Despite the difficulties of the moment – perhaps due to the strangeness and menace of the daily spectacle from the White House – something profoundly significant is stirring in Europe.
A radical transformation is underway in Washington. Though erratic, Trumpist politics follows a clear method: a wire never breaks with a clean snap – it breaks by bending and twisting it in every direction.
For this reason, it makes little sense to follow the often contradictory maneuvers of the American administration day by day, move by move.
To understand a revolution, it may be more useful to study what twenty- and thirty-somethings who seek to impose it are reading.
Curtis Yarvin is one of the intellectuals of the new Trumpist elite.
With his blog, he has formed and politicized a group of angry and ambitious young people – the “young wolves” now bending Washington and seeking to break American institutions. When we interviewed him in our Latin Quarter newsroom, he himself seemed surprised by the strength of the early steps of the American president’s second term. He explained that he was convinced of one thing: Trump’s actions unleashed “monarchical energy.” During the first term, few, if any, knew or tried to harness it, but now, thanks to the meticulous use by a small elite, a decaying and inept democracy could finally become a strictly autocratic system, directed by a handful of tech lords.
Domestically, the dismantling of the American Republic implied the progressive suspension of the force of law and justice, the breakdown of the balance of powers, and the concentration of executive power in the hands of a single man, his family, and his courtiers.
Externally, this form of government was anything but isolationist. The administration and the tech lords were aiming to impose a zone of influence in which sovereignty and autonomy belonged exclusively to the metropolis, while all other political entities would be reduced to more or less brutal forms of vassalage. The annexation of Greenland and the imposition of an imperial tribute disguised as a major commercial operation were part of the same attempt: to transform the West into a kind of Warsaw Pact, into a vast algorithmic space.
The idea of a new Yalta, in which new emperors would divide the world into a series of spheres of influence, seemed to rest on a coherent and powerful imaginary.
This imperial filter – which often distorted the way the media viewed geopolitics – started from an assumption: history was a grand game of Risk. The world’s great powers moved pieces in a brutal space with few rules.
The most evident impasse of this imperial filter, however, was that societies disappeared in this framework.
We all became useless variables, passive figurines in the hands of inexorable powers.
If there was one thing Ukraine had shown us for over three years – and that the White House could not bear – it was that societies could resist the claims of the first emperor in line.
The most surprising thing was precisely this.
A large majority of Europeans seemed to be ready to resist the imperial grip.
The latest Eurobarometer, published a few days ago, revealed the highest level of trust in the European Union recorded in the last eighteen years and a historic peak of support for the euro.
The data were interesting and deserved careful analysis. Nearly seven out of ten respondents agreed that the European Union represented a space of stability in a world in crisis. More than eight out of ten supported a common defense and security policy among member states – the highest value since 2004.
The highest percentage recorded in the last twenty years (75 percent) stated they felt like citizens of the European Union. More than six out of ten citizens declared themselves optimistic about the Union’s future. We were witnessing a historic moment.
The contest between lords, empires, and republics was once again underway – Canada, Germany, and Romania told us that nothing was yet written.
The problem was that, in the face of this new European ferment, a significant part of our institutions viewed this change with fear, subjugation, without critical spirit, and without the slightest form of creativity.
The idea that the Trumpist crisis might be a passing fever, a parenthesis, or a bad dream continued to tempt governments and elites who looked anxiously at polls and perhaps no longer knew how to navigate the choppy seas of politics.
As I wrote these words, Viktor Orbán was speaking at CPAC in Budapest. He said: “This is not the Europe we were promised. Brussels is stealing our future. It is time to occupy Brussels”.
The Hungarian prime minister was a fragile leader: his trust rating had never been so low, and he had never been at such risk of losing control of the country.
His fiery speeches projected an illusory image of strength – but they posed an urgent question.
Who among today’s European leaders dares to speak about Europe like this?
Who was trying to speak to Europeans who wanted to engage in a new phase, warmer and certainly more difficult, but commensurate with the moment of extreme danger we were experiencing?
Who had been able to respond to the humiliations of Trump and J.D. Vance?
Millions of citizens were waiting.
That winter, with the magazine, we proposed to a little over two hundred friends and contributors to gather in the Aosta Valley Alps. Since our retreat took place a few meters from the summit of Mont Blanc, we called this annual event the Grand Continent Summit.
Among them was Adam Curtis, the great BBC director, behind one of the most influential and important works of political analysis, its concepts, and its imaginaries.
He told us: “I am not an expert on the European Union, but I am a journalist who talks to many people, even very ordinary ones. Most people still perceived the EU as completely disconnected from reality. And this didn’t happen only in the United Kingdom or among Brexit supporters: it was a broader sentiment. People felt that the EU spoke a language that no longer reflected their experience. Moreover, the Union seemed incapable of imagining something new or radical, as if it had lost the ability to think differently or take risks”.
What to do? “My advice was simple: the European Union should adopt an anti-establishment attitude. No one else was really doing it. The only one, surprisingly, was Trump. Many around him drew on the language of the anti-establishment movements of the 1960s, and people seemed to understand. They were, so to speak, ‘challenging the system’. I often wondered if the EU could save itself by transforming into a radical force capable of questioning the entrenched powers in the very states it intended to unite.
The idea would be to call for more Europe, but not simply more of the same Europe. Not a further strengthened version of what already existed, but a Europe that embraced its propensity for rupture, its creative incompleteness”.
A strategy change was needed: “At that moment, it seemed that everyone was focused solely on holding Europe together, curled up in a fetal position, as if waiting for a storm or an explosion. Perhaps, however, the path to take was to stop closing ranks and start imagining what the continent’s future could be. To connect with what people thought and felt at that time, Europe should become a rebellious Europe”.
In 1977, George Lucas invented a story so powerful it became a myth.
The Republic had been swept away by an organized, impressive, invincible empire.
In a faraway, dusty, and somewhat desperate province, a new force would spark an ever-growing and more powerful rebellion.
The title of that first film was simply Star Wars.
Only later, following its popular success, would funding become available to produce a full trilogy. The film would then be renamed: Star Wars: Episode IV.
Lucas would then add a subtitle: A New Hope.
