Trump, Silicon Valley, and Europe’s Far-right

The change comes at an inflexion point for Europe. Ukraine is fighting Russia’s war with Europe. European countries are struggling with sluggish growth and competitiveness. European innovation faces stiff competition from China and the US. And now, US President Trump’s victory has emboldened leaders inside and outside the region who want to fundamentally rewrite the trajectory of the European project.

The Third Front

Trump’s re-election converges with Russia’s war on Ukraine. Both events pose a potentially existential threat to Europe—and taken together, they risk amplifying each other’s worst consequences. From the east, Russia’s imperialistic ambitions and desire to destroy Ukraine’s sovereignty and take the frontline further across the continent are a direct security threat. From the west, MAGA ideology is finding receptive audiences with Europe’s far-right populists. It is inspiring those leaders in Europe who see the EU as a cash cow rather than a European peace project and have no qualms about weakening the institutions that have preserved prosperity on the continent since World War II.

As the EU tries to double down on protecting liberal democracy, it is coming under direct fire from a third front: a group of radical libertarian tech billionaires and venture capitalists, and US Vice President JD Vance.

Europe’s far-right leaders have developed close relations with the tech billionaires and the MAGA wing of the Republican party. Trump name-checked Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán during the presidential debate in the campaign. Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has cultivated a friendship with Elon Musk and attended Trump’s inauguration. They all meet regularly at Conservative Political Action Conferences (CPAC). Initiated in the US, now events on both sides of the Atlantic gather far-right leaders to discuss topics like immigration and Christian values.

Not all European friends of MAGA are cut from the same cloth. Not all populist, far-right leaders subscribe to the MAGA ideology, nor do they have the same objectives for Europe. Some are supportive of Ukraine’s fight against Russia (Law and Order in Poland, the Finns Party in Finland), others are not (Freedom Party of Austria, Lega in Italy). The latter find natural affinity with the nationalist ‘America First’ foreign policy position of the second Trump administration.

What they broadly share, however, are ultra-conservative values: protecting traditional heteronormative families, reversing minority rights, and the perception of immigration as an existential threat to the nation and the west more broadly.

The Democratic Backsliding

The emergence of this transatlantic movement comes hand in hand with democratic backsliding in these leaders’ respective countries. How democracies die describes the process at the hands of elected officials, who “slowly but steadily erode the political system, usually in the name of democracy.”

Orbán is considered the most successful modern populist and an emblem of how to come and remain in power by the Trump administration. Within months of being re-elected in 2010, Viktor Orbán reduced legislative and judicial constraints on the executive branch. A few years later, he bought most media outlets through closely managed associates and replaced judges with those friendly to his regime. He has consistently attacked minority and LGBTI rights. The state capture was orchestrated hand-in-hand with the civic circles movement, a set of civil society groups that advance illiberal democratic objectives and have helped Orbán keep winning the elections since 2010.

This playbook is now being replicated elsewhere in Europe, most obviously in Italy. Easily overlooked as a far-right leader, Giorgia Meloni has presented herself as a pragmatic politician, respected among her peers. She is European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s go-to ally on immigration management. She walked back from her pro-Russian, anti-NATO, anti-EU positions when she came to power, and has since aligned with the rest of the EU on support for Ukraine and measures taken against Russia.

Yet, as Natalie Tocci eloquently put it, emboldened by Trump’s re-election, Meloni has since tacked right on foreign policy, including Ukraine. Domestically, too, it is clear she is deploying Orbán’s playbook. She has undermined the judiciary by criticising rulings against her plan to send asylum seekers to Albania. She is trying to pass constitutional reform which would give more power to the prime minister. Her government has attacked women’s rights by supporting a measure facilitating anti-abortion groups’ access to family counselling centres and LGBTI rights by making it harder for same-sex couples to register the birth of children.

In the US, some of these actions are being replicated by Trump. Less than 4 months in power, and he is already moving towards amassing unconstrained executive power.

