A Europeanized Republican Party: Is Donald Trump America’s Jean Le Pen?

The below quote startled me. It comes from a conservative writer who locates the signal in the noise as to what Donald Trump really means for American politics: the Europeanization of the Republican Party. In other words, Trump is riding an emerging wave of populist blood and soil nationalism before our very eyes, moving the party ever more explicitly toward white racial politics of the sort usually associated with the European right:

A classically liberal right is actually fairly uncommon in western democracies, requiring as it does a coalition that synthesizes populist tendencies and directs such frustrations toward the cause of limited government.

Put another way, a growing number of Republicans increasingly don’t want smaller government and free trade, but stronger protectionist government that is ever more heavily militarized and suspicious of the outside world–and led by a strong white man not deterred by moderating courts or legislatures (an American Putin; an American Mussolini).

Donald Trump could transform the Republican Party into a coalition focused on white identity politics. We’ve seen this in Europe, and it’s bad.
THEFEDERALIST.COM

About Santi Tafarella

I teach writing and literature at Antelope Valley College in California.
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3 Responses to A Europeanized Republican Party: Is Donald Trump America’s Jean Le Pen?

  1. Alan says:

    Trump is a buffoon who if he does anything in this election, it will be to guarantee the Democratic candidate wins, regardless whom they nominate.

    • Staffan says:

      He is putting the important issue of immigration on the agenda. That alone is of huge (heh) importance. But in the bigger picture, I think secession, or a credible threat of it, would be the best strategy. Especially if several states team up to form a block, like the Far West, for instance.

  2. Staffan says:

    What’s bad is that France now has so many terrorist attacks it’s no longer shocking, only a confirmation that they are gradually morphing into northern Africa. Nationalist parties are simply reacting when liberals fail to do so.

    And this isn’t a white thing. I know just by following social media in Sweden how many of nationalist supporters here are Kurds, Iranians, Jews etc. It’s people trying to protect the ideals threatened by multiculturalism – the ideals of human rights that you as a liberal is supposed to fight for. But liberals live in a twisted fantasy where this reaction becomes the problem. Like feminist who make ten times as much noise about white men “manspreading” in the subway than about female genital mutilation, honor killings, or arranged marriages.

    Yes, it’s bad in Europe. People are living under threat, they are killed by their own families, they are instructed how to dress by Muslim vice squad. Gay people aren’t safe anymore, nor are Jews, or anyone who doesn’t show Muslims what they think of as proper respect, regardless of what that will do to free speech.

    None of that is due to the European nationalists; it’s all due to mass immigration, and it has been ignored and hushed up for decades by naive liberals enablers.

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