Its been a bad stretch of polling for President Donald Trump. In recent weeks, a string of new polls has found Trump losing ground with key constituencies, especially the young, non-white and low-propensity voters who swung decisively in his direction in 2024. The uptick in support for Trump among those non-traditional Republican voters helped fuel chatter of an enduring “realignment” in the American electorate — but the durability of that realignment is now coming into doubt with those same groups cooling on Trump. Surveying the findings of the most recent New York Times-Siena poll, polling analyst Nate Cohn bluntly declared that “the second Trump coalition has unraveled.” Is it time to touch up the obituaries for the Trumpian realignment? To find out, I spoke with conservative pollster and strategist Patrick Ruffini, whose 2024 book “Party of the People” was widely credited with predicting the contours of Trump’s electoral realignment. Ruffini cautioned against prematurely eulogizing the GOP’s new coalition, noting that the erosion of support has so far not extended to the constituencies that have served as the primary drivers of the Trumpian realignment — particularly white working-class voters and working-class Latinos and Asian Americans. But he also acknowledged that the findings of the recent polls should raise alarms for Republicans ahead of 2026 and especially 2028. His advice to Trump for reversing the trend: a relentless focus on “affordability,” which the White House has so far struggled to muster, and which remains the key issue dragging down the president. “I think that is undeniable,” he said. “It’s the number one issue among the swing voter electorate.” This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Based on your own polling, do you agree that “the second Trump coalition has unraveled?” It really depends on how you define the Trump coalition. The coalition that has really reshaped American politics over the last decade has been a coalition that saw voters who are aligned with a more populist view of America come into the Republican Party — in many cases, after voting for Barack Obama twice. Those shifts have proven to be pretty durable, especially among white working-class voters but also among conservative Hispanic voters and conservative Asian American voters. You have another group of voters who is younger and disconnected from politics — a group that had been really one of the core groups for Barack Obama and the Democrats back in the 2010s. They didn’t always vote, but there was really no hope or prospect for Republicans winning that group or being very competitive with that group. That happens for the first time in 2024, when that specific combination of young, minority, male voters really comes into play in a big way. But that shift right has proven to be a little bit less durable — and maybe a lot less durable — because of the nature of who those voters are. They’re not really connected to one political party, and they’re inherently non-partisan. So what you’re seeing is less of a shift among people who reliably vote in midterms, and what we are seeing is more of a shift among those infrequent voters. The question then becomes are these voters going to show up in 2026? How big of a problem is it for Republicans if they don’t? How alarmed should Republicans be by the current trends? I think they’re right to focus on affordability. You’ve seen that as an intentional effort by the White House, including what seems like embracing some Democratic policy proposals that also are in some ways an end-run around traditional Republican and conservative economics — things like a 10 percent cap on credit card interest. What’s the evidence that cost of living is the thing that’s primarily eroding Republican support among that group of voters you described? I think that is undeniable. It’s the number one issue among the swing voter electorate. However you want to define the swing voter electorate in 2024, cost of living was far and away the number one issue among the Biden-to-Trump voters in 2024. It is still the number one issue. And that’s because of demographically who they are. The profile of the voter who swung in ‘24 was not just minority, but young, low-income, who tends to be less college-educated, less married and more exposed to affordability concerns. So I think that’s obviously their north star right now. The core Democratic voter is concerned about the erosion of norms and democracy. The core Republican voter is concerned about immigration and border security. But this swing vote is very, very much concerned about the cost of living. Is there any evidence that things like Trump’s immigration crackdown or his foreign policy adventurism are contributing at all to the erosion of support among this group? I have to laugh at the idea of foreign policy being decisive for a large segment of voters. I think you could probably say that, to the extent that Trump had some non-intervention rhetoric, there might be some backlash among some of the podcast bros, or among the Tucker Carlson universe. But that is practically a non-entity when it comes to the actual electorate and especially this group that is floating between the two political parties. Maybe there’s a dissident faction on the right that is particularly focused on this, but what really matters is this cost-of-living issue, which people don’t view as having been solved by Trump coming into office. The White House would say — and Vance said recently — that it takes a while to turn the Titanic around. Which is not the most reassuring metaphor, but sure. Exactly, but nonetheless. I think a lot of these things are very interesting bait for media, but they are not necessarily what is really driving the voters who are disconnected from these narratives. What about his immigration agenda? Does that seem to be having any specific effect? I do think there’s probably some aspect of this that might be challenging with Latinos, but I think it’s very easy to fall back into the 2010 pattern of saying Latino voters are inordinately primarily focused on immigration, which has proven incorrect time after time after time. So, yes, I would say the ICE actions are probably a bit negative, but I think