As a UK citizen, it's interesting to think back to Barack Obama's attempt to convince the country not to vote for Brexit (saying the UK would "go to the back of the line" for future trade deal negotiations).
I think the real difference now, isn't so much that the US is applying more pressure on european politics, but that it's politics is so much further away from most european countries than even five years ago.
The importance of trading blocks (as in Obama's example) is a pretty standard view. The support for antidemocratic strongmen (with Vance's support of Orban) is a lot less, even now.
Vance's support of Orbán; Musk's support of Reform, AfD, and other far-right parties across Europe; Thiel's shadow interference through his "gatherings" with other countries' elites while being explicitly anti-democracy. Many other oligarchs are likely involved with different levels of visibility and effort for this push, I wouldn't be surprised if Zuck is part of it by providing the machinery of social media while keeping a safe distance from the more overt acts.
It's a whole concerted effort by many figures in the US political landscape (in this I include moneyed elites) to tear down democratic pillars of European countries.
The USA already had massive issues with corporate power in politics, the Trump admin just made the merge of state and corporate interests even deeper and more overt. The pressure has only been building up the past 10 years, the Biden years were a short respite of a movement ongoing for longer.
Unfortunately we will only see how this ship continues to sail after the US's midterms, it will be the defining moment to see if American society can find ways to right the ship or if it's going to be cement the plunge into the abyss...
> As a UK citizen, it's interesting to think back to Barack Obama's attempt to convince the country not to vote for Brexit (saying the UK would "go to the back of the line" for future trade deal negotiations).
As an European citizen, the whole Brexit thing was rather obviously fueled by a massive state-sponsored disinformation campaign aimed at destabilizing the UK in particular and the EU in general.
> I think the real difference now, isn't so much that the US is applying more pressure on european politics, but that it's politics is so much further away from most european countries than even five years ago.
No,the difference is not in mere political misalignments.
You have both US governments and US oligarchs openly pushing and directly promoting fascist and extremist political parties, while at the same time threatening with annexation and military interventions.
> You have both US governments and US oligarchs openly pushing and directly promoting fascist and extremist political parties, while at the same time threatening with annexation and military interventions.
I think the first part of this is political alignment right? What are "fascist and extremist political parties" is not politics with a very different alignment?
I think your second point is a really good one though, the Barack Obama and J D Vance examples are both soft power usage. But in the case of Vance, it comes alongside a state using military force to bully its way through issues, that's a very significant context difference I didn't really acknowledge earlier.
> I think the first part of this is political alignment right?
No, no it's not a mere misalignment. Opposing fascism supported on dehumanizing policies such as racial supremacy is not a mere difference in opinion, as is pushes to invade and annex other countries.
WW2 wasn't fought because people happened to disagree. The problem with Nazi Germany and imperial Japan was not a whimsical difference of opinion. Let's not pretend that the US is any different.
> Opposing fascism supported on dehumanizing policies such as racial supremacy is not a mere difference in opinion, as is pushes to invade and annex other countries.
I'm not sure, I'd say two things:
- I think "mere difference of opinion" suggests disagreements can't be on serious issues, as if there's something trivial about "x things racism is acceptable a y doesn't". I don't know that I'd agree? Differences in opinion can be on major issues and are important.
- Pushing to invade and annex countries is a real thing, which I said in my comment above, I don't know that interferences like Vance in Hungary are pushing to invade countries though? Other things the US doss might be, but I'm not sure it comes into play here?
From a technical voter fraud perspective, paper ballots remain the answer.
From a propaganda perspective, things are probably more complicated. I imagine some European democracies are more easily influenced than others. And when the EU itself is on an authoritarian bender, it's hard to see how foreign meddling could make things much worse.
More transparency into party funding might be a good place to start. That's something that seems pretty vague at least here in BE. More direct representation would also be pretty sweet, but that might be asking for too much...
> This is business as usual. It's just now they are shilling different political parties than before.
A fascist US transitioning to a full dictatorship is not business as usual. Europe lived through something similar, and learned some lessons that so far hasn't forgotten.
The US is certainly far closer to so called ‘illiberal democracy’ (ie., not a democracy, but maintains some of the aesthetic of democracy) than it used to be. It probably hasn’t entirely tipped over the precipice yet, but it’s extremely naive to think that the current situation is anything like business as usual.
Hm, why don't we ask people who know what they're talking about? How about, idk, Yale professors that focus on fascism and its rise? Surely they'd be able to give us an informed opinion?
