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.

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

Erasing Palestine’s culture, history and public memory is part and parcel of Israel’s genocide in Gaza

Over 80% of the schools in in Gaza have been reduced to rubble—libraries, archives, publishing houses, and cultural centers . . . and centuries-old manuscripts in the Great Omari Mosque have been completely destroyed.

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

In his 1980 book, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Milan Kundera wrote, “The first step in liquidating a people … is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, and its history. Then have somebody write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history.”

This chilling observation, drawn from the foundational logic of colonial erasure, precisely describes the century-long project of Zionism.

Founded in the late 19th century as a nationalist political ideology by ethnic European intellectuals like Theodor Herzl, who framed it explicitly as a secular political ideology rather than a religious imperative. Zionism sought to establish a Jewish state in historic Palestine through the systematic displacement of its indigenous inhabitants—Palestinian Muslims and Christians—and the erasure of their culture and history.

Far from an organic expression of Judaism, Zionism hijacked Jewish identity to pursue a supremacist agenda of demographic transformation and cultural obliteration. From its inception, the movement’s followers have pursued the goal of emptying Palestine of its indigenous inhabitants, and the erasure of Palestinian memory, history, and presence, employing mass violence, archival destruction, geographic renaming, and environmental camouflage as core tactics. This pattern, evident in the 1948 Nakba (Arabic for “catastrophe”) and repeated in subsequent wars and the ongoing Gaza genocide, reveals Zionism not as a liberation movement but as a cancer on humanity, intent on annihilating a people by first annihilating their collective identity.

Zionism emerged not from ancient religious longing but from 19th-century European nationalist fervour. Herzl, a secular Austro-Hungarian journalist, articulated in his 1896 pamphlet Der Judenstaat a political program for Jewish colonization of Palestine, viewing it as a “new society” to be built by European settlers while sidelining or removing the Palestinian majority. Early Zionist congresses, beginning in Basel in 1897, emphasized “transfer” of the indigenous population as a practical necessity, a euphemism for ethnic cleansing that became explicit policy.

This was no theological “return” of Jews to the Holy Land, where Jews had lived in peace with Muslims and Christians for centuries. It was a colonial enterprise by European Ashkenazi elites who claimed Jewish heritage while rejecting the Jewish religion. Prominent Jewish thinkers recognized this danger early. Albert Einstein, a vocal critic of Zionism, repeatedly rejected the creation of a sovereign Jewish state. In 1938, he declared his preference for “reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the basis of living together in peace than the creation of a Jewish state,” warning that such a state would inflict “inner damage” on Judaism through “narrow nationalism.”

Jewish-American historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt, similarly condemned Zionism’s embrace of exclusionary sovereignty. In her essays from the 1940s, she advocated a bi-national framework preserving Palestinian rights and decried the movement’s drift toward militarism and domination. Their stance culminated in a public letter published in The New York Times on December 4, 1948—signed by Einstein, Arendt, and 26 other prominent Jewish intellectuals—denouncing the “Freedom Party” (Herut) led by Menachem Begin as “closely akin to the Nazi and Fascist parties” of Europe for its terrorist methods and chauvinism. The letter warned that Begin’s vision foreshadowed a society built on oppression and violence, exposing the fascist undercurrents within Zionist factions even as Israel was being consolidated.

These warnings proved prophetic. The establishment of Israel in 1948 was founded on mass murder and ethnic cleansing—the Nakba in which Zionist terrorist militias, operating under Plan Dalet, systematically depopulated over 500 Palestinian villages and urban neighborhoods. Tens of thousands of Palestinians were killed in massacres such as Deir Yassin, where Irgun and Lehi terrorist gangs slaughtered hundreds of civilians, including women and children, as a deliberate terror tactic to induce flight. By war’s end, over 750,000 Palestinians—more than half the indigenous population—had been expelled or fled in terror, their homes looted and lands seized. To conceal these crimes, Zionist forces razed villages to the ground and planted forests over the ruins through the Jewish National Fund (JNF). Pine trees, alien to the Palestinian landscape, now blanket sites like those of Lubya (renamed Lavi) and hundreds of others, transforming sites of life into recreational parks that erased visual evidence of Palestinian existence. This planting of forests was not environmental stewardship but deliberate camouflage—a “greenwashing” of genocide, as documented in Israeli archives and eyewitness accounts.