Latino voters primarily share the same concerns as other voters in the electorate. They’re primarily focused on cost of living, jobs and health care. How would Trump’s first year in office have looked different if he had been really laser-focused on consolidating the gains that Republicans saw among these voters in 2024? What would he have done that he didn’t do, and what shouldn’t he have done that he did do? I would first concede that the focus on affordability needed to be, like, a Day 1 concern. I will also concede how hard it is to move this group that is very, very disaffected from traditional politics and doesn’t trust or believe the promises made by politicians — even one as seemingly authentic as Trump. I go back to 2018. While in some ways you would kill for the economic perceptions that you had in 2018, that didn’t seem to help them much in the midterms. The other problem with a laser focus on affordability on Day 1 is that I don’t think it clearly aligns with what the policy demanders on the right are actually asking for. If you ask, “What is MAGA economic policy?”, for many, MAGA economic policy is tariffs — and in many ways, tariffs run up against an impulse to do something about affordability. Now, to date, we haven’t really seen that actually play out. We haven’t really seen an increase in the inflation rate, which is good. But there’s an opportunity cost to focusing on certain issues over this focus on affordability. I think the challenge is that I don’t think either party has a pre-baked agenda that is all about reducing costs. They certainly had a pre-baked agenda around immigration, and they do have a pre-baked agenda around tariffs. What else has stopped the administration from effectively consolidating this part of the 2024 coalition? It’s a very hard-to-reach group. In 2024, Trump’s team had the insight to really put him front-and-center in these non-political arenas, whether it was going to UFC matches or appearing on Joe Rogan. I think it’s very easy for any administration to come into office and pivot towards the policy demanders on the right, and I think that we’ve seen a pivot in that direction, at least on the policy. So I would say they should be doing more of that 2024 strategy of actually going into spaces where non-political voters live and talking to them. Is it possible to turn negative perception around among this group? Or is it a one-way ratchet, where once you’ve lost their support, it’s very hard to get it back? I don’t think it’s impossible. We are seeing some improvement in the economic perception numbers, but we also saw how hard it is to sustain that. I think the mindset of the average voter is just that they’re in a far different place post-Covid than they were pre-Covid. There’s just been a huge negative bias in the economy since Covid, so I think any thought that, “Oh, it would be easy that Trump gets elected, and that’s going to be the thing that restores optimism” was wrong. I think he’s taken really decisive action, and he has solved a lot of problems, but the big nut to crack is, How do you break people out of this post-Covid economic pessimism? The more critical case that could be made against Trump’s approach to economic policy is not just that he’s failed to address the cost-of-living crisis, but that he’s actively done things that run contrary to any stated vision of economic populism. The tax cuts are the major one, which included some populist components tacked on, but which was essentially a massively regressive tax cut. Do you think that has contributed to the sour feeling among this cohort at all? I think we know very clearly when red lines are crossed and when different policies really get voters writ large to sit up and take notice. For instance, it was only when you had SNAP benefits really being cut off that Congress had any impetus to actually solve the shutdown. I don’t think people are quite as tuned in to the distributional effects of tax policy. The White House would say that there were very popular parts of this proposal, like the Trump accounts and no tax on tips, that didn’t get coverage — and our polling has shown that people have barely actually heard about those things compared to some of the Democratic lines of attack. So I think that the tax policy debate is relatively overrated, because it simply doesn’t matter as much to voters as much as the cultural issues or the general sense that life is not as affordable as it was. Assuming these trends continue and this cohort of sort of young, low-propensity voters continues to shift away from Trump, what does the picture look like for Republicans in 2026 and 2028? I would say 2026 is perhaps a false indicator. In the midterms, you’re really talking about an electorate that is going to be much older, much whiter, much more college-educated. I think you really have to have a presidential campaign to test how these voters are going to behave. And presidential campaigns are also a choice between Republicans and Democrats. I think certainly Republicans would want to make it into a Republican-versus-Democrat choice, because polling is very clear that voters do not trust the Democrats either on these issues. It’s clear that a lot of these voters have actually moved away from the Democratic Party — they just haven’t necessarily moved into the Republican Party. Thinking big picture, does this erosion of support change or alter your view of the “realignment” in any respect? I’ve always said that we are headed towards a future where these groups are up for grabs, and whichever party captures them has the advantage. That’s different from the politics of the Obama era, where we were talking about an emerging Democratic majority driven by a generational shift and by the rise of non-white voters in the electorate. The most recent New York Times poll has Democrats ahead among Latino voters by 16 points, which is certainly different than 2024, when Trump lost them by just single digits, but that is a far cry from where we were in 2016 and 2018. So I think in many respects, that version of it is coming true. But if 2024 was a best-case scenario for the right, and 2026 is a worst-case scenario, we really have to wait till 2028 to see where this all shakes out.

