More stories

  • in

    The ‘Iron Mountain’ hoax: how anti-Vietnam war satire sparked today’s conspiracy theories

    We live in a ­blizzard of fake news, ­disinformation and ­conspiracy theories. It’s tempting to blame this on social media – which does indeed ­exacerbate the problem. And AI deepfakes promise to make the situation even worse. But at root this is not about technology: it’s about how humans think, as an astonishing case that long predates the internet reveals. This is an amazing story – about the perils of amazing stories.In November 1967, at the height of the war in Vietnam, a strange ­document was published in New York. Report from Iron Mountain was the work of a top-secret “­special study group” recruited by the Kennedy administration to scope out what would happen to the US if permanent global peace broke out. It warned the end of war, and of the fear of war, would wreck America’s economy, even its whole society. To replace the effects, extreme measures would be required – eugenics, fake alien scares, pollution, blood games. Even slavery. The report was so incendiary it had been suppressed, but one of the study group leaked it, determined that the public learn the truth. It caused a furore. The worried memos, demanding someone check if this document was real, went all the way up to President Johnson.View image in fullscreenIn reality, as the White House eventually realised, Report from Iron Mountain was a hoax. It was the brainchild of leftwing satirists: Victor Navasky, editor of a magazine called Monocle, his colleagues, and a fellow satirist, Leonard Lewin, who wrote it with the help of luminaries like the famous economist and former US ambassador to India, JK Galbraith. Their goal was to expose what they saw as the insanity driving the intervention in Vietnam, and the whole of the cold war. By presenting their fake report as a real leak, they aimed to make people ask if this insane document might be real – and what that said about the people running the US government.And it worked. To young Americans living under the shadow of conscription, Report seemed all too plausible. Officials whispered to journalists that some of their ­colleagues really did think like this. Once the hoax had its satirical impact, Lewin came clean. But his work was so convincing it began to take on a life of its own.In the late 1980s, Report from Iron Mountain was discovered by the extreme right, which was convinced it was real. It was republished by a company called the Noontide Press, part of a network of fringe organisations that were among America’s primary promoters of Holocaust denial. These ­people were convinced they had found the smoking gun, confirming their darkest suspicions about the government’s secret plots to start wars and control the ­public. A ­horrified Lewin embarked on a long legal battle to take back control of his work and its true, meaning.But meanwhile, the militia movement spreading across the US seized on Report from Iron Mountain, as fuel for its paranoid visions of imminent oppression at the hands of the ­one-world government and its black helicopters. And Lewin’s creation found its way to Hollywood. In JFK, Oliver Stone’s 1991 movie about the Kennedy assassination, the great revelation about why the president was assassinated hinges on a character repeating the hoax’s claims in the belief that they were disturbing truths.View image in fullscreenReport even spawned a secondary hoax: Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars. This ­purported to be the operations ­manual that helped the elite control its ­sheeple-civilians. This strange text was first popularised by the pioneering conspiracist Milton William Cooper, who ­published it in Behold a Pale Horse, his influential compendium of ­conspiracy theories. Cooper also included extracts from Report from Iron Mountain itself (and, horrifyingly, another hoax: that notorious antisemitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion). Silent Weapons has often been cited by arch ­conspiracist Alex Jones and has been invoked by “Q”, the ostensible government insider revered by the QAnon movement.Lewin and his colleagues had contrived their hoax so expertly that they inadvertently created “evidence” for a host of conspiracy theories. It could be used to explain everything from why wars end to the real reasons behind lockdown, from environmental regulations and terrorist attacks to the fiery end of a cult in Waco, Texas.The reasoning at work here is revealing. If something in Report chimes with what is really happening in the world, the conspiracist’s logic runs, that cannot be a coincidence. Rather, it exposes the secret motives that caused that reality. The ­principle here – a ­consistent fallacy of ­conspiracy theory – is that “nothing is accidental”. One online ­analysis of Report from Iron Mountain in 2014 even decided the fact Lewin later wrote a novel was an attempt to ­retrospectively create a cover ­identity so he could pretend Report was fiction too.And yet the fate of this all-too-successful hoax also suggests what we might need to do to ­counter this kind of thinking. In a political ­climate roiled by conspiracy ­theories and disinformation, the tale of Report from Iron Mountain is a warning about the ­consequences of taking your eye off the line between compelling stories and what we know to be true.Phil Tinline is the author of Ghosts of Iron Mountain: The Hoax That Duped America and Its Sinister Legacy, which will be published by Head of Zeus on 27 March. More

