On Friday, US Vice President J.D. Vance gave a devastating speech to the Munich Security Conference, putting Europe in general and Germany in particular on notice that the guarantor of our security – the American Empire – expects its Continental protectorates to return to a more open and less authoritarian political style.
To an audience that hoped to God he would just talk about Ukraine and the great threat Vladimir Putin poses to European liberal democracy, Vance said that the real danger is neither Russia nor China. The real danger comes from within, from a political elite that is increasingly arrayed against the “fundamental values” our leaders claim to share with United States:
We gather at this conference… to discuss security. And normally we mean threats to our external security. I see many, many great military leaders gathered here today. But while the Trump administration is very concerned with European security and believes that we can come to a reasonable settlement between Russia and Ukraine… the threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other external actor. What I worry about is the threat from within. The retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values: values shared with the United States of America.
He suggested that the US has no interest in providing security to a closed, authoritarian Continental political class:
I was struck that a former European Commissioner went on television recently and sounded delighted that the Romanian Government had just annulled an entire election. He warned that if things don’t go to plan, the very same thing could happen in Germany too. Now, these cavalier statements are shocking to American ears. For years we’ve been told that everything we fund and support is in the name of our shared democratic values. Everything from our Ukraine policy to digital censorship is billed as a defence of democracy. But when we see European courts cancelling elections and senior officials threatening to cancel others, we ought to ask whether we’re holding ourselves to an appropriately high standard. And I say ourselves, because I fundamentally believe that we are on the same team.
He complained about Interior Minister Nancy Faeser’s campaigns against internet discourse, deploring specifically that German police “have carried out raids against citizens suspected of posting anti-feminist comments online as part of ‘combating misogyny’ on the internet”. He did not spare his own country, and made it clear that he believes the impetus for these authoritarian attitudes also owes something to the American progressive establishment, against which his administration is presently waging full-scale war:
Free speech, I fear, is in retreat and in the interests of comity, my friends, but also in the interest of truth, I will admit that sometimes the loudest voices for censorship have come not from within Europe, but from within my own country, where the prior administration threatened and bullied social media companies to censor so-called misinformation. Misinformation, like, for example, the idea that coronavirus had likely leaked from a laboratory in China. Our own Government encouraged private companies to silence people who dared to utter what turned out to be an obvious truth.
He said he came to Munich not merely to criticise, but to make “an offer”, namely that politicians on both of our continents can “work together” on reversing the political repressions of “the Biden administration”, which “seemed desperate to silence people for speaking their minds”.
In Washington, there is a new sheriff in town. And under Donald Trump’s leadership, we may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer them in the public square. Now, we’re at the point… that the situation has gotten so bad that this December, Romania straight up cancelled the results of a Presidential election based on the flimsy suspicions of an intelligence agency and enormous pressure from its continental neighbours. Now, as I understand it, the argument was that Russian disinformation had infected the Romanian elections. But I’d ask my European friends to have some perspective: you can believe it’s wrong for Russia to buy social media advertisements to influence your elections. We certainly do. You can condemn it on the world stage, even. But if your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn’t very strong to begin with.
Sparing nobody – not even his hosts – Vance deplored the fact that the organisers of the Munich Security Conference had “banned lawmakers representing populist parties… from participating in these conversations”.
To many of us on the other side of the Atlantic, it looks more and more like old entrenched interests hiding behind ugly Soviet era words like misinformation and disinformation, who simply don’t like the idea that somebody with an alternative viewpoint might express a different opinion or, God forbid, vote a different way, or even worse, win an election.
He asked the auditorium brimming with authoritarian and provincial Eurocrats what they even thought they were defending: “What is the positive vision that animates this shared security compact that we all believe is so important?” He emphasised again that the Trump administration has no interest in funding the defence of a postliberal Europe:
I believe deeply that there is no security if you are afraid of the voices, the opinions and the conscience that guide your very own people. Europe faces many challenges. But the crisis this continent faces right now, the crisis I believe we all face together, is one of our own making. If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you. Nor for that matter, is there anything that you can do for the American people who elected me and elected President Trump. You need democratic mandates to accomplish anything of value in the coming years.
