Not too difficult but: How Donald Trump Won Over Europe's Right-Wing Xenophobes
Last night, Donald Trump took his "America First" message global. Appearing at a rally in Mississippi alongside British Member of European Parliament Nigel Farage, the architect of the United Kingdom's exit from the European Union, the GOP nominee sought to re-energize his struggling campaign by hitching his star to Europe's resurgent right-wing populism. "On June 23, the people of Britain voted to declare their independence," Trump said, "which is what we are going to do also, folks."
On a conservative Mississippi talk radio show earlier in the day, Farage compared himself to Trump, touting how he had won the Brexit vote against all predictions by the political establishment—despite being accused of xenophobia and "neo-nazism…There are huge similarities between what made Brexit happen and what can help Trump to win," said Farage, the former leader of the anti-immigration UK Independence Party. "The same thing can happen here." At the evening rally, Farage added, "If I was an American citizen, I wouldn't vote for Hillary Clinton if you paid me."
Trump's appearance alongside Farage is the latest example of his campaign making common cause with ethno-nationalist political parties across the Atlantic. In June, Trump, while in Scotland to promote his golf resort there, proclaimed Brexit "a great thing," and his affinity with Europe's far-right runs deeper than their mutual dislike of the European Union. Farage shares Trump's penchant for racially charged rhetoric, such as when he told an interviewer he would feel "concerned" if a group of Romanian men moved next door but suggested that he would have no problem if they were Germans. Trump has received glowing endorsements from many of continental Europe's most controversial nativists and xenophobes—politicians championed by some of Trump's most prominent supporters.
Among Trump's fans across the pond are National Front founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, whom has been fined in France for "inciting racial hatred;" Dutch Party for Freedom founder Geert Wilders, who has likened the Koran to Mein Kampf; and far-right Belgian politician Filip Dewinter, who spoke on the "Islamization of Europe" at the May conference of American Renaissance, a white nationalist group. Far-right leaders in Russia, the Czech Republic, Serbia, Slovenia, Sweden, Italy, and Greece have also endorsed or praised Trump. Golden Dawn, the ultra-right-wing Greek nationalist party, made a pro-Trump video starring neo-Nazis. The Trump campaign has not publicly disavowed any of these endorsements.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/08/donald-trump-campaign-right-wing-xenophobes-europe-nationalists
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