2 weeks Ago By Lara Marlowe
The rise of the “reactionary international” constitutes a realignment as fundamental to the future of the world as the cold war. This time, the fault lines do not follow national boundaries, but divide societies from within. French president Emmanuel Macron brought the term reactionary international into vogue in a speech in January, implicitly comparing the rise of the extreme right across much of the world to the influence of the Socialist International, an alliance of progressive parties that profoundly marked the last century.
The reactionary international opposes immigration and multiculturalism, globalisation, LGBTQ rights and renewable energy. Donald Trump is their hero. Like him, most prefer Vladimir Putin to Volodymyr Zelenskiy and support Israel’s war on Palestinians .
They have no regard for the rule of law or civil liberties. Critics and opponents are labelled terrorists. The reactionary international propagates lies through social media, tends towards misogyny and, in the case of the American far right, has a strange affinity for cryptocurrencies .
Though far-right parties have been on the rise for decades, Trump’s election has empowered them as nothing before. “There’s a great emboldening,” Rosa Balfour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace told the New York Times. “What Trump says reverberates strongly [in Europe].
But also, what the US does not do. It does not punish or condemn any attempt to undermine rule of law or democracy.” Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban has been called Trump’s surrogate in Europe.
Slovakian prime minister Robert Fico is, like Orban, allied with Trump and Putin. Far-right populists are front-runners in upcoming Romanian and Czech elections. Like-minded parties have nearly come to power in Austria, France, Germany and the Netherlands.
They ruled Poland for eight years and could return. [ The Irish Times view on Hungary: Orbán panders to the far right Opens in new window ] “We must stop believing that the triumph of extreme-right populists is a parenthesis in history,” says the leftist French MEP Raphaël Glucksmann. “It’s a groundswell, in Europe as well as in the US.
” Hungary recently banned the Budapest Pride parade. This was possible, Orban’s chief of staff said, because the “American boot” had been taken off the chest of the Hungarian government, enabling it to “breathe”. Orban last month announced a “spring cleaning” against political opponents, journalists, judges and NGOs, whom he described as “stink bugs”.
[ By flirting with the far right, Europe’s centre-right parties play a dangerous game Opens in new window ] President Recep Tayyip Erdogan , who has ruled Turkey for 22 years, recently precipitated huge demonstrations by imprisoning his chief political rival. Erdogan describes himself as “against LGBT” and banned Istanbul’s Pride march in 2015. Draft legislation in Turkey would impose jail sentences of three years for not behaving according to one’s biological sex in public and would make it a crime to officiate at same-sex marriages.
Trump describes Erdogan as “a good leader”. Donald Trump jnr has praised Serbia ’s autocratic, pro-Russian ruler Aleksandar Vucic “for embracing the Maga movement” and repeated Vucic’s claim that widespread demonstrations against government corruption were fomented by the left. The leader of Reform UK, Nigel Farage , has promised a “British equivalent of Doge”, the department of government efficiency headed by Elon Musk , and criticises government recruitment as “designed to put ethnic minorities to the top of the list against white people with more history in this country”.
This week, Daniel Kebede, the leader of the UK’s National Education Union, described Farage as “a pound-shop Donald Trump”. Far-right leaders from Europe and South America flocked to Washington for Trump’s January 20th inauguration. A fortnight later, the Patriots for Europe, who constitute the second largest group in the European Parliament , gathered in Madrid for a “Make Europe Great Again” fest.
“The Trump tornado has changed the world in two weeks,” Orban gloated. “Yesterday, we were the heretics; today we’re mainstream. People thought we represented the past; today, everyone sees that we are the future.
” European far-right politicians made another pilgrimage to Washington on February 19th for a three-day Conservative Political Action Conference. “Putting Donald Trump in the White House was the first step in putting Europe back on track,” Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni gushed. The Argentinian president Javier Milei gave Musk a symbolic chainsaw, so that Musk could mutilate government services as he has.
The reactionary international demonstrated solidarity by condemning the French far-right leader Marine Le Pen’s conviction on March 31st for diverting more than €4 million in EU funds. “Je suis Marine,” Orbán posted on X. Trump dismissed the conviction as a “witch hunt” based on “a bookkeeping error” and concluded his post: “FREE MARINE LE PEN!” Unlike his predecessors, Trump holds impromptu press conferences in the Oval Office, which allows him to exclude media he doesn’t like.
Two such recent charades drove home Trump’s renunciation of the US’s role as leader of the free world. The February 28th ambush of Zelenskiy showed how closely Trump has allied himself with Putin. On Monday, Trump’s warm reception of Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele, the self-described “world’s coolest dictator”, signalled the end of habeas corpus – the notion that the government cannot seize one’s body without legal justification – in the United States.
Trump has paid Bukele $6 million (€5.3 million) to imprison 260 Latin American men whom the Trump administration accused of belonging to Venezuelan gangs. The two presidents engaged in a grotesque charade in which both declined to liberate Kilmar Abrego Garcia , a law-abiding permanent US resident, whom the White House admitted was deported by mistake.
“We want to do homegrown criminals next ...
The homegrowns,” Trump said. “You gotta build about five more places.” “Yeah, we’ve got space,” Bukele replied.
[ The global fight for science in the face of Trump’s attacks Opens in new window ] The US vice-president, secretary of state and attorney general were all present, yet there was not the slightest recognition that mass deportations – apparently to include US citizens in the future – without charge, trial or due process, are illegal and immoral. On the contrary. The room erupted in laughter.
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