Reflections on the 78th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba (Catastrophe)

There will be no peace in the Middle East until the foundational injustice at the heart of the region—the creation of Israel on stolen land, and its repercussions—is addressed.

By Fareed Khan 
A version of this can be found on Substack.

As Palestinians and their allies mark the 78th anniversary of the Nakba we need to reflect on how the world arrived at this moment in history and what it means. 

In the 1930s and early 1940s, Western governments watched Nazi Germany’s escalating persecution of Jews with a mixture of indifference, appeasement, and self‑interest. That moral failure helped clear the path to the Holocaust. Today, a parallel pattern of ambivalence, active support for Israel, and deep anti‑Palestinian racism among Western political elites is enabling another catastrophe in full view of the world—the ongoing Nakba and the Gaza Genocide being perpetrated by Israel on Palestinians.

This is not rhetorical excess. It is what emerges when one takes Palestinian history seriously, listens to the growing number of Jewish and Israeli voices breaking from Zionist orthodoxy, and examines the historical record—including the United Nations’ own documentation of its permanent responsibility on the question of Palestine, and its role in creating the situation of the Palestinian people.

The reality is the Nakba—“catastrophe” in Arabic— never ended. It refers to the mass expulsion, ethnic cleansing and dispossession of approximately 750,000 Palestinians during the 1948 war and the erasure and depopulation of more than 400 Palestinian towns and villages. For decades, Western discourse treated this as an unfortunate but closed chapter, a tragic birth pang of a necessary state. But for Palestinians, the Nakba is not a date, it is an ongoing structural injustice that has affected generations of their people.

The UN itself acknowledges that the Nakba was not merely a by-product of war but a systematic process of displacement and dispossession that created one of the world’s largest and longest‑standing refugee populations. The UN’s “About the Nakba” page explicitly states that the events of 1948 “resulted in the displacement of more than half of the Palestinian Arab population” and that the consequences of this displacement “remain unresolved to this day.”

Palestinian writer Aziz Abu Sarah describes the Nakba as having “a dual meaning”—both the razed villages and refugee camps of 1948, the daily reality of land confiscation in the years and decades that followed, settlement expansion, family separation, and legal discrimination that continues to this day. His parents cannot legally live in the house they built just outside Jerusalem without losing their Jerusalem IDs, while nearby illegal Jewish settlers enjoy full rights. Every checkpoint, every denied permit, every demolished home is experienced as a renewed Nakba.

Independent Jewish Voices Canada (IJV) reinforces this understanding, arguing that the Nakba is “not a historical event but an ongoing process,” one that has evolved from ethnic cleansing in 1948 to what they describe as genocide in Gaza today. Their analysis emphasizes that the logic of elimination—removing Palestinians from their land—has been consistent since the creation of Israel.

Human rights organizations and Palestinian institutions now explicitly frame Israel’s current genocide in Gaza as a continuation of that same project of displacement and replacement. The Al Mezan Center for Human Rights calls the present war “a renewed Nakba manifested in a genocidal war,” noting mass killing, starvation, siege, and the displacement of nearly two million people in Gaza as part of an “ongoing colonial policy based on population replacement, land control, and the erasure of Palestinian national identity.”

The UN’s 2024 Nakba commemoration made the same point: “The Nakba of 1948 and today’s Nakba in Gaza are not two separate events, but an ongoing process of Palestinian displacement and replacement.”

The truth is that to call Israeli oppression of Palestinians merely “a conflict” is to participate in the erasure of Palestinian history and almost eight decades of Palestinian suffering.

Western complicity: From 1948 to Gaza today

The Nakba was not only the work of Zionist terrorist militias and the Israeli army. It was made possible by Western powers—particularly the United States—that endorsed partition of historic Palestine, recognized the new state created on lands beyond the UN partition plan, and then looked away as refugees were barred from returning by Israel in defiance of international law.

Ardi Imseis, in his 2024 UN‑commissioned study The Nakba and the United Nations’ Permanent Responsibility for the Question of Palestine, argues that the UN bears a unique and ongoing responsibility because it played a direct role in partitioning Palestine and then failed to enforce the rights of the displaced population. Imseis notes that the UN’s responsibility is “not episodic but permanent,” rooted in the fact that the organization “helped create the conditions that made the Nakba possible.”

UN Resolution 194 affirmed the right of Palestinian refugees to return or receive compensation, but Western governments never seriously enforced it. Their strategic interests—Cold War positioning, oil, and alliance with a self‑styled “outpost of the West”—took precedence over Palestinian rights.

