Thinking the Unimaginable

First Part: A Transatlantic Pathology

This article is the first of a triptych in which Philippe de Lara analyzes the populist upsurge that is sweeping on the other side of the Atlantic, but also through European societies. In particular, the author explains the passions and mechanisms behind the populist crisis of liberal democracy. The Kremlin and its trolls are masters in the art of “cognitive warfare”, but alt-right ideologues are not to be outdone, particularly when it comes to selecting the angriest individuals by processing Internet profiles and manipulating social networks. Subsequent sections will focus on the totalitarian nature of the Trumpist lie and the weaknesses of the enemy.

How do we think the unimaginable? First of all, we need to find the right words to describe Donald Trump’s reversal of alliances: there has been much talk of a new Yalta, or a new Munich, but it is more a question of a new German-Soviet pact, as French political scientist Gérard Grunberg writes in Telos. I would add: worse, because the catastrophe of the ruthless abandonment of Ukraine is part of a chain of statements and decisions that are radically changing the face of the world and are tantamount to a simultaneous attack on Europe on several fronts. From one day to the next, we have to ask ourselves whether we can still speak of the “West”, the “free world”, at least in the singular. With its rough and tumble vulgarity, the new American revolution¹ manifests a geopolitical grand design, which we must try to understand. Whatever the weight of the “disinformation bubble” that Russia has woven around Trump, it is not the only explanation for America changing sides. To mark out the perimeter of what is happening to us, I will start from a fact that at first sight seems paradoxical: one of the keys to the rift between the United States and Europe lies in a situation they both share, which I will call the populist crisis of liberal democracy. Paradoxically, the same trend that is fuelling a revolution in the United States is manifesting itself in Europe in the form of pathetic stagnation. 

Populism, a Transatlantic Disease

With the exception of Volodymyr Zelensky, who has never been so upright, so heroic, so political, Europe’s leaders are repeating themselves. They are trying to react, to commit themselves in some cases (France, United Kingdom), but they are stuck in the “Pax Putiniana” scheme concocted by Donald Trump, which they are only trying to improve by proposing the presence of European troops on Ukrainian soil after a ceasefire, without however giving any clear content to their mission. You have to count the words: it seems to me that the European politicians who are supposed to “help Ukraine as much as necessary” talk much more about what is “impossible” than about what should be done. Zelensky, on the other hand, speaks plainly and keeps a cool head, with support from his people: there will be no ceasefire on the basis of what Trump is proposing, i.e. nothing less than capitulation. The Ukrainians will continue to fight, regardless of the military aid they receive from their European allies – which they obviously hope will be as substantial as possible².

Europe at a Loss

The fact that Europeans are struggling to define an autonomous strategy in the wake of a predicted geopolitical earthquake, and at a time when their security is directly threatened by Russia, is cause for despair but, alas, not surprising. Of course, there are many factors to be taken into account, not least the busy electoral agenda, which is putting the brakes on European decision-making. But will they be better off after the elections? The German government will change after the parliamentary elections, and Poland and Romania are also on the eve of crucial and uncertain presidential elections, so their current leaders cannot commit themselves too much: in Poland, will the PiS retain or lose the presidency, as Donald Tusk hopes? In Romania, pro-Russian candidate Călin Georgescu, whose election was invalidated in November 2024 on the grounds of Russian interference, is standing for re-election and is currently leading the polls. 

As for Germany, Friedrich Merz is likely to be the next chancellor, and he is known to be firmer than Olaf Scholz in the face of the Russian threat³. But he will be up against virulent pro-Russian parties in the Bundestag, boosted by their electoral successes: the AfD is surging ahead in voting intentions (20.6%) and is set to become the country’s second-largest party, far ahead of the SPD, which is down 10 points on the 2021 federal elections (it is credited with 15.5% of the vote⁴), and Sahra Wagenknecht’s party (BSW) may well enter Parliament. Sahra Wagenknecht, who was a Communist in 1991, is a Die Linke defector. Her party – which bears her name – had just been created when it made a spectacular breakthrough in the European and regional elections of 2024. She claims to be different from the AfD, supposedly neither right nor left, and so attracts voters uncomfortable with the AfD’s neo-Nazi tendencies, but her violent, charismatic style is reminiscent of fascist leaders, and her program is much the same as the AfD’s: anti-immigration, lower taxes, stopping arms supplies to Ukraine and resuming friendly relations with Russia⁵. The backdrop to the rise of these parties is the economic recession, which many Germans rightly perceive as a crisis of the “German model”: an economy driven by exports, cheap energy and security supplied by Russia and the USA respectively, all collapsing at the same time. 

