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Donald Trump's politics of tribalism

By Clarence Page, Tribune Content Agency on

Donald Trump's claim that immigration is negatively "changing the culture" of Europe may be his ugliest racial-ethnic dog whistle yet. But it points to a disturbing trend. He's cozying up not only to Russia's Vladimir Putin but with rising far-right, populist ethno-nationalism across Europe.

In a news conference with the United Kingdom's Prime Minister Theresa May the weekend before his summit with Putin in Helsinki, Trump claimed that immigration is negatively "changing the culture" of Europe. Although he offered no evidence or examples to back up his remarks, he said he believed immigration has been "very bad for Europe," adding that he knew it was not politically correct to talk about but he would "say it loud."

Like a host whose guest has just dropped something foul into the punch bowl, Prime Minister May bravely defended immigration as a benefit to the UK, which "has a proud history of welcoming people."

That's the attitude that has helped the industrialized West to grow strong over the decades. Yet May knew she was not alone among NATO allies who had become a pin cushion for Trump's criticisms.

For days he tweeted tweaks at German Chancellor Angela Merkel's approach to Europe's migration crisis, over which her fragile government wrestles with deep internal divisions.

Trump asserted erroneously that crime in Germany is "way up" and that immigrants are to blame. "Big mistake made all over Europe," he tweeted, "in allowing millions of people in who have so strongly and violently changed their culture!"

 

Yet those sentiments contrast sharply with the praise that Trump has heaped on conservative Euro-skeptic leaders like Italy's new Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

Conte, scheduled to visit the White House at the end of July, was praised as "a really great guy" by Trump at the Group of Seven meeting in Quebec. The two apparently bonded over the treatment of migrants and the global role to be played by Russia. Conte, leading a coalition of far-right and anti-globalist parties, was the only G7 leader to voice support for Trump's suggestion that Russia, ejected from the group after its invasion of Crimea in Ukraine, should be readmitted.

Orban, after his third landslide election victory since 2010, basks in popularity for his country's economic gains under his party's watch. But he also has turned his government in a troubling authoritarian direction and fanned public's anger and anxieties over the Europe's refugee crisis.

Taking the global view, we can see Trump's apparent affection for autocrats and Euro-nationalism goes far beyond Putin. Surprisingly elected weeks after the UK surprisingly voted to leave the European Union, Trump's rise parallels that of populist ethno-nationalists and autocrats across Europe and elsewhere on the planet.

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(c) 2018 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

 

 

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