A Look At Our Future: 5 Nations Who Elected Their Trump

5 The Golden Dawn Party (Greece)

Things have to get seriously out of hand in a country before the people start considering Nazis a viable solution to their woes. Hitler hung around on the fringes for a long time in Germany before the masses got desperate enough to consider letting him act on the crazy shit he'd been preaching all those years. Unfortunately, things have gotten precisely that out of hand in Greece, as evidenced by the rising popularity of the genuinely terrifying Golden Dawn Party.

Their roots trace back all the way to the early '80s, but they weren't recognized as a legitimate political party until 1993. They participated in a few elections back then, and never gained more than one percent of the vote.

That poor showing can be blamed on the fact that, from the very beginning, Golden Dawn has been labeled a group of fascists and/or neo-Nazis. Understand, those labels shouldn't be taken as the typical "unfair comparison to Hitler"-type of stuff we so commonly hear in political arguments today. No, this is just a straight-up hate group, and they've got the perfect logo for the job.

No, it's not a swastika, but it certainly wishes it could be. It looks like the kind of thing you'd see in a movie where the filmmakers want to imply that Nazis are involved without being too on the nose about things.

Seeing as how members of Golden Dawn have been accused of a whole slew of hate crimes over the years, sometimes of the full-on murder variety, it seems improbable that a group as radical as this could ever gain any real power in the modern world. But poverty is a powerful force. Greece experienced one of the most dramatic economic collapses in history a while back, and the longer it takes them to recover, the more traction Golden Dawn gains as a legitimate government entity.

Their days of winning less than a percentage point in elections are long gone. In 2012, they won seven percent of the vote in the general election in Greece, enough to earn them 21 parliament seats. They repeated that success in 2015, except in a much more troubling way. You see, at the time of Golden Dawn's strong showing in that election, most of the party leaders were in prison. See the guy on the right in this picture?

That's Ilias Kasidiaris at a swearing-in ceremony for a city council position he'd just won. He was granted a temporary leave from prison so he could attend. Something else important happened for Golden Dawn in 2015. That's the year they released their Hitler-esque 15-point plan for rescuing Greece from its economic crisis. I know what you're wondering, and yes, of course it says all immigrants should be expelled from the country.

While we're on the subject, as if having one huge problem (the financial crisis) to exploit for political gain wasn't enough, the flood of refugees pouring into Greece has given Golden Dawn another talking point to work with.

Greece just had an election last year, so for the next few years at least, Golden Dawn will remain a relatively minor player in their affairs. Here's hoping things get vastly better by 2019. If they don't, we could have a newfangled Nazi party running its own country very soon.

4 Marine Le Pen (France)

Golden Dawn may still be a few years and a couple more catastrophes away from taking power for real in Greece, but things are significantly more dire in France. That country's National Front (FN) party has been around for a similarly brief amount of time (founded in 1972), but they've been a force in French politics since the '80s, to the point where election rules were amended in 2004 in an effort to put a halt to the momentum the party was gaining.

That worked for a while, but that all changed in 2011, when Marine Le Pen, the daughter of former FN leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, took over control of the party. She promptly set about repairing the National Front's image, hoping to make their message more palatable for a mainstream audience.

Or as palatable as "kick out all immigrants and don't let any new ones in" can be, at least. She also wants to bring the death penalty back and increase prison capacity in France, both as a means to control the raging crime problem that she blames on -- you guessed it -- immigration. Her stance on that issue is such that The New Yorker actually labeled Donald Trump "America's Marine Le Pen."

In that same article, they discuss her rising popularity, which includes a terrifying third-place finish in the 2012 presidential election. It's mentioned that her rise pre-dated the terrorist attacks that happened in Paris in November 2015. That's exactly the kind of tragedy that a candidate who runs on a platform centered around fearing foreigners can capitalize on, and sure enough, in the first round of polling since it happened, Le Pen leads the race to become the next president of France.

That would certainly mean disaster for any immigrants living in France currently, but it would also quite likely spell bad times for the United States as well. Turns out Le Pen isn't a fan, claiming we dragged her nation back into the NATO fold as a means to force them into participating in our misguided wars. She's driven that point home by buddying up to Vladimir Putin. You can argue all day as to whether we really need France's help fighting our wars, but there's no debating the fact that the last thing this country needs right now is another enemy.

3 Silvio Berlusconi (Italy)

Le Pen isn't the only European politician who's drawn direct comparisons to Trump. Way back in September of last year, The Washington Post was imploring Americans to not treat the Trump campaign as a joke, lest we suffer the same fate that befell Italy when they somehow managed to let renowned fuckup Silvio Berlusconi become their longest-serving Prime Minister.

Berlusconi arrived on the scene at a time when the people were fed up with "the establishment" and yearning for change of some kind. He was an outsider -- a successful businessman (he owns the AC Milan football club, among other things) who promised to do for his country what he'd done for his own personal finances.

His campaign was built on insults, harsh language, and anything else that would keep people from focusing on the irrationality of his ideas. It worked so well that not only did people not pay attention to the details of his plans, but they laughed off the idea of him winning entirely. Does any of this sound familiar so far? What if I mention that Berlusconi is also a vehement sexist and misogynist? This was most famously displayed the time he referred to German chancellor Angela Merkel as an "unfuckable lard ass."

