Ted Cruz defends the gay-haters: The demands by radical pastor Kevin Swanson, who wants the death penalty for "homosexuals", if they do not "repent", are part of "practising our faith"

Ted Cruz and insane person Kevin Swanson: "Kill the Gays" is part of their faith

By Patrick

While we and many others focused on Donald Trump during the recent months, there is of course somebody else we should be concerned about as well, and we certainly haven't forgotten about him: Senator Ted Cruz, who wants to become the President and the Ayatollah of the USA, and who wants to seriously transform the USA into a Christian fundamentalist country.

However, very often, Ted Cruz "is getting away" with his extreme religious views: He is a very experienced "talker", famous for his sharp debating skills which he successfully developed and practised as a student. Therefore, it is not often the case that he is "caught in the act", as he often manages to hide his real views with polished language, and he certainly is also an expert when it comes to avoiding tough questions. These are the skills which eventually might earn him the Republican nomination, considering that Donald Trump is currently on the verge of self-destruction.

But if you take a closer look, it is pretty easy to discover what "faith" really means to Ted Cruz. It is apparent that Ted Cruz's "faith" includes the right to hate, oppress and even kill others. In this respect, he is no different from radical Islamists, who believe the same, just the other way round.

If one is looking for a good case to highlight Ted Cruz's extremism, his relationship to insane preacher Kevin Swanson is the ideal case study.

Kevin Swanson is a pastor radio braodcaster from Colorado, who hosted an anti-gay "religious liberty" conference in November 2015 in Des Moines, Iowa, and three of the featured guests of this conference were: Mike Huckabee, Bobby Jindal, and Ted Cruz.

But words are not enough to explain the vulgarity of this event. "Anti-gay" is not a term which shocks people any more. What Kevin Swanson said during this conference really needs to be seen in order to be believed.

Samantha Bee thankfully published a summary, which is a good starter - this is a must-see clip, also great for sharing:

Yes, Kevin Swanson said a lot of very inflammatory and very dangerous things during this conference, as well as other crazy things. This man clearly is insane. The fact that people like him have the influence to be visited by "high ranking guests" like Ted Cruz is just beyond belief. Many Americans might be frightened by "Muslims", but there is much more reason to be frightened by Christian extremists in their own country, like Kevin Swanson.

Just watch this - CLIP 1:

CLIP 2:

CLIP 3:

At this conference, Ted Cruz comes on stage and is being greeted by Kevin Swanson, who then starts a "Q & A" session with him.

WATCH:

Rachel Maddow showed a report about this event:

"The Young Turks" also had a very good report:

"Bonus" clip, not related to this conference - according to Kevin Swanson, the Girl Scouts turn children into lesbians:



Now comes the really interesting part, which exposes Ted Cruz for the evil person he truly is:

Ted Cruz was a few days later asked by CNN about the fact that he attended this anti-gay conference, and the presenter asked Ted Cruz whether he "endorsed conservative intolerance."

So how did Ted Cruz respond? Did he actually admit that it was possibly wrong to execute gays, and that these people like Kevin Swanson were "intolerant"...?

No, that's not how Ted Cruz responded.

As mentioned above, Ted Cruz is a highly skilled debater. That clearly was an inconvenient question by CNN, although also a fully justified question. So Cruz decided to unlock his arsenal of debate weapons, and gave the following reaction:

1. First response: Ignore the question.
2. Ted Cruz "doesn't know what the gentleman (Kevin Swanson) has said or hasn't said."
3. Then he goes straight to the issue of "religious liberty", which has been his"passion" for "decades." Also, under the Obama-adminstration, there has been an "assault on religious liberty from the Federal government", and so on.

WATCH:

So Ted Cruz did not even try to defend himself in this interview, which he gave several days after the conference. He skillfully deflected the question, and clearly was not concerned at all to have attended an event which celebrated religious hate. He also did not bother to answer the question whether people like Kevin Swanson are "intolerant."

I get the impression that Ted Cruz believes that only those people who disturb him in hating others are "intolerant."