In France, the same trends are quietly emerging: neither public deficits nor political instability seem to be a serious concern for the French. Those most concerned by uncontrolled immigration and Islamism are also convinced that the National Rally’s accession to power in the 2027 presidential elections will solve these problems (while increasing purchasing power and lowering the retirement age). The threat posed by the Russian party is underestimated by the fact that both Unbowed France and the National Rally are striving to erase their Putin tropism. Indeed, in France, it is hard to imagine the unabashed radicalism of the Russian party in Germany, although it is also working, albeit still discreetly, on the French elites and population. Meanwhile, American public life is hypnotized by the Trump hurricane, so much so that the deafening silence of the political forces and voices opposed to Trump has gone unnoticed. 

The Populist Crisis of Liberal Democracy

The populist crisis of liberal democracy is a complex political, cultural, and civilizational phenomenon. The categories of extreme right, nationalism, and illiberalism are unsatisfactory because they are too narrow. We need to integrate into an explanatory model a wide range of social facts, which we intuitively perceive to be interconnected, but without understanding how: the loss of confidence in government, the loss of efficiency of the welfare state, the weakening of legal regulations, the pressure of migration, the education crisis, the digital revolution which assigns us to screens and institutes a tyranny of transparency, the hold of social networks which intensifies antagonisms and engenders violence, etc. We need to mobilize the resources of the scientific community, which is the key to our understanding of this complex phenomenon. We need to mobilize the resources of political science, law, anthropology, and so on. But, to the globalizing mirages of the philosophy of history, I prefer a more modest approach, bringing to light the passions and mechanisms that slyly transform our regimes and our societies.

The spirit of secession is one of them. By this I mean the propensity of groups of all kinds to set themselves up as a besieged fortress, to regard the rest of society as a threat. It is a widespread phenomenon that has become almost commonplace, but one we need to get to grips with. Its most striking manifestation is the success of deliberately divisive political ventures. The rise and electoral victory of Donald Trump, twice over, is a textbook case. Trump has exploited (and reinforced) the latent state of civil war that is tearing American society apart. The violence of his rhetoric against the elites, the Democratic Party, the federal state, the East Coast, the West Coast, etc., is purposely divisive. It is aimed at electorally catering to all angry groups. Wokeness is another form of secessionism. It demands not only the recognition and rights of minorities (racial, sexual), but the conquest of as many institutions as possible (universities, businesses, even the armed forces), to compel them to function as communities where these minorities are at home. Wokeness is therefore not just a demand for equality, but for the reform of society in line with minority lifestyles. The politics of minority inclusion has turned into the politics of hijacking the rules and purposes of previously open institutions. Such are the demands to rewrite the literature of the past to remove anything supposed to offend this or that minority: this amounts to altering a universal cultural heritage and erasing the truth. This kind of demand is no better than Putin’s rewriting of history. One could say that the watchword for practices of this kind is “secession is inclusion”, worthy of the Party slogans in George Orwell’s 1984: “war is peace”, “freedom is slavery”, “ignorance is strength”.

Of course, secessionist mobilizations (wokeist, evangelical, reactionary, etc.) thrive because they are fanned and manipulated by those stoking anger. The Kremlin and its trolls are masters in the art of “cognitive warfare”, but alt-right ideologues such as Steve Bannon⁶ are not to be outdone, particularly when it comes to selecting the angriest individuals by processing Internet profiles and manipulating social networks. Steve Bannon is one of those who very early on understood the usefulness of the tools provided by Cambridge Analytica to, as he put it, “fill their brains with shit⁷“: a perfect definition of promoting the spirit of secession.