What's that? They've decided to leave the country? Huh.
They have a personal grudge against Trump since he cut their funding and they can no longer take money from the government for spreading leftist ideology.
When you call studying the rise of fascism and trying to prevent it "leftist ideology" and then try to prevent that whole line of inquiry, I think that kind of proves my point, no?
And yes, no shit, they don't like the guy who is doing the fascist things, that's kind of the whole focus of their study.
I think they would have to get a lot _better_ at it for it to be a major concern, honestly. See Vance and Orban; if anything that probably hurt Orban. Like, thus far, American attempts seem _extremely_ crude relative to Russian ones.
This is one of those topics that annoys me, because the reporting on it is always “how dare they!” and never a realpolitik explanation of how states attempt to interfere with each other’s power-selection mechanisms.
It seems pretty obvious that every great power attempts to influence other states. The more interesting question is: when is this acceptable? To what degree?
Is a leader commenting on an election fine, but actually committing funds toward NGOs too much? Is it completely acceptable for certain political ideologies but not for others, i.e., it’s okay for me to interfere with you, but not for you to interfere with me. Is it acceptable against adversaries but not amongst allies?
(This last one is probably the real question RE: the US and EU.)
It’s a complex geopolitical question. And no matter which answer you give, there will be examples that make you uncomfortable and willing to break your own rule.
Every major power dislikes election interference until it's strategically useful. The surprise isn't that countries try to influence each other. The surprise is that anyone still treats it as exceptional.
So, business as usual? The mighty have always influenced the less powerful. The US has just as much incentive to influence European elections, as do Russia or China. It's not surprising that they act on these incentives.
Yeah, if this is the effect that attempted US influence has, then have at it!
Having said that, it is frustratingly amusing seeing the US going overt with its extra-territorial electoral interference with their recent history of being incredibly sensitive and defensive about other countries attempts at influencing US elections.
> with their recent history of being incredibly sensitive and defensive about other countries attempts at influencing US elections.
That was always the play. You say the things you would do if you were in your political opponents shoes, you talk about how bad it is, how horrible and wrong. And then, if you can manage to get enough political or monied support, you do the thing you said they were doing! After all, they did the thing first, right? It's just fair play, you say.
That definitely seemed to be the case in Australia, but where it's possibly started moving the other way is that a smaller, more conservative (I don't like these political terms, it's not exactly correct but it gets the point across, I think) party than the main conservative party, appears to have taken the main 'conservative party' crown.
There was a good couple of months of mainstream media even touting that they're a threat to the left/progressive/less-conservative party currently in power who won the last election in no uncertain terms (maybe possibly a landslide...?).
It's hard to get a real gauge on it, but there's a very vocal minority that has been emboldened by Trump's anti-immigration, easy answers, point at 'other' as the cause of all the problems plaguing society rhetoric and actions, such that the 'more conservative' are at least getting more airtime, which makes it seem as if they're a "growing base". I know some people who have started talking a bit more openly in this direction.
> After all, Elon Musk, the American tycoon who owns X and Tesla and is a former adviser to President Trump on public spending, personally campaigned to support the far-right AfD party in the German elections.
The USA is supporting the same parties that they had to fight in WWII. I would think that repeating the same mistakes from the past and expecting different results is not a sane approach to politics.
A lot of people are fed up with uncontrolled migration and are drifting to parties that promise this to stop or be reverted. No need of US interference to explain it. And they choose democratic way to try and reverse it
Of course there are. But how many people were brainwashed by Fox News in the US, various tabloids in the UK, the Bolloré media empire in France, etc. ?
My guess is it's there huge majority of them. Like in any part of the world, take some unhappy people (mostly poor but not only), you have a very fertile ground for your readymade enemy stories.
Just last week in Europe we had - Islamist ramming a vehicle in pride parade in Berlin and Islamist stabbing in France - in which three women were seriously hurt.
Do you claim that those didn't happen, were exaggerated or invented out of thin air from the media to brainwash the hoi polloi?
This is such a lazy comment. How is the EU changing? How is it changing to be closer to which part of South America? South America is changing so do you mean how it was or are they converging? The EU has expanded in the last 40 years but I don't imagine that's what you mean.
Basically, losing any sense of autonomy and becoming US's hinterland. It has moved a lot in this direction from an economic and geopolitical PoV over the past 40 years, now we're seeing the electoral process being subverted by American interests.