While this gay-hating conference was just "talk" and does not have immediate consequences on US politics, people in other parts of the world are not that lucky. For example, Kevin Swanson and his fellow gay-haters are active supporters of anti-gay legislation in Africa, for example in Uganda. This legislation, which includes life imprionment and the death penalty for gays, has been defended by Kevin Swanson, as should come as no surprise for anyone who watched the clips I posted above.

Fortunately, the latest development, the "Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Act" from 2014 had been ruled invalided by the Constitutional Court of Uganda, and it seems that it won't be re-introduced.

The sad thing is that in other parts of the Western World, a politician who attended such a gay-hating conference would never ever be invited again by any TV-network, and would never be taken seriously again. He or she would be a "persona non grata", and would be close to prosecution for hate crimes. However, in the USA, it remains a very sad fact that this person could very well be the next candidate for US president of one of the two main political parties - and his rival in this race is a celebrated racist and bully.

There is a "postscript" to this report, because several months later, in February 2016, Ted Cruz's suddenly said that it was a "mistake" to attend the gay-hating conference in November 2015.

A "mistake"...!

Don't worry, Ted, hardly anyone noticed.

Have a good weekend, everybody!

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UPDATE:

I just saw that Ted Cruz's father, Rafael Cruz, was a speaker that this 2015 "National Religious Liberty Conference" as well, which makes Ted's assertion that it was a "mistake" to attend this conference even more ridiculous. They knew very well who they were associated with!

However, video from the conference is hard to find apart from the clips which were posted by "Right Wing Watch" on the internet.

Screenshot from the conference webpage (click to enlarge):

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UPDATE 2:

"Right Wing Watch" just posted yesterday about another one of Ted Cruz's crazy "pastors", with lots of frightening info:

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UPDATE 3:

Today (April 12, 2016), "Ring Wing Watch" published an unexpected update on the story regarding Kevin Swanson's "National Religious Liberty Conference." 

Just yesterday, Ted Cruz was confronted in a radio show, the "John and Ken Show", about his appearance at the conference. Cruz then denied that he agrees with Kevin Swanson's views, and claimed that he "denounced them at the time." This is of course a bold lie, and "Right Wing Watch" correctly states that Ted Cruz now wants to rewrite history.

(h/t KarenJ)

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UDPATE 4:

Extensive video recordings from Kevin "kill the gays" Swanson's conference can be viewed in full here.

A photoshopped photo by Ted Cruz's campaign is the perfect symbol for America's ugly 2016 campaign, and for Ted "Liar Liar" Cruz himself

Marco Rubio is happily shaking hands with President Obama - or is he?

By Patrick

Yes, finally a post about Ted Cruz again! We have missed him dearly, right? The 2016 campaign has largely been a Trump-show so far, but we shouldn't forget the that Ted Cruz is also part of the game. Some people even think that Ted Cruz is more dangerous than Donald Trump. I personally do not agree with this view, as a Trump-presidency would cause complete political and economic chaos worldwide, however, it is obvious to me that the habitual liar and religious extremist Ted Cruz is dangerous as well. However, he is dangerous in a slightly different way in my opinion.

But what I would like to talk about in this post is a photoshopped picture which brilliantly symbolizes the ugly face of Ted Cruz and his campaign. On the photo at the top of this post, Marco Rubio is shaking hands with Barack "The Antichrist" Obama, and Marco has a happy smile on his face, just like a little child. He clearly is in cahoots with the enemy, isn't he, the treacherous Marco Rubio, a friend of the Democrats and a part of the despicable Washington establishment! Who would vote for such a dishonest creature? Boooooo, Marco!

There is only one problem: The photo used by Ted Cruz's campaign is fake. It is a photoshopped "stock photo", but Ted Cruz had of course no hesitation to use it extensively. And, in order to put the cherry on top, the Cruz campaign then lied about the fact that it was a photoshopped picture. Thankfully, we have the internet to quickly expose such tricks.

