Right-wing populists cheer the return of Trump, one of their own

ROME - Some heads of state are shuddering at the thought of a new Donald Trump presidency. But at least one segment of the global political class is publicly rejoicing: right-wing populists who are hailing the return of the U.S. leader who could validate and amplify their agendas.

In Argentina and Brazil, the Netherlands and Hungary, Germany and Turkey, nationalists showered praise on Trump, congratulating a man they view as a powerful ally in the culture wars, who mirrors their views on illegal immigration, who would push back with them against climate action - and who has proved to be tolerant of democratic backsliding. In time, Trump’s policies, particularly his vows to slap steep tariffs on imports, may sting. But for now, they are celebrating.

“It was not woke Hollywood that decided this election, but the working American people,” Alice Weidel, co-leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, wrote on X.

The U.S. vote, she said, was “an election against mass migration. It was an election against economic decline, against climate ideology, against gender. Donald Trump has said, by the way, no men in women’s sports and things like that. It was above all an election of young people who finally want to have a perspective again. And it was an election against all this war propaganda.”

In his first term in office, Trump offered comfort to authoritarians, regularly speaking in admiring terms of Russian President Vladimir Putin, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, while downplaying their rights abuses and other efforts to crush dissent. He offered a new way to dismiss accountability by popularizing the term “fake news.” He endorsed constructing walls to control migration, withdrew from international climate agreements and fueled the “war on woke.”

Observers see his coming term as more of the same, but on steroids, and one that could deliver a fresh jolt of momentum to populists and nationalists abroad.

“I think that this will embolden them; they will now have a sense that they are in the march of history,” said Catherine Fieschi, a political analyst and fellow at the Robert Schuman Center of the European University Institute in Florence and the author of a book on populism.

Nationalist politicians in Europe said they see Trump as a partner in their push to end the flow of money to Ukraine and to roll back rules aimed at slashing greenhouse gas emissions and regulating social media.

“Donald Trump is now freeing us for the next few years from the Ukraine war, from the Green Deal, from the Digital Services Act,” said Maximilian Krah, an AfD politician and member of the European Parliament. “And he is giving us political breathing room, because you can see that in the U.S. people are already further along and are voting for Donald Trump.”

In Italy, the Trump victory was being spun as a win for socially conservative thought.

It “represents a severe defeat for the radical agenda on abortion and gender promoted by the Biden presidency and sponsored by VIPs and mainstream media aligned with Kamala Harris in the election campaign,” the conservative social values advocacy group ProVita and Famiglia said in a statement.

The Biden administration had criticized a new law, backed by the government of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, that criminalizes international surrogacy in a move that critics say especially targets same-sex couples seeking to have children.

“The U.S. was exercising its moral suasion to discourage the embracing of policies that would lead to taking steps back” in civil rights, said Gabriele Piazzoni, secretary general of Arcigay, Italy’s largest gay rights group. “Now this bulwark will entirely come undone.”

In the Netherlands, the party of far-right firebrand Geert Wilders - a brother of Trump’s in ideology and hairstyle - is now part of the governing coalition. Celebrating Trump’s victory, Wilders declared on X: “Patriots are winning elections all over the world. The liberal-leftish woke driven nihilists are full of disbelief and hate and unfit to give the people what they truly want: freedom and their own nation first, their own people first and most of all no more illegal immigration.”

Analysts say Wilders is likely to leverage Trump’s victory while trying to push a new anti-migrant program through the Dutch parliament. The move would tighten rules for family reunifications, shorten the term of temporary visas, and designate parts of Syria safe for the return of rejected asylum seekers.

“Wilders will use this victory, saying, ‘See, this is a universal trend and you have to deal with migration.’ It will help him in the national discussion,” said Ruud Koole, a Dutch political analyst and former senator.

Trump’s strongest ally in the region is the illiberal Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orban, a leader who has co-opted the courts while muzzling the free press, nongovernmental organizations and his political opponents. During the presidency of Joe Biden, Orban came under pressure for eroding the rule of law - a criticism likely to disappear under Trump, who has described the Hungarian as “fantastic.”

Orban welcomed Trump’s win as “a much needed victory for the World!” The Hungarian leader is hosting summits of European leaders this week in Budapest, where he is expected to boast about a resurgent right and leverage his bromance with Trump to elevate his place on the European stage.

But relations between nationalist populists can be like porcupines mating - tricky at best.

China has used Orban as a back door into Europe, an issue that may drive a wedge between him and Trump, who has promised to take aim at Beijing. And another major European far-right figure, France’s Marine Le Pen, was notably less effusive Wednesday than some of her counterparts.

Trump is so widely reviled by the French public that seeming to be too close to him may not be to Le Pen’s benefit. A certain strain of anti-Americanism, and pro-Russian sentiment, also runs through her nationalist movement, as well as others in Europe.

In fact, her top lieutenant, Jordan Bardella, signaled Wednesday that the French should see the Trump victory as a national wake-up call for the “protection of our interests and our identities.”

“As all the other powers are waging an economic and influence war against Europe, we must now take our destiny into our own hands. Nobody will do it for us,” he wrote on X.

And a trade war, observers say, could quickly smash any ideological bridge between Trump and the European nationalists heralding his victory now.

It’s possible, Fieschi said, that Trump may try to curry favor with certain leaders by offering trade exceptions in exchange for loyalty. But it could be a hard sell.

“He’d have to make someone like Meloni, who is the most powerful right-wing conservative in Europe, a very special deal to convince her it’s okay to trash her playground, Europe, with tariffs,” she said.

In Latin America, Trump allies old and new celebrated his win. Argentina’s unconventional president, Javier Milei, who may be looking to Trump to smooth his chronically indebted nation’s relations with the International Monetary Fund, posted an edited photo of the two men embracing before a background of U.S. and Argentine flags.

Few were more devoted to Trump on the international stage than former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, who lost reelection in 2022. His backers have said a Trump victory could give momentum to Bolsonaro’s attempt to override a court order that banned him from running in 2026 over his baseless attacks on Brazil’s electronic voting system.

“May Trump’s victory inspire Brazil to follow the same path. May our compatriots see in this example the inspiration needed to never bow down, to rise with honor, following the footsteps of those who refused to be conquered by adversity,” Bolsonaro wrote on X.

During Trump’s first term in office, he and Turkey’s autocratic president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, enjoyed a warm relationship that appeared impervious to tensions between their two governments, including over the conflict in Syria, Turkey’s purchase of a Russian missile defense system and its imprisonment of U.S. citizen Andrew Brunson, a Christian evangelical preacher who was eventually released.

Erdogan has been a vociferous critic of Israel’s military offensives in Gaza and Lebanon and has voiced continued support for the Palestinian militant group Hamas, presenting a possible obstacle in his relationship with Trump now. Turkey, a NATO member, has also sought a middle path between Russia and Ukraine during their conflict, with Erdogan keeping close ties to Putin even as his government has supported Ukraine, including by supplying Turkish-made drones.

On Wednesday, Erdogan congratulated his “friend Donald Trump.”

“In this new period,” Erdogan wrote, “I hope that Turkey-US relations will strengthen, that regional and global crisis and wars, especially the Palestinian issue and the Russia-Ukraine war, will come to an end.”