THE CONFLICT FRONTMAN WAS ONE OF THE FEW WHO WALKED THE PUNK WALK AS MUCH AS THEY TALKED IT ~ Phil ~ Colin Jerwood, frontman and organiser of legendary anarcho-punk band Conflict, has passed away after a short illness, his family said in a statement released yesterday. The band also released a statement saying “As you can imagine we are struggling to find the words to describe how sad and upset we feel upon hearing of the loss of our band member and dear friend Colin. We extend our deepest condolences to James, Georgia and the rest of Colin’s family and friends. We ask that you respect their wishes and understand that we are all currently grieving a great loss”. Jerwood, who was 63, had led Conflict since their formation in South London in 1981. The band’s first release was the 1982 EP “The House That Man Built” on Crass Records. The next year they started their own label, Mortarhate, which also released music by other artists including Hagar the Womb, Icons of Filth, Lost Cherrees, The Apostles, and Stalag 17. Self-described as the Ungovernable Force, Colin and Conflict were in the thick of the action, whether the agenda was anti-war, animal rights or anti-capitalism. They gained notoriety for acts such as providing addresses of vivisectionists on the inside of their record sleeves, and they financially supported organisations and bust funds. A concert at Brixton Academy in 1987, labelled The Gathering of the 5,000, with Steve Ignorant added to the line up and poet Benjamin Zephaniah enlisted to help out, was violently attacked by the police and ended in a riot that had major consequences for the band. In Colin’s own words: “Three punk bands have been the subject of parliamentary debate, The Sex Pistols, Crass and Conflict. Only one has ever been officially banned from making live appearances by order of a white paper, and that is Conflict”. With Conflict in Los Angeles, 1985. Photo: Luis Castro The band’s latest work, “This Much Remains”, was released only last month, and recently Colin had been working on his memoir, encompassing “Conflict, the movement, and me.” His untimely passing is a major shock for many, and a tribute page has been created where many fans are paying their respects. “Colin and Conflict, Crass, and all the rest of those bands from the early 80s set me on the trajectory of my whole life”, wrote one contributor, “I now work for a trade union as a consequence of those politics and ethics. No compromise with the servants of power! An inspiring life Colin. Thank you”. Another fan wrote: “I remember the day 1983 when the 16 year old me went off to buy the first album. It’s a cliche to say that a record changed your life and the way you think. But inside every cliche there’s a grain of truth. This was mine. Thanks for all the gigs, the music and the sentiment. You will always be missed.” My personal recollection goes back to the summer of 1990, when a 17 year old version of me saw the Stone Roses play in Spike Island. I also saw Conflict play at the Marquee in Charing Cross Road. You can guess which had the bigger impact. A rare gig for Conflict at that time, they hadn’t played for a while and had to play previous gigs secretly under pseudonyms. I had only recently been introduced at school to Crass and Conflict, both bands were before my time and punk had already gone underground. It was a miracle I ever heard of them. I’m so glad I did. The lyrics of these bands opened windows, and actually blew the bloody doors off in my case of how I thought about the world. The blinkers were off. While I found Crass to have more of an individualistic take on things, I warmed to Conflict, their desire to build a movement and their emotional take on politics and humanity. What was very important to me was Colin’s honesty about the scene he saw around him. Performing at T-Chances, 2017. Photo: Del Blyben When I found out yesterday he had suddenly passed away, I was first in disbelief (Conflict have been touring with their new record), and then very, very sad. Colin Jerwood, the man who led a band but never wanted to be a leader (“you never wanted leaders but you treated us as such”), one of the few who walked the punk walk as much as they talked it. He supported human rights, animal rights, class war and anti-fascism, and dealt head-on with police and state violence. There are so many stories that could be written about Colin and so many points of view, lots has been written and I’m sure lots more will be. Recently he featured in the publication Anarcho-Punk: Music and Resistance in London 1977-1988 by David Insurrection. Colin talked about freedom, about anarchism, about hypocrisy and about the power we have and don’t realise. He turned me, a teenage council estate kid, into new ways of thinking and I will be forever grateful.  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Top image: Jerwood at Punks against Cancer 5, Derby, 2017. Photo: Ian Taylor The post Colin Jerwood R.I.P. appeared first on Freedom News.

