As a triumphant Donald Trump bids for the Republican nomination in the running for US president and thereafter straight to the White House, the rest of the world looks on in amazement and disbelief.
At a glance, the front runner in this year’s presidential race is one of a kind. The profanity, the bullying brittleness, the sheer absurdity of Donald Trump, a billionaire New York property developer posing as a tribune of the people, set him in a class of his own. And Europeans have to be careful when casting judgment. Those looking for an explanation for the xenophobic nationalism and authoritarianism need only look over their shoulder...
There is more to the story than the unbelievable character of Trump. He is the unpleasant face of a political insurgency that spans the Atlantic. The terms of politics in many of the world’s advanced democracies have changed dramatically and well before Donald Trump joined the Republican primary contest for US president. Trump’s flair, if we can call it that, has been riding the wave and exactly like in other countries around the globe.
Populists in Europe are fuming against Trump as he insists time and time again to expel Mexicans and bar Muslims from entering the US. In France, the National Front’s Marine Le Pen is bidding for the presidency on a platform of Islamophobia and state capitalism. Both are unabashed admirers of Russian president Vladimir Putin. In Slovakia too, a proud neo-Nazi party - complete with sinister black uniforms - won seats in the Slovakian parliament to the astonishment of various diplomats. In neighbouring Hungary, prime minister Viktor Orban presides over an authoritarian regime that is very hostile to Muslims, permissive of anti-Semitism and blames foreign capital for the country’s economic ills.
Germany, hitherto a linchpin of Europe’s political stability, is facing the beginnings of its own insurgency in the rise of the Eurosceptic and anti-migrant Alternative für Deutschland party. In Britain too, the movement to take Britain out of the EU has its own populist hue.
Trump is promising to make America great by throwing up the barricades. Boris Johnson, the ambitious mayor of London, is pledging that Brexit would see Britain take back control of its borders. No one should be surprised if Trump wins and becomes America’s next president. The populist parties have found a voice because some, at least, of their grievances are real. Eight years after the global financial crash, workers and pensioners in advanced economies still confront stagnant wages and pensions, austerity programmes and shrinking employment prospects.
Will Trump succeed in making it to the White House? Only timewill tell.