And then he talked about the most central issue in European politics right now, putting his hand directly in the gaping wound just days after the Munich attack that has now claimed two lives, and one week before the German elections:
Of all the pressing challenges that the nations represented here face, I believe there is nothing more urgent than mass migration. Today, almost one in five people living in this country moved here from abroad. That is, of course, an all time high. It’s a similar number, by the way, in the United States, also an all time high. The number of immigrants who entered the EU from non-EU countries doubled between 2021 and 2022 alone. And of course, it’s gotten much higher since.
And we know the situation. It didn’t materialise in a vacuum. It’s the result of a series of conscious decisions made by politicians all over the Continent, and others across the world, over the span of a decade. We saw the horrors wrought by these decisions yesterday in this very city. …
No voter on this continent went to the ballot box to open the floodgates to millions of unvetted immigrants. But you know what they did vote for? In England, they voted for Brexit. And agree or disagree, they voted for it. And more and more all over Europe, they are voting for political leaders who promise to put an end to out-of-control migration.
Vance said all of that, and yet the climax was still to come. In his final lines, he returned to the problem of “dismissing people, dismissing their concerns or… shutting people out of the political process”, which he said “protects nothing” but is also “the most sure-fire way to destroy democracy”. He noted that “Speaking up and expressing opinions isn’t election interference”, even when the people speaking are “outside your own country”. In a humorous jab that fell like lead on a stunned and enraged room, he said that “if American democracy can survive 10 years of Greta Thunberg’s scolding, you guys can survive a few months of Elon Musk”.
And then the bastard said it, the madman went all the way:
Democracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people matters. There is no room for firewalls. You either uphold the principle or you don’t. Europeans: The people have a voice. European leaders have a choice. … Embrace what your people tell you, even when it’s surprising, even when you don’t agree. And if you do so, you can face the future with certainty and with confidence, knowing that the nation stands behind each of you.
Precisely at that first sentence in my quotation, the camera cut to Bavarian Minister President Markus Söder in the audience, laughing and rolling his eyes:
Musk’s advocacy on behalf of Alternative für Deutschland in January at least left some room for doubt as to whether his were personal views or whether they reflected the position of the Trump administration. Vance’s speech has now provided clarity, and confirmed our rulers’ worst fears. It is not only the AfD and 20% of Germans who find themselves behind the firewall now. The Trump administration has joined them, and we can begin to ask who is really walled out and who is really walled in. Vance told his listeners not to be afraid, he wished them “good luck” and he left the stage, having just thrown a live hand grenade into the thicket of the post-Merkel political landscape of the Federal Republic.
In the audience, some noticed the presence of Richard Grenell, the man who served as German ambassador during Trump’s first administration and who is presently the President’s “envoy for special missions”. In 2018, Grenell provoked a minor controversy when he told Breitbart London of his ambition “to empower other conservatives throughout Europe, other leaders”. He spoke in the aftermath of the 2015 migrant crisis and during the rise of populist European parties like the AfD, and there was no mistaking what he meant. Vance’s speech was a message to the entire Eurocracy that Trump has not forgotten his old ambitions, and that he still hopes to open a path in Europe for populist politics. I honestly don’t know why he wants to do this, but apparently he does, and if he is serious the coming years are going to be crazy.
Vance’s words fell so far beyond the window of acceptable German political discourse that our rulers have had trouble finding a coherent response to them or even grasping their meaning. German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) took the podium after Vance and sputtered in outrage:
The US Vice President earlier called democracy into question for the whole of Europe. … If I understood him correctly, he compared conditions in parts of Europe with those in authoritarian regimes. … This is not acceptable and this is not the Europe and not the democracy in which I live and for which I am currently campaigning.
Green Party Chancellor candidate Robert Habeck appeared even more deranged. “What Vance said yesterday is none of his business,” he told ntv and RTL the next day. “You have to be clear about that.” He added, addressing the United States: “It’s just none of your business. Mind your own business, there are enough problems in the USA.” American political discourse is attended by a much harsher rhetoric than in Germany. Habeck’s sharp, dismissive words were shocking, especially coming as they do from a sitting Vice Chancellor. It’s like the man has been driven to the edges of sanity. Certainly he lacks all self-awareness. We are talking about a man who not-so-subtly endorsed Joe Biden during the 2024 election campaign and whose party is happy to lecture the entire world on carbon emissions and liberal democratic values at every opportunity.
