Trump, more dangerous today than yesterday

By Juan De la Puente.

November 9, 2016

When Hitler lost 2 million of votes in the elections in November 1932 and passed from 230 to 196 seats in the Reichstag, the fashion guru in Europa, the English Harold Laski, proclaimed that Nazism was already an exhausted force and that Hitler would spend his days on the terrace of a Bavarian bar recalling how he had been about to rule Germany. Two months later Hitler was appointed chancellor by the aged President Hindenburg after effectively conspired to divide the ranks of the conservatives Nazis.

Most analyses after Hitler's rise to power changed after his appointment as chancellor. Germany's problem was no longer Hitler and his brown shirts but the "other" and the "others”. And so, a list of fatalities of Germany was elaborated that instead of explaining Hitler, justified him: The Treaty of Versailles, the Great Depression of the 29, the loss of the colonies, the unemployment, the communists, the unions, the Social-democrats, and especially the Republic of Weimar and its liberal constitution, allegedly attacked for expressing the old of politics. And of course, the Jews, very similar in today's xenophobic language to Latinos in the US.

I am not among those who "already knew" that Donald Trump would win the US election. I believed that the battle for freedom in that country would not have that end. Trump always seemed to me a 21st-century fascist who manipulated-I now see effectively-the emotions of a nation susceptible to the rhetoric of manifest destiny and conservative philosophy toward the rest of the world and its neighbours.

Now he looks more dangerous than yesterday. That's why I'm not among those who start diving to find reasons for Trump's triumph other than Trump, that is, the usual list: Hillary Clinton is hated, Latinos piss on the streets and steal jobs from Americans or US has shielded against Islamist terrorism. Trump's triumph without Trump can not be explained. The indirect explanations that are made direct ones to avoid pointing out the political meaning of a fatal act, was already tried in the thirties in Germany to justify the rise of fascism. From that explanation Trump is less Trump. I believe instead that what has happened in the US is the victory of the populist and dangerously nationalist wing of a conservative nation. Twelve years ago, John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, two journalists from The Economist, published a revealing text of that conservatism in progress. (The Right Nation, Penguin Press 2004). The text mentioned that 41% of Americans considered themselves conservative, compared to 19% considered liberal. The authors already spoke 12 years ago of an ongoing conservative revolution that has operated since the end of the Second World War. That revolution seems to have matured this year. We have an extremely idealized idea of US development, to the point when we deny its high rate of inequality when compared to the European average, an example of which is its health system that has problems to become universal, as Europe did 30 or more years ago. It is also a historically armed country, which has more than 2 million prisoners, the highest rate of incarceration in the world, with 756 people per 100,000 population; which does not sign treaties; which practices the death penalty in several states; and uses force to resolve their conflicts.

This conservative nation is fought house by house from liberalism and in that way, the warnings about Trump have not been scarce. On that route, the system not only produced Obama eight years ago, but also Bernie Sanders - the clearest anti-Trump - who with his strong liberal social rhetoric won 13 million votes in the Democratic primaries and more than 1,800 delegates at the Democratic Convention.

It was not enough. The campaign against Trump failed to impact the social, racial, and territorial gaps of the United States. The polls conducted by Edison Research for several US media reveals that fewer black people than 2012 voted now for Democrats, and that more blacks, Latinos and Asians voted for Republicans this time. In the case of the Latino vote while in 2012, 71% voted for Obama, 65% now voted for Clinton, and similarly, more young and poor people voted for the Democrats 4 years ago than now.

If you should blame someone for Trump's triumph, it's not the ones who fought him but those who did not fight him, especially his own party, the Republican, which has accepted the historical substitution of the right-wing by a far-right, misogynist, isolationist, nationalist, warmongering and violent ideology.

Trump is not Hitler because the US is not Germany, 2016 is not the same as 1933, nor democracy in this century has the standards of 80 years ago. But let us not underestimate him; a non-democratic president cannot make a democratic government, and even if he succeeded big messes are not discarded.

(Translation: Micaela De la Puente)