The same pattern is evident today. As Gaza is bombed into ruins, with hundreds of thousands killed and many more maimed or starved, Western states continue to arm, fund, and diplomatically shield Israel. Legal experts, UN rapporteurs, and civil society groups have warned of a serious risk, and ultimately, the reality of genocide. Just as Western governments once found reasons to downplay or rationalize Nazi persecution of Jews until it was too late, they now supply endless justifications to excuse or minimize Israel’s destruction of Palestinian life. Then, the rationales centered on fear of refugees, antisemitism, and geopolitical calculations. Now, they invoke “counter-terrorism,” “self-defence,” and the imperative to stand with an ally—no matter what that ally does.

Suppressing the story: Nakba denial as a Western project

The Nakba is not only being continued on the ground, it is being suppressed in classrooms, parliaments, and media studios across the West.

In the United States, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy barred Palestinian‑American Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib from holding a Nakba commemoration at the Capitol after lobbying from the Anti‑Defamation League, forcing the event to move to a different room offered by Senator Bernie Sanders. Senator Jacky Rosen condemned the very idea of calling Israel’s establishment a “catastrophe” as “deeply offensive,” erasing the lived catastrophe of Palestinians in favour of a sacrosanct (albeit false) state narrative.

The Jewish Currents newsletter that reported this incident drew a sharp parallel between this discomfort with Nakba education and white uneasiness about teaching Black history in the United States. It described a “collective narcissism” that reads any expression of Palestinian identity—flags, commemorations, the kheffiya Palestinian scarf, even grief—as an attack on Jews, and noted that Israel‑advocacy organizations are increasingly using the charge of antisemitism to preemptively repress Palestinian speech, from the U.S. to Germany, where Berlin police have repeatedly banned Nakba Day protests.

Inside Israel, the state has passed laws penalizing public institutions that commemorate the Nakba, and Palestinian educators face constant pressure. Abu Sarah notes that the Israeli government not only ignores Palestinian history but “is also trying to force Palestinians to forget their own narrative, by forbidding commemoration of the Nakba.” Organizations like Zochrot, which work to educate Israeli Jews about the Nakba and Palestinian return, have been marginalized and attacked, even as they collaborate with groups like BADIL to bring Nakba testimony to international audiences.

In the U.S., Jewish Voice for Peace’s “Facing the Nakba” curriculum exists precisely because mainstream Jewish and general education has erased this history. The curriculum explicitly teaches that the Nakba “began with Israel’s establishment, and continues to this day,” and is designed to help U.S. Jews confront why they were never taught this story and how that omission shapes their politics. It is initiatives like this that are attempting to resist the Zionist attempt to deny the reality of what Palestinians have endured.

From Nakba denial to a new form of Holocaust denial

Holocaust denial is not only the crude claim that the gas chambers never existed. It is also any attempt to relativize, justify, or erase the systematic destruction of European Jewry. We rightly treat such denial as a moral red line.

Yet when it comes to Palestinians, Western political and media elites routinely engage in analogous forms of denial. They:

• Erase the original crime by refusing to acknowledge that Israel’s creation involved mass expulsion and dispossession.

• Justify ongoing violence as unfortunate but necessary “self‑defence,” even when it clearly targets civilians on a massive scale.

• Suppress testimony by banning Nakba commemorations, criminalizing Palestinian solidarity, and smearing critics as antisemites or terrorist sympathizers

The UN’s 2024 Nakba commemoration made explicit what Palestinians have long said: “The Nakba is an enterprise of displacement and replacement of people that continues to this very day,” and Gaza’s people now face a choice between “displacement, subjugation, or death—in other words, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, or genocide.” To deny this reality, or to insist that it cannot be named because it offends Western sensibilities, is to participate in a form of historical and moral erasure that echoes the mechanisms once used to minimize the Holocaust while it was unfolding.

Jewish voices breaking the spell

One of the most hopeful developments is that more Jewish and Israeli voices are publicly challenging the myths that sustain this denial. The Al Jazeera feature on Jewish voices around Nakba Day highlights historians like Avi Shlaim, who calls Israel “a pariah and a war criminal state” whose brutality in Gaza and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank have created a crisis with world Jewry. Within Jewish communities, projects like “Facing the Nakba” and the work of Jewish Currents, Jewish Voice for Peace, and others are insisting that Jewish ethics demand confronting Palestinian dispossession, not denying it.

Independent Jewish Voices Canada adds that confronting the Nakba is not only a moral obligation but a necessary step toward ending what they describe as Israel’s “genocidal campaign” in Gaza.

Their message is simple: acknowledging the Nakba and opposing genocide in Gaza is not anti-Semitic, it is a Jewish obligation grounded in the very lessons of the Holocaust that Western elites claim to honour.

Justice for Palestinians: The defining human rights struggle of our time

Because the Nakba is ongoing, justice for Palestinians is not one issue among many, it is the central test of whether the international human rights system means anything at all.

