[sunaurus]

The US does not benefit from a stronger, more unified Europe. Thanks to NATO, "the west" has effectively become an empire in all but name, with the US having enough influence to be the de facto leaders of this empire.

If US pulls back from NATO, and Europe builds up military power to compensate, then the US loses this de facto leadership seat of an empire.

Today, the US appears in parallel to be doing two things:

1. Causing fragmentation in Europe, by promoting right-wing nationalist politics in the EU

2. Threatening to drastically reduce their role in NATO

At the very least we can both agree that these two efforts are completely in contradiction with each other, and it's very unlikely that Europeans will want to go for more fragmentation without the military power of the US on their side, right?

[epolanski]

> Today, the US appears in parallel to be doing two things:

You forgot another one: literally threatening two NATO members (Canada and Denmark, in form of Greenland) of annexation.

[autoexec]

An attack on one NATO member is an attack on all. The US is threatening Canada, Denmark, and all of their allies.

[bryanrasmussen]

it's true that if the bet of creating fragmentation in the EU works out, then the destruction of NATO might also work out, because the US would not have created another military power with a hostile attitude to balance them.

If that bet is actually being made by Putin, hmm, I'm worried, but then again the implementation of the anti-NATO project is being run by Trump, so I think the EU just might come out on top. The whole Greenland thing for example, seems like an EU solidifying step, at the same time as it is NATO destroying.

[jacquesm]

The exact same thing happened with Sweden and Finland joining NATO.

[brightball]

How is the US promoting right wing nationalist policies in the EU?

Why would anyone listen?

[mkesper]

Just one example: Elon Musk (at that time part of US government) tried to directly influence German elections by prominently featuring AfD (German right-wing extremists).

[youngtaff]

And appeared a UK far right rally to promote the idea that civil war was coming to the UK

[brightball]

But why would anyone listen? That's the real question. People can say anything they want but most people are going to ignore crazy.

[layer8]

Last February, JD Vance had a meeting with the AfD leader in Munich, after delivering a stupefying speech at the Munich Security Conference where he accused European nations of failing to defend free speech, calling out Germany in particular. He complained that the AfD was being ostracized and called for it to end. Marco Rubio followed up by calling the designation of the AfD as a right-wing extremist party as "tyranny in disguise."

Actions like these where US leadership is heavily distorting the facts make it much easier for the AfD to present themselves as a legitimate political movement allegedly being wrongfully suppressed by the “authoritarian” incumbents. The AfD currently scores 25% in representative nationwide polls, higher than any other political party in Germany. In some federate-state elections they scored over 30%, in one of them again higher than any other party. You can’t just ignore them as “crazy“.

[mkesper]

These people are extremely good at "social" media like Tiktok etc. And the algorithms massively reward rage content and the platforms do not remove fakes.

[tim333]

They are often not that crazy. These days "extreme right wing" is what people call a party that wants to send some immigrants back.

Same kind of thing that got Trump elected.