Outgroup Preference Is Driving Europa And America Apart
Third, and most important, Trump, Elon Musk, Vance, and the rest of the MAGA team are openly backing illiberal forces in Europe. In effect, they are trying to impose a far-reaching regime change throughout Europe, albeit without using military force. The signs are unmistakable: Hungary’s Viktor Orban is a
welcome guest at Mar-a-Lago. Vance
met with Alice Weidel, co-chair of the far-right Alternative for Germany party, while he was in Munich, but
not with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and his declaration that the main challenge to Europe was “the threat from within” was an unveiled attack on the continent’s political order. (It was beyond ironic for Vance to criticize Europeans for anti-democratic behavior, given his
refusal to admit that Trump lost the 2020 election or to
condemn the Jan. 6 insurrectionists. But I digress.) Not to be outdone, Musk has been
spewing his own false and hateful accusations at various European leaders,
defending far-right criminals like Tommy Robinson, and
interviewing Weidel and expressing his own support for her party.
Despite a few differences on certain issues, the MAGA movement and most far-right parties in Europe
generally opposealmost all forms of immigration; are skeptical to hostile toward the European Union; see elites, media, and higher education as the enemy; want to reimpose traditional religious values and gender norms; and believe citizenship should be defined by shared ethnicity or ancestry and not by shared civic values or one’s birthplace. Like their fascist predecessors, they are comfortable with and adept at using the norms and institutions of democracy to subvert democratic rule and strengthen executive power.
Sound familiar?
Rachman’s assessment that the United States is now an adversary of Europe is only partly correct, therefore, because Trump and his minions support European far-right nationalist movements that share their basic worldview. They are hostile to a vision of Europe as a model of democratic governance, social welfare, openness, the rule of law, political, social, and religious tolerance, and transnational cooperation. One might even say that they would like America and Europe to have similar values; the problem is that the values they have in mind are incompatible with genuine democracy.
Trump and co. think treating Europe as an enemy risks little, because they believe Europe is a declining region and incapable of getting its act together. Undermining efforts to strengthen European unity by backing the far right also makes it easier for Washington to play divide-and-rule. On the other hand, openly bullying other countries tends to encourage national unity and a greater willingness to resist (
as we are now seeing in Canada), and the chaos Trump and Musk have been unleashing here in the United States may make Europeans wary of trying similar experiments at home.
