Red Carpet, Orange Man

What Britain’s strange week means to Iceland

Recently Donald Trump flew to the United Kingdom on an official state visit. The British Government, eager to curry favour with a fickle ally, rolled out the red carpet and the Royal Family too. If you tuned into the BBC you could watch His Majesty Charles III and President of the United States, Donald Trump, seated on the Windsor Castle lawn under an elevated gazebo. There they watched four military bands perform and march in beautiful synchrony, dressed in a variety of quaint period uniforms. The bands reached a crescendo as a squadron of military aircraft streaked overhead, leaving a nicely ambiguous trail of red, white and blue against the grey English sky. The television presenters underlined how important the pageantry was: it would put Donald Trump in the right frame of mind, they said, towards the United Kingdom.

Meanwhile, the British public rolled out — not a red carpet — but photos of Trump with Jeffrey Epstein. Taking the piss out of Trump on state visits has become something of a tradition. The last time the president visited he was met by a blimp, a “Trump Baby” floating serenely above Westminster, clad in a nappy. At that time, in the heady days of 2019, it was something everyone in Britain could get behind. I’d moved to London a year previously, and was still learning to say sorry at every conceivable opportunity. I’d learned that the British instinct for politeness was so strong that they even said sorry when someone else bumped into them. It seemed to me a good sign that these polite people were eager to hurl some well-chosen words at the US president.

In the intervening years Trump has made modest inroads with the British public. Reform UK, a right-wing nativist party, has for the whole summer polled higher than Labour, the party in Government. A week before Trump’s visit more than 100,000 people marched on London — a number that would have seemed outrageously large a year earlier. They carried anti-immigration banners, Union Jacks and St. George’s flags. Some covered their heads with red MAGA hats.
“Unpleasant as this was, the deeper fear their protest stirred was that they could, in the fullness of time, become an Icelandic MAGA movement. MÍGA, if you will.”

Richest man on earth and compulsive poster Elon Musk addressed the march via video call saying, among other things that “if this continues, that violence [of the left] is going to come to you. You will have no choice. You’re in a fundamental situation here where whether you choose violence or not, violence is coming to you. You either fight back or you die. You either fight back or you die.” Striking a decidedly shrill note in the ears of the British public.

While American politics are in a seemingly apocalyptic spiral, politics in the UK remain boring and low key. This summer English nationalists were busy painting St. George’s crosses on roundabouts, not starting militias. Safe to say Reform UK is not MAGA; it is a single-issue party obsessed with immigration and seemingly nothing else. Restricting immigration has been the wish of a large part of the British electorate, something that’s been obvious since Brexit. That it’s become such an ardent and openly advertised desire is new, but maybe not surprising, as the pace of immigration has only increased since the 2016 vote.

Which brings us to Iceland. In May of this year, a few hundred protesters gathered in front of the Althing, the parliament of Iceland, demanding, in effect, a much stricter asylum system. This outing debuted our very own nativist movement. Complete with MAGA hats and Icelandic flags, they sallied forth from their Facebook groups. To an overwhelmingly liberal Iceland, this was shocking, seeing all our embarrassing uncles gathered together like that. Unpleasant as this was, the deeper fear their protest stirred was that they could, in the fullness of time, become an Icelandic MAGA movement. MÍGA, if you will. This seems unlikely, but if it does it’s likely to have a specifically Icelandic flavour, like we saw with Reform.

Looking west to America, we have the actual nightmare in the flesh. The country that controls the strongest military in the world has turned autocratic and expansionist. Last we heard, its president wanted to conquer Greenland, our next-door neighbour, to satisfy a barely veiled imperial appetite. Earlier this year, in an address to Congress, he said he was going to get Greenland “one way or the other” and the assembly laughed like hyenas. These coarsened, nihilistic lawmakers are in control of the United States — Iceland’s primary security guarantor.

We are for better or worse, in their hands. So while our local Trump emulators appear dangerous and full of potential, a close eye should be kept on the original. There may come a day when we’ll need to charm and woo him too, like the British Government, if only to delay and outlast this atavistic stage of American politics.