4mo ago

Trump’s spell has been broken | The US president is hurting rather than helping his ideological allies such as Nigel Farage

www.newstatesman.com

Trump’s spell has been broken

Summary

Donald Trump's influence on global right-wing politics is waning as his association increasingly becomes a political liability.

In the UK, Nigel Farage's popularity has dropped, with 53% of Reform Party supporters now viewing Trump unfavorably. This shift undermines Farage’s chances of political success.

Internationally, leaders like Canada’s Pierre Poilievre and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni are distancing themselves from Trump.

Meanwhile, Trump's economic promises have faltered, with US growth forecasts down and stock markets struggling.

The fading appeal of Trumpism marks the end of his ideological hold on Westminster politics.

59 comments

Jon Stewart made a joke about how dems keep saying the right-wing “fever” is going to break. He showed clips all the way back to Obama.
- The stuff you mentioned only matters if people know how to vote in their own best interest, and they don't. All the Tesla protesters and the AOC crowds likely voted Democrat anyways. Nobody's mind has changed.
  I think that can start to change in the coming months. On April 2 Trump's full tariffs are going into effect. There will be a retaliatory response from the whole world. But make no mistake. If the election were held again today Trump would still win.
- The Onion likely did it first. Regardless it’s funny either way.
- When Trump can run an ad about giving sex changes to prisoners, to then place them in a female prison, you realize there needs to be a shift towards what the average person actually wants.
  Inclusively is nice, but we instead have a guy dismantling everything.
  
  Oh come on not this "oh the Democrats lost because they're too woke" nonsense again.
  
  Trump claimed "they're eating the cats, they're eating the dogs" live on national TV and it didn't make a difference, he could run an ad about Democrats being void monsters from beyond the abyss and the average person would go with it.
- Yeah, it's not a fever, it's more like a reversion to our primitive mean. That being said, actually doing things they have to defend is what made fascism uncool the first time.
- The WALLS are CLOSING IN on him!
Glad the rest of the world is learning from our mistake.
- Now if only we could.
  
  Maybe there should be a federal agency for making sure Americans learn things? The Bureau of Learning? No there has to be a name that's gooder than that.
  
  Learning from our mistakes is obviously unamerican.
- Yes, thanks America. You're finally up on the cross with the best of them.
  (I'm sorry this is happening to you, OP)
- It's weird, because there's inarguably been a 'vibe shift' away from the more authoritarian side of progressive ideas and politics, and for a while it seemed the backlash was unstoppable and far-right. I hope we are starting to see a 'vibe shift' away from the extremes of the right, too. It can't be healthy for a society to swing from one extreme to the other. I suppose social media, and the difficulty with communicating nuance on such platforms is partly, maybe wholly, to blame.
  
  I'm sorry, but what "authoritarian side of progressive ideas and politics" are you talking about? I'm a progressive (not a tankie), and genuinely have no idea what you might be talking about. Most everything that people have wanted passed is protecting individual rights and liberties for everyone...not just white men.
- That's, frankly, copium. Give them a few years and they'll be even stronger than they are now as liberals all over screw up.
- America needs to fail for humanity to succeed.
Yup. In several countries, including my own (Portugal), the 'far right' who tends to repeat Trump's talking points is raising red flags all over.
Poilievre in Canada, Farage in the UK, the whole AfD/Musk/Vance debacle in Germany, and so on. And many of these parties were gaining strong traction with each election. Now Trump's image association with them might as well be a radioactive label.
- I hope you're right, but I'm not convinced we can draw conclusions yet. Starmer's government is not popular and while Farage has been a joke at home among many, he never drops out of the picture because he has a lot of international far-right support and consequently a lot of money. Brexit was obviously stupid and happened; giving Farage power would be similarly stupid and I'm not sure it couldn't still happen. In Germany the AfD is still too strong, though not quite as strong as it had hoped. In Canada I hope people have finally seen through Poilievre, but again Canada underestimates the Trumpist/convoy/PP people at its peril, and while Carney is sending a lot of good messages the kind of liiberalism he represents has not traditionally done well in holding off the fascists.
  
