FLASH
Shkruar nga Ivan Krastev
Many Europeans have begun to see America as a threat.
A century ago, Mao Zedong pointedly asked: “Who are our enemies? Who are our friends? This is a question of prime importance for the revolution.” Today, a revolutionary with a different ideological bent, Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, who is affiliated with Trump, argues that “we are in the process of a second American revolution.”
It is a turmoil that has inspired an explosion of political interplay between cosmopolitan liberals and far-right nationalists on the old continent. Trump’s second coming has changed America’s understanding of who to count as friends and enemies in Europe. Leading American politicians now cozily associate with far-right European leaders, while treating the continent’s supporters of liberal democracy as enemies.
Many Europeans have begun to see America as a threat. As a recent survey by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) reveals, while most Europeans believe Trump is bad for America, for their country, and for world peace, most supporters of Europe’s far-right have fully supported Trump’s revolution. They claim that the American political system is doing its job, while Europe’s is broken.
The relationship between European far-right parties and Trump may resemble that of the communist parties of Western Europe and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, where the far right felt compelled to defend Trump, as well as to emulate him. Fascinated by what is happening in the US, European Trumpists dream of mass deportations of immigrants, but they are largely silent when it comes to Trump’s trade war against Europe.
But what exactly does the European right achieve by parroting Trump, and what do European liberals gain by opposing him? The union between European nationalists and Trump’s Maga movement is hardly a match made in heaven. While leaders like Viktor Orbán in Hungary seem thrilled to have the US on their side, their respective nationalisms have little in common. In the offices of far-right leaders across the old continent you find outdated maps, showing their nations with the broad borders of a bygone era; in Trump’s office you find family photos that seem to have been painted over with a brush. European nationalists are devoted to History with a capital H; the US president is devoted to Trump with a capital T.
Trump’s nationalism is a nationalism without history. When he refers to his predecessors, it is to claim that he is better than them. When he talks about making Gaza a five-star resort, he speaks like a real estate tycoon for whom nations are merely tenants of his land. For the blood-and-soil nationalists of Europe, God has given every bit of the continent’s territory to white Europeans and their descendants. Traditionally, European far-right parties have imagined themselves as defenders of national sovereignty and national tradition against the useless citizens in Brussels. These days, they are recasting themselves as part of a transnational revolutionary movement, embracing the rhetoric of fundamentalist Christianity and civilizational conflict that wins votes in America but will not necessarily spread to Europe.
European liberals have reinvented themselves, too. They are now seeking to portray themselves not as Davos-style globalists but as defenders of the national interest against US meddling. Mark Carney’s victory in Canada, riding a wave of patriotic anger, has inspired EU leaders going through an identity crisis to believe that resisting Trump is the best way to get re-elected.
But this will not work everywhere. Only when Trump plays the irredentist card, as he did in Canada, can liberal leaders count on mass mobilization. The Danes today, because of Trump’s fantastic threat to invade Greenland, have become the most anti-Trump Europeans, but the Carney effect is not present elsewhere in the EU. Trump may be a dual partner, but most Europeans are willing to live with him because they are skeptical of the EU’s ability to protect itself. Like a couple married for decades, they cannot imagine living alone.
The “Trump effect” in EU politics is as unpredictable as Trump himself. After Brexit, the European far right was similarly captivated by the nationalism of Brexiteers for “taking back control”. Many Eurosceptics called for referendums on leaving the EU. But Brexit quickly became a burden and parroting the words of the British was no longer fashionable. So who wins and who loses from the “second American revolution” will depend not only on Trump’s failures and successes at home, but also on the ability of European leaders to use the Trumpian moment to create new political identities for themselves. / Adapted from “Pamphlet” from “Financial Times”
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