The short-term expediency of populist politics has long been recognised as a means to an end by politicians. The New Right politics of Nigel Farage, Marie Le Penn, Donald Trump and other lesser known emerging right-wing extremists share several mutual characteristics.
Their common genesis emanating from public widespread security-related fears and well-founded concerns of home-incubated terrorism born out of the uncontrolled mass influx of disaffected refugees and illegal economic migrants is one obvious common denominator. There is, however, also an interesting anomaly when comparing the leading figures in this vanguard of new conservative nationalism.
Farage and Le Penn base their respective positions on an ideology of strict insular New Right nationalism. They are eloquent, articulate, sensibly measured in their public comments and quick-witted when reacting to sensitive public issues.
Trump on the other hand uses a mix of fearmongering while painting seemingly easily achievable horizons of significant economic gain based on his intensely insular policies. The arguments of Farage and Le Penn are intellectually based, albeit controversial, rationalism. Trump argues in more compelling and easily understood fear and reward rhetoric - it is populist at its most effective.
Despite his obviously seriously flawed character, Trump still exudes a persuasive attraction for millions of his followers. Like an unguided human missile, mostly foot in mouth and brain in neutral, he continues to inflict heavy collateral damage to his own cause with gaffe after public gaffe, but the very alarming fact to sociologists and other professional observers is that despite all the very obvious and serious shortcomings this aspirant commander-in-chief of the world’s most destructive nuclear arsenal incredulously continues to draw millions of supporters in one of the most politically enlightened nations in the world.
It is a historian’s point of interest that during the last century a synergistic set of circumstances in Europe, spawned by unrealistically heavy economic and humiliating burdens imposed on Germany after World War I by the allied nations drunk with victory, eventually led to two of the most civilised nations on earth at that time, embracing other ideologues spouting similar vitriol and extreme populist rhetoric who then went on to lead to the disastrous rise of fascism in 1930s Europe.
It is a troubling déjà vu analogy. Given the unrelenting terrorist acts in the Western world and dire warnings of more to come, Trump and others like him will continue to find readily sympathetic listeners to his populist off the cuff rantings and naturally with each additional incident of terror his credibility gains ground.
In an atmosphere of stark insecurity, Trump’s continuing rise is not entirely surprising but the one thing Trump has done differently and up till now clearly effectively in terms of his own campaign is his ongoing simplistic mantra of insular and isolationist economic policy accompanied by a foreign policy which is very light on factual content.
Both policies offer an attainable mirage of short-term, quick-fix economic benefits for his followers and are easy to understand, identify with and support.
Trump’s foreign policy is equally confused and seemingly based on trivialised assertions
On the economic front, Trump advocates the introduction of restrictive new trade regulations designed to stop American companies moving their manufacturing base from the US to cheap labour markets found in mostly Asian or South American countries.
He wants to shut down Ford and General Motors manufacturing in Mexico and stop multinational corporations like Google, Avon and dozens of other US companies from moving their manufacturing base to China.
Trump promises to stop the haemorrhaging of hundreds of thousands of jobs from the home market in the US.
The appeal to people in the street is palpable and understandable. Naturally Trump makes no mention of any of the highly significant economic benefits to the US arising out of offshore manufacturing like the substantial financial gains from exploitation of the disparity in foreign exchanges between countries like China and the US, the advent of robotics in newly developed premises without the shackles of restrictive trade unions, the massively cheaper overheads all resulting in lower prices, exponentially bigger markets resulting in massively greater corporate profits which eventually migrate back to shareholders in the US and presumably also result in higher national revenues to the Federal Reserve from taxation.
Also very significant are the human benefits in the form of mass employment in third world countries with non-existent employment prospects all of which lead to better lifestyles and social stability in those countries.
Bringing industrial manufacturing back to the US will inevitably result in dramatic product price rises with significant contraction in market share for those companies and would inevitably result in loss of profits and a subsequent drop in employment thus making Trump’s much banded reversal of current trade position an exercise in futility.
Trump’s foreign policy is equally confused and is seemingly based on trivialised assertions, which have no place in the real world.
His demands for pulling back US forces from Asian regions make no reference to the policy of containment as China continues to arbitrarily expand its borders to the mounting concern and the chagrin of its neighbours Japan and the Philippines.
Demands by Trump that NATO members must pay billions of dollars to the US for the defence umbrella the US provides for their part in that organisation is like sweet music to taxpaying American middle ground families tired of their country’s costly role as the world’s policeman.
On the face of it not an entirely unreasonable suggestion to the common man or woman in the street but international politics does not work like that. Australia and New Zealand, both Commonwealth countries, were dragged into the Vietnam War by US President LB Johnson on the basis of strong military ties and common interests in southeast Asia.
Britain, Australia and Canada, all Commonwealth countries, had joined President George Bush in the expensive and destabilising first Iraq war soon to be followed by a second Iraq war by another Bush with the same consequences. Clearly the US’s contribution to NATO is just part and parcel of a complex relationship amongst many nations of the so-called free western world.
It may well be that Trump had picked his successful blend of fearmongering and promises of economic utopia by accident but the undeniable fact is he was victorious in the mot debilitating preliminary battle for high office in the world which is the US presidential primaries and had he not succumbed to that moment of sheer madness by insulting the grieving parents of a fallen Islamic US warrior he had a reasonable chance of being crowned the leader of the free world with his finger on enough nuclear power to reduce our planet to its original gaseous state.
A very sobering thought for all of humanity given his extreme retaliatory knee-jerk reactions to everything he takes umbrage to. Perhaps we are just discovering Demos-kratia is not all that’s it cracked up to be after all.
Anthony Trevisan is a businessman passionate about environmental issues particularly as they affect Malta.