Trump’s re-election has sparked concern globally due to his authoritarian approach

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Pedro Ángel Palou

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Publicado: 7/11/2024 · 11:41 a.m. MX | Actualizado: 7/11/2024 · 11:41 a.m. MX

A wannabe fascist, who wants to blow up liberal democracy, has been favored again thanks to it and has been sent by a majority of American voters back to the White House.

We are on the threshold of a territory for which we have no other map than the fall of the Weimar Republic if we want to regroup from today, think about what went wrong and work hard for a future closer to what we want for ourselves and for the world that will also inevitably pay the consequences of that decision.

Voters went out to vote with post-pandemic amnesia, hurt by what they think is a collapsing economy (although the IMF says it recovered during the Biden administration and is the healthiest on the planet, with very low unemployment rates). They think that the tycoon-in-training is capable of getting them out of the hole that he himself painted.

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Many also came out outraged by what they feel is a porous border, with fear of immigrants (another reality that Vance and Trump took it upon themselves to draw atrociously, with, according to them, millions of migrants even from mental hospitals sent to the United States).

The experts will come to disaggregate the data and see who sent Trump back to the White House. Young men from GenZ encouraged by Joe Rogan? The Hispanic population that did not move enough despite the pseudo joke about Puerto Rico at the MSG rally? White women from the Sun Belt and the Rust Belt? Their husbands? It’s the least of it. The important thing is to prepare ourselves so that the counterweights, civil society, the press, and universities do something so that Project 2025 and the madness of Musk and other advisors do not materialize.

There is little left to hold on to, but it must be done. As Tom Nichols wrote in The Atlantic, paraphrasing Churchill, this is not the beginning of the end but the end of the beginning. We woke up depressed, it is true, but from this moment on we have work to do.

The recent reelection of Donald Trump has generated great concern both in the United States and worldwide due to his authoritarian stance and the tendency of his policies towards an unprecedented consolidation of power.

On the domestic level, Trump’s stance, on the other hand, is characterized by the centralization of power, the disqualification of institutions, and the use of government for personal and political purposes, which worries those who see in this attitude the potential to erode American democracy irreversibly.

There are apparently already more than two thousand MAGA “loyalists” ready thanks to Project 2025 to fill government positions. But if RFK Jr. is put in charge of health agencies and Elon Musk is tasked with slimming down the government and of course enriching whomever he chooses to outsource, we’re screwed.

As for international relations, his “America First” policy has already weakened traditional alliances, leaving a vacuum that other actors, such as China, are willing to fill. His anti-multilateralism rhetoric and isolationist approach could reduce cooperation on critical global issues, such as climate change and nuclear security.

As a result, European and other leaders fear that under his watch, the United States will cease to be a pillar of global stability and that its influence will wane, leading to a more fragmented and less predictable world.

Mexico is not going to do well. He is going to threaten us with tariffs, he is going to ask us to act as police on the border and as asylum for migrants, as he already did, but he is also going to escalate his rhetoric. Let us not forget that he once threatened to attack the cartels directly.

Let us not fool ourselves: political and social divisions are going to intensify. The strictest immigration control policies (he has promised mass deportations of eleven million migrants) and his refusal to regulate access to weapons will be the order of the day while he can try to use the police, the national guard or the army against citizens who protest peacefully. He will use the confrontation that he himself provokes and builds to show his “hard hand.”

Trump’s reelection puts us at a critical juncture for both American democracy and international stability. And it forces us to work immediately to prevent his dreams of being a dictator from coming true.

BY PEDRO ÁNGEL PALOU

COLLABORATOR

@PEDROPALOU

Content originally published in spanish in El Heraldo de México.

Pedro Ángel Palou