MAGA’s next frontier: Europe
Trump’s tentacles are spreading across the continent...
Elon Musk’s presence is so ubiquitous that you can barely spend five minutes online without seeing him sieg-heiling across your computer screen.
Even Musk, who has artificially inserted his posts onto the feeds of basically every Twitter user, is now getting annoyed with how much attention he’s receiving on the platform.
One symptom of this Elon-ification of the news agenda is that we’re becoming prone to seeing everything through the lens of one drugged-up oligarch and his deranged midnight tweets.
In other words: we’re neglecting other important trends, because the media is obsessed with Musk.
This is particularly the case in terms of Donald Trump’s influence over British and European politics – a story that has become hyper-focused on Musk’s various attempts to platform and promote his friends on the far-right.
Indeed, I worry that Musk is simply one element in an orchestrated campaign from Trump’s allies to occupy European politics and reshape the continent in their demented image. And in focusing too much attention on Musk, we’re ignoring other key actors.
Take the story I reported for DeSmog and The Guardian this week. The Heartland Institute, a U.S. group that loudly and proudly denigrates climate scientists, has been working with far-right politicians in Europe to scupper flagship green policies.
The group, which has received money in the past from ExxonMobil (obviously), is close to team Trump. It advised his last administration on how to dispute climate science, and it delivered a 10-point energy and climate plan to his transition team ahead of last week’s inauguration. Almost all of the ideas have been adopted by Trump – including leaving the flagship 2015 Paris climate agreement.
However, polluting America clearly isn’t enough for the Heartland Institute. With the help of our very own Nigel Farage – and with Liz Truss in attendance – the group recently launched a new UK-EU branch so their ideas can reach further and deeper into Europe.
Public Announcement
I’m working on a story about how the Daily Mail ripped off its own shareholders.
Sound like the sort of thing you want to read about? Click subscribe below.
In many ways there is nothing new about this story, and that’s why it’s so dangerous.
We rightfully worry about the influence of dark money Tufton Street think tanks on British politics – “free market” groups like the Institute for Economic Affairs and the TaxPayers’ Alliance that have a slash and burn attitude to public services.
However, their American cousins have been embedded in Westminster for years. The likes of the Heartland Institute established the playbook for Tufton Street – showing Britain’s libertarian lobbyists how to sell a radical, anti-tax, pro-privatisation agenda to the media and the Conservative Party.
Trump’s victory has simply emboldened these well-connected agents of chaos as they try to export his worldview abroad.
This also applies to the Heritage Foundation – the group behind the insidious “Project 2025” blueprint for a second Trump term.
If you aren’t aware, the Heritage Foundation received a lot of flak from the Democrats during the election campaign for coming up with a 900-page screed that called for Trump (among other things) to drastically reduce reproductive rights, rip up environmental regulations, and concentrate power in the office of the president.
You’d think that British politicians would take a long pause before jumping into bed with these cranks. You’d think wrong. A number of senior Tory shadow cabinet members – including Robert Jenrick and Priti Patel – have forged close ties to the Heritage Foundation in recent years.
Almost a full 12 months after the release of Project 2025, Jenrick spoke at a Heritage Foundation event and fondly recalled how he forged bonds with the group while working as an intern in Washington DC.
The Heritage Foundation itself leans into this trans-Atlantic alliance. It runs a “Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom” led by a chap called Nile Gardiner. During his Heritage Foundation speech, Jenrick praised Gardiner as “the special relationship made flesh”, while current shadow foreign secretary Priti Patel gave Gardiner and Heritage Foundation boss Kevin Roberts a tour of Parliament last March.
The MAGA movement already has a foothold in Europe. What’s more, the prevailing political weather gives Trump a strong tailwind.
A populist surge is threatening to (re)shape European politics. With the presence of Le Pen, Orban, Meloni, Farage, Wilders, Weidel, and Badenoch, the new U.S. president has plenty of friends on the continent. His allies will waste no time in using these favourable conditions to turn Fortress Europe – they hope – into a Trump stronghold.
And Britain’s Brexit elite is aiding Trump’s attempt to launch a hostile takeover of Europe.
Take the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC). This little-known group has been trying to convene the global MAGA (Make America Great Again) cult with the help of a few well-resourced Brits.
ARC is run by Conservative peer Philippa Stroud and funded by the co-owners of GB News: the hedge fund manager Paul Marshall – who has given at least £1 million to ARC – and the Legatum Group investment fund.
ARC leverages the Trump ecosystem to promote an anti-tax, pro-fossil fuel, populist worldview. Its advisors include Jordan Peterson, Douglas Murray, Katharine Birbalsingh, Konstantin Kisin, Mike Johnson, Mike Lee, Tony Abbott, Vivek Ramaswamy, Miriam Cates, Danny Kruger, and Paul Marshall’s son Winston (formerly of Mumford & Sons).
At ARC’s annual conference in London next month, Trump’s foot-soldiers with gather to plot their next crusade, and in the process they will once again expose one of the great paradoxes of the Brexit campaign.
Namely, for all their talk of securing Britain’s “independence”, the fiercest advocates of Brexit actually want to put our country in the service of a foreign power: the United States of America.
As Adam Bienkov has aptly pointed out, Brexiteers have been practically delirious in their attempts to fawn over Trump since his election victory in November. Some of them (e.g. Richard Littlejohn in the Daily Mail) have even gone so far as to encourage him to “buy” Britain.
And so we’re led to an inevitable yet depressing conclusion: the likes of Littlejohn, Farage, Marshall, and Truss are Trump’s useful idiots – and they’re willing to give up our political independence, and the independence of our European neighbours, to prove their obedience to the MAGA cause.
Why subscribe?
I’m an investigative journalist and current affairs writer who has worked with the New York Times, the Guardian, the Mirror, the New European, Novara Media, New Statesman, Led By Donkeys, and others.
I specialise in exposing dark money and radical right-wing ecosystems, and I’m probably best known for my stories revealing the billions in PPE contracts awarded to Tory friends and donors during the pandemic. I was the first journalist to expose the £100 million+ contracts awarded to Michelle Mone’s firm, PPE Medpro.
I’m listed by Carol Vorderman as a person to follow in her latest book, Now What?
Trump, Musk and Farage are on the march – followed closely by Badenoch and an increasingly radicalised Conservative Party. Investigative journalism exposing their funding sources, their plans, and their networks has never been more important.
Please subscribe and help me to continue this vital work.