GHALEB CACHALIA: Poor presentation opens door to Trump and his ilk who thrive on cultural antagonism

As the year draws to a close, many global concerns remain historically, morally and empirically sound: few can dispute that Black Lives Matter exposed serious systemic inequities. #MeToo shattered the culture of impunity surrounding gendered abuse. Trans rights activism initially sought little more than dignity and safety for all, and critiques of neo-colonial exploitation simply name the still-visible architecture of global inequality.

Yet the political terrain around them has shifted dramatically. The past decade has seen the astonishing ascendancy of Donald Trump, the consolidation of alt-right ecosystems online, and the rise of ultraconservative movements from Europe and India to Latin America and the Philippines.

Their success is not merely a reaction to fair-minded demands; it represents a strategic exploitation of moments when legitimate demands for justice can be caricatured as overreach, exclusion or moral arrogance.

In the algorithmic age, movements often migrate from the streets into digital theatres designed to reward anger over complexity. Social media compresses nuance into slogan and disagreement into betrayal. It’s easy within this environment to drift toward rhetorical absolutism, policing language and motives that alienate those who might otherwise be sympathetic.

Far-right talking points

Witness the opportunity provided to Trump and others who thrive on cultural antagonism. Trump, in particular, has cast himself as a warrior against “political correctness”, tapping into public fatigue with the tone of certain activist spaces. He turns every reformist overreach — whether real, exaggerated or imaginary — into fuel for populist mobilisation.

In South Africa the likes of Afriforum capitalised on it, and Trump seized the gap by publicly rebuking President Cyril Ramaphosa over land reform and accusing the government of “seizing farms” and “killing white farmers”, echoing long-debunked far-right talking points.

This was hardly a good-faith intervention in South Africa’s complex land debate. It was a deliberate attempt to fold a legitimate historical justice issue into a global culture war narrative. By portraying Ramaphosa as a symbol of “radical left overreach”, Trump simultaneously appealed to his base at home and amplified alt-right discourses abroad, illustrating how easily justice questions can be reframed as existential threats, turning nuanced debates into fodder for reactionary mobilisation.

Across Europe far-right parties have surged by weaponising frustrations with social justice rhetoric, tethering them to anxieties about migration, economic insecurity and cultural displacement. In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro rode to power partly by positioning himself as the antidote to “excessive” progressive politics. In India and the UK, rights-based debates are intentionally recast as elite impositions on national identity.

Performative outrage

These ultraconservative movements rise not because the principles of justice are flawed but because their opponents make themselves easy to lampoon. When activists are perceived as unwilling to engage, uninterested in persuasion or too swift to shame, populist conservatives seize the opening. They redirect public frustration away from inequality, precarity or corruption and toward the fashioned villain of the “woke elite”. And so political energy is deflected from structural reform into carefully crafted culture wars.

Polarisation is not incidental; it is the intended outcome. Broad coalitions are rendered almost impossible; they permit the quiet consolidation of power through judicial appointments, privatisation and policy rollbacks. Citizens remain distracted by performative outrage.

But urgency and moral clarity need not be lost if a willingness to persuade rather than posture, to expand the terrain rather than police, to recognise that effective politics and not captivating rhetoric, is what ultimately shifts societies.

Racial justice, gender equality and decolonial repair cannot be left to be undermined by poor presentation. In the coming year, when figures like Trump and global ultraconservatives turn activism’s missteps into ammunition, the challenge is whether reformers can avoid becoming inadvertent accelerants of the very forces they seek to resist.

• Cachalia, a businessperson and management consultant, is a former DA MP and public enterprises spokesperson, and chaired De Beers Namibia.