{"id":641860,"date":"2026-08-17T13:54:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-17T13:54:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/641860\/"},"modified":"2026-08-17T13:54:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T13:54:14","slug":"why-maga-sees-europe-as-an-ideological-battleground-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/641860\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Maga sees Europe as an ideological battleground \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trump<\/a> administration officials have learned to choose their words carefully to avoid getting ahead of their mercurial boss. But on one subject they appear ever ready to let rip: Europe.<\/p>\n

From the vice-president down, US officials have cast themselves as being on a mission to save western civilisation from the Continent they see as its cradle. Mass migration<\/a>, curbs on speech and the surrender of national sovereignty, they argue, threaten not only the transatlantic relationship but the very idea of Europe.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t save the West if Europe doesn\u2019t get its act together,\u201d said Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank that helped to draw up the agenda for Donald Trump\u2019s second term. \u201cI\u2019ve been worried for a long time, for the better part of two decades, that Europe was committing civilisational suicide.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cThe civilisation that we\u2019re defending is 3,500 years old,\u201d he added, tracing it back through Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, London and Philadelphia. <\/p>\n

Arguing that Europe needs saving from itself, the administration has backed like-minded parties and movements across the Atlantic. Vice-president JD Vance<\/a> went so far as to campaign for Viktor Orb\u00e1n<\/a>, Hungary\u2019s former prime minister and a lodestar for the populist-nationalist right, on the eve of what proved to be Orb\u00e1n\u2019s electoral defeat.<\/p>\n

\"USUS vice-president JD Vance supported Viktor Orb\u00e1n’s failed bid for reelection in Hungary. Photograph: Janos Kummer\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

At the state department, officials have earmarked millions of dollars in grants for like-minded groups in Europe seeking to combat \u201ccensorship\u201d and develop \u201ccivilisational bonds\u201d between the US and the Continent.<\/p>\n

Anna Kelly, a White House spokeswoman, said the US president \u201chas rightfully warned other world leaders that western civilisation will continue to erode if they don\u2019t quickly reverse course.\u201d<\/p>\n

The focus on Europe has widened the transatlantic rift and prompted officials and commentators on both sides of the Atlantic to ask: why is Maga coming for Europe?<\/p>\n

Sarah Rogers, the under-secretary of state for public diplomacy and one of Trump\u2019s most outspoken critics of Europe, denies the administration is simply out to pick a fight.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur national security strategy and other statements we\u2019ve made are often framed as critiques of Europe or attacks on Europe, and that\u2019s not the frame that I would use,\u201d she told the Financial Times.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we advocate on these themes, it\u2019s not because the American people or we, as their representatives, are interested in conflict with Europe for the sake of it,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s because we identify with the UK and Europe in a lot of ways … When it comes to certain challenges, we\u2019re all in this together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rogers occupies a role traditionally used to advance US soft power through educational exchanges and cultural programmes. The former litigator is better known, however, for acerbic social media posts about European and UK migration policies and efforts to regulate hate speech.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year Rogers said Germany had imported \u201cbarbarian rapist hordes\u201d. She later clarified that she was seeking to make a point about a 2018 hate speech investigation into a German far-right lawmaker who had used similar terms.<\/p>\n

Her stance on free speech in Europe contrasts with the administration\u2019s relative silence on many authoritarian states. In June, she visited Turkmenistan, one of the world\u2019s most oppressive regimes, making scant reference to freedom of speech.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur engagement on these issues depends upon the depth of our entanglement with countries, the nature of our alliance, it depends upon the country\u2019s history and trajectory,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Meet Trump\u2019s Maga disciples tearing up the diplomatic rule book across EuropeOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Maga\u2019s view of Europe as a civilisation on the brink grew out of the American new right, an intellectual and policy ecosystem that flourished between Trump\u2019s two terms. As Republicans shed the remnants of Reaganite conservatism, a new cohort of Maga-aligned think tanks and intellectuals sought to turn the raw power of Trump\u2019s political machine into an ideological doctrine and policy programme.<\/p>\n

The Biden years gave Trump\u2019s allies a \u201chalf-time breather\u201d in which to develop what they saw as the intellectual core of Trumpism, said Joshua Trevino, a senior director at the America First Policy Institute.<\/p>\n

Explaining why the Trump administration has been so outspoken on freedom of speech, Trevino said American conservatives \u201cactually care what happens in Europe\u201d because they see it as part of themselves \u2013 and Britain in particular as an ancestral source.<\/p>\n

That sense of kinship meant Europe\u2019s political direction could feel like a \u201cmoral injury\u201d. \u201cThere\u2019s actually two different standards in the mental framework among conservatives now in relationships with foreign nations,\u201d he said. One is more transactional, the other \u201ccivilisational\u201d.<\/p>\n

Maga\u2019s stark new theory of the Atlantic alliance was set out by the US vice-president at the Munich Security Conference last year. Vance said the greatest threat to Europe came not from Russia or China but from \u201cwithin\u201d \u2013 its alleged divergence from the US on values such as freedom of speech.<\/p>\n

That thinking was later codified in the National Security Strategy, the blueprint for US foreign policy, which called for \u201ccultivating resistance\u201d to Europe\u2019s civilisational decline. The US state department\u2019s own strategy document set a similar goal: to \u201crebuild the civilisational alliance with European states\u201d.<\/p>\n

The ideological scattergram of the American new right encompasses right-wing populists, national conservatives, post-liberal Catholic intellectuals, libertarian tech founders and hard-right activists.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s two trends coming together: the long decline of the American social contract and the complacent assumption in all western democracies that representative democracy is like a perpetual clock that is never in need of repair,\u201d said Constanze Stelzenmuller, director of the centre on the US and Europe at the Brookings Institution and a Financial Times contributing editor.<\/p>\n

