By María José Iglesias on July 20, 2024
Ignacio Ramonet, photo: Bill Hackwell
Although the bullet was “centimeters away” from killing him, “last Saturday’s attack is like a gift from heaven for Donald Trump, as it comes right on time to complete his victimizing story”. This was said yesterday by Ignacio Ramonet writer, journalist and sociologist based in France and a leading figure of the anti-globalization movement, during the conversation he had at the Club La Nueva España with the Asturian politician Gaspar Llamazares, current spokesman for IU in the City Council of Oviedo. “For his (Trump’s) followers this assassination attempt is fuel for greater fanaticism and divinization of his figure”, stressed Ramonet, who made an analysis of the political situation based on the crisis that the truth is experiencing and the conspiracy theory that seems to invade everything, “favored by the networks and believed by the people”.
Semiologist and professor at the Sorbonne, director until 2022 “Le Monde Diplomatique” and raised in Tangier, where his parents, Spanish republicans, settled in 1948, Ignacio Ramonet assured that at this moment there is no candidate who can face Donald Trump. “The international extreme right wing has been reproducing itself. Now the Republican Party candidate is an international model that has reached the level of France or Argentina with figures such as Le Pen and Milei,” he pointed out. “Although Biden was elected with seven million more votes, Trump presents himself as a victim of justice and this discourse plays out well to his base who don’t trust the government. It must be understood that he is not a political leader in the sense of the word. He is a guru, like a religious leader, the extreme of the populist leader,” added Ramonet.
Gaspar Llamazares supported his arguments: “Trump leaves rationality. He enters into another type of discourse. He is a ghost that not only runs through the United States,” he stressed about the former president and Republican candidate, who has 157 million followers in social networks.
“There is no television channel that has more than 30 million viewers,” Ramonet said by way of comparison. “He is the first political leader created by social networks and who knew how to use them for this purpose, although Obama was a precedent. Seventy percent of the American population under the age of 40 is informed every morning through the networks, and he knows how to occupy that space,” he explained.
“The European elections have shown that there is a drift to the right with three extreme right-wing groups represented in the European Parliament,” Ramonet also commented, who also did not overlook the results of the recent legislative elections in France: “Macron dissolved the Assembly without explaining very well why, and the legislative elections have not clarified the situation. Out of 577 seats, the extreme right took 400 in the first round. The Popular Front is 100 seats short of an absolute majority,” he added. And the analyst warned; “The middle class is disappearing. The model in our societies is the hyperrich. Between the pharaoh and the builders of the pyramids there was less difference than between Elon Musk and an average American”.
Source: Cubaperiodista translation, Resumen Latinoamericano – English