This is how Trump has influenced right-wing radicals in Europe

From: TT

Published: Oct 31, 2020 at 8:37 a.m.

When Donald Trump was elected president of the United States in 2016, radical right-wing parties in Europe could ride the wave. But four years later, the situation is different.

– It can be a bit risky to support Trump directly, says political scientist Ann-Cathrine Jungar.

The controversial Steve Bannon brought Donald Trump to the White House. After being the president’s chief strategist, his task was to establish a link between the right-wing populist parties in Europe and the United States. A kind of global populist movement was to be created and the campaign increased before the EU elections in 2019.

– It was like that, its reputation has never been particularly high in Europe, so it did not become much of that, says American expert Erik Åsard.

During his four years in power, Donald Trump has regularly spoken warmly about the leaders of radical right-wing parties, which Åsard describes as an outcast in Europe, rather than the allies with whom the United States has traditionally had good ties. The heat has also been answered.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who leads the nationalist and anti-immigrant Fidesz party, is one of the few EU leaders to praise President Trump. He shows his support for Trump’s anti-globalism and has called it a phenomenon and an icon.

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In Poland, the majority (51 percent) are confident that Donald Trump is doing the right thing when it comes to world politics, according to a 2019 poll by the Pew Research Center. The corresponding result for Sweden is 18 percent. 79 percent in Poland also have a generally good attitude towards the United States.

Polish President Andrzej Duda, leader of the National Conservative Law and Justice Party, was the first foreign leader invited to the White House after months of closure due to the corona pandemic.

Another example is found in Italy, where Luigi Di Maio, a former leader of the populist Five Star Movement party, criticized the EU’s austerity policy and instead highlighted Trump’s expansive policy and good American economy.

– If there is someone with whom you should have relations, it is these right-wing populist parties, this is how you have seen it in the White House, says Erik Åsard.

Trump views foreign policy the same way he views business, he wants to get the most out of himself and has raged at NATO members who fall short of the 2% level of defense spending.

Fascination in the Nordic countries

Ann-Cathrine Jungar, associate professor of political science at the University of Södertörn, says that many immigration-critical European nationalist parties tried to take advantage of Donald Trump’s wave of success when he won the 2016 election. There was also a fascination for Trump in the Nordic countries.

– There are many true Finns and also Swedish Democrats who wore Trump T-shirts. A few years ago, it was very common to wear this props, which reflected that there was some kind of closeness between the radical right-wing parties in Europe and Trump in the United States.

In Sweden, Swedish Democrats have tried in recent years to get closer to conservative Republicans, according to Ann-Cathrine Jungar.

– The United States has not been a country with which radical parties of the Nordic right have established bilateral contacts, with the exception of the Norwegian FRP (Progress Party) which has had contacts with the Republicans before. So it’s fairly new for Swedish Democrats to ally with conservative national think tanks, individuals and institutions, he says.

“Closer than ever”

Former leader of the group of Swedish Democrats Mattias Karlsson now heads the conservative think tank Oikos. He says he follows American politics more closely than ever before, partly through personal contacts with the Republican Party, partly through contacts with other conservative think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation and the Hudson Institute.

TT: Are there any specific questions that interest you the most?

– It is partly about what is called the culture war in the United States, which in Sweden we can call the fight for the image of Sweden. How arguments are exchanged in areas of feminism, national identity, national history, law and order, which are also central here. But also how to relate to China together.

According to Karlsson, the increased contact with American organizations is due to the fact that politics has become more international.

– I think it’s part of Trump. With Trump also came another Republican establishment that was more open to transatlantic cooperation. These old alliances, which are actually from the Cold War, are not perceived as equally relevant, they focus on new issues.

Closer to Putin

Karlsson, on the other hand, does not share several values ​​in American politics that he describes as morally conservative, such as the vision of the LGBTQ movement, religious moralism, and the right to abortion.

Ann-Cathrine Jungar adds that Donald Trump’s vision of the democratic rules of the game has led European parties to hesitate to openly support the president and rather take off their MAGA (Make America Great Again) caps. His hesitancy on the issue of a peaceful shift of power is one of those reasons. Links with right-wing extremist groups in the United States and the reaction after the 2017 Charlottesville incident also affect.

– There, the radical right-wing parties keep a certain distance, because some of them have tried for a decade to build some form of democratic credibility. It can be a bit risky to directly support Trump.

Many have a closer relationship with Vladimir Putin in Russia, Jungar notes. Especially parties in Eastern Europe. And while the president of the United States and radical right-wing European parties have impressed each other, fuel on the continent has arisen rather from events such as the refugee situation in 2015 and the financial crisis in 2008.

– It was a starting point for the radical right-wing parties to mobilize their criticism of the EU. So Europe has had some other types of events that have allowed them to grow, because they have had to talk about their problems. They really are parties that have clear answers on how this should be solved. But for Trump in the United States, for example, the idea of ​​building this wall with the Tea Party movement was much earlier, says Ann-Cathrine Jungar.

Published: Oct 31, 2020 at 8:37 a.m.