The New Populism (II)
Written by Alfonso Elizondo
The current US president, Donald Trump, is a populist and has two important focuses: race and nationalism. It doesn’t matter if it is on the left or on the right, populism is ultranationalist. The bad guys are those who are not the majority because they are traitors to the country, explained Professor of International Relations, Ramírez Ugarte.
As in the case of Trump, world populisms see foreigners as a threat, as coming to steal work from nationals. So they are the ones who represent the transfer of the national wealth into the hands of foreigners.
Anti-immigration discourse is common in several European movements and political parties. Currently there are right-wing parties in Europe with pacifist ideas that have an anti-immigrant agenda and are anti-European.
Since the 1990s, right-wing populist parties have been gaining parliamentary representation in Europe. This happened in France, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Estonia and Romania. Other countries formed coalition governments, such as Switzerland, Austria, Greece, Slovakia, Lithuania, Latvia, the Netherlands and Italy. In addition there were some who ruled alone, as the cases of Hungary and Poland.
Since early 2010 there have been movements and political parties that were previously small, such as the French FN, the Italian Northern League, the Dutch PVV and the British UKIP, that began to emerge from the margins and gain support from the victims of the financial crisis and the Eurozone. The leaders of these parties blamed the European Union, the political elites and immigration for all the ills of society.
In its annual report, the porCausa Foundation noted that the presence of populism in Europe is due to cultural elements and ethnic identity, as well as hatred for foreigners and for anything that is different from them. These new populisms place the anti-immigration and Islamophobic message at the center of their election manifestos under the pretext of caring for security and public order.
Addendum: The New Populism of the Western World is a social and political phenomenon that marks the start of a new stage in human society. Its outcome is enigmatic and similar to what happened when the first agricultural society appeared on a private territory 9,000 years ago, and then the stage of the pharaohs, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The only difference is that in the world today, History and the Divine Powers have disappeared, so that only the present and the immediate future can be seen in a human society devoid of emotions and feelings.