It is now an explicit U.S. foreign policy goal to promote parties that, in Europe, are considered subversive.
“American diplomacy should continue to stand up for unapologetic celebrations of European nations’ individual character and history,” says the national security strategy. “America encourages its political allies in Europe to promote this revival of spirit, and the growing influence of patriotic European parties indeed gives cause for great optimism.”
The old Atlanticist parties are out of favor. The new radical parties — National Rally in France, AfD in Germany, and Vox in Spain — are in. Germany’s intelligence service considers AfD a threat to democracy; the White House sees it as a preferred partner.
The Trump administration, in fairness, speaks for many European voters. Anti-immigrant and ethno-nationalist parties lead the opinion polls in most European Union countries (although, under proportional voting, most would fall short of a majority).
Calling them names has lost its power. Leftist hypochondria about fascism has devalued the word. George Orwell observed that, when someone said that “Jones is a fascist”, all they really meant was “I don’t like Jones”. If that was true when fascist regimes held sway across much of Europe, how much truer is it today? Still, it creates a semantic challenge.
If John McCain and Mitt Romney were called Nazis, how are we to describe the current obsession in parts of the American Right with the works of Carl Schmitt, an actual Nazi who is in vogue precisely because of his hostility to the rule of law? If airports, grits, and farmers’ markets were considered racist, what words are left to label Nick Fuentes, who taunts Holocaust survivors?
For a long time, European media and Brussels functionaries played the same game. Anyone who criticized mass immigration or opposed European integration was dismissed as a right-wing extremist.
But devaluing a word does not make the thing it describes go away. It is important to distinguish between criticism of supranationalism, bureaucratic overreach, and open borders, and criticism of the entire liberal-democratic order. When Vice President JD Vance berated European leaders for their lack of commitment to free speech, he was on to something. Free speech is part of the liberal Western patrimony, alongside limited government, representative democracy, and the rule of law. Parties that want free speech only for their own side, that develop cults around their leaders, or that want to use government to punish their opponents, are outside that tradition.
The oddest thing is that the Schmittian Weltanschauung has no roots in the United States or the Anglosphere. The politicians that Vance and Elon Musk support — Marine Le Pen, Alice Weidel, and so on — can be said to have ideological ancestors in their respective countries. Before the Front National, France had Vichy; before Vichy, the Action Française. Germany, as we all know, had its own tradition of statist nationalism.
The U.S. was founded to get away from all that. It was built on certain principles: that we should be judged as individuals, not groups; that power should be dispersed and democratized; that there should be no established church; that not even the most powerful people in the land should be above the law.
These were the ideals that Americans exported to Europe after 1945 and again after 1989. European nations became happier, richer, and freer because they became more American. They changed their governments peacefully and democratically. They restricted the power of the state over the citizen. They accepted that borders ought not to be altered by force. They embraced liberty and property.
The politicians who stand for these things are imperfect. Still, you can imagine how shocked they feel at being repudiated by the country they took as their inspiration. Especially when they see that the Americans most in favor of replacing them with populist parties often have a very jaundiced view of their own founding traditions.
TRUMP’S NEW GLOBAL ORDER WILL MAKE THE US MORE VULNERABLE
Two more members of the Heritage Foundation’s board resigned this week in the ongoing row about its defense of Tucker Carlson’s interview with Nick Fuentes. I was struck by the reason both gave for stepping down. “I remain committed to the ideals of the American Founding and to institutions that champion human dignity and responsible governance,” said Abby Spencer Moffat, while Shane McCullar said he had joined to “advance the ideals of America’s Founding.” Good for them.
It is bizarre. The people who make the loudest claim to be American patriots are less attracted to their own story than to the blood-and-soil nationalism of European autocrats. They want America to be just like anywhere else. Have they any idea of the preciousness of what they stand to lose?