While Trump was being crowned new golden age leader in Washington, Starmer was making a public statement about what he's going to do about individual terrorism. This, in the light of the guilty plea made by Axel Rudakubana, the isolated teenager who according to Starmer was "obsessed with violence" and who "meticulously planned" and carried out "with intent" a murderous attack on little girls attending a dance class in Southport.

    This guilty plea, it seems, was enough to turn this boy into a terrorist, and a conscious one at that, even if the reality is that he is likely to be severely mentally ill.

    But never mind. The image of a PM, cracking down on "terrorism" is far more desirable apparently, than truthful diagnosis and assessment of the utter failure of the system he presides over. Its latest victim - and yes he is also a victim - is a very disturbed teenager who was excluded from school, and left on his own, since the NHS, social services and "Prevent" had nobody with the expertise to relate to him, nor even to make a diagnosis. Who should bear the ultimate responsibility for this terrible (but not terror!) attack? Really?

Spreading barbarism

And what's the wider political context? Starmer, along with his counterparts, presiding, without blinking an eye, over the systematic terrorising of Palestinians in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank by the Israeli army - the so-called Israeli "Defence" Force.

    It has been a frenzy of killing and destruction, with absolute intent, lasting 16 months, reducing 60% of Gaza to rubble. And despite the so-called ceasefire "deal", if Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu manages to hang onto power, the IDF will no doubt be officially instructed to finish the job it started under the pretext of eradicating Hamas. That is, demolish the rest of Gaza. The pro-Netanyahu Donald Trump said as much himself, at his inauguration on Monday.

    But even if Netanyahu is deposed, the terror-killing of Palestinians will carry on, "unofficially". At the moment the far-right ultra-Zionist Israeli settlers, armed to the teeth by the government, are ready and waiting on the borders of Gaza. They're already carrying out a terror-campaign in the West Bank, burning and killing under the benevolent eye of the IDF.

    What's happened in Gaza (but let's not forget Lebanon and Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan) is barbarism - no other word for it - in real time and on a scale which the working class has never seen so graphically before. Of course, some will certainly recall the "shock and awe" invasion of Iraq by the US and British partners in March 2003, carried out under the false pretext of destroying Irag's non-existent "weapons of mass destruction"...

Into the twilight zone!

So yes, the working class of this country knows all too well that "fake news" - the deliberate, official propagation of lies - is nothing new, and weren't invented on "Twitter" or "X", nor by Donald-Duck Trump, now ensconced in his Washington Disney-world. Lies are the bread and butter of the ruling class, which has to defy all odds to protect the interests of a tiny minority of super-rich against the vast majority of the working population.

    And let's be clear: the election of Liar in Chief, Donald Trump, was no landslide. He got less than 50% of the popular vote, while less than a third of the registered electorate voted for him. So no wonder he has rushed to sign his executive orders. Like Keir Starmer, he has no popular mandate! In fact, he's proved his own assertion that US "democracy" allowed a "steal" - only this time he's the thief.

    He's also done the rest of us a favour, by blatantly parading in the Capitol, all the politicians, Republican and Democrat, in their ridiculous, pompous glory, along with the richest representatives of capitalist rule today: Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, et al., so nobody can be in doubt as to the almighty con which this political system has pulled off for more than two centuries - or who really rules. The crude vulgarity of this theatre in Washington was an apt reflection of capitalist "democracy" and why precisely it needs to be chucked out and replaced!

    So what about Starmer, who supposedly has to swallow his disapproval to deal with Trump? He may not invoke god to justify himself, as Trump does, but he just as much fosters crude irrationality when he labels the mentally ill as "evil terrorists" and when he poses as a champion against anti-Semitism, while backing Netanyahu's brutal slaughter in Gaza.

    The maintenance - in fact promotion - of public ignorance is a deliberate policy. It's as barbaric and savage to deprive people of a proper understanding, as it is to deprive them of their lives. On this charge, Starmer, Trump, and all the rest of the western imperialists are 100% guilty. It will be up to the working class in every country to hold them to account.