Chancellor (and Chancellor candidate) Olaf Scholz meanwhile chose to deliver yet another lecture about the Holocaust, this time to an American head of state whose country helped defeat the National Socialists:
A commitment to “never again”, as Vance earlier made when visiting the Dachau concentration camp memorial, could not be reconciled with support for the AfD, Scholz said: “That is why we will not accept outsiders interfering in our democracy, in our elections, in the democratic opinion-forming process in favour of [the AfD].” “This is not appropriate, especially not among friends and allies, and we firmly reject it.” The Chancellor added: “We ourselves decide how our democracy will progress.”
The hypocrisy is again just blinding, since Scholz himself – as German Chancellor, no less – called Kamala Harris “competent and experienced” and openly hoped for her victory last year.
Not to be outdone, CDU Chancellor candidate Friedrich Merz had his own whining to do. “It is almost an overbearing way of dealing with the Europeans, especially with us Germans. … We have a different opinion and I made that very clear to him at midday today in our conversation.”
Make no mistake: the stubborn resolve and the hard words are an act for the cameras. Vance has put the fear of God into the German establishment. His speech reduced Christoph Heusgen, Chairman of the Munich Security Conference, literally to tears.
Some conference attendees nevertheless tried to maintain a brave optimism before the press:
There were people among the visitors to the security conference these days who tried to take all the madness with humour. “They should all go to therapy,” one diplomat said, and it was clear that he… meant the trio Trump, Hegseth and Vance.
There were also people who tried to find a ray of light in the darkness. “So far, the US has not questioned the most important core of the [NATO] alliance – the nuclear shield over Europe,” a senior NATO official in Munich said. “As long as that remains the case, we can cope with what is happening in Washington.” An EU colleague added: “I’d rather have Vance talking about this culture-war censorship stuff than about the withdrawal of US troops from Europe.”
The fear ahead of Vance’s speech was precisely that he would announce a 20% draw-down of American troops in Europe, and perhaps also reiterate Trump’s earlier demands for increased military spending – not only at 2% of GDP, but at 5%. Instead, Vance appeared to issue an ultimatum: no more firewalls, no more censorship, no more political repression, if you want to enjoy American support.
In the article linked above, which is well-sourced to German diplomats, we also read this (emphasis mine, here and below):
Vance linked transatlantic security to the Right-wing populist values of the new US administration. According to the Vice President, the suppression of freedom of expression, disguised as the fight against disinformation, is more dangerous than the threats posed by Russia and China. Then he continued. “What is the positive vision that animates this shared security compact that we all believe is so important? I believe deeply that there is no security if you are afraid of the voices, the opinions and the conscience that guide your very own people.” This was new. If America were to tie future transatlantic security cooperation to Europe’s Right-wing populists and extremists, to lies and agitation being given free rein, it would have dramatic consequences for the allies on this side of the Atlantic.
Vance’s speech was immensely cathartic, particularly for someone like me who has been shouting many of the arguments he voiced into the void for years. He spoke his words to an insular, self-satisfied political class who have never had to listen to anything like that before, and who are also accustomed to writing off criticisms like his as the concoctions of Russian bots and biased social media algorithms. Vance, being neither a Russian bot nor an algorithm, cannot be so easily dismissed. That in itself is a big deal.
It’s always dangerous to pick moments from the cacophony of current events and assign them historical significance, but if any singular speech is likely to signal the end of the present political insanity in Europe, it is the one Vance gave in Munich on Thursday.
I want to conclude with some thoughts about the strategy of the Trump administration here. You expect me to be a realist and to tell the truth, and so I must say that I hope Vance had no illusions his words would soften the firewall against the AfD, because if anything they have had the opposite effect. As I noted, the CDU responded to his words with offended condemnation. In public anyway, the firewall is stronger than before – propped up on the one hand by a desperate CDU seeking cover from press attacks after it voted twice with the AfD at the end of January, and on the other hand stabilised by a fresh round of hypocritical outrage at American ElEcTiOn InTeRfErEnCE.
