Donald Trump's populist wave sweeps through EuropeBERLIN — As Western Europe gears up for a string of elections over the next year, right-wing parties are seizing on Donald Trump's victory as proof that a strong nationalistic stance against trade and immigration will propel them into power.
A wave of populism already has spread to Eastern Europe, where countries that include Croatia, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia have rightest governments.
Farther west, Austria next month could elect Europe's first far-right head of state since World War II. Norbert Hofer of the Freedom Party narrowly lost a race for the largely ceremonial post in April, but a new election was ordered because of alleged irregularities in counting mailed-in ballots....
..."People are sick and tired of politicians who refused to listen to their worries about rising immigration, the loss of law and order, taxes being spent abroad while domestic needs are rising, trade agreements that harm employment at home," said Geert Wilders, a Dutch lawmaker and leader of the Netherlands' far-right Party for Freedom.
"We are witnessing a Patriotic Spring, in America as well as in Europe," he told USA TODAY. "Our people have the same worries as the American people. The Trump victory proves that change is possible. There is no doubt this will encourage the Dutch people to vote for change as well."...
...Trump's backers identify with his vow to reject the political elite and take back control of American institutions and policy that he claims have been undermined by years of corrupt and inefficient government. "The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer," Trump declared in his victory speech early Wednesday.
Similar themes fueled the frustration that led to Brexit in June, when British voters defied nearly all the polls and expert predictions by rejecting more than 40 years of EU membership. Indeed, when Trump visited the United Kingdom the day after the vote to open a new golf course in Scotland, he said: "They took their country back, just like we will take America back." In August, he joked of calling himself "Mr. Brexit." In October, Trump said he would deliver "Brexit times five."...
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2016/11/13/donald-trump-victory-hailed-europe-populists/93580556/
