MEGA dazzle: does the MAGA playbook apply in Europe?

From the moment that America’s 47th president took his oath of office this Monday, it’s as if national conservatives around the world, together with the opponents of globalism, woke progressivism and all the other twisted ideological emanations of the postmodern Left, have been living in a dream. One by one, almost every totemic policy position built up by the US Left in recent years and even decades has begun to be dismantled in the first hours of the new administration by presidential Executive Order – over 40 of them on Day One alone. 

There is no substitute for victory

From sealing the border to terminating DEI, and from curbing the anti-carbon crusade to banning the dozens of fake “genders” invented by LGBTQ+ propaganda, Trump’s government is already hard at work restoring sanity to the US government. His directives are aimed, with precision, at the vital support pillars of the entire Left-liberal system of socio-cultural and political control that had grown and metastasized across the whole of American public life, particularly inside the machinery of government – down to the deepest recesses of the “deep state”. 

The entire Clinton-Obama-Biden progressive political-power complex now looks to be falling apart in the face of a second-term Trump who, this time, knows exactly what buttons to push and has the unquestioned democratic mandate to enact his America First agenda. Among US conservatives, not to mention their counterparts overseas, to fix even one of these major issues like immigration, bogus “gender rights” or climate-fanaticism would have been a historical achievement in the long-running struggle against the crushingly-dominant globalist regime. 

Now the adversary is completely vanquished and all key areas of US policy can now be entirely reformed – or rather, re-normalised – on the basis of popular conservative principles. This is what real victory looks like, in politics.

It is not hard to see why non-American conservatives present at the event – as well as those watching it on TV – would have been dazzled by the quasi-imperial grandeur of the Inauguration, by its significance, and, surely, by its promise for the future of anti-establishment nationalist politics everywhere. 

The following images later in the day, of a Trump Triumphant, now invested with the immense power of the US presidency, proceeding to sign into reality a new, common-sense direction of travel for his country, carried a huge symbolic power. They will have given many conservative political leaders and activists from other countries, especially from Europe, a sense that finally now everything is becoming possible back home as well. 

These friends of America and dedicated, loyal admirers of Donald Trump – often populist underdogs as he once was, struggling against the same kind of malign adversarial power-elites as he did – will now be returning to their own countries full of hope and convinced more than ever that history is on their side and that their own parties’ triumph is not only inevitable but closer than ever. 

From MAGA to MEGA

With backing from the imperial capital in DC, and with the success of MAGA as living proof that this kind of politics is unstoppable, how, indeed, could other MAGA-like movements elsewhere – especially in Europe – not make it? Well, at this point of maximum elation and inspiration on the winning side – broadly speaking – a reality check might be in order.

One of the most salient characteristics of Western political affairs in our times is that identification with US politics is strong. So much of the European political conversation, as well as of style and practice of politics across the continent, is infused with American ideas and follows American political trends. As with culture and media – long overwhelmed by Hollywood and other US exports – so with politics and political attitudes.

It is therefore not in the least surprising that MAGA will have inspired a corresponding notion of Making Europe Great Again (MEGA), looking to act as a banner and conceptual rallying point for Europe’s own Trump-style Eurosceptic, sovereignist, and (often) nationalist conservative parties. A conference on this theme is already being organised at the end of this month in Brussels by Romania’s AUR party, under the aegis of the ECR. Fittingly, one of its prime movers is well-connected Romanian lawmaker Mihai Neamtu, a rising star of European national conservative politics – who literally wrote the book on the “Trump phenomenon”.

Trump’s victory in America will certainly put wind in the sails of Europe’s sovereignist parties and raise the prospect of further “MEGA” victories going forward. But, at the same time, Europe and America present radically different political outlooks, and the challenges facing European anti-establishment parties in achieving truly significant victories at a systemic scale within the EU remain extremely difficult. A much greater sense of realism is required for anything approaching a full Trump-style political defeat of the reigning Euro-integrationist regime. A number of key reasons play into this:

Unchecked Brussels power

To begin with, the concentration of power – i.e. the lack of democratic checks and balances – is vastly greater in the EU system than in the US, and it is protected by multiple layers of safeguards against takeover by “hostile” political movements. In other words, the dice is heavily loaded against challengers.

A Eurosceptic political force wishing to somehow “take control” of the EU – in the manner that Trump has taken control of the US state for example – would have to not only take control of the European Parliament (which approves the Commission) but also of at least the key governments represented on the European Council (which nominates the EC president and individual commissioners, as well as ECJ judges). Only in this manner could reformist political forces actually access the positions of political control across the “government” of the EU, and be able to exercise real power.

