Add to all of this one more factor: President Trump's clear sympathy for far-right, xenophobic movements (and their admiration for him), especially at a time when such extreme nationalist groups have become the biggest threat to democracy and tolerance within the European Union.
Here again, his incendiary statements have been anything but one-off gaffes; they have been systematic and, as in Paris, ongoing. While still the president-elect, he volunteered that Nigel Farage, the interim leader of the right-wing, nativist UK Independence Party who had voiced support for Trump's presidential aspirations, would do "a great job" as British ambassador to the United States. Farage pronounced himself "very flattered" and was clearly taken by the idea, but Number 10 Downing Street, not amused, retorted tartly, "There is no vacancy. We have an excellent ambassador to the U.S." As it happened, Trump got together with Farage before he even held his first official meeting with Prime Minister Theresa May.
And when it came to praising xenophobic European politicians, Farage was just the first European version of a Trumpian-style politician to get in line. There&rsqursquo;s Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who's been busily eroding his country's democratic institutions, whipping up anti-immigrant sentiment and Islamophobia, closing his border to refugees from war-torn countries, emitting anti-Semitic dog whistles, and posing as the protector of Hungary's "Christian culture." He acclaimed Trump's America First nationalism as a death knell for multilateralism. In turn, Trump and his team have warmed to Orban. This August, Trump's friend and recently appointed ambassador to Hungary, David Cornstein, gushed that the president admired Orban because the latter was "a very strong leader." Trump has yet to host Orban at the White House, but the prime minister's top officials have met with Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Then there's the Polish government led by that country's Law and Justice Party (PiS). Its ideology is a kissing cousin's to Orban's, so much so that Polish leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski has praised the Hungarian prime minister as an ally in resisting the EU's insistence on democratic governance. No matter: while visiting Poland in July 2017, Trump hailed that PiS-ruled country as a defender of Western values, despite its government's attacks on the independence of the Polish judiciary and media. This September, one day after the EU referred Poland to the European Court of Justice for politicizing its judicial system, Trump, in a speech to the U.N. General Assembly, again lauded that country for the way its people were defending "their independence, their security, and their sovereignty."
Also noteworthy is the mutual admiration between Trump and France's far-right National Front. In February 2017, its leader, Marine Le Pen, who would later run against Macron for the French presidency, exclaimed: "I have only reason to rejoice in Donald Trump's actions" and Trump in turn hailed her "as the strongest candidate... strongest on borders... and she's the strongest on what's been going on in France." She lost to Macron, but this February, her niece, Marion Mare'chal-Le Pen (she later dropped the "Le Pen"), a rising star in the National Front who may become its leader someday, joined President Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, and Nigel Farage in addressing the Conservative Political Action Conference and praised Trump's America First narrative.
Then there's Matteo Salvini, Italy's deputy prime minister and leader of the far-right, immigrant-bashing Northern League. He dreams of a future alliance among Europe's ultranationalist parties, as does former Trump adviser Steve Bannon. Salvini met Trump in 2016, backed his quest for the presidency, and then released a photograph of both of them smiling in a thumbs-up pose and another of him holding a Trump campaign poster. This September, by then perhaps the most influential member of Italy's new government, he offered a blanket endorsement of Trump's policies. Steve Bannon met the Italian leader that month and, while speaking of his plan to form a trans-Europe populist alliance, reported that "we have Salvini on board."
It's telling that Trump favors the most anti-democratic European governments and movements, the ones that peddle bigotry, while choosing to pick fights with the leaders of Britain, Germany, and now France. It's no less revealing that other European far-right figures find him so appealing. None of this, however, should be surprising. The narratives of Europe's right and the president's rhetoric overlap, as do the policies they favor.
And it never ends: the vitriolic tweets, the falsehoods, the fondness for far-right groups, the penchant for demeaning allies. It's easy enough to take all of this as just the White House's ongoing version of Saturday Night Live. But that would be a mistake. Behind it lurks a future in which nationalism could shatter Europe, proving hazardous for Europeans and Americans alike.
Rajan Menon, a TomDispatch regular, is the Anne and Bernard Spitzer Professor of International Relations at the Powell School, City College of New York, and Senior Research Fellow at Columbia University's Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies. He is the author, most recently, of The Conceit of Humanitarian Intervention.
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Copyright 2018 Rajan Menon
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