EACH TIME Slawomir Mentzen speaks, the crowds seem to get larger. In a matter of weeks the 38-year-old far-right firebrand has leapfrogged to second place in Poland’s presidential contest. Mr Mentzen once said his party opposed “Jews, homosexuals, abortion, taxation and the European Union”. Now, he has a powerful new message: thinly veiled antagonism for Ukraine. A recent poll suggests that one in five Polish voters supports him.
Opponents of wokery, immigration and liberal internationalism in Europe and elsewhere expected President Donald Trump’s return to the Oval Office to kindle voters’ enthusiasm for their cause. At first glance, it would appear that Mr Trump is indeed bolstering the hard right in Poland, too. At a recent rally for Mr Mentzen in the small city of Legnica, a boyish supporter with a sharp haircut told the crowd that “in America, people woke up…they chose Donald Trump.” Drawing a parallel closer to home, he insisted that “all over the world, you can hear the same thing: enough.” But look a bit deeper and a different picture emerges, for Mr Mentzen’s rise comes at the expense of Poland’s main hard-right party, Law and Justice (PiS).
This splintering of the right-wing vote in Poland is not just a clear example of how Mr Trump is disrupting politics elsewhere. It also shows how he is affecting politics in ways that are often unexpected and are certainly unpredictable. Even as Mr Trump and his MAGA movement set about deliberately reshaping American politics, the waves they are making at home are rocking parties around the world. In some cases he is bolstering incumbents, many of them with centrist, liberal or even left-wing views that are antithetical to his America First policies on immigration, trade and defence alliances. In others he is splintering support for parties on the right, or creating problems for their leaders, because of his quarrels with America’s allies and his soft touch for Russia.
This “Trump effect” is strongest in countries where the American president has picked fights (see chart 1). Since Mr Trump berated Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office in February, support for Ukraine’s president has shot up by ten points, to 67%. Canada’s incumbent Liberal Party has seen an even more impressive 23-point bounce since December, after Mr Trump started a trade war with it and with Mexico.
This may be partly down to the resignation of its leader, Justin Trudeau, but not entirely: the former prime minister’s approval rating has soared by 14 points. Mexicans are also rallying round their flag—and their president, Claudia Sheinbaum, who has gained seven points, to win approval from an emphatic 71% of voters. In Denmark support for the incumbent Social Democrats has risen by five points since Mr Trump spoke of buying or seizing Greenland from it.
MAGA’s international allies (who describe themselves as “national conservatives”) had expected Mr Trump’s victory to make radical right-wing politics more credible with voters elsewhere. Shortly after Mr Trump took office, leaders of Europe’s populist right gathered in Madrid, claiming they would “Make Europe Great Again” too (though, to their chagrin, the acronym MEGA has not really caught on). Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary, said: “The Trump tornado has changed the world in just a few weeks.”
But a populist Trump-bump has failed to materialise, despite efforts by many of Mr Trump’s lieutenants to make his administration and the wider MAGA movement an inspiration to and example for right-wing populists around the world. Among their priorities has been to withdraw American funding for initiatives that promote diversity, equity and inclusion abroad. In February, while in Germany, J.D. Vance, Mr Trump’s vice-president, lectured European leaders for refusing to work with right-wing parties. And in a meeting with Sir Keir Starmer, he griped about Britain’s anti-hate-speech rules.
Elon Musk, a billionaire who wields extensive authority in Mr Trump’s administration, has reportedly agreed to pay the legal fees of Tommy Robinson, a jailed English anti-Islam activist. Mr Trump’s allies have been particularly keen to give succour to the hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which Mr Musk has endorsed, and whose co-leader Mr Vance has met.
So much for the MAGA magic
For all that, though, Messrs Vance and Musk had no discernible impact on the German election in February, says Roland Abold of Infratest dimap, a pollster. Though the AfD came second, its fortunes had not changed much since Mr Trump’s re-election. In general Mr Trump’s immediate effect has been to boost mainstream incumbents at the expense of populist outsiders. Fears of trade wars and real wars tend to suck oxygen from culture wars.
Some leaders on the hard right are now beginning to worry about MAGA muddying their own brand. Mr Trump has had few clear wins and many chaotic policy turns (witness falling markets and voter approval ratings). Much energy has been devoted to targeting domestic political enemies for grievances that do not resonate outside America. And Mr Trump is diabolically unpopular in many liberal democracies, except for among people who already support the hard right (see chart 2). Luke Tryl, a pollster in London, says that Mr Trump’s bracing start has not given the right-wing parties in Britain new political verve. Instead it seems to have pushed crucial undecided voters farther out of their reach.
Any benefit Mr Trump might have given right-wing parties is “being overshadowed by an expansionist and aggressive political nationalism”, says Eric Kaufmann, a professor at the University of Buckingham (and a self-described national conservative). America First, he says, “is activating political defensiveness in other countries”. Views of America have turned sharply negative across polls in several Western countries. Canadians are booing America’s national anthem at hockey games, Greenlanders are protesting outside America’s consulate in Nuuk and Germans are forgoing Tesla cars in protest against the company’s founder, Mr Musk.
Initially, Nigel Farage of Reform UK hailed Mr Trump’s win as an inflection point for the nationalist right globally—but now he is putting distance between himself and the American president. Mr Farage, who has long used his friendship with Mr Trump to buy himself political relevance at home, suffered a 12-point fall in net approval between February and March.
Marine Le Pen, the leader of the hard-right National Rally party in France, and Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s hard-right prime minister, are perhaps natural allies of Mr Trump. Yet he is causing both of them a headache for reasons that echo across many far- and hard-right parties in Europe, including his administration’s cavalier disregard for Europe and the sacrifices of its soldiers in America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Mr Trump’s apparent willingness to abandon Ukraine in order to do a deal with Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, is also dividing populists in places such as Poland. “Shouldn’t Polish taxpayers’ money be spent on the needs of Poles, not on the needs of our Ukrainian neighbours?” Mr Mentzen argued recently at a rally. His hard-right rival, PiS, meanwhile, was slower to shed its sympathies for Ukraine and has paid a political price.
The humiliation of Mr Zelensky in the Oval Office in February has divided MAGA’s fellow travellers. Some, such as Ms Le Pen and Geert Wilders of the Dutch hard right, came out in support of Ukraine. Yet Germany’s AfD appeared gleeful, and Mr Orban and the leader of Georgia backed Mr Trump.
The reasons for such divisions are fundamental. Populist movements have gained purchase with voters by focusing on culture wars and immigration—not foreign policy. Whereas liberals believe in universal values, cultural nationalists necessarily emphasise their identity as unique. Though elites in the populist movement are generally sympathetic to Mr Trump’s affinity for Russia’s cultural nationalism, their voters are badly split over Russia and Ukraine (see chart 3). Only a minority of AfD supporters view Russia as a threat. In contrast, disapproval of Mr Trump among Mr Farage’s supporters almost doubled to 53% after the Oval Office bust-up.
What’s more, one national conservative’s dogged pursuit of his country’s self-interest will inevitably contradict another’s. PiS, say, has a keen interest in a strong NATO to fend off Russia. As Mr Trump has backed off defending Europe, any association with him has become an unhelpful one, says Wojciech Szacki, a Polish political analyst. Certainly, Mr Trump seems uninterested in shaping his agenda to help other right-wingers. Asked on March 19th whether he has doomed Canada’s Conservatives in their election later this year, Mr Trump said: “I don’t really care. It doesn’t matter to me at all.” ■