A devastating war on the doorstep of Europe

Let us step back from the noise of what happened to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office of the White House, and recall and analyze an incident that occurred a few days earlier, the hero of which was also J.D. Vance, the US Vice President.

In Munich, on the podium of the Grand Hall of the Bayerische Hof Hotel, J.D. Vance, Trump's vice president, stood and delivered a long, lofty speech.

He spoke to Europeans as a teacher and lambasted their democracy, which was “muzzled and facing the prospect of implosion.” Your voters did not go to the polls, Vance said, to give you a mandate to open the floodgates and flood the continent with refugees. America will do exactly the opposite, he said.

And to convey to them, beyond any doubt, that America's policy toward Europe was going in a direction they were not familiar with, he used an expression from American culture: "There's a new sheriff in town."

The expression dates back to before the 19th century, and is meant to say that a town - often of ill repute - is about to undergo a fundamental change in politics, and that some cruelty is imminent and deserved.

Most Americans remember the cliche from the classic 1970s movie Blazing Saddles. A new black sheriff—a rule-breaker—is sent to a town with a bad reputation. The sheriff, in a comedic vein, will restore the authority and discipline all manner of miscreants.

Europeans breathed a little air when Germany's defense minister followed him on the same platform and said clearly that the US vice president's speech was "unacceptable."

The next day, Chancellor Olaf Scholz stepped up and said: “We will not accept that outsiders interfere in our democracy, in our elections, or in shaping democratic opinion in favor of that party. German politics is determined by Germans and no one else.”

Scholz, as every German politician does, referred to the lesson the country has learned from its own history, and to the fascist doctrine that “that party” (the Alternative for Germany) still carries in its political genes.

Germany received a special share of the US vice president’s speech, which lasted more than half an hour. His mockery of the “firewall” seemed to annoy the German centrist parties that are trying to isolate “that party” through a firewall that criminalizes closeness to it. On the sidelines of the conference, Vance went to meet Alice Weidel, the leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany party, and avoided the German chancellor.

The "American Sharif" did not delay long, as he announced from Washington his absolute endorsement of what was stated in his deputy's speech in Munich.

The cultural level in Germany, in various local media, saw what was happening as a rift that could no longer be repaired. Half an hour of listening to the press summary on German Radio at 7 am is enough to see the Western rift, and even to predict its outcome.

German democracy is fighting a tough battle with right-wing radicalism, with the AfD coming in second in all polls. According to a 2024 Pew Center study, 26% of German “men” are now satisfied with the party.

Centrist parties are trying to get the beast out of the game, and Friedrich Merz, Germany's chancellor-in-waiting, has already promised his voters that he will push the AfD to the margins of political life, to "where it should be," in his words.

Europe is sliding into an internal culture war, and one result of that war is that centrist parties are becoming more radical in the hope of winning voters’ favor and avoiding being left out.

In the midst of an existential struggle, as the political center sees it, the far-right AfD has managed to jump the wall of fire. While the political firewall is still in place, albeit less solid than before, the party’s presence in public life has become a natural occurrence that appeals to one in four Germans.

How can a democratic institution criminalize a party that represents a quarter of the population? Centrist parties are faced with this new reality and there is little they can do. There are dangerous signals coming from the past.

The elections to the Thuringian state parliament on 13 December 1930 gave the Nazi Party (NSDAP) the opportunity to participate in a regional government for the first time in its history. The previous summer's elections in the same state gave the radical Alternative for Germany (AfD) the largest percentage of votes.

Following the example of the red Trump conferences, far-right leaders met in Madrid a few days ago and held their conference under the banner of “Make Europe Great Again” (MEGA). Once again, the European right is repeating: there is a cultural threat to Europe, and the continent must collapse to preserve its cultural identity. But it must also erect barriers between its countries, and each country must manage the security of its borders. In other words, Europe must become great, pure and divided at the same time.

The German right is inspired by the Trumpist story and is seeing anything possible. At a recent election rally in Saxony-Anhalt, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) hosted Elon Musk on a big screen. Musk addressed his hosts, saying that they were Germany’s only hope, as he does on his X account. The euphoria of the moment led him to call on “Germans” to overcome their “World War II complex.” His advice, which received unparalleled applause, was understood as a direct attack on the Holocaust, the holy shrine of German politics. The MAGA clique is giving Europe’s right-wing parties a clean bill of health, and that is the real threat that the centrist parties see, not Vance’s claims.

At the lower levels of the AfD’s audience, there is “right-wing extremism, manipulation of history, and a lack of trust in the democratic system,” as journalist Jessica Berka observed while reporting on the party’s youth for the BBC. Holocaust denial, Hitler praise, and hatred of “those above” are the daily staple of the party’s youth.

According to a study conducted by the German newspaper Die Zeit, more than 80% of Radical Party members do not have a high school diploma. There is a widespread feeling of discontent, fear and uncertainty, and as a result, a segment of those who have lost faith in the democratic establishment and in the efficiency of the liberal state are drawn to the group that succeeds in exploiting their discontent.

German politicians claim that their country represents the last “green meadow” of democracy in the world, and that their democratic institutions are protected by the lessons they have learned from history.

It is a belief that Trump, Musk, Vance and the rest of the MAGA gang do not share, nor do the illiberal forces sweeping across the lost continent. It seems that the “MAGA gang” is trying to impose a new order on all of Europe that aims to dismantle it from within, as a unified force, through a policy of “divide and rule,” as Steve Walt, professor of international studies at Harvard University, puts it in an article in Foreign Policy magazine.

The Trump experience could usher in an extended American era of extremism, isolationism, and political “masculinity.” Europeans are aware of the reality and danger of this possibility, and that they must now think not about what they will do to win Trump’s favor, but about what they must do to manage their continent.

Serious challenges, their danger is real on all levels. It is interesting that the European peoples, in the face of Trump’s shock, turned their cards and found no trick other than the Middle East trick, which has always been a source of ridicule: boycotting American goods. A poll in recent days indicated that 60% of Germans refuse to buy Tesla cars, manufactured by Elon Musk, and that 60% of Britons said they would buy Chinese electric cars. Canadians, at a higher rate than Europeans, said they would not buy American goods.

Things are falling apart in the Western world, which has never ceased to claim that its model of politics and culture represents the end of human perfection.

*Quoted from Al Jazeera Net