The Stillbirth of the Nationalist International
Twentieth-century fascism was an international movement. Its champions in Germany, Italy, France, Britain, and elsewhere shared its central tenets, albeit sometimes awkwardly: the elevation of a particular segment of the native population over others; the corresponding war on minority and individual rights and the liberal political order that protected them; racism, antisemitism, xenophobia, authoritarianism, disdain for empiricism, the mobilization of violent, uniformed (and where necessary, nonuniformed) supporters; control of media and the courts, and, eventually, civil society. Thus did the troops defending the bunker of the German ultranationalist Hitler against the Soviet army in the final days of the Third Reich comprise a diverse international brigade of European fascist true believers.
There’s a common core of beliefs that would appear to unite today’s neofascists (or, if you prefer, ultranationalists), too. The elevation of the ostensibly native population over “others,” whether immigrants or just unwelcome minorities who threaten that native culture—even if the “others”’ roots in the nation are hundreds of years deeper than those of the self-professed natives—remains the baseline of today’s far right. Racism, authoritarianism, disdain for empiricism (including news media) and a liberal political order, an implicit or explicit threat (and occasional reality) of violence from uniformed or nonuniformed supporters—the support for these -isms, and for making them common practice and state policy, crosses borders.
One part of the Trump administration’s foreign policy has sought to build on these commonalities. Its support for Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, which is the one European regime that is firmly in this anti-liberal ultranationalist camp, exemplifies this cross-border solidarity. So does its support for the neo-Nazi AfD in Germany, which Vice President Vance has hailed, as well as its fond words for Nigel Farage’s far-right party in the U.K.
At bottom, Trump isn’t even a nationalist. He’s a Trumpist, indifferent to the needs, desires, and legal rights of others.
But there’s more to Donald Trump’s actual worldview than is dreamed of in neofascism’s cross-border anti-liberal philosophy. And whatever solidarity Trump had established with the sundry tin-pot wannabes of the European far right was blown out of the water by his effort to seize Greenland from Denmark.
As The Washington Post has reported, it’s not just the establishment parties that have long governed Europe—Christian Democrats, Social Democrats, Tories and Labour—but also the MAGA look-alikes that have recoiled at and condemned Trump’s Greenland grab. “Trump has violated a fundamental campaign promise not to interfere in other countries,” said AfD co-leader Alice Weidel. The party’s other co-leader, Tino Chrupalla, deemed Trump’s “Wild West methods” to be unacceptable.
In the U.K., Farage termed Trump’s proposed tariffs on nations that opposed his Greenland ploy “a very hostile act,” while in France, Jordan Bardella, second only to Marine Le Pen in the leadership of the surging National Rally party, said that Trump’s “threats against the sovereignty of a state” were “intolerable.” Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s far-right prime minister, termed Trump’s Greenland-related tariffs a “mistake.”
The most pungent rebuff to Trump came from Sweden’s Mattias Karlsson, a leading figure in that nation’s far-right Swedish Democratic party. Karlsson took to X to opine that “Trump increasingly resembles a reverse King Midas. Everything he touches turns to shit.”
As the late great comic Mort Sahl invariably commented in the course of his act, “Is there anyone I haven’t offended?”
It was Marx and Engels in their 1848 Manifesto who first called on workers of all lands to unite. But neither the Socialist nor the Communist Internationals ever really got it together. Since its founding, Davos has been a kind of symbol of the de facto Capitalist International that governed—legally, extralegally, occasionally illegally and more commonly a-legally—the neoliberal world order, much of which now appears to be crumbling, though nothing any better looms on the horizon.
What might have been looming was, for lack of a better term, the Nationalist International—more a congeries than an organization, but in any case, a grouping of like-minded racist, ultranationalist parties seeking to erode their nations’ liberal orders. Problem is, most Internationals eventually have a dominant member, a hegemon. The Communist had (to its woe) the Soviet Union. The pre-1914 Socialist International didn’t have a hegemon, but it certainly had a dominant party, Germany’s Social Democrats, whose vote to approve their nation’s entry into World War I rung down the curtain on that International. The original fascist movement also had Germany, whose expansionism was largely welcomed by non-German fascists, but proved militarily unsustainable. The U.S. was the hegemon of the Capitalist International, but with that hegemon no longer willing to play by its rules, it’s become an International in deep flux.
Which brings us to the Nationalist International, which appeared to be on the upswing until Trump’s Greenland-grabbing grotesqueries. They ran up against one of the baseline beliefs of all those parties: the primacy of borders. Trump ran on sealing America’s borders, and he’s largely succeeded in doing that. Orbán has made border-sealing the sine qua non of his rule, and every party of the European far right has made that plank number one in their platforms. Somehow, but not surprisingly, it never occurred to Trump that seizing part of Denmark’s domain obliterated the sanctity of its borders, that his version of expansive ultranationalism ran up against the nationalism of his fellow ultranationalists.
So, Trump isn’t a very good fit into any International. He isn’t even particularly concerned about preserving America’s hegemonic status in the Capitalist International; he’s blithely driving Europe and Canada to align their economies more with those of China and Latin America. He does defend the U.S. tech behemoths against European regulations, but that’s because those companies’ owners and executives are a big chunk of what remains of his political base. He’s now blown off his role as hegemon of the emerging Nationalist International, as the national interests of the MAGA equivalents in other nations stood athwart his personal ambitions to be the president who seized other lands for America.
At bottom, Trump isn’t even a nationalist. He’s a Trumpist, indifferent to the needs, desires, and legal rights of others, both foreign and domestic, when they conflict with those of his insecure and insatiable ego. The Orbáns, Le Pens, and Farages—and for that matter, the Marjorie Taylor Greenes—may think they’re linked in common cause with Trump, but they’re just so much roadkill if he opts for a course on which they happen to be in the way. No Internationals for him: He’s the hegemon of Trumpism; everyone else, beware.
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