Donald Trump and those on his side believe that the world forged by and for Americans no longer serves American interests. Their aim is to tear down the entire ideological edifice of the 20^th century.

(This article was translated by Chronicles Editor Paul Gottfried. For his note on the piece, please click here.)

The French are not Americans. Unlike Americans, the French are not typically forthright about their political views. Whenever a responsible right-wing French politician is asked where he stands politically, he is always careful to say that he is neither on the right nor on the left. This is true whether he is a member of the Rassemblement National (Marine Le Pen’s conservative nationalist party, which is a rival of my party, Reconquête), and its true even if the media persistently place him on the extreme right of the French political chessboard. The same thing is true especially of Les Républicains (the party of French President Immanuel Macron); no matter the party, all French politicians claim to be in the center.

We alone in the Reconquête proudly proclaim to be a movement of right. I’ve had the honor of presiding over Reconquête since its creation in 2020, and ours is the only French party that declared before the world our support for the candidacy of Donald Trump, even when the polls gave the victory to his Democratic opponent. It is undoubtedly because of our uniqueness as a French party that Chronicles has asked me to write about the effects of Trump’s election on the French and European right.

It is the entire European right, but especially the moderate branch of it that frequents national seats in governments, who see their vision of the world furiously convulsed by the Trumpian offensive. 

“The French are not Americans.” This sentence sounds bizarre to our ears, like an ironic reflection, an antiphrasis, a denial of reality or even an exhortation. After all, we know that France is the second largest market for McDonald’s (after the United States itself). The most popular of our singers in the 20th century, Johnny Hallyday, gave himself a purposely American-sounding name, and many French parents do the same for their children, including those of Jordan Bardella, the president of Rassemblement National. It may surprise Americans to learn that many French retirees pass their days dancing to American country music. One of our greatest left wing intellectuals, Régis Debray, an icon of the French conservative newspaper, Le Figaro, who became in his later years a fervent Gaullist, wrote numerous brilliantly expressed works explaining, in a tone of regret, how it is the dream of Frenchmen and other Europeans to become American citizens, in the same way as ancient barbarians strove to become Roman citizens.

But, “We are not Americans.” At the risk of irritating the pride of the French, it should be noted that all the great revolutionary movements that have overturned France and the West were born in the United States. The Declaration of Independence of the American Republic in 1776 unleashed, counting backward, our great revolution of 1789. President Woodrow Wilson’s 1919 discourse on peace and the establishment of the League of Nations, based on human rights and collective security, may have inspired in some way the pacifist politics of Aristide Briand in the 1920s, which won for the Frenchman the Nobel Prize for Peace. The conflicts that beset California universities in the 1960s helped launch our May 1968 uprising in Paris. There would have been no liberalism in the 1980s without Reagan. Nor would there have been globalization without the decision of Bill Clinton in the year 2000 to allow China to progress toward entering the World Trade Organization.

“We are not Americans,” but we belong, whether we wish it or not, to the same Western civilization, whose foundations are the Jewish prophetic tradition, the Christian religion, Greek culture, and Roman law. Great historians like Arnold Toynbee and Henri Pirenne demonstrate quite cogently that each time in history, and particularly since the Middle Ages, a movement, be it political but also cultural or even economic, is born in the West, it spreads, without firing a shot, throughout this geographical region. All the revolutionary movements I have described have arisen from exchanges from both sides of the Atlantic. The American Founding Fathers all read Montesquieu and Rousseau. The universalist prophecies of Victor Hugo preceded the preaching of Wilson. The hirsute protestors at Berkeley had as their professors the founders of French deconstructionist theory, Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze. Globalization was prepared by those highly placed French functionaries who directed our great international economic institutions. This continuing back-and-forth is, incidentally, proof that we belong to the same civilization.

Not all European right-wingers have shown the same reserved, indeed hostile, attitude toward the Trump phenomenon as have the French. The Hungarian President Viktor Orbán, or the Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, or the Germans in the Alternative for Germany Party (AfD), or the Englishman Nigel Farage of the UK Reform Party, like my movement Reconquête, have not concealed their enthusiasm nor withheld their support for Trump. They all constitute parts of this current of European right-wing thought that has been ostracized by the dominant ideology on the continent, marginalized by European institutions, and labeled with the deliberately degrading designation “extreme right.”

One should also understand Trump as a counterrevolutionary. He fits as surely into this mode as does the counterreformation by the Catholic Church after the Protestant wave and the wars of religion, and just as there was the Congress of Vienna in 1815 after the wars of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Empire. It is the entire ideological edifice of the 20th century that Trump and his men wish to tear down.

