WHY MAGA HATES EUROPE

I. The Document

In November 2025, the White House published its National Security Strategy — 33 pages setting out the foreign policy doctrine of the second Trump administration. It is a remarkable document. Not because it is surprising. But because it states, unencrypted for the first time, what had previously been between the lines.

Europe is mentioned in it approximately fifty times. China half as often. Russia is not a threat — it is a negotiating partner. China is an economic competitor, not an existential enemy. But Europe — Europe is doomed.

The document warns of "civilizational erasure" of the European continent. It speaks of mass immigration, over-regulation, suppressed free speech, democratic deficits. It sets European "elites" against their own peoples. It claims a majority of Europeans want peace with Russia but are prevented by their governments. And it claims for the United States a right to ideological intervention: to defend the "real" freedoms of Europeans against Brussels, against the courts, against national governments.

Janan Ganesh posed the obvious question in the Financial Times: "What bothers these people about Europe? What has the continent done to the West that the US has not done? Why can't Americans just leave Europe alone?"

It is a good question. The answer is more revealing than the question.

II. The Mirror

Europe is not the enemy. Europe is the mirror.

Everything the MAGA movement criticises about Europe exists in the United States in equal or greater measure. The woke movement? Born in America before it was exported to Europe. Immigration? The US has roughly the same proportion of immigrants as the larger Western European states. Over-regulation? Anyone who has ever read an IRS tax notice or navigated American health insurance knows that bureaucracy is not a European monopoly. Suppressed free speech? In the US, professors are fired, books are removed from libraries, and journalists are called "enemies of the people" — by the president himself.

MAGA's critique of Europe is not analysis. It is projection. One projects one's own problems onto a foreign continent because it is easier to name an external enemy than to resolve an internal contradiction.

Ganesh puts it precisely: "Perhaps they have lost too many battles on the home front. That is why it is easier for them to attack foreign countries. The attack on Europe is a hidden self-reproach."

III. The Business Model

But there is a second reason, and it is less psychological than economic.

Europe is the only alternative. Not militarily — Europe was never a threat there. Not economically — the American economy is larger. But as a model. Europe has — for all its weaknesses — built something that does not exist in the United States and whose mere existence undermines the MAGA narrative.

A public healthcare system that works. Not perfectly, not cheaply, not without problems — but it exists. No American loses his house because he falls ill in Germany. No French person goes bankrupt because of cancer treatment. No Briton has to decide whether to call the ambulance or pay the rent.

A social system that catches poverty. Does not eliminate it — but catches it. Unemployment benefits, parental leave, paid holiday, maternity protection, pension insurance. Things that in the US count as "socialism" and in Europe as self-evident.

Workers' rights worthy of the name. Works councils. Collective agreements. Employment protection. Things that do not exist in the US and whose existence in Europe proves they are possible.

That is the real problem. Europe proves by its mere existence that alternatives exist. That one can run a capitalist economy without taking everything from the weakest. That taxes are not theft but infrastructure. That the state is not the enemy but a tool.

For a movement that lives by telling its voters there is no alternative to unbridled capitalism, Europe is an existential threat. Not because of its armies. Because of its hospitals.

IV. The "Great Replacement" in the White House

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the 2025 National Security Strategy is not what it says about Europe. It is the language in which it says it.

"Civilizational erasure." That is the language of Renaud Camus, the French author of "Le Grand Remplacement." It is the language cited in Christchurch before a man shot 51 people in two mosques. It is the language cited in Buffalo before an eighteen-year-old murdered ten Black people in a supermarket. It is the language of the Identitarian movement, of Europe's far-right fringes.

And now it stands in an official document of the government of the United States of America.

Tom Wright of the Brookings Institution put it precisely: the NSS is "a plan for an illiberal world order." It discards the consensus of both the previous Trump and Biden eras — great-power competition with China and Russia — and replaces it with a culture war in which Europe is the principal adversary.

Russia is not mentioned as a threat in this document. Not once. The war in Ukraine serves merely as an accelerator of European decline. Small wonder that Moscow praised the document.

V. The MAGA Ambassadors

Anyone who believes the document is merely paper should observe the practice.

Charles Kushner, US Ambassador to Paris. Convicted felon, pardoned by Trump. Father-in-law of Ivanka Trump. When the French foreign minister summoned him because the US embassy had instrumentalised the killing of a far-right activist in Lyon — Kushner sent a subordinate and excused himself with "personal reasons." For the second time in a year.

