Poland evens Trump’s international poll influencer score at 1:1
For every George Simion, it turns out, there is a Karol Nawrocki.
Mr Nawrocki narrowly won Poland’s June 1 presidential election, delivering a substantive and symbolic victory to Mr Trump and his MAGA movement’s efforts to export the ideology overseas.
Mr Simion was, to use a familiar Trumpian insult, the “loser” who let his self-described “MAGA ticket” down in last month’s presidential election in Romania.
The score is even for Mr Trump and MAGA’s quest to internationalise their signature mindset, rhetoric, aspirations, inspiration and…enemies. (Germany, Canada, Australia didn’t march to the MAGA siren call for various domestic reasons, but Poland and Romania were thought to be susceptible to the Trump effect.)
The Trump brand largely rallies behind politicians hostile towards immigration, globalism, climate-mindful policies, alternative lifestyles and DEI or diversity, equity and inclusion. A week before the Polish election, Mr Trump’s Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was in the country urging Poles to vote for Mr Nawrocki to ensure the country continues to enjoy a US military presence. It may have been swayed some, given Poland’s proximity to the war in Ukraine.
Generally though, in Poland and Romania (as well as in Germany and Britain), Trumpism speaks in favour of a fierce fight for Western civilisation, the need to have more white babies and the occasionally stated belief that some cultures are superior to others.
How else to explain the mere three-month turnaround between the Trump administration’s public affirmation of support for white South Africans and the offer of refugee status on the false premise they are suffering a “genocide”?
On June 2, a second group of Afrikaners arrived in the US, just a few weeks behind the first batch of 59, who stepped off a plane despatched by the US government. The first batch was received at the airport with great fanfare by the US deputy secretary of state Christopher Landau, who made no secret about why America was resettling Afrikaners not Afghans. He told journalists it was because “they could be easily assimilated into our country”. (On the very day the first 59 Afrikaners arrived in the US, Mr Trump’s administration ended legal measures that had temporarily protected Afghans from deportation. More recently, it did the same with respect to Haitians, thereby condemning them to return to a country wracked by gang warfare and practically no government.)
That said, it’s also fair to note that Mr Trump and MAGA are making an effort to be truly international influence-pedlars. They’re not restricting themselves to the Western world.
In South Korea’s snap election on June 3, MAGA has backed Kim Moon-soo of the governing conservative People Power Party.
Mr Trump’s ally Steve Bannon devoted a section of his podcast to boosting Mr Kim. And MAGA types have been spreading polarising rumours that South Korea’s former conservative president, Yoon Suk Yeol, was ousted in a China-backed coup. Never mind that Mr Yoon was impeached and removed for his attempt to impose martial law in December, an act that plunged the nation into its gravest constitutional crisis in decades.
For all the support from Trumpland, Mr Kim has a problem. Mr Yoon, the former president reviled by many South Koreans, was from his party. Unluckily, Mr Yoon has also endorsed Mr Kim, thereby strengthening the toxic association in voters’ minds.
Might that mitigate any benefits of MAGA’s approval?