  • in

    Enrique Tarrio follows and insults officers who defended US Capitol on January 6

    Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the far-right Proud Boys group who was convicted and then pardoned for his role in the January 6 insurrection, confronted a group of police officers who defended the Capitol during the attack, accusing one of them of being a “coward”.A video shared by Tarrio on social media on Saturday showed him following the officers, Michael Fanone, Harry Dunn and Aquilino Gonell, through the lobby of a Washington hotel that was hosting the Principles First summit, a conference where one of the officers received a “profile in courage” award.In the video, an unidentified woman with the officers tells Tarrio: “You guys are traitors, just back off.”“You were brave on Twitter,” Tarrio said to one of the officers as he continued to follow them. “You guys were brave at my sentencing when you sat there and laughed when I got 22 fucking years. Now you don’t want to look in my eyes, you fucking cowards.”Fanone, a former Capitol police officer, then turns and tells him: “You’re a traitor to this country.”In 2023, Tarrio received a sentence of 22 years in prison for seditious conspiracy and other charges related to the January 6 attack. Donald Trump pardoned Tarrio and roughly 1,500 other insurrection participants when he took office last month, an act that prompted outcry from many lawmakers, including some Republicans.Gonell, a former Capitol police sergeant who defended the Capitol on January 6, acknowledged the confrontation with Tarrio as he accepted his “profile in courage” award from Principles First. A spokesperson for Principles First, which is considered a center-right alternative to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for comment on the confrontation with Tarrio.“A few moments ago, we were upstairs, and Enrique Tarrio and the Proud Boys were upstairs,” Gonell told conference attendees, prompting surprised gasps from the crowd. “How they got into the building, I don’t know, but it’s insane that we had to be subjected to their harassment now because they feel emboldened and empowered because of the pardons that they received.“We shouldn’t be harassed for doing the right thing, for telling our story, for telling the truth, for speaking against them in court and in public. They’re the traitor. They’re the one who attacked the Capitol.”The confrontation at the conference came one day after Tarrio was arrested near the Capitol for simple assault after he allegedly struck the cellphone and arm of a woman who was protesting an event he was attending with other January 6 insurrectionists.At a panel discussion held at the summit a couple of hours before the confrontation with Tarrio, four police officers who protected the Capitol on January 6 – Daniel Hodges of the Metropolitan police department and former Capitol police officers Gonell, Fanone and Dunn – expressed outrage over the pardons offered to the insurrectionists.“He pardoned them because he wants people to know that, if you commit crimes on his behalf, he’s got your back,” Fanone said.Fanone described far-right groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, who played an instrumental role in executing the January 6 attack, as “Donald Trump’s personal brownshirt militia”, referring to the German Nazi party’s paramilitary storm troopers of the 1920s and 1930s.“They are operating under the assumption that, if they commit violent criminal acts on Donald Trump’s behalf, that he will pardon them for future violence,” Fanone said. “These are insurrectionists, let’s be very clear.”A member of the audience appeared to agree with Fanone’s assessment, yelling in response to his comment: “Traitors!”Fanone replied: “Yes, fucking traitors.”He later urged conference attendees to forcefully push back against Trump’s “Make America Great Again” political movement, telling them: “That is what we are up against: the indecency, the cruelty, the inhumanity of this movement that needs to be purged – purged – from America.”Dunn, who moderated the discussion, applauded his fellow officers for keeping a spotlight on the January 6 attack, reminding the audience: “History is going to remember us for what we did or did not do.” More

  • in

    UK populists mix faith and politics with parroting of ‘Judeo-Christian values’