The UN’s own language now recognizes that 1948 and Gaza are part of a single process of displacement and replacement.[5] Anthropologists describe Israeli institutions, including universities, as “settler universities” embedded in a 78‑year project of ethnic cleansing and “Judaization.” Palestinian and international human rights groups document patterns of apartheid, persecution, and now genocide.

If the world cannot—or will not—stop a state that openly talks of a “second Nakba,” that has destroyed every university in Gaza, that starves children and then blames their parents, then the post‑1945 promise of “never again” has been hollowed out and is meaningless, not only for Jews, but for everyone.

There will be no peace in the Middle East until the foundational injustice at the heart of the region is addressed—the creation of a state on stolen land, the exclusion of its indigenous people, and the ongoing attempt to erase their presence. 

The UN’s worst decision and what it would mean to undo it

In hindsight, the UN’s endorsement of the partition of historic Palestine and the creation of a Jewish state in a region where Palestinians were the majority may be the single most disastrous decision it made in the 20th century. Not because Jews did not deserve safety after the Holocaust, but because that safety was pursued through the dispossession of another people rather than through de‑Nazification, open borders, and genuine global responsibility for refugees.

Ardi Imseis argues that the UN’s failure to uphold Palestinian rights after partition created a “permanent responsibility” that the organization has yet to fulfill. The turmoil, wars, occupations, and cycles of violence that have followed are not unfortunate side effects, they are the predictable consequences of building a state on a foundational injustice and then refusing, decade after decade, to confront it.

The Nakba was not an accident. It was a choice. Continuing it is also a choice.

© 2026 The View From Here. © 2026 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.

PALESTINIAN DESTINY

By Fareed Khan 
A version of this can be found on Substack.

Every Israeli bullet and bomb

That genocides innocent Palestinians

That destroys their lands and homes

And seeks to send them to oblivion

Plants the seeds of a revolution

And foretells the obliteration

Of the racist Zionist ideology

It will see an end to the inhumanity

Of almost eight decades of Israeli depravity

And decades of their bigoted insanity

The day is coming when the world will see

An independent Palestinian nation

Free from Israeli domination

A time when Palestinians will be free

From the river to the sea

Because that is their destiny

* * *
 

 

© 2026 The View From Here. © 2026 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.

White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting casts a shadow over American democracy

The path forward demands more than condemnation. It requires bipartisan and societal rejection of political violence and the political rhetoric that feeds it.

By Fareed Khan 
A version of this can be found on Substack.

On the evening of April 25, 2026, the glittering annual White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner at the Washington Hilton—long a ritual of Washington’s political and media elite—was shattered by the sharp crack of gunfire. President Donald Trump, attending the event for the first time as a sitting president in his second term, was seated at the head table alongside his wife, Vice President J.D. Vance, and senior cabinet officials when chaos erupted around 8:40 p.m. EDT. A 31-year-old man from Torrance, California, identified as Cole Tomas Allen, a former tutoring teacher and registered hotel guest, rushed a Secret Service checkpoint near the main screening area just outside the ballroom.

Armed with a shotgun, a handgun, and multiple knives, Allen fired at least six shots in a frenzied 25-second assault. Secret Service agents and local police tackled him immediately, preventing him from reaching the ballroom where some 2,600 guests—including journalists, lawmakers, and dignitaries—had ducked under tables or fled. One Secret Service officer was struck in his bullet-resistant vest but sustained no serious injury and was reported in “great shape.” No other casualties occurred.

Trump was swiftly evacuated by agents shouting “shots fired,” while the ballroom fell into stunned silence. The president returned to the White House for a press conference where he used measured language in his statement and responses to reporters’ questions. He described the attacker as a “lone wolf” and a “sick person,” praised the “very brave members” of the Secret Service for their rapid response, and confirmed that the dinner would be rescheduled within 30 days rather than cancelled outright. The shooter was taken into custody, treated at Howard University Hospital for injuries sustained when he was taken down by police, and preliminarily charged with using a firearm during a crime of violence and assault on a federal officer. Law enforcement, including the FBI and the Metropolitan Police Department spokespersons, described him as a lone actor with no immediate evidence of broader conspiracy; his motive remains under investigation.

This incident did not occur in isolation. It arrives amid a years-long surge in documented cases of political violence in the United States. The list is grimly familiar: a 2024 assassination attempt on then-candidate Trump at a Pennsylvania rally; the 2022 hammer attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi; the 2017 shooting at a congressional baseball practice that gravely wounded Republican Whip Steve Scalise and injured others; the 2011 attempted assassination of Rep. Gabby Giffords in Tucson, Arizona, which killed six and wounded 13, and the 2025 assassination of Minnesota state Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband. Add to these the January 6, 2021, Capitol Hill riot, where there were threats against then Vice President Mike Pence, and election officials, and sporadic attacks on state capitols and judges, and you have a devolution of political culture in the US. These events span the ideological spectrum—left-wing extremists, right-wing militias, and seemingly apolitical disturbed individuals—yet share a common thread, namely the targetting of elected leaders, their families, or the democratic process itself.