\"DonaldDonald Trump has made regular forays into Europe\u2019s domestic politics over the past 18 months. Photograph: Doug Mills\/The New York Times <\/p>\n

The surge was helped by funding from tech billionaires such as Peter Thiel<\/a>, an early backer of Vance. Arnaud Miranda, an associate research fellow at France\u2019s Sciences Po university, said donors had identified \u201ca need for a more elitist approach that would give a direction and a doctrine to Trumpism\u201d.<\/p>\n

The tech right, as it is sometimes known, has its own particular grievance against the EU, which has sought to place guardrails around Big Tech and levied billions of euros in fines under its competition and digital rules.<\/p>\n

This has been infused with elements of the \u201cdark enlightenment\u201d, a philosophy influential in parts of the tech right that considers democracy an impediment to technological progress and argues that states should be run more like corporations. Europe, in this view, serves as a warning of what the US could become if it does not change course, Miranda said.<\/p>\n

Others see this as merely window dressing. \u201cThis is about making money. It\u2019s not about principles, it\u2019s not about legal cultures, it\u2019s about profits,\u201d said Stelzenmuller.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0\u2018He does what his boss says\u2019: Trump\u2019s undiplomatic diplomat stirs it up for Maga in IrelandOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

There is also clearly a deep dislike for the EU and its executive arm, the European Commission. They are often portrayed in semi-apocalyptic language as usurpers of the national self-determination of the bloc\u2019s member states. \u201cI think they\u2019re both godawful. I think they\u2019re sinister. I think they\u2019re evil,\u201d said Roberts of The Heritage Foundation.<\/p>\n

The antipathy for Brussels mirrors Maga\u2019s hostility to America\u2019s elite institutions: universities, the media, the judiciary and career public servants who have come under attack in Trump\u2019s second term. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe Trump administration \u2013 like many other nationalist rebel movements and parties in western countries \u2013 has a problem with universities and the educated elites,\u201d said Yoram Hazony, an Israeli-American political theorist whose 2018 book The Virtue of Nationalism is regarded as a central text of the American new right.<\/p>\n

Many of those elites were seen as having \u201cdrunk the Kool-Aid\u201d of believing there was \u201cno need for independent nations\u201d and \u201cno need for national interest\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n

Hazony acknowledged \u201ctension\u201d between the Trump administration\u2019s stated aim of stepping back from the US\u2019s role as global policeman and its finger-wagging at Europe. But he likened the dispute to a quarrel between siblings.<\/p>\n

\u201cBrothers and sisters \u2013 they fight. Sometimes it\u2019s the older brothers and sisters who are fighting with their younger brothers and sisters, not out of disgust or hatred, but out of love,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s fraternal affection has been expressed in ways that have shaken allies over the past 18 months: threats to seize Greenland<\/a> by force, steeper tariffs on allies and regular forays into Europe\u2019s domestic politics. <\/p>\n

Central to it all has been immigration. The US National Security Strategy went as far as to argue that Europe could be \u201cunrecognisable\u201d in 20 years, potentially jeopardising the Nato alliance. <\/p>\n

\u201cA military alliance has to be based on a civilisational consensus. And if we notice \u2013 and I think we are noticing that \u2013 an erosion of that, civilisational erasure, that will be very concerning to us,\u201d said Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow with the Heritage Foundation. <\/p>\n

In reality, a little over 10 per cent of the EU\u2019s population is foreign-born, compared to almost 16 per cent in the US, although the second Trump administration has launched a relentless crackdown on immigration. \u201cWe are all in this together. We are urging people to get on board with a course that we ourselves are trying to take,\u201d said Rogers. <\/p>\n

Critics contend that the preoccupation is sometimes infused with anti-Islamic sentiment targeting immigration into Europe from the Middle East. \u201cThey are absolutely comfortable with outrageous Islamophobia,\u201d said Laura Field of the Niskanen Center think tank in Washington, who studies the American new right.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s been packed into their movement going back to Michael Anton,\u201d she said, referring to an architect of the National Security Strategy. Anton has portrayed immigration from Islamic countries as a security threat, describing Islam as a \u201cmilitant faith\u201d in a 2016 essay.<\/p>\n

The fixation on immigration has left the Trump administration supporting European political movements that in other ways run headlong against its administration\u2019s foreign policy. In Germany, it found common cause with the far-right AfD on immigration, even though the party is staunchly opposed to big increases in defence spending.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have backed candidates and parties because of their position on migration that are actually quite systematically against America\u2019s interests globally,\u201d said Thomas Wright, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former national security official in the Biden administration. \u201cThe shared enemies are more important than US interests in geopolitics.\u201d <\/p>\n

While the defeat of Orb\u00e1n led some to predict the Maga movement might be losing sway in Europe, there are no signs of its rhetorical assaults abating.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Will Donald Trump get a bigger Irish welcome than Ronald Reagan?Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Field, whose book Furious Minds examines the intellectual currents behind Maga, says that appreciating the movement\u2019s perverse sense of Europhilia is crucial.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s all of this pretension to have been the true heirs of European civilisation, and that they are going to come and return to the motherland and re-educate these flaky Europeans about their own roots,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a childish caricature of Europe, and it\u2019s fundamentally unserious in a lot of ways.\u201d \u2013 Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Trump administration officials have learned to choose their words carefully to avoid getting ahead of their mercurial boss.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":641861,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,356,13,14,6,56,12175,11,12,15,16,5,115329,7,8,107,65,66,67],"class_list":["post-641860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-donald-trump","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-headlines","tag-immigration","tag-jd-vance","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-news","tag-peter-thiel","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories","tag-us","tag-world","tag-world-news","tag-worldnews"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117111192239584521","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=641860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641860\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/641861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=641860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=641860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=641860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}