  The thing is that Centrist neoliberal politics is completely on appealing to anyone, and the far right has capitalized on that by fighting an alternative that blows but it Taps into racism so they're able to achieve some success against competition that doesn't even pretend to care about you or fight for anything other than billionaire profits. That's also why Unapologetic left-wing parties can also do well sometimes when not actively suppressed. Even stuff like Bernie Sanders and AOC's rally tour shows that people something different than what we have, and they don't seem to be too picky about what it is specifically. If we can convince them that the left wing side offers them a better life than the right wing we can beat them
- Just a little while ago, Rui Rocha, leader of IL (liberals, but now they are more like libertarians) was saying that we had to adopt an efficiency department like DOGE. Apparently they don't believe that Trump and Musk's image can damage theirs.
- I don't see why AfD would have any problem with USA leadership. They both want to normalise Nazi rhetoric, and Musk is helping a lot. Same in France with the RN
- Worst. Vampire. Ever.
- 'Masters of the Return' like dangerous politicians, toxic influencers, child-molesters, con artists, neighbours-from-hell, serial adulterers (to give a few examples) keep recycling the same old behaviours because behind what they do is a pathology, a closed loop with no exit ramp, a compulsion they rarely have enough insight to acknowledge or control. How do these parasites/predators keep finding victims to exploit? Because society constantly creates a supply of new victims to use. Behind every victim there is a matching pathology, usually going back to childhood abuse or neglect, that sets them up to be abused.
  Thus in a society like Britain, we have a minority of sociopaths and psychopaths (1% or less), a large group of people with sub-optimal childhood experiences (some measures might say as many as 80% have poor childhoods and thus grew up to some degree vulnerable to be exploited in adult life), that leaves very few citizens who had a good enough start in life to not become either an abuser or a victim (maybe as few as 19% or one in five of us).
  What is a shock to me is that the ideal of how we should be, is actually a minority experience. Few people are what we call 'normal'. Actually, 'normal' is the exception not the rule. Our politics has not kept pace with reality. We need politics to see itself as a branch of therapeutics - see it as necessary in order to heal society. Sadly, politics is one area of life which has very few 'normal' people in it - not even one in five MPs is psychologically healthy, more than 1% are sociopaths. People like that cannot fix politics any more than they can fix their own pathologies. Starmer and his Cabinet are same as Farage and Reform, in that they are not mentally healthy and not offering the kind of politics we actually need.
  If I had to guess, I'd say this level of pathology is required by capitalism and will only end if we curtail capitalism to protect ourselves i.e. capitalism harms us in childhood, we grow up exploitable, and capitalism duly exploits us - ultimately it is profitable to hurt kids. To be able to exploit people capitalism requires a supply of sociopaths, so such people are not just tolerated under capitalism but promoted into powerful positions and weaponised to exploit the rest. The good news is that just by being normal, giving your kids and others close to you a healthy, well-nurtured, psychologically normal life - being just normal humans, good mams and dads, happy kids - is actually radical politics and helps the push back against tyranny. I reckon this is one deep reason why capitalists hate stuff that promotes good human relations e.g. woke stuff, gender politics, trans rights, stuff that heals and empowers 'ordinary people' who would otherwise have just been victims. A happy child will not grow up to be anyone's doormat. That's the hidden revolution going on right now.
I just don't get it. He could have used the Defense Production Act to lower prices of eggs and he would have been a HERO to the working class idiots that voted for him. He would have ensured that no Democrat ever wins another election. Instead he was like, "Y'all are about to be poor for awhile while I do the dumbest shit you've ever seen. Watch this shit. Fuck your egg prices, I'm going to pretend to steal Canada, Greenland, and Panama City Beach or some shit."
- That's assuming he's even considering that there will be future elections. Or at least elections in which the oligarchs have a chance of losing (I'm still betting Trump plans on living forever and never ceding power because narcissist).
  
  Rhetoric that there won't be future elections is straight up pussy shit. Go lay down and die somewhere else.
In Canada, both parties are accusing each other of being aligned with Trump
- One clearly is though
- Benny Hill music intensifies.
- In Britain our most powerful parties are competing to kiss Trump's massive arse - our Prime Minister 'likes and respects Trump'. Honestly, Starmer, get a room! Ugh! I am sick of being shamed by my politicians.
  I hope Canada elects leaders who will tell Trump to get lost. You need Zelenskyy energy. You deserve it. Give 'Uncle Spam' hell, Canada!
  