To find a comparable wave of high-profile political assassinations and attempts, one must look back more than half a century to the turbulent 1960s. The assassinations of President John F. Kennedy (1963), Malcolm X (1965), Martin Luther King Jr. (1968), and Senator Robert F. Kennedy (1968) convulsed the nation and fuelled national soul-searching about violence, race, and governance. Those killings occurred against a backdrop of civil rights struggles, Vietnam War protests, and cultural upheaval. Today’s violence, by contrast, unfolds in an era of relative peace abroad but hyper-partisan political polarization in the US, amplified by social media, cable news, right wing media voices, and algorithmic outrage.

This incident raises an important question: Is the shooting at the Correspondents’ Dinner merely the latest symptom of a democracy in decline, an ominous signal that American politics risks devolving into the unstable, violence-plagued model common in many developing countries—where coups, assassinations, and strongman rule have supplanted peaceful transfers of power—or is it a natural reaction to Trump’s aggressive and bombastic political style?

The evidence of political erosion is hard to dismiss. Political scientists have tracked a measurable rise in “affective polarization”—the visceral hatred of the opposing party—since the 1990s. Threats against members of Congress have skyrocketed, the Capitol Police reported over 9,600 threats in 2023 alone, more than triple the figure from a decade earlier. Public trust in institutions—Congress, the press, even the courts—hovers at historic lows. When a sitting president must be rushed from a black-tie media event by armed agents, the symbolism is inescapable—the norms that once insulated democratic rituals from physical danger have frayed.

In developing democratic nations—from Latin America’s repeated presidential assassinations to South Asia’s dynastic feuds or Africa’s post-election violence—such incidents often mark the point where electoral competition gives way to personal vendettas and institutional collapse. The United States has not crossed that threshold (yet), but repeated near-misses invite uncomfortable comparisons.

Who is to blame? The reflexive partisan answer would be to blame the other side, a response which only deepens the rot. Trump’s own rhetoric has at times glorified strength over restraint and labelled opponents “vermin” or “enemies of the people.” However, Democratic leaders and media figures have also trafficked in inflammatory language at times, framing Trump as an existential threat to democracy itself, a framing that some individuals appear to have taken literally. The 2024 attempt on Trump’s life came after years of legal battles and heated campaign discourse. The attack on Paul Pelosi followed months of conspiracy-laden attacks on his wife. Both sides have normalized aggressive framing, with one side (justifiably) warning of “fascism,” while the other of pushes narratives of “communism” or “deep state” plots.

Social media platforms, while not the sole culprit, pour fuel on the fire, funneling grievance and conspiracy into echo chambers where lone actors radicalize. Mental health failures, easy access to firearms, and a cultural glorification of vigilante justice compound the problem. Responsibility is diffuse—cultural, institutional, and individual—rather than the monopoly of any single party or leader.

What does this portend for the future of American politics?

In the short term, expect heightened security at all events where politicians are featured, where future political events, from rallies to state dinners, resembling armed camps. The Correspondents’ Dinner itself, already criticized as an elitist spectacle, may face calls for abolition or even a permanent virtual format. Public reaction, already fracturing along predictable partisan lines, will likely follow suit. Trump supporters will see confirmation of a “rigged system” or media complicity while critics will point to the president’s past statements as incitement. Polls in the immediate aftermath will show a brief spike in national unity—much as after prior attempts—followed by renewed recrimination once the 24-hour news cycle moves on.

Trump’s initial response was notably restrained, crediting law enforcement and avoiding immediate finger-pointing. Yet his history suggests a he will return to form within days. Expect Truth Social posts and statements decrying the “radical left” or “fake news” as the causes for this shooting, potentially framing the incident as evidence that only he can restore order.

The longer-term implications are potentially more ominous. Could this incident provide ammunition for extraordinary measures, such as delaying or cancelling midterm elections under a declared national emergency? Legally and constitutionally, the prospect is remote given that the U.S. Constitution vests election administration primarily in the states, and federal courts have consistently rejected attempts to suspend voting even amid crises far graver than a foiled hotel shooting. No president—Republican or Democrat—has successfully overridden this framework. Yet the mere discussion of such ideas, once fringe, now enters mainstream conservative discourse amid repeated threats.

More plausibly, the event will fuel demands for stricter vetting for those who attend such events, expanded Secret Service protection for candidates and elected officials, and perhaps new federal legislation on domestic terrorism—measures that themselves risk civil-liberties trade-offs.

