Some Europeans Fear Trump Aides Want A Far Right Take Over

President Trump meeting with Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, in July.Credit...Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times

The continent’s leaders have concerns that U.S. officials are pushing for parties that support their views of nationalism and traditional values to come into power.

By Steven Erlanger

Reporting from Berlin and Washington

The New York Times

 

President Trump has called the European Union “a foe,” “set up to take advantage of the United States” and “worse than China” as an economic competitor.

Vice President JD Vance has criticized European democracy as deeply flawed — suppressing religious expression and dissent; promoting uncontrolled migration without voter consent; canceling elections; and censoring the far right, thus limiting political debate.

Mr. Vance has even gone further, wading into Germany’s politics during the country’s election this spring, a departure from the custom of world leaders staying out of the domestic affairs of allies. After his surprise attack on European democracy in a Munich speech in February, he met with the head of a far-right party considered anti-constitutional and extremist, the Alternative for Germany.

In the months since Mr. Trump took office, other administration officials have declared their support for right-wing parties in nearly every country in Europe, including Britain, the Czech Republic, France, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Romania, Slovakia and Spain.

Those parties, the Trump officials said, represent a so-called civilizational nationalism that favors national identity, strong leaders, Judeo-Christian values, traditional gender roles, and anti-migrant and anti-Islam policies. The American conservatives see them as the best antidote to the liberalism that they regard as a threat that undermines Western security.

The killing of the activist Charlie Kirk and the Trump administration’s response to it in recent days have fueled the ideological battle. Mr. Trump and his officials, while demanding free speech for the right, have escalated efforts to crack down on what they call hate speech from the left, celebrating the silencing of popular critics like the late-night host Jimmy Kimmel this week. The Federal Communications Commission chairman, Brendan Carr, also suggested that regulators could use their powers against ABC, the network that airs Mr. Kimmel’s show, and the local stations that carry it.

Some Europeans have expressed worry that Mr. Trump’s and his allies’ effort to silence liberal criticism, especially through popular pressure driven by social media, will be a model for their own far-right and populist parties, which are already being made more credible by support from Washington.

In Warsaw during Poland’s presidential campaign, Kristi Noem, the U.S. secretary of homeland security, told conservatives in May, “We do not have the time to dance around the dangers that threaten our societies.” Europe’s leaders are “weak,” she warned, and they “have destroyed our countries because they have led by fear. They have used fear to con people, and they’ve used fear to promote an agenda that is not what liberty is about, that is not what freedom is about.” 

She openly backed Karol Nawrocki, the candidate of a far-right Polish party that wants an altered European Union. Mr. Trump welcomed Mr. Nawrocki to the White House during the campaign, which Mr. Nawrocki won, and again this month.

The Trump administration’s broadsides against Europe’s liberals amount to a battle over culture, ideology and trade that is so fierce that some European leaders and officials increasingly believe that the president’s aides are pressing for regime change in Europe. They see the Americans as aiming to replace governments of the center-left and center-right with coalitions of the far right that align with their ideas of nation, religion, gender and cultural values.

Donald Trump and Karol Nawrocki stand outside on a red carpet with the Washington Monument in the background.

Mr. Trump meeting with President Karol Nawrocki of Poland this month. Mr. Nawrocki, who represents a far-right party, was elected this year.Credit...Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times

They cite not only American incursions in elections but also the meetings of Trump allies with like-minded European legislators; their efforts to undercut European regulations; their interference in Greenland, a territory of the NATO ally Denmark; and attacks on French and Romanian courts for decisions that went against far-right presidential candidates.

European officials acknowledged that Mr. Trump and his advisers were free to disparage their worldviews and other perceived flaws. But while Russia interferes secretly in European elections, they said they considered the Trump officials’ open intrusions in domestic politics a violation of norms among allies. 

Senior European officials nonetheless want to keep Washington on their side for security reasons. European leaders who publicly flatter Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance are privately furious about their interventions in domestic affairs, a senior European official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss private opinions.

Robin Niblett, former director of the nonpartisan research group Chatham House, said, “Vance and his followers believe they are in the vanguard of a revolution in Western identity to a true one, which is a Judeo-Christian West that is being diluted and undermined by a valueless new normality propagated by self-questioning elites.”

“So, yes,” he added, “they are after regime change in Europe.”

Luuk van Middelaar, a Dutch historian and former European official, compared the Trump officials to a right-wing Comintern, the Soviet organization that promoted world communism.