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Vice-president JD Vance urged European leaders on Friday to end the isolation of far-right parties through the continent, an extraordinary embrace of a formerly curly political movement with which the Trump administration shares a common approach On migration, identity and discourse on the Internet.
The address amazed and reduced the hundreds of participants in the Munich Security Conference, a forum where politicians, diplomats and high -level analysts had gathered while waiting for President Trump’s plans to end the war in Ukraine and in Defense of Europe against a growing Russian threat.
The vice-president distinguished his German guests, telling them to drop their objections to work with a party that has often reveling with prohibited Nazi slogans and was rejected from the government accordingly. He did not mention the party, the alternative for Germany, or AFD, by name, but directly referred to the long -standing agreement of traditional German politicians to freeze the group, some parts of which have been officially classified as extremists by German information.
“There is no room for firewalls,” said Mr. Vance, bringing dressing in the room.
He punctuated the message by meeting on Friday with Alice Weidel, the AFD candidate for the Chancellor during this month elections, as well as other German leaders. In total, it was an unusual intervention in the internal policy of an American democratic ally.
The vice-president offered what could be an overview under Mr. Trump of a redefinition of a transatlantic relationship built on post-war stability between allied governments. Mr. Vance aggressively disputed the diplomats in the Munich room, telling them that their greatest threat of security was not from China or Russia, but “the enemy inside” – what he called their abolition of manifestations of abortion and other forms of freedom of expression.
He made the complaint at a time when Russia has been putting the greatest land war in Europe since 1945 against Ukraine. He reported the priorities of the Trump administration – expanding the Maga movement abroad rather than countering President Vladimir V. Putin.
Mr. Vance’s remarks have echoed that of hard leaders across Europe and the anti-establishing messages that Russia has pumped on social networks in order to destabilize democratic policy in America and Europe.
Trump on Friday, speaking to journalists from the Oval Office, called him “a very brilliant speech”.
“I heard his speech and he talked about freedom of expression”, ” Mr. Trump said. “And I think it’s true in Europe; It loses. They lose their wonderful right of freedom of expression. I see it. I mean, I thought he had made a very good speech, in fact, a very brilliant speech. »»
Mr. Vance is the second figure of the Trump administration to try to withdraw the efforts to isolate the extreme right in front of the German elections next Sunday by trying to destigmatize AFD.
Billionaire Elon Musk, one of Mr. Trump’s main advisers, approved AFD at the end of last year in an article on social networks. He publicly interviewed Ms. Weidel. And in a speech to the members of the party this month, Mr. Musk said that Germany was “too focused on past guilt”. It was a clear reference to the long shadow of Hitler, which continues to dominate traditional German policy, including in close legal restrictions against the Nazi language.
The remarks of Mr. Vance aroused a furious response from German leaders in most party lines. They immediately rejected Mr. Vance’s suggestion that they should drop their firewall against AFD, highlighting previous comments from party members in favor of socialist nationals or Nazis.
Boris Pistorius, the German Defense Minister and member of the governor Social Democrats, moved away from his speech on Friday afternoon to reprimand Mr. Vance.
“If I understood it properly, he compares parts of Europe with authoritarian regimes – it is not acceptable,” said Pistorius, attracting applause. “It’s not Europe, not democracy, where I live.”
Thomas Silberhorn, member of the German Parliament of the Christian Social Union, the Bavarian sister party of Christian Democrats, also said: “This is our business. My message to the American administration is: the German extremists who refer explicitly to National Socialism-part of the AFD-are clearly anti-United States which released us from National Socialism. »»
AFD and its members have history of the use of the Nazi language and anti -Semitic and racist comments, as well as plots to overthrow the federal government. The party went to the second rank of the ballot boxes with its call to suppress immigration.
Mr. Vance did not note that the luggage did not mention any extremist elements of anti-immigration political parties. But, without naming parties in particular, he launched the AFD and its counterparts across Europe as legitimate vessels of the anger of the voters above the millions of refugees who have entered the European Union of the Middle -Orient, from Africa and elsewhere in the past decade.
Germany was the most successful great European power to close its lasting party out of power, as well as France, where a group of rival parties is committed to strategic vote last summer to deny the rally national right of right, a parliamentary majority.
Other firewalls fell in Europe, especially in the Netherlands, Hungary and Italy. In Austria, the right-wing right party was one of the federal coalitions and seemed to lead its next government, before negotiations with a central-law party collapsed this week.
In his speech, Mr. Vance seemed to group these restrictions in a long list of what he called European differences in relation to democratic values and attacks against freedom of expression.
These failures, said Mr. Vance, included efforts to restrict disinformation and other content on social networks, and the laws against abortion that he has unjustly declared Christians reluctantly.
“If you run in the fear of your own voters,” said Vance, “there is nothing that America can do for you.”
European intelligence agencies have made alarms on what they consider as a systematic effort of Russia during mass disinformation and propaganda, often using false social media accounts to sow division and doubt on democratic systems.
Mr. Vance ridiculed this threat.
“It looks more and more like old rooted interests hiding behind ugly words from the Soviet era such as disinformation and disinformation, which just don’t like someone with an alternating point of view Could express a different opinion, or, God does not please, vote another way, or worse, wins an election, “he told a largely stony audience.
He also paid contempt on the decision of a remote Romania “, as he called him, to cancel a presidential election due to clear evidence of the Russian manipulation of the political campaign.
“If your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars in digital advertising from a foreign country, then it was not very strong to start,” he said.
Such declarations came as a shock for the participants who had hoped to know more about the administration’s plans for peace negotiations with Russia. Mr. Vance barely mentioned Ukraine.
“While the Trump administration is very concerned about European security and believes that we can achieve a reasonable regulation between Russia and Ukraine, and we also think that it is important in the years to come so that the Intense Europe in an important way to provide for its own defense, “said Mr. Vance.
“The threat that I am most vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia, it is not China, it is not another external actor.” He added: “What worries me is the threat of the interior, the retirement of Europe of some of its most fundamental values, the values shared with the United States.”
Mr. Vance also denounced mass migration to Germany and other nations in 2015, which included many asylum seekers fleeing wars in Afghanistan and Syria. He equaled the migration to terrorist crimes, including a car attack in Munich Thursday by an Afghan asylum seeker, who injured 30 people.
“Over a decade, we saw the horrors formulated by these decisions yesterday in this same city,” he said.
Even before Mr. Vance spoke, the experts of the security conference warned European leaders that they could be in a rapid and painful reorganization of the continent with the United States.
Mr. Trump’s pressure to negotiate directly with the Russian president on Ukraine and his transactional approach to trade policy and military expenditure dominated a round table of breakfast organized by the United States Council on Germany and the Cabinet KPMG World accountant.
A panelist, Jana Puglierin, a political official of the European Council for Foreign Relations in Berlin and the “anti-revealing” attitudes.
The advice published new polls this week This suggests that the change in value has already resonated in Europe. He found that the majorities of Europeans now consider America as a “necessary partner” and not as “ally” under Mr. Trump. He also found that Mr. Trump’s return to the White House was the most celebrated in Europe among the members of several right -wing parties.
There is an exception, perhaps paradoxical. The survey revealed that AFD members were more likely to say that Mr. Trump’s election would be bad for Germany than to say that it would be good.
Emma Bubola Contributed reports of Rome.
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