美英选举黑马志同道合 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.
唐纳德礠朗普(Donald Trump)和杰里米科尔宾(Jeremy Corbyn)应该会一会。来自极右翼的特朗普希望获得美国共和党总统候选人提名。有望成为英国反对党工党领袖的科尔宾来自奉行社会主义的极左翼。他们都颠覆了各自所在的党派。两人之间的共性要多于他们各自愿意承认的。
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.
美国共和党有16人有意角逐明年的总统大选，目前亿万富翁特朗普在初步角逐中领先。《华盛顿邮报》(Washington Post)和美国广播公司(ABC)本周发布的民调显示，在共和党选民和倾向共和党的选民当中，特朗普的支持率达到24%。这样一位参选人居然能得到如此高的支持率——他发表的保守仇外言论简直让人觉得茶党人士是自由主义者。在“特朗普星球”上，来自拉美和墨西哥的移民是强奸犯、罪犯和毒贩；约翰麦凯恩(John McCain)不是战争英雄，因为他曾被越南人俘虏过；同性婚姻和堕胎令人憎恶；中国是敌人；气候变化是一场骗局。
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.
如果说这让主流共和党人感到困惑，那么科尔宾则是在英国反对党工党的上层引发了盲目的恐慌。工党在去年5月的选举中惨败给戴维愠蕓伦(David Cameron)的保守党之后，埃德猠利班德(Ed Miliband)辞去党魁之职，把元气大伤的工党留在一片废墟之中。在本周民调中领先于其他三位党魁候选人的科尔宾，恐怕将让这片废墟灰飞烟灭。
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”.
与特朗普不同，科尔宾希望增税，尤其是对富人增税。他将对全球企业发起一场十字军运动。有人说，特朗普正是他要针对的那类目标。在国内，科尔宾将对具有重要战略意义的行业国有化，大幅削减国防支出，向新芬党(Sinn Féin)的爱尔兰统一运动提供支持，增加福利支出，抛弃紧缩政策。他从不会忘记提及自己反对伊拉克战争，但当有人指出他曾经将真主党和哈马斯称为“朋友”时，他大发脾气。
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.
说实话，在担任本党后座议员的30多年间，科尔宾一直支持此类政策。但在此之前从未有人想到，他有一天会角逐工党领导人之位。
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.
科尔宾没有特朗普那么富有。后者以粗鲁低俗为荣，而科尔宾大体上还算温文尔雅。特朗普炫耀他那颗全球最糟的“谢顶头”；科尔宾身着夏季薄西服，头戴巴拿马草帽，而不是穿着左派传统的T恤和牛仔裤。特朗普到处树敌；而科尔宾却假惺惺地表示，如果有机会，他要对世界上的独裁者和暴君施加魔法，让他们热爱和平、繁荣、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.
尽管如此，你仍可以听到大西洋两岸遥相呼应的声音。这两人一个是财阀，一个是自封的人民领袖，他们从事的政治事业与抗议没有什么两样。他们让自己处于反抗精英的第一线。如果特朗普的着眼点是本土主义者的偏见，科尔宾的着眼点则是自以为是的义愤，他们都是在迎合民众的不满情绪，而不是提供解决办法。特朗普毫不以为耻的自恋和科尔宾宣称从未违背自己的原则的大话有着微妙的对应关系。
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.
这两人也是各自党派的映象。特朗普之所以领先，是因为共和党总统候选人非常多。16人宣布角逐共和党总统候选人的事实说明了这一点。杰布布什(Jeb Bush)、斯科特茠克(Scott Walker)、马可脠比奥(Marco Rubio)以及其他候选人全都有自己的拥护者，但他们没有一个提出有说服力的竞选纲领。共和党能够赢得众议院和参议院的多数席位，并在州选举中大获全胜，但遴选一位总统候选人的事情暴露出了党内务实派精英和极右翼基层之间分歧和裂痕。
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.
英国工党其他候选人当中，只有中间派利兹科伊肯德尔(Liz Kendall)率直地指出，工党必须弄明白为何遭到中间路线选民的抛弃。这样的勇气使她在四位候选人中排名第四。安迪伯纳姆(Andy Burnham)和伊薇特錠珀(Yvette Cooper)这两位自我宣称的主流竞争者迄今没有发表任何言论。
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.
与美国共和党初选一样，英国工党党魁选举也是由活跃分子唱主角。米利班德错误地认为，他可以通过倒向左派来把卡梅伦赶下台。选民们做出了不同的决定。令人难以置信的是，许多工党成员认定，错误在于社会主义倾向还不够。
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.
尽管说特朗普和科尔宾是同道之人似乎有些古怪，但他们的共性不只表现在各自党派的脆弱。抛开具体政策不提，他们都向幻想破灭和不满的人传达了同样的核心信息：我们可以让世界停止运转并下车。就特朗普来说，敌人是移民、中国以及所有不想听从美国指示的国家，就科尔宾来说，敌人是全球资本主义和美国军国主义。
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.
环顾欧洲，你可以看到极左思潮和极右思潮同样汇合了起来：共同的民粹主义迎合了选民的不满和沮丧情绪——选民们不仅受到经济衰退的冲击，而且还因全球化而缺乏经济和人身安全保障。这是没有答案的政治，但它为法国的国民阵线(National Front)、希腊的激进左翼联盟党(Syriza)和意大利的五星运动(Five Star Movement)赢得了选票。
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.
美国共和党人和英国工党或许会摆脱集体疯狂，让特朗普和科尔宾靠边站。但使这两人得以脱颖而出的民众不满情绪和不信任态度已经成为现代民主政治中一个危险的现象。