The sheer complexity of this task, and the need for temporal coordination – i.e. sovereignist/reformist parties in power at home, at the same time, across sufficient major EU countries – makes it a very tall political order. At present, the anti-establishment vote in the EP – i.e. the ECR, Patriots and other smaller groups or independent rightwing MEPs – stands at between 22-28 per cent, depending on the issue and how one counts. In national politics across Europe, the ceiling for sovereignist, “hard Right” populist parties is generally at around 28-33 per cent. But only a few usually achieve that, such as RN, PiS, FdI or AUR – with Hungary’s Fidesz being an exception at over 41 per cent. Most of them struggle to break through the 23-25 per cent barrier.

This might sound like a counsel of despair, but in reality a political breakthrough at European level that could truly start destabilising the pan-EU regime and set it on a downward spiral does not necessitate a majority in the EP. Pushing the ECR/Patriots share towards 40 per cent would likely be enough to trigger cascading effects and open opportunities for hard negotiations. 

The key issue, however, remains the political struggle of Eurosceptic forces at the national level, i.e. their ability to enter government as a senior coalition partner with at least the power to block key EU-related policy decisions. This can often be achieved, depending on local conditions, with less than 40 per cent of the vote, thus putting perhaps half of Europe’s “rebel” parties in the more important countries within a striking distance of less than 20 points. In a few years, especially if events move opinion in their direction, this gap can be closed; but it will require a much more disciplined and effective political strategy, as well as more coordination with external sources of support.

One important problem with all this, as alluded to already, is the fact that the only constant in politics is change. Even when Eurosceptic/Euroreformist rebel parties will mature and grow enough to join government, they will not all do it at the same time. Over time, they will lose ground again and so on. Fidesz, with its long reign in Hungary, is the exception that confirms the rule. This problem of “political asynchrony” again works in favour of the incumbent EU regime. 

The only shortcuts through this thicket of electoral barriers against a bottom-up takeover of the EU are complete landslide victories of anti-establishment forces in the key nerve-centres of the Union, i.e. in France and/or Germany. Nothing short of a Trump-style full capture of the actual machinery of government in Paris and/or Berlin, and the imposition of democratic control over each country’s “deep state”, will suffice; and in the French case it is also essential to win the presidency as well. Superficial victories obtained with a flimsy majority that barely gives legislative control to the RN or AfD in the Assemblée Nationale and the Bundestag would not provide enough political capital to impose decisive changes on the EU system; the bureaucratic resistance and internal sabotage from pro-EU elements remaining within the French and German establishments would be too strong, as seen in the UK during Brexit.

In the United States the task of taking control of the state at the ballot box – i.e. through the normal functioning of democracy – is very hard (as Trump’s travails have shown) but not nearly as hard as in the EU. The main difference is the much simpler two-party US system, with the further MAGA advantage that it contested the 2024 election not as an “insurgent” force outside either party but in the guise of the GOP itself. The Trump-led MAGA takeover of the Republican party has been a years-long process itself, but it had been virtually completed by the time of the 2024 election cycle.

A derivative advantage from that situation is that as the key Republican figure from 2016 onwards, Trump – and, increasingly more, the MAGA movement overall – enjoyed varying degrees of Republican support within Congress at key points. There is hardly any term of comparison between the political influence of the Republicans with respect to the US state even during the Biden administration – i.e. with MAGA “in opposition” – and any kind of real political power that even the best-positioned MEGA party in the EU could possibly hope for anytime soon. This is a fundamental structural problem facing the EU’s rebel parties, which they would need to take into account as they strategise their way to the next EP elections.

Even this brief survey shows just how much more power is at the discretion of the EU regime as opposed to the situation in the US. The most serious “democratic deficit” of the EU – which was the major driver of Brexit, despite the dishonest pro-Remain narrative blaming immigration or economics – is not only, or even mainly, about the “unelected EU officials” and the EU’s legislative authority over that of national parliaments. Rather, it is simply about the fully closed, self-sustaining system of power embedded by design in the institutional architecture of the EU, including the EU treaties, and the near-impossibility of altering it decisively at the ballot box. 

Finally, it is now also beyond doubt that the EU regime has absolutely no qualms about exercising its immense power to override any democratic norms and suppress national political “revolts” against its interests. This was demonstrated by the EU’s full support for the constitutional coup that took place in Romania in December 2024, with the baseless cancellation of the country’s presidential election when it became clear that the “wrong” (i.e. sovereignist) candidate was about to win. It has even been suggested by Thierry Breton, recently, that similar measures might “have” to be taken in Germany in the case of AfD “if necessary”.

As they perhaps upgrade their own ambitions in the wake of Trump’s inauguration, MEGA enthusiasts should thus be fully aware that the nature of the Brussels-based political system that’s opposing them is radically different and in many ways much more dangerous and unrestrained than is the case in the US. 

