I'm from the Netherlands here and Trumps succes reminds me of the sudden unexpected rise of Pim Fortuyn in many ways.
Now first of all, there are some major differences between the two.
* Pim Fortuyn was gay and secular, Trump is hetero and at least pretends to be religious.
* Pim was flamboyant yet exceptionally wellspoken whereas Trump is more rude and oafish.
* Pim was a scientist, worked for the goverment and eventually became a proffessor at a university before he started his political career and Trump is a business man.
But there are some almost eery similarities as well.
* Both Fortuyn and Trump were complete outsiders who got into politics and immediatly became phenomenons
* Both Fortuyn and Trump were initially heralded with amusement on the right and left and by the press. Both weren't considered to be serious candidates at first. Both were seen as "clowns" or "entertainers" by many.
* Both Fortuyn and Trump got a lot of media attention by saying outrageous things.
* Both Fortuyn and Trump are actually entertainers, both exactly knew how to play the media, how to gather attention.
* Both were exceptionally underestimated right until the point were underestimation changed into realization that this isn't some occurance but a new reality.
* Both Fortuyn and Trump became popular in a time where a large part of the population got sick and tired of politics as usual, and both of them rose by painting the establisment as being totally out of touch with the common people and impotent in terms of leadership.
* Both Fortuyn and Trump managed to severely damage other politicians by attacking them as out of touch and weak, particularly on immigration.
* Both Fortuyn and Trump had a no surrender style of attacking their political enemies which schocked the establishment. For example Pim Fortuyn attacked the minister of healtcare and claimed that she was murderer responsible for thousands of deaths because of the waiting line problem at the time.
* Both Fortuyn and Trump were loved by their followers because they "told it like it is". Fortuyns slogan was basically, "I say what I mean and I mean what I say".
* Of course both Fortuyn and Trump have immigration as their key political strenghts and as the main reason they got their attention. Fortuyn was mostly focused on muslim immigration here in the Netherlands, while Trump is focused on the latino immigration.
* Both were painted as racists by their opponents.
Initially people on the left didn't really worry about Fortuyn and thought that Fortuyn would mostly cannibalize the right wing vote. The strange truth is that he didn't. Fortuyn actually crushed the left wing parties, particularly the leading social democrat party, and most Fortuyn voters were actually middle class blue collar previous "socialists and social democrats" who where dissapointed by their party and who saw their party as unable to help them in their daily lives. Now I'm not saying the same will happen with Trump, but it at least tells us that American liberals shouldn't get to comfertable.
Of course, Fortuyn got killed before the national election happened, and as much as i didn't agree with Fortuyn, I really didn't want that to happen, after all the Netherlands is a country of free speech and despite the fact that I disagreed with some of the things Fortuyn said, he didn't deserve to die (same goes for Trump of course). The murder of a politician is a tragedy and kills a part of everyones freedom, even if you don't agree with them.
Had Pim Fortuyn remained alive, most pollsters agree that Pim Fortuyn would have won the election of 2002 and become the Prime Minister. The Fortuyn revolution changed Dutch politics forever.
I don't think Trump will be president, because he really lacks the impeccible style, finesse and smoothness of Fortuyn who was much more intelligent and better able to crush an opponent verbally into the ground while at the same time seeming to talk perfectly polite whereas Trump more or less is like an elephant in the porcelain room. But I do think that basically he has opened the same can of worms that Fortuyn opened and we may well see American politics changed permanently because of it.
p.s. Sorry for my bad English, it's not my native language.
