Hot Type: This Is a Warning to the UK – Don’t Repeat Our Mistake and Sleepwalk Into Fascism

US columnist Heidi Siegmund Cuda reports from London and urges the British people to resist following in America's footsteps

Elon Musk gives a Nazi-style salute at a Presidential inauguration event in Washington. Photo: Associated Press / Alamy

“A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its boots.”

The murky origins of that quote, often attributed to Mark Twain or Winston Churchill, but likely penned by 18th century satirist Jonathan Swift, is an example of how disinformation permeates our world.

I didn’t want to be in the US when the Trump-Musk regime took power, so I traveled overseas, with the first stop being London.

At 3am, jet-lagged and famished, I made my way to a 24-hour restaurant, where the host – after determining I had just survived the Greater Los Angeles Fires – explained how California’s Democratic leaders were responsible for the catastrophic events.

Calmly, I explained that the combination of the Santa Ana winds, which have been there since before people walked the land, and the lack of rain in Southern California created the conditions for the firestorms, which are then exploited by bad actors.

He looked stunned. I had punctured his information bubble, as I further explained the army of firefighter heroes deployed to battle on behalf of the land and its people.

The new US regime is coming for California, and public servants with empathy are getting in their way of acquiring our resources, so lies must be told and those lies make their way halfway around the world and seed themselves into people’s consciousness thus becoming ‘reality’.

I left the restaurant with a sinking feeling that this hostile takeover by billionaires who own our news channels and social media platforms presents quite a formidable challenge.

As I spent time in London detoxing from eight solid years of attempting to defend my country from a fascist takeover 24/7 on the virtual battlefield of Twitter, I was overcome with sorrow. We gave away our sacred freedoms so freely, while other countries continue to fight mightily for their own democratic values.

Still, I took comfort in the beauty of London, its welcoming people, and what to a tourist appears to be an effortless multicultural integration. It is a city that feels comfortable in its own skin, and having lived under years of extreme tension in the US, I welcomed the reprieve, particularly knowing that guns are scarce here.

But in the nights, when I couldn’t sleep, came the haunting, the gnawing fear that Britain could be next on the chopping block.