I went to a conference in Venice last month on the rise of strongmen, alt-right populists, and ethnic and religious nationalists in India, Turkey, Western Europe and the United States.  An economist from Rome worried about the ways in which skyrocketing economic inequality was fueling these trends. A sociologist from Paris observed how rising Islamophobia was driving young women in France to take up arms with the Islamic State terrorist group. A former Italian ambassador fretted about the growing influence worldwide of “peddlers of reactionary utopias.”

Everyone at this meeting of the Venice-Delhi Dialogues, sponsored by the Italian non-profit Reset, seemed fearful that hardening ethnic and religious identities were threatening such longstanding democratic values as freedom of the press and respect for the rule of law. It was, in short, an old-fashioned freakout among progressive scholars and journalists who had already suffered through their own elections of Trump-like figures, and who were now living with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s arrests of political opponents in Turkey and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attempts to turn India into a Hindu nation.

When I spoke, I refused to join in the pity party. I had just written a book about howliberals almost always win America’s culture wars. And I had been following closely the prognostications of a Clinton victory at Nate Silver’s fivethirtyeight.com. So I told my colleagues that the United States was different. My fellow Americans would never elect their own version of the wealthy Italian playboy Silvio Berlusconi.

I was wrong. As of Nov. 9, the United States is part of a global pandemic of majoritarian anti-politics that threatens to undo longstanding global commitments to religious pluralism and the rights of ethnic and racial minorities. So much for American exceptionalism.

It is tempting to assign local causes to what historians will likely categorize as one of the most shocking political events in modern U.S. history, but the fact that Donald Trump is but one puffed-up strongman among many cries out for more global analysis. The most obvious cause of their rise with empty promises is the new global economy, which has sent factories and factory workers packing and brought on unprecedented economic inequality.

But this cause is intimately tied up with another: the rise of religious and ethnic nationalisms as easy antidotes to the anxiety and anger brought on by the jarring dislocations (and migrations) of this new global order. Trumpism and Brexit are both rejections of global trade, but they are also efforts to pull up the drawbridges and wall off outsiders.

Modi was elected on a promise to modernize the Indian economy, but his electoral success hinged on strong support among Hindu nationalists. They applauded him for his role in deadly anti-Muslim riots in 2002 that led the George W. Bush administrationto ban him from the United States for “severe violations of religious freedom.”

Before Nov. 8, European and Asian nations wrestling with their own flirtations with majoritarianism and illiberal democracy were looking to the United States as a beacon of democratic values. Now when people look across the oceans to what President Reagan proudly described as a “shining city upon a hill,” what they see is a dark and unexceptional America getting in line behind the vulgarities of Philippine PresidentRodrigo Duterte (who recently called President Obama a “son of a whore”) and the naked aggression of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

It is, of course, possible that (as my mother put it to me) “the office will make the man” — that President Trump will not govern the way that Donald Trump ran his campaign. Perhaps he will denounce the attacks on Muslims that have already followed in the wake of his election victory. But Modi did not do that. Perhaps Trump will withdraw threats to jail his political opponents. But Erdogan did not do that.

One must always hope, I suppose. But for the time being at least, Americans like myself who hold dear such values as free speech, freedom of the press and freedom of religion — values already under attack in Russia, Turkey, France and India — must turn to citizens in Europe, Asia and elsewhere to keep the beacon burning that American voters extinguished Nov. 8. At least for now, the United States is no longer the foremost defender of Western civilization. It is its greatest threat.

Stephen Prothero, a professor of religion at Boston University, is the author of the new book Why Liberals Win the Culture Wars (Even When They Lose Elections).