“People need to stand up”, D. José Ornelas tells Rádio Renascença
Portugal’s top bishop has compared what one newspaper calls “the positions of United States president Donald Trump” with those of the former leader of Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler.
In interview with Rádio Renascença, the president of Portugal’s Episcopal Conference, said: “‘When you hear the words ‘America First’, it’s the same as ‘Deutschland über alles’. It is the same thing: everyone else takes a back seat and only has a place in the world after us. It is saying ‘we dictate the world’ (…) This is not an order; we are reaching the end of world order and of everyone’s capacity. And then what comes next is what is very dangerous. It is the question of saying: “I want Greenland; I want Canada”. This cannot be! This is Lebensraum, Hitler’s living space, achieved with the enlargement of German territory in the Second World War (…) This has to be taken seriously,” urged D. José Ornelas.
Assuring his interviewers that he is not proposing a conflict with the United States, Portugal’s leading bishop stressed it is “important that the mentality and culture of this world, and people, stand up”.
Claiming to be “not at all calm” about what has been happening since Mr Trump took office in January, D. Ornelas stressed that “if we want a new order, if we want hope, we have to fight for it”.
Reports of his interview refer to another juncture where he said: “In order for us to have hope, and to be the founders of hope, we need to be on our feet. There is no point in falling asleep. You cannot fall asleep right now!”
Following up on these extremely explicit words, university lecturer, former mayor and former PJ investigator Francisco Moita Flores writes that after “three months in which there has not been a single day without the vomiting of nonsense, someone has said out loud what fearful politicians are saying very quietly.
“An ignoramus, transformed by the size of his ego, in love with himself, unashamedly vulgar, has put an end to years and years of peace and stability.
“Many were scandalised when they saw him insult Zelensky in the Oval Office, aided by his pet monkey JD Vance. They were scandalised by his tariffs, and up until now, our people grumble, but they’re slow to punch back.
“This is a man who betrays alliances, who loves Putin, who wants to gobble up Greenland and Canada, like (Hitler) did with Czechoslovakia and Poland. (This man) who daily insults the wisdom and science produced by his universities – some of them the most prestigious on the planet; who meddles like a parasite in other people’s universities (writer’s note: this being a reference to the questionnaires recently sent out by US authorities to European universities), is the leader of the West? Is this the kind of person that ministers and consorts still pay their respects to? And don’t they blush with shame at such cowardice?”
Correio da Manhã, which published Moita Flores’ column, alongside Bishop Ornelas’ warnings, adds that John Kelly, former White House chief-of-staff in Donald Trump’s first administration said in an interview last October that Mr Trump ‘admired Adolf Hitler’ and “certainly falls into the general definition of fascist” . ND
Sources: multiple
