In the U.K., he’s pro-Brexit Nigel Farage; in France, he’s the Le Pens. In Austria, he’s Norbert Hofer. In Germany, he heads a movement with a deceptively bland name, “An Alternative for Germany.” In Hungary, he is Viktor Orban. And in Russia, of course, there is the original Trump template, Vladimir Putin.
In country after country, Trumpians have risen by tapping the same fears: that financial, digital, logistical, political, ethnic and religious globalization will destroy the “homeland’s” power to protect local jobs, culture and even lives. [...]
While their policy proposals (such as they are) differ, the leaders have certain methods and characteristics in common: a lust to amass power through division, not addition. A gift for crude but effective sound bites. Shrewd and obsessive use of social media. A claim to a purist “outsider” status of some kind, often based on family, wealth or both. Disdain for intellectuals and contempt for journalism and free speech. An authoritarianism born of their own raging egos. And the ability to cynically wield nostalgia for a simpler time — one that never really existed outside the minds of their followers. [...]
His toxic stew of racism, xenophobia and populist economics is held together by (white) Americans’ hysteria at losing their place, not only in the world, but within the culture of the U.S. itself.
Voters in Great Britain, America’s mother country, no longer have such imperial illusions to lose. But long after the sun set on their empire, the most fearful among them think they are fighting to save a remnant of the old ways.
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