Geographic erasure complemented physical destruction. Zionist authorities launched a comprehensive renaming campaign by assigning Hebrew names to thousands of Arab place names—villages, hills, rivers—to fabricate a narrative of continuous Jewish presence while severing Palestinian ties to the land. The Palestinian village of Asqalan became Ashkelon, and countless others followed suit under a 1949 Israeli government committee. This linguistic colonization mirrored the destruction of archives and libraries. In the “Great Book Robbery” of 1948-1949, Israeli librarians and soldiers systematically looted over 70,000 books, manuscripts, and newspapers from Palestinian homes in Jerusalem, Jaffa, Haifa, and elsewhere, transferring them to the National Library or destroying them. Private collections documenting centuries of Palestinian culture—poetry, legal records, family histories—were pillaged or vanished, ensuring that future generations of Palestinians would inherit a blank slate.

This erasure was not confined to 1948. Israel instigated multiple wars to expand territory or consolidate demographic control. The 1956 Suez Crisis saw Israel invade Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula in coordination with Britain and France, seizing Gaza and the Sinai before international pressure forced withdrawal, demonstrating Zionist willingness to launch aggressive campaigns against Israel’s Arab neighbours. In 1967, Israel was the aggressor in the Six-Day War, launching a surprise aerial assault that destroyed Egypt’s air force and seized the West Bank, Gaza, Sinai, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, and again displacing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. These conflicts, framed by Israel as “defensive”, were rooted in an expansionist doctrine, enabling further settlement and land expropriation while perpetuating the Palestinian refugee crisis that began with Israel’s creation in 1948. Subsequent invasions, including Lebanon in 1982, followed the pattern of pre-emptive aggression to neutralize resistance and secure the vision of a “Greater Israel.”

The Gaza genocide, unfolding with ferocious intensity since October 2023 as a “defensive” operation against Hamas, represents the culmination of this century-old strategy. Israeli forces have replicated the Nakba playbook on a compressed scale and with greater brutality, targeting not only lives but the infrastructure of memory and knowledge. All twelve universities in Gaza have been destroyed, their collection of knowledge obliterated. In addition, over 80% of the schools in in Gaza—over 500 institutions—have been reduced to rubble. Libraries, archives, publishing houses, and cultural centres lie in ruins—the Gaza Public Library, the Edward Said Library, and centuries-old manuscripts in the Great Omari Mosque have been completely destroyed. Mosques and churches, repositories of communal history, have been bombed, including the 7th-century Omari Mosque with its 13th-century library. 

This “scholasticide” also extends to human carriers of knowledge with at least 95 university professors, 261 teachers, and thousands of students—many of them children—have been killed, with journalists and story tellers systematically targeted by Israel. According to Euromed Human Rights Monitor, as of April 19th over 21,400 Palestinian children have been killed, with one study calculating that more than 300,000 children have been killed since October 2023. This ensures that future generations can’t reclaim or transmit their heritage, with UN experts and scholars noting this is not collateral damage but intentional annihilation of the fabric of Palestinian society.

Such actions align with the crime of genocide as defined by Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term in 1944. Lemkin described genocide as a “coordinated plan” to destroy a group’s “essential foundations of life”—not only through mass killing but by eradicating culture, language, religion, and national feelings so the group “withers and dies like plants that have suffered a blight.”

While the UN Genocide Convention emphasizes physical destruction, experts including the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention and human rights organizations have applied this broader lens to Palestine, arguing that cultural erasure—destroying educational and religious sites, preventing knowledge transmission, and killing intellectuals—constitutes genocidal intent. In Gaza, the scale of scholasticide and heritage destruction, coupled with statements from Israeli officials invoking biblical erasure, fulfills Lemkin’s criteria with the intent to erase Palestinians and their identity.

Zionism’s legacy is thus one of calculated dehumanization and the erasure of Palestinian existence in all its forms. By liquidating Palestinian memory—through forests over villages, Hebrew names on maps, looted archives, and bombed universities—it has advanced halfway to total liquidation of the people. Yet Palestinian resilience persists, a testament to the ideology’s ultimate failure and the determination of Palestinians not to surrender to Zionist violence.

For more than a century, the supremacist project of Zionism has inflicted immeasurable suffering, hijacking Jewish ethics in service of colonial violence. Recognizing this political ideology for what it is—a cancer demanding confrontation—is essential to any just future for the region and humanity. Only by restoring Palestinian history, culture, and right of return, and opposing the Zionist ideology wherever it exists, can the cycle of erasure end and justice for the Palestinian people be achieved.

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