However, all of this pales in comparison to the actions he took in an effort to make Italy great again. Despite campaigning on the promise that he'd bring his vast business skills to the Italian government, he was eventually forced to resign after failing to make the slightest dent in the country's mounting debt. By the time he finally left office, Italy was $2.6 trillion in the hole. This from a guy who, unlike Trump, has never filed for bankruptcy once. Buckle up, America!

2 The UK Independence Party

The UK Independence Party (UKIP) is for all intents and purposes Britain's version of the Tea Party. Yes, purists, I know that UKIP was founded well before the Tea Party. I'm just making a comparison; let's not turn it into a competition. There's plenty of room for both of our countries to be awful. Anyway, the Tea Party comparison is appropriate in that neither party is openly racist. It's more that you just kind of know. Then one day, all of your suspicions are confirmed when a video like this starts making the rounds:

That's video of former UKIP councillor (Ha! England spells stupid!) Rozanne (Again!) Duncan confirming that she has absolutely no qualms with Pakistani people being in her country, which sounds great until she follows it up with, and I quote, "the only people I do have problems with are Negros, and I don't know why."

Yowzers, lady! That is some bold talk! Bold enough, in fact, that it got her kicked out of the party after leader Nigel Farage referred to her remarks as "deeply racist." So she was just one bad apple in the bunch, right? Not so much, as you'll note from this article which points out 15 different instances of UKIP members in full-fledged bigot mode. Here are just a few of the examples they dug up:

Apparently, all of that only falls under the umbrella of "racist" and not "deeply racist," hence the lack of response from the aforementioned Nigel Farage.

Oh, and since he's come up again, it's worth noting that Farage hasn't been at all silent when it comes to the Trump controversy. At one point, he said that Trump's plan to outright ban Muslims from entering the United States went "too far." Which seems like good news, but he also beamed with pride over how The Donald was using talking points similar to those of UKIP to gain popularity. Like how they both think immigrants should be banned from their respective countries because of all the diseases they spread after they arrive, for example.

If those two points make it seem unclear as to where exactly Farage stands on the subject, he set the record straight last month when he openly endorsed the idea of a Trump presidency, saying he'd be "more pro-British" than Obama ever was. I can't be certain, but I'm pretty sure what he really means is "pro-white."

1 Stephen Harper (Canada)

If any country will try to throw shade over us coming so very close to electing Donald Trump, it will definitely be Canada. For one thing, half the United States has already vowed to move there if Trump is elected. People who live there now will definitely have something to say about the prospect of us flooding their relative lack of shores to exponentially increase their emergency room wait times and whatnot.

They also just elected their first good-time party Prime Minister, the insanely social-media-friendly and super progressive Justin Trudeau.

So rest assured they'll be riding high on a wave of "It's better up here" confidence. The worse things get here, the more we'll hear about it from the people upstairs about how we should be more like them. That's to be expected, but it certainly doesn't mean they're right. After all, it's not like Canada has been a bastion of progressive thinking over the past decade.

From 2006 to 2015, the Canadian government was run by Prime Minister Stephen Harper. While comparing him to Trump is a bit of a stretch, he definitely qualifies as Canada's version of George W. Bush. Well, minus the penchant for invading Middle Eastern countries for sport. Aside from that one difference, he was remarkably Bush-like when it came to all the ways he moved his country further to the right than most residents would ever be comfortable admitting. From denying climate change to suppressing minority votes through shady tactics to making gun ownership an all-around less restrictive process and so much more, Harper hit nearly every note in the United States conservative politician songbook, and Canada is now a far less progressive place than it used to be as a result.

That's not to say that Harper never veered into Trump territory. Near the end of his reign, he fought hard to make sure Syrian refugees who entered Canada were mostly of the non-Muslim variety. That sounds familiar, right?

Speaking of which, he also turned Islam into a wedge issue after his proposal that wearing a niqab (a type of face veil worn by a small minority of Muslim women) should be illegal during Canadian citizenship ceremonies was rejected by a Federal Appeals court. Rather than let the issue die, he vowed to take his case to the Supreme Court and made the ban a divisive talking point at every turn during his campaign.

He may not be in office anymore, but a campaign like Harper's final failed attempt to stay in power stokes anti-Muslim sentiment in a way that stays with people. As a result, it should surprise no one that in the aftermath of the recent terror attacks in Paris, incidents of violence against Muslims in Canada skyrocketed.

We've seen this all before in this country, and now, with the candidacy of Donald Trump, we're seeing the potentially disastrous result of assuming that hatred and xenophobia are problems that go away once you elect a more progressive leader. The people who were most vehement in their disdain for Muslims didn't just change their mind because we elected Obama.

No, instead they sat around for eight years getting angry that their right to be racist in public was being infringed upon, and now they're rallying around the one man who seems like he maybe agrees. Basically, my point is this: Don't get cocky, Canada. You elected your George W. Bush and survived. Now you've elected your Obama and everything seems right again, but don't be shocked when your version of Trump shows up a few years from now and promises to finish what Stephen Harper started.

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