“Is Maga dead?” asked Margaret, a Guardian reader in Switzerland, in a live Q&A with our correspondents after the seismic US midterm elections.
asserted
Margaret → ask → elections
If Margaret’s query expressed a hope that the Democrats’ blue wave could transform Europe’s fortunes after two years of Maga-induced trauma, she was probably not alone.
uncertain
she → express → trauma
The resounding defeat for Donald Trump’s Republicans and the installation of a Democratic-controlled US Congress has been met with understandable relief in European capitals.
asserted
defeat → control → capitals
Trump didn’t need congressional approval, after all, to unleash a trade war on his supposed European allies, threaten to invade Greenland, try to stitch up Ukraine or go to war with Iran, an act that has inflated fuel and food prices disastrously.
asserted
that → need → prices
Hemmed in now on domestic policy, the US president may, many European leaders fear, use his extensive foreign policy powers to become even more confrontational on the world stage.
uncertain
leaders → hem → stage
Europe, warned Nathalie Tocci, is exactly where Trump will lash out.
asserted
Trump → warn → ?
“Trump and Maga have always seen Europe as the mirror image of their domestic foes: a bunch of presumptuous, woke, emasculated liberals.
asserted
Trump → see → liberals
Now that those foes have made a comeback at home, Trump’s rancour towards Europe is likely to grow.”
asserted
rancour → make → Europe
The lashing out could come in the form of new tariff chaos.
uncertain
lashing → come → chaos
As the humiliated Maga figurehead (one Washington expert likened the movement now to “a cornered ferret”), Trump could veto aid for Ukraine and thwart Kyiv’s access to defence technology.
uncertain
Trump → liken → technology
Paul Taylor sketched a fearful scenario in which he could even attempt a carve-up of eastern Europe in the so-called “big, beautiful deal” for Ukraine that he says he is working on with Russia.
uncertain
he → sketch → Russia
The omens for Europe were poor as US-mediated talks opened in Abu Dhabi, with delegates from Germany, France, the UK and the EU, literally sidelined.
asserted
delegates → mediate → Germany
Nor can Europe rely on the new intake of congressional Democrats to challenge Trump on its behalf, Blanche Leridon of the Institut Montaigne thinktank in Paris, tells me.
asserted
Leridon → rely → me
“We have to be clear-sighted that the Democrats’ priority in Congress won’t be to re-establish a more harmonious relationship with Europe.
asserted
priority → have → Europe
Their foreign policy is, at this point, difficult to decipher.
asserted
policy → decipher → point
There isn’t a single, consistent position between the more progressive and centrist factions when it comes to either Europe or Ukraine specifically.
asserted
it → be → Europe
We can’t even assume that nationalist populist parties, encouraged by Trump to destroy the EU from the inside, will suffer by their association with him.
asserted
parties → assume → him
True, in central and eastern Europe, where the Maga spirit was heavily promoted by Viktor Orbán, some incumbents may have to perform a pivot.
uncertain
incumbents → promote → pivot
Poland’s conservative president Karol Nawrocki, who is backed by the opposition Eurosceptic Law and Justice party and has vaunted his proximity to Trump, is now facing awkward questions.
asserted
who → back → questions
And in Czechia, which has one of the most pro-Maga governments in Europe, populist PM Andrej Babiš and his far-right coalition partners, the Motorists party, have faced a wave of grassroots protests lately.
asserted
Babiš → have → protests
In Italy meanwhile, the far-right prime minister Giorgia Meloni played up tensions with Trump months ago, a strategic move to allay the concerns of voters, the majority of whom despise him.
asserted
majority → play → him
But in countries where populists have not yet been in government and are polling at record levels, Trump’s humiliation may not matter to voters, even if their grievances – such as stagnant pay, inflation and lack of affordable housing – are often driven by global forces.
“It would be wrong to conclude that national-populist and reactionary forces are in retreat everywhere in the west,” Leridon says.
uncertain
Leridon → poll → west
“The Democrats won in the US because people were fed up with Trump, in Serbia, [Aleksandar] Vučić was overthrown after 14 years, but in countries where populist political forces are not in power, but on the verge of gaining it, the calculation is different.
asserted
calculation → win → it
In France, Marine Le Pen is still leading in the polls, six months ahead of a presidential election being fought on cost-of-living issues.
asserted
Pen → lead → issues
Her far-right National Rally party identified Trump as a liability some time ago.
asserted
party → identify → liability
“Le Pen and [Jordan] Bardella understood perfectly the radioactive effect the US president could have on them as politicians claiming to defend French national interests.
uncertain
president → understand → interests
Above all, they recoiled from the corrosive impact of Trump’s policies on purchasing power in France, whether via trade tariffs or the war in Iran,” Leridon says.
asserted
Leridon → recoil → Iran
In Germany, Alice Weidel, a co-leader of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland, had also distanced the party from Trump in response to tariffs and Greenland.
asserted
Weidel → distance → tariffs
Weidel now blames Trump’s defeat on broken promises about going to war with Iran.
asserted
Weidel → blame → Iran
A critical test for Europe’s political direction is looming in Spain.
asserted
test → loom → Spain
Socialist prime minister Pedro Sánchez, who called a snap election for 29 November, welcomed Trump’s defeat as a straw in the wind for the revival of progressive forces.
asserted
who → call → forces
But amid public outcry over housing and wages (the cause of Wednesday’s general strike), the momentum is with the opposition rightwing Popular Party (PP) – which could coalesce with the far-right Vox.
uncertain
which → coalesce → Vox
If this happens, it will be the first time a far-right party enters government in Spain since the end of the Franco dictatorship in 1975.
asserted
party → happen → 1975
Santiago Abascal, the Vox leader, dismissed any suggestion of an ideological connection with Trump’s Republicans.
asserted
Abascal → dismiss → Republicans
“We are in Spain, not in Michigan,” he said after the midterms.
asserted
he → say → midterms
A yearning for generational change
And yet, longer term, the broader, more hopeful lesson from across the Atlantic could be that after years of global backsliding liberal democracy is not dead.
uncertain
democracy → yearn → backsliding
“If Europe can celebrate an essential point, it is that American democracy is alive and was the big winner of these elections,” Leridon says.
asserted
Leridon → celebrate → elections
Could this even, as Alexander Hurst asked, be a “democratic spring” – one that began in Budapest in April with Orbán’s defeat?
uncertain
that → ask → defeat
Julian Borger unpacked how a sequence of four pivotal elections this year, in Hungary, Serbia, Brazil and now the US, has shown the power of grassroots activism to produce surprises and could, perhaps, begin the reversal of a worldwide drift towards authoritarianism.
uncertain
sequence → unpack → authoritarianism
The US vote could even shake Europe’s ailing mainstream parties out of their fatalistic mimicking of far-right policies and into action.
uncertain
vote → shake → action
…and 5 more, not listed.
The Aporia