Silicon Valley’s MAGA Wing

For Europe, perhaps almost as important as the man in the White House himself are his supporters in Silicon Valley. The financial support from radical libertarian tech billionaires and venture capitalists, like Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen, and David Sacks, was a key driver of Trump’s return to office and helped convince him to take Vance—formerly one of their own—as a running mate. Musk went as far as to create his own political action committee (PAC) to bankroll Trump’s campaign, which spent around $200 million and behaved in ways wildly out of kilter with democratic norms, such as offering cash incentives to voters in swing states to sign a petition in support of free speech and the right to bear arms.

Supporting a candidate for their beliefs is not new in politics, of course. During the 2022 mid-term elections, libertarian Peter Thiel—who previously said he no longer believed democracy to be compatible with freedom—gave almost $30 million to Republican candidates. This was dwarfed by the $128 million donated to Democrats in the same races by philanthropist George Soros.

What sets this particular moment apart, though, is the support for undemocratic candidates through democratic processes. In 2022, Thiel specifically supported candidates who denied the 2020 presidential election result—including Vance, resulting in his ascent to the Senate.

Musk and the European Far-right

While the majority of the Silicon Valley MAGA crowd may not care much about Europe, one among their ranks does. So far, Musk has been leading the charge on advocating for—and providing support to—far-right parties in Europe. Most notably, he hosted a live conversation on X with Alice Weidel, co-chair of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, weeks before the German federal elections. He called her the “leading candidate to run Germany” and the AfD the only party that could save the country. Musk also expressed support for British far-right activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, better known as Tommy Robinson, and Romanian presidential candidate Călin Georgescu.

Since his $44 billion acquisition of X, formerly Twitter, teams set up to tackle misinformation on the platform have been stood down, and observers have noted a significant shift in the prominence of far-right content.

Politics is one aspect, but there are also business interests at the heart of it. While platforming far-right leaders is highly visible, a more fundamental issue is Big Tech’s (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft) concern over EU regulation. In particular, the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which is in part aimed at curbing mis- and disinformation on social media platforms—a regulation Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg referred to as “institutionalising censorship.” The DSA, and in particular its Code of Conduct on Disinformation, is disliked by tech companies for the resources needed to comply with the regulation and the heavy fines when in violation. According to Trump, this is “overseas extortion,” and Vance believes it’s an assault on freedom of speech.

Yet the proliferation of disinformation and foreign interference online is considered a “fundamental threat to European values,” as Chatham House colleagues recently argued, and a threat to European liberal democracy. The prolific use of social media by European far-right figures, amplified by Musk, and foreign actors interfering in European affairs through the spread of misinformation pose a significant challenge for social media companies.

For now, Musk’s verbal support for the AfD had little impact on determining the German parliamentary election outcome. But it has sparked concern across Europe. In the UK, rumours of a substantial financial donation by Musk to Reform UK have triggered politicians to consider stricter limits on donations by foreign entities.

Campaign finance rules differ among European countries, and yet again for European Parliamentary elections. For the latter, contributions made to political parties, or their foundations, are restricted to €18 000 per year per donor—miniscule compared to practices in the US. In the most recent European Parliamentary elections, Big Tech primarily supported the liberal faction.

However, the inconsistencies of rules and possibilities for foreign actors to exploit loopholes in laws expose European countries to serious foreign electoral interference should Musk, or other Silicon Valley MAGA-ers, decide to throw their financial weight behind undemocratic candidates in the same way they have in the US.

The Impact on Security Policy

As the rules of the transatlantic partnership are being re-written, so is the security contract between the US and Europe. Trump has made it abundantly clear that he wants to weaken and undermine European security and prosperity—starting with the EU but certainly not ending there. The imposition of tariffs and opening negotiations with Putin over the war in Ukraine, without consulting Ukrainians or Europeans first, shows this much.

There are significant gaps between the politics and policy of the Trump administration and the European far-right. The EU countries with the biggest trade surplus with the US are Germany, Ireland, and Italy—both German and Italian far-right leaders are choosing to align with Trump and Vance. On defence too, Trump’s closest European allies do not all reach the 2% of GDP spending target, and most are very far from reaching 5%, which Trump has called for.

