They call themselves ‘patriots’, but what exactly makes them patriots? We are still trying to figure it out. We have listened again and again to the speeches made on Saturday by their leaders gathered in Madrid, and what we hear from Viktor Orbán, Marine Le Pen and their friends is nothing but enthusiasm for this ‘acceleration of history’ that Donald Trump is said to embody.

A US president is threatening to annex a European territory, the rich and strategic Greenland, by force, and the parties that formed the third largest group in the European Parliament, the ‘Patriots for Europe’, are patriotically abstaining from saying a single word.

No doubt they had forgotten this detail. No doubt they had also failed to perceive the patriotic enthusiasm that has taken hold of the whole of Canada, its Anglophones, its Francophones and all its parties, since Donald Trump wanted to integrate it into the United States. No doubt these Patriots for Europe have also forgotten that the reason why Canada still has a European monarch, Charles III, as its sovereign, is that it has never wanted to be absorbed by an overly powerful neighbour, but what does that matter to them!

Enthralled by their idol, they are not only prepared to hand over Greenland and Canada to him, but also the interests, security and independence of the whole of Europe. After all, ladies and gentlemen of the Patriots, did you have nothing to say about the astronomical customs duties that your friend Donald is threatening to impose on the rest of us Europeans?

Well, no! The Patriots for Europe did not have a word to say in defence of European agriculture, industry and therefore the European jobs that their American friend wants to attack. In their speeches, led by Marine Le Pen, they have denounced the European will to fight against global warming, but not a single word on the trade war that Donald Trump has declared on us, nothing, not the slightest proposal for a response or a counter-attack, not the slightest allusion, yet the most astonishing thing is not even all of the above.

Their hero made it so clear that he had no desire to defend us and would rather annex Greenland that no one in Europe is questioning the need for a common European defence any more, but what did these European patriots have to say on Saturday on this matter?

Nothing either, not a single word about this betrayal of an ally who has let us down completely, from one day to the next, and about the need for us Europeans to increase our military spending and lay the foundations for pan-European arms industries.

Their silence was such that it made it clear that they would not mind having to come to an agreement with their other source of inspiration, their other friend, Vladimir Putin, the man whom Matteo Salvini admires so much, who had received candidate Le Pen on 24 March 2017 and of whom Viktor Orbán is the Trojan horse.

These Patriots for Europe should have been named ‘Patriots for Trump’ or ‘Patriots for Putin’, but since it is not European patriotism that unites them, what do they have in common?

Beyond their rejection of immigration, they have two essential things in common. One is their horror of the law and justice, which apply to everyone, governments and citizens, rich and poor. The other is their hatred of the state as arbiter and redistributor, which Donald Trump and their friend Javier Milei, the Argentinean chainsaw enthusiast, are working so frantically to dismantle. The common ideal of these patriots, who are patriots in name only, is power for the richest, an oligarchy in the Russian and now American style: the opposite of democracy.

(Photo: Patriots.eu)