19 May 2016

FiveThirtyEight: What Can Europe’s Far Right Tell Us About Trump’s Rise?

The DPP is one of the most regionally powerful far-right parties in the European Union, but its success — and that of other such parties — cannot be attributed to economics alone. “It’s not just about jobs,” said Matthew Goodwin, a professor of political science and international relations at the University of Kent in the United Kingdom. “People are feeling their values, national culture and identity are under threat from rapid demographic change.” Not every far-right party is equally successful, but they are widespread and include the Lega Nord in Italy, the Swiss People’s Party, the neo-Nazi People’s Party — Our Slovakia, the English Defence League and the Alternative for Germany. [...]

Even though Trump’s ideology is conservative on many issues, his positions on trade protection and U.S. intervention in overseas conflicts can overlap with the left-populist positions of a candidate like Bernie Sanders. German political strategist Simon Vaut notes that far-right parties in Europe don’t fit with the American sense of the political right favoring free and globalized markets. “Most of the European far-right parties are National Socialist. France’s National Front, for example, has an anti-immigration platform but is also anti-free-market and wants a paternalistic welfare state,” he said in an email. He sees Trump as akin in style to former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a self-congratulatory billionaire media tycoon who survived several scandals only to be convicted of tax fraud in 2013.

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