One possibility is that Vance, like many statesmen appearing before foreign audiences, intended his words primarily for supporters in America. In this scenario, his actual strategy with respect to Germany – whatever that might be – will have played out behind closed doors, in private meetings with Friedrich Merz and Alice Weidel. While I was arguing with angry MAGA Americans on X about this point, J.D. Vance himself appeared in my replies, emphasising again “that many of these censorious impulses derive from bad American leadership” which “has now changed”. He also wrote that “reminding both our American and European friends that we have an admin biased towards open debate and expression was worth the effort.”
Having a foreign head of state respond directly to your questions on social media ranks among my more surreal experiences. Until now, the only thing politicians beyond the AfD have ever done is block me. I’ve had to think about Vance’s reply for a few days, and this is my conclusion: had he just said “European friends”, I would understand him to mean that he was addressing America’s European allies. The reference to “American and European friends” is altogether more interesting, and suggests he aimed his speech at populist supporters in America and at potential populist allies on the Continent. He was speaking over the heads of the Eurocrats at the Munich Security Conference, to the rabble they fear beyond them. El Gato Malo offered a similar reading of Vance’s tweet on Saturday.
I sometimes worry that the Americans in general – not just Vance – underestimate the power of the taboo presently resting upon the AfD. By calling for an end to the firewall, Vance drove a vast wedge between himself and the centre-Right Union parties of Germany. Like it or not (and I certainly don’t like it), these parties are presently the gatekeepers for anti-migration policy and the AfD both. Vance’s appeal made it effectively impossible for the CDU and the CSU to endorse his speech or align themselves with his anti-migration message. He pushed them in the opposite direction. Now that may have been precisely his intent, for what reason I can only imagine. It’s also possible that he doesn’t care, because he was serious about his threats to use NATO leverage to force change regardless.
I’ll also note that Vance has a remarkably more optimistic view of the present German political landscape than I do. In a post-speech interview with the Wall Street Journal, he said this:
President Trump’s attitude is we want to work with whoever ultimately wins these elections, right? If Chancellor Scholz wins, if it’s the CDU leader Merz, or if it’s the AfD leadership, and those seem to be the three big tickets in town, we want to work with any of them.
Like many Americans accustomed to a different political system, Vance speaks imprecisely of a winning party, so we have to interpret his statement with some freedom. I take that bolded bit to mean that the Trump administration envisions two possibilities the next German Government will consist contain some combination of the CDU, the SPD and the AfD. That means, practically speaking, either a CDU/SPD coalition or a CDU/AfD coalition. You’ll note that he does not mention the Greens at all; the Americans would seem to have written them off. That is also interesting, because the latest polling suggests that a CDU/SPD/Green Government is the most plausible outcome if the firewall holds.
Vance continues:
We’re not going to endorse in their elections, we certainly don’t want to meddle in their elections. But do we think that European leaders can sort of say, “Here is a group of opinions that are completely anathema to democratic debate?” No, you can’t do that, because the people who decide whether a particular opinion should be part of the democratic debate is the people.
And if the people keep on saying we’re pissed off about something, we’re frustrated about something, you can’t say we’re going to ban, censor, silence this group of people. You have to listen to them, even if they’re a minority.
I mean… sometimes… in European elections… you have migration sceptic parties who win a plurality of the votes, but then have no presence in the Government. It’s crazy that people are crying out, I think, for a particular response to what’s going on in Europe over the past 10 years, and I just think that European leaders have to be more responsive to that.
That is defence of democracy. It’s listening to the people. It’s not hanging your hat on these institutions that are very valuable, in some cases, but are often disconnected from the will of the people.
“The group of opinions that are completely anathema to democratic debate”; the people “you have to listen to… even if they’re a minority”; the “people crying out… for a particular response” – these are all references to AfD and its supporters. Including these people, more than military support for Ukraine, more than policing Russian disinformation bots on the internet, “is defence of democracy”. If German elites really want to defend their democratic institutions, they have to end their exclusionary tactics and extend representation to the opposition.
I would say that a coalition between the CDU and the AfD is at this point a near-impossibility, but Vance does not think so. Perhaps he knows more than I do.
