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Trump becomes a toxic asset for Europe’s far right

Marc Bassets — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 09:34:41 GMT

When Donald Trump returned to power in early 2025, and he and his supporters intensified their calls in support of Europe’s far right, that message sounded like a blessing within that ideological camp.

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In Spain, the US and Argentina, the far right is rewriting the past: ‘Nationalism needs its history’

Tommaso Koch — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 03:30:00 GMT

On Via Rasella, in the heart of Rome, stands a bullet-riddled building. The machine gun fire left so many holes that you can see them with a quick Google Maps search. It was there, on the afternoon of March 23, 1944, in the German-occupied city, that a company of the SS Bozen Regiment was marching when the GAP partisan group detonated two bombs. Thirty-three soldiers died, while their surviving comrades fired in all directions. The walls still bear witness. And so does all of Italy: the Nazi vengeance the following day in the Ardeatine Caves claimed the lives of 335 people — 10 for every German killed. Both episodes have since filled history books and collective memory. But three years ago, they were rewritten.

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Berlin is rearming, and its neighbors are weighing the risks and benefits of the new German hegemony

Marc Bassets — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 14:34:21 GMT

The Victory Column is one of the few monuments to Germany’s former power that remained standing after World War II. From its summit, the golden angel that Wim Wenders filmed in Wings of Desire overlooks the city. Below, the statues of the stern Prussian field marshals Roon and Moltke, and that of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, still stand, a lasting symbol of Germany, or perhaps an anachronism.

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Young women are also moving closer to the far right, just more slowly than men

Domitila Diez — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 12:13:16 GMT

Young women are not moving away from the far right, but rather moving closer to it, albeit at a slower pace than men. This is the conclusion of the latest report by Javier Carbonell, a researcher specializing in inequality, the far right and youth, for the European Policy Centre, a Brussels-based think tank. “Far-right parties across Europe are eroding what was once a pronounced gender divide in their electorates,” he asserts, focusing on a “significant minority” of women who are shifting towards these parties, “rejecting feminism and embracing traditional gender norms.”

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Global opposition to Trump gains momentum

Andrea Rizzi ,Silvia Ayuso — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 16:29:35 GMT

Trumpism is facing growing opposition on a global scale. The week at the World Economic Forum in Davos has strengthened the ranks of its opponents, with a shift among numerous European leaders — including figures from the far right, theoretically close to Trump — who have abandoned their usual conciliatory attitudes and are now opting for firm rejection in the face of his abuses and insults. In this way, albeit without formal coordination, they are joining the group of countries that refuse to yield, such as China, India, Canada, and Brazil.

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From safe-haven investment to geostrategic weapon: Who owns the most gold and where are the bars kept?

Nuria Salobral — Sat, 27 Dec 2025 04:00:00 GMT

Gold has been a symbol of wealth for thousands of years. While humans have used all sorts of instruments as money (salt, coins, banknotes, or now, algorithms), no asset even comes close to matching its historical significance. And popular culture is also full of references to the precious metal. These include historical references, like the Moscow gold sent by the Spanish Second Republic to the USSR, and television references, such as the success of the series Money Heist.

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AfD, a key pawn for Trump in Europe, strengthens ties with Washington

Marc Bassets — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 10:36:35 GMT

There was a party in Germany that everyone else considered an outcast. Its positions were marginal and, for many, anti-democratic, tainted by the totalitarian ideologies of the 20th century. The story is German, but it happens in other European countries as well.

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The BBC is no exception: Far-right forces are targeting European public broadcasters

Quino Petit ,Ignacio Fariza — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 16:31:32 GMT

The far right has a long list of targets. Immigrants. Taxes. The left in general. Those who advocate solidarity or the values upon which an increasingly blurred international order rests. And public media corporations have now become a top target.

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Niklas Frank, son of a Nazi criminal hanged at Nuremberg: ‘I am against the death penalty, except for that of my father’

Marc Bassets — Thu, 20 Nov 2025 13:15:39 GMT

Niklas Frank can’t shake off his father, the Nazi war criminal Hans Frank. He never will. He compares him to a goblin, an evil spirit clinging to his shoulders, refusing to let go. He’ll always have him with him.

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The unsuspecting grandson of Heinrich Himmler on Spain’s Costa del Sol

Marc Bassets — Sat, 08 Nov 2025 04:00:00 GMT

Henrik Lenkeit, a Christian pastor and life coach living on Spain’s Costa del Sol, woke up one summer day in 2024 with his usual worries and life much as it always had been; more or less predictable. Within hours, everything changed, and he became a different person. A year later, this German national who is married to a Mexican citizen and a father of three, recounts his story in fluent Spanish.

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80th anniversary of the end of World War II: How does a country fall into the abyss of hatred?