Ultimately, the shooting should force a reckoning about how political opponents are framed by their critics. American democracy retains extraordinary resilience—free elections, independent judiciary, vibrant (if polarized) press—but its guardrails are under unprecedented stress. The 1960s assassinations did not end the republic, and did eventually lead to national healing. Today’s violence, however, occurs in a fragmented media landscape where healing narratives struggle to compete with social media outrage. If leaders on both sides continue to treat opponents as irredeemable adversaries rather than fellow citizens, the risk grows that political competition devolves from debate into political violence against opponents.

Developing nations that lost their democratic moorings did so not in a single cataclysm but through accumulated erosion—impunity for violence, eroded trust, and strongman appeals that pit “us” against “them.” The United States is not there yet, but nights like April 25th reminds us how fragile that line can be.

The path forward demands more than condemnation. It requires bipartisan and societal rejection of political violence and the political rhetoric that feeds it. This includes a firm rejection of the kind of dehumanizing language that has become normalized in recent years—rhetoric that brands the media as “the enemy of the people,” political opponents as “vermin,” “scum,” or “radical left thugs,” and anyone critical of Donald Trump as disloyal traitors or “fake news” peddlers. It also requires an investment in civic education that teaches citizens that political opponents can disagree without dehumanizing each other. It needs a cultural recommitment to the peaceful transfer of power as sacred and political leadership that returns to the norms of responsible political dialogue rather than framing opponents as existential enemies.

Whether America heeds that call—or allows another generation of leaders and journalists to be stalked by gunfire—will determine if this incident marks a low point or the beginning of a steeper decline.

© 2026 The View From Here. © 2026 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.

King Charles’ state visit to Trump’s America is a grave miscalculation by the UK government

The decision to go ahead with the visit has alienated the voters who expect more from their government. And it has squandered whatever remaining moral authority that the Starmer government claims on the world stage.

 

By Fareed Khan 
A version of this can be found on Substack.

As King Charles III and Queen Camilla prepare to touch down in Washington this weekend for a four-day state visit hosted by President Donald Trump, the United Kingdom government’s decision to press ahead with it looks less like prudent diplomacy and more like a catastrophic political miscalculation.

Scheduled for April 27 to 30, 2026, the trip is billed as a celebration of the 250th anniversary of American independence. In reality, it unfolds against a backdrop of acute transatlantic strain—a US-led war in Iran that the UK has pointedly refused to support in full, and a president who has spent the past year publicly humiliating the British. By allowing the King to proceed with the visit, Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government has handed Trump a glittering propaganda victory while exposing the monarchy to potential embarrassment and, crucially, dragging Canada—where King Charles is also head of state—into the political crossfire. This is not statesmanship. In the current political climate between the US and the UK it is a blunder of historic proportions.

The case for cancellation was never abstract. It has been spelled out in stark terms by opposition leaders in the British Parliament, senior Labour Party figures, and ordinary citizens. A YouGov poll for The Times found that 45% of the British public believe the visit should be scrapped outright. Liberal Democrat Party leader Ed Davey has been relentless, describing the trip as a reward for “bullying behaviour”, and an “illegal war” in Iran that is destabilising the Middle East and driving up energy bills for British families. Davey has repeatedly called Trump a “mafia boss running a protection racket” and accused Starmer of weakness for refusing to stand up to him.

Twenty-nine Liberal Democrat Members of Parliament signed a motion urging cancellation. Green Party leader Zack Polanski labelled Trump “dangerous” and “unpredictable” and condemned the government’s capitulation. Even within Labour, MP Emily Thornberry warned that the visit against the backdrop of an illegal war risks embarrassing the royals. Guardian letter-writers echoed the sentiment, arguing that Trump would see the visit as personal tribute rather than apolitical protocol, and calling the optics “awful”, accusing the government of pandering to Trump’s narcissism. 

Yet Starmer’s government ploughed on, insisting the visit is “non-political soft diplomacy.” That claim collapsed the moment one examines how Trump operates. The president has never met a photo opportunity he did not turn into a personal endorsement. A state banquet, an address to Congress, joint appearances with the King in Washington, New York, and Virginia—these are not neutral ceremonies. They are catnip for a man who already boasts about restoring the “special relationship” on his own terms. Trump will frame every handshake, every toast, every regal flourish as implicit British (and therefore allied) approval of his most controversial policies—the Iran campaign, his confrontational style with NATO partners, and his willingness to berate allies in public. The visit becomes Exhibit A in his narrative that even the stuffiest of old-world institutions have come around to “Trumpism.” Starmer’s ministers may whisper that the monarchy is above politics, but Trump will shout the opposite from every podium.