But perhaps the biggest potential risk to Europe is the impact of unity on security policy. Orbán has never pretended to support Ukraine, and he is joined by Robert Fico in Slovakia. Italy is beginning to waver. In Germany, anti-war far left and far-right parties did unprecedently well in the most recent parliamentary elections. In Romania and the Czech Republic, there’s a risk of pro-Russian politicians coming to power this year. Rassemblement National, Marine Le Pen’s party and a major force in the French parliament, has historically been close to Putin’s associates.

While each politician, party, and country have their own political dynamics at play, the cumulative impact is one where the EU’s united position on Ukraine is beginning to waver—a double win for Trump’s ‘America First’ objectives of retracting support for Kyiv and undermining the EU.

Opportunism or Ideology?

The security dimension, coupled with the Big Tech element, presents European leaders with a multifaceted problem. Big Tech’s objectives vis-à-vis Europe are not necessarily the same as Silicon Valley’s MAGA wing—it is unclear whether the latter even has a view on Europe at all, beyond Musk, who has been peculiarly vocal in his support for a global right-wing libertarian movement. Big Tech may look to opportunistically reduce the regulatory burden and has taken an increasingly belligerent stance towards the European Commission since Trump’s re-election. Yet Europe remains a critical market for US technology, and growing calls for European tech sovereignty will raise eyebrows in Silicon Valley boardrooms.

The question that remains unanswered is the extent to which ideology drives the Trump administration’s policy decisions. While Vance has in the past been critical of Big Tech and the monopolies they espouse—he has already connected US support to NATO to the EU’s approach to regulating X.

More broadly, however, as Vance’s and Silicon Valley’s MAGA views converge, they will increasingly seek to bring about a transatlantic cultural revolution based on nativist values, with a secondary objective of fragmenting and perhaps even destroying the EU institutions. This matters because it will attempt to chip away at Europe’s liberal democracies, which not only the EU institutions but also NATO help protect and safeguard.

The Response

This multipronged assault requires a comprehensive response. The first is to ensure watertight campaign finance laws. Within the EU, this is done at the member state level, which means there are significant differences among the EU27. The European Parliament could, however, propose a minimum baseline for member states to prevent foreign interference through campaign donations in elections.

The second, as analysts from the European Policy Centre wrote recently, is for the EU to double down on tech regulation and digital protection—to shield European consumers from hate speech and mis- and disinformation, which ultimately threaten European democracy and electoral integrity. European decision-makers concerned about the influence of Chinese digital platforms on European democracy should seriously consider the risk that US platforms may present similar dilemmas.

The third is to strengthen Europe’s democratic institutions. As lessons from Hungary and Poland show, it does not take much for illiberal leaders to plunge their respective countries into democratic backsliding once they have grasped the reins. What this looks like in practice will vary country by country, but special attention should be paid to fireproofing an independent judiciary and ensuring free and independent media can thrive in difficult circumstances.

Finally, security. The lack of consistency from the Trump administration on the re-writing of the security contract between the US and Europe leaves European governments scrambling to decipher and respond to an erratic presidency, at a time when Europe’s security is directly threatened. The Commission, in particular, has levers it can use to ensure EU member states fall into line—but as has been demonstrated with Hungary, they are not always effective. In the short term, the coalition of the willing is Ukraine’s best bet for military and financial support. In the medium- to longer term, however, these ad hoc arrangements need to become institutionalised (likely best through NATO).

Equally importantly, a new European security contract needs to be negotiated with the US and phased in through a transition period. The US needs to acquiesce to Europe boosting its ability to defend itself by building its defence industrial base. Clarity and consistency are needed from the US administration on the security umbrella and conventional commitments to Europe.

More broadly, Europe as a whole faces a rocky road ahead. At its core, the new transatlantic partnership is deeply sceptical of the EU’s values and purpose. The convergence between Silicon Valley’s MAGA wing and European far-right politicians poses an existential threat to the EU. Those outside the EU will need to play a very careful balancing act while facing similar threats to their democracies and democratic institutions. As they say in America, we’d better buckle up.