US election 2024: Who is Donald Trump? An op-ed by James W. Davis.

One of the benefits of viewing US politics from the other side of the Atlantic is the obvious comparisons it allows. Whereas those Americans back home who like me are terrified by the prospect of a second Trump Administration reach back in history to link Donald Trump and "Trumpism" (to the extent that there is a coherent ideology to which we can affix the moniker) to Adolf Hitler and Nazi ideology, I am more inclined to draw parallels to the populist movements that are upheaving Dutch, French, German, Polish, Hungarian, Italian, Polish and Slovakian politics. Trump is not Hitler, but like Hitler, Trump recognized untapped political potential in a restless public.

A hundred years after the French philosopher, Julien Benda, criticized European intellectuals for engaging in "the game of political passions" today, on both sides of the Atlantic, populist politicians are unleashing the passions of the masses through the political mobilization of cultural hatreds and personal resentments. Donald Trump is simply the American embodiment of this Zeitgeist. But will Americans allow themselves to be swept up by passions or will they once again choose a pragmatic, dare I say rational, path forward?

The man from Mar-a-Lago casts the election as a choice between conservative American values and what he terms "a radical leftist agenda". But like his European political allies, Donald Trump is no conservative. There is nothing conservative about tearing down the institutions that support the state and civil society. Like his fellow populists in Europe, Trump has systematically worked to erode the public’s faith in elections, the free press, an independent judiciary, the education system, and even public libraries. In doing so, he steps outside of a long-established constitutional order while asserting that he alone is the salvation for all that troubles us. Not the democratic process, not the entrepreneurial spirit of American business, not the world-class researchers in American universities and think tanks – rather, Donald Trump. And in what can only be termed blasphemy, he now asserts that he is an agent of divine providence.

Mistrustful of modern American culture, Trump’s "Make America Great Again" (MAGA) movement promises a return to a mythical past where life was simpler and more comfortable. The obvious response is: simpler and more comfortable for whom? The answer becomes clear if we consider the many absurd ironies of the movement’s reactionary agenda. While many men at Trump rallies wear T-Shirts bearing a derogatory term for a sexually promiscuous woman above a picture of Vice President Kamala Harris, the MAGA crowd cheers a convicted sex offender when he tells them that he will be the protector of women. While claiming to "love the black population" of the United States the Trump campaign plays "Dixieland" – the unofficial national anthem of the breakaway confederate states that provoked a civil war in a failed effort to preserve slavery – at his election rallies. And in a country whose greatness is the result of immigration, the son of a Scottish-American mother and grandson of German emigres claims that immigrants are "poisoning the blood of our country". 

Trump is not an instrument of providence and MAGA – insofar as it embraces misogyny, racism, and nativism – is a deeply unamerican movement. Where the Declaration of Independence proclaims that governments are instituted by men to guarantee individuals’ God-given rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, Trump and his MAGA followers are obsessed with curtailing all three. Trump has mused about returning to firing squads, hangings, and group executions for criminals. Denying women moral authority over their own bodies, MAGA Republicans seek access to women’s health records to enforce ever more restrictive bans on abortions. Rather than allow transsexual individuals to pursue personal happiness through the assertion of their unique human dignity, Trump and his MAGA movement have elevated a truly small minority of fellow citizens to the status of a major threat to the American family even as he proposes eliminating government agencies and programs that benefit the most vulnerable families in the country. None of this is moral, and none of it reflects the best traditions of the United States.

If liberty is a God given right, then it is not exclusively American. The United States became a great nation in the eyes of many when it assumed the burden of leadership in the free world. True, the Unites States is responsible for its share of misdeeds around the globe, but at its best, it has offered blood and treasure to defend liberty against despotism and tyranny. How else to explain the willingness of American mothers from Berlin, Connecticut to Berlin, California to send their sons and daughters to fight and die so that Europe could be freed from Nazi-Berlin? And once they had, these same American sons and daughters stayed to defend the independence of West Berlin and assist in the reconstruction and rehabilitation of their erstwhile enemy. Donald Trump has called those Americans who died fighting for others’ freedom, "losers" and "suckers".  Rather than standing up to aggression, he coddles dictators whether in Moscow or Pyongyang. But American greatness is not to be found in cutting deals with dictators. You will find it in the personal stories of the heroic men and women buried in our national cemeteries.

When you look at those stories you see the difference between Americans and Europeans. Americans were never fighting to preserve established privilege or return to some mythical past. They have always fought to create a future different from both the past and present. The American story is not about where we came from but where we are going.  And we have always welcomed others to join us on the journey.

To ask whether Kamala Harris is the perfect candidate is thus to miss the point. Today, Americans will answer the question of whether they will continue to be Americans or instead give up on our collective journey to assuage the personal hatreds and resentments of a very unamerican man. 

James W. Davis is Chair for International Relations and professor of Political Science at the University of St.Gallen. He has been an advisor to Hillary Clinton and for Angela Merkel’s German Chancellor's Expert Group on Germany in the Eyes of the World. For the 18th time he has chaired the Transatlantic Forum at the 2024 Munich Security Conference.

Image: Adobe Stock / Gaston