To many, it felt as if new alliances were being formed. This February, a National Conservatism conference was held in Rome’s glitzy Grand Hotel Plaza, in a bid to build bridges between Anglo-American conservatives and European radical right-wing populists.

On one side, the conference featured influential American and British conservatives, such as Chris DeMuth, longtime head of the American Enterprise Institute, the British neoconservative Douglas Murray, and the Tory MP Daniel Kawczynski. On the other end, the gathering hosted well-known leaders of the European radical right, like Hungarian president Viktor Orbán, France’s Marion Maréchal (who is also granddaughter of Jean-Marie le Pen) and Thierry Baudet, the new kid on the block of the Dutch radical right.

Right-wing politics on the two continents were long seen through separate lenses: the European radical right was understood as a peculiar product of the continent’s dark legacy with fascism and racism, whereas, similar political stances in the United States and the UK were explained away as the quirky aberrations of Anglo-American conservatism. But such neat distinctions have quickly collapsed in recent years, in no small part due to Brexit and Donald Trump.