THE COMPLEX LEGACY OF POPE FRANCIS His was a dramatic papacy, frustrating conservatives and progressives alike. Beloved by the faithful, he leaves behind a divided Church. By BEN MUNSTER and HANNAH ROBERTS in Rome Andreas Solaro/AFP via Getty Images Just weeks before he died, Pope Francis was doing what he does best: infuriating conservatives. In an extraordinary intervention in mid-February, the pope initiated a head-on clash with the new U.S. administration, slamming President Donald Trump’s plans to deport millions of undocumented migrants as a “violation of dignity,” and accusing Vice President JD Vance of misusing an obscure theological term. Washington responded with predictable fury, but the Holy See was undeterred.  It was a vintage Francis move: impulsive, instinctively protective of the poor and defenseless, and — mercifully — light on theological jargon. But it was also illustrative of the pope’s willingness to abandon diplomatic niceties and take a divisive, outspoken approach at a time of increasing fragmentation. Advertisement Francis, who died on Easter Monday at the age of 88, leaves behind a complex legacy. He was elected in 2013 on a mandate to clean up the Church, after his predecessor Benedict XVI abruptly resigned following the so-called Vatileaks scandal. The first Latin American and Jesuit pontiff, he was also first to use the name Francis, in reference to Francis of Assisi, the 13th century champion of the poor. But he departs an institution that, while outwardly committed to advocacy for the dispossessed and marginalized, has made inadequate efforts to address its own failings, from priestly abuse to the misuse of Vatican finances.  Jorge Mario Bergoglio was born in 1936 in Buenos Aires to Italian migrants Mario, a railway worker, and Regina, a homemaker. Reportedly clever, mischievous and fond of football, he worked stints as a nightclub bouncer and janitor, before studying chemistry and then working as a lab technician in a food laboratory. A serious bout of pneumonia led to the removal of part of one of his lungs in 1957. Soon after, he joined the Jesuits, following an apparently inspired visit with a local priest.  Bergoglio initially struggled to reconcile his vocation with more civilian instincts, later confessing  he was “dazzled” by a young woman he met while at seminary. Nevertheless, he rapidly climbed the ranks of the Argentine Church, gaining a reputation for magnanimity and earning the sobriquet “slum bishop” for doubling the number of priests in Buenos Aires’ poor neighborhoods. But he was already a divisive figure: During the bloody “dirty war” of the junta against its adversaries in the 1970s, Bergoglio — then the leader of Argentina’s powerful Jesuits — was accused of complicit silence when the military abducted dissident clerics who were under his authority. Others, however, claimed he attempted to protect his subordinates. IN THE ETERNAL CITY   Francis slipped into his now familiar persona of humility and simplicity when he was made cardinal by Pope John Paul II in 2001, cultivating a name for eschewing priestly extravagance, living modestly and using public transport. After Benedict XVI quit, he seemed to embody reformists’ ideals in a Church desperate for change, becoming the first pope from outside Europe since the eighth century’s Syrian Pope Gregory III. His papacy marked a break with Benedict’s distant, academic style. He headed a drive for the Church to resemble more of a “field hospital,” prioritizing the needy and downplaying the importance of sexuality. ”Who am I to judge,” he famously told reporters in 2013 when asked if a gay person could become a priest.  Tiziana Fabi/AFP via Getty Images Isabella Bonotto/AFP via Getty Images Andreas Solaro/AFP via Getty Images Franco Origlia/Getty Images Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images That message, delivered with characteristic cheek, marked the start of Francis’ yearslong bid to realize the progressive ambitions of the Second Vatican Council — the 1960s-era global consultation that sought to align the Church with the liberal revolutions of that era. From the outset, he projected a message of tolerance, defended migrants and harshly criticized capitalist excess, while striving to balance that agenda with the conservatism of the fast-growing Catholic cohorts in Africa, Asia and Latin America.  To an extent, Francis was able to chip away at the Church’s millennia-old structure, opening up high-level Vatican offices to women and lay people.  But for the most part, these chaotic efforts only annoyed conservatives and disappointed liberals. For instance, he maintained barriers to female priests, and was forced to dilute a landmark declaration of same-sex blessings under pressure from outraged African bishops.  Advertisement Francis was also divisive on the international stage. He won the admiration of followers in the global south and received blowback from supporters in the West with his urgent calls for peace in Ukraine, silence on China’s oppression of religious minorities and harsh condemnations of Israel’s invasion of Gaza — reflecting a complex worldview forged in leftist Peronist Argentina. His leadership style could also be unpredictable, as he would cancel plans after leaks by journalists and abandon promises.  