For the past decade or more, European governments have been trying to resist the covert influence operations of adversaries. Russia and China.
Now they have a very different challenge: fending off the overt efforts of Elon Musk and Donald Trump's MAGA movement to seize territory, overthrow elected leaders, and empower far-right causes and parties.
Even before Mr. Trump returns to office, he is making threats — maybe serious, maybe not — to acquire territory from NATO allies like Canada and Denmark. And Mr Musk, the president-elect's biggest financial backer, is using his social media platform X to mainstream the far-right Alternative for Germany party and smear the leaders of Britain's centre-left Labor Party.
It is unclear whether Europe's political immune system has the antibodies to defend against these new attacks.
This is not the first time that a Trump ally has tried to build a bridge with the European far-right. In 2018 and 2019, Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon held meetings with far-right politicians across Europe. But the current political landscape is very different. The German and French governments collapsed; far-right parties are on the rise in these countries and are already in power in several others on the continent.
A senior official from the first Trump administration, who is poised for a higher post in the second, was frank in his assessment: Europe does not know what is coming.
“A very rich man who speaks his mind”
Mr. Musk spent $250 million of his $400 billion fortune to help Donald Trump get re-elected. He has equally influenced US politics through his fame and ownership of the social media network X, formerly known as Twitter.
He campaigned aggressively against Kamala Harris (in one instance sharing a fake video of her describing herself as a “mercenary of diversity” who “doesn't know the first thing about running a country”) and interviewed Trump live on the platform. It now deploys a similar playbook in Europe.
Mr. Musk in Britain revived the decades-long “equal gangs” scandal It emerged while Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the centre-left Labor Party was in power as head of public prosecutors.
Fueling the flames fueled by right-wing media outlets, Mr Musk called Mr Starmer a “total scoundrel” and said he should be “in jail”. Last week, he asked his 212 million viewers to vote on whether America should free the British people from their oppressive government.
According to British media reports, Mr Musk is also considering a $100 million donation to Britain's far-right Reform Party, which would be the country's largest ever political donation. Nigel Farage, the leader of the party and one of the main campaigners for Brexit, has met with Trump several times, most recently at Mar-a-Lago last month.
“MAGA hates Starmer,” a former Trump administration official told The Times. He spoke on condition of anonymity to express his candid views as he is being considered for a role in Trump's second administration.
“MAGA loves Meloni,” he added, referring to Italy's right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, “as long as it meets its deportation targets.”
Mr Musk's SpaceX is also in talks with Ms Meloni's government to provide secure military communications via the Starlink satellite network. Last week at the press conferencehe described Mr Musk as “a very rich man who speaks his mind”.
“Musk normalizes us”
In Germany, which holds snap federal elections next month, Mr Musk is encouraging voters to vote for the far-right AfD, offering it legitimacy rejected by Germany's domestic intelligence service for its links to a party long under surveillance. neo-nazis.
In an opinion piece for a major German newspaper published on December 28, he called the AfD the last “spark of hope” for Germany. According to him, the country is “on the verge of economic and cultural collapse”.
On Thursday he Live streamed a 75-minute conversation with Alice WeidelThe AfD's chancellor candidate in X gave him the same platform he gave Trump five months ago.
After Musk first endorsed the AfD in December, Weidel's posts on X regularly went viral, in part because Musk reposted them, reviving and amplifying numerous neo-Nazi accounts. Researchers following the scene online say Far-right German influencers now post in English on X To get Musk's attention.
Germans won't vote for the AfD just because an American billionaire asks them to. But social media is a tool that can change public opinion, take ideas that were once considered extreme and bring them into the mainstream over time.
Despite being the second most popular party in the country, what keeps the AfD out of power is a national taboo against working with the far right. The memory of Hitler, who formed a coalition with centrist conservatives, has kept this security wall in place until now.
“The security wall between the AfD and the White House is officially gone, and it makes the German security wall look silly,” AfD co-chair Tino Chrupalla told me. “Musk normalizes us.”
Open vs Covert
US influence campaigns in other countries are not new. During the Cold War, America supported friendly nations and parties and intervened—sometimes aggressively—in countries seen as ideological enemies.
Now, however, the MAGA movement is deliberately creating discord among US allies. This is confusing for Europeans who grew up learning American lessons about democracy after World War II.
Friedrich Merz, leader of the center-right Christian Democratic Party and chancellor candidate, said: “I do not remember a similar case of interference in the election campaign of a friendly country in the history of Western democracies.” His party is leading in the polls but will need a coalition partner to form a government.
The US remains the main guarantor of Europe's security, as the war in Ukraine has shown. It is also Europe's largest export market, making the prospect of tariffs a strong threat to European economies. Europe lacks tech companies like those from Silicon Valley, including Mr. Musk's X platform and his Space X satellite company.
Europe's dependence on Russian energy has long prevented it from responding to Kremlin interference. But in the United States, addiction is greater.
Add to this the fact that the American intervention is not covert, but takes place during the day, which makes the fight even more difficult.
Using existing complaints
Influencer campaigns work best when they address existing grievances. As in the US, European trust in institutions has declined since the 2008 financial crisis and the pandemic. Voters are more hostile to immigration and more concerned about the cost of living and the economy. There is a growing sense that centrist leaders on the left and right have failed on these issues.
Conservative author and commentator Matthew Goodwin said millions of people in Europe were angry with the institution. “It's not orchestrated by Trump or Musk.”
“Musk did not create the AfD,” Mr Goodwin said. “The AfD is helped by their attention, but the main reason for this is the policy choices made over the last decade.”
Mr. Musk's provocations in Europe may be designed for maximum chaos rather than electoral success. in britain he destroyed Nigel Farageafter Mr Farage, the leader of the far-right Reform Party, refused to back Mr Musk's demand that the far-right campaigner be released from prison.
“Both the Kremlin and the forces around the libertarian-authoritarian camp around Musk want to sow chaos in Europe and get rid of the liberal democratic elite,” Thorsten Benner, director of the Global Public Policy Institute in Berlin, told Germany's Die Zeit. . “We have to arm ourselves against it. But the greatest threat to our democracies comes not from outside, but from within. “Those who fight in election campaigns should focus on the problems that concern the voters.”
A similar level of infighting and chaos exists within the wider MAGA movement. Back in the United States, there are signs of Mr Trump's anti-immigration hardliners in his inner circle. fed up with Mr. Muskespecially after the controversy surrounding the country's expansion of work visas for highly skilled immigrants. one He gave an interview to the Italian newspaper “Corriere della Sera”. on Sunday, Mr. Bannon called Mr. Musk “really evil” and vowed to “take this guy down.”
Whatever the direct impact of America's intervention on Europe's political map in the coming years, Trump is determined to implement his priorities in Europe, regardless of who is in government.
“At the end of the day, Trump is going to be so aggressive with Europe in terms of uncompromisingly defending the US position that it really doesn't matter who's in charge,” said a former Trump official. “They main issue is America. Everything else is a distraction. Trump will use America's power to get his way.”