Trumpism doesn’t exist in a vacuum; it has plenty of characteristics in common with European right-wing populism, including hatred of immigrants, support for declining industries and rural areas against a supposedly insensitive urban elite, and contempt for woke cultural ideas. But is Trumpism unique in some ways?
Yes. First of all, the European extreme right parties are ideological; they aren’t cults of personality. The individual grievances of their leaders don’t figure into their campaign strategies. Second, they aren’t attacking their own legal and political institutions as being fundamentally rotten. Finally, they haven’t targeted a large proportion of their own citizens as being the enemy. Trump and his supporters have made it clear that anyone who votes against them is not a real American and should be dealt with accordingly.
The emphasis on personal grievances is really what sets Trump apart from any other right-wing dictator or semi-democratic strongman with whom I’m familiar. Even Hitler and Mussolini didn’t do that; for them, at least in public, it was about the revival of the nation, not themselves. In a way, that may make Trump less dangerous than someone driven by ideology, but his reservoir of venom is almost bottomless, so it would be a mistake to assume that his ambition to turn blue America into an ash heap is limited.