BRIAN READE: 'With US gangsters, tariffs and foodbanks, it's like we're back in 1920s'

The longer this decade drags on the more it feels like we’re living through a re-run of the 1920s. In that decade, Spanish Flu wiped out millions just as did in the 2020s. Back then, Germany, Italy and Britain witnessed the rise of the far right with Hitler, Mussolini and Mosley. We see it today with the AfD, Meloni and Reform UK.

In the 1920s, technological advances transformed lives, today does the same. In the Roaring Twenties, as it does now, the rich elite got considerably richer while the poor just got poorer. For hunger marches back then, see foodbank queues today.

Just like the present, an incoming US Republican president, Warren Harding, introduced tariffs on imports to put America first, countries retaliated, and the global economy nosedived into a Great Depression.

But the most glaring, frightening, parallel is gangsterism. Back then, Prohibition saw the likes of Al Capone and Lucky Luciano rule through violence and fear. Today the likes of , Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump do the same.

Putin is a psychopathic mobster, Netanyahu and his murderous ­hoodlums are terrorising an entire people to try to get them off their turf, and America is fast becoming a mafia state run by Don Trumpione, with tactics straight out of the Capone playbook. He called this week’s announcement of shakedowns with menaces on rival powers ­Liberation Day.

But it was a Valentine’s Day massacre of America’s global standing. A VE Day in reverse. An EV Day. As in Empty Victory. Because there are few winners in global trade wars, and in this one, apart from Trump’s billionaire backers who he’ll reward with thumping tax cuts, the vast majority of Americans will end up poorer.

He’s even put together a crew of wiseguys to give him muscle. Look at the beating that JD Vance and co gave Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House all because he didn’t show the Don enough respect.

The Poundland Corleone is so desperate to acquire Ukraine’s mineral wealth he has threatened to put Zelensky in cement shoes by saying: “if somebody doesn’t want to make a deal, that person won’t be around very long.”

He has openly stated he will own Greenland at any cost and sent over his bagman, Vance, to make them an offer which, if refused, could mean that soon they will sleep with the seals. He aims to crush all opponents, whether they be journalists, civil ­servants or judges, rages against anyone who questions him, and wants to rip up the constitution so he can rule for a third term.

He respects no human rights and sees other countries as rival mobs who need to be clipped. Hence the tariffs. He detests people he perceives to be weaker than him. Hence his man crush on fellow mobster Putin.

In the decade after the Roaring Twenties the world realised too late that you don’t appease gangsters, you stand up to them. But it took the loss of too many lives to get there. Which is why every country with an ounce of self-respect, and hopefully that still includes Britain, needs to show strength and face Trump down.

The wiseguy in the White House needs to be put on ice – politically speaking – not seduced with flattery and red-carpet sycophancy.

Because if we end up bending over backwards to get into bed with Trump this decade will rightly go down as the Whoring Twenties.

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