This article originally appeared on Eugyppius’s Substack newsletter. You can subscribe here.
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The Gravy Train is old, wobbly, and crowded but it must roll on providing a good living for the old elite. Or not.
He came, he saw, he gave them a right bollocking. The Spirit of 1776 lives on. If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they don’t want to hear.
If he and the boss do right by the American electorate, he could be in the White House in ‘January 29, through to January ’37.
By then, the current shoal of European minnows, sprats and piranhas should have been swept well out to sea, and a better breed of fish will be clearing up the mess.
Still early days. Onward and upward.
The original sin of the AfD was that – roughly a decade ago – some prominent member, possibly Björn Höcke, chose to take a certain side in the so-called 1980s quarrel of the historians by claiming Germany had existed for much longer than 12 years and that any particular period of 12 years, especially an increasingly past period, perhaps isn’t that important anymore. That’s something the German political establishment absolutely doesn’t want to hear because it derives it whole legitimacy from this eternal 12-year-ism and something which gets people who say it in Germany with one leg into jail (German idiom for something that’s borderline criminal and will end badly unless changed fundamentally).
Vance should know that and hence, this bollocking was a bit airheaded. Germany is governed (or rather administrated) in line with the principles the Allied Control Council laid down for this and while there’s room for interpretation and classifying the AfD as Nazis is obviously nonsense, a fundamental freedom to disagree, oppose and speak your mind about it has never existed in the FRG and was never meant to exist there.
Being a Brit, I’m not really acquainted with the nuances of German politics, present or post-war past.
But fair to say, I think, Mr Vance was addressing Europe in general, rather than Germany (or Britain) in particular, albeit with specific examples taken from Germany (and Britain, and Romania).
The firewall is a specific reference to the German AfD sizable parts of the political establishment would outlaw rather today than tomorrow if they only could. And the political system where something like this is not only legitimate but actually called for as duty of all really upright citizens is an Allied legacy for Germany (and a bunch of other European states, namely, Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary and Finland).
When are you going to explain what you mean clearly, instead of these vague references to an “Allied Legacy for Germany” and other states including Hungary, which does not seem to be suffering from whatever it is you are darkly referring to…
This is a clear reference, you’re just not familiar with what it’s referring to, namely, the “anti-nazi” provisions of the German basic law which limit exercise of the right of free expression and association, of the freedom to teach and research and of personal property to purposes which are not designed to “fight against the free and democratic basic order” and which allow prohibition of political parties seeking to change the political order in ways the powers-who-are aren’t happy with (one could argue that the very purpose of a political party is to change the established political order in some way and that hence, strictly speaking, all political parties in Germany are principally illegal).
It’s perfectly possible to get jailed as terrorist in Germany for publishing poems/ song texts politicians really don’t like.
Similar restrictions to freedom of speech etc were reportedly imposed onto all German allies of WWII (which I named). I have no detailed knowledge about this, though.
Ok. I sort of get it now. So basically Germany has no democracy and therefore F c u k e d ?
I ask the same question. Clear and plain English is required.
What is your point? Please clarify. I want the AfD to win. We want common sense to win.
And the unelected EU parasites are the cause of the world’s problems.
That’s certainly an upcoming classic (paraphrase):
Vance: Democracy means listening to the people!
Merz: We have a different opinion about that!
Apart from that, put your money where your mouth is, Vance, and revoke the so-called law 104 which – to this date – is the precise reason why Merz has “a different opinion” about which kinds of opinions are legitimate in the German so-called democracy and which aren’t.
Who passed this law, and in which country?
That’s the German law implementing the Allied Control Council directive 24 for “elimination of national socialism and militarism” which – to this date – is an implied part of the German basic law (Article 139). One would assume that, after almost 80 years of “elimination of national socialism”, not much can be left of it but the German political establishment, especially, the left-wing parts of it, think otherwise: The more elimination takes place, the worse the situation reportedly gets, crying for yet more elimination.
The liberal elites who rule most of Europe cannot get their brains around the notion that “populist” political parties are called that because they have “popular” policies.