Fragmentation and incoherence

The other structural challenge for Europe’s challenger parties, already mentioned above, is their inevitable problems of coordination and synchronisation as separate national political entities that have to contest elections in their own countries. This leads to a critical macro asymmetry in the politics of the EU. 

On the one side, the cross-party, transnational pro-EU establishment (the “EU regime”) is united in its dedication and loyalty to the EU integrationist project, and can coordinate the use of Brussels power (which it controls completely) and EU tools against its opponents in national elections. On the other side, the sovereignist, Euroreformist parties (the “rebels”) agree in general on the need to curb Brussels’ power and to oppose further EU “integration”, but have hardly any actual power of their own within the EU institutions, and must focus overwhelmingly on the political struggle at home. 

This leaves the rebels operating with relatively low levels of mutual coordination and support across the pan-European electoral battlespace in their competition against the EU regime. To a significant extent this problem is built into the very make-up of Europe as a collection of (still) nominally independent nations with distinct legislatures. In general there probably isn’t much practical and material assistance that can be given across borders by one sovereignist party to another one which is fighting an election next door. But this question has not been explored enough and may in fact, in time, come to be seen as feasible and worthwhile, perhaps starting in the realm of online political campaigning and fundraising.

A more important and more accessible area of cooperation among different rebel parties – which could be easily undertaken irrespective of ECR/Patriots alignments in the EP – is that of building up a more competitive transnational infrastructure and network for intellectual debate and policy research. The road to forging a Europe-wide MAGA movement is certainly a political process first of all – through closer and permanent contacts and EU-level coordination among rebel parties – but it also involves intellectual work through think tanks, magazines, conferences and the like. 

This is not an original point by any means and some sovereignist parties have been giving more serious attention to these matters than others. But much more will need to be done in order to develop the European national conservative/sovereignist movement into a more coherent politico-cultural force able to compete effectively with the EU regime parties over the long term. 

In this sense, the work done by Heritage Foundation in recent years around Project 2025 has set the gold standard for opposition political movements engaged in a large-scale, high-stakes electoral battle with entrenched establishment parties. One benefit from this kind of work is that it helps consolidate the movement itself, as all of its constituent forces – in Europe’s case, these would be the different sovereignist parties – align on the ideological and policy front. 

Another benefit is of a directly practical nature: to help with the running of the government once the election is won. This is less directly relevant in the shorter term in Europe in the struggle against the EU regime, as no sovereignist party or coalition is about to take control of the Brussels institutions and manage them. 

Nonetheless, preparatory work for this kind of task – the details of prospective policy and legislative action at EU level – should be done as if a takeover of the EU by the rebel political forces is possible, because this would greatly improve the latter’s credibility with voters and other allies. As Europe enters a new historical phase of political competition – marked by Trump’s ascendancy in the US, by EU’s own decline, and by Russia’s military threat in the East – sovereignist parties should be prepared to take advantage of sudden political opportunities to accelerate their road to power – in other words, they should aim to be perceived as being ready for government.

Conclusion

Trump’s historic victory in the United States, the sense of restored freedom and of the immense potential of a great nation about to be released from the absurd policy chains of the Left-liberals cannot fail to inspire all national conservatives everywhere who love their countries and believe in the values that made them great, on their own terms, in the first place. 

Many of these politicians who look to the achievements of MAGA in the US as perhaps a model to learn from and apply are involved in or lead the various sovereignist parties in Europe. With the political-cultural momentum now on the side of Trumpist Rightwing politics, it is easy to get carried away and imagine that perhaps Europe, too, is ripe for a MAGA-style MEGA disruption.

But the political reality in Europe is much harsher than that. The EU regime is not only much more powerful and entrenched, comparatively – in relation to sovereignist forces – than what Trump’s MAGA Republicans had to deal with in the US, even with all the abuses of the Biden administration. It is also unrestrained and willing to break any democratic rules in order to suppress its political foes – ironically, in the name of “democracy”. 

If the aim of the sovereignists is to somehow defeat this System and “take control” of the EU – so as to shift it towards a “Europe of Nations” version and return powers from Brussels to the nation states, and/or enact any other major reforms – they need to get very serious about realistic political strategy and organisation because this is an incredibly difficult task. 

It also has much less to do with what will now happen in America under Trump. The “liberation” of America mainly creates a cultural opportunity for accelerated political development in Europe and elsewhere by weakening Davos Man and shifting the Overton window in a conservative direction. It is no guarantee of anything more. The MEGA movement in Europe, and its constituent parties, must be prepared to fight their own political battles – at great disadvantage, for the foreseeable future – and win on their own terms. A stronger sense of realism will help.