In detail:

Here is a slightly larger version of this picture:

And here is the "stock photo" which it is based upon - the Cruz campaign simply photoshopped Marco Rubio's and President Obama's heads on this photo:

An internet sleuth found it:

The Rubio campaign is livid, and this is absolutely understandable:

Ted Cruz used this photo also in other "anti Marco Rubio" material. Interestingly, he also used it in the original, "mirrored" way:

The crooks and liars from the Cruz campaign had the audacity to deny that the campaign uses photoshopped pictures:

The people from the Cruz campaign might change their story later, but seriously, these people are obviously in a real competition with Donald Trump's campaign for "Huuuuugest liars of the universe."

We keep our fingers crossed that the American voters will keep these people far, far away from the White House! :-)

The "authoritarians" are on the rise: How the "democratic disconnect" makes democratic societies "easy prey" for right-wing extremists like Donald Trump

“The receptivity of the masses is very limited, 

their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. 

In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda 

must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans 

until the last member of the public understands 

what you want him to understand by your slogan.”

Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf" 

By Patrick

The USA is heading with full speed into this fateful election year, and one thing seems already certain: This won't be an election like the previous ones. Even 2008 with Sarah Palin's demagoguery was most likely only a "mild prelude" to what is coming now. The leading Republican contenders are two extremists, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, and the "old GOP" is barely visible any more. The Republican base has been whipped into a frenzy, the obvious result of many years of relentless vicious right-wing propaganda. It appears that many Republicans now want the "real deal": A strong man who does not care too much about traditional views, but is willing to go to extreme measures to solve real or imagined problems.

In every democratic country there is a part of the population which is deeply distrustful of the democratic system. These people perceive the system as "weak" and favor the easy, quick solutions. Also, every country has a choice: Either a society pushes these people to the side, and treats them as outcasts, or you allow them to become part of the mainstream. Once they are in the mainstream, it is very difficult to get rid of these people again.

While "experienced countries" like Germany treat these people usually as outcasts, remembering very well how right-wing extremists once destroyed a German democracy and afterwards caused chaos and destruction all over the world, many people in a country like the USA are unfortunately much more open to treat these people as viable contenders for the highest positions in the country. These extremists like Donald Trump and Ted Cruz receive huge attention by the media, and their often ridiculous talking points as well as their shameless lies become part of the mainstream.

The "Transatlantic Academy", a US-German research organisation, published an extensive report in 2013 called "The Democratic Disconnect - Citizenship and Accountability in the Transatlantic Community." In this report,  the researchers provide an excellent summary of why Democracies are increasingly under threat (page 11):

Democracy is in trouble. The collective engagement of a concerned citizenry for the public good — the bedrock of a healthy democracy — is eroding. Democratic governments often seem crippled in their capacity to deliver what their people want and need. They are neither as responsive nor as accountable as they need to be in an era of hard choices and rising non- democratic powers.

There is widespread concern about apparent declining rates of voter participation and about the alienation or disaffection of citizens from the political process. In Europe, there is fear that the distance between ordinary citizens and the politicians and bureaucrats in Brussels compromises democratic legitimacy. In the United States, lamentations about gridlock and polarization are the order of the day. Canadians worry about the tendency of their political system to place largely unaccountable power in the hands of the prime minister.

Acute crises are putting political systems under stress, both in the United States after the 2008 financial crisis, and in Europe today. Angry demonstrations in Greece and elsewhere over externally enforced austerity programs inevitably raise questions about the stability of the democratic system itself. Citizens have ways of expressing themselves when their vital interests are being harmed — but increasingly in a manner that seems to challenge, rather than reinforce, democratic government. Democratic governments, for their part, frequently behave in ways that are incomprehensible to their citizens.

These two architectural features of liberal democracy — citizenship and governance — are connected, or ought to be. But today they seem increasingly disconnected.

Domestically, there is a deepening democratic disconnect between the formal government institutions of established and aspiring democracies, on one hand, and the lived democratic experience of their citizens, on the other. This report contends that both sides of this citizen-government relationship merit serious policy attention.

