Millions of words were published across Europe in 2025 about the next phase of its relationship with the US ever since the second inauguration of Donald Trump - and most of them are wrong. Europe’s media still largely refuses to describe the situation as it is and to say what we can all see with our own eyes. The reality is, as we all know, very simple: the US is now governed by a MAGA regime guided by fascist ideology, hiding in plain sight as mere idiocracy.
This is not a matter of tone or a provocation: it is a factual description of how power is exercised and justified in the US. But many commentators still insist on treating the MAGA regime as if it is just a slightly out-of-the-ordinary government that “has a point” on certain issues. Whether this is in an attempt to posture as objective or an attempt at flattering those here who would gladly import elements of this model, it prevents Europeans from coming to the obvious conclusion that we do not need or require America any longer.
Speaking truth in a post-truth world
One could fill volumes explaining why the MAGA regime that now governs the US and captures its institutions on a day-by-day basis merits this characterisation. Yet, you need to look no further than the weaponisation and mobilisation of ICE as a modern-day Gestapo. While asserting its right to kill bystanders who “get in the way,” Republican legislators openly declare that obedience to the state is the price of staying alive. Disobey and obstruct their war against a supposed “foreign invasion” and you too will be treated as an enemy combatant.
While the MAGA regime deports anyone who looks too brown to have European origin and lacks documentation far beyond what a white citizen would be asked to provide at home, “America First” has been replaced with “Might Is Right”. It now openly proclaims a naked imperialism, stripped of all of the restraints and limitations of past administrations. It asserts an inherent entitlement to seize land, steal resources, impose protectorates, styling itself as a so-called “dominant predator.”
Greenland is not a joke, a gaffe, or a bargaining chip - it is a declaration of the MAGA regime’s intentions towards Europe. We are not an ally under their worldview, we are simply terrain that serves their interests. We must stop legitimising this doctrine just because it is wrapped up in Trump’s infantile branding. The substance is clear enough and this behavior does not exist in isolation. It is the endpoint of a long process to normalise racism, nativism, patriarchy and a range of fascistic ideas that should have been buried in the rubble of WWII.
Fighting against the mainstreaming of idiocy
The element of idiocracy in this MAGA regime is not a by-product of our times or Trump’s repulsive person, it is a strategy intended to legitimise fascism by dumbing down the population. Science, mathematics, medicine, economics – none of it matters anymore. Fact is treated as mere “opinion”; the views of academics and experts in their field are weighed equally to those of flat-earthers, anti-vaxxers, and Christian nationalists. The US is now governed by these people for these people.
The Democrats, like the opponents of fascism in the 1920s and the 1930s, have internalised Trumpian claims as a reality they need to live with. They increasingly avoid appeals to law, ethics, and truth and revert to a transactional, pocketbook messaging. “Trump promised cheaper goods, but he didn’t deliver them!” They think the section of the electorate that no longer care about the rule of law will respond to this. Perhaps this is true, perhaps it is not, but it does not really matter. They have given up and conceded America to a managed moral decline.
Europe’s media is not ignorant of any of this. They report the chaos, the cruelty, the daily absurdities. They publish pieces about European sovereignty and the need to reduce dependence on Washington. But almost all of it is wrapped in cotton wool. America is described as a troubled partner who has temporarily lost its path, an erratic but ultimately familiar actor. The MAGA regime is framed as eccentric, volatile, or excessive – anything to avoid calling it the morally repugnant monstrosity it so blatantly has become.
Realising our media will not save us
Whenever our own politicians avoid blunt language, one can still construct a charitable interpretation that they are quietly planning disengagement, but the media have no such excuse. What explains this persistent self-censorship? Fear of US retaliation? Dependence on American platforms? The pursuit of clicks from outrage tourists? Europe’s own far-right ecosystem? Whatever the motive, the effect is to normalise their rhetoric and mainstream it in Europe.
Calling Trump a “disruptor” or a “controversial figure” is not neutral language, but propaganda by omission of the truth. It convinces readers that he is closer to Silvio Berlusconi than Benito Mussolini, closer to bad taste than to a historical catastrophe. Trump’s “deal-making” is not an eccentric but pragmatic strategy, it is gangster politics that teaches audiences brute force and extortion are acceptable forms of behaviour from the very top.
Europe’s media, where it continues to defend its cowardice and capitulation, reverts to the justification of being the Fourth Estate. Yet, that role is not fulfilled by describing the collapse of reality in polite terms. It is fulfilled by naming threats, drawing moral lines, and refusing to collaborate in a collective form of denial. Avoiding the label of “partisanship” is no excuse, opposing authoritarianism and the rise of idiocy is the minimum requirement of a responsible journalist.
Public spaces, in the meantime, are being flooded with disinformation and alternate realities, much of it amplified by US-based platforms. Twitter, hollowed out and rebranded as X by Elon Musk, functions as a propaganda accelerant, not the town square he claims. The result is a fatalism where citizens watch their leaders humiliate themselves before Trump and think they had no choice. The Nazi regime required smuggled leaflets and underground radio broadcasts. The MAGA regime’s broadcasting is welcomed with open arms.
Resistance is becoming a daily task
This resignation is cultivated and it can be resisted, but resistance requires pressure - and pressure requires clarity. Without sustained, unambiguous messaging that MAGA represents everything Europe claims to reject, politicians will continue to default to cowardice and accommodation. And responsibility does not stop with institutions: it extends to everyday life. When friends, colleagues, or family insist on viewing the US through Hollywood nostalgia, it is necessary to push back.
What we are witnessing from our political-media ecosystem is not “realpolitik” or “business-minded pragmatism.” It is complicity dressed up as sophistication. The US increasingly resembles the darkest regimes of the twentieth century, crudely repainted in the orange of Trump’s odious fake tan to disguise the brown of the fascism that lies underneath. The real debate is no longer whether Europe can remain allied with such a state, but why we would want it to remain so.
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