This post was updated on Monday evening, after Donald Trump called for a ban on Muslims entering the United States.
On Saturday, Donald Trump took his rabble-rousing Presidential campaign to Davenport, Iowa, and, naturally enough, he addressed the attack that took place in San Bernardino on Wednesday, and the fact that the two perpetrators appear to have been inspired by the Islamic State. “That shit is not going to happen any more,” Trump told a cheering crowd. “We’re going to be so vigilant. We’re going to be so careful. We’re going to be so tough and so mean and so nasty.”
Just how mean and nasty? Trump didn’t say. He did, though, point out that his support has grown since last month’s terror attack in Paris—a fact confirmed by a new poll, released on Friday, by CNN, that shows him more than twenty points ahead of his nearest Republican rival, Ben Carson. “Every time things get worse, I do better,” Trump said. “People want strength.”
That might be true, but the number of people who respond positively to the windy brand of toughness that Trump is offering shouldn’t be overestimated. About forty per cent of voting-age Americans identify themselves as Republicans or leaning Republican, and the latest polls show him garnering about thirty per cent of their support. This suggests that perhaps twelve per cent of the American electorate can be counted as members of the round-’em-up/put-’em-on-a-watch-list/send-’em-back brigade. (It should be noted, however, that the poll was carried out before the attack in San Bernardino.)
Meanwhile, France has supplied a disturbing example of how terror attacks can generate support for an authoritarian backlash against immigrants and Muslims. On Sunday, the ultra-right-wing National Front made big gains in the country’s regional elections. Exit polls suggested that the Party, which is led by Marine Le Pen, had won about thirty per cent of the vote, well ahead of Nicolas Sarkozy’s center-right Republican Party and President François Hollande’s center-left Socialist Party. Depending on what happens in the run-off elections, next month, the National Front could end up controlling local governments in vast swaths of France.
While rising support for the National Front predates the two major terrorist strikes that took place this year in Paris, concerns about Islamic radicalism and rising antagonism toward immigrants undoubtedly helped Le Pen and her colleagues. In the wake of last month’s coördinated attacks on the Bataclan theatre and other sites, Le Pen restated her earlier call for an end to all immigration into France, legal and illegal. She said that the mainstream parties had failed to protect the French people and demanded an immediate police crackdown. “Islamist fundamentalism must be annihilated,” she said. “France must ban Islamist organizations, close radical mosques, and expel foreigners who preach hatred in our country as well as illegal migrants who have nothing to do here.”
In some ways, Trump hasn’t gone as far as Le Pen. He still favors legal immigration, for example. But, in other ways, his message is uncannily similar to Le Pen’s; on one issue, he's even outdone her. On Monday, he issued a statement calling for a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on." In typical fashion, Trump didn't provide any details or background material to support his proposal, which came hours after polls showed Ted Cruz leading him in Iowa. "Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in Jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life," Trump said in the statement. "If I win the election for President, we are going to Make America Great Again."
Appearing on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, Trump stepped up his attacks on President Obama for failing to use the term “radical Islamic terrorism,” and said that the United States wouldn’t defeat ISIS until Obama “gets the hell out” of the White House. Trump also called for stepped-up surveillance of Muslim communities and institutions, such as mosques, and he endorsed police profiling of Muslim individuals.
“I think there can be profiling,” Trump said. And, he went on, “A lot of people are dead right now. So everybody wants to be politically correct, and that’s part of the problem that we have with our country.” He later added, “You have people that have to be tracked. If they’re Muslims, they’re Muslims.”
For now, at least, some of the other Republican candidates are distancing themselves from Trump’s most incendiary statements. “The fact is, we don’t need to be profiling in order to be able to get the job done here,” Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey, said, also on “Face the Nation.” He cited what happened after 9/11 in New Jersey and other states, where the authorities created closer relationships with Muslim communities and mosques but didn’t engage in overt profiling. “What you need is a President who’s had the experience and the know-how to do this,” Christie said, “and not someone who’s just going to talk off the top of their head.”
