English author Michael Rosen’s 2014 poem is pertinent to our times. It is worth quoting:

“Fascism arrives as your friend. It will restore your honour, make you feel proud, protect your house, give you a job, clean up the neighbourhood, remind you of how great you were, clear out the venal and the corrupt. remove anything you feel is unlike you… It doesn’t walk in saying, ‘Our programme means militias, mass imprisonments, transportations, war and persecution.’ ”

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US vice president, JD Vance (he of the “childless cat ladies” fame, a remark that drew an instant rebuke from Jennifer Anniston), delivered a blistering speech at the Munich Security Conference, eviscerating the Europeans for not listening to their voters and for being afraid of them. Munich holds special significance. Adolf Hitler was born and raised in Austria, right across the border from Munich, where he spent ample time as a young man. Vance refused to meet German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Germany but he met with Alice Weidel. Who is Alice Weidel? Weidel is the face of the far-right in Germany. She leads the neo-Nazi party, Alliance for Democracy (AfD).

In November 2023, with many Nazi motifs, a secret plan was hatched near Berlin not just to deport non-Germans from Germany but also all “unassimilated” German citizens. The criteria for judging assimilation was not specified, but it would have probably meant those who were not white and Christian and/or did not speak fluent German. The meeting was conducted with the utmost secrecy. Roland Hartwig, personal aide to Weidel and an MP, was present. He is widely seen as the general-secretary of the party and claimed to represent AfD’s board at the meeting. Weidel is just 49 and leads a party that is polling second in Germany, at 24 per cent. She certainly seems to listen to her voters.The AfD makes no bones about the fact that it is racist. In a hoarding displayed prominently in cities around the country, it says, “So Europe will not become Eurabia.”

It shows four dark-skinned Arabic men with headgear, with one of them inserting his hand inside the mouth of a naked (breasts shown clearly) white woman. So America now wants to align with the far-right in Europe. In France, there is Marine Le Pen. Le Pen wants to be president of France. Pushed by the far-right, France’s centrist president, Emmanuel Macron, has proposed a radically stringent immigration bill claiming white existential anxiety of white French people is at stake. The far-right in Europe is making ultra-rightists of Europe’s centrist politicians. Elon Musk has called German Chancellor Scholz a schizophrenic oaf and an incompetent fool.

Vance said that Europeans should not mind taking abuse from Musk because of the invectives that the US had to bear from Greta Thunberg for 10 years. But isn’t Thunberg trying to save the world from climate change? Who are Weidel, Le Pen, and Geert Wilders of the Netherlands saving? Wilders is now the kingmaker in Holland. Trump wants to welcome skilled workers on H-1B visas to America. Many students who go to America have to get the H-1B to work. But Wilders wants to limit the number of students entering his country. Of course, every western country has limits on the number of students it can take, but Wilders wants to slash the already existing limit in his country.

Europe’s lurch to the far-right is exacerbated by America’s lurch to the far-right. The Republican party was the party of Lincoln, the man who freed the slaves. Trump’s Republican party is nothing like the Republican party of old. Trump calls Klu Klux Klan members “good people” (after the KKK rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017). David Duke, a leading light of the Klan endorsed Trump when he first ran for president in 2016, an endorsement that Trump did not spurn. It’s amazing that one always thought that America was more welcoming to Third World immigrants than Europe, but now America is firmly in the hands of people (Trump, Vance and Musk) who align themselves with neo-Nazis.

Trump listened to his voters and won power in America. His approval rating currently is about 70 per cent. The non-Hispanic white population of America is about 65 per cent. Trump’s rating neatly dovetails the white population in America. Trump is trying to make America white again, just as Weidel, Le Pen, and Wilders want to make their respective countries white. Vance said that the enemy of Europe is not Russia, not China, but the liberal voices within, which must be quashed. The illiberal voices must be heard. In another time, in another place, in Germany, a man who could hear did precisely that.

(The writer is an expert on energy and contributes regularly to publications in India and overseas.)