These liberal elites and their presstitutes in the main stream and legacy media are afraid of losing their power if they allow the great unwashed public to elect anyone that goes against the neoliberal wet dream of borderless countries with a multicultural society all living in harmony.
Many in the European electorate are far too savvy to believe this neoliberal nonsense.
Whilst we’re at it Russia is no threat whatsoever to Europe and only want to be equal partners with mutual respect for each other.
I’d love to know exactly who war gamed that Ukraine would be able to defeat Russia – no doubt some highly skilled lol, NATO computer modellers were involved. I wonder if they factored in the fact that they were dealing with a country that lost 30 million plus souls in largely winning WW2,.hardly a single family would be untouched.
So we have German tanks complete with Balkenkreuz rolling across the Steppe again.
For many EU leaders – particularly Tusk and UVL they are just carrying out the family tradition. Sadly the UK joined in, particularly Johnson whose eagerness to participate has been ably matched by Starmer and the Wests MSM. Somehow history has been turned on its head – Russia and anyone supporting them are Nazis?!
A few weeks ago Putin said that European leaders would bark and growl (at the peace talks) but shortly thereafter come running to the feet of their master – with their tails wagging.
For me it is immensely satisfying to see them squirm at the collapse of their brave warmongering efforts – very easy to say when you’re not actually fighting.
However that’s nothing compared to the sadness and anger I feel at the totally unnecessary loss of life suffered by both sides.
Much like the covid debacle it’s so sad that the bastards responsible will escape any form of justice on this earth at least.
Time will tell on your last point.
This was an absolutely brilliant, astonishing, powerful speech by US Vice President Vance. Thanks to Eugyppius and the DS for featuring it and the reaction.
Eugyppius is, however, mistaken in worrying that “Vance drove a vast wedge between himself and the centre-Right Union parties of Germany.” The truth is that “Centre-Right Union parties” DO NOT EXIST anywhere in Europe or the UK. They are all Leftist Traitors hiding behind a facade of conservatism, and their only purpose is to deceive the public into drawing away from True Patriots in every nation.
Merz has recently made an about-face by trying to end Merkel’s open borders policy in favour of something more in line with what the CDU used to stand for, which used to be an anti-immigration and pro-German party (within the usual limits for that). Reportedly, he has back-paddled since then and no potential coalition partner for the CDU would accept anything but open borders but this could be a start. It even got the supposedly retired Angela back into the ring to declare that something like this must not happen. Yet, it was spoken and voted on in parliament.
But Merz is a total fake, and is only back-peddling to deceive the public again, just like the evil Communist Globalist Tusk has been making similar noises in Poland.
How Tusk managed to get re-elected is a mystery, but as Stalin said, it’s not the voters, but who counts the votes that’s important.
Among other things, Merz has in the past voted against a law requiring politicians to declare their commercial interests publically. He’s also committed to saving the climate etc. The ‘fake’ is out of question. But generally, people articulating CDU positions of 20 – 25 years ago are immediately shouted down as Nazis by the German political establishment and hence, him openly doing so was nevertheless a political earthquake (offices and other buildings of the CDU obviously got immediately targetted by the anti-fascists because of this.)
Note to the author: Populist is a smear term people knowingly governing against the will of the population (and usually, for its detriment) use to claim that there is no alternative to that and that people who support alternatives policies are either dishonest or misguided and ill-informed: They’re either trying to trick people into voting for them by supporting popular policies despite they know about the almighty TINA or they’re too stupid to understand her ways.
There are great many very intelligent people in the AfD which was – after all – originally founded by a professor of economics opposed to the Euro and I don’t think they’re particularly dishonest, either, at least not for politician’s standards. There are certainly alternatives to heat pumps and wind-generated electricity, namely, what we’ve been using so far for this. Only rabid would-be planet-savers claim otherwise.
It is hard to put into words how much contempt I have for all these establishment people in positions of power. There is nothing redeeming about them. They are despotic, they have no capacity for self reflection, they are badly lacking in intelligence and wisdom. And to top.it off they talk down to people that are better than them in almost every way; people who are smarter, more honourable and honest.
They are really scum.
Especially the current British Labour Cabinet, who are irredeemably thick and talentless
That’s a great description, and reminds me of an old Monty Python sketch, in which John Cleese described a group as “irrepressibly dull and awful”.
