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Thursday, December 10, 2015

Petition to Ban Donald Trump From the UK Gains Momentum


Good versus evil. David versus Goliath. Tolerance versus Bigotry. Suzanne Kelly versus Donald Trump. 

Kelly's petition to ban Trump from the UK hit the international headlines yesterday as the number of signatures rose from 42,000 to over 250,000 in one day. That number has reached over 400,000 and is still climbing.

Around the world people have expressed revulsion at Trump’s unashamed bigotry and pathological addiction to untruth. One of his favorite expressions is “I don’t know if it’s true or not but it sounds like it’s true,” but he draws absolution conclusions from the premise that it (whatever the subject of the day is) is true.

Harmless when you’re exaggerating your wealth, but a tremendous danger to society when you’re fabricating lies about people on the basis of their religion or nationality, which is Trump’s trademark these days.

And a danger to himself when he lies about cities like London, saying there are parts that  have such entrenched radicalism that the police fear for their lives. London’s Mayor, Boris Johnson, said the only reason he wouldn’t go to parts of New York was the very real risk of meeting Donald Trump.

Sarah Wollaston, MP, tweeted “Do we get to ban Donald Trump?” on December 8, the day Suzanne Kelly started her online petition to the UK Government to do just that.

Per the UK Independent Prime Minister David Cameron was dead serious when he called Trump’s bigotry “divisive, unhelpful and quite simply wrong.” And Jeremy Corbyn, Labour leader, was more to the point, saying Trump’s comments were an “affront to humanity”. He called for people to unite against racism. Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said “For someone trying to be president of America it frankly shows why he is utterly unsuited for the role.” Master of the understatement.

Sunder Katwala, Director of the nonpartisan think-tank British Future, wrote on their website that “...It is important that the UK Government makes very clear that [Donald Trump’s] extreme view is rejected and repudiated in the strongest possible terms.

“The UK Home Office has set out clear guidelines which have led to the exclusion of preachers of hate from the UK.  Theresa May has excluded extreme Islamists on these grounds, and also kept out those who have fanned extreme anti-Muslim prejudice, such as the bloggers Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer. Trump’s statements are more extreme than theirs.

“Unless and until Trump were to retract these highly prejudiced comments, there is a good case for making clear that he would be refused entry to the UK by the Home Secretary.”

JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, said that Trump was worse than the evil Lord Voldemort of her novels.

And over 400,000 British citizens and residents despise him enough to want to make sure he can’t taint their country with his obnoxious presence.

In Scotland, Ronald Gordon University, which had bestowed an honorary degree on him, withdrew it yesterday after a petition to do so garnered over 7,500 votes. Nicola Sturgeon, Scottish First Minister, fired Trump from the position of Business Ambassador. She said his comments “are obnoxious and offensive, and have rightly been condemned by people across the political spectrum.”

In the US on Tuesday the White House issued a statement urging the Republican Party to denounce  Donald Trump, stating that his inflammatory proposal disqualifies him from the Presidency.

Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council of American-Islamic Relations, said: “Donald Trump sounds more like the leader of a lynch mob than of a great nation like ours.”

Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter wants to ban Donald Trump from the city, St. Petersburg Fla Mayor Rick Kriseman tweeted that Trump should be banned from his city, and Portland, Oregon, city council will vote next week to formally denounce Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims.

Hillary Clinton said that the GOP candidate traffics “in prejudice and paranoia. It is not only shameful. It’s dangerous.” Bernie Sanders, speaking to Jimmy Fallon on Tonight’s Show, called him a demagogue, one who, a few months ago, was telling Americans to hate Mexicans. “Now he wants us to hate Muslims. That crap won’t work in America.”

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls tweeted "Trump, like others, stokes hatred and conflations: our ONLY enemy is radical Islamism."

Süddeutsche Zeitung, a German daily newspaper, ran an editorial with the headline, “How Donald Trump is betraying America.”

Evil versus Good. Donald Trump is execrable, his bigotry offensive. But we’re seeing what amounts to an international, grass roots movement to counter it. And that is something to behold.