    The splendours of the Parthenon, Colosseum and Great Pyramid of Giza were in stark contrast to the utilitarian conference centre in London’s Docklands, but they were there to make a point.As 4,000 people from dozens of countries filed in for a three-day jamboree of rightwing discourse this week, the images were a reminder that great civilisations of the past had risen, declined and fallen. A commentary warned that western civilisation was at a tipping point, in crisis because it had lost touch with its “Judeo-Christian foundations”.The message greeted those attending a sold-out conference for politicians, policymakers, businesspeople and “culture formers” organised by the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (Arc) at the ExCeL centre in east London, where non-discounted tickets cost £1,500.The Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, and the Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, addressed the gathering in person. Mike Johnson, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, and the billionaire entrepreneur Peter Thiel joined via video link from the US.It was not explicitly a faith-based event, but a distinctly religious flavour ran through the proceedings. The Arc’s co-founders and principal faces are Philippa Stroud, a Tory peer and devout Christian, and Jordan Peterson, a Canadian psychologist whose lectures draw heavily on the Bible.Among the group’s known funders is the GB News investor Paul Marshall, a hedge fund boss and media tycoon whose worldview is shaped by his evangelical Christian faith. According to one well-connected former Conservative MP, Marshall’s influence on UK rightwing discourse is growing, not just through GB News but also his ownership of the Spectator magazine and the Unherd website.Marshall is not a member of any political party and said in a pre-conference interview last week that faith and politics were a “dangerous combination”. But some rightwingers – energised by Donald Trump’s victory and beguiled by the rhetoric of his Catholic vice-president, JD Vance – see populist potential in advocating for “Judeo-Christian values”.View image in fullscreenThe meaning of this phrase, much repeated at the Arc conference, is the “moral foundation of western civilisation” based on the shared values of Christianity and Judaism, according to Dennis Prager, an American conservative talkshow host. He added: “The ultimate embodiment of Judeo-Christian values has been the United States of America.”The term, drawing on both faiths’ biblical roots, was first used in the early 19th century to refer to Jewish converts from Christianity. Much later, it was adopted by conservative Christians in the US. The former Trump adviser Steve Bannon has fought court battles in an attempt to set up an academy for the Judeo-Christian west – a “gladiator school for culture warriors” – in an Italian monastery.Some believe the phrase has become code for Islamophobia. During Trump’s first term as US president, Meredith Warren of the University of Sheffield said it was a dog-whistle myth peddled by the far right “to draw a line between imagined Christian values and a perceived (but false) threat of Muslim immigration”.Farage, whose populist brand of politics has rarely made reference to the Christian faith, told this week’s conference that Britons should have more children to restore traditional Judeo-Christian culture. “We’ve kind of forgotten that what underpins everything is our Judeo-Christian culture and that’s where we need to start. And if we recognise that, and if we value that, then I think everything comes from that,” he said.Badenoch did not use the phrase in her speech to the conference but has often described herself as a “cultural Christian”. She understands the “importance of Christian values as the foundation of family and community life”, David Burrowes, a former Tory MP and co-founder of the Conservative Christian Fellowship, said last year.View image in fullscreenThe influence of evangelical Christianity in the Conservative party remains relatively marginal, but it has grown in recent years via two prominent voices: Danny Kruger, an MP since 2019 who has become a leading opponent to legalising assisted dying; and Miriam Cates, who