Trump and Le Pen: Two takes on a rising populism

On either side of the Atlantic, the 2008 recession, refugee crises and heightened terror threats have fueled an isolationist populism embodied by Donald Trump and Marine Le Pen -- but they are far from mirror images.

Their most striking common points: both feed off voter disaffection for the traditional ruling class, and have adopted stridently anti-immigrant positions and fear-mongering that hardened in the wake of attacks in Paris and California.

The US Congress is suffering from the lowest approval ratings in four decades, five years after the ultra-conservative Tea Party movement burst onto the scene with its anti-establishment "throw them out" rallying cry against Democrats and Republicans.

In France, Marine Le Pen pushes a similar message at the head of the party founded by her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, the National Front, whose motto is "Ni-Ni" -- neither left, nor right -- and which is hoping to gain control of its first region in Sunday elections after a historic first-round score.

In Italy, the euro-skeptic, opposition Five Star movement headed by Beppe Grillo has also made strides at the ballot box to become the number two political force.

America's celebrity billionaire Trump is not a direct product of the Tea Party, but the Republican presidential frontrunner for 2016 is the anti-establishment candidate par excellence, openly mocking his "weak" campaign rivals in the primary race.

His "outsider" appeal has proven so strong that even Democrat Hillary Clinton, in the high echelons of power for decades, has tried to suggest she too would break the mold as the first female commander-in-chief.

Like Le Pen, Trump blames some of his nation's economic woes on a foreign invasion -- a message encapsulated by his promise to build a wall on the Mexico border, and which resonates with America's working classes, millions of whom are yet to recover from the financial crisis.

- Anti-immigrant surge -

Trump's anti-immigrant platform targets the "carpenters, plumbers, electricians, who feel that their jobs are being threatened by people coming and earning lower wages," George Washington University political management professor Christopher Arterton told AFP.

"With that kind of instinctive anti-foreign element in Trump support, he's taking clear advantage of attacks in France and San Bernardino to expand his indictment of immigrant communities."

Trump's words -- "We don't have a country without a border" -- echo those of Le Pen, who for years has called for reinstating French border checks instead of allowing passport-free travel inside Europe's so-called Schengen zone.

Leaders of Europe's hard right, from Italy's Northern League to UKIP's Nigel Farage in Britain, have been warning for months of the risk of jihadists slipping into Europe amid the flood of refugees fleeing Syria's brutal war.

The Northern League's Matteo Salvini has become a fixture in Italy's political conversation, constantly shifting the debate back to migrants.

Even Swedes, traditionally generous to refugees, have lurched rightward as the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats muscle into national politics, topping several polls in recent months.

In the United States much of the Republican camp, which controls Congress, are seeking to close borders to Syrian and Iraqi refugees.

But the parallels with Europe stop there.

In practice, distance largely inoculates America from the chaos of Syria's refugee crisis. President Barack Obama has allowed just over 2,000 Syrian refugees in since the start of the civil war.

"American institutions and means are more advanced than those in the European Union, where the Schengen system and the Dublin Regulation (on asylum seekers) clearly are no longer suitable," said Simond de Galbert, a former French diplomat and current fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

- Trump on his own -

But perhaps the most significant distinction between Trump and the European far right in Europe is that "The Donald" is largely on his own.

While Trump has succeeded in winning over nearly a third of the Republican electorate, the party establishment is ill at ease with him -- and fellow presidential candidates have overtly rejected his increasingly extreme anti-Muslim stance.

When the bombastic billionaire declared all Muslims persona non grata in the United States this week, triggering global outrage, even Le Pen suggested he had gone too far.

"Have you ever heard me say something like that?" she told French television. "Whatever their background, whatever their religion, I defend all French people, it's as simple as that."

Trump has characteristically dismissed the furor, boasting: "Every time things get worse, I do better."

But he appears increasingly isolated.

More opportunistic than ideological, Trump is protectionist one day, anti-rich the next, and with a saber-rattling willingness to go to war if necessary.

And beyond him the US far right is splintered, with one wing of the conservative movement libertarian, individualistic and opposed to the welfare state, while another is committed to religion and opposition to abortion and gay marriage.

"Our far right has a great deal of libertarianism," said Boston College professor Jonathan Laurence.

He argues that the individualism and distrust of government carried by US conservatives effectively protects the country from the "centralizing impulse of fascistic movements" in Europe.

That libertarian strain, he said, "may be the saving grace of conservative Republicans."