Guillermo Altares Lucendo — Thu, 08 May 2025 10:40:07 GMT

The end of World War II in Europe on May 8, 1945, with the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany — although in Russia it is commemorated on May 9 — marks its 80th anniversary this Thursday. The conflict left a devastated continent in its wake where, as historian Keith Lowe explains in Savage Continent, “there was no morality, only survival.” In the still-smoking ruins of Europe, as the full extent of the Nazi extermination and concentration camps was being revealed, with millions of refugees and homeless people and millions more dead, one question loomed over all others: how could it have happened? How could it have come to this?

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Jean-Claude Juncker, former EU chief: ‘Trump’s goal is to divide us. And he will fail again’

Claudi Pérez — Sun, 30 Mar 2025 04:20:42 GMT

“Any idiot can face a crisis.” This phrase by Anton Chekhov, the Russian playwright, is all the rage these days in Brussels. This is understandable, given the mix of new technologies and old instincts that characterizes Trumpism and which has dealt a formidable blow to global geopolitics. Indeed, any idiot can face a crisis… and any idiot can cause one.

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The drums of war are beating louder in eastern Germany: ‘Here, we still remember what Germany owes to Russia’

Luis Doncel — Sat, 22 Mar 2025 04:00:00 GMT

Wünsdorf is only 60 kilometers (37 miles) from Berlin, but a vast chasm separates this town in eastern Germany from the thoughts of the country’s political and intellectual elites. Just as the Bundestag is racing to spend whatever it takes to confront Vladimir Putin’s Russia, here, in this locality that during the Cold War hosted the largest Soviet military base outside the borders of the USSR, time seems to pass more slowly. Here, the 20th century is still very much in focus. And it serves to answer many of the questions of the 21st century.

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How the historical memory of Nazism (partly) explains the success of the far right in Germany and Austria

Marc Bassets — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 18:25:45 GMT

The far right is on the rise in Europe, and it is most successful in countries that avoided taking responsibility for the crimes of National Socialism after World War II. Just look at the map of the elections on 23 February in Germany and those of 29 September, 2024, in Austria. Nationalist-populist parties are hegemonic in what was, until 1990, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and in Austria. Both are territories that, unlike West Germany, for decades considered that the history of the Nazis did not concern them.

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Alice Weidel, a far-right profile that breaks the mold

Elena Sevillano — Sat, 22 Feb 2025 04:35:00 GMT

Alice Weidel, Alternative for Germany’s (AfD) candidate for German chancellor, is the antithesis of everything you might imagine a far-right leader to be. Her party advocates the traditional family of a man and a woman, but she is gay and is raising two adopted children with her partner. When she takes to the stage, she delivers a German nationalist discourse, calling for closed borders and an end to globalization, but she spends most — or almost all — of her time in another country. The AfD wants to deport thousands of foreigners en masse, but Weidel’s civil union partner, film producer Sarah Bossard, is originally from Sri Lanka.

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Baden-Württember, southern Germany’s wealthy state where family businesses ward off economic crisis

Almudena de Cabo — Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:13:11 GMT

An unending line of loaded-down trucks fills the streets and highways of the German state of Baden-Württemberg, located next to Bavaria and the borders of Switzerland and France. Driving through the southern German region, one sees a series of towns perched amid the countryside, next to forests and farmlands, many with factories on their outskirts, including global market leaders in their sectors. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the country’s economic and labor engine, dominate the area’s landscape and have helped keep its local population from having to seek their livelihood in the big cities. The national debate surrounding the best path to growth after two years of economic recession, one of the major issues in the German campaign season that culminates in Sunday’s elections, is seen differently here, perhaps a bit more optimistically.

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Macron’s mini-summit exposes EU disagreements over Trump’s Ukraine shake-up

Daniel Verdú — Wed, 19 Feb 2025 12:40:09 GMT

“Those who go to Mar-a-Lago regularly have to be part of a strong Europe, because President Trump does not like weak friends,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned during the Munich Security Conference last weekend. Only two European leaders have so far been to the U.S. president’s Florida residence: Giorgia Meloni and Viktor Orbán. And only one, the Italian prime minister, was at the Paris meeting on Monday, urgently convened by French President Emmanuel Macron to deal with the shockwaves caused by Washington negotiating directly with Russia — and without Europe — on the war in Ukraine.

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Auschwitz survivor Albrecht Weinberg: ‘Everything can go back to the way it was in the 1930s’

Almudena de Cabo — Thu, 06 Feb 2025 11:28:36 GMT

Albrecht Weinberg was 18 years old when the Nazis deported him to Auschwitz in 1943. He survived three concentration camps and was finally liberated at the Bergen-Belsen camp. His parents and almost all of his family were murdered in the Holocaust. In 2012, he returned with his sister from the United States to Leer, a small town in northern Germany, and since then he has dedicated himself to educating German students about what happened in the past, which earned him the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2017. Now, about to turn 100, he admits to being shocked by the decision of the Christian Democrat leader, Friedrich Merz, to accept the support of the extreme right in order to try to push through a package of measures against immigration. In a telephone conversation with EL PAÍS from his home, he warns of the danger of giving space to the far right.

