Donald Trump gets the reputation in liberal quarters of being a “crass bigoted bully with a narcissistic personality disorder and policy views bordering on gibberish.” After a week in Washington watching him on TV, I wouldn’t take much issue with that sentiment.

That said, if his views are gibberish, they’re more in tune with global trends than his critics perceive. Like Trump, many of the world’s most powerful leaders and would-be leaders depend upon populist-nationalist strategies to sustain their influence and cow their critics.

China’s President Xi Jinping has embraced the idea of “the American Dream” as an aspirational slogan; and in fashioning his policy since 2013, he’s proposed “the Chinese Dream.” Employing aggressive rhetoric, Xi’s administration keeps alive the slaughter that Japan visited on China in the 1930s and 1940s ; the earlier “humiliation” of Western imperialism; and the rapid economic growth of the West since the 1980s, which happened on the watch of a Communist Party that spent the previous three decades slaughtering people even suspected of harboring pro-capitalist thoughts.

One figure in particular — that of the 5th-century BC sage Confucius — has been hauled forward 25 centuries to stand as an example of a benevolent autocrat . He’s the kind of figure who would be entirely at home in the Chinese Communist Party of today.

Vladimir Putin is even more overtly nationalist than Xi and still more in thrall to past (if less ancient) ideologists of nationalism. The philosopher Ivan Ilyin (1883-1954), whom Putin has commended, wrote that “mankind has been morally blinded, gripped by materialism, irrationalism and nihilism,” a state for which the West was allegedly to blame.

Putin must hope that nationalism and the humiliation of an uppity, pro-Western Ukraine will trump (pun intended) the recession now afflicting Russia.

India, by contrast, is growing faster than it has in years. Yet there, too, the ruling party employs a bold, divisive form of nationalism. The country’s Muslim minority fears that Narendra Modi and his BJP government — which has always espoused, though not so often practiced, a strongly anti-Islamic philosophy — may impose discriminatory practices against it. Modi is more constrained by a robust, if often corrupt democracy, than either Putin or Xi. But behind him stands a mass movement with an unforgiving distaste for Islam: the RSS organization, a Hindu nationalist group for which he was an official for much of his working life.

Trump hears his anti-immigration rhetoric echoed in Europe’s rising far-right parties, which have grown emboldened amid a massive refugee crisis across the continent. These groups spread panic over what they see as an immigration catastrophe, all the while promoting their message of aggressive nationalism.

Case in point: Before Trump even recommended it in the United States, Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban built a fence around much of his country.

The populist message Trump articulates is common currency — not just in the Republican Party but much more widely. “Populism,” as a term, equates to different strategies in different states. Common to it, however, is an identification with the so-called “true people” of the nation. These populists feel oppressed by an out-of-touch elite and beset both by enemies abroad and by invading hordes bent on taking their jobs and benefitting from the welfare systems their taxes provide.

There are real issues at hand, which power the raucous rhetoric and the stoking of prejudice. In highlighting immigration, Trump exploits the worries of Democrats as well as Republicans. In Europe, the immigration crisis has found no strong, central response (because there is no strong center). Thus the “keep them out at any cost” rallying cry grows louder and louder.

Globalization has put large power in the hands of multinational companies, global institutions and the elites’ elite of executives, experts and politicians. For nationalist-populists, the good ol’ days, when American (or French, or Swedish, or Russian) values were articulated and followed by leaders who loved their country and cared little for others, are gone.

These are fears that the contempt of globalized liberals cannot dismiss. Much more seriously, they cannot be solved by the reactionary policies of those who pose as friends of the dispossessed.

One of the many memorable occasions in my rapt viewing of Trumpery was when, on MSNBC’s Morning Joe show, Trump was asked about his belief, assiduously peddled, that Obama had to prove he was born in the U.S. Trump responded by saying: “I don’t talk about that anymore.” In Trump’s mind, even one of the most serious charges one could make against a sitting president — that he was falsely masquerading as an American citizen — can simply be dismissed, no longer a talking point.

Trump has grasped what former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi — surely an inspiration — had as a motto: Nothing matters except what is on TV and almost none of what is said is widely remembered — except the charisma of the person saying it.

Populism is a perfect medium for those who know how to use it ruthlessly. Trump’s rhetoric is soaked in it — and he’s in a large company.