was elected to parliament in 2019 but lost her seat last year, who is a vocal proponent of traditional family values. Kruger and Cates are on the Arc’s advisory board.Georgina Waylen, a professor of politics at the University of Manchester who has been researching the influence of evangelical Christianity on British politics, said it had “grown in recent years, and most notably in the Conservative party, following the election of a small number of rightwing socially conservative evangelical MPs who were well organised, knew what they wanted to achieve and oppose, and have been aided by the increasing influence of evangelical Christians in the rightwing ecosphere.”She added: “The evangelicals work effectively with others, including some rightwing populists, and have taken advantage of the chaos in the Conservative party. They have been active around gender identity issues and oppose assisted dying.”Evangelical conservative Christian groups have been active in lobbying MPs on issues such as abortion and assisted dying, although their involvement has not always been explicit. In November, an Observer investigation found that Christian pressure groups were secretly coordinating and funding anti-assisted dying campaigns ostensibly led by grassroots healthcare workers and disabled people.Organisations on the US Christian right have been accused of “infiltrating” the UK, lobbying MPs to restrict women’s reproductive rights. Last year, the UK branch of the US-based Alliance Defending Freedom provided “briefing material and legal analysis” to MPs before a vote on introducing buffer zones to prevent anti-abortion activity outside abortion clinics.One reason for the sometimes covert involvement of such groups is the resistance of many people in a largely secular society to religious individuals or organisations seeking to impose their worldview on others. Evangelical Christians have fared poorly in UK politics whenever their views have come into conflict with principles fundamental to British liberal democracy.“Religion is much less of a factor in politics here than in the US,” said Nick Spencer of Theos, a Christian thinktank. “But the Christian right is gaining momentum. I don’t think the Arc conference would have got off the ground 10 years ago.”Those speaking at the conference appeared to be a mixture of conservative Christians, social conservatives, libertarians and “Maga-types”, he said. “It is clear what they’re against – internationalism, net zero, the denigration of national history – but these aren’t necessarily theological positions.”Rob Ford, a professor of politics at the University of Manchester, said there was “no comparison whatsoever between the US and UK. Britain is one of the most secular societies in the world. Very few people go to church. The largest group are the people who say they have no religion at all. The kind of highly polarised debate that the Americans have had over abortion is inconceivable in the same way.”But he added: “At the level of political elites, that’s where you get the most interesting similarity that is also a difference. In the US, evangelical Christians are a huge part of politics because they are a huge part of US life. Here you have quite a remarkably high density of evangelical Christians in elite politics.”Some evangelical Christian organisations have sought to nurture potential high-flyers in order to ensure a Christian presence in the upper reaches of public life. Half a century ago, the Iwerne Trust’s Christian holiday camps, mainly for boys attending elite public schools, had precisely this goal. Holy Trinity Brompton, London’s foremost evangelical church, has counted many high-flyers among its congregation – including Marshall.Not all evangelical Christians share the same political views. Tim Farron, the former Liberal Democrat leader who resigned in 2017 saying the role was incompatible with his Christian faith, said the use of the term “Christian values” was sometimes “a proxy for things that aren’t very Christian at all”.He said: “People who talk about the loss of Christian values often have actually lost touch with Christian values themselves. It’s really dangerous when political parties seek to appropriate Christianity for their own ends.” More

