Making nationalism scary again

The Star

31-05-2025

THANKS are owed to Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump and – in a special mention – JD Vance: The aggressive nationalism and chaos these three men promote have made far-right populism scary again, swinging several recent elections, including Romania's presidential vote on May 18.
That should be welcome news for anyone who recognises the potential damage a nationalist free-for-all can inflict. But make no mistake, without a radical transformation in their approach, this reprieve for traditional parties of the centre right and left will be short-lived.
First, there was Canada, where Trump's trade wars and talk of turning the country into the 51st US state helped erase a commanding opinion poll lead for the country's Maga-lookalike Conservative Party.
Then, on May 18, Bucharest's mayor and maths nerd Nicusor Dan scored an equally dramatic, come-from-behind victory to win Romania's presidency. He ran as a moderate independent against George Simion, a nationalist who also had nailed his colours to Trump's mast.
Vance ruffled feathers in Romania earlier in 2025, when he used the country's annulment of a first-round presidential vote in November 2024 to accuse Europe of abandoning democracy. Vance dismissed the basis for that court decision – intelligence findings of a massive TikTok campaign organised and paid for by Russia – as 'flimsy'.
But a raft of evidence has emerged to support the ruling. In Romania's case, the biggest shift driving the May 18 result was Putin's act of hybrid warfare. Russia's Manchurian candidate was banned from standing again.
But when Simion won May's first-round rerun even more convincingly, his success prompted a backlash. Turnout soared for the run-off. Bucharest crowds willing Dan to his 54% to 46%victory chanted: 'Russia don't forget, Romania is not yours.'
In fact, the vote may well have been swung by the huge increase in participation by voters in neighbouring Moldova, where more than one million people have dual Romanian citizenship.
Simion and his Alliance for the Union of Romanians party cried foul, but so far without providing evidence. It is explanation enough that they were pledging to reunify Moldova with Romania and halt military aid to Ukraine. Both proposals pose existential threats to the small ex-Soviet state, one from the west and the other from the east.
These are skin-of-the-teeth escapes for political elites who seem yet to have grasped the scale of the anger felt by voters who want genuine change.
Warning lights were flashing this past weekend, too, in Portugal, where the ruling centre-right coalition increased the number of seats it controls in Parliament in the May 18 snap election. Yet it still failed to gain a majority and the day's bigger story was that the far-right Chega party surged to 23% of the vote, mainly at the expense of the centre-left socialists. The country's traditional two-party system now looks broken.
There is a lesson here for all centrist parties, especially those on the left that have lost the trust of their traditional bedrock support among blue-collar workers. If they are to survive, these politicians must now be seen to deliver the fundamental change and economic improvement so many voters want. Managing and tinkering will not cut it.
Poland shows the challenge. Former European Council president Donald Tusk and his Civic Platform party won back power from the populist Law and Justice Party in late 2023. But delivering on reform promises has proved tough, especially with a Law and Justice president still in office to block legislative change.
On May 18, Warsaw's mayor and Tusk ally Rafal Trzaskowski emerged from a first-round presidential vote with a slender lead over his Law and Justice rival, according to exit polls. Strong showings from two other far-right candidates suggest an uphill struggle to win the run-off. Trzaskowski pledged to 'speed up changes'.
There is a similar dynamic at play across Western democracies. It does not matter that Brexit has clearly failed to deliver on any of its promises in the United Kingdom, or that Trump and his administration at times resemble an out-of-control clown car as much as a government in office.
The point is they are breaking things, which is what many voters want to see. And so long as Maga-like populists are the only ones offering radical change, they will probably be able to ride a growing tide of voter frustration.
So yes, Trump and Putin's clumsy aggression is for now undercutting the credibility of their populist acolytes in Western democracies. Yet this respite will count for little if moderates cannot find ways to show they recognise the need for change, and effect it.
That is admittedly a tall order. Improving productivity and healthcare, while still tackling climate change and halting Russian aggression in Europe, is infinitely harder than feeding anti-vax conspiracy theories and culture wars, or promising unaffordable handouts.
But leaders who recognise the vast damage populist chaos can cause will have to be more bold. They need to pick fights, take risks and break some taboos of their own.
Romania's new president, to name just one example, should use his meaningful, if limited, powers to launch a high-profile assault on corruption, forcing him into open warfare with the traditional parties that not only run the government and legislature, but also helped him win the run-off.
This will require levels of political courage not yet on display. But it is probably also, at this point, a binary choice. If centrist politicians cannot address the fury so many voters feel over the failure of an era of unprecedented wealth creation and cultural change, then it is only a matter of time before those leaders are roadkill. – Bloomberg Opinion/TNS