It is indicative of a Europe in decline that the European Parliament is exhibiting a gilded statue, over two metres tall, of a naked and obese Trump resting on the shoulders of a frail man, entitled ‘The Orange Plague’ or ‘The King of Injustice’.
The work by the Danish artist Jens Galschiøt was unveiled on Tuesday at the European Parliament in Strasbourg – as is well known, the Union has this absurd arrangement whereby the Parliament has two seats, incurring very high commuting costs as the entire political apparatus has to travel back and forth constantly.
Regarding the statue of Trump, CNN reports that
his thighs and sagging belly cling tightly around the man’s head; his hands cling to a long golf club and the scales of justice.
‘I am sitting on a man’s back’, reads the inscription on the statue’s plinth. ‘He is sinking under my weight. I would do anything to help him. Except get off his back.’
For the artist, it is political:
For Galschiøt, the work symbolises what he sees as the US President’s threats to the environment and the rules-based world order. “Trump is destroying everything I believe in,” he said.
MEPs are permitted to organise exhibitions on the institution’s premises, but require authorisation.
The Parliament’s rules prohibit events or exhibitions deemed to be “offensive or seditious or contrary to the values on which the Union is founded”, or which “undermine the dignity of the Parliament”.
The granting of permission is not the same as explicit approval of the content. Nevertheless, Galschiøt, who had feared that the application would be rejected, considers the green light to be a form of tacit approval from Europe’s MEPs.
In Galschiøt’s view, it is Trump who is the emperor with no clothes:
He says that the decision to depict Trump naked is an allusion to Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’, in which a vain emperor parades naked through the city. ‘Dictators do not like being laughed at,” he explains.
The exhibition was initiated by the Danish MEP Per Clausen, who previously represented the Red-Green Alliance in the Danish Folketing.
“I believe we need to have a discussion about power in the world and how this power is used,” he says on the phone from Strasbourg. “The way Trump behaves is a very, very big problem for people in Europe. I want to spark a debate in Europe about how we can defend ourselves against Trump, and how we can pursue policies that are not dependent on him.”
Whilst Trump’s Secretary of State is delivering this year’s speech in Athens, in which he urges Europeans not to completely flush their own civilisation down the toilet, it is precisely Trump whom European politicians – the very ones to blame for our continent’s decline – portray as the devil incarnate.
The world is certainly being deceived.
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