Good morning.
US president Donald Trump has made the Iran war both holy and obscene, while Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán is hoping a bomb will help him keep power.
Trump framed Iran as a crusade when he called the rescue of a downed US pilot in Iran on Sunday (5 April) an "Easter miracle", while treasury chief Scott Bessent said "on this holiest of Christian days … a brave American warrior was rescued".
But Trump also said to Iran on Sunday: "Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell … Praise be to Allah".
He sounded more normal in a press conference on Monday, albeit while threatening war crimes (bombing civilian bridges and power plants) if Iran did not come to heel.
Democrats called for him to be removed from office on mental-health grounds under Article 25 of the Constitution — and even MAGA was shocked.
"Stop worshipping the president and intervene in Trump’s madness," said former Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene.
MAGA influencer Alex Jones said: "It's one thing to drop the F-bomb on the campaign trail, but on Easter? … this isn't what we voted for".
But Trump, who has also grabbed women "by the pussy", raped one woman, and paid hush-money to a porn star, was still described as Jesus by MAGA evangelist Paula White at an Easter lunch also on Sunday.
Meanwhile, the incoherence of Trump's sacred-obscene identity was echoed by Israel.
On one hand, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he was waging war to defend Judaeo-Christian heritage.
On the other, he bombed Lebanese Christian communities on Easter Sunday, killing seven people.
There is no point in trying to make sense of it, because the fact it makes no sense is the point.
Speaking to EUobserver back in 2019 on the homophobic and homoerotic nature of Russian propaganda (e.g. photos of bare-chested Russian president Vladimir Putin on horseback), US historian Timothy Snyder said: “It doesn’t have to be coherent and it never was — that’s precisely the point. Fascism isn’t supposed to be coherent”.
Instead, fascist discourse aims to trigger a violent emotional response - disgust, fear, lust, tribalist loyalty - or what social media calls "engagement".
And for his part, Hungary’s far-right Orbán and his foreign minister Péter Szijjártó were also aiming to stir emotion by saying this weekend that Ukraine was plotting to blow up a gas pipeline from Russia to Hungary via Serbia.
The Russian foreign intelligence service spelt out the strategy in a report leaked to the Washington Post on 21 March, which proposed staging a "Gamechanger" false-flag assassination attempt against him.
"Such an incident will shift the perception of the campaign out of the rational realm of socioeconomic questions into an emotional one, where the key themes will become state security," it said, in what was equally true of Sunday's pipeline plot allegation.
"Suspiciously convenient timing [for the alleged bomb plot]," said Polish foreign minister Radek Sikorski.
The Ukrainian foreign ministry said: "We categorically reject attempts to falsely link Ukraine to the incident with explosives found near the Turkstream pipeline in Serbia …. Most probably, a Russian false-flag operation as part of Moscow’s heavy interference in Hungarian elections".
But emotions aside, the bomb-plot story could also have a legal implication, warned Hungarian journalist Szabolcs Panyi.
"Orbán could declare a state of emergency, significantly affecting the election campaign - which he is currently losing - and potentially disrupting the organisation of the 12 April election," Panyi said.
Andrew Rettman, foreign-affairs editor
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