It is much too early to say to what extent President Trump will enact his campaign promises as government policy and, indeed, how much he will actually be able to do in office. But every day since his election demonstrations have sprung up throughout the United States to express outrage, apprehension and dismay.

Moreover, there is no doubt that once in office Trump and his administration will continually do and say things that will inspire protest. For at least the next four years people in the US will rally and march against his government, regularly and in large numbers. Protesting against threats to the environment will undoubtedly be urgent, as will be the generalized atmosphere of violence against people of color, women, LGBTQ populations, migrants, Muslims, workers of various sorts, the poor — and the list goes on.

One of the potential pitfalls for social movements, however, is that activism goes no further than protest. Protest, of course, can bring a city to a halt, can block temporarily the action of the government, and can even play the crucial role of opening up spaces for political alternatives. But on its own, protest is never enough to create lasting social transformation.

The significance of the Trump presidency and, moreover, the keys to developing protest against it become clearer, we think, when posed in a global context. Before coming back to the questions for social movements, then, let us frame some of the basic aspects of the global context into which Trump’s government will enter.

The many faces of the global right

Although Trump is certainly an idiosyncratic figure, he is really one of many “populist” right-wing leaders that have emerged on the global stage against the backdrop of the economic crisis, including Vladimir Putin in Russia, Narendra Modi in India, General Al Sisi in Egypt, Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, Michel Temer in Brazil, Mauricio Macri in Argentina, and perhaps soon Norbert Hofer in Austria and Marine Le Pen in France.

This is a heterogeneous group, obviously — and even the label “populism” we use as shorthand here deserves greater critical scrutiny. But these right-wing figures do share several characteristics. All of them promise a combination of neoliberalism and nationalism as the solution to economic and social malaise. Most of them also manage to mobilize for the right a widespread hatred for the entire political class and contempt for the political establishment — a sentiment that at other times has been mobilized effectively by the left, for instance in 2001 in Argentina and 2011 in Spain.

Many of these right-wing leaders and political forces also add some traditional characteristics of fascism, such as the threat of the mass expulsion of migrants, racial purity as a condition of legitimate belonging to the nation, the suspension of normal legal procedures to imprison and repress political opponents, attacks on the independent press, and creating an atmosphere of terror for LGBTQ populations, people of color, women and others.

Note too that the rise of these right-wing “populisms” has exacerbated in all of these countries a profound institutional crisis, often blocking, for instance, the basic traditional functions of government (passing budgets, approving nominations) as well as undermining the standard political rationalities of administration. And the economic crisis that began in 2007 has functioned as a hothouse to facilitate and accelerate all of these phenomena.

Studies will emerge in the coming months (and years) that explain in detail the success of Trump’s campaign strategies and the motives of his supporters — how much was driven by racial resentment, how much by the economic fears of “the losers of globalization” and an industrial working class in decline, how much by a fabricated social panic, and so forth. These are undeniably important questions, but we simply want to signal that Trump’s election, seen from a global perspective, is not the exception but squarely in line with a significant (and terrifying) trend.

Trump’s version of U.S. global hegemony

The fact that Trump’s election fits so clearly in this emerging aspect of the current global order is obscured by his own rhetoric of separation and countering the forces of globalization — but this too is part of the same right-wing global trend. Trump’s declared strategy for addressing the epochal crisis of US hegemony in the world seems to indicate a withdrawal, and his version of “making America great again” seems to stand at the opposite end of the spectrum from George W. Bush’s strategy of military unilateralism, which sought and failed to maintain or recreate a hegemonic role. (Even when Trump has shown spasms of militarist bluster, declaring he would bomb this or that enemy, it is not with the aim of recreating a hegemonic position.)

Trump’s election might thus be read as a concession by the right to the loss of US global hegemony, declaring itself satisfied instead with an “America first” ideology. But really the US protectionism and isolationism of today bears little resemblance to that of the beginning of the twentieth century, in the period when the US aspired toward an ascendant position in international hierarchies. We suspect, in fact, that despite Trump’s campaign proclamations, US foreign policy will not withdraw but continue to deploy some combination of soft power and militarism.

The comparison to Brexit might be helpful in this regard — not because Britain will really retreat from Europe but, to the contrary, insofar as it will seek new, more favorable terms for maintaining a foot in the European market, managing the flow of migrants, and continuing to underwrite the dominant financial role of the City — objectives, of course, that will subject to difficult negotiations, especially with Germany. (And it remains to be seen how Trump’s election will change this scenario.)

We can say simply that in both the UK and the US, when nationalism and neoliberalism are combined at the core of a right-wing populism, there is inevitably a kind of horse trading between the two, and we suspect that neoliberalism will always eventually get the upper hand — such that nationalist isolationism will have to bend to its interests. The question of how and with what success the Trump government will seek to “make American great again” while navigating a new or different hegemonic role in the globe is another question that will only become clear in the years to come.