The democratic disconnect also shows itself in the international community’s half-hearted responses to persistent authoritarianism or to dynamic popular upheavals such as the Arab Spring. The engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan have left the very notion of liberal interventionism widely discredited. Democracy promotion is beset by self-doubt. The economic success of some rising nondemocratic regimes accentuates democracy’s malaise.

Established democracies in the West struggle to meet the demands of their people. Economic and financial globalization has been empowering for some citizens, but for many others, it appears to reduce government to a passive mediator between the demands of global financial markets and citizens’ expectations. Democratic governments themselves are hostage to the imperatives of international financial flows. Increasingly, we see the privatization of gain and the collectivization of pain. Meanwhile the global institutional infrastructure mutates from traditional multilateralism to “minilateralism” at a time when resilient institutions are ever more needed to address proliferating problems of global governance.

This report explains how the erosion of Democratic systems is a world-wide phenomenon, and unfortunately, a significant part of the society in the USA has become a "part" of this anti-democratic movement as well. The people who reject Democracy in its current form are now usually called "The Authoritarians." 

Seducing the disillusioned population: Nazi election poster from 1932 - "Our Last Hope - Hitler" 

Citizen in Berlin looking at this election poster

In December 2015, the online magazine "Vox" published excerpts from an extensive poll among Americans, showing that many US-citizens are not very keen on living in a Democracy any more.

The results of the research are actually truly shocking. Especially many young Americans apparently turn away from democratic values.

Examples:

Just today, "Politico" published a very important article, explaining that there is one fact which unites the supporters of Donald Trump: The fact that they are authoritarians.

Politico writes:

If I asked you what most defines Donald Trump supporters, what would you say? They’re white? They’re poor? They’re uneducated?

You’d be wrong.

In fact, I’ve found a single statistically significant variable predicts whether a voter supports Trump—and it’s not race, income or education levels: It’s authoritarianism.

That’s right, Trump’s electoral strength—and his staying power—have been buoyed, above all, by Americans with authoritarian inclinations. And because of the prevalence of authoritarians in the American electorate, among Democrats as well as Republicans, it’s very possible that Trump’s fan base will continue to grow. My finding is the result of a national poll I conducted in the last five days of December under the auspices of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, sampling 1,800 registered voters across the country and the political spectrum. Running a standard statistical analysis, I found that education, income, gender, age, ideology and religiosity had no significant bearing on a Republican voter’s preferred candidate.

Only two of the variables I looked at were statistically significant: authoritarianism, followed by fear of terrorism, though the former was far more significant than the latter.

Authoritarianism is not a new, untested concept in the American electorate. Since the rise of Nazi Germany, it has been one of the most widely studied ideas in social science. While its causes are still debated, the political behavior of authoritarians is not. Authoritarians obey. They rally to and follow strong leaders. And they respond aggressively to outsiders, especially when they feel threatened. From pledging to “make America great again” by building a wall on the border to promising to close mosques and ban Muslims from visiting the United States, Trump is playing directly to authoritarian inclinations.

The power of the "authoritarians": Admiring the "strong man" who solves all the problems

There is a real danger in my opinion that "the authoritarians", the people who believe that problems should be solved with radical decisions by the government or the president, while ignoring the democratic process, will become more and more popular in the USA. Even if Donald Trump does not become President, there will be politicians who will be inspired by Trump's current success, and will try to imitate him. This is probably already happening.

The "old GOP" is already starting to disappear, but how will the "replacement" look like? It is obvious that a large part of the "base" is radicalized, and the "civil war" in the GOP will likely continue. My expectation is that eventually "the authoritarians" are going to take over the GOP, and this would be very bad news for the USA, and the world.

A very informative study about "The Authoritarians" can be found on the internet here, published by Canadian professor Bob Altemeyer already in 2006. His thoughts from 10 years ago read like a bad prophecy:

But why should you even bother reading this book? I would offer three reasons. First, if you are concerned about what has happened in America since a radical right-wing segment of the population began taking control of the government about a dozen years ago, I think you=ll find a lot in this book that says your fears are well founded. As many have pointed out, the Republic is once again passing through perilous times. The concept of a constitutional democracy has been under attack--and by the American government no less!