  Man starmer is such a disappointment... I was so happy for my British cousins when you finally voted out the Tories, but it seems like there's barely any change in the policies or even just vibe..
- The faster, and harder, the better it will be for EVERYONE. Well, except the rich Americans
Trump's playbook is Attack, Deny and Never Admit Defeat. This is no joke, he's not going to let reality spoil the party.
- Yeah, he's a malignant narcissist. You just described their playbook. DARVO: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim/Offender. They have no accountability, they constantly blame and accuse their victims, and they absolutely NEVER apologize for their disgraceful behaviour, because it's always your fault, not theirs.
  
  Hmm, in The Apprentice the mantra was Attack, Deny, and Never Admit Defeat. Where did DARVO come from?
He's a cult leader. Cult leader's spells are only broken when they die.
I'm willing to bet that they get a "2nd wind", where some kind of tipping-point removes obstacles to their dismantling of our world's civilization..
It was Richard Stutely's book "The Definitive Business Plan" which identified that there is ONE thing that startups & businesses planning a market-expansion NEVER do:
understand the opponent's countermeasures.
Is anybody looking into the right-wing discussions, to see how they are going to rally/adapt/evolve?
XOR is this just "looking at the foam on the sea & making pronouncements on the rip-current's 'not' existing"?
Further, there is a tipping-point crossed, in the US, whereby it's irreversible: there simply is no way for the US to get back into representative-republic territory, now: too much got dismantled, already, & it isn't slowing-down.
In Europe, they're still working-on getting that far, right?
& the Heritage Foundation, the original puppetmasters designing Trump's whole operation..
https://www.project2025.observer/
( that tracks their breathtaking accomplishment-speed )
now working on Europe..
https://www.desmog.com/2025/03/14/heritage-foundation-project-2025-allies-mcc-ordo-iuris-discuss-dismantling-the-eu-european-union/
that is about their plan to dismantle the EU for themselves..
https://www.factcheck.org/2024/09/a-guide-to-project-2025/
for 1 window into what their plans are.
Do the anti-fascist-"society" forces within the countries outside of the US have enough pragmatism, enough objectivity, enough uprightness, to resist the Combined Arms ( attacking from ALL angles possible, until the opponent fails ) assaulting of the far-right, for their converting-the-Western-world-to-a-bunch-of-Russias-owned/ruled-by-them??
.. I am not betting on it, tbh.
Responsibility & accountability are both their enemies, but both responsibility & accountability are the enemies of .. ALL political-entities??
Politics itself opposes responsibility & accountability, doesn't it?
Which sets the underlying problem thus:
IF politics opposes both responsibility & accountability, because it wasnt ONLY authority-on-others,
AND ALL the political-factions are working to have political-authority-on-others,
THEN .. how the hell could anybody get what political-motivation doesn't want, accountability & responsibility, to be the core of any political-"answer"??
The political basis for any countermeasure hamstrings its trueness-of-aim!
To me, this identifies that politics, itself, has to be removed from ruling our world: its nature won't allow the integrity required to keep us alive, during The Great Filter, when political-tantrum, religious-tantrum, ClimatePunctuation, food-chain-degradation/collapse, panic-migrations, totalitarianism, etc, all vie for being the "ruler" of the world, while we try to NOT face our own unconscious-mind's bulling-ignorance ( which created this whole mess, & which would rather kill us completely-off than force-grow-up ).
Find 1 country which has the integrity to remove political-motivation with successful machiavellianism, from being significant in its representatives' government..
I don't believe there is 1 on this world.
Yet it would require a majority-of-NATO to do exactly that kind of thing, to survive what's gradually blowing-up-in-our-faces..
_ /\ _
Small PP isn't distancing himself from Trump, he's just lying about it
I do worry though for a sort of dig in in their policies. Similar to Putin before the invasion. A lot of the far right said that "yes, a strong autocrat, masculin, anti-woke, homophobic person like Putin would be the saviour of Europe". Now some of them, like almost split in the middle, stopped saying "those things are good, look at Putin", but lost no support after the invasion. With Trump its going to be a similar thing, is my worry. "Yeah, but Trump is a bafoon, but massdeportation, autocracy, and capital's control over the government are still important, we will just to ot the proper way" is what it will move to. And of course a lot of europeans, even on the far right, will breath a deep sigh of relief that they can call Trump a bafoon. I think, or worry more like it, it will marginally affect the support for the fra-right, if at all, the liberals that has not already joined the far-right or the socdems will try to shoehorn in a comparison to Trump at every argument, and they will get nowhere.
God I hope so
Yeah lets hope this effect is seen nationally as well.
All the stupid fuck had to do was lock the clocks, ending the time change.

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