The Atlantic: Is Trump Dragging Down the European Far-Right?

[TomSea]

Is Trump Dragging Down the European Far-Right?

Worse-than-expected results for the Netherlands’s Geert Wilders are only the latest sign that the American president’s poor standing is harming politicians aligned with him.
Yves Herman / Reuters
    David A. Graham 9:18 AM ET Global

Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election in November was heralded as the latest in a series of triumphs for the populist right: First there was Brexit, followed by a series of gains for right-wing, anti-immigration parties in Europe. When Italians voted against a referendum backed by Prime Minster Matteo Renzi in December, it looked like proof of the populist wave’s continued surge.

But a poorer-than-expected showing by Geert Wilders’s Dutch Freedom Party (PVV), with nearly 80 percent turnout, in elections on Wednesday complicates the picture. While Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s center-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy lost eight seats, it will be the biggest party in the 150-seat Dutch parliament. Wilders’s party won 20, short of the 30 it hoped to pick up.

It’s too soon to declare the populist wave dead, but with Wilders’s stumble, it’s worth at least raising the question of whether Trump’s victory may have been the high-water mark for the right-wing populist movement.

Continued: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/03/is-trump-hurting-the-european-far-right/519735/

[The_Reader_David]

I suspect the PVV falling short had more to do with Rutte's government having the stones to stand up to Erdogan, thereby attracting back some voters who might have gone PVV had the government followed the previous islamophile fashion, than it had to do with anything on this side of the Atlantic.

[EC]

The French will be the real test.