All of this helped nurture an increasingly radical conservative faction — particularly in the U.S.  The de facto leader of the opposition to Francis was arch-conservative Cardinal Raymond Burke, renowned for wearing ludicrously ostentatious cosplay bishops’ vestments, while lamenting that the Catholic Church is “too feminized” and pinning the priest shortage on the introduction of altar girls. Burke repeatedly clashed with Francis over his supposed woke agenda, with one particularly bizarre feud unfolding over the alleged supply of condoms to Myanmar by the Order of the Knights of Malta. Burke’s broadsides continued without cease for years. He challenged the pontiff’s push to end the church’s ban on communion for remarried divorcees, and fulminated over his crackdown on the Latin mass. The pope responded by quietly marginalizing Burke, eventually removing his right to a subsidized Vatican apartment. Indeed, Francis was no shrinking violet, and his avuncular image belied a talent for playing adversaries off one another, ensnaring them when they least expected. More prosaically, he liked to insult them — even saying his pompous conservative critics are mentally unstable. Filippo Monteforte/AFP via Getty Images His conservative foes, meanwhile, used Benedict as a totem for their values while he still lived. They claimed the throne of Peter was vacant under Francis’ rule, with some even dubbing him the “antichrist.”  They were helped by Francis’ own blunders, including his patchy efforts to clean up the Vatican’s finances. In 2017, a top auditor was mysteriously ousted, leading to a botched investment in London real estate, as well as the conviction and imprisonment of former cardinal Angelo Becciu. Francis met Becciu privately as the trial was underway, raising questions about his judgment.  His handling of abuse allegations against top lieutenants raised similar issues. The pontiff was seen as protecting and even elevating close friends accused of serious sexual misconduct. This included Jesuit priest and mosaic artist Marko Rupnik, whose garish artworks were recommissioned by the Vatican even after rape accusations emerged. Inconsistency might have been the defining feature of the pope’s reign. Rather than reforming the Church, he has largely left behind chaos — and a theological quagmire — for whoever succeeds him.  As conservatives now sharpen their knives, that battle looks to be fraught. On the one hand, Francis dramatically reshaped the geographic breakdown of the clerical elite over the years, appointing 110 of the 138 cardinals who will be eligible to elect his successor, many of them from outside of Europe. But Rome insiders warn that’s no guarantee of their support for his vision after he’s gone; Vatican alliances rarely survive the shift to a new pontiff.  All the same, much of the drama around his papacy has been an elite one: At his death, he enjoyed approval ratings among the world’s 1.4 billion faithful that would be the envy of most politicians. Advertisement

PARIS — Throughout his life, Jean-Marie Le Pen was a polarizing figure, evoking visceral hatred from some corners of society and passionate support from others. His death proved no different. Le Pen, who was several times convicted of racism, antisemitism and Holocaust denial, died Tuesday at the age of 96, according to an announcement by the far-right National Rally party he founded. Le Pen had long been a household name in France, and was seen as something of a political caricature until he shocked the country by making it to the runoff round of the 2002 presidential election. Even though he was ultimately trounced by Jacques Chirac, the fact he made it to the second round helped elevate what was a fringe movement to the mainstream. Reactions to Le Pen’s death have become something of a political Rorschach test in France. Though Le Pen’s daughter, Marine, had him expelled from the party to distance herself from his legacy, dozens of National Rally officials praised him in their tributes, testimony to his enduring influence on the party. “He will be remembered as the man who, in the storms, held the flickering flame of the French nation in his hands,” the National Rally itself wrote in a lengthy, effusive statement. Jordan Bardella, the current head of the National Rally, said on X that Jean-Marie Le Pen “always served France, its identity and its sovereignty.” In his recently published memoir, Bardella claimed he “knew nothing” about Le Pen when he joined the party — including his remarks on racial inequality and his description of the Holocaust as a “detail” of history. Éric Zemmour, who tried to challenge the Le Pen family’s hold on the French far right by running against Marine Le Pen in the 2022 presidential election, said Jean-Marie “was among the first to warn France