Must-Read: : To Understand Donald Trump, Look to Europe['s] Far-Right: "Newish parties... are gaining support with platforms...
...[of] nationalism... anti-immigrant politics... [plus] a more... [larger] welfare state... the Trump ideological mix.... Their rise has been astoundingly swift, and it tells us a lot about Trump.... As unlikely as Trump's rise in the polls has been in some ways the rise of the Sweden Democrats is even weirder.... Trumpism, in other words, is much bigger than... Trump or the... pathologies of... Republican[s].... Thinkers who define ideological space have... decreed... nationalis[m]... pair[s]... with small government... and cosmopolitan[ism]... pair[s]... with economic egalitarian[ism].... But many actual voters see it differently.... Sometimes this can express itself in a kind of 'keep the government's hands off my Medicare' ideological confusion. Other times, leaders of mainstream conservative parties can try to square the circle, as when the Republican Party promises to cut Social Security benefits for young people but not for old people...
Mainstream conservative[s]... [can't advocate]... social welfare for retirees because, being parties of the right, they [want]... taxes low.... Populist conservatives... [claim] that if we weren't wasting so much money on welfare for migrants, retirement programs would be easily affordable. This simply isn't true.... More immigration means at least marginally faster productivity growth, immigrants improve the ratio of working-age to retired people, and foreign-born health care providers help contain the cost of caring for the elderly.
