Populists are out to divide us. They must be stopped | Timothy Garton Ash

The US is the latest country to be seduced by nationalists. Liberals should brace themselves for a long struggle

So now the challenge is in plain view: we face the globalisation of anti-globalisation, a popular front of populists, an International of nationalists. “Today the United States, tomorrow – France,” tweets Jean-Marie Le Pen. It will be a long, hard struggle to defeat them, at home and abroad, and we may now have to look elsewhere for the “leader of the free world”. But defeat them we will.

In Vladimir Putin’s Russia we have something very close to fascism. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey is rapidly crossing the line between illiberal democracy and fascism, while Viktor Orbán’s Hungary is already an illiberal democracy. In Poland, France, the Netherlands, Britain and now the US, we have to defend the line between liberal and illiberal democracy.

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