Western Europe was much more integrated with the US during the Cold War than it was at any time after 1990 (just as Eastern Europe was thightly integrated with the USSR), and that process of disentanglement with the US has accelerated dramatically once the US decided to start the process of turning itself into a fascist autocracy (its quite similar with Eastern Europe disentangling from the post-USSR actually, just that Western Europe is about 30 years late to the party).
> Western Europe was much more integrated with the US during the Cold War than it was at any time after 1990
Not quite. For instance no European countries got involved in Vietnam like they did in Iraq (twice) and Afghanistan, and France had left Nato integrated command in the 60s, only to join again in 2009.
I suspect that this was less about helping the US, but rather about gathering at least a bit of battlefield experience for the various European armies that took part, since at that time the thought was that the Cold War armies prepared for a type of warfare that would never happen again after the Cold War was "won" (and thus also the massive demilitarization of the 1990s).
Also quite famously, Germany gave the middle finger to the US when it wanted to pull allies into 3rd Gulf War with that made up Iraqi WMD claim (and we also weren't partaking in the 2nd Gulf War before - apparently we paid $10 billion in financial support and some non-combat roles).
But yeah, Afghanistan was a pointless endeavour all around, and we shouldn't have joined there either.
As a UK citizen, it's interesting to think back to Barack Obama's attempt to convince the country not to vote for Brexit (saying the UK would "go to the back of the line" for future trade deal negotiations).
I think the real difference now, isn't so much that the US is applying more pressure on european politics, but that it's politics is so much further away from most european countries than even five years ago.
The importance of trading blocks (as in Obama's example) is a pretty standard view. The support for antidemocratic strongmen (with Vance's support of Orban) is a lot less, even now.
"good interference" vs "bad interference"
this is a ludicrous argument in general. having people, even in power, give their opinion like musk or obama is not "interference"
stop trying censoring opinions you don't like.
if it's through funding or other way of intereferece like ngo, just ban it yes
> with Vance's support of Orban
Tbh, if that always plays out like it did in this case I'm all for US interference in EU elections ;)
Vance's support of Orbán; Musk's support of Reform, AfD, and other far-right parties across Europe; Thiel's shadow interference through his "gatherings" with other countries' elites while being explicitly anti-democracy. Many other oligarchs are likely involved with different levels of visibility and effort for this push, I wouldn't be surprised if Zuck is part of it by providing the machinery of social media while keeping a safe distance from the more overt acts.
It's a whole concerted effort by many figures in the US political landscape (in this I include moneyed elites) to tear down democratic pillars of European countries.
The USA already had massive issues with corporate power in politics, the Trump admin just made the merge of state and corporate interests even deeper and more overt. The pressure has only been building up the past 10 years, the Biden years were a short respite of a movement ongoing for longer.
Unfortunately we will only see how this ship continues to sail after the US's midterms, it will be the defining moment to see if American society can find ways to right the ship or if it's going to be cement the plunge into the abyss...
Also, recent: "Trump administration to fund Maga-aligned projects in Europe as he reorders US aid, FT reports" https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/trump-adminis...
> As a UK citizen, it's interesting to think back to Barack Obama's attempt to convince the country not to vote for Brexit (saying the UK would "go to the back of the line" for future trade deal negotiations).
As an European citizen, the whole Brexit thing was rather obviously fueled by a massive state-sponsored disinformation campaign aimed at destabilizing the UK in particular and the EU in general.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_20...
No wonder that anyone not aligned with said state actors would voice concerns about the whole sad state of affairs.
> I think the real difference now, isn't so much that the US is applying more pressure on european politics, but that it's politics is so much further away from most european countries than even five years ago.
No,the difference is not in mere political misalignments.
You have both US governments and US oligarchs openly pushing and directly promoting fascist and extremist political parties, while at the same time threatening with annexation and military interventions.
> You have both US governments and US oligarchs openly pushing and directly promoting fascist and extremist political parties, while at the same time threatening with annexation and military interventions.
I think the first part of this is political alignment right? What are "fascist and extremist political parties" is not politics with a very different alignment?
I think your second point is a really good one though, the Barack Obama and J D Vance examples are both soft power usage. But in the case of Vance, it comes alongside a state using military force to bully its way through issues, that's a very significant context difference I didn't really acknowledge earlier.
> I think the first part of this is political alignment right?
No, no it's not a mere misalignment. Opposing fascism supported on dehumanizing policies such as racial supremacy is not a mere difference in opinion, as is pushes to invade and annex other countries.
