Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs

by Johann Hari

In 2017, a transcript of a conversation between Trump and the recently elected president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, was leaked. Duterte had said in a press conference: “Hitler massacred three million Jews . . . There’s three million drug addicts [in the Philippines]. There are. I’d be happy to slaughter them.” He added: “If Germany had Hitler, the Philippines would have . . .” and pointed at himself. This was not a joke. He had dispatched death squads across the country to kill people who use, are addicted to, or sell drugs, and this campaign has extrajudicially murdered more than 12,000 people as I write this, according to Human Rights Watch. Trump phoned him and said: “I just want to congratulate you because I hear you have been doing an unbelievable job on the drug problem. Many countries have the problem, we have the problem, but what a great job you are doing, and I just wanted to tell you that.”