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Alice Weidel: The unlikely leader driving the far-right AfD to new heights

Marc Bassets — Mon, 13 Jan 2025 17:55:25 GMT

She is a woman in a party dominated by men. She lives with another woman from Sri Lanka, with whom she has two children, yet she is surrounded by leaders who champion the traditional family model of a man and a woman, while rejecting immigration. She is a politician from West Germany, yet leads a party that is most successful in the East, where its most vocal base resides. As a liberal economist with a cosmopolitan career, she heads a movement rooted in Germany’s old nationalism — an ideology that, due to the country’s history, unsettles many both within and outside its borders. On stage, she is a powerful speaker who calls for the “remigration” of foreigners, but in personal encounters, she comes across as almost timid, as if she did not quite believe the role she now plays on the national and international stage. She is an apparent moderate leading a party that, unlike its counterparts in France and Italy, has only become more radical over time, rather than softening its message.

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How Musk’s political interventionism expands his business empire

Álvaro Sánchez — Mon, 13 Jan 2025 11:40:02 GMT

Elon Musk has broken boundaries. For months, the persona of the world’s most successful businessman has coexisted with that of the guy who rubs shoulders with extremist leaders and lectures sovereign countries about their domestic affairs, with the United Kingdom and Germany as his preferred targets. This new political facet, whether corporate strategy or pure ideology, has already brought him considerable economic benefits: Tesla shares have risen more than 50% since the election victory of Donald Trump, to whom he has tied his own destiny; the valuation of his social network X.com, once in free fall, has stopped its bleeding; bitcoin and the main cryptocurrencies, in which he invests, are moving close to historical highs; and the recent rounds of financing of xAI, his artificial intelligence company, and SpaceX, his aerospace company, have catapulted their market prices.

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Magdeburg Christmas market attack fuels migration and security debate in Germany

Almudena de Cabo — Tue, 24 Dec 2024 11:55:10 GMT

Following the initial shock of the attack by a Saudi Arabian national on the Magdeburg Christmas market, in which five people died and 200 were injured, it is time for political debate and the predictable exploitation of the tragedy by the far right to promote hatred against migrants two months before the general elections, ignoring the fact that the perpetrator actually came from its own circle of sympathizers.

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The eternal wait at the EU’s largest refugee center in the former Berlin airport

Almudena de Cabo — Tue, 19 Nov 2024 16:00:59 GMT

“I’ve been trying for months to get a flat so I can leave here with my family,” laments Viktor Olug, leaning on his cane in one of the 27 temporary sheds erected near the former Terminal C of Tegel Airport in northern Berlin. His eyes are filled with sadness. Showing the two scars on his neck, he says he has suffered five strokes, two in Berlin and three in Ukraine. “I need peace and quiet. It’s too noisy here,” he says. Olug, 69, came from Ukraine with his son, daughter-in-law, and three grandchildren. “It will be two years in December.”

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Femonationalism in Europe: How the far right disguises xenophobia as freedom

Diego Stacey — Fri, 09 Aug 2024 18:55:37 GMT

Cologne, Germany. New Year’s Eve 2015. Several dozen women are sexually assaulted, robbed and intimidated by a crowd of men of Arab and North African origin. Investigations reveal that among the accused are several refugees who entered the country through Angela Merkel’s open-door policy. The episode caused a wave of anger and forced the government to tighten its asylum rules, an action on which extreme right-wing parties across Europe capitalized to justify their rejection of immigrants, who had become the scapegoats of sexism and violence against women on the continent.

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When the Nazis used soccer as a weapon of mass manipulation

Elena Sevillano — Sat, 22 Jun 2024 03:05:00 GMT

Adolf Hitler extolled the virtues of sport, especially its effect among young people. “What wonderful bodies you can see today!” he remarked on one occasion, after gazing at a picture of a swimmer. But when it came to physical exercise, he could not be said to lead by example. “He refused to practice any sport,” wrote Albert Speer, the Führer’s favorite architect, confidant, and Reich Armaments Minister, in his memoirs: “Nor did he ever mention having done so in his youth.”

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Major German companies mobilize to prevent populist support in European elections

Almudena de Cabo — Wed, 15 May 2024 11:12:43 GMT

Amid the European election campaign and a heated debate in Germany on how to protect politicians from attacks in an atmosphere of growing hatred, 30 of the country’s major business consortiums have joined forces to campaign and raise awareness, at least among their 1.7 million employees, against populist movements. The alliance, which they have dubbed “We stand for values,” is calling for votes for pro-European parties and warning of the dangers of supporting groups such as the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). This is a particularly sensitive issue in Germany, a country that requires immigration to maintain its economic activity.

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