As we know, Trump didn’t invent Trumpism; it has existed in Europe for decades. Today, from Brexit to Duterte, you see evidence of it all over the world. Here are my observations:
1. Trumpism operates differently in presidential and parliamentary systems. In Europe, virtually every nation has an anti-immigrant party which gets a fairly stable percentage of the vote, but never dominates the legislature, and is rarely included in the government. As a result, the problems these parties create are chronic, but not acute. In the US, the situation is the opposite; by suddenly taking over one of the existing parties in a two-party system, reactionaries have created the possibility of wielding power with only the law and the judicial system to check them. In parliamentary terms, it is as if the Conservatives and UKIP were running as a single party, with the UKIP leader as the choice for PM. It would never happen, but the Brexit vote shows the potential result if it did.
2. There is an analogy in the French system. It is widely assumed (in my opinion, incorrectly) that all respectable opinion will coalesce around the moderate right-wing candidate after Le Pen gets the greatest number of votes on the first ballot in 2017. Clinton is attempting to do the same thing by reaching out to old school Republicans and emphasizing the unpredictability and dangerousness of a Trump Administration in her campaign. Will it work? That remains to be seen; some prominent GOP members are publicly supporting Clinton, but the vast majority have fallen in line behind their tribal leader regardless of their concerns about his ability to function as President.
3. Where does Duterte fit in this? Like the US, the Philippines were enjoying reasonably strong growth, but they elected a thug whose coarseness and disdain for opposition and due process are clearly reminiscent of Trump’s. On the other hand, Duterte doesn’t have much to say about immigrants, which obviously sets him apart from Trump and the European anti-immigrant parties. I think his success is due more to a new world-wide impatience with the democratic process that I will address in a subsequent post than to the anti-globalist zeitgeist.