美英選舉黑馬志同道合 Trump and Corbyn are two of a kind
Donald Trump and Jeremy Corbyn should get together. Mr Trump wants to grab the Republican presidential nomination from the Neanderthal right. The would-be leader of Britain’s opposition Labour Party hails from the hard, socialist left. They are seriously destabilising their respective parties. And they have more in common than either would care to admit.
唐納德礠朗普(Donald Trump)和傑里米科爾賓(Jeremy Corbyn)應該會一會。來自極右翼的特朗普希望獲得美國共和黨總統候選人提名。有望成爲英國反對黨工黨領袖的科爾賓來自奉行社會主義的極左翼。他們都顛覆了各自所在的黨派。兩人之間的共性要多於他們各自願意承認的。
The billionaire Mr Trump has leapt to the front of the GOP’s 16-candidate primary race for next year’s election for the White House. A poll released this week by the Washington Post and ABC gave him the support of 24 per cent of Republican and Republican-leaning voters. This for a candidate whose reactionary xenophobia can make the Tea Party sound liberal. On planet Trump, immigrants from Latin America and Mexico are rapists, criminals and drug-dealers, Senator John McCain is not a war hero because he was captured by the Vietnamese, same-sex marriage and abortion are anathema, China is an enemy and climate change a hoax.
美國共和黨有16人有意角逐明年的總統大選，目前億萬富翁特朗普在初步角逐中領先。《華盛頓郵報》(Washington Post)和美國廣播公司(ABC)本週發佈的民調顯示，在共和黨選民和傾向共和黨的選民當中，特朗普的支持率達到24%。這樣一位參選人居然能得到如此高的支持率——他發表的保守仇外言論簡直讓人覺得茶黨人士是自由主義者。在“特朗普星球”上，來自拉美和墨西哥的移民是強姦犯、罪犯和毒販；約翰麥凱恩(John McCain)不是戰爭英雄，因爲他曾被越南人俘虜過；同性婚姻和墮胎令人憎惡；中國是敵人；氣候變化是一場騙局。
If this has discombobulated mainstream Republicans, Mr Corbyn has stirred blind panic in the upper reaches of Britain’s opposition Labour party. Ed Miliband, the former leader, left his party in ruins after a crushing defeat at the hands of David Cameron’s Conservatives in last May’s election. Mr Corbyn, who this week opened a poll lead over the three other putative Labour leaders, would reduce to ashes what remains.
如果說這讓主流共和黨人感到困惑，那麼科爾賓則是在英國反對黨工黨的上層引發了盲目的恐慌。工黨在去年5月的選舉中慘敗給戴維慍蕓倫(David Cameron)的保守黨之後，埃德猠利班德(Ed Miliband)辭去黨魁之職，把元氣大傷的工黨留在一片廢墟之中。在本週民調中領先於其他三位黨魁候選人的科爾賓，恐怕將讓這片廢墟灰飛煙滅。
Unlike Mr Trump, Mr Corbyn wants to put up taxes, particularly on the rich. He would lead a crusade against global corporations. Mr Trump, one assumes, is just the sort he has in his sights. At home, Mr Corbyn would nationalise strategically-important industries, slash spending on defence, lend support to Sinn Féin’s campaign for a united Ireland, increase welfare benefits and jettison austerity. He never fails to mention he opposed the Iraq war, though gets cross when reminded he once referred to Hizbollah and Hamas as “friends”.
與特朗普不同，科爾賓希望增稅，尤其是對富人增稅。他將對全球企業發起一場十字軍運動。有人說，特朗普正是他要針對的那類目標。在國內，科爾賓將對具有重要戰略意義的行業國有化，大幅削減國防支出，向新芬黨(Sinn Féin)的愛爾蘭統一運動提供支持，增加福利支出，拋棄緊縮政策。他從不會忘記提及自己反對伊拉克戰爭，但當有人指出他曾經將真主黨和哈馬斯稱爲“朋友”時，他大發脾氣。
To be fair, Mr Corbyn has espoused such policies for the 30-odd years he has sat on his party’s backbenches in parliament. Until now, no one has ever imagined that he might one day emerge as a contender for the leadership.
說實話，在擔任本黨後座議員的30多年間，科爾賓一直支持此類政策。但在此之前從未有人想到，他有一天會角逐工黨領導人之位。
Mr Corbyn has nothing of Mr Trump’s wealth. While the latter takes pride in belligerent vulgarity, his British counterpart, by and large, is softly spoken. Mr Trump sports the world’s worst “comb-over”; Mr Corbyn has swapped the traditional jeans-and-T-shirt uniform of the left for a summer suit and Panama hat. Mr Trump looks for enemies; Mr Corbyn pretends that, given the chance, he would charm the despots and tyrants of the world into embracing peace, prosperity and equality.
