Have Populist Politics Reached 'Peak Trump'?
Against that backdrop, Holland's record high turnout that left Wilders in second place offered a hopeful sign that the momentum of Le Pen and others might be stalled and even pushed back. Significantly, a number of experts are saying the chaos and confusion that followed Brexit and the rise of Trump's unorthodox regime may have alarmed Dutch voters enough to raise a counter movement against radical populist change, at least for now.
Can we all get along? Until Trump's upset victory, we Americans usually provided a better model of how a vastly diverse society can work, despite our periodic clashes over race and ethnicity. Unlike Europe, our identity as Americans is not tied to our ancestral identity -- regardless of what kind of outlandish ideas Rep. King may have about who is a "real American."
Yet as much as we call ourselves a "nation of immigrants," we are also a nation of immigration debates.
The rise of Brexit, Trump and Wilders are not only about racism. Fears, suspicions and resentments about the ethnic future of Western civilization add fuel to the current fervor. This is particularly true in Europe, shaken in recent years by a flood of refugees from the Middle East, and in the U.S., where Trump made immigration and his proposed Mexican border wall his signature campaign issues.
But another similarity between Europe and the U.S. is the polarization of politics between left and right, made worse by a near-complete collapse of the center-left. Centrists like Britain's former Prime Minister Tony Blair helped keep the center-left alive in Europe -- as Bill Clinton did in the United States -- since the end of the Cold War and the decline of trade unions.
Into the power vacuum, some of Europe's disillusioned left-wing voters have drifted toward racial populists is much the same way that some former Barack Obama voters switched to vote for Donald Trump. When things look bad enough, any sort of change looks better than the status quo.
Has the West reached peak-Trump? The populist rise in the Netherlands gave a wake-up call to the sensible political center. But traditional politicians in Europe and America can't afford to hit the snooze button. They need to offer better alternatives to those who feel displaced and left behind by industrial and geopolitical change.
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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)
(c) 2017 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
