Trumpian wave crashing over Greece

Donald Trump’s election for a second term to the American presidency has caused waves across the globe – waves that are, inevitably, also affecting Greece. Indeed, the findings of recent public opinion polls are impressive – and not in a good way. They point to a certain stability among the country’s mainstream parties, a status quo, if you will, but this is not the case with antisystemic parties. Within just a short period of time, a little over a month after Trump was elected, the parties to the right of conservative New Democracy gained 4 percentage points (roughly the same amount lost by those to the left of center-left PASOK), resulting in a cumulative total exceeding 20%. That is substantial.

The stability is on the surface only; down below, activity is intense. The CEO of polling firm Metron Analysis, Stratos Fanaras, describes the phenomenon best, calling it “fragile political stability.” What’s more, what this movement to the right of New Democracy represents may be even more important than its momentum, as there are signs that we are on the cusp of a comprehensive political wave – a Trumpian wave – taking shape in that fragmented (for now, at least) space. With specific characteristics, a unified agenda and (as far as is known) informal yet substantive transnational coordination with similar movements and organizations, what binds this space together are Trumpist values and ideas, and a cult of personality.

These developments are causing alarm at the Maximos Mansion, as the prime minister team watches the incumbent Kyriakos Mitsotakis drop three points in popularity and Afroditi Latinopoulou of the far-right nationlist-populist Voice of Reason gain a similar amount, or sees 20.7% of self-proclaimed right-wingers express their intention to vote for her party, against 42.5% supporting New Democracy. It also sees that ND’s biggest losses are to that party and it is now scrambling to jump on the bandwagon with statements about gender and other such nonsense.