European neo-fascists gather in Koblenz, Germany to hail Trump inauguration
By
Alex Lantier
27 January 2017
On January 21, the day after Donald Trump was inaugurated as US president in Washington, a coalition of European far-right parties met in the German city of Koblenz to hail Trump’s installation in the White House.
Attendees included Marine Le Pen of France’s National Front (FN), Frauke Petry of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), Geert Wilders of the Dutch Freedom Party (PVV), Harald Vilimsky of the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ), and Matteo Salvini of Italy’s Northern League. They all treated the coming to power of a violently nationalist and protectionist regime in Washington as support for their own political aspirations in Europe.
The Trump administration has made clear that the cultivation of neo-fascists in Europe is a priority of its foreign policy. Trump has selected as his top adviser the white supremacist Stephen Bannon, who praised the FN during the presidential election campaign, and whose Breitbart News web site refers to the French New Right—the ideological basis of the FN—as a source of “inspiration.” He also hailed Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, Marine’s niece, as a “rising star.”
Maréchal-Le Pen—an extreme-right Catholic figure who has attended meetings of the Action Française, the descendant of the anti-Semitic Action Française of Charles Maurras that provided the basis of the Nazi-collaborationist Vichy regime—publicly thanked Bannon after Trump’s election. She tweeted, “I answer yes to the invitation of Stephen Bannon, CEO of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, to work together.”
At the same time, it is ever clearer that the Trump administration’s cultivation of far-right forces reflects more than just political…