Donald Trump's politics of tribalism

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.

Europe's far right gained a big boost from anger and anxieties following the 2008 financial collapse and the refugee flood from the wars in the Middle East and North Africa. In the past, we have seen all sorts of extremists rise to power on populism and nationalism, usually in the wake of big societal changes, particularly those involving race, religion or ethnicity.

That's why Trump's alarm over immigrants "changing the culture" in Europe brought delight to white nationalists. As Heidi Beirich, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project observed, it comes "straight out of the white supremacist/white nationalist playbook."

In the endless battle to keep this new tribalism from ripping our civilization apart, the United States has a distinct advantage: our long-running tradition of welcoming newcomers and encouraging their assimilation into the social mainstream.

That's still a new thing for the industrialized nations of Europe, for example, where language and ethnicity are closely tied to national identity. Much of the domestic anxiety over new arrivals in Europe comes from policies that have left immigrants in ghettos, separated from the mainstream culture and economic opportunities.

America, by contrast, is the land of makeovers and reinvention, people who are attracted by the opportunities this nation offers to build a better life and a new identity -- Americans.

The more we encourage the virtue of inclusion against the lure of the tribe, the better we can keep our proverbial melting pot simmering, without boiling over.

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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)