The breakthrough of Donald Trump has brought to the fore an old cleavage in the bosom of our European right-wingers, between moderate conservatives and reactionaries, between those who submit to the dogma of the left and those who resist and combat it. Donald Trump has prevailed not by humbly putting his hands in his pockets, but by drawing his sword and confronting the mainstream media and the woke universities. One understands this action has not pleased the leaders of the Rassemblement National who, under the staff of Marine Le Pen, have developed as a political strategy for gaining power what they call the “detoxification”—that is to say, reverential deference for the words and ideas imposed in the public space
by the left.

Moreover, the entire political class of the French right strongly suspected that once Trump returned to the White House, he would impose tariff increases on Europe, and they did not wish to be accused of complicity in this policy by French winegrowers, cheesemakers, or the owners of various luxury industries that export to America. Rassemblement National, however, has never hidden their hostility to “globalization” and to the indefinite extension of an unbridled free market run with a special zeal by the European Commission in Brussels, and which for 30 years ruined numerous industries and French agricultural enterprises, which were swept away by competition from everywhere, but especially from China.

That is not the case with the liberal establishment parties, whose ultimate partisan representative is Macron’s Républicains. Historically, the French right has long been protectionist, but it began its conversion to free market principles under General de Gaulle, who accepted, to everyone’s surprise, the idea of allowing France into what was then called “the common market,” the six founding countries of the European Union, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. Since the 1980s, the French right has become, like its German counterpart the CDU, a zealous defender of globalization and free trade. So, one can understand the fury of its leaders when they see the American president resuming the old protectionist discourse that was once embraced by the French right. 

This situation is entirely different for the German right. As it has been the reliable bulwark of Germanic industrial power, whose exporting machine generates the nation’s wealth, the German right has every reason to be horrified by Trump’s position on tariffs. A protectionist line is acceptable, however, to the Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who shares the conservative presuppositions of a Catholic, anti-woke Europe, similar to the ideas of U.S. Vice President JD Vance. But Meloni also has to defend Italian industry, which exports heavily to the U.S. and which fears above all that the great American market should close its doors to “made in Italy.” 

It is the entire European right, but especially the moderate branch of it that frequents national seats in governments, who see their vision of the world furiously convulsed by the Trumpian offensive. But it’s a vision of the world resting on American armies and NATO guarantees, especially Article 5 guarantees for a common defense for all members. The leaders of European countries and the European Commission in Brussels are discovering, to their panic, that they may no longer be able to rely on the American security umbrella.

American hegemony imposed itself quite powerfully after World War II, a situation that the fear of communism helped create, and so members of the European right adopted the evangelism of liberal democracy preached by Uncle Sam. Only General de Gaulle revolted against this dictat in the name of French independence, but his struggle revealed itself to be quixotic when France’s youth turned against him in the demonstrations and riots of May 1968. After his departure, the cowed French right accepted American authority.  

This question was posed with noticeable sharpness regarding the war in Ukraine. For three years, European leaders have played the game of going to war with Ukrainian blood and American arms. They were deeply upset when Trump and Vance reminded them of this unpleasant reality. On this topic, too, the French right is incoherent. For decades, it was the Gaullist right, from General de Gaulle to François Fillon, passing by Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy, who maintained the best relations in the world with Russia, whether with the Soviets or Putin. This reflected a distant memory of the World War I “Alliance of Opposites,” that ideologically unlikely partnership of Tsarist Russia and Republican France against Germany. 

The Rassemblement National followed the same politics in the name of Gaullist (pragmatic nationalist) principles, in the same way the German and Italian right-wing parties valued relations with Moscow by reason of their energy and commercial interests. It was former French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel who blocked the entry of Georgia and Ukraine into NATO in 2008. Henceforth, we are dealing with reversed fronts as the Americans, under Trump and even under Biden, refused to allow Ukraine into the Atlantic alliance. Trump has been at the head of a great reversal of alliances advocated by Henry Kissinger before his death, who had tried to detach Russia from its close relationship with China. It is the exact inversion of the brilliantly successful strategy of President Richard Nixon, who in 1972 drew closer to Communist China in order to tear it away from its alliance with the Soviet Union.

Even Donald Trump’s critics should admit that Trump has placed himself in the line of dynamic American presidents, both right and left, whose actions have revolutionized the West and the world, from Wilson to Reagan to Clinton. We might add to this list, on the strictly economic level, Roosevelt and his New Deal and Nixon, who abolished the tie between the dollar and gold. 

But one should also understand Trump as a counterrevolutionary. He fits as surely into this mode as does the counterreformation by the Catholic Church after the Protestant wave and the wars of religion, and just as there was the Congress of Vienna in 1815 after the wars of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Empire. It is the entire ideological edifice of the 20th century that Trump and his men wish to tear down. This is an edifice born in the ruins of World War I, which overturned the values of the 19th century. This is an edifice that privileges the individual over the nation, civil society over peoples, the child and the mother over the family father, the free market over protectionism, the consumer over the producer, the financier over the industrialist, the foreigner over the native, rights above the State, minorities over majorities, international organizations over the
sovereignty of states. 