科爾賓沒有特朗普那麼富有。後者以粗魯低俗爲榮，而科爾賓大體上還算溫文爾雅。特朗普炫耀他那顆全球最糟的“謝頂頭”；科爾賓身着夏季薄西服，頭戴巴拿馬草帽，而不是穿着左派傳統的T恤和牛仔褲。特朗普到處樹敵；而科爾賓卻假惺惺地表示，如果有機會，他要對世界上的獨裁者和暴君施加魔法，讓他們熱愛和平、繁榮、平等。
And yet. You can still hear the echoes across the Atlantic. The plutocrat and the self-styled tribune of the people are in the same business of politics as protest. They have put themselves at the head of insurgencies against the elites. If Mr Trump’s niche is nativist prejudice and Mr Corbyn’s self-righteous indignation, they both play to popular resentments instead of offering answers. Mr Trump’s unabashed narcissism finds a subtle counterpart in Mr Corbyn’s claim never once to have sullied his principles.
儘管如此，你仍可以聽到大西洋兩岸遙相呼應的聲音。這兩人一個是財閥，一個是自封的人民領袖，他們從事的政治事業與抗議沒有什麼兩樣。他們讓自己處於反抗精英的第一線。如果特朗普的着眼點是本土主義者的偏見，科爾賓的着眼點則是自以爲是的義憤，他們都是在迎合民衆的不滿情緒，而不是提供解決辦法。特朗普毫不以爲恥的自戀和科爾賓宣稱從未違背自己的原則的大話有着微妙的對應關係。
The two also hold up a mirror to their respective parties. Mr Trump has prospered of the company he is in. The very fact that 16 candidates have thrown their hats into the Republican ring is telling. Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, Marco Rubio and the rest — they all have their champions, but none has made a compelling bid. The GOP can win the House and the Senate, and sweep the board in state elections, but picking a presidential candidate opens up the fissures and fractures between realist party establishment and hard-right grass roots.
這兩人也是各自黨派的映象。特朗普之所以領先，是因爲共和黨總統候選人非常多。16人宣佈角逐共和黨總統候選人的事實說明了這一點。傑布布什(Jeb Bush)、斯科特茠克(Scott Walker)、馬可脠比奧(Marco Rubio)以及其他候選人全都有自己的擁護者，但他們沒有一個提出有說服力的競選綱領。共和黨能夠贏得衆議院和參議院的多數席位，並在州選舉中大獲全勝，但遴選一位總統候選人的事情暴露出了黨內務實派精英和極右翼基層之間分歧和裂痕。
Among the others in the Labour contest only the centrist Liz Kendall has stepped out of the party’s comfort zone by saying it must explore why it had been deserted by middle-of-the-road voters. Such daring has left her trailing in fourth place. Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper, the self-declared mainstream contenders, have so far said nothing of any note.
英國工黨其他候選人當中，只有中間派利茲科伊肯德爾(Liz Kendall)率直地指出，工黨必須弄明白爲何遭到中間路線選民的拋棄。這樣的勇氣使她在四位候選人中排名第四。安迪伯納姆(Andy Burnham)和伊薇特錠珀(Yvette Cooper)這兩位自我宣稱的主流競爭者迄今沒有發表任何言論。
As with the Republican primary, the race is being shaped by the activists. Mr Miliband’s delusion was to think he could oust Mr Cameron by lurching to the left. The voters decided otherwise. Incredibly, many Labour members have drawn the conclusion that the mistake was to have been insufficiently socialist.
與美國共和黨初選一樣，英國工黨黨魁選舉也是由活躍分子唱主角。米利班德錯誤地認爲，他可以通過倒向左派來把卡梅倫趕下臺。選民們做出了不同的決定。令人難以置信的是，許多工黨成員認定，錯誤在於社會主義傾向還不夠。
Odd bedfellows as they may seem, Messrs Trump and Corbyn share more than the fragilities of their parties. Strip out the policy specifics and they carry the same core message to the disenchanted and disgruntled: we can stop the world and get off. In Mr Trump’s case, the enemies are immigrants, China and anyone who does not do what the US says; in Mr Corbyn’s they are global capitalism and American militarism.
儘管說特朗普和科爾賓是同道之人似乎有些古怪，但他們的共性不只表現在各自黨派的脆弱。拋開具體政策不提，他們都向幻想破滅和不滿的人傳達了同樣的核心信息：我們可以讓世界停止運轉並下車。就特朗普來說，敵人是移民、中國以及所有不想聽從美國指示的國家，就科爾賓來說，敵人是全球資本主義和美國軍國主義。
Look across Europe and you see the same marriage of far left and right: a shared populism that plays to the anger and frustration of electorates battered by recession and by the economic and physical insecurities of globalisation. This is politics without answers, but it has been winning votes for the National Front in France, Syriza in Greece and the Five Star Movement in Italy.
環顧歐洲，你可以看到極左思潮和極右思潮同樣匯合了起來：共同的民粹主義迎合了選民的不滿和沮喪情緒——選民們不僅受到經濟衰退的衝擊，而且還因全球化而缺乏經濟和人身安全保障。這是沒有答案的政治，但它爲法國的國民陣線(National Front)、希臘的激進左翼聯盟黨(Syriza)和意大利的五星運動(Five Star Movement)贏得了選票。
The odds are the Republicans and Labour will shake off their collective madness, leaving Messrs Trump and Corbyn on the sidelines. But the anger and mistrust that have put them in lights have become a dangerous fact of modern democratic politics.
美國共和黨人和英國工黨或許會擺脫集體瘋狂，讓特朗普和科爾賓靠邊站。但使這兩人得以脫穎而出的民衆不滿情緒和不信任態度已經成爲現代民主政治中一個危險的現象。
