Since the violent attack launched against European democracies by US Vice President JD Vance in Munich on February 14, there is no more doubt. The denunciation of NATO, the abandonment of Ukraine in favor of Russia and the choice of Vladimir Putin over Volodymyr Zelensky, are coupled with a political offensive against the rule of law, on which peace and the construction of Europe have rested since the victory over Nazism. By stating that he was more "worried" about the "threat from within" Europe than from Russia or China, Vance has astonishingly established the US as Europe's new adversary, not only in economic and geostrategic matters, but now also in political and ideological ones.
We must first expose the extreme hypocrisy of this lesson in democracy given by the number two in a Trump administration that has pardoned over 1,500 people convicted for the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, which was nothing less than a putsch against American democracy. We must also point out the insincerity of the lessons in tolerance given by a leader at war with all counter-powers in his own country, his lessons in pluralism while a hunt for non-subservient media is underway in the US and journalists from the Associated Press (AP) news agency are banned from the White House under the pretext that they continue to talk about the "Gulf of Mexico" which the president has decided to rename the "Gulf of America."
How can one fail to see that his criticism of alleged European infringements of freedom of expression hides the defense of the social media business model of his billionaire friends, who, by promoting confrontation and fake news, by spreading hatred, hinder informed debates and undermine democracy? How can one fail to see that underneath his conception of unlimited "free speech" lies the promotion of a far-right ideology eager to substitute the law of the strongest for policies in defense of social rights, women and other victims of discrimination?
Wake up call
By constantly pitting the "will of the people" against the institutions, political leaders, laws and judges in charge of enforcing them, and by calling for the lifting of the "firewall" that keeps the far-right out of power in Germany, Vance explicitly promotes the nationalist, populist and authoritarian parties at war with the rule of law on the Old Continent. His contempt for moderate parties is part of Trump's desire to divide and weaken a Europe built on law in order to impose, under the pretext of defending freedom, his transactional model based on force.
Faced with these unprecedented attacks, Europeans urgently need to shake their stupor off. Experience of History's tragedies has taught them to value individual freedoms, in particular freedom of expression, tempered only by the criminalization of defamation and incitement to hatred, violence, or discrimination. This model, the guarantor of our liberal democracies, must be defended. We must face the facts: Trump's US is no longer a protection but a threat to democracy in Europe. JD Vance's speech in Munich, mixing security blackmail and political pressure, rang out a new existential alarm bell for Europeans.