  • in

    French far-right leader cancels CPAC speech over Steve Bannon’s ‘Nazi’ salute

    The French far-right leader Jordan Bardella on Friday morning cancelled a scheduled speech at the US Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, after Donald Trump’s former aide Steve Bannon flashed a fascist-style salute there hours before.Bannon, who helped Trump win office in 2016 and is now a popular rightwing podcast show host, finished his CPAC speech on Thursday with an outstretched arm, fingers pointed and palm down – a sign that echoed the Nazi salute and a controversial gesture made by the tech billionaire Elon Musk at the US president’s second inauguration in January.Bardella, of the far-right National Rally party in France, pulled out of CPAC citing Bannon’s allusion to “Nazi ideology”.The salute during Bannon’s speech brought cheers from the audience at the US gathering.Bardella, who was in Washington ahead of his appearance and had said he intended to talk about relations between the US and France, issued a statement saying: “Yesterday, while I was not present in the room, one of the speakers, out of provocation, allowed himself a gesture alluding to Nazi ideology. I therefore took the immediate decision to cancel my speech that had been scheduled this afternoon.”The National Rally party was bested in France’s snap election last summer by a leftwing alliance.Bannon on Thursday night fired up the CPAC crowd, where he spoke directly after Musk, the man who has eclipsed him in Trump’s circle and with whom Bannon is not on good terms.“The only way that they win is if we retreat, and we are not going to retreat, we’re not going to surrender, we are not going to quit – we’re going to fight, fight, fight,” Bannon said of opponents, echoing Trump’s exhortation to supporters following the assassination attempt on him.Bannon then flung out his right arm at an angle with his palm pointing down. The Nazi salute is perhaps more familiar, especially from historical footage of Adolf Hitler, with the arm pointing straight forward – but the fascist overtone of Bannon and Musk’s signals has been unmistakable.The Anti-Defamation League, which campaigns against antisemitism, defines the Nazi salute as “raising an outstretched right arm with the palm down”.“Steve Bannon’s long and disturbing history of stoking antisemitism and hate, threatening violence, and empowering extremists is well known and well documented by ADL and others,” the Anti-Defamation League wrote on X in response, adding: “We are not surprised, but are concerned about the normalization of this behavior.”Bannon, speaking to a French journalist from Le Point news magazine on Friday, said the gesture was not a Nazi salute but was “a wave like I did all the time”.“I do it at the end of all of my speeches to thank the crowd,” Bannon said.However, from video, when he shoots his arm in the brief, straight-arm gesture, then nods sharply with a smile, to audience cheers, and says “amen”, it looks distinctly different from the very end of his address, when Bannon walked about the stage saluting the audience, throwing first his right arm out, then his left arm out, in a looser gesture that looked much more like conventional post-speech acknowledgment of a crowd.Online, some far-right users suggested Bannon had made the gesture purposely to “trigger” liberals and the media. Others distanced themselves.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNick Fuentes, a far-right influencer and Trump ally who uses his platform to share his antisemitic views, said in a livestream that Bannon’s salute was “getting a little uncomfortable even for me”.Bannon’s gesture, like Musk’s, has been characterized by some as a “Roman salute” – though some historians argue that is a distinction without a difference. Some rightwing supporters have argued, without evidence, that the Roman salute originated in ancient Rome. Historians have found, instead, that it was adopted by the Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini in the 1920s, and then Hitler’s Nazi party in Germany.However the ADL concluded that in that group’s view Musk had “made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute”.The Bannon speech showcased CPAC’s evolution from a traditional conservative conference to an all-out Trump-centric rally. Bannon also