Worse, the risk of real-time embarrassment is not hypothetical—it is almost inevitable. Trump’s well-documented penchant for straying from the script has already produced diplomatic disasters. He has dismissed the Royal Navy's ships as “toys,” sneered that Keir Starmer is “no Winston Churchill,” and accused his government of wrecking the special relationship. During the visit he could easily veer off-message with a casual aside about British military “weakness,” a boast about forcing allies to “pay up,” or a joke at the expense of the very man standing beside him. Buckingham Palace’s careful choreography—every word of the King’s speeches pre-vetted, every gesture calibrated for neutrality—will mean nothing if the American president treats the occasion like a political rally. The King, whose role demands dignified silence in the face of provocation, would be left either to smile awkwardly or to endure a breach of protocol that damages the institution he represents. No amount of post-visit spin can erase footage of the monarch standing mute while his host insults the country over which he reigns.

The domestic cost to Britain is already evident. Cancellation would have been a principled signal that London will not legitimise unilateral wars, will not reward public insults to its armed forces, and will not allow the monarchy to become a prop in someone else’s political agenda. Instead, the British government’s decision has deepened divisions in that country. It has handed the opposition in Westminster a ready-made stick with which to beat Starmer as “weak on bullies.” The decision to go ahead with the visit has alienated the very voters who expect the British government to do far better. And it has squandered whatever remaining moral authority that the Starmer government claims on the world stage. When the prime minister’s office insists the visit is “on government advice,” it merely confirms the parliamentary opposition’s claims that the Labour government lacks the spine to say no—even when the national interest screams otherwise.

The repercussions extend beyond the United Kingdom. King Charles is not only the United Kingdom’s monarch, he is also Canada’s head of state. The visit therefore implicates Ottawa in ways that haven’t even been considered in London. Canadian public opinion has long been critical of Trump’s style and policies. Many Canadians continue to be outraged at the trade war launched by Trump, about tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum, his threats about possibly cancelling the USMCA, and his repeated expressions of disrespect directed at former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and current Prime Minister Mark Carney. A royal state visit—complete with Trump’s inevitable claims of restored friendship—will be interpreted by many in Canada as tacit endorsement of the very administration with which Ottawa now has an adversarial relationship.

Polls in Canada already show unease about the monarchy’s relevance, and this episode could turbo-charge republican sentiment. More dangerously, it risks complicating Canada-US relations at a delicate moment. If Trump uses the King’s presence to pressure Canada, Ottawa will find itself caught between loyalty to the Crown and the need to protect Canadian interests. The constitutional fiction that the King acts solely on British ministerial advice offers little comfort when the images will be broadcast live from the White House lawn. Canadians did not ask for their head of state to become a prop in Trump’s diplomatic theatre.  And the fact that Canada wasn’t consulted given Canada’s close economic and military ties with the US (far closer than what the UK has) is deeply troubling.

The UK government’s defenders will trot out the usual bromides—tradition, the 250th anniversary, the importance of the special relationship. But tradition does not require grovelling before a leader who has spent months disparaging Britain. Anniversary symbolism cannot justify tacitly endorsing a war against Iran that the UK itself has declined to join. And the so-called special relationship has never been more lopsided. Trump’s own disparaging words towards the British reveal how he views the UK. It should be noted that a state visit is not a repair kit, it is a reward. By granting it, Britain signals that insults can be forgotten, that unilateral aggression carries no diplomatic cost, and that even the monarchy can be co-opted. That is precisely the message Trump craves.

Critics inside and outside government offered Starmer a clear off-ramp. Ed Davey’s warnings about humiliation, the Early Day Motion, the public polling, the Guardian letters—all pointed to the same conclusion, that the visit should be postponed, cancelled, or at minimum scaled back to a working visit without the full royal pageantry. Starmer decided to ignore them resulting in a self-inflicted wound. The King will arrive in Washington not as a symbol of continuity and dignity, but as the reluctant face of a policy that looks to much of the British public and many international observers, like appeasement hiding behind pageantry.

History will not be kind to Starmer for this decision. British history will note that in April 2026, with the Middle East in flames and the Atlantic alliance fraying, all due to Trump’s actions, a Labour government chose to send the King to break bread with a president whose actions endangered the world. They will record the predictable outcome—Trump crowing about how the British love him, the King placed in an impossible situation, and Canada by extension caught in the back wash. The special relationship is not being strengthened, it is being cheapened, and the monarchy is being politicized. With this visit the United Kingdom’s reputation for principled restraint is being further tarnished, and the likely political gain will be minimal.

There is still time—barely—for a last-minute adjustment. The Starmer government could issue a discreet clarification that the visit proceeds with reservations. The prime minister could use the remaining hours to impose stricter ground rules on what can be said in the presence of the King. But the wiser course would have been to cancel the visit weeks ago. Unfortunately, that ship has sailed.

