The latest American actions, the capture of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela and the various threats—ranging from “purchasing” to invading—Greenland, haven’t gone down particularly well among European Trumpians. Nigel Farage, the British nationalist leader, gleeful and garrulous because his Reform UK could be crowned the first party in the Kingdom at the May local elections, said that the American operation in Caracas “is unorthodox and contrary to international law” and that it’s up to the Greenlanders to decide their own future: a potential American invasion “would be the end of NATO.” Then Farage softens his tone, says he hasn’t spoken with Donald Trump about these things, that it’s not true that the American president wants to destroy the Atlantic Alliance, that friends can have divergent ideas, and so on with winks and nods, but it’s legitimate that these violations of sovereignty frighten sovereignists.
Even France’s Rassemblement National, Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland, Spain’s Vox, and even Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who always agrees with Trump (and with Vladimir Putin too), have issued cautious statements: beyond the sovereignty issue, there’s the problem that the imperialism of great powers becomes dangerous for those parties that preach the dismantling of the European supranational project, because once implemented, they are indeed free from the phantom European trappings, but find themselves smaller, more alone, more vulnerable. Quite a pickle, in short, and yet according to the new American doctrine, centered on controlling the so-called “Western Hemisphere”—the Americas—it’s precisely these European parties that are the lever for breaking up Europe as it’s currently constituted and remaking it in the image and likeness of Trumpism: what do you do when you thought you were safe from the consequences of the transatlantic divorce and instead find yourself constantly stumbling into it?
First, a certain awareness is needed that there are obvious convergences between European sovereignist parties and Trumpians, but not complete overlap: “I remember when Elon Musk appeared on the screen at the stage of Tommy Robinson’s large ultra-nationalist rally in London,” says Giuliano da Empoli, who in 2019 published a book on the engineers of chaos, in 2025 published one on digital and political predators, and in between wrote his first novel, “The Kremlin Magician,” an editorial success that became a film, co-written with Emmanuel Carrère and directed by Olivier Assayas, which will be released in Italy on February 12. “As long as Musk was talking about making a revolution, closing Parliament, preparing for violence to respond with more violence, there were applause, chants, a celebration. Then when Musk started talking about how he imagines the future, a beautiful future, like Star Trek, with robots and everything, the euphoria of Robinson’s crowd immediately waned. As long as they’re destroying the old elites, the counterpowers, the laws, the media together—that is, what restrains the dismantling of liberal democracy—everything’s fine, but for the future, no, there’s no common vision.”
In “Engineers of Chaos,” Da Empoli chronicled the architects of Brexit, of the new Trumpian right, of Eastern European nationalism: strategists and Big Data experts circulated extreme messages exploiting digital platforms, they were “a byproduct of the social media business model,” he says; today, as he recounts in “The Hour of the Predators,” “those I call digital predators and political predators, the owners of large digital companies, explicitly support nationalist movements because they’ve realized they can exploit them to dismantle liberal democracies: there’s no convergence on what comes after, on the future, but in the meantime they destroy together, and more effectively.” What was once implicit has now become explicit, and according to Da Empoli, the transatlantic divorce has followed the same trajectory: “The United States imposed military and technological dependence on us for a long time: they respected the forms of dialogue and friendly diplomacy, but the dependence was there. Now Trump has made explicit, and extremized as is his nature, this imbalance, effectively extending his cultural battles against the establishment to Europe as well: we Europeans are comparable to American Democrats or old-school Republicans, and therefore fall among the targets to be hit with the fury that Trump uses in America.” Besides making the divorce explicit, the American president has also modified the rules of the game, or rather “has expanded the sphere of the possible,” says Da Empoli: everything that seemed unchangeable, too complicated, immobile, like immigration, crime, deindustrialization, has become transformable, almost “a miracle,” “because according to theology, a miracle occurs when God surpasses human laws to produce a concrete effect on reality, and Trump, like illiberal leaders, goes beyond laws, rules, counterpowers and produces effects, alas, very concrete ones.” The capture of Maduro in Caracas “is a condensation of everything that makes Trump strong: extreme speed and contempt for rules, supported by the geometric firepower of the American system, which allow the accomplishment of a kind of miracle: the removal of a bloodthirsty dictator.”
Europeans who approve of the intervention in Venezuela, however, are “like turkeys celebrating Christmas” because “we’re next on the list, given that Trump’s neocolonial project also concerns Europe.” And that’s why the possibility of salvation for Europeans lies precisely in trying, they too, to expand the sphere of the possible, but without Trumpian fury, without contempt for laws and rules, but also not by continuing to move and think as if the perimeter of relations with America hadn’t been overturned. “Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, has powers in matters of trade and digital policy, for example, that she could exercise much more convincingly and effectively than she does: she would expand the sphere of the possible while staying within the rules. It’s basically what Mario Draghi keeps saying too, who, as is quite evident, has become much more explicit in his statements than he’s ever been.” Of course, it takes courage, given that Trump and Trumpians are ruthless, and of course it requires the consent of European country leaders, who instead often obstruct out of fear of retaliation, but “continuing to whistle as if nothing had changed” is the recipe for defeat. Europe needs a bit of desire for miracles too, which amid this chaos seems truly difficult to find, but these last ten years—in 2016 there were Brexit and the first Trump—show that it’s possible: “2016, an apocalyptic year, in the sense of apocalypse that reveals things, wasn’t the end of the world; Europe not only resisted but public sentiment of European adherence is stronger today than it was ten years ago.” Da Empoli doesn’t tend at all toward optimism, but there’s European political capital that isn’t being used “because we refuse to do politics and continue to stay within the confines of the previous world”: the tools exist, the energy is there, the sphere of the possible can be expanded.
Giuliano da Empoli is a writer. His most recent books include “Gli ingegneri del caos” (Marsilio, 2019), “The Wizard of the Kremlin” (Pushkin press, 2022), and “” (Pushkin press, 2025). In February, the movie “The Wizard of the Kremlin”, co-written by Emmanuel Carrère and directed by Olivier Assayas, will be released.
