The thoughts start with a flashback. It’s a dystopian horror film about an America where the political party that won the election introduces ‘The Purge’ — 12 hours of uncontrolled crime, including murders, whilst the emergency services stood down. The main targets were the Latinos, people of colour, and homeless people, whilst patriotic Americans, white supremacists, and vigilantes were the ones doing the killings. The government provides refuge shelters which are protected by the paramilitary. On the day of the Purge, groups who are targets are moved to these shelters — those who can’t make it are left to their own devices for the following 12 hours until the Purge is called off. Until one year when the killings didn’t stop when the Purge had finished. The situation soon spirals out of control, and the mayhem that followed is disturbing. The flashbacks were equally upsetting — people fighting for the last bus taking them to shelter, the fortified shelters that resembled ghettos, people doing menial jobs disappearing without a trace, vigilantes attacking the shelters, attacking and killing random strangers in broad daylight for fun. It was a montage of a broken America, thankfully only imaginary. Or is it?

The Purge is part of a franchise; the first film was released in 2013. I wonder if they could see the future or if the writers and the director already saw an America we were unaware of during those times. The years that followed showed they were not too far from where reality was heading. The recent rise in white supremacy outfits is alarming, especially since the election of Donald Trump in 2016 as the US president. In 2020, we thought the nightmare was over, and with an impeachment of Trump to come through in the following years, one would have thought that the law and order system was not broken. Then came 2024, and with one catastrophe to another, we saw in utter horror how the Republicans still chose a convicted, raving lunatic to stand for the presidency for a second term, and despite the odds, on the eve of 6th November, the re-election of Donald Trump into the White House.

How is the re-election of Trump related to the flashbacks I had about The Purge? Because Trump pledged eviction of all illegal immigrants living within the US, he pledged to target all his political adversaries, incarcerate the judge who convicted him, he vowed to send the military to the political dissidents, because a recent Supreme Court provided complete immunity to the US presidents, and Trump is surely to leverage that during his forthcoming tenure. His previous stint showed the irrational, racist, misogynistic facets of his personality with nothing left to the imagination. What’s most worrying is that he is a populist leader, and no matter how ridiculous or deranged that man is, millions of people are willing to follow his commands. Followers who would raid the Capitol to stop the appointment of Joe Biden as the US president in 2021.

During the 2016-20 term, we have seen all the vices of the person unfit to hold any public office — a megalomaniac, misogynist, openly racist, corrupt, volatile, and erratic. A dangerous man. Vengeful. When NYT published testimonials from people who knew Trump, it made you wonder how the world’s biggest economy would choose to let this loony run the country. Yet, there are other indicators that we must take into account. Trump won the popular vote, as well as the Senate, by a large margin. That doesn’t happen by miracle or fluke. It’s not just the white voters, not just the male voters, not just the gun lobbyists, or the confederates who voted Trump in. It was also the immigrants, people of colour, entire streets of Arab Muslims, disillusioned Democrats — Trump managed to get a mandate from the entire American nation.

Kamala Harris would probably have been a better candidate for the White House, but she was perceived as a puppet for Joe Biden, who himself wasn’t proven to be a people’s leader. America certainly spent the most nondescript period of its political history of this century. From leaving Afghanistan, to the Taliban to supporting a shadow war at Ukraine with vested familial interests for the president, to more recent times where the US didn’t leverage its ties with Israel to stop the atrocities in the Middle East, the internal strife with immigration, labour, healthcare — USA has been plagued with a catalogue of errors and is fast losing its credibility as a major player in the global political landscape. The disruptive Trump and his MAGA camp did not make matters any better, but that was a distraction a seasoned diplomat like Joe Biden would have known to handle.

Unsurprisingly, the world watched in incredulity how the Americans brought in a convicted criminal to run the country. To many, including me, it was a political hara-kiri, putting too much at stake. In Europe, there has always been an amount of scepticism and derision regarding how Americans conduct themselves, and with that biased view, American voters have been ridiculed in recent days. However, if we put such prejudices aside, what makes us wonder is how Donald Trump managed to gain such a huge mandate from many communities that his previous tenure marginalised. One obvious answer is that Trump’s campaign has been full of promises he may not keep, such as imposing massive import duties on foreign goods. Misinformation is the key to success in a populist world, and the media team for Trump surely had a lot of help from his newfound friend Elon Musk.

The other possibility, however, is more dismal for the US, that the American Dream has finally shattered, and the system is broken to such an extent that people are desperate to vote for anybody who promises to do things differently, even if their best argument is the immigrants are eating cats and dogs. In a time like this, the politics of hope and grand visions fail to make sense to desperate voters. They seek an enemy they can blame for their situation and are promised to avenge that enemy. Trump delivered that message well and got the results. The Democrats, as elsewhere in the world, also tend to encourage multiculturalism. A Republican, nationalist state would undermine multiculturalism and will force an assimilation of the identities. It is possible that the minorities upon whom the democrats relied so heavily are no longer willing to vote according to their communal bias, and they have subscribed to the American values — an immigrant who is settled there does not want another immigrant of their kind to come over. They have succumbed to the ‘enemy’ rhetoric that is the core mantra of populism. Multiculturalism is no longer the pinnacle of American democracy, not that it ever was, but just a flaky word that politicians will use to demonstrate that the society is no longer divisive.

In one of the recent interviews, Charles Barkley, a member of the formidable Dream Team, aptly put the reasons why the democrats lost — because they didn’t have a game plan, and they were stupid. He blamed the celebrity bandwagon for supporting Harris as much. The idea is ludicrous that a celebrity expressing their voting intentions would be seen as the silver bullet for a political party that is otherwise clueless about how to win votes. Even if it is Taylor Swift or Beyoncé, with millions and billions of supporters and followers, their votes still count as one. Whilst it is perfectly logical to expect them to voice their support against a dangerous man like Trump, when it came to choosing the ballot, people — at least most of them, as we have seen in this election — aren’t led by their emotions. Celebrities and sportspersons are mere entertainers, and whilst they have their places in people’s lives, people’s livelihoods do not depend on them. Not that Trump will help put food on the table, but his campaign focussed on inflation, unemployment, and other similar issues that bothered people, and the results spoke volumes about what people really wanted.

Trump’s victory against the odds poses a much bigger question on the future of democracy. Although the populist and nationalist movements have always been around, since the wake of this century, we have seen a meteoric rise in populism across the globe, effectively fuelled by the shock and fear of 9/11. We have seen Brexit in the UK, the RN almost on the verge of power in France thanks to the inability of the centrists and the Left to cooperate, and many other nationalist parties in power across Europe already at the helm or on the brink of a power swing. The lessons from the last century have not taught us anything about the perils of radical nationalist movements. It is a dismal situation for anyone hoping to see nationalism and populism become a thing of the past. It is here to stay, as the social and economic divides will continue to expand, and newer technologies will bring in newer means of spreading misinformation. How we deal with it is how the future will shape up, not just for the US, but the politics across the world.

See the next part of the blog here: The Nokia Moment in Politics Lessons for Progressives