Europe’s Far Right Want to Be American Vassals
Europe’s far-right parties have long boasted about putting their own countries’ interests first but now slavishly support the latest US-Israeli war. While they opt for vassalage, antiwar forces have turned out to be the real defenders of sovereignty.
Most Europeans oppose the latest US-Israeli war, which is killing thousands and stirring economic mayhem. Yet Europe’s nationalist parties have lined up behind the war, putting their alliance with Trump and Netanyahu first. (Antonio Masiello / Getty Images)
For years, the rising far right in Europe has wrapped itself in the language of sovereignty. Decorating itself with the national flag, it has promised to put national interests and national identity first. Its entire political vocabulary has revolved around the claim that it alone puts its own country before everything and everyone else.
The genocide in Gaza and the ongoing US-Israeli war on Iran and Lebanon have exposed just how hollow that rhetoric always was.
In the United States, the war has once again shattered the illusion that Donald Trump’s part of the right wing is somehow less imperial, less militarist, or more committed to peace than the liberal establishment it claims to oppose. Similarly, in Europe, it has revealed that when Washington or Tel Aviv call, self-proclaimed sovereigntists suddenly lose all interest in sovereignty.
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