The mid-term elections of 2006 give hope that the best values and traditions of the country will ultimately prevail. But it could prove a huge mistake to think that the enemies of freedom and equality have lost the war just because they were recently rebuffed at the polls. I’ll be very much surprised if their leaders don’t frame the setback as a test of the followers’ faith, causing them to redouble their efforts. They came so close to getting what they want, they’re not likely to pack up and go away without an all-out drive.

But even if their leaders cannot find an acceptable presidential candidate for 2008, even if authoritarians play a much diminished role in the next election, even if they temporarily fade from view, they will still be there, aching for a dictatorship that will force their views on everyone. And they will surely be energized again, as they were in 1994, if a new administration infuriates them while carrying out its mandate. The country is not out of danger.

Yes, the USA is definitely not out of danger, and we will see during the course of 2016 whether our fears are justified. Let's just say that with "Trump-mania" in full swing, the year is off to a bad start.

(Many thanks to AnnetteK and junasie14 for providing the inspiration to this post!)

Donald Trump quickly becomes an international joke, but his campaign boosts right-wing extremism, and also incites violence against Muslims in the USA

By Patrick

We thought we had seen it all, but then came Donald Trump, who still dominates the headlines in the USA, and also starts to receive major attention around the world. The man who is basically a SNL-parody which inexplicably came to life has become a huge danger especially for Muslims living in the USA. Trump's violent speeches undoubtedly encourage violence and abuse against Muslims, and in my view it will most likely get much, much worse.

The "Washington Post" reported on Thursday:

Rasheed Albeshari was praying in Castro Valley, Calif., on Dec. 7, when a woman approached him and began shouting insults about his Muslim faith. Albeshari was then "hit by an umbrella before taking a shower of coffee."

From sea to shining sea, Muslim Americans are coming under attack.

In New York City, a shop owner was savagely beaten Saturday by a stranger promising to “kill Muslims.” In California, a man was playing volleyball and praying in a park on Sunday when a woman accused of him of being a terrorist, struck him and splashed him in the face with coffee. And in Philadelphia, a severed pig’s head was tossed outside of a mosque on Monday.

On Wednesday, a Muslim American congressman linked the “rise in Islamophobia” — including a death threat he received on Monday — to the “demagoguery” of Donald Trump.

“You have other politicians who are joining the bandwagon and who are fanning the flames of bigotry,” Rep. André Carson (D-Ind.) told interviewer Jake Tapper. “That concerns me because we’re putting people — i.e. Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus and others — into the line of fire exposing them to death threats, discrimination at the workplace and assaults.”

There are more incidents:

In Austin, two young Arab-American women reported they were verbally assaulted at a restaurant Sunday morning by another patron. Leilah Abdennabi, a Palestinian American born in Chicago, and Sirat Al-Nahi, an Iraqi American born in Seattle, who both wear Muslim head scarfs, said an older man at Kerbey Lane Cafe shouted they “should just go back to Saudi Arabia.” The restaurant moved the patron but did not make him leave, the women told Fox 7 TV.

Sarker Haque, who owns Fatima Food Mart in Queens in New York reported he was beaten Saturday by a customer who promised to “kill Muslims.” Haque was bleeding and bruised and had a dislocated hand. He was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital for treatment, according to NY1-TV. Police charged Piro Kolvani, 55, of Jacksonville, with assault and criminal mischief in connection with the incident.

At the Islamic Center of Greater St. Louis, someone claiming to be a former Marine left a threatening voicemail Saturday. The incident is being investigated as a possible hate crime, Fox 2 TV in St. Louis reported.

In Palm Beach, Fla., someone broke windows in a prayer room at the Islamic Center. Police arrested Joshua Killets, 27, on Friday in connection with the incident. He faces charges that include criminal mischief to a religious structure, according to WSVN-TV.

