Trump’s Little Brothers

We already knew that Donald Trump’s adventure as the head of the U.S. government was probably more than a mishap, or a simple bad, passing moment, that America’s deep Trumpist “cry” represents something significant and serious in the 21st century, both for world diplomacy and for modern definitions of democracy and political action.

We knew that Nov. 8, 2016 was more than a blip of electoral mechanics, as bizarre and capricious as what resulted that evening, in the arrival of the fickle billionaire to the White House, with fewer popular votes than his opponent (46 percent compared to Hillary Clinton’s 48 percent).

This cry had precursors before November 2016.

Think back to the Italian Silvio Berlusconi who, in the 1990s and 2000s, was redefining modern politics around the cult of the boss, marketing and news manipulation. This was before the arrival of social media, far from the deep debates, legislative details and complex reflections … with a “capo,” in any case, who did not care and a fan club that applauded him anyway.

This primal cry for demagogic leaders today has many echoes, both contemporary and in sync with the American shock wave.

Also in 2016, Rodrigo Duterte was elected president of the Philippines. This also came about oddly: with only 39 percent of the votes cast, he drew upon nearly full powers to launch offensives against organized crime – a tsunami of violent summary justice, denounced by the United Nations – and against the Islamic guerillas on Mindanao Island, the South Pacific’s version of the Islamic State.

In early 2018, the Italians, rebelling against massive immigration from the Mediterranean under the eye of the rest of Europe, gave half of their votes to two so-called “populist” formations: the League and the Five Star Movement.

These groups then allied themselves in a hybrid government, with a combination of left-wing spending (challenging the European Commission’s deficit reduction) and right-wing security, which, for example, sought to impose a strict curfew on small shops run by immigrants.

Here too, we’ve seen a strongman with big muscles and a vulgar vocabulary rise to power. However, Matteo Salvini, the current minister of the interior, only received 17 percent of the vote last March with his League, the minority partner of the coalition. He is serving with Luigi di Maio (whose Five Star Movement received 33 percent of the vote on March 4, 2018), who has been largely relegated to the shadows … along with a sham prime minister, whose name has been largely forgotten.

The paradoxical result: Salvini is today the undisputed strongman of the Italian government … having received just one-sixth of the votes eight months ago! Today, according to polls, he would get double the votes … which would still only give him a third of the support.

The same can’t be said for Jair Bolsonaro, the latest arrival to this global club of loudmouths, strongmen and elected authoritarians. He benefited from Brazil’s two-round system: in the first, he got 46 percent of the votes; in the second, he jumped to 55 percent.

The portraits of Bolsonaro in recent weeks have abundantly detailed the many fascist characteristics of his personality. It remains to be seen how they will translate into facts, between his avowed hatred of homosexuals and blacks, his love of over-the-counter weapon sales and his economic advisers’ ultra-neoliberalism.

Even in far-off South America, sometimes presumed to be an outsider, there are now clear links. Bolsonaro is a hybrid who combines – and accentuates – the worst traits of Trump and Duterte.

Tomorrow in the United States, with the midterm elections, the future of this whole movement will play out a bit. Can the Democratic opposition put the brakes on Trump’s packed train, on his uncompromising and aggressive mobs?

Will counterpowers to authoritarianism be able to assert themselves in the House of Representatives, in the courts, on investigative commissions? Or do Trump and his consorts represent a groundswell that will affect an entire era and change the entire democratic world against which a small-scale vote in the United States won’t do very much at all?