Team Trump only want the freedom to say anything they like, without being prepared to allow others to express different views
US vice president JD Vance tours the US military’s Pituffik Space Base in Greenland last March. Photo: Jim Watson/Reuters
“Democracy was a very nice idea for a while but now it’s worn out,” says a character in a TV drama I’m watching. Years and Years imagines a dystopian near future with some eerily familiar characteristics, such as free speech under threat and extremist politicians going mainstream.
The six-part series, broadcast on the BBC in 2019 but having a resurgence after landing on Netflix, follows the rise of a wealthy, populist leader. She’s played by Emma Thompson, who channels Nigel Farage with a side order of Donald Trump. The politician harvests support by expressing public anxieties while using emotionally charged rhetoric to push a tribalising, polarising, radicalising agenda.
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