It’s time Europe got to grips with the MAGA challenge, writes Mark Leonard

Many European leaders are in a bind. They find themselves dependent on security guarantees from an American president who supports the political parties that pose the greatest threat to their own political survival. Deft diplomacy, increased defence spending and flattery have so far averted a catastrophe in Ukraine. But Europe’s leaders, by concentrating on the short-term policy emergencies stoked by the White House, are missing a deeper and longer-term maga challenge: the ideological one.

To talk to the thinkers and politicians of the “new right” movement is to know that it’s transatlantic, and a politics of today. The Trump administration’s recently published National Security Strategy accuses mainstream European governments of inviting “civilisational erasure” and “subversion of democratic processes”. It signals its determination to “cultivate resistance” in Europe by working with maga’s fellow travellers across the continent, from Reform uk to the Alternative for Germany (afd).

In Europe, as in America, the starting-point of this movement is a critique of liberalism and the globalisation unleashed after the cold war. It claims this has left citizens at the mercy of a series of crises: the 2008 financial crash, the migration crisis in 2015, the pandemic in 2020 and the cost-of-living spike after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Each successive crisis damaged the standing of the liberal centre by overwhelming the state and raising questions about whose side it was on.

The new right on both sides of the Atlantic has sought to build a new social base by courting those on the wrong side of these crises: often working-class voters who have suffered from a relative loss of status and wealth. This appeal is enshrined in a radical policy agenda—on immigration, trade, foreign policy and the reinvention of the state—linked to the idea of recreating a national identity. Border control can be used to determine who is an authentic citizen, and who should be expelled. Tariffs can be used to recreate a national production economy around the dignity of work. Foreign policy is recast around a very narrow definition of the national interest. And it is all made possible by waging war on the “deep state” and the “experts” who upheld the liberal agenda.

To get its message across, the new right has exploited the fragmentation of the public sphere into disconnected digital tribes. New parties bypass establishment media and have come to dominate the new information space, whether on TikTok or Telegram. Figures like Elon Musk and J.D. Vance use social media as a megaphone to support far-right parties or figures once considered beyond the pale, from the afd to Tommy Robinson. They use a weaponised definition of “free speech”, which doesn’t distinguish fact from falsehood, to “flood the zone” with their causes.

So in Europe, as in America, the new right has the narrative, the social base, the policy agenda and the communications channels to thrive. And the European and American new right are co-operating in forging that new politics.

How should Europe’s mainstream leaders respond? First, they must develop a counter-narrative, social base, agenda and communications strategy of their own, geared towards working-class voters. There is no perfect answer, but there are a number of positive examples. In Denmark Mette Frederiksen, the Social Democrat prime minister, has mapped out solid ground to counter the right on migration. Rather than mimicking right-wing attacks on race, she turned the question of migration into an argument about how best to defend the welfare state. In the Netherlands Rob Jetten took his left-leaning D66 party from fifth place to pole position by winning over centrists and conservatives with a message of hope and reclaiming the Dutch flag from the populists.

Second, the European mainstream can exploit the fact that it is possible to break the transatlantic membrane by using Donald Trump as a weapon against the Euro-maga crowd. Mark Carney and Anthony Albanese showed the path in Canada and Australia, respectively. They were quick to realise that populist tribunes can no longer simply pose as nationalist challengers when they are part of a transnational revolutionary movement.

Some populists, including Reform UK’s Nigel Farage and National Rally’s Jordan Bardella in France, have already begun to disassociate themselves from Mr Trump—though the fact that their politics is similar to that of the most powerful leader in the world gives them some of the disadvantages of incumbency, and they need to explain where they stand in relation to his policies. Brexit became a millstone round the necks of Europe’s hard right as the self-harm of leaving the eu was revealed. Polling by the European Council on Foreign Relations shows that the same could be true of the movement’s bonds with Mr Trump, with large majorities across Europe thinking his re-election is bad for their countries.

Smart European leaders explain that the measures they are taking to please Mr Trump—from increasing defence spending to reducing energy dependence on Russia—are things they would need to do anyway. They’re right. But the same is true of what they need to do to respond to maga in Europe. The European new right may take inspiration from Mr Trump, but its long-term challenge to the continent’s establishment has grown on home soil, from real European needs. By defending national sovereignty from the American leader’s attacks, liberal European leaders can rebuild support in communities that have long felt left behind and find answers to problems that have long been allowed to fester. If they do that, Mr Trump will not be just a populist firecracker. He will also be a catalyst for a new centrist European politics. ■