As developed elsewhere: while Trump and more in general the fact that we are sitting on a tinder box should not be underestimated, it is important not to individualise the problem and reduce things on Trump as evil after whom’s disappearance and a bit of tidying up the rubbish pile, the world will be good again. The pile he erects has a solid foundation in US-American and also European history and what makes it remarkable is that he gilded the pile for himself and his tribe, thus making it more visible.
Renaming the Gulf of Mexico, now by executive order [August 27, 2026] the Lake Ontario (and what next in this spirit?) is interesting for different reasons.
Section 1. Purpose and Policy. As I announced in Executive Order 14172 of January 20, 2025 (Restoring Names That Honor American Greatness), it is the policy of my Administration to recognize the extraordinary contributions of the American people and the rich heritage of our history by naming great natural landmarks for our shared achievements. The United States is the greatest protector of the Great Lakes, including the body of water currently known as Lake Ontario.
In terms of International Law such executive order is void and the mobilisation of relevant US-bodies to implement the renaming is in fact as illegitime as the order itself. Any such renaming depends on international conventions and one could even go so far to sue those officials as they breach the law:
* commissioning of an act which is not permissible under international law and therefore constituting a criminal offence, as far as it involves the alteration of official documents of international significance
* misleading/deception/representation of false facts
* disregard for the rights of indigenous peoples to be represented and present themselves.
The latter point is of special interest here:
The name “Lake Ontario” is believed to be derived from the Huron Indigenous people’s Wendat language word “oniatarí:io,” which is thought to mean “lake of shining waters”, “great lake” or “beautiful lake”. (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/8/28/can-trump-really-rename-lake-ontario-lake-america)
This means that MAGA is not about the claim of US-American supremacy; it is fundamentally concerned with the denial of history, it is genocide 2.0.
But in fact it is not 2.0: the history of the United States of Northern America is a series of genocides, a claim not of superiority and primacy but in addition of the right to translate this into oppression of others.
A final thought may be added: Rubio stated during the Munich Security Conference (Minute 5:08 ff.)
America was founded 250 years ago, but the roots began here on this continent long before. The men who settled and built the nation of my birth arrived on our shores carrying the memories and the traditions and the Christian faith of their ancestors as a sacred inheritance, an unbreakable link between the old world and the new. We are part of one civilization, Western civilization. We are bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could share. Forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry, and the sacrifices our forefathers made together for the common civilization to which we have fallen heir.
It may sound trivial and looking at the great traditions that, without doubt, can also be found in Europe, there is one point we should not forget — Maria Mies reminded us of the dark roots:
In fact, the very name of this small continent – Europe – reflects this history of conquest of land and the abduction and rape of her women. According to the Greek myth, Zeus, the Thunder-God residing on the Olympus, in the shape of a bull abducted Europa, the daughter of the Phoenician king Agenor and carried her over the sea to Crete. Agenor sent his sons out to search for their sister. One of them, Kadmos, landed in Greece and was told by the oracle of Delphi that he should wander around, armed with his spear till he reached the cowherd Pelagon in the land of Phokis. He should kill Pelagon – the man of earth, “born to die” – and choose the cow with the sign of the moon on both her flanks and follow her, till she would lie down, with her horns on the ground. On this hill he should kill and sacrifice her to the earth Goddess and then found a big city on this spot, Thebes.
Kadmos followed the oracle and became the founder of Thebes. He married Harmonia, the daughter of Ares, the War God, and Aphrodite (Kerényi 1966). It is not clear from the myths whether he killed the moon-cow, obviously his sister Europa, or not. In any case, one does not hear of her again. She, the raped and abducted woman was only the means to lead the warrior and new culture hero into the foreign land and to his greatness.
I do not know why the name of this abducted and raped foreign women, a Phoenician, Semitic woman at that, a woman who never plays an active role in this myth, was chosen for a continent which has been more aggressive, more expansionist, more violently racist than any other. (Mies, M., 1999: ‘Europe in the Global Economy or the Need to De-Colonize Europe’. In: Herrmann, P. [ed.] Challenges for a global welfare system. New York: Nova Science, pp. 199)
Is it strange, then, to see Europe, easily giving in and paradoxically accepting the new America, by imitating it? Closing borders, cutting down on welfare, eager to weaponise and neglecting investment where it is necessary … not to catch up and reaching competitiveness, but to provide develop that allow a decent life for all.