Yet “cognitive” warfare would not be so effective if it did not match with a willingness, not to say a desire, on the part of large sections of the population. The spirit of secession, which is also a spirit of defiance, has become a democratic passion (in the sense in which French political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville uses this concept), the effects of which can be seen in the rise of “gratuitous” violence or in the lack of control of some MPs. Here again, the chaos strategy at the Palais Bourbon, where the National Assembly meets, is deliberate, but it relies on the approval of a significant proportion of the public, without which it would be counter-productive. 

The genius of Trump – or of the authors of the MAGA program – has been to unite pressure groups and secessionist communities under a catch-all slogan that resonates in the American political tradition: in a rogue and obscene manner, “Make America great again” reactivates the “Pursuit of happiness” enshrined in the Constitution or the ideal of the “Land of opportunity” dear to Lincoln. Its political strategy redefines the conquest of the majority in the age of the spirit of secession: consensus through secession. Yascha Mounk explains that Trumpism is an enduring political and social force because it has invented a new type of populism, different from ethnic and nationalist populism: aspirational populism⁸. The strength of aspirational populism lies in its convergence with the messianic element of American political culture – “manifest destiny”, a Calvinist concept adopted by early settlers, convinced that they had a divine mission to colonize the new continent, and extended after the Civil War and the first waves of immigration to the democratic conception of the American ideal. You could say that Trumpism is a reactionary wokeness, promising all conservative communities that he will make them feel at home. Its solidity comes from the universality of its watchword. Which is why you cannot rely too much on the divergent interests of the groups that support it.

The spirit of secession strikes directly at the law and judges in the name of the absolute sovereignty of the people. When populism takes hold, the legitimacy and effectiveness of legal regulation weakens. Trump is shamelessly attacking constitutional procedures and the rule of law (which he calls the deep state) because he understands that the tradition of respect for the law and the judge in the United States is being undermined by the spirit of secession, which makes a mockery of all forms of mediation.

In a future article, I will come back to Donald Trump’s persuasion techniques, an original variant of totalitarian lying.

Philippe De Lara

Lecturer at the University of Paris II Panthéon-Assas. Teaches philosophy and political science.

1. “This won’t be business as usual. This is going to be a revolution”, Elon Musk said the day after Donald Trump’s victory. See Françoise Thom, “United States: cloning Putinism?”, Desk Russie, December 22, 2024.
2. They say Ukraine can only last six months without American help. But six months is almost an eternity in a war full of twists and turns, and against a very weakened aggressor
3. In particular, he has pledged to deliver the Taurus missiles that Scholz is refusing Ukraine.
4. February 17, 2025 polls.
5. On the German political landscape in the run-up to the elections, see Marc Villain, “L’essor des formations politiques extrémistes en Allemagne : un nouveau Munich?”, Desk Russie, January 12, 2025.
6. Founder of Breitbart, the alt-right‘s media outlet, director of Donald Trump’s first campaign and then strategic advisor to the president, he was sacked after just a few months and seized the opportunity to found an international movement, The Movement, and criss-cross Europe where he lavished his advice on populist parties, like the guru of the global “conservative revolution”. He appears alongside Giorgia Meloni, and is a guest of the far right in Berlin. He is close to Viktor Orban and claims to be a “friend” of Marine Le Pen, whom he advised on the 2019 European elections. His stated aim is to win over populist parties and “bring down” the European Union (“Make Europe great again”, another Orwellian slogan). After supporting Donald Trump’s campaign in 2024, he is leading a virulent crusade against Elon Musk, while campaigning for a third Trump term in 2028.
7. Quoted by David Colon, in La Guerre de l’information.
8. Yascha Mounk, “The Birth of Aspirational Populism“, Persuasion, January 25, 2025. By the same author in French, see in particular Le Peuple contre la démocratie (2019) and La Grande Expérience. Les démocraties face à la diversité (2023), Paris, Le Livre de Poche.