This weekend’s events represent a colossal mistake born of a huge political miscalculation. Britain—and Canada—will be living with the consequences long after King Charles returns home and the state banquet candles are extinguished. Even as Canada and the UK’s allies redouble their efforts at traditional diplomacy—quiet negotiations, multilateral forums, and appeals to shared history—the Donald Trump’s unpredictable impulses suggest that fresh rounds of chaos, tariffs, territorial jabs, or diplomatic broadsides are likely to follow no matter the efforts to maintain “normal” relations with the US.

© 2026 The View From Here. © 2026 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.

Donald Trump: A cancer upon the world that needs to be dealt with

It wouldn't be shocking to say that many global leaders hope that nature takes it course and Trump succumbs to age or a health issue that removes him from office and this world permanently.  

 
By Fareed Khan 
A version of this can be found on Substack.

Donald Trump is a walking catastrophe of a human being, a man so devoid of basic decency, empathy, or any shred of genuine humanity that his very existence feels like an insult to the human species. In essence, he is a cancer upon the world.

This is not hyperbole. It is the cold, observable truth about a narcissistic sociopath, a man-child whose every action radiates selfishness, megalomania, cruelty, and a chilling indifference to the suffering his words and actions leave in his wake. He doesn’t care about how his behaviour harms people—never has, never will.

To Trump, human beings are props to be used for his personal benefit, or obstacles to be overcome in the endless melodrama of his own ego. The pain and suffering, the death, the economic ruin, and the democratic erosion he has caused aren’t unfortunate side effects, they are foreseeable results that any truly intelligent person with an ounce of humanity could predict. But, ultimately, to him they are irrelevant, because nothing registers on his brain unless it flatters him and boosts his ego, or threatens his fragile, bloated self-image.

Look at the Middle East right now, teetering on the edge of a catastrophic war that could claim millions of lives. Before February 28 there was a tense peace among the nations of the region and oil was flowing freely through the Strait of Hormuz. But Trump’s reckless actions, launching an illegal and unprovoked war against Iran, in conjunction with Israel, his political posturing, his genocidal rhetoric, and his dangerous game of brinkmanship—culminating in a blockade of the Strait—are shoving the region toward chaos, and could drag in other nations affected by the crisis his actions have created. Oil flows have been disrupted, global supply chains strangled, and innocent people killed by American and Israeli attacks—all because of one man’s irrational, impulsive bullying style of “diplomacy”, and because his fragile ego demands attention.

Trump doesn’t lose sleep over the mothers burying children killed by US bombs, refugees fleeing US-Israeli attacks, or people being unable to afford food. Why would he? Compassion isn’t part of his emotional vocabulary. He’s too busy smirking in front of cameras, turning foreign policy into a reality TV spectacle, while real human lives are upended. His lack of humanity and his embrace of what can only be termed evil aren’t flaws he tries to hide, it’s who he is to the core. He revels in strength as a form of domination, never as a way to protect the vulnerable or uplift the weak. The suffering of innocents? Mere collateral damage in his quest for personal victory at all costs.

And then there is the economy. Trump’s bull-in-a-china-shop antics are barrelling the world towards a global recession, stoking inflation, and will push interest rates higher with every chaotic tweet and every effort to make the Iranians succumb to his unconditional demands. Families worldwide are already feeling the squeeze—sky high gas prices, higher food prices, layoffs as businesses try to cut rising costs, and plans for the future put on hold due to uncertainty. Yet he charges ahead, indifferent to how his actions sow chaos and misery in the lives of ordinary people. This is the same man who, in his first term as president, displayed a chilling indifference to the fragile interconnectedness of our world, deliberately weaponizing personal vendettas against his political enemies in ways that left a trail of devastation among the vulnerable—both at home and abroad.

Trump doesn’t care about the single mother struggling to feed her kids because grocery costs spiked. He doesn’t care about the factory worker whose livelihood vanishes in a trade war he started. To him, humanity and compassion are not virtues but fatal weaknesses—signs of inferiority to be exploited and crushed. Those who dare display empathy deserve nothing less than public humiliation, served up like sacrificial lambs to feed his endless hunger for dominance. He mocks the merciful, belittles the decent, and gazes upon them with the cold contempt of a tyrant surveying peasants, reminding us all that in his dark vision of America, kindness is treason and strength means only the ruthless exercise of raw power.

The world is utterly sick of Donald Trump. From European capitals to Asian financial hubs, from Latin American streets to African villages feeling the indirect shocks of his actions, people watch the circus he has created with a mixture of horror and exhaustion. His antics aren’t just embarrassing anymore, they are dangerous. A superpower led by a man with the emotional maturity of a spoiled toddler, armed with nuclear codes and the world’s largest military, is a recipe for global instability and disarray far beyond what we are already enduring.

