A new era of American intervention in Europe

For the past decade or more, European governments have been trying to resist covert influence operations from adversaries such as… Russia and China.

Now they face a very different challenge: fending off overt efforts by Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s MAGA movement to seize territory, oust elected leaders, and empower far-right causes and parties.

Even before he regains office, Mr. Trump is making threats — perhaps serious, perhaps not — to seize the territory of NATO allies such as Canada and Denmark. Mr. Musk, the president-elect’s biggest financial backer, is using his social media platform

It is not clear whether Europe’s political immune system has the antibodies needed to defend against these new incursions.

This is not the first time that a Trump ally has tried to build a bridge with the European far right. In 2018 and 2019, Trump advisor Stephen K. Bannon has meetings with far-right politicians across Europe. But the political scene now is completely different. The governments of Germany and France have collapsed; Far-right parties are on the rise in those countries, and are already in power in many other countries across the continent.

A senior official from Trump’s first administration, who is expected to take on a larger role in the second, was blunt in his assessment: Europe has no idea what’s coming its way, he said.

“A very rich person speaks his mind”

Mr Musk spent a $250 million slice of his $400 billion fortune to help Donald Trump get re-elected. He arguably had just as much influence on American politics through his notoriety and ownership of the social media network X, formerly known as Twitter.

He has campaigned aggressively against Kamala Harris (in one case, sharing a fake video of her describing herself as “hired for diversity” who doesn’t “know the first thing about running the country”) and interviewed Trump live on stage. He is now spreading similar rules of play in Europe.

In Britain, Mr. Musk It revived the “grooming gangs” scandal that had been going on for ten years This happened while Prime Minister Keir Starmer, whose centre-left Labor Party is in power, was DPP.

Exciting the flames fanned by the right-wing media, Mr Musk described Mr Starmer as “absolutely despicable” and said he should be “in prison”. Last week, he asked his 212 million followers to vote on whether “America should liberate the people of Britain from their tyrannical government.”

According to British media reports, Mr Musk is also considering a $100 million donation to Britain’s far-right Reform Party, which would be the country’s largest political donation ever. The party’s leader, Nigel Farage, one of the most prominent activists in the Brexit campaign, met Trump several times, most recently at Mar-a-Lago last month.

“MAGA hates Starmer,” the former Trump administration official told The Times. He spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer his candid opinions while he is considered for a role in a second Trump administration.

“MAGA loves Meloni,” he added, referring to right-wing Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, “as long as she achieves her deportation goals.”

Mr Musk’s SpaceX is also in talks with Ms Meloni’s government to provide secure military communications through its Starlink satellite network. In a press conference last weekShe described Mr. Musk as “a very wealthy person who speaks his mind.”

“Musk makes us natural”

In Germany, which holds early federal elections next month, Mr. Musk is encouraging voters to vote for the far-right Alternative for Germany party, providing it with the legitimacy long denied to a party monitored by Germany’s domestic intelligence service because of its links to Hezbollah. Neo-Nazis.

In an opinion article in one of the major German newspapers Posted on December 28, He described the AfD as Germany’s last “spark of hope.” He said the country was “teetering on the brink of economic and cultural collapse.”

Thursday is Live stream a 75-minute conversation with Alice Weidelthe AfD’s candidate for chancellor, is on X, giving her the same platform it gave Trump five months ago.

Since Musk first endorsed the AfD in December, Weidel’s posts on say researchers monitoring the scene online Far-right German influencers are now posting on X in English To get Musk’s attention.

Germans will not vote for the AfD just because an American billionaire asked them to. But social media is a tool that can shift public opinion, taking ideas that were once considered extreme and bringing them into the mainstream over time.

What has kept the AfD out of power even though it has become the country’s second most popular party is a national taboo against working with the far right. It is the memory of Hitler, who formed a coalition with the centrist conservatives, that has so far kept this firewall in place.

“The firewall between the AfD and the White House is officially gone, and that makes the German firewall look ridiculous,” Tino Shruppala, co-leader of the AfD, told me. “Musk makes us natural.”

Overt versus confidential

US influence campaigns in other countries are not new. During the Cold War, America gave its support to friendly countries and parties and intervened – sometimes aggressively – in countries that were seen as ideological rivals.

But now it appears that the MAGA movement is deliberately sowing discord among US allies. This is confusing for Europeans who grew up imbibing American lessons about democracy after World War II.

“I cannot remember a similar case of interference in the election campaign of a friendly country in the history of Western democracies,” said Friedrich Merz, leader and chancellor candidate of the center-right Christian Democrats. His party is leading in opinion polls but will need a coalition partner to form the government.

The United States remains the main guarantor of European security, as the war in Ukraine has shown. It is also Europe’s largest export market, making the prospect of tariffs a strong threat to European economies. There are no technology companies in Europe on a par with those from Silicon Valley, including Mr Musk’s X platform and his space company Space

Europe’s dependence on Russian energy has long hampered its response to Kremlin interference. But the dependency is much greater in the case of the United States.

Add to this the fact that the American intervention is not secret, it occurs in broad daylight, which makes responding to it even more difficult.

Exploiting existing injustices

Influence campaigns work best when they exploit existing injustices. As in the United States, Europe’s trust in institutions has declined in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and the pandemic. Voters have become more hostile toward immigration and more concerned about the cost of living and the economy. There is a growing sense that centrist leaders on the left and right have failed them on these issues.

Matthew Goodwin, a conservative writer and commentator, said millions of people in Europe are angry with the establishment. “It is not coordinated by Trump or Musk.”

“Musk did not create the AfD,” Mr. Goodwin added. “It is useful for the AfD to have their attention, but this is mainly driven by the policy choices that have been made over the past decade.”

Mr. Musk’s provocations in Europe may be designed to achieve maximum chaos rather than electoral success. In Britain, He destroyed Nigel Farageleader of the far-right Reform Party, after Mr. Farage refused to support Mr. Musk’s request to release a far-right instigator from prison.

“The Kremlin and the forces surrounding the libertarian-authoritarian camp around Musk want to sow chaos in Europe and get rid of liberal democratic elites,” Thorsten Benner, director of the Institute for Global Public Policy in Berlin, told German newspaper Die Zeit. . “We have to arm ourselves against that. But the greatest danger to our democracies does not come from without, but from within. Those who campaign must focus on the problems that matter to voters.”

Similar levels of infighting and chaos also exist within the broader MAGA movement. Back in the United States, there are signs that those in Mr. Trump’s hardline anti-immigration inner circle They are tired of Mr. MuskEspecially after a row over whether the country should expand work visas for highly skilled immigrants. in An interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera On Sunday, Mr. Bannon called Mr. Musk “really evil” and vowed to “take this guy down.”

Whatever the direct impact of American intervention on the political map of Europe in the coming years, Trump is determined to impose his priorities in Europe, whoever is in the government.

“Ultimately, Trump will be so much more aggressive with Europe in terms of relentlessly defending the U.S. position that it won’t actually matter who’s in charge,” the former Trump official said. “Their main thing is America first. Everything else is a distraction. Trump will use American power to get his way.”