Donald Trump’s hate politics is finally doing the world some good. It’s showing other countries exactly what they don’t want their governments to look like, as we saw over the weekend in Australia’s federal election.
As an American, I’ve been watching in fear as my country moves from a liberal democracy towards what experts are calling “competitive authoritarianism”. Trump has been laying out his power grab blueprint, eroding the US system’s checks and balances, eradicating diversity and inclusion, expanding his executive power and targeting anyone who doesn’t agree with him.
It’s a formula that impedes on free speech and has uprooted America’s identity of ourselves as a society of “freedom and justice for all”.
While the fear I feel for my own country is still alive and present, I’m at least glad the rest of the world is now able to watch on and understand the urgency required to reject Trumpian politics in their own elected officials.
We’ve seen this happen recently with the Canadian federal election. Voters rejected the Conservative party that looked primed to sweep victory before their leader failed to adequately condemn Trump’s tariffs and rhetoric about Canada becoming the “51st state” of the US.
Now, here in Australia, voters have made it loud and clear that attempting to ingrain the same culture wars that America is navigating, will not be an effective enough tactic to win a federal election.
The Coalition found this out the hard way when they suffered what analysts are calling a ‘catastrophic’ defeat. Not only did the party’s leader Peter Dutton lose to Anthony Albanese for the role of Prime Minister, he’s out of office after failing to win his seat of Dickson over Labor’s candidate Ali France.
As the Coalition’s campaign unfolded over the past few months, it became increasingly clear that Dutton was attempting to emulate Trump’s style of leadership in more ways than one.
Not long before polling day, Dutton decided to leverage Trump’s tactic of attacking the media for not pandering to his personal wishes. Taking aim at Australia’s journalists as ‘fake’ and ‘hateful’, Dutton turned towards divisive rhetoric to delegitimise opposing views from his own.
While these language parallels can be drawn, even further proof of a deliberately Trumpian campaign strategy by the Liberals was seen when one of the architects of Trump’s 2024 presidential victory told undercover reporters that he made an unpublicised visit to Australia to advise the Liberal party about “structural issues” related to Peter Dutton ahead of the federal election.
Thankfully, Australian voters were able to prove that they would not be swayed into the political pathway that America has chosen for itself. Labor’s landslide victory has opened the door for progress, even if it’s not as strong of a turning point that some had wished to see with a minority government who might have pushed for bolder action on the issues that matter to women, like safety, climate change and the nation’s cost-of-living crisis.
Since Trump’s US election win last November, I feel like I’ve been watching the world fall apart in ways that were semi-predictable but nonetheless devastating.
Within his first 100 days of office, Trump’s unnerved use of his executive authority triggered several days of volatility in US and global stock markets, with his widespread tariffs on global trading partners threatening stable political alliances. It’s hard to make sound policy decisions when a country’s leadership behaves in such a reckless manner.
It’s also hard not to forget one of Trump’s most vile moments, when the world watched him speak down to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, over negotiations of a cease-fire with Russia.
The rest of the world may already have been critical of the US political landscape, but our heightened chaos could be the turning point needed for moderate voters to swing left instead of right within their own country’s elections.
Amid doom and gloom there’s not much else to do than seek little pockets of hope. That’s why, despite the fact that I’m not Australian and didn’t vote in this election, Labor’s victory feels so satisfying.
It’s left me wondering if perhaps Australia’s decision could serve as a mirror to America and make us realise that our elected political leaders are meant to serve us, not the other way around.
Opinion polls are showing that this could be the case. Trump’s popularity ratings, even amongst Republicans, are at an all time low, with many Americans viewing him as a failure and a careless leader.
With such real-world impact on everyday American lives, it could be that everyone is waking up to the orange man’s ineffectiveness. I definitely have my fingers crossed.
While Australia and Canada’s elections are showing an opportunistic swing towards centre left politics, voters around the world must use this as a platform to push into more progressive territory.
Progress is never guaranteed, and the world’s politics never remain stagnant. Culture and rhetoric are constantly evolving, and if we truly want to expunge Trump’s harmful influence from weaving further into our collective narrative, vigilance is required.