If only they were that smart and gifted.
No doubt what many European Politicians are worried about is Trump and Putin agreeing that the fighting will stop, the Ukraine border will be redrawn near to where it is now and there is an agreement that Ukraine will never be part of NATO. Then more and more people will start asking ‘what was it all for?’ The 100s of thousands killed and injured, the 100s of billions of dollars of devastation that needs to be rectified, the upheaval to families, businesses and infrastructure. What’s happened to Ukraine is a political failure on a massive scale, going back decades, and the politicians who failed the dead and injured will be desperately trying to distance themselves from any culpability.
Just like with the Covid PsyOp, this was no failure when you consider the UK has been training up Ukrainian forces since around 2014. Destabilising Russia seems to be part of the plan. The failure is to stop Trump bringing an end to the bloodshed. that’s why they’re throwing their toys out in a panic.
They’ll also look (even more) stupid when after things settle down, it turns out Putin wasn’t on a mission to conquer all of Europe as everyone was told after the invasion. Scare tactics like always to get everyone into line and behind the morons that pretend to lead us.
Shame that coup de’etat failed, because only a revolution will shift these ‘liberal’ tyrants.
President Trump has already described the speech as brilliant..As fine an analysis as this is, it misses the main drivers of the US , one is the need to get the budget under control, they can’t afford to pay for the West’s security, at the expense of their own taxpayers and secondly they have no interest in being a slave to the mad ideas of Davos,,,,,,which by dumping those mad plans also saves them a fortune and gears up their economy……
The EU needs to wake up fast, as far as the US government is concerned Davos and all it stands for ,is dead……very soon many of it’s biggest fans, like Soros and Gates, are going to be asked some very hard questions, about all the US taxpayer money, they have been getting, in their tame NGO’s, as are the likes of many of the EU’s biggest supporters…..
The reaction in Munich was more than likely not intellectual, it was the first inkling that their gilded lives were about to become very ordinary.
JD Vance: “Europe does not accept free speech.”
Europe: “The Vance speech is not acceptable.”
Lol.
Eva Vlaardingerbroek
Jesus wept, is this man on his period or something? Somebody give him a bolus of testosterone, stat! The cherry on the cake is that he gets comforted by a literal female ”Nazi”: Alice from the AfD, lol;
”The poor little chairman of the Munich Security Conference had a full-on pathetic meltdown, sobbing like a toddler, all because JD Vance dared to hurt his precious feelings by criticizing European leaders.”
https://x.com/politblogme/status/1891423658985279524
Hilarious!
Oh blimey, sticks and stones might break my bones…
…You couldn’t get away with being a wimp like that in the playgrounds and streets I remember from all too many decades ago, when the big boy from that big boys’ school started taking the mick.
Someone get that man a packet of Kleenex and a backbone transplant.
What an utter disgrace that R s hole is. Absolutely pathetic. Shameful.
If Germany gets a coalition of CDU/SPD/Green nutters after the election then their downward spiral will probably pick up speed as businesses will know that the country is uninvestable for years to come. The impoverished people will have even less to spend every month prompting the crisis of lack of income from sales tax to fund the states. Munich ironically is one already struggling as consumer sales drop away. Will the last industrial company padlock the gates as it departs for cheaper locations.
If Germany gets a coalition of CDU/SPD/Green nutters after the election… then too many will have effectively voted for it.
And the point is?
Do you realize that politically sanctioned thugs roam German streets and beat up people who are suspected to support the AfD? AfD politicians too, obviously, who can expect to run into all kinds difficulties in their jobs, have their business boycotted and their premises attacked, possibly with “home-made” firebombs in the dead of the night, and who can expect to be preferred target for knife-wielding religion of peace adherents on the prowl.
There were votes in the USSR and strangely, people always voted for the party. So, it’s clearly all their fault.
I’m really starting to wonder how obviously f***ed a system can be for the routine victim blamers to realize that the victims are not the prepetrators and that they didn’t really have a choice.
No. I did not realise this.
