Donald Trump ‘is trying to rationalise racism’, says Black Country MP

In an impassioned statement, Ian Austin spoke out about the US President’s comments that there was blame and ‘very fine people’ on ‘both sides’ after clashes between neo-Nazi protesters and anti-racism demonstrators in Charlottesville, Virginia, which left one woman dead and 19 injured.

The Dudley North Labour MP said: “As someone who grew up learning about the Holocaust from my father who had fled to Britain as a 10-year-old Jewish refugee from Czechoslovakia, I never thought a day would come where the leader of the free world would legitimise and rationalise racism, anti-Semitism and white supremacy. I have always believed in a strong relationship between Britain and the US.

“That partnership guaranteed peace, stability and freedom in post-war Western Europe and helped communist dictatorships in Eastern Europe like Poland, East Germany and Czechoslovakia become democracies with freedom and human rights for their citizens.

“But that partnership was based on our mutual values of democracy, equality, freedom, fairness and tolerance. These are the values that make us the people and the country that we are and it is vital that we stand up for them.”

Mr Trump has faced widespread criticism after saying: “You had a group on one side that was bad and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent.

“No-one wants to say that, but I’ll say it right now: You had a group on the other side that came charging in without a permit and they were very, very violent.”

Hundreds of white nationalists gathered in Virginia over the weekend to protest plans to remove a statue of General Robert E Lee, commander of the pro-slavery Confederate army in the US civil war.

They were met by anti-racism demonstrators as tensions escalated. Suspected Nazi sympathiser, James Fields, drove his car into a group of the counter-protesters, killing a young woman.

Mr Austin added: “Think of Britain in the 1930s. When the rest of Europe succumbed to fascism – Hitler in Germany, Mussolini in Italy and Franco in Spain – Britain rejected (Oswald) Mosley and fought for freedom. Imagine 1941: France invaded, Europe overrun, America not yet in the war and just one country standing for liberty and democracy, a beacon to the rest of the world, fighting not just for our freedom, but for the world’s liberty too.

“America too is a country founded on values. That is why Americans and people all over the work look to the US President for moral clarity and I’m afraid Mr Trump has failed them miserably. There are not ‘many sides’ to blame for the events in Charlottesville, only good and evil.

“White nationalism, hatred, bigotry and racism are evil and ‘fine people’ do not take part in racist rallies.”