Is Donald Trump an American Hugo Chávez?



MEXICO CITY — To dramatic music, the video starts with a clip of the Republican nominee for president, Donald J. Trump, threatening to jail his rival, Hillary Clinton, before the words “Te recuerda a alguien” (“Does this remind you of someone”) pop up. The image switches to the former Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, founder of the self-declared Socialist revolution, who steered his oil-rich nation to meltdown.

The video goes on to compare their attacks on the press, from Mr. Trump’s throwing out Univision’s Jorge Ramos to Mr. Chávez’s announcing the shutdown of a TV network that had criticized him. “No votemos por Donald Trump,” it finishes — “We don’t vote for Donald Trump.”

The video, with Spanish subtitles, comes from the Democratic National Committee and is aimed at a particular group of Latino voters: those who fled Mr. Chávez’s Venezuela and other authoritarian countries, like Cuba. It has a particular resonance in Florida, a battleground state and home to an increasing numbers of Venezuelans, especially in Doral, west of Miami, where Senator Marco Rubio has an office.

Many voters with ties to Cuba and Venezuela are highly suspicious of anything resembling the left, the province of both Mr. Chávez and the Cuban government, making them sympathetic to Republicans. Claiming that Mr. Trump could lead to the tyranny and poverty they fled, then, is a powerful emotive argument to reject the Republican candidate. And it comes at a time when Venezuela’s crisis is reaching a boiling point, with social unrest and a looming humanitarian disaster. But does the comparison between a Latin American Socialist and an American billionaire really hold up?

Unsurprisingly, the Venezuelan government rejects staining the name of its deceased “comandante,” whom it has elevated to near saint status, with someone who waves the flag of the empire. “It is an expression of the racist arrogance and irrationality of a party that doesn’t attend to its voters,” Venezuela’s foreign affairs minister, Delcy Rodríguez, tweeted. Some American leftists likewise reject the comparison, pointing out that Mr. Trump attacks undocumented immigrants, while Mr. Chávez built his base in the kind of barrios they come from.

The debate has spread to Mexico, where politicians are comparing Mr. Trump to the leftist presidential hopeful Andrés Manuel López Obrador. As Mr. Trump has suggested he might do, Mr. López Obrador rejected the results of Mexico’s last two presidential elections, claiming he was robbed by fraud, and leading protests. Mr. López Obrador knocked down his Trump comparison, tweeting “no manchen” — a popular Mexican expression that could be roughly translated as “Get out of here!”

These arguments underline the murkiness of the populism debate. While the label is pinned on politicians from Brexit Britain to resurgent Russia, most people fail to nail a satisfactory definition. The central confusion is that it includes those from both ends of the ideological spectrum, from the socialist Mr. Chávez to the anti-immigrant Mr. Trump.

Reporting on Latin America and sitting in news conferences with Mr. Chávez, Mr. Trump and Mr. López Obrador over the years, I have been cautious about using the populist label flippantly. That said, given the particular flavor of the current political turmoil, there’s obviously an authentic phenomenon that we have to come to terms with, however tricky to define. Whoever wins the election, Mr. Trump has changed American politics.

John B. Judis, the author of “The Populist Explosion,” offers one of the most convincing explanations for our global unrest. “It is not an ideology,” he writes, “but a political logic.” It pitches the idea of a noble section of the people against the idea of an utterly corrupt elite. The populist political strategy centers on this conflict in an emotive way, adapting to fit different contexts — anti-immigrant in the United States, anti-American in Venezuela.

Seen that way, the comparison between Mr. Trump and the pro-Brexit U.K. Independence Party on the right, and Mr. Chávez and Mr. López Obrador on the left, holds up. While they have wildly different backgrounds and advocate different policies, they are united in posing as the enemy of the entrenched, corrupt elite, who make possible whatever ails the people, be it Muslim refugees or global capital.

Mr. Trump pits hard-working Middle America against the Washington establishment. Mr. Chávez pitted the noble Venezuelan poor against what he called “the oligarchs” and the imperial United States. Mr. López Obrador pits his notion of the “pueblo Mexicano” against “the mafia of power.”

It’s a strikingly flexible strategy. As the establishment is held as corrupt, today’s populists blame it and its institutions — government, the media — for anything that goes wrong, even when it’s the populists themselves who are to blame. When newspapers report accusations of sexual assault by Mr. Trump, he blames a media conspiracy. When Venezuelans march to complain they have no food, the government denounces a plot by oligarchs and the media. Mr. Trump assailed a judge overseeing a lawsuit against him as being biased. Mr. Chávez jailed a judge who made a ruling he disagreed with.

Even the chants converge. Trump supporters at rallies shout, “Tell the truth!” at journalists. When Mr. López Obrador marched against electoral fraud, his supporters would shout the same thing — “Que diga la verdad!” — at reporters.

One reason the populist strategy is effective is that it does touch on certain truths. Washington is corrupted by special interests. Latin American governments do suffer immense corruption. However, Venezuela shows that a populist strategy can lead to an even worse alternative. That is a worthwhile lesson when considering where Mr. Trump’s blaming the media, crying of fraud and assault on judges could take us.

Ioan Grillo is the author of “Gangster Warlords: Drug Dollars, Killing Fields and the New Politics of Latin America” and a contributing opinion writer.

Last edited by Goose (11/04/2016 10:27 am)