The struggle to understand the Trump phenomenon has created a small library of books about Middle America. But it might be just as useful to look at Thailand or Turkey. For the rise of the US president is part of a political phenomenon — visible all over the world — that is pitting “metropolitan elites” against pitchfork-wielding populists based in small towns and the countryside.
In the 2016 election, Donald Trump lost in all of America’s largest cities — often by huge margins — but was carried to the White House by the rest of the country. This flame-out in big-city America replicated the pattern of Britain’s Brexit referendum earlier that year, when the Leave campaign won despite losing in almost all big cities. The urban-rural split was also an educational divide. In the UK, voters who had left school without educational qualifications voted 73 per cent for Leave, while those with postgraduate degrees voted 75 per cent Remain. There was a similar pattern in the US, leading Mr Trump to exult, on the campaign trail: “We love the poorly educated.”
The split between a metropolitan elite and a populist hinterland is clear in western politics. Less often noticed is that the same divide increasingly defines politics outside the west — spanning places with very different cultures and levels of development, such as Turkey, Thailand, Brazil, Egypt and Israel.