One of the most flagrant offenders is Stripe, an online payment processing company that works with some of the biggest names in tech, including Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and Salesforce. But such while major content providers Apple, Spotify, Facebook, and YouTube have taken half-measures to give the appearance that they’re cracking down on hate, payment processing systems, and especially Stripe, haven’t even done that much, continuing to allow its purveyors to collect profits via their services.

What makes the inaction of the payment processing companies so infuriating is that they are still readily working with such groups and websites — even those who can’t be bothered to hide their racism and anti-Semitism behind layers of “irony” and “humor,” as do many in the ranks of the 2.0 form of white identitarianism — despite repeated promises that they would do just that.

Stripe, for instance, is servicing payments for the League of the South, Occidental Quarterly, and Counter–Currents Publishing. The League of the South is an openly white supremacist, neo-Confederate group that advocates Secession and the creation of a southern theocracy. Its leaders say that immigration “will eventually weaken and destroy our civilization.” (Intriguingly, a whole section of the group’s website is devoted to “Russian Outreach.”)

“How many of the 300 were probably guilty? Maybe half. My reasoning? The 2004 report by the John Jay College for Criminal Justice found that 4 percent of priests nationwide had a credible accusation made against them between 1950-2002,” he continued. “That is the figure everyone quotes. But the report also notes that roughly half that number were substantiated. If that is a reliable measure, the 300 figure drops to around 150.”

This is Donohue’s “debunking” of the story. It gets worse.

At one point in the rambling piece, Donohue declared that rape accusations against the priests are a “myth.”

“This is an obscene lie,” Donohue declared. “Most of the alleged victims were not raped: they were groped or otherwise abused, but not penetrated, which is what the word ‘rape’ means.”

Donohue goes on to say that his assertions are not meant to be a “defense,” but an attempt to “set the record straight and debunk the worst case scenarios attributed to the offenders.”

In other words, it’s a defense.

The picture of Trump as president is now crystal clear. His instincts and methods are those of the autocrat. He respects no separation of powers, no zones of authority from which the constitution very deliberately excludes him and his office. He may be called Donald, but he wants to rule like a don.

The danger of all this to Americans is obvious. The US system of government, cherished and nurtured over two centuries, is being eroded by a president who tramples over every convention and custom that ensures its survival – and, crucially, by his Republican enablers in Congress who could stop him but won’t. (In a chorus, they supported his act of revenge against Brennan.)

Americans need to guard against an authoritarian impulse whose existence in their body politic is now demonstrably real. A survey this month found that 43% of Republicans were willing to give Trump the power to close down media organisations, while a separate poll a year ago found 52% would support “postponing” the 2020 election if Trump proposed it. Among all Americans, support for rule by the army – as opposed to elected politicians – is unusually high, with nearly one in five in favour.

But there is a threat here to the rest of us too. For Trump is forging a template for the 21st-century autocrat. Of course, there are already plenty of models to work from – Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Xi Jinping, Rodrigo Duterte – all of whom have received lavish, fawning praise from Trump. But an American president stands on a uniquely influential platform, observed the world over. Where once the US presidency offered an example of executive power restrained by the “co-equal” judicial and legislative branches, today Trump stands as an inspiration to every would-be strongman and abuser of authority, ready to bellow the line from his 2016 convention speech that could serve as a governing credo for tyrants everywhere: “I alone can fix this”.

Will no one rid me of this turbulent prick? Not content with being the worst foreign secretary in a century, resigning because his mate did even though he didn’t want to, and then sparking racial hatred via the pages of a national newspaper column for no better reason than his yawning fear of not being talked about, Boris Johnson is thinking of getting back on the bus. The Huffington Post reported this morning that Johnson was, joy of joys, being urged to consider arranging a bus tour to campaign for Brexit. Again.

Actually, he might not be. Also earlier today, Kevin Schofield, editor of Politics Home, tweeted that a suspiciously familiar-sounding source close to Britain’s worst Donald Trump impersonator had described the news as “total and utter bollocks”

With most politicians you’d assume that one of these reports must be true and the other false, but Johnson is not most politicians. Given his record of backing both sides of an issue until the last possible moment, it seems entirely possible in my mind that Johnson was the source of both stories. This is, at this moment, Schrodinger’s bus tour: it exists and does not exist, at exactly the same time, and until Johnson collapses the waveform by actually publicly commenting, this state will persist.

Whether the violent tactics of Antifa are the most moral option in the face of emboldened Nazi marchers is also one for debate by future historians. On one hand, their violent attacks against the Nazis marching in Charlottesville and at other white supremacist rallies like one in Berkeley just two weeks later gave Trump cover to pretend moral equilibrium between the two sides.

But on the other hand, those who said that stooping to their level would in some way undermine the counter-movement do not yet seem to have been proven right.

In the end, in Washington DC, the outer bands of a torrential rainstorm to the north of the city dampened this weekend’s Unite the Right rally. Two dozen soggy white supremacists arrived at the White House flanked by rows of police officers, allocated for their protection from the masses of counter-protesters who gathered to show that they were not welcome, and from the black-clad Antifa in their midst.

The message seems to have gone out that, at least as far as the American people are concerned, Nazis will not be allowed to march through the streets with impunity.

At least, not yet.