WW2 wasn't fought because people happened to disagree. The problem with Nazi Germany and imperial Japan was not a whimsical difference of opinion. Let's not pretend that the US is any different.
> Opposing fascism supported on dehumanizing policies such as racial supremacy is not a mere difference in opinion, as is pushes to invade and annex other countries.
I'm not sure, I'd say two things:
- I think "mere difference of opinion" suggests disagreements can't be on serious issues, as if there's something trivial about "x things racism is acceptable a y doesn't". I don't know that I'd agree? Differences in opinion can be on major issues and are important. - Pushing to invade and annex countries is a real thing, which I said in my comment above, I don't know that interferences like Vance in Hungary are pushing to invade countries though? Other things the US doss might be, but I'm not sure it comes into play here?
From a technical voter fraud perspective, paper ballots remain the answer.
From a propaganda perspective, things are probably more complicated. I imagine some European democracies are more easily influenced than others. And when the EU itself is on an authoritarian bender, it's hard to see how foreign meddling could make things much worse.
More transparency into party funding might be a good place to start. That's something that seems pretty vague at least here in BE. More direct representation would also be pretty sweet, but that might be asking for too much...
This is business as usual. It's just now they are shilling different political parties than before.
> This is business as usual. It's just now they are shilling different political parties than before.
A fascist US transitioning to a full dictatorship is not business as usual. Europe lived through something similar, and learned some lessons that so far hasn't forgotten.
The US is nowhere near fascism or directorship. People always exaggerate when someone other than a spineless neoliberal is elected.
The US is certainly far closer to so called ‘illiberal democracy’ (ie., not a democracy, but maintains some of the aesthetic of democracy) than it used to be. It probably hasn’t entirely tipped over the precipice yet, but it’s extremely naive to think that the current situation is anything like business as usual.
Hm, why don't we ask people who know what they're talking about? How about, idk, Yale professors that focus on fascism and its rise? Surely they'd be able to give us an informed opinion?
What's that? They've decided to leave the country? Huh.
https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000010157022/yale-c...
They have a personal grudge against Trump since he cut their funding and they can no longer take money from the government for spreading leftist ideology.
When you call studying the rise of fascism and trying to prevent it "leftist ideology" and then try to prevent that whole line of inquiry, I think that kind of proves my point, no?
And yes, no shit, they don't like the guy who is doing the fascist things, that's kind of the whole focus of their study.
I think they would have to get a lot _better_ at it for it to be a major concern, honestly. See Vance and Orban; if anything that probably hurt Orban. Like, thus far, American attempts seem _extremely_ crude relative to Russian ones.
This is one of those topics that annoys me, because the reporting on it is always “how dare they!” and never a realpolitik explanation of how states attempt to interfere with each other’s power-selection mechanisms.
It seems pretty obvious that every great power attempts to influence other states. The more interesting question is: when is this acceptable? To what degree?
Is a leader commenting on an election fine, but actually committing funds toward NGOs too much? Is it completely acceptable for certain political ideologies but not for others, i.e., it’s okay for me to interfere with you, but not for you to interfere with me. Is it acceptable against adversaries but not amongst allies?
(This last one is probably the real question RE: the US and EU.)
It’s a complex geopolitical question. And no matter which answer you give, there will be examples that make you uncomfortable and willing to break your own rule.
Every major power dislikes election interference until it's strategically useful. The surprise isn't that countries try to influence each other. The surprise is that anyone still treats it as exceptional.
So, business as usual? The mighty have always influenced the less powerful. The US has just as much incentive to influence European elections, as do Russia or China. It's not surprising that they act on these incentives.
> US Vice-President J.D. Vance urged Hungarians to vote for the outgoing prime minister, Viktor Orbán,
Hungarians voted Orbán in, but they also voted him out even with Vance influence.
Yeah, if this is the effect that attempted US influence has, then have at it!
Having said that, it is frustratingly amusing seeing the US going overt with its extra-territorial electoral interference with their recent history of being incredibly sensitive and defensive about other countries attempts at influencing US elections.
Rules for thee moment
> with their recent history of being incredibly sensitive and defensive about other countries attempts at influencing US elections.
That was always the play. You say the things you would do if you were in your political opponents shoes, you talk about how bad it is, how horrible and wrong. And then, if you can manage to get enough political or monied support, you do the thing you said they were doing! After all, they did the thing first, right? It's just fair play, you say.
