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Foto de archivo: EFE/MATTHEW CAVANAUGH
Archive photo: EFE/MATTHEW CAVANAUGH

When Washington sneezes, all Europe catches a cold

The reversion of the famous nineteenth-century proverb is the accurate description of what seems to be happening in international politics: roles have not only…

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The coming to power of a candidate like Donald Trump is not an innovative matter. Populism is a constant in political rhetoric, but its resurgence in the 21st century has taken more than one by surprise.

Trump's electoral strategy was to resort to an invalid nationalism, in a country built by immigrant labor and on the basis of a state wrought from the ground up, giving birth to one of the most heterogeneous cultures in the world and whose strength has transformed it in the world power par excellence.

Racism, classism, misogyny and white supremacy were only the gimlet of what the new administration had prepared for the country of the free man. The immigration ban with which Trump would inaugurate his mandate was sponsored by a cabinet of white and multimillionaire men who in no way represent the majority of the American people, this being one more failure of the battered democracy.

But its collaterals have not only been restricted to the American continent. It is no mere coincidence that the presidential campaign of Donald Trump was inaugurated just a week before the English referendum for the permanence in the European Community, that resulted in the phenomenon of the Brexit, with 52% of the population ready to leave the diplomatic model after the Second World War.

The motive behind both phenomena was the same: immigration. The English population claimed that the foreigner took advantage of opportunities that corresponded to the native, and the opinions in the United States were (and remain) exactly the same.

Before the Brexit, British Prime Minister David Cameron resigned, giving place to Theresa May who made public the decision to submit the Brexit to parliamentary vote on January 17, 2017, and its activation is scheduled for March 29, only 4 days after the anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome, which in 1957 sought to make war "not only unthinkable, but materially impossible", with half of the continent still extinguishing the isolated fires that remained of the second great war.

At the end of December 2016, candidates for the general election of the Netherlands were made public, the most prominent being the founder of the Party for Freedom, Geert Wilders.

Wilders founded his campaign in the most staunch Islamophobia, advocating Islam's ban in Holland, as well as the Koran, the Burka and the immigration ban, a strategy that Donald Trump had already up his sleeve, intending to put it into action a month after.

But Wilders did not get the necessary seats, and was the center-right representative Mark Rutte who would win, giving a respite to the European Community, which watched clinging to the seat.

The European panorama is now in the hands of two political fronts that represent the continent's state of tranquility: France and Germany.

Populism has not dodged the country of Enlightenment, Marine Le Pen being the main character in anti-European, anti-Islamic and nationalist rhetoric. President of the far-right National Front party, and daughter of her controversial founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, this French lawyer has based her campaign on the reactivation of the death penalty, control of borders by abandoning the Schengen area, and a Referendum for the abandonment of the euro and later NATO.

While the polls give the advantage to her opponent, former economic advisor to President François Hollande, Emmanuel Macron, the reformulation of the Trumpist rhetoric on French soil is fearful of more than one, especially the President of the European Parliament, Antonio Tajani who has assured that "the position of the Parliament is not populist".

The safest scenario is the one for Germany. The European power has been under the mandate of Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has run the country since 2005 and who has run for election again in September this year. Merkel is one of the most stable political figures, with a high rate of approval among the German people, who have witnessed the emergence of anti-immigrant trends like the Alternative for Germany (AfD), whose slight pickup in recent weeks has been captured by the corner of the eye of many specialists.

One way or another, Donald Trump's Presidency and the reality of Brexit will be only the tip of the iceberg of world political transformation. It will be the responsibility of the European Community to adopt new and more risky strategies to keep calm in a sea that threatens to wreck the peace of the last almost 70 years.

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