of the existential threats it faced.” Centrists allied with Macron attempted to thread the needle, issuing statements that effectively said merely that he existed. Prime Minister François Bayrou delivered one such anodyne reaction, describing the five-time presidential candidate as “a figure of French political life.” President Emmanuel Macron’s office similarly walked on eggshells and called Le Pen, who handed his party’s leadership over to his daughter in 2011, “a historic figure of the far right” whose “role in the public life … is now a matter for history to judge.” Bruno Retailleau, a tough-talking conservative senator who took up a role in government as interior minister in September, said “a page in French political history has turned” and that Le Pen had “undoubtedly left his mark on his era.” Left-wing officials were far more explicit in their denunciations of the nationalist figure. Jordan Bardella, the current head of the National Rally, said on X that Jean-Marie Le Pen “always served France, its identity and its sovereignty.” | Lou Benoist/Getty Images “Respect for the dignity of the dead and the grief of their loved ones does not erase the right to judge their actions,” hard-left France Unbowed leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon wrote on X. Mélenchon, who was the leading leftist candidate in the past two presidential races, has in the past been unafraid to celebrate the deaths of figures he opposed. He tweeted that “Margaret Thatcher will find out in hell what she did to the miners” when the former British prime minister died in 2013. “The fight against the man is over. The fight against the hatred, racism, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism he spread continues,” Mélenchon added. “A fascist from another era is gone. But he leaves behind some very contemporary heirs,” said François Ruffin, another leading politician on the French left. Louis Boyard, one of the youngest French lawmakers and a rising star in France Unbowed, said Le Pen “deserves no tribute,” while Socialist Party spokesperson Arthur Delaporte said Le Pen’s death “should not exonerate the National Rally from the weight of his legacy: xenophobia, antisemitism, rejection of others.”

Jean-Marie Le Pen, the longtime face of the far right in France notorious for his hate speech and Holocaust denial convictions, has died, his family told French newswire AFP. He was 96 years old.

One Sunday morning in 2008, I woke up to learn I had supposedly plotted with then-U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney to overthrow the Turkish government. A standard off-the-record conversation I’d had with one of Cheney’s staff, in my capacity as a journalist in Washington, had apparently raised suspicions with some Turkish prosecutors. My phones were tapped, and the story — a baseless accusation soon to be part of a court indictment — was splashed across the papers. It was part of a showpiece case, now recognized as a witch hunt, which was championed by the followers of Fethullah Gülen — a Muslim preacher who died this week in Pennsylvania. Gülen’s movement had long been allied with Turkey’s Islamist government, deeply infiltrating the country’s police, prosecutor’s office and judiciary. The case that ensnared me — now known as the Ergenekon conspiracy — was an attempt to suggest there was a tenebrous group of secularist army officers, journalists and politicians plotting to take over the state. The case ultimately collapsed, and it led to a split between Gülen and then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who became president in 2014. The mounting tensions between the preacher and the president would sour further and culminate in a bloody 2016 coup attempt, with tanks on the streets of Turkish cities. The alliance between Gülen and Erdoğan was a marriage of Islamist convenience while it lasted, until the two sides fell afoul of each other in a battle that has shaped today’s Turkey. The story goes back decades. LIGHTHOUSE IMAM Gülen, born in 1941, was an imam from the Erzurum region in Turkey’s conservative east. He eventually became the leading figure of a movement that started in the 1970s and today commands the allegiance of millions, including a global network of schools, think tanks and media outlets. As a state-licensed cleric he was sent to the coastal city of İzmir from his Anatolian hometown in the 1960s, and started to grow his base. During this period he founded and financed a network of “lighthouses” — shared student flats — giving sermons to young people and sowing the first seeds of his cult-like empire. Known to his followers as Hoca efendi (master preacher), Gülen went on to build a solid base of supporters, forming his sect and core cadre, named the Hizmet Hareketi (Movement of Service). By the 1990s, members trained in the lighthouses had started finding positions in state institutions.  