MAGA vs. EU: Brussels rejects interference, but right wing sees Washington as “key”
The new US national security strategy, especially the threat of interference in favor of right-wing parties, is angering many on the continent. Elon Musk is adding fuel to the fire.
It was on Valentine's Day, of all days, that the crisis really began. Back then, on February 14, 2025, US Vice President J. D. Vance delivered his much-noticed inflammatory speech against Europe and everything it stands for at the Munich Security Conference. Despite warnings, the allies were stunned and shocked.
Less than ten months later, and after numerous cold shoulders, the MAGA clique from the US has gone one step further and put its view of Europe, characterized by racist stereotypes and distorted representations, on paper: as part of the new security strategy, allied Europe was presented as a continent threatened with the “extinction of civilization” because some NATO countries would soon be “predominantly non-European” due to “mass immigration.” The narrative of the “Great Replacement,” which is allegedly being deliberately conjured up by the elites, is particularly popular with the political right. The same is true of “the supposed censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition,” which the US criticizes.
At the latest when the US announced in a document published on Friday that it would “assist” in “cultivating resistance to Europe's current course within European nations” and “correcting the current course,” alarm bells rang in Brussels and many capitals. The sense of urgency was apparently heightened by threats and behaviorally conspicuous tweets from the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, a former close associate of Trump. Following a €120 million fine from the EU for misleading authentication of user accounts and lack of transparency on his platform, the X boss called for the EU to be abolished and power to be returned to the nation states, which Russia's former president Dmitry Medvedev expressly supported. Musk also retweeted images that stylized the EU as the reincarnation of Nazism.
Costa: “That's going too far.”
The combination of these developments over the weekend apparently prompted EU Council President António Costa to respond on Monday morning. Europe cannot accept the “threat of interference in European political life,” he said. Nor can the US decide on behalf of Europeans “which parties are good and which are bad.”
In principle, there were “different world views, but this goes too far,” said the Council President, who praised the fact that Europe was still listed as an ally in the new security strategy: “But if we are allies, we must also act as such,” the EU Council President made clear. On Monday, the German government also criticized the threatened interference and made it clear that, unlike the US, it continues to regard Russia as a threat.
Washington as the “key”
The right-wing nationalist AfD party is particularly fond of Trump's MAGA supporters. Just recently, AfD members sang the controversial first verse of the German national anthem, “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles,” at a joint conference with the Young Republican Club, a Republican youth organization in Manhattan, according to research by Der Spiegel. Contacts have intensified in recent months, with Musk appearing as the star speaker via video link at the campaign kickoff at the end of January. The phrase “Washington is the key” is being heard more and more often within the AfD.
Transatlantic assistance is primarily intended to serve as a trump card for the AfD in the event that the party is banned. According to Spiegel, party leader Alice Weidel is not part of the delegation of three Bundestag members currently visiting the US. However, she hopes to receive an invitation from Trump in the near future. Because the US sees the “growing influence of patriotic parties” as a ray of hope, according to its security doctrine, such an invitation is certainly not out of the question. Europe's leaders, on the other hand, have agreed to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday. After a meeting in London with the heads of government from the UK, France, and Germany, he also wants to meet with the leaders of the EU and NATO – in complete European unity.