It would not be shocking to say that many global leaders secretly hope that nature takes it course and Trump succumbs to age or a health issue that removes him from office and this world permanently. They likely hope that this exhausting chapter in world history ends before the damage Trump has inflicted becomes irreversible. And they are likely joined by tens of millions around the world who feel similarly. It’s safe to say these would be the sentiments of people who are exhausted, who see one man-child holding the planet hostage, and who can’t wait until the Trumpian nightmare ends.

Americans who still possess a conscience—those who didn’t vote for him and those who now regret their vote—must confront the ugly reality. Under Trump, there is no politics as usual. What America faces is the outcome of a collective insanity, which has been building for years, that placed in the presidency a man who is dismantling their democracy brick by brick, while torching the world order that preserved a fragile global peace for eighty years. His pathological personality, serial lying, bombast, and dangerous rhetoric are not mere quirks. They are weaponized personality disorders that are laying waste to the very foundations of the imperfect civil society built from the ashes of World War Two.

This is a man who lies every time his lips move because truth threatens his fragile ego. Fact-checkers have tallied thousands of lies whenever he has spoken publicly or posted on social media, yet he doubles down with that signature smirk, daring anyone to call him out. His amorality is disgusting and dangerous. He praises dictators, cozies up to authoritarians, and treats democratic norms like inconvenient suggestions. Ethics? Accountability? According to Trump these are for suckers. He operates on pure transactional self-interest, where loyalty is demanded, and betrayal is met with venomous rage.

The truth is that the world is utterly sick of Donald Trump’s face, his grating voice, and that perpetual, menacing sneer that drips with entitlement and barely concealed insecurity. This is a man who has openly mocked the disabled, ridiculed war heroes, and degraded women through vulgar, boastful tirades that expose a vicious misogyny and a self-loathing he projects onto the entire world. His racism and bigotry are no longer whispered dog whistles but brazen, inflammatory rallying cries that deliberately summon humanity’s darkest tribal impulses. Trump channels a chilling, Hitlerian vision of dominance—a “fourth Reich” fantasy in which a white supremacist-tinged America demands global submission to him and his cabal of billionaire sycophants, who feed their insatiable greed and lust for unchecked power. He surrounds himself with loyal enablers who eagerly amplify his hatred, mainstream conspiracy theories, and display open contempt for every democratic institution that dares restrain his authoritarian ambitions. How can any decent person witness this rising threat without feeling a profound and urgent sense of revulsion?

Democracy in the US is itself under threat because to Trump, it’s not a sacred system of checks, balances, and peaceful transitions. It is a tool to be bent or broken when it doesn’t deliver what he craves. His actions are not just unravelling American democracy, but also the fragile post-World War Two order, pushing alliances to the brink of fracture, and inviting adversaries to exploit the global divisions he is creating.

The 33% of eligible American voters who knowingly returned Donald Trump to power—fully aware of the Access Hollywood tape, the endless scandals, the racial incitement, and his pathological lying—bear a heavy responsibility. The MAGA crowd decided that character didn’t matter, that racism, misogyny, and raw amorality were acceptable in a leader rather than disqualifiers. Their blind loyalty has created a frightening cult of personality that prizes grievance over governance and spectacle over substance, normalizing the abnormal, and handing the nation’s steering wheel to a drunk driver.

Americans who care about their nation—truly care, beyond partisan tribalism—must come together now to halt this madman before he destroys what’s left of their democracy, not to mention, the impact that unravelling of the US will have globally. It falls to them to rise above the noise and chaos that Trump peddles, and demand better. This isn’t about right versus left, it’s about sanity versus insanity, humanity versus nihilism.

The people of the US must unite across divides—progressives, moderates, conservatives who still believe in democracy and principles over personality. They must organize, vote, speak out, hold the people who enable Trump accountable. They must pressure Republican congressional representatives and senators to prioritize country over cult, lest the nation that is celebrating the 250th anniversary of its founding this year, comes apart at the seams. The world cannot afford three more years of the global danger Trump represents. His actions don’t just damage America, they endanger the entire world by amplifying irrationality and instability.

Donald Trump doesn’t represent America’s best. He enables its worst. He must be rejected, constrained, and if possible arrested, tried and convicted, if Americans are to reclaim the democracy he treats as his personal playground. Before it’s too late, before the pain spreads further, before the world pays an even steeper price, for one man’s profound lack of soul and dearth of humanity.

This maniac must be stopped. Americans who love their nation more than they fear discomfort must act decisively. The suffering Trump has caused and could yet unleash demands nothing less.

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