Though under the vigilant eye of the Turkish military, Gülen tried to keep close relations with politicians and the business world alike. After the collapse of the Soviet Union he established schools in Turkic countries, the Balkans and Africa. While his private schools produced thousands of graduates every year, the movement was also able to gain control of companies in various sectors, including food, health, education and media, thanks to his followers’ annual contributions. Toward the end of the decade, however, Turkish law enforcement prepared a report exposing the movement’s influence within the state apparatus, leading to an investigation by a prosecutor who accused Gülen “of trying to create a theocratic state.” Fethullah Gülen died this week in Pennsylvania. | Thomas Urbain/Getty Images So, on March 21, 1999, Gülen left Turkey for the U.S. — never to return again. Not long after, Erdoğan’s rise to power in 2003 presented Gülen’s movement with an opportunity to bring its political influence out of the shadows. The new prime minister lacked influence in the state apparatus, and Gülen needed Erdoğan to help spread the movement’s hold — or, as Gülen himself was quoted as saying in one of his sermons from that time, to “ooze into the state’s arteries.” But by the 2010s, once secular sections of the Turkish military and judiciary had been purged after show trials like Ergenekon and Sledgehammer — a parallel case targeting the military — the strains between the Gülen and Erdoğan camps approached breaking point. The tipping point came in February 2012, when a prosecutor asked Hakan Fidan, then head of the National Intelligence Organization, to testify in court on links between the agency and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a Kurdish group listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S. and the EU. The move on Fidan, Erdoğan’s right-hand man at the time, was perceived as a direct attack on the prime minister himself. “He is my locked box. He is the locked box of the Turkish Republic. The locked box of Turkey’s future,” Erdoğan said, and ordered Fidan not to testify. Then, in December 2013, Istanbul police arrested a businessman, a number of mayors and various sons of government ministers on accusations of bribery and corruption. Erdoğan’s son Bilal was also implicated. Reviling the arrests as “a dirty operation,” Erdoğan removed police chiefs and prosecutors from office while his AK Party government went to open war with its close ally, holding Gülen responsible for the police operations and calling his movement “a parallel structure” within the state. Finally, after the coup attempt against Erdoğan in 2016 — in which some 300 people died and rebel military officers bombed the Turkish parliament — the Gülen movement was added to Turkey’s top terrorist list as the Fethullahist Terror Organization. Soner Çağaptay, from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, believes Gülen and his movement caused the most harm to Turkish democracy in 2008, when prosecutors claimed in the Ergenekon case that the Turkish deep state was plotting a coup. “They used that allegation to wiretap and intimidate journalists and civil society activists. Less than a decade later, the movement carried out its own failed coup attempt causing the death of hundreds of Turkish civilians,” he said. ERDOĞAN FIGHTS ON In the aftermath, Erdoğan called on the U.S. to extradite Gülen, and Washington’s refusal to do so became a major source of dispute between the two countries. Çağaptay thinks Gülen’s death could now remove a major diplomatic thorn. The case ultimately collapsed, leading to a split between Fethullah Gülen and then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who became president in 2014. | Adem Altan/Getty Images Soli Özel, a senior lecturer at Kadir Has University in Istanbul, agreed that the cleric’s death might mean one less headache for Erdoğan’s regime at home. “A cult-like organization, once it loses its cult figure, is unlikely to generate the same intensity of loyalty among followers” he said. But he added that Gülen’s network could continue to cause trouble abroad, given its effective network in the U.S. After Gülen’s death, Fidan, now foreign minister, vowed to continue fighting against the movement: “The leader of this dark organization is dead. Our resolve in fighting terrorism remains ongoing. The news of his death will not lead us to complacency,” he declared at a news conference in Ankara this week. Looking back, Gülen’s followers were near their peak strength on that day in 2008, when I was caught up in their machinations. None of the ludicrous charges against me were even taken to court, but with more than 8,000 pages of accusations written, hundreds were indicted and jailed. All of them stuck in the cross fire between Erdoğan’s AK Party — good at winning elections but not so adept at running bureaucracy — and Gülen’s self-styled movement, playing the long game to gain leverage over the elites of tomorrow. The question now is, with their founder and spiritual leader gone but a long tradition of building power and influence in the shadows, will the Gülenists recover from their current moment of weakness?