spoke about the forthcoming election in 2028, prompting cheers of “We want Trump,” and saying himself: “We want Trump in 28.”The statement echoed those of Trump himself, who on Wednesday asked a crowd if he should run again, was met with calls of “four more years”, and called himself a “KING” in a post on social media. US presidents are limited to two terms.Meanwhile, Musk on Thursday brandished a chainsaw at CPAC, gloating over the slashing of federal jobs he is overseeing across multiple departments, in the face of legal challenges and protests. He called it “the chainsaw for bureaucracy”.It was handed to him on stage by Argentina’s rightwing president, Javier Milei. More

  • in

    The Guardian view on Germany’s election: a chance to reset for a new era | Editorial

    When Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, chose in November to force this weekend’s snap election, it felt like awkward timing. In the United States, Donald Trump had just won a decisive victory and was promising to move fast and break things. With a political storm brewing, was this the right time for the EU’s most important member state to embark on a period of prolonged introspection?Three tumultuous months later, with German democracy itself in the crosshairs of a hostile Trump administration, Sunday’s poll feels more like a valuable opportunity for an emergency reset. Any federal election carries huge significance beyond Germany’s borders. This poll is distinguished by being the first of a new era – one in which the transatlantic alliance that underpinned Europe’s postwar security can no longer be relied upon. Its outcome will be fundamental to shaping the EU’s response to that new reality, as existential decisions are made over defence spending and protecting Ukraine.With the centre-right coalition of the Christian Democratic Union and the Christian Social Union comfortably ahead in the polls, the strong likelihood is that Mr Scholz, a Social Democrat, will be replaced as chancellor by Friedrich Merz. Mr Merz has emphasised the need to stand up to bullying from Mr Trump over Ukraine and potential trade tariffs. Increasingly hawkish on Russia and the need to protect the EU’s eastern flank, he would be likely to take a more expansive approach on the European stage than Mr Scholz, whose inward focus exasperated the French president, Emmanuel Macron.Mr Scholz had his reasons for that. However alarming the international outlook, for many voters Germany’s urgent priorities remain narrowly domestic. A spate of fatal attacks involving migrant suspects has been ruthlessly exploited by the far‑right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, driving immigration to the top of the political agenda.All mainstream parties remain committed to the traditional firewall excluding the AfD from power (though Mr Merz relied on its votes to pass a recent opposition motion on stricter migration rules). But polls suggest it will achieve a comfortable second place on Sunday – a deeply disturbing position of strength for an ethno-nationalist party officially classified as suspected extremist. The party’s growing popularity among under-35 voters, and particularly among young men, is ominous.The rise of the far right has been accelerated by prolonged economic stagnation. Post-pandemic, Germany’s business model has been crushed by an end to the era of cheap Russian energy, higher interest rates and falling demand for its exports. Since Covid, almost a quarter of a million manufacturing jobs have been lost, in a country that prided itself on being Europe’s industrial powerhouse. A historic reluctance to borrow to invest – constitutionally enshrined in the 2008 debt brake – has become a liability, stymieing Mr Scholz’s attempts to respond.A suddenly isolated Europe needs a confident and prospering Germany at its heart. In a fragmented political landscape, it will almost certainly fall to another broad coalition government, led by Mr Merz, to try to deliver this. The AfD will, meanwhile, position itself as a Trumpian alternative-in-waiting, talked up by the likes of Elon Musk and the US vice‑president, JD Vance. Rarely has it been so important that the politics of moderation and consensus should succeed. In the post‑reunification era, the stakes both inside and outside Germany have never felt higher. More