On ABC News’s “This Week,” Jeb Bush, the former governor of Florida, expressed similar sentiments. “We don’t have to target the religion,” Bush said. “We just have to target those that have coöpted the religion and make sure that we’re fully aware of the radicalizations taking place, not just here but all around the world.” On Monday evening, in response to Trump's call for a ban on Muslims entering the United States, Christie and Bush criticized him again. "This is the kind of thing that people say when they have no experience and don't know what they are talking about," Christie said on a radio show. "We do not need to resort to that type of activity, nor should we." Bush tweeted, "Donald Trump is unhinged. His 'policy' proposals are not serious."
It remains to be seen whether this measured attitude will survive contact with the G.O.P.’s base. As I write this, the Real Clear Politics poll average shows Christie and Bush garnering the backing of 6.8 per cent of potential Republican voters, between them. Trump has 29.5 per cent. With the American public increasingly alarmed about the possibility of future terrorist attacks, and with conservative commentators baying for blood, it is far from clear that reason and restraint will be rewarded. “As much as anyone may disagree with his policies (and I do), Trump is not hurting himself with GOP voters with his negativity toward Muslims,” Eric Fehrnstrom, a Republican strategist who advised Mitt Romney in 2012, said on Twitter Monday evening. He followed up by writing, “Sad but true: GOP attitudes toward Muslims are very low, especially among white Evangelical Protestants (i.e. Iowa)”
Trump, clearly, is in his element. During and after Obama’s address to the nation on Sunday night, he kept up a derisive commentary on Twitter: “Is that all there is? We need a new President - FAST!” “Well, Obama refused to say (he just can’t say it), that we are at WAR with RADICAL ISLAMIC TERRORISTS.” “Obama said in his speech that Muslims are our sports heroes. What sport is he talking about, and who? Is Obama profiling?”
The mocking tone is one of Trump’s defining characteristics. Another—as the Times pointed out this weekend, in an analysis of his public comments—is a relentless focus on the threat to America, and to American values, presented by outsiders of various kinds: Mexican immigrants, Syrian refugees, radical Muslims. A third trait of his campaign is the constant refrain that he will restore American greatness.
Mockery of the political establishment. an “us versus them” attitude, the myth of national regeneration: all of these things have long been associated with political movements of the far right, course, and among the commentariat there is now a lively debate about whether or not Trump can be regarded as fascist or proto-fascist. Since there is no generally agreed-upon definition of fascism, this discussion is unlikely to be resolved. What can be said without fear of contradiction is that Trump represents a long-standing and deep-rooted strain of American nativism and parochialism, which, in earlier eras, was exploited by such figures as Father Coughlin, Joseph McCarthy, and George Wallace.
How far can Trump push it? To repeat, the polls suggest that his support is limited, however vocal it may be. And unlike Marine Le Pen, he doesn’t have a separate political party behind him. Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie, formed the National Front in 1972, and it has spent more than four decades agitating and building up its presence at the local level. But it wasn’t until the telegenic Marine took over as the Party’s leader, in 2011, and set out to “de-demonize” its public image that the National Front became a serious threat to the mainstream parties.
For now, Trump is trying to coöpt the Republican Party, some elements of which regard him as a cancer. If, as remains the most likely outcome, the Party unites around somebody to defeat him in the upcoming primary, he could still end up running in the general election as an independent or third-party candidate. (Just last week, he repeated that his earlier pledge to support the Republican ticket even if he doesn’t win the nomination depended upon him being treated “fairly.”) But given Trump’s self-centeredness and lack of interest in organizational details, it seems unlikely that he will bequeath to America a new right-wing party.
In any case, though, he is successfully demonstrating how far celebrity, riches, demagoguery, and favorable circumstances can take an ambitious and unscrupulous individual. Even a couple of months ago, it was clear that his campaign was tapping into deep veins of economic disappointment, ethnic resentment, and political disaffection. To that febrile mix, the fear of domestic terrorism has now been added. Hopefully, the President is right, and the country will overcome the threat of ISIS without ditching the values and liberties it claims to represent. Like France, though, America stands at a perilous political moment.
And Trump, Lord save us, is at the center of it.