Canada and Australia election results away from conservatives are result of US "influence"
That definitely seemed to be the case in Australia, but where it's possibly started moving the other way is that a smaller, more conservative (I don't like these political terms, it's not exactly correct but it gets the point across, I think) party than the main conservative party, appears to have taken the main 'conservative party' crown.
There was a good couple of months of mainstream media even touting that they're a threat to the left/progressive/less-conservative party currently in power who won the last election in no uncertain terms (maybe possibly a landslide...?).
It's hard to get a real gauge on it, but there's a very vocal minority that has been emboldened by Trump's anti-immigration, easy answers, point at 'other' as the cause of all the problems plaguing society rhetoric and actions, such that the 'more conservative' are at least getting more airtime, which makes it seem as if they're a "growing base". I know some people who have started talking a bit more openly in this direction.
The only real way to judge is an actual election.
Thankfully, they don't realize how odious they are to anyone not stuck in their cult already.
> After all, Elon Musk, the American tycoon who owns X and Tesla and is a former adviser to President Trump on public spending, personally campaigned to support the far-right AfD party in the German elections.
The USA is supporting the same parties that they had to fight in WWII. I would think that repeating the same mistakes from the past and expecting different results is not a sane approach to politics.
Finally
The headline makes me chuckle.
A lot of people are fed up with uncontrolled migration and are drifting to parties that promise this to stop or be reverted. No need of US interference to explain it. And they choose democratic way to try and reverse it
They are driven by conservative media explaining to them the enemy is the other (brown, or trans, or plain woman) instead of the ruling class.
You can't imagine any situation where the people are seeing this for themselves? It must be that they're brainwashed by conservative media?
Of course there are. But how many people were brainwashed by Fox News in the US, various tabloids in the UK, the Bolloré media empire in France, etc. ? My guess is it's there huge majority of them. Like in any part of the world, take some unhappy people (mostly poor but not only), you have a very fertile ground for your readymade enemy stories.
Just last week in Europe we had - Islamist ramming a vehicle in pride parade in Berlin and Islamist stabbing in France - in which three women were seriously hurt.
Do you claim that those didn't happen, were exaggerated or invented out of thin air from the media to brainwash the hoi polloi?
Those hateful islamists are the same easily influenced poor sods from the other side of the sea, converted by other kinds of right-wing opportunists
They should. Election Interference is their chief export.
At least they’re allowing their colonies to have elections
Aaaand flagged.
[flagged]
It is when someone who has no say, has a say.
Election interference is when others interfere in our democratic processes.
Of course the outcome would be something we don't like, they don't do it out of the goodness of their hearts or because they want the best for us.
>now
Completely unserious continent.
UK Labour party had activists in the US encouraging people to vote for the Democrats in 2024. This isn't unique to the US.
I've been talking about how the EU was slowly turning into South America for the past 40 years, so this is just the next step in this direction.
This is such a lazy comment. How is the EU changing? How is it changing to be closer to which part of South America? South America is changing so do you mean how it was or are they converging? The EU has expanded in the last 40 years but I don't imagine that's what you mean.
What do you mean?
Basically, losing any sense of autonomy and becoming US's hinterland. It has moved a lot in this direction from an economic and geopolitical PoV over the past 40 years, now we're seeing the electoral process being subverted by American interests.
Western Europe was much more integrated with the US during the Cold War than it was at any time after 1990 (just as Eastern Europe was thightly integrated with the USSR), and that process of disentanglement with the US has accelerated dramatically once the US decided to start the process of turning itself into a fascist autocracy (its quite similar with Eastern Europe disentangling from the post-USSR actually, just that Western Europe is about 30 years late to the party).
> Western Europe was much more integrated with the US during the Cold War than it was at any time after 1990
Not quite. For instance no European countries got involved in Vietnam like they did in Iraq (twice) and Afghanistan, and France had left Nato integrated command in the 60s, only to join again in 2009.
I suspect that this was less about helping the US, but rather about gathering at least a bit of battlefield experience for the various European armies that took part, since at that time the thought was that the Cold War armies prepared for a type of warfare that would never happen again after the Cold War was "won" (and thus also the massive demilitarization of the 1990s).
Also quite famously, Germany gave the middle finger to the US when it wanted to pull allies into 3rd Gulf War with that made up Iraqi WMD claim (and we also weren't partaking in the 2nd Gulf War before - apparently we paid $10 billion in financial support and some non-combat roles).
But yeah, Afghanistan was a pointless endeavour all around, and we shouldn't have joined there either.