  • in

    Hold your breath and look to Germany: its election could decide the fate of Europe – and the UK | Martin Kettle

    Even in less stressed times, Britain always pays too much attention to the US and too little to Germany. In today’s torrid circumstances, that imbalance is perhaps excusable. After all, Donald Trump, it now turns out, really means it. He is more interested in US plunder and profit from places like Gaza, Ukraine and Greenland than in upholding a just peace or good order.Even so, the inattention towards Germany needs to end. Britain’s politicians, like German politicians, are rewiring their worldviews amid a political gale. But Germany, though no longer a great power, is nevertheless a great nation. Indeed, it may be more than ever the essential European nation now, after the Trump administration’s very public trashing of the entire Atlantic alliance seemed to leave Europe to its own devices.The German general election, this coming Sunday, is an event with consequences. Primarily, of course, those consequences will be felt in Germany itself, with its extended economic stagnation, its anxieties about migration and borders, its traditional fears about borrowing, its nervousness about military commitments, and its sudden lurching anxiety that the US is ready to allow Russia to threaten the lands on its eastern frontier.Germany’s inherent importance, though, means the election will also help determine whether Europe – not just the EU – is able to cope with Trump’s second term. Will that Europe be able to deliver the defence and security to protect not merely Ukraine, a daunting enough task, but the Baltic republics, Poland and the other former Soviet satellite states too? Can it reform its faltering economic model? These are reverberations that Britain cannot avoid, even if it wants to.Needless to say, the German election has received only a fraction of the attention that this country’s political class lavishes on a US election. Equally predictably, much of that very limited amount of attention is absorbed by a fixation – one that is shared to a degree by the German media – with the populist anti-immigrant Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party. As a result, however, the likely victor on Sunday, the centre-right CDU-CSU coalition under the probable next chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has barely been scrutinised at all.This contest is occurring against a backdrop of economic failure, not success. The German economy shrank in 2023 and again in 2024. It seems likely to stay in recession again this year. It adds up to the longest period of economic stagnation since the fall of Hitler in 1945. Whoever emerges as chancellor after Sunday will face choices very similar to those confronting Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves.The reasons for Germany’s decline are not hard to understand. Germany’s dependence on Russian energy meant prices soared after the invasion of Ukraine. Olaf Scholz’s three-party coalition government, in power since 2021, has scaled back that dependence – renewables now produce 60% of German energy – but not eliminated it. German car exports have become more expensive, while China has surged ahead in the production of cheaper electric vehicles. A tariff war with the US now looms.All this has provided a system shock to a country still strongly conditioned by its craving for postwar stability. “We have used up our old success, and not invested in new things,” the commentator Theo Koll told the UK in a Changing Europe podcast this week. “We have for a long time lived in a kind of ‘Gore-Tex republic’ … we wanted it nice and cosy inside and all the unpleasant things had to be outside.”The rise of the AfD, amid the perception that irregular migration is out of control, is the single most visible sign that the old political era has ended. It has been quickened by violent killings where migrants are suspects during the election campaign in Magdeburg, Aschaffenburg and, last week, Munich. The latest Politico poll of polls puts the AfD on 21%, double what it secured in the previous federal election in 2021, running second to the CDU-CSU on 29%, but ahead of Scholz’s SPD on 16% and the Greens on 13%.By that token, though, a victory for Merz’s CDU-CSU on 23 February would be genuinely significant. It would be significant even though 29% would be a decline from the 42% that the parties took under Angela Merkel in 2013. It would show, in Europe’s heartland, that the line can be held against populism of the right. This is not a trivial lesson, especially after the debacle of the French assembly election last year.It would also be a vote of confidence, albeit a relatively weak one, for one of Europe’s few remaining big parties of the centre right. Once-powerful parties like the French Gaullists can only look on with frustration and envy – to say nothing of Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives. Not least, it would also be a rebuke to those like Elon Musk and JD Vance who have actively promoted the AfD from abroad.Yet it would also pose two big questions. The first, and more immediate, would be the coalition that Merz would construct and the content of its programme. Everything here depends on which parties qualify for the Bundestag and on how many seats each wins. Merz has repeatedly ruled out governing with the AfD, so his main coalition partner could be Scholz’s diminished SPD or, less likely in view of Merz’s commitment to growth, the Greens.If the polls are right, however, whatever Merz comes up with is likely to be a weak coalition. This would give him relatively little leeway to drive reforms of the kind he advocates – familiar themes to UK readers, like benefit cuts, ending business red tape and raising defence spending. He is, though, open to loosening the constitutionally enshrined “debt brake”, which is blocking much-needed public investment. It is likely to take until Easter before we know the full coalition picture.The other, intimately related, question would be about Germany’s borders. Merz triggered huge protests when the AfD backed his bill allowing Germany to turn asylum seekers and other migrants back at the border. This prompted a rare rebuke from Merkel, that Merz had abandoned a historically resonant firewall against far-right support. Yet border controls matter for any state that seeks to ensure the security, including the social welfare, of its citizens, and Germany is not the only country where voters are demanding greater effectiveness.Sunday’s election is a critical European moment, and would be even if Trump did not exist. The key question is not, at least at this stage, about the rise of the extreme right. It is about the continuing viability of the centre right, or the adaptability of what Merkel, from early in her career as party leader, dubbed “the new social capitalism”. The current recession has put this vision to an unforgiving test. Merz will be judged by the outcome, if he wins power. It is a moment that matters for Germany – but also for us.

    Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist More

  • in

    Trump and Vance are courting Europe’s far right to spread their political gospel

    The Trump administration is making a big bet on Europe’s hard right.Speaking at a conference of Europe’s leaders in Munich on Friday, the US vice-president JD Vance stunned the room by delivering what amounted to a campaign speech against Germany’s sitting government just one week before an election in which the anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim AfD is set to take second place.As Vance accused foreign leaders of suppressing free speech, failing to halt illegal migration and running in fear from voters’ true beliefs, a whisper of “Jesus Christ” and the squirming in chairs could be heard in an overflow room.Hours later he met with Alice Weidel, the leader of the AfD, breaking a taboo in German politics called the “firewall against the far-right”, meant to kept the anti-immigrant party with ties to extremists out of the mainstream and of any ruling coalition.“It’s an incredibly controversial thing for him to do,” said Kristine Berzina, the managing director of the German Marshall Fund’s Geostrategy North, who was at the Munich Security Conference.The backing of Vance – or Elon Musk, who recently gave a video address at an AfD party summit – is unlikely to tilt the result of Germany’s elections, said Berzina. And it’s unlikely to browbeat the ruling Christian Democratic Union, which should win next week’s vote, into allowing AfD to enter any coalition.But the US right under Trump does have its eyes set on a broader transformation in Europe: the rise of populist parties that share an anti-immigration and isolationist worldview and will join the US in its assault on globalism and liberal values. They see those leaders in Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Giorgia Meloni in Italy, as well as the UK’s Reform party and Marine Le Pen in France.“It is personal and it is political in terms of far-right political alignment,” she said. “It also opens the door to what other unprecedented things are we going to see in terms of the US hand in European politics.”Could the US president even threaten serious policy shifts like tariffs based on an unsatisfactory German coalition? “That would be normally unthinkable,” she said in response to that question. “But in 2025, very little is unthinkable.”Trump has claimed a broad mandate despite winning the popular vote by a smaller margin than any US leader since the early 2000s. And he seeks to remake politics at home and redefine the US relationship with its allies abroad, many of whom attacked him personally in the wake of the January 6 insurrection and his second presidential campaign.Vance also wanted to antagonise Europe’s leaders on Friday. He refused to meet with Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor who should be among the US’ key partners in negotiations with Russia over the future of the war in Ukraine. “We don’t need to see him, he won’t be chancellor long,” one former US official told Politico of the Vance team’s approach.That speaks to a trend in the Trump administration’s thinking: that voters abroad will handle what his negotiations and alliances cannot. As Vance stunned the European elite on Friday, he told them that “if you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you”.“You need democratic mandates to accomplish anything of value in the coming years,” he said.This is something that Vladimir Putin, who waited years for the return of a Trump administration, knows well regarding his war in Ukraine: sometimes you have to bide your time until conditions are right.And it’s something that Trump intimated about Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy as he riffed on his plan to end the war through negotiations that would cede Ukrainian territory and give up Kyiv’s designs on Nato membership.“He’s going to have to do what he has to do,” Trump said of Zelenskyy agreeing to a deal. “But, you know, his poll numbers aren’t particularly great.” More

  • in

    JD Vance breaks taboo by meeting with leader of Germany’s far-right party

    JD Vance has met with the leader of Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland party, breaking a taboo in German politics as the Trump administration continues to court and promote far-right populist parties across Europe.At the meeting in Munich on Friday, the US vice-president and AfD leader Alice Weidel reportedly discussed the war in Ukraine, German domestic politics and the so-called brandmauer, or “firewall against the right”, that prevents ultra-nationalist parties like AfD from joining ruling coalitions in Germany.Vance met with Weidel just weeks before a German election in which the anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim party appears poised to take second place on a wave of growing anti-establishment sentiment.The meeting was the latest in a string of contacts between the party and figures close to Donald Trump. Elon Musk, the billionaire now leading a purge of the US federal government, has repeatedly claimed that “only the AfD can save Germany” and last month hosted Wiedel in a 75-minute live conversation on his social media platform, X.Addressing the Munich security conference earlier on Friday, Vance admonished Europe’s leaders for refusing to work with their far-right parties.“If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you,” said Vance. “You need democratic mandates to accomplish anything of value in the coming years.”The move sent shockwaves through German political circles as the Trump administration appeared to be making a large bet on some of the continent’s most toxic parties in opposition to the sitting governments in the UK, Germany and other major allies.“I expressly reject what US Vice President Vance said at the Munich Security Conference,” said Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, in a post on X. “From the experience of National Socialism, the democratic parties in Germany have a common consensus: this is the firewall against extreme right-wing parties.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionGerman courts have ruled that the AfD can be classified as a suspected threat to democracy, paving the way for the country’s domestic intelligence agency to spy on the opposition party.In May, the AfD was expelled from a pan-European parliamentary group of populist far-right parties after a string of controversies, including a comment by the senior AfD figure that the Nazi SS had been “not all criminals”.In a speech likely to further drive a wedge between the US and Europe as they struggle to find a single policy on the war in Ukraine, Vance also accused the European leaders of “hiding behind ugly Soviet-era words like ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’”.“Listening to that speech, they try to pick a fight with us and we don’t want to pick a fight with our friends,” said Kaja Kallas, the EU’s foreign policy chief, at the Munich event.Boris Pistorius, the German defense minister, said he couldn’t let the speech go without comment.“If I understood him correctly, he is comparing conditions in parts of Europe with those in authoritarian regimes. That is unacceptable, and it is not the Europe and not the democracy in which I live and am currently campaigning,” he said. More