American hegemony imposed itself quite powerfully after World War II, a situation that the fear of communism helped create, and so members of the European right adopted the evangelism of liberal democracy preached by Uncle Sam. Only General de Gaulle revolted against this dictat in the name of French independence, but his struggle revealed itself to be quixotic when France’s youth turned against him in the demonstrations and riots of May 1968. After his departure, the cowed French right accepted American authority. 

We are speaking about an edifice built throughout the course of the 20th century, and one that reached its full force after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. It was an edifice built by and serving primarily America, an edifice for which great oligarchs like George Soros and Bill Gates were the most conspicuous symbols, and which was consecrated in the famous work of Francis Fukuyama about the
end of history.

For a long time, European right-wingers resisted what one French intellectual, Robert Aron, designated from the 1920s onward as “the American cancer.” But American hegemony imposed itself quite powerfully after World War II, a situation that the fear of communism helped create, and so members of the European right adopted the evangelism of liberal democracy preached by Uncle Sam. Only General de Gaulle revolted against this dictat in the name of French independence, but his struggle revealed itself to be quixotic when France’s youth turned against him in the demonstrations and riots of May 1968. After his departure, the cowed French right accepted American authority.  

But today Trump and his supporters believe the world forged by and for Americans no longer serves American interests. In any case, the interests of the American people, of the broad middle class, of American industry, and ultimately American hegemony are threatened by their Chinese rivals. Europe’s right-wingers now stand in opposition to their onetime protector. Whence their disarray and anger at Trump.

I believe this is an entirely improper attitude. We should be supporting the new world that Trump is attempting to forge—certainly in noise, fury, and sometimes disorder. It provides an unhoped-for opportunity for the French and European right-wingers to take their revenge on the progressivism that has indicted, delegitimated, and finally marginalized them. All of Europe’s right-wingers, like the MAGA right, have been denouncing for years the ravages of individualism, the war against Christianity, the destruction of the family, the ripping apart of national identity, the ravages of drugs, the disintegration of the nation, the migratory invasions, the great replacement, the pauperization of the middle class, the credit bubbles, the laying to waste of our countryside, the impoverishment of our farmers, the uglification of our overdeveloped cities, the weakening of our shopkeeper economy, the judicial tyranny, the rise in violence, the tyrannical wokeism in our universities, and the collapse of academic standards in our primary schools. All these evils have issued from the world the 20th century bequeathed to us. One cannot combat these evils while defending the
ideological universe that favors them.

The only difference between Trump and his predecessors is that while he takes overtly nationalist positions, his predecessors dressed them up in the garb of universal altruism and hid their pursuit of national interest behind the curtain of human rights and “noble” sentiments. At least the brutal candor of Trump may open the eyes of the most naïve Europeans and lead them to defend just as ferociously the interests of their own countries. 

This ideological and political alliance certainly does not mean submission to the American will. In the past, belonging to nations has always prevailed over ideological proximity. French and German socialists confronted one another quite harshly during World War I, despite the dreams of socialist fraternity nursed by the French pacifist Jean Jaurès. In the same way, Chinese and Russian Communists almost came to a nuclear collision at the beginning of the 1970s, although they shared the same Marxist-Leninist breviary. Trump has taken the political course that he thinks most likely to protect the interests of his country, just as his Republican and Democratic predecessors did. The French and other Europeans have not waited for Trump in order to yield to American competition, the extraterritoriality of American law, the massive fines on European enterprises demanded by American justice, or the telephone bugging of the leaders of European countries by the CIA. 

The only difference between Trump and his predecessors is that while he takes overtly nationalist positions, his predecessors dressed them up in the garb of universal altruism and hid their pursuit of national interest behind the curtain of human rights and “noble” sentiments. At least the brutal candor of Trump may open the eyes of the most naïve Europeans and lead them to defend just as ferociously the interests of their own countries. Europe’s right-wingers have been able to see the results of Trumpism and how it has caused the sudden transforming the European left and its state media, which for years never hesitated to clothe simple patriotism in the worst attributes of fascism, Nazism, and racism, into supercilious,
vindictive nationalists.

The European right should denounce this ridiculous about-face by the left, this hypocritical transformation of cosmopolites into nationalists. But they should also, whatever the vicissitudes of Donald Trump’s tenure, preserve their ideological coherence and cease to denounce defects in America’s Trumpian right, which is campaigning for the causes they cherish.

In any case, the Trumpian counterrevolution will not stop because, without always comprehending it, all Western societies are now following its lead. This counterrevolution is the final cry of Western peoples who do not wish to die. 

In any case, the Trumpian counterrevolution will not stop because, without always comprehending it, all Western societies are now following its lead. This counterrevolution is the final cry of Western peoples who do not wish to die. It is the historic opportunity for members of the French and European right to pursue a populist movement against progressivism, while reestablishing an ordered society in harmony with the heritage that Western civilization has bequeathed to us. ◆