What do people in the Czech Republic think of Trump?

Reactions to Trump are surprisingly mixed in the Czech Republic. There is a range of opinions.

First the polls, courtesy of Kristyna Zemanova, whose comment  I have cut and pasted here, followed by my own anecdotal stories.

 Kristyna writes:

There were actually opinion polls about the American elections, both before and after the results. In october 2016 43% favoured Hillary, 13% Trump and the rest didn’t know/didn’t care. After the elections 22% were very or rather satisfied with the result, 22% were very or rather unsatisfied and the largest group - 37% was neither satisfied nor disatisfied. In december, 30% said that they trusted Trump while 43% didn’t trust him which left him with a score of -13. This was a significantly worse result than Obama’s (+26), but waaaay better than Merkel’s (-58). Putin was at -41.

So there you have it. Not as popular as Obama, but way more popular than Putin or the hated Merkel.

My own anecdotal evidence goes like this:

While some people are certainly against Trump, including some prominent figures, a surprising amount of people in my encounters support his positions — although in many ways, like any European country, this is a social democracy with a European health care system and so on, i.e., far to the left in American terms, it is actually much more conservative than a lot of Western European countries.

An amazing amount of people I know are against Muslim refugees settling in Europe. The fear of Islamic terrorism is very high. One woman I teach told me at the news of Trump’s election that the world was heading for a new era. And she seemed pretty pleased pleased by that.

In a discussion with my in-laws last weekend, they all told me they supported Trump.

It seems that his stances on immigration and anti-Islamic stance is something that speaks to them. One of them said, “I don’t like Russia. But I am not afraid of Russia. I am afraid of Muslims coming to Europe.” This was a direct quote.

Every argument I made against Trump was dismissed using what was in my opinion, really inane arguments, considering the intelligence of those involved. (I do have great respect for my girlfriend’s family, despite the fact that I disagree with them on some political issues.)

My arguments ran thus:

• He is a puppet of Putin
• He is anti-democratic
• He is anti-Freedom of Speech/Expression/Press
• He has massive conflicts of interest
• He is only out for himself

The idea that he might be working for Putin — was considered ridiculous. They openly scoffed at the idea; and they furthermore scoffed at the idea that any of the other nationalist politicians active in current Europe were in any way tied to Russia.

The idea that Trump was anti-Democratic — was also dismissed due to, I believe, a deep seated cynicism involving Democracy itself. The attitude seemed to be that all politicians were were anti-Democratic so what did it matter?

The conflicts of issue/corruption argument — seemed to generate a basic “well, they are all corrupt anyway, so what can you do?”

Anti-Freedom of Speech/Expression/Press arguments — they seem to think that American institutions are too strong to prevent Trump really going too far. They actually have more faith in American institutions than I do, when it comes to protecting civil liberties.

So there was actually a lot of double-think going on: Their arguments boiled down come down to two incompatible notions:

• America is hopelessly corrupt anyway, so what does it matter?
• Yet has institutions that will stop Trump from becoming the American Putin. (or whatever: obviously Trump is Trump and Putin is Putin.)

Euro-scepticism runs pretty deep in the Czech Republic so a lot of Trump’s frankly anti-European/anti Merkel rhetoric resonates much more than I think Western Europeans realize. Or maybe they do realize it, but they don’t post here on Quora.

If that boggles your mind, remember that everything Trump says or tweets is translated into Czech, thus cleansing it of the usual malapropisms that partially fuel the anti-Trump resentment among those with better English skills. Also his tweet-tantrums are not as widely reported in Czech news as they are on English-speaking news. English is widely spoken here but not like it is in Scandinavia or Denmark: few people are actually gaining news from English sources.

It is also a fact that supporters of Czech centre-right (as I am, actually) don’t quite understand that the Republican/Trump agenda is quite a bit more radical than they would be comfortable with — you, the anti-science bit or the anti-abortion bit, or the anti-LGBT bit.

You know, most people are not students of American culture. Especially if they don’t speak English.

I hesitate to put a percentage of how many people support Trump, but I would say it is far greater than I personally, as a vociferous anti-Trump American, am comfortable with.

But I would guess it is a slight majority, especially when you consider that the ones in the Czech Republic that are most likely to support Trump-like ideas are the lower working class: I don’t have a lot of contact with those people: most of the Czechs I know are either middle class and educated — or teenage students.

I am also in a particularly Christian region of this mostly atheistic country and that may play into the attitudes I am seeing, too, I suppose.

As for politicians, the Czech President Zeman enthusiastically supports Trump (and Putin), and penned a fawning syncophantic letter to Trump in November that was published and widely reported in the press. (Badly translated into English, which, as a part-time translator, pissed me off, because I am probably cheaper than whoever he got to work on it, but never mind.)

Of course not everyone supports Trump. I have spoken people who distrust and dislike the Donald. There is a range of opnions, as I said. But the anti-Trump people in my vicinity (for example, my girlfriend) do not seem to be as openly vocal as those who support him.