Some European Union leaders cannot live with Trump – others cannot live without him

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The writer is a FT editor, head of the liberal strategies center, and his colleague at IWM Vienna

A century ago, Mao Zaidong clearly asked, “Who are our enemies? Who are our friends? This is an issue of the first importance of the revolution.” “We are in the process of a second American revolution,” says Kevin Roberts, head of the Trump Heritage Foundation. It is a revolution that inspired the political compression between international liberals and right -wing nationalist nationalists in the old continent. Trump’s second coming has changed America for those who can be considered friends – and enemies – in Europe. Senior American politicians are now friendly with the right -wing European leaders while dealing with supporters of the continent for liberal democracy as enemies. In response, many Europeans began to look at America as a threat.

As the latest European Council for External Relations (ECFR) reconnaissance It reveals, although the majority of Europeans believe that Trump is bad for America, their country, and for global peace, most of the extremist right -wing supporters in Europe have fully signed the Trump revolution. They claim that the American political system is doing its work while breaking Europe.

The relationship between the right -wing European parties and Trump may resemble the Communist parties in Western Europe and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, where the extreme right feels that he is forced to defend Trump as well as to imitate him. Charming what is happening in the United States, Trump dreams of European experts of the mass deportation of migrants, but they are often silent when it comes to Trump’s trade war on Europe.

But what exactly what Europe can achieve through Trump’s parrot, and what do European liberals gain from its opposition? The union between European nationalists and the Maga Trump Movement is hardly a marriage in Paradise. While leaders like Viktor Orbán in Hungary seem happy with the presence of the United States to their side, their nationalities for each of them do not share little. In the offices of right -wing leaders throughout the ancient continent, one finds old maps, displays their countries with the extensive borders of the two -year -old. At Trump’s office, one seems to find family photos. European nationalists devote History with capital H; The US President is dedicated to Trump with the capital of T.

Trump’s nationality is nationalism without history. When it indicates its predecessors, the expression of being better than them. When he talks about making Gaza a five -star resort, speaking like a real estate pole, as states are only rented for their lands. For nationalists in Europe and soil, God gave every piece of the continent to the white Europeans and their offspring. Traditionally, the European extremist right parties imagined themselves as defenders of national sovereignty and national traditions against the citizens of nothingness in Brussels. Nowadays, they return themselves as part of a revolutionary movement across patriotism, with the adoption of fundamentalist Christian discourse and the civilized conflict that wins voices in America, but will not necessarily fly in Europe.

European liberals have also reshaped themselves. They are now seeking to throw themselves as a dog in Davos, but as defenders of the national interest against American interference. Mark Carney’s victory in Canada, who was riding a wave of national sale, inspired the leaders of the European Union who are undergoing an identity crisis that Trump’s resistance is the best way to re -election. But it will not work everywhere. Only when Trump plays the IRREDENTIST card, as he did in Canada, liberal leaders can rely on collective packing. Today, due to Trump’s fictional threat to the seizure of Greenland, the Danish are the most anti -Trump Europeans, but Carney’s influence does not exist elsewhere in the European Union. Trump may be a double partner, but most Europeans are ready to live with him because they are skeptical of the European Union’s capabilities to defend itself. Like a married couple for decades, they cannot imagine living alone.

Trump’s influence on European Union policy is unpredictable like Trump itself. After Britain left the European Union, the extremist European right was a magic by nationalism “restoring control of Brexiters”. Many Europeans demanded referendums to leave the European Union. But Brexit soon became responsibility, and the British parrot is no longer in Vogue. Therefore, those who gain and those who lose from the “second American revolution” will depend only on Trump’s failures and successes at home, but also on the ability of European leaders to use Trump’s moment to formulate new political identities for themselves.