Trump’s character, and who now, in the wake of January 6 and when Trump has had the Pro Life plank removed from the GOP platform and repeatedly expressed his support for “reproductive rights” and greater abortion access are still Trump loyalists defending their champion and their support for him. Unfortunately this group includes many prominent evangelical leaders (such as Al Mohler, Franklin Graham, Tony Perkins, Robert Jeffress, Michael Brown, and many others) as well as most of my American evangelical friends.

Here are the two, in my opinion most important paragraphs from Wehner’s article:

Now ask yourself this: How could an evangelical who claims to be passionately pro-life vote for a presidential candidate who now promises that his administration will “be great for women and their reproductive rights”? Especially when that person has cheated on his wives and on his taxes, paid hush money to porn stars, and been found liable of sexual assault?

And how can those who profess to be followers of Jesus cast a ballot for this candidate, once the excuse of casting a pro-life vote is gone? For a convicted felon and a pathological liar, a man who has peddled racist conspiracy theories, cozied up to the world’s worst dictators, blackmailed an American ally, invited a hostile foreign power to interfere in American elections, defamed POWs and the war dead, mocked people with handicaps, and encouraged political violence? How can they continue to stand in solidarity with a person who has threatened prosecutors, judges, and the families of judges; who attempted to overthrow an election; who assembled a violent mob and directed it to march on the Capitol; and who encouraged the mob to hang his vice president?

I feel an immense sadness for this once great country which in many important areas increasingly looks like a third world nation and which out of a population of 335 million could not find two suitable candidates for the nation’s, if not the world’s, most important office. Unfortunately neither of the current candidates will make America great again.

And I feel an even greater sadness for that segment of the American church which seems to have lost its moral compass.

A number of years ago, at the height of the Roman Catholic clerical abuse scandal first in the US and then also in Europe (Ireland, Austria, etc) there was quite a bit of tut-tuting among some of us Evangelicals, combined with finger-pointing at the celibacy requirement for Catholic clergy.

In 2017 prominent Evangelical apologist Ravi Zacharias was shown to be a sexual abuser and in 2022 the clerical abuse and lack of safeguarding scandal errupted in the Southern Baptist Convention.

In the past couple of years “The Roys Report” has reported almost weekly about clerical abuse cases (both sexual and other) across the entire Evangelical spectrum in the US[1], from small country churches to megachurches, from charismatic to non-charismatic churches and ministries. Most of these, of course, involved married abusers.

And just like the Catholic leadership twenty years ago, many Evangelical leaders who were tasked with the oversight of these abusive pastors and youth ministers seemed more concerned with reputational and financial damage control than with justice for and pastoral care of the victims.

It’s time we stopped the finger pointing and started praying for a cleansing in the entire Body of Christ, of whatever tradition. Abuse victims don’t care in the slightest whether their abuser professes belief in the “Solas” or in transsubstantiation, or what he thinks of the pope, whether he speaks in tongues or not. The damage is the same, and in all these cases it is the name of Christ that’s being dragged through the mud.

(BTW I am not raising this under some illusion of my own sinlessness or holiness, but I confess that I am utterly unable to fathom how one could commit such acts and then stand up at the front of the church and preach the gospel or handle the communion elements.)

1. I believe that if we hear less of this in Europe the reasons are sociological rather than the greater holiness of European churches[↩]