Antonio Navalón
One of the most frequently repeated phrases during the thousand-year Reich regime was: “Heute ist Geschichte” (Today is history). Every time a kilometer of highway was inaugurated, the experimental model of the Beetle was presented, the crematoria at Auschwitz were shown in operation, or any other act representing a German ‘conquest’ took place, they always began with that same phrase: Today is history.
I am not saying, nor would I like it to be inferred, that I am comparing the dark and cruel days of Nazism with the present, much less relating it to the unscrupulous barbarity carried out by its leaders, but what I would like to highlight is that famous phrase: “Today is history.” Because, in reality, all of these days… are also history.
In this age of immediacy, it is difficult to focus on a single issue when everything seems to overlap, when each event overshadows the previous one, and none ceases to be relevant. But, in any case, in the spirit of participating constructively in the shaping of this modern history—the one delivered to us daily by politicians, peoples, wars, and bombs—I want to pause at a specific moment.
I would like to analyze a very important event that occurred at the NATO meeting held last Wednesday in The Hague.
During the press conference, Donald Trump, the peacemaker, made an appearance. Donald Trump, the avenger. Donald Trump who defines the monsters of our time as his friends, as good people, and who even dares to say—on television—“We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing”.
Without a doubt, this is the most triumphant moment in Donald Trump’s political life. After having captured everyone’s attention, he is once again at home. However, he was not only the center of attention but also served as a great architect of behavior, a keeper of memories, and a settler of scores.
This US president has behaved like no one before him. And he, without meaning to—or perhaps meaning to for more than 15 years—has managed to ensure that the days he stars in retain a dose of uncertainty and enigma. In these times, everything is different. Everything is the negation of history. Everything is what it is. And as the old saying goes, that’s the way it is.
Several aspects of the event in question caught my attention. The first is that the United States—aware that its position as the world’s leading empire is in danger—has decided that others must pay. But not pay as before: not in the form of purchasing products, royalties, using the dollar, or consuming Coca-Cola. No. That is no longer enough. Now they must pay with all that… and, in addition, contribute to their defense. Just look at the predicament Spain and President Pedro Sánchez face in meeting the increase demanded by NATO and its members.
Since 1945, the real question that has prevailed among the high command and the power elite in the United States has been: Could we win the wars without them, referring to those who make up NATO? To this end, it is useful and essential to remember that, since 1945, the United States of America, so powerful, so strong and capable of controlling everything, has in fact only won two wars: the invasions of Panama and Grenada.
All the others—Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan—have been mere contributions of good wishes to the history of humanity. And like everything else, these incursions must also be called what they are: absolute military failures. However, that was before President Trump took office. No other president, none, dared to define the bad guys as friends, criminals as good people, or dictators as troublemakers.
The truth is that no US president—until the current occupant of the White House—ever behaved openly as what they always were: emperors of an empire. Perhaps, just perhaps, it is only because the empire is now being tested that it was essential to have someone with such airs of grandeur, someone who reminds us of the great emperors, such as Donald Trump.
His behavior with the press is also worthy of analysis. Let it be known, dear colleagues, commentators, and storytellers: to doubt, at this moment in history, is tantamount to treason. Wanting to know the truth, fulfilling the historic mission of journalism, has become an act of subversion… and, moreover, treason. Of course, this emperor—so charismatic, so media savvy, so skilled at maneuvering in the short space where he can insult you or embrace you in the same sentence—knows journalists by name. He greets them all, one by one, as if they were pearls displayed in the temple of fake news.
He calls them by name and then immediately discredits them. He insists over and over again, using arguments such as: “You lie,” “You deny the truth just to hurt me politically.” Does this dynamic sound familiar? And it’s not just him saying it. He is backed by his secretary of defense, a military man who, unlike many, was actually in Iraq. Pete Hegseth knows what he’s talking about, which is why he feels entitled to ask all of us—especially those of you who doubt, those of you who report uncomfortable truths—to stop destroying the national conscience and sense of patriotism and instead be grateful for the great tribute to the heroes, the pilots who destroyed Iran’s nuclear system. Wanting to know more than what he chooses to tell us is treason, terrorism, and subversion.
It no longer makes sense to remember that old father of the nation—so exemplary in public life and so troubled in private life—named Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson clearly expressed his deep conviction about the importance of freedom of the press as an essential pillar of democracy. In 1787, he wrote: “If it were left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not for one moment hesitate to prefer the latter.”
For Jefferson, a free press was the only genuine guarantee against the abuse of power. He understood that a government without public scrutiny would inevitably fall into arbitrariness and injustice, and so he argued: “Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that freedom cannot be limited without being lost.”
Jefferson also knew that newspapers could be uncomfortable, even imperfect, but he considered them preferable to civic ignorance. “Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe,” he asserted. Jefferson believed that access to information and public criticism were indispensable to a free citizenry. Limiting the press was, for him, the first step toward tyranny, which is why he defended even the right to be criticized rather than the silence that protects power. In his view, “The only security for all is in a free press.”
The Constitution and freedom of speech are dead.
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