Could European right make Trump the ‘ugly American’?
Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash
Hear this in your head. The speaker is a male European politician:
Donald Trump’s threats “against the sovereignty of a state” are “unacceptable”.
“Commercial blackmail is equally intolerable”.
The speaker was referring to the US president’s threat to impose an additional 10 per cent tariff on eight European countries that opposed US takeover of Greenland.
The man was Jordan Bardella, leader of France’s populist-right National Rally (RN). He is likely to be the party’s candidate for next year’s presidential election should his mentor Marine Le Pen be unable to contest on account of legal troubles.
The remarks above are quoted by The Economist’s Paris bureau chief Sophie Pedder to demonstrate the strength of feeling of European right-wing parties and leaders towards Mr Trump’s imperious treatment of non-Americans and the world beyond the US.
Mr Bardella and Alice Weidel of Germany’s AfD party could be called “patriots” by Mr Trump and his MAGA movement, in the sense that they share an anti-immigrant, chest-thumping sort of instincts and rhetoric. These are trotted out as love of country, a muscular nationalism, for doers.
Ms Weidel recently said President Trump had violated his “fundamental campaign promise” not to interfere in other countries.
The AfD is clearly responding to German queasiness about America’s triumphal attempts to subordinate others, including Germany to its will.
The US movement sees Mr Bardella and Ms Weidel as “civilisational allies”.
It is extraordinary that this is the situation within months of the Trump administration’s explicit support for European nationalists. Late last year, America’s national security strategy stated that “the growing influence of patriotic European parties…gives cause for great optimism”.
But now…relations are strained. Either it’s TACO time (Trump Always Chickens Out) and the US president adopts a more emollient approach, or the European right makes Mr Trump the embodiment of the “ugly American”!
