Following the Republicans’ heavy defeat in the US midterm elections, far-right politics appears to be facing visible erosion and crisis. It is a politics that shamelessly humiliates migrants and mocks Muslim activists and politicians. But why has this approach and rhetoric met with a negative response wherever it has been raised? Why does anyone lose whenever Trump and his political machine back them? Candidates in US states, and politicians in other countries such as Viktor Orbán in Hungary and Flávio Bolsonaro in Brazil, have left the scene one after another. It is as though people are so offended and upset by Trump’s policies that they greet anyone he supports with a loud, collective “no.”
The Trump administration, backed by some Western countries and met with the silence and neutrality of others, confronted Western society with a moral question just when Israel attacked Gaza, destroyed the city, killed thousands of women and children, and Netanyahu’s defense minister called its residents animals. Iran was then attacked, delivering a hammer blow to the global economy. Far-right leaders in the West supplied a large share of the money and weapons Israel needed. They described the action as boldness, a defense of the free world, and a war against barbarism. When many of the world’s diplomats walked out of the hall during Netanyahu’s speech at the annual session of the United Nations (UN) in New York, he called them cowards. But when the International Criminal Court (ICC) accused Netanyahu of war crimes, world public opinion pointed the finger of blame at the West, placing these countries in a morally difficult position.
A moral crisis may change nothing on the surface, but it lays the foundation for doubt and distrust in society. When economic crisis and livelihood insecurity spread, people determine their fate at the ballot box. The far right promises people paradise with grandiose slogans about improving the economy, making the country greater, and expelling foreigners and migrants. But when these promises collide with realities on the ground, erosion and challenge begin.
Geert Wilders, leader of the far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) in the Netherlands, won the most votes in November 2023 and formed a cabinet in coalition with several other parties. But in less than a year, the cabinet collapsed, elections were held again, and his party was pushed back. The main reason was that none of his campaign promises were fulfilled. Wilders himself protested, asking why none of his goals were being realized. This is precisely the core problem: during elections, crises and complexities are oversimplified and the migrant community is presented as the cause of all of society’s misfortunes. In practice, however, it becomes clear that the real causes are inefficiency, hatred, and an inability to understand and manage the range of issues that keep a welfare state running.
The same story repeated itself in Hungary and Brazil, where right-wing movements lost elections. Likewise, Netanyahu in Israel failed to win the expected majority of votes from the Jewish right-wing camp. But the defeat of the far right in America was like a bucket of ice water poured over other far-right leaders in various countries. The Trump administration pushed society toward polarization, weakened the economy, increased the number of wars in the world, and tried to normalize insulting and fascist rhetoric. Just as Trump, with his excitability and thoughtless rhetoric, was an inspiration and role model for right-wing party leaders in Europe, his party’s defeat has now become a source of disappointment and distress for them.
In the Trump era and in the rhetoric of his supporters, empathy and ethical conduct are more often interpreted as naivety and cowardice. Lying, attacking, aggression, and self-contradiction have found their place and have become tools of political success. Susan Neiman, an American philosopher based in Germany, examines this era from a structural and cultural perspective in her new book, published in September 2026 and titled Call It Evil: Understanding the Trump Era, drawing on the thought and moral philosophy of Hannah Arendt. In her view, evil does not necessarily appear in the face of an exceptional criminal; it can spread through ordinary structures, administrative decisions, and political and economic mechanisms: starting wars to hold on to power, cutting social assistance to lower taxes on the wealthy, normalizing violence against defenseless people, and turning discrimination and injustice into everyday policy.
Trump has acted decisively in these areas, to the point that 150 migrants from Afghanistan are now set to be deported from the United States. Among them are even people who have lived in America for four decades. This is precisely the terrible nature of evil: it makes the humiliation and expulsion of defenseless people normal, legal, and workable, while society seems numb and shows no reaction. For this reason, Neiman warns that evil must be called evil on a wide scale, wherever it appears in its various forms, and that we must not behave so cautiously that evil ends up destroying everything.
According to Neiman, moral decline begins before political decline. A political crisis does not begin merely with the dominance of an authoritarian leader; before that, a society’s moral sensitivity may already have worn away. Society becomes hesitant in recognizing injustice, and then grows used to it. One of the traps of this situation is that all crises are blamed on the migrant community, after which attacks and humiliation against migrants are normalized. It is in such a situation that justice and truth fall into crisis, and recognizing them becomes difficult for a helpless, angry, and impatient person.
The defeat of the ruling party in America is not only the defeat of Trump and his belligerent, inflammatory rhetoric. It is a sign of the weakening roots of a structure and worldview that seeks to stay in power through deception, bullying, crudeness, and evasion of responsibility and freedom. One of the biggest victims of this far-right machine is the migrant community, the most readily available defenseless group, which is subjected to psychological pressure, threats, deportation, and marginalization. The defeat of such a fascist outlook, whose entire body is rooted in wickedness, offers the migrant and Muslim community a chance to breathe and a measure of peace of mind.
Abdul El-Sayed’s victory in Michigan and Mike Rogers’s defeat brought smiles to the faces of those whose names, identities, and communities Trump had ruthlessly mocked and insulted. Thousands of people answered insult, bullying, and anti-migrant hostility at the ballot box, with a heavy and historic response the likes of which Republicans had not experienced in half a century.
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