The Manassas Mosque in Virginia received a voicemail threat Dec. 2, the night of the San Bernardino attacks that left 14 people fatally shot by a married Muslim couple who the FBI says were "radicalized." A caller claiming to represent the Jewish Defense League referred to the California shooting and promised to “do to your people what you did to them,” according to a CAIR report.

The Tempe, Ariz., police department received a report of unspecified damage in the last week.

In Grand Forks, N.D., community members believe the deliberate Tuesday morning torching of a restaurant serving Somali food was a hate crime.

There also seems to be a growing trend to throw off Muslims from airplanes:

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee said it received complaints from three airline passengers pulled off planes since Dec. 2. Multiple death threats and other abusive comments have been directed at the group from phone callers, said Abed Ayoub, the committee's national legal and policy director.

The TV-report of the Muslim shopkeeper who was beaten is truly heartbreaking:

But it can and surely will get much worse, and I believe that this is just what Donald Trump wants. He hates other people with a passion, and the "Muslims" and the "Mexicans" are just very convenient targets for him. He will happily add more "targets" to this list, if it appears useful for him.

He is a true fringe candidate and does not care about truth or fiction, he only cares about propaganda, and from history, we know that propaganda can work extremely well.

People who are "infected" by the Trump-virus have become true "believers", and comments like this one can be found everywhere these days on the internet (from an article at Yahoo News):

Trump's rhetoric is in no way different from the methods how the Nazis incited the Germany against the Jews in the years before and after 1933.

If you for example look at old Nazi anti-Jewish cartoons, like this one from 1929 ("The year is over. The fight will go on!"), then the parallels are obvious. The groups are interchangeable. The person on the left could also very well be a Muslim:

The relentless propaganda against the Jews also had the desired results long before the Nazis came to power in 1933.

From an historical overview about the Jews in Berlin:

Goebbels exploited the February 1930 killing of Horst Wessel, an SA storm-trooper man in Berlin, to launch a campaign against the city’s Jews. On the Jewish New Year of 1931, Jews on the way home from the synagogues were attacked on the Kurfurstendamm in western Berlin.

The next year, 1932, saw a spate of attacks on Jewish university students and lecturers in the city. The election campaign that year served to intensify the anti-Semitic atmosphere.

An interesting article explains who the Jews in Germany were living in fear already before 1933 - and how the Nazis were not taken very seriously at the same time:

True, many German Jews understood the danger early on and were all too eager for others to understand their dire situation, as well, including the relatively rare American Jewish visitor like labor organizer Abraham Plotkin. When Plotkin arrived in Berlin in November 1932, German Jews peppered him with questions about Jewish life in the United States. When he said there was anti-Semitism there, too, they scoffed at the notion that it was at all comparable. “Do they ever throw Jews out of subway cars in New York?” they asked, enumerating other acts of violence.“There is hardly a Friday night that we pray without trembling.”

And yet when Plotkin went, on December 16, 1932, to see a Nazi rally, which featured chief propagandist Joseph Goebbels, he found the event anticlimactic. “I confess my disappointment,” he wrote in his diary. “I had come to see a whale and found a minnow.” On January 30, 1933, Hitler was named chancellor.

It is absolutely justified in my opinion to compare Donald Trump's statements and his tactics, his unashamed use of propaganda, with the methods of the Nazis. Such rhetoric inevitably leads to violence and abuse, and this surely is not unintended, as violence seems to emphasize the strength of your very own movement.

Donald Trump and his minions have a very relaxed attitude to violence, to put it like that, as evidenced again by a campaign event on Friday, when a female protester was shoved to the ground by Trump's security guards:

It is also hardly surprising that Neo-Nazi groups enjoy a spike in attention and support:

Politico reports:

But its leaders consistently say that Trump's rhetoric about minority groups has successfully tapped into simmering racial resentments long ignored by mainstream politicians and that he has brought more attention to their agenda than any American political figure in years. It is a development many of them see as a golden opportunity.

Meanwhile, analysts from the two leading organizations that track violence against minority groups say Trump is energizing hate groups and creating an atmosphere likely to lead to more violence against American Muslims.

