Just when you might think it couldn’t get any more absurd or disgusting.
Just when you might think this grotesque alternate timeline we’ve wandered into couldn’t feel any more surreal, Donald J. Trump goes and does something so beyond the pale that it feels like it should be satire and not real life.
But it doesn’t appear to be satire, unfortunately.
President Trump’s stomach-turning promo video (I don’t know what else to call it) for his post-Palestinian Gaza ‘riviera’ really does have to be seen to be believed.
You watch it and you keep thinking ‘This can’t be real’: it must be a fake.
But no, it’s real – the ‘President’ of the United States posted it himself. And yes, this is is simply the reality we now live in. One of naked moral bankruptcy and grotesque self-aggrandisement: dancing on the corpses of dead children.
The AI-generated video was published to his Truth Social platform. The fact that the sitting President of the United States can share this completely horrendously tone-deaf content and not see anything wrong with it tells us everything we need to know about the era we’re in.
The video shows war-torn Gaza, including Palestinian children moving in the rubble, and then tastelessly transitions to Trump’s and Israel’s vision of a Dubai-like luxury resort in place of the devastated Palestinian territory.
We covered Trump’s extraordinary Gaza vision here a few weeks ago after his absurd press conference with Netanyahu. And we talked about Netanyahu’s ‘Gaza 2030’ programme too in that context.
So the vision portrayed in this video isn’t anything new.
But quite why Trump, having already said all these things openly, felt the need to share such an over-the-top and unselfconscious video is unclear.
It is a form of manifestation magic? You know, like creating the imagery and putting it out there will make it become real?
The AI-generated footage plays like a luxury holiday promo, complete with beach scenes, general revelry and plush hotels.
As if the message isn’t clear enough, the video is sure to show us signs saying ‘Trump Gaza’ – because, you know, there’s no point in subtlety or leaving anything to the imagination.
But that’s nothing. An actual golden statue (golden idol?) of the great Trump himself also appears in the midst of this presumably ethically-cleansed Gaza.
Some months ago, I wrote an article here about Israel as the ‘Golden Calf’: to be adored and obeyed.
It was slightly tongue-in-cheek: but now Trump appears to be embodying the golden idol himself.
Again, it’s so surreal.
And again, you keep thinking ‘This can’t be real’. But yes, it’s real – and the ‘President of the United States’ just put it out there.
An Elon Musk lookalike is seen enjoying the benefits of this reimagined Gaza, including sampling the local seafood.
There’s lots of imagery of actual money being thrown about. And things made of gold: including what seems t be souvenir gold Trump statues.
And if you think you’ve seen enough already to induce vomiting, we also are treated to the image of a shirtless Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu relaxing in beach chairs, sipping what are probably margaritas – toasting, you could say, over the unmarked graves of a few thousand children.
The ill-advisedly upbeat music – with lyrics that can scarcely be believed – only adds to or underscores the extraordinarily smug brand of inhumanity.
Why on earth Trump shared this atrocity of a video (whether he had it made or not – which isn’t clear), I don’t know.
Why no one advised him against it is even more baffling.
It almost feels like trolling. But I don’t think it is. I think Trump and those with him are simply sharing their true vision.
But it’s hard to think of a comparable or more revolting display of undisguised greed, immorality or open Imperialism in modern times.
To be clear, over sixty thousand people have been killed in Gaza in the last year-and-a- half: according to some, the real number could be much higher.
It is quite possible that those thousands of deaths, and all the accompanying destruction, devastation and war crimes, are going to count for nothing: except to simply pave the way for some Trump resorts and Zionist beach holidays.
This is the level we’re at now.
But then this AI-generated atrocity appears in the same week that Trump’s United States voted with Russia, North Korea and Israel to endorse the invasion of Ukraine, while the US President demands access to Ukraine’s mineral wealth.
Some call it an open rot that is symptomatic of ‘late stage capitalism’. But I would argue it’s just plain psychopathic: entirely devoid of tact, morality or empathy.
A soulless, empty inhumanity that is threatening to become the defining characteristic of our world today.
Again, the fact that this came from not some rabid Zionist fanatic in Israel, but from the President of the United States of America, is why it’s so surreal.
A year ago, I wrote that the ‘masks had fallen’: that the open support for war crimes and sustained massacre in Gaza demonstrated a moral bankruptcy in the West. ‘The point is that the illusions have fallen away. The masks have been lowered. The pretenses have gone… And that’s probably a good thing. It’s better to see reality as it really is and to see people, organisations and institutions for what they really are.’
But I was naive back then to think we couldn’t get any lower: there’s always lower to go.
And a new Trump presidency was the last piece of the puzzle needed to show us the lowest of the low in moral bankruptcy.
I guess they just don’t care how it looks anymore. It’s become open psychopathy without shame or hesitation.
