LINDA PENTZ GUNTER reports from the one of 2,700 protests against the Trump government’s power grabs, on a day when seven million people defied fear-mongering in a outpouring of joy and hope in what might be the biggest protest in US history

THERE is a common origin story to the new far-right billionaire backers of Donald Trump: apartheid South Africa.
Both Elon Musk and Peter Thiel — the biggest tech billionaires backing Trump — grew up there, where their fathers grew rich, respectively, mining diamonds and uranium — sectors at the core of the apartheid economy.
“The centrality of South Africa for the far right and for neoliberals is quite extraordinary,” said Boston University’s Professor Quinn Slobodian in a recent interview. “For Musk himself the experience of growing up there with a very authoritarian dictatorial father was a very dystopian one, from the way his biographer recounts it.”

Politicians who continue to welcome contracts with US companies without considering the risks and consequences of total dependency in the years to come are undermining the raison d’etre of the NHS, argues Dr JOHN PUNTIS