According to experts at the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center who monitor hate groups and anti-Muslim sentiment, Trump’s call on Monday to halt the entrance of Muslims to the United States is driving online chatter among white supremacists and is likely to inspire violence against Muslims. “When well-known public figures make these kind of statements in the public square, they are taken as a permission-giving by criminal elements who go out and act on their words.” said Mark Potok of the SPLC. “Is it energizing the groups? Yeah. They’re thrilled.”

Marilyn Mayo, co-director of the ADL’s Center on Extremism, said Trump’s proposal this week to halt the entrance of Muslims into the United States is only the latest statement to inject vigor into the racist fringe of American politics. “Since the beginning of Donald Trump’s candidacy, we’ve definitely seen that a segment of the white supremacist movement, from racist intellectuals to neo-Nazis have been energized,” she said.

Donald Trump meanwhile also continues his love-affair with lies and conspiracy theories and a few days ago gave a long interview to the largest promoter of outrageous conspiracy theories, Alex Jones from "Infowars." For me as a German, this type of behavior also immediately reminds me of Nazi-tactics, as the Nazis loved nothing more than conspiracy-theories in order to justify their warped and dangerous views.

Watch:

It is almost comical to see that even extreme right-wing politicians from abroad disagree with Trump - he is too extreme for some of them:

Trump has also been called out by other Western allies, including politicians in France and the Netherlands. France's prime minister, who is less powerful than the nation's president, said Trump "feeds the hatred and the confusion," and Dutch Foreign Minister Bert Koenders called the brash billionaire's remarks "very unhelpful and very discriminatory."

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls also compared Trump to the country's far-right nationalist party, but even the party's leader, Marine Le Pen, rejected the comparison.

"Seriously, have you ever heard me say something like that?" she said when asked about Trump comparisons in a TV interview, according to The New York Times. "I defend all the French people in France, regardless of their origin, regardless of their religion."

In the USA, a broad coalition of members from the public, politicians, journalists and others, strongly condemn Donald Trump. It surely is also a harsh reminder for some people that radical rhetoric will have consequences at some point. Eventually, a larger part of the population will get radicalized, and there will be politicians who will be eager to exploit this. Once you define a huge group of people summarily as "the enemy", then the gloves are off, and anything can happen.

It is refreshing and encouraging to see that some people use social media very effectively to call out Donald Trump, like the British war veteran Chris Herbert, who lost his right leg in Iraq.

His facebook post is very powerful:

I do hope that people continue to speak out against Donald Trump, the big bully of US politics - celebrities, politicians, journalists and citizens. His is riding the Nazi-train, trying to push anyone aside who is "weak." His supporters should not get the impression that they are in the majority, because they clearly are not.

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BONUS:

Also worth a read (from Raw Story):

Meet the nutters on Team Trump — the people behind the candidate’s quest for the White House

Excerpt:

The spokeswoman

Katrina Pierson has long been a fixture on cable news, often defending Trump, although she only officially joined his campaign in November. A professional activist who has warned Tea Party members of UN plans to take over Texas, she has worked for the Tea Party Leadership Fund, one of the most prominent “ scam Pacs ” – groups, mostly on the right, that spend almost all the money they raise on themselves. In 2014, she mounted an unsuccessful primary challenge to veteran Texas congressman Pete Sessions. Her campaign was damaged by the revelation that while preparing her run and doing consulting work for the Senate campaign of Ted Cruz , she was receiving government unemployment benefits .

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PLUS:

Most of you will probably not watch Donald Trump's interview with Alex Jones which I posted above, but if you do, you will see that this is a conversation of two people who are clearly insane. You will also see that Trump uses another Nazi-tactic to the extreme: Declaring that your own country is the victim of virtually every other country around you, that everybody else just wants to exploit and weaken the USA. That's exactly the type of talk with which Adolf Hitler poisoned the hearts and minds of many Germans.

Donald Trump will cause lasting damage, whether he succeeds with his campaign or not, but it is important that he is being properly called out and exposed as the despicable and insane person he actually is. The USA has to withstand the propaganda, and this will be a great challenge.