Bill White, US Ambassador to Belgium. Wrote a post on X in capital letters — imitating Trump's own style — instructing Belgium to "do a much better job on this subject." The Belgian foreign minister summoned him and reminded him that an accredited ambassador "has the responsibility to respect our institutions, our elected representatives, and the independence of our judicial system."

Tom Rose, US Ambassador to Poland. Unilaterally broke relations with the Marshal of the Sejm because the latter did not support Trump's Nobel Peace Prize nomination.

Ken Howery, US Ambassador to Denmark. Removed the flags in the embassy honouring Danish fallen soldiers — in the middle of the Greenland controversy.

These are not diplomats. They are MAGA activists with diplomatic passports. Their task is not understanding. Their task is humiliation.

VI. Vance in Munich

In February 2025, J.D. Vance took the stage at the Munich Security Conference and delivered a speech that was received in Europe as an insult. He accused the Europeans of suppressing free speech, hollowing out democracy, and surrendering their own civilisation.

The speech was not a diplomatic blunder. It was a programme. The same language, the same accusations, the same contempt that would appear a year later in the NSS. Vance was testing the rhetoric. Munich was the laboratory.

What Vance did not say — and what the NSS does not say — is equally revealing. Not a word about the American opioid crisis, which kills more Americans than any terrorist attack. Not a word about American life expectancy, which is falling while Europe's is rising. Not a word about American infant mortality, which is higher than in any Western European country. Not a word about the 40 million Americans without adequate health insurance. Not a word about the school massacres that do not happen in Europe.

The European whom Vance accuses of decadence lives statistically longer, is better protected, dies less often from gunfire, and sends his children to schools from which they come back alive.

But these are facts. And facts are irrelevant in this fight.

VII. The Nationalist Who Does Not Understand Nationalism

Ivan Krastev, one of Europe's sharpest political analysts, has perhaps offered the most precise diagnosis: "Trump is always called a nationalist, but he is a nationalist who does not understand nationalism — particularly the nationalism of others."

Krastev describes Trump as a nationalist "without history." When it comes to land, he has the perspective of the real-estate developer: he believes he is in the business of gentrifying the world. For European nationalists, by contrast, the principles of land and borders are almost "sacred" — shaped by the memory of what happens when borders are redrawn by force.

Greenland was the proof. Trump believed he could buy a Danish possession like a plot in Manhattan. Denmark — one of the most pro-American countries in Europe — responded with outrage. The Danish flags in the embassy were removed. The relationship was damaged.

The paradox is exquisite: MAGA is attempting to win European right-wing parties as allies — the AfD, Orbán, the Reform Party, Rassemblement National. But precisely these parties are nationalists. And nationalists do not take dictation from a foreign nationalist. Orbán is the right's hero — but he is also an avowed China fan. He invests in the Asian future, not the American past.

Krastev says: "Trump has underestimated how much nationalism is based on pride." One cannot court European nationalists by insulting their nations. It does not work even with the willing.

VIII. The Heritage Foundation and the Black International

It does not stop at rhetoric. MAGA is building structures in Europe.

The Heritage Foundation — the think tank that authored "Project 2025," that 900-page plan for remaking the American government, of which 75 per cent has reportedly already been implemented — is sending representatives to Europe. Paul McCarthy, Senior Research Fellow for European Affairs, recently travelled to Rome and spoke in the Italian parliament with members of Fratelli d'Italia, Lega, and Forza Italia.

Steve Bannon has been trying for years to establish a training school for the global MAGA movement in Italy. Documents from the Epstein files indicate that as early as 2018 and 2019, he had an interest in financially supporting Italy's Lega party.

Andrea Stroppa, a young Italian cybersecurity expert and external adviser, is considered "Musk's man in Italy" and serves as an intermediary between Elon Musk and Italian institutions.

In Brussels, they speak of a "black international" — a network of the Heritage Foundation, Bannon contacts, and Musk connections aimed at strengthening European nationalist forces and weakening the EU. Members of the European Parliament responded unambiguously: the NSS is "a frontal attack on the European Union."

IX. The Iran War and the Crack in the Movement

And then came 28 February 2026. Operation Epic Fury. And suddenly MAGA no longer hated only Europe. MAGA hated itself.

Tucker Carlson — for years the movement's most influential voice — called the Iran strike a betrayal of "America First." Megyn Kelly expressed unease. Matt Walsh, a Daily Wire host, wrote on X that Rubio's explanation — that the US had entered the war because Israel would otherwise have attacked alone and the retaliation would have struck American bases — was "basically the worst possible thing he could have said."

Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has repositioned herself as an influencer since her break with Trump, put it most sharply: "Make America Great Again was supposed to be America First, not Israel First."

On the other side: Ben Shapiro and Ted Cruz defend the strike as necessary for national security. Fox News' biggest stars remain cheerleaders. The White House plays defence on social media.

Trump's response was telling: "MAGA is Trump. MAGA is not the other two." He meant Carlson and Kelly. The leader of the movement defines the movement as himself. Whoever disagrees is not MAGA.

According to a Pew poll from January 2026, Trump's overall approval stands at 37 per cent. Only 27 per cent of Americans support all or most of his policy plans. The DJT stock has lost 55 per cent of its value. Truth Social is being spun off because it has failed as a standalone business model. The midterms in November 2026 could become an existential test.

The movement that hates Europe cannot even agree on Iran.

X. Manifest Destiny 2.0

There is a deeper reason for the hatred of Europe, and it lies in the logic of the movement itself.

MAGA began in 2016 as a revolt against the establishment. "Drain the swamp." The energy came from outrage. But outrage has an expiry date. When you are in power, you cannot forever protest against power. When you are the establishment, you cannot forever fight it.

So you need enemies. Internal enemies: the media, the universities, "woke" culture, the bureaucracy, the judiciary. But internal enemies are exhausting — they fight back, they litigate, they win in court. External enemies are simpler. Europe mocks, does not pay enough, is decadent, is doomed — and cannot fight back.

Steve Bannon summed up the new direction: "How can you get more 'America First' than Manifest Destiny 2.0?" After the seizure of Maduro in Venezuela and the Greenland demand, MAGA figures spoke openly of Colombia, Cuba, and Greenland as territories "ripe for colonisation."

Manifest Destiny — the nineteenth-century doctrine that justified the extermination of indigenous peoples and expansion to the Pacific as a God-given right. The same doctrine, just with new targets: no longer the American West but the Western Hemisphere. No longer the Native Americans but the Europeans.

The "Trump Corollary" to the Monroe Doctrine — explicitly formulated in the NSS document — claims for the US the right to prevent any foreign influence in the Western Hemisphere. In the nineteenth century, that meant Europe. In the twenty-first century, it means China. But the language, the gesture, the presumption — they apply again to Europe. Still Europe.

XI. Why Europe Should Not Take It Personally

Because it is not about Europe.

It is about a movement that has lost its direction. That stands at the crossroads between the memory of its beginnings and the danger of irrelevance. That has been telling its voters for ten years that everything will improve once the right people are in power — and is now in power and discovering that the opioid deaths are not fewer, the health insurance not cheaper, the schools not safer, the rents not lower, the wages not higher.

Europe is the perfect scapegoat: far enough away that no consequences need be feared. Close enough to serve as comparison. And — here is the real sting — successful enough in precisely those areas where America fails.

The attack on Europe is not a sign of strength. It is a sign of exhaustion. A movement attacking hospitals because they prove that public healthcare is possible. Attacking workers' rights because they prove that capitalism and human dignity are compatible. Attacking climate protection because it proves that economic growth and responsibility need not be contradictions.

Europe should not be insulted. Europe should understand that the hatred is the most sincere compliment MAGA has to give.

XII. The Boomerang

Henry Mace suggested a simple recipe in the Financial Times: "Perhaps there is a simple reason why Trump is so hostile towards Europe. Trump responds to flattery, and he receives practically none from Europe."

That is witty. But it is also naive. For the problem is not Trump's ego. The problem is the system that produced him.

A movement that defines Europe as the enemy loses Europe as a partner. A movement that insults NATO allies as freeloaders gets allies who build their own armies — not to help America, but to protect themselves from America. A movement that wants to destroy the EU gets an EU that arms itself, consolidates, and builds its own security structures.

Krastev is right: Trump has underestimated the nationalism of others. Europe's answer to MAGA is not submission. It is emancipation. More defence spending — but not for America. Indigenous arms projects — but not with American companies. Indigenous technology — but not dependent on American platforms.

That is the boomerang. MAGA wanted to weaken Europe. Instead, it has woken Europe up. And a Europe that wakes up and realises it cannot rely on the United States is precisely the Europe the United States should fear most.

Not as an enemy. As an alternative.

MAGA does not hate Europe because Europe is weak. MAGA hates Europe because Europe proves that things can be done differently. And that is the one message a movement that lives by "There Is No Alternative" cannot bear.