Technocratic and Europeanist centrism has been broken down for years, intellectually and politically. Now confined to a small elite circle, it no longer arouses the enthusiasm or the promise of progress that it once held in the eyes of some. In recent months, its spokespersons from all countries have found a new vocation in the “resistance” against Donald Trump. Those who only yesterday viewed sovereignty and patriotism with suspicion are now draping themselves in it to mark their independence from the United States, widening the border between the “two Wests”, according to the formula of Mathieu Bock-Côté. Last week, Gabriel Attal therefore proposed that France build the “United States of Europe” to avoid becoming the 51st American state.
On the occasion of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s visit to the European Parliament, Ursula von der Leyen also took the opportunity to announce with great fanfare that she was inviting Canada to become the first “associated member” state of the EU. She seems to have found in the former governor of the Bank of England, an outspoken opponent of Brexit at the time, a kindred spirit across the Atlantic. Thus, the “resistance” to American Trumpism, and to populism in the broad sense, becomes for Europeanists a battle of civilization in which they imagine themselves in the role of defenders of the true West, whose deep nature would be found in a technocratic liberalism going beyond the nation-state.
This is a strange reversal of roles, which is reminiscent of the words of Frédéric Martel in his book Occidents: Investigating Our Enemies, which classifies among the said enemies, in an undifferentiated manner the “hyper-Westerners” of the national right and the “anti-Westerners” like the China of Xi Jinping. Critics of the decline of the West, who want a revival, are thus assimilated to those who wish to see its fall, in a form of reasoning that claims to be above the fray. In reality, it only defends policies which have allowed and accelerated the loss of identity and sovereignty of European nations: more supranational integration, less democracy, fewer borders.
Let us not forget that those who are puffing out their chests in the face of the Americans today are those who pushed to reduce the powers of the national parliaments of Europe and who have given up trying to control migratory flows for almost ten years now. In Canada, the Liberal Party, before Mark Carney replaced Justin Trudeau, described the country as the “first postnational state” and preferred to celebrate the thesis of “systemic racism” than the history of its country. The fact that they criticize the United States does not make them defenders of their nations, nor of what makes the West special. These new “postnational patriots” seem to believe that a political-institutional apparatus or often distorted abstract principles, like human rights, are sufficient to define a civilization.
The excesses of American power arouse real opposition abroad
However, we cannot separate the institutions and values that make up our civilization today from the peoples, languages, cultures and the Judeo-Christian base on which they were historically built. This is precisely why populism will not disappear as long as European elites persevere in a project which goes against national belonging, predominant among the vast majority of Europeans, and their democratically expressed preferences for strong borders and their cultural continuity. No amount of bravado towards the Americans will be able to appease these existential demands which have been expressed in Europe for decades now.
These developments should, however, give pause to the European right, because the excesses of American power are arousing real opposition abroad, having probably cost the victory of the Canadian and Australian right last year. It is not because she can agree with American Republicans, on wokism or immigration for example, that she must refrain from marking her differences when necessary, or from asserting the sovereignty of her own people in the face of the specter of a new American imperialism. If resisting Washington does not imply submitting to Brussels, the opposite is also true. As the presidential election approaches, the national right will have to walk this tightrope to win the favor of the French.
