Sit down and cry? Cry with rage and fear at the speed with which Donald Trump and his men are attacking the American checks and balances and muzzling Republican elected officials by threatening to oppose candidates of their own in the next primaries?
Yes, we could cry with rage because in their demolition of American democracy, Donald Trump and his gang are moving so fast that they could rig the 2026 parliamentary elections. There is every reason to be frightened, but should we resign ourselves to powerlessness and sit back?
No, because there are plenty of reasons not to despair.
In the United States itself, there are judges who say that many presidential decisions are illegal or even unconstitutional. Despite being a Trump supporter, the Chief Justice has publicly expressed his concern about the attacks on these judges. The stock market and the business community are worried about the economic chaos that the trade war is likely to bring. Many of Donald Trump’s voters do not approve of the brutal cuts to government services. Democracy is not yet dead in the United States, and the frontal attack to which it is being subjected everywhere is not a great success.
The German far right could not exceed the score that the polls had been showing them for sever months, not even with Elon Musk’s ardent support. One might even wonder if this support did not slow down its progress, as America and capitalism do not necessarily have a good press with this electorate.
Throughout Europe, these currents, which emerged again out of the 1930s, had shown successive sympathies for Vladimir Putin and then Donald Trump. What the European far right had in common with these two men was authoritarianism, denunciation of immigration and the assertion of a Christian identity. But now that the Kremlin and the White House are trying to get closer to each other, at the expense of the Ukrainians, and are united in their hostility to Europe, how can the far right support them, and at the same time claim to be nationalist and European?
This is becoming all the more difficult as public opinion in the Union is clearly hostile to the Russian and American presidents, concerned about their collusion and now overwhelmingly in favour of the establishment of a common European defence.
The parties on which Trump and Putin were betting are going through a bad patch and, at the same time, in an increasing number of countries, the local Putin and Trump are facing profound movements of rejection.
In Hungary, polls show Viktor Orbán in the minority. His Slovakian friend Robert Fico is unable to consolidate his extremely fragile power. In Serbia, President Vucic no longer knows how to regain control in the face of a growing protest movement. In Georgia, the pro-Russian government is failing to silence the democratic and pro-European opposition. In Austria, the moderate right has finally decided to govern with the centre and the left rather than form an impossible coalition with the far right. In Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu is stirring up the democratic camp by trying too openly to take his cue from his friend Trump. Even more spectacularly, in Turkey, the eternal Recep Erdogan has aroused massive indignation by having the mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, thrown in prison. Imamoglu is the man who could beat him in the next presidential election.
The dictatorship has not won the battle for people’s hearts. Freedom still stirs people to action. The desire for democracy is bringing people onto the streets, and there is all the more reason not to despair as Europe, bastion of the rule of law, closes ranks.
The Union has just made common defence an objective to be achieved in five years and to this end has instituted a European preference in the purchase of armaments. The United Kingdom, Norway, Canada and Australia are joining it in the formation of a new alliance, with Turkey moving closer. It is, in effect, an Atlantic Alliance without the United States, and the Kremlin is taking it seriously enough to make it an out-and-out adversary.
Neither Europe nor freedom are dead.
(Image: EliElschi @Pixabay)