Certainly I am aware of two-tier justice in the UK with outrageous cases of illegals evading deportation on spurious excuses and left and right leaning political rallies policed in entirely unbalanced ways. Violence by left-leaning demonstrators far outstripping that by right-leaning demonstrators.
As for victim blaming: Yes. For example I blame Londoners for re-electing Khan. They knew what he stands for and they had alternatives. The UK elected the current Labour government and I hope the nation suffers and through that realises and does not repeat its mistake.
Yes, media coverage is unfair. If people will not look beyond the state media they will not get a balanced view.
As far as I understand it the German electoral system is rigged to result in coalition more often than not. If the people don’t want a coalition government they have to do something about it.
The UK’s electoral system is rigged against insurgent political parties. A breakthrough from insurgent to mainstream is the only way to overturn the current uniparty. I was disappointed but not too surprised when the UK voted against AV in the second national referendum. PR is what gives Germans no real choice. FPTP gives the UK a choice of one. Both countries need real change.
There once was a VP called Vance
Who shook the élite from their trance:
”If you block your cloth ears
To your countrymen’s fears,
Then frankly you don’t stand a chance.”
Wonderful!
“This is not acceptable and this is not the Europe and not the democracy in which I live and for which I am currently campaigning”
You are in the ‘right’ side of what the establishment agrees with.
Well I think maybe the esteemed author may be overthinking this. I don’t see how anyone could speak honestly and clearly about what’s happening in Europe without incurring the wrath and alarm of the European establishment, however subtly it is phrased – especially not someone from the Trump administration who are all viewed doubtless as “far right extremists” already by said establishment. Ultimately the kind of ideas that Vance expressed need to become respectable among the majority of European populations otherwise we are screwed whatever happens.
I am a little confused, because previous items by the author seemed to indicate contempt for the status quo in Germany and a hope that change was on the way from good showings in the polls from AfD. For me, if the AfD are the largest party but the rest of the German political system contrive to exclude them, just as if Reform become the largest in the UK, after the locals, without cooperation from the uniparty, it will hopefully only speed the demise of the outdated establishment in future elections. Vance’s speech was one of the most earth shattering, welcome interventions into European politics in years.
What a great line for a future quote, Cotfordtags!
“Vance’s speech was one of the most earth shattering, welcome interventions into European politics in years.”
Absolutely.
Vance reading them the riot act:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlXUeNexTCw
No Prisoners!
It was a Master-Class in FREE SPEECH. The right to say what you think, even if it offends the sensibilities of people who disagree with you.
I hope he (or Trump) does exactly the same to our own Authoritarian PM when he visits next week.
I really enjoyed the Vance speech and know he’s bang on the money. However, unless European and UK governments will not listen, they are so convinced they are right these regressive Marxist will double down and become more authoritarian and dictatorial.
These communist thugs know they are being beaten back and will do everything they can to stay in power.
God bless America for seeing the light, we need to catch up quickly.
We need a JD Vance in the UK. Even Farage is not capable of saying half of the stuff Vance said in Munich!!! This was a I am a Berliner moment. Seismic. Incredible and brave. I would vote for him any day!
Great speech and his claim to be next Republican President. And thank you J.D.Vance for spelling out to Starmer and the unitary what we, the people, have been voting for all these years
What the main German political parties apart from the AfD are saying is that the Nazis destroyed Germany’s democracy forever and Germans should forever accept that they need to be governed by totalitarians to eliminate the return of Nazism. I as a Brit don’t think this is true and I hope the good people of Germany agree with me. Vance, I hope, has opened the German people’s minds to the effect of their current governing parties and the way they want to maintain the status quo, which I hope now they feel free to talk and vote against. We in Britain have a current government aligning itself with the undemocratic elements of the EU and working hard to destroy our democracy and right to free speech unless we the people can fight against them, they will destroy our country and its previous reputation as a bastion of freedom and free speech we were once the envy of the world for.
“I would say that a coalition between the CDU and the AfD is at this point a near-impossibility”
Maybe. That will depend on the results of the election. In the opinion polls, the AfD are polling at least 20 percent, with the Union parties at 30 percent or less. Given that the polls probably understate support for the AfD, the true result could easily be 25 percent for the AfD, with about the same or only a little more for the CDU/CSU. That would change these considerations completely.