The
average Chinese man on the street may not be following the American
election, but the Global Times, an uber-nationalistic state-run media
outlet, warned readers Thursday: “If you plan to visit New York sometime
this year, take my advice: Try to stay away from Fifth Avenue because
Donald Trump may be lurking there with a gun.”
Indeed, Gordon Chang, author of The Coming Collapse of China and Daily Beast contributor, said Beijing was paying close attention. “China is obsessed with Trump, just as Trump is obsessed with China,” he said. “State media takes his candidacy as proof that American democracy is flawed, comparing him to a ‘celebrity potato,’ for instance. Chinese netizens generally denigrate him as well, but in a country where Communist Party leaders are highly scripted, you can be sure they secretly admire someone who speaks his mind.”
On the other side of China’s mountainous border with Afghanistan, government officials in Kabul were equally unimpressed.
Zardasht Shams, the deputy minister of information, said they were still waiting to hear a real policy on how Trump would deal with the U.S. drawdown and post-conflict resolution. “Sorry, I’m not well updated on this fool’s policy or stand on Afghanistan,” he told The Daily Beast. “In general, Afghanistan, being a conservative and radical Muslim society, would hate and extremely dislike [Trump becoming president] and feel uncomfortable because of his anti-Muslim statements.”
The hostility toward Muslims has gone down better with some in Israel, where the statements have resonated with a growing far-right movement, which has called upon Israeli politicians to revoke Israeli Arabs’ citizenship and residency rights as a form of collective punishment.
These
extremists see Muslims and Arabs as a barbaric enemy that understand
only power and with whom the enlightened “Western” world cannot
negotiate, and some see parallels here in Trump’s own worldview.
Within that far-right movement, a lot of Israelis see Trump’s brash racism as a refreshing dose of truth. While Trump scares many in the Israeli left, he has won credit among even the mainstream right for saying that the world should recognize Jerusalem as the country’s capital and Israel’s need for a separation wall, both of which President Obama and the international community have criticized.
Another potential friend is lounging on the other side of the Mediterranean Sea. Silvio Berlusconi, now 79, has had a low profile in Italy since being banned from public office in 2013 for tax fraud. He recently said his party still needs him, so he is claiming that his ousting was unconstitutional, and friendly words from Trump have been warmly welcomed. “I love Italy,” Trump said. “Berlusconi? He’s a great guy. I like him.”
Berlusconi seems to think this will help him back into power. He has always maintained close personal ties with Vladimir Putin and one might envision the three of them in a sort of club of global misfits if Trump is elected and Berlusconi is back in power.
In
the rest of Western Europe, mainstream politicians and the media have
been largely critical of the American property tycoon. In Germany, Der Spiegel
published an article explaining “Trump’s World.” They concluded: “You
can laugh about it, get angry about it—this man lives on his own
planet.”
The Dutch magazine Elsevier tried harder to explain Trumps’ popularity in the polls. “Trump chooses Fort America… he’s obsessed with national identity. It is a mistake to dismiss him as a clown without ideology. He certainly has a nationalist ideology, which is in tune with the international Zeitgeist.”
Deeyah Khan, a filmmaker born in Norway, said there had been a real effect on Europe’s Muslim population, especially after Muslim and Sikh citizens were thrown out of Trump events.
“The
Trump phenomenon shows us how much fear of Muslims there is out there,
and how easily it can be exploited,” she told The Daily Beast. “The
reaction of his followers to Rose Hamid and Arish Sing is deeply scary.”
When he announced his presidential run last summer, Le Monde described him in its headline, flatly but correctly, as an “eccentric billionaire.”
Since
then, people in France and Belgium have learned that he casts his
insults far and wide. At the beginning of the week, in an interview with
Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business, she asked Trump about his plans to
stop Muslims from entering the United States. He cited Paris and
Brussels as places where Muslims were out of control and unassimilated:
“You go to Brussels —I was in Brussels a long time ago, 20 years ago, so
beautiful, everything is so beautiful—it’s like living in a hellhole
right now.”
When the Belgian press translated hellhole idiomatically, it came out as “trou à rats,” or, literally, rat hole.
Brussels Alderman Philippe Close, responsible for the city’s tourism, called Trump “a totally vulgar clown.” And people started posting beautiful images of the city with the ironic hashtag #hellhole.
One showed a beautiful shot of La Grand Place, the square at the heart of Brussels, alongside Trump shouting: “WHERE is the #hellhole @realDonaldTrump? Brussels or your mouth???”
Someone else proposed a novel way to shut Trump up—and blocked up his mouth on Photoshop with a huge Belgian waffle.
Additional
reporting by Christopher Dickey in France, Philip Obaji Jr in Nigeria,
Barbie Latza Nadeau in Italy, Thomas Seibert in Turkey, Brendon Hong in
China, Sami Yousafzai in Afghanistan, Shira Rubin in Israel, and Nadette
De Visser in the Netherlands.
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