The Trumps the Arab leaders support

Donald Trump announced his candidacy in the US presidential elections after trolleying down a golden escalator in one of his mega-buildings. On that first day of campaigning for the Republican Party primaries, he called Mexican immigrants “rapists” and vowed to build a wall to separate the US from Mexico.

The immediate impression was that Trump would be the US election’s seasonal sideshow. In other words, he would join those “candidates” on the extreme right or the extreme left of politics that garner cult-like following from a small but dedicated group of like-minded people. In Trump’s case, those include candidates like Ross Perot, who ran in 1992. A super-wealthy businessman running on his own dime, unhinged from the establishment and society, Perot was charismatic enough to make a decent run as a third, “spoiler” candidate. Like Perot before him, characters like Trump are usually amusing enough for public debates and Television shows in the electoral season.

It’s been five months now since Trump announced he is running for office. He has not only gained in stature, but is easily the most widely discussed and influential candidate in the running today. Instead of toning down his ridiculous xenophobic statements (assuming that most voters reject these thoughts), he has stood his ground and has been the Republican front-runner for quite some time. Arabs and Muslims are the butt of his comments.

As the prospect of a Trump presidency increases, it becomes evident that he is not representing a niche, as much as he is expressing populist views in some parts of the world’s wealthiest country and superpower. Trump exhibits an American reality that is becoming overtly and unabashedly antagonistic to the 1.5 billion Muslims of the world, especially the Arabs among them. Trump once mentioned how Arabic names make him uneasy. He later stated that he would not rule out identifying Muslims with special “badges”. While the Republican Party’s politicians have universally denounced Trump’s plan for a “total and complete ban on Muslims” entering the US, his platform on the party’s primary elections continues to expand.

It would be naïve to think that these inclinations are alien to his party at the moment, amid a growing belief among Republicans in a “Clash of Civilizations” between the Judeo-Christian value system that represents the morale ethos of a significant portion of American politics, and the Islamic world. This is evident in a statement by Ben Carson, a candidate for the Republican nomination for president, who said that he “would not advocate” a Muslim being in charge of the country, since Islam is “inconsistent” with the US constitution.

While other candidates did not go so far as Trump and Carson, they generally tend to view Muslim-majority countries, especially in the Middle East, in a reductionist matter. They perceive this region as sheltering populations and a dominant religion that must be contained in the matter that best serves the United States. A true danger awaits the people of the Arab Middle East if any of the Republican candidates does win the presidential elections. Ted Cruz, perhaps the Republican Party’s most plausible “establishment” candidate, claims US foreign policy should have been geared to maintaining the pre-2011 status quo in the region, rather than voice (or actively offer) support for any of the pro-democracy movements that emerged from the Arab Spring.

The argument can definitely be made, in retrospect, that the region was more “stable” before that period in time, but at what cost? Cruz’s position blatantly undermines all of the factors that built up to the regional explosion in 2011. This so-called “stability” was achieved by severe oppression of any independent voices; an oppression that created an untenable situation that was bound to erupt, one way or another.

Pretty much everyone in the Arab World denounced Trump’s very direct statements. However, the sentiment at the core of his statements is one that actually empowers many of the despotic practices and figures in the Arab World. And it is a sentiment that has become the mainstream of the Republican Party.

Last week, Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, reportedly the richest man in the Arab world, engaged in a Twitter spat with Trump. Long story short: Bin Talal called Trump a “disgrace”, and Trump called Bin Talal “dopey”.

Billionaire Twitter riffs aside, there is one huge anomaly here, and it’s that for years, until February 2015, Prince Alwaleed was the second-largest shareholder in media giant News Corp, owned by Rupert Murdoch. This company has become the extreme right’s mouthpiece in America via its biggest outlet, Fox News. It is responsible for spawning so much anti-Islamic rhetoric. It also cemented the idea that the US must stick to a Middle East policy centered on securing its oil interests in the region, and empower Israel to continue terrorizing Palestinians. Even though he sold most of his shares in News Corps, Bin Talal remains a major shareholder in other businesses run by Murdoch, a man whose bigotry could easily out-trump Trump.

This past August, Ted Cruz praised Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi for his record since coming to power, despite concerns around the world regarding human rights abuses in Egypt. Subsequently, the most widely read Egyptian government newspaper, Al-Ahram posted an editorial in its daily print edition claiming that Cruz would be the best US candidate for Egypt. This is despite Cruz’s particularly horrible record of anti-Islamism.

The relationship between the political and business elite in the Arab World and American establishment politics (especially Republicans) is by no means a new one. It will be interesting to see how much longer it holds, as the extreme right of American popular politics continues to edge dangerously closer to the mainstream.

And as Russia and China continue to gain international prominence in search of regaining their “superpower” titles, it would be interesting to see whether some of this elite within the Arab world decides to shift away from American patronage, towards other power centers. Given shifting geopolitics, will Republican politics in the US continue to drift to a xenophobic right, or is the current trend just an aberration?