Fault Lines

How Trump and Musk are exposing fractures in the global right-wing alliance

Last week the American right held their annual CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) jamboree in Washington. This event has been running since the 1970s but was supercharged by the Tea Party movement during the Obama years and has turned into a vast, lavish, affair – with appearances from Donald Trump, J. D. Vance, Elon Musk and hundreds of others.

Perhaps the most interesting moment this year was a speech that didn’t happen. Jordan Bardella – the President of Marine Le Pen’s “National Rally” party – was due to appear but pulled out after Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon decided to copy Musk’s Sieg Heil gesture.

It’s interesting for two reasons. The first is that Bardella was planning to speak at all. What was once an entirely US event has become a global one in recent years as nationalist parties and authoritarian leaders have gained ground all over the world. CPAC conferences have been held in Europe and South America.

This year’s speakers at the main event included Slovakia’s pro-Putin President Robert Fico, Viktor Orbán ally Miklós Szánthó, the leader of Spain’s Vox party Santiago Abascal, former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, Argentina’s current President Javier Milei (who gave Musk his signature chainsaw), as well as representatives from Poland, Australia and Mexico. Our very own Nigel Farage and Liz Truss also appeared, albeit in the latter case to a largely empty auditorium.

But it’s also interesting because Bardella’s response to Bannon’s gesture is indicative of a wider fracturing in this global right-wing movement. Last year Bardella, who is also leader of the “Patriots for Europe” faction in the European Parliament, refused to allow the German AfD to sit with his group. This followed comments by Maxmillian Krah, the AfD’s lead candidate in the European elections, defending Waffen-SS officers.

In response the AfD set up its own grouping with the most extreme far right parties in Europe including Neo-Nazi holocaust deniers from Slovakia and a breakaway Hungarian party whose leadership think Orbán is too left-wing.

The return of Trump, and the extremely aggressive approach being taken by his second term team, has energised this global movement – with the most powerful people in the world now preaching long held concerns about immigration and diversity. But it is also increasing the tensions between the (relatively) moderate and extreme wings.

This is a particular problem for right-wing parties in Western Europe, including Reform and, to some extent, the Conservative party too. On a whole range of issues from Ukraine to tax they are getting pulled between their hardcore base, now backed by well-funded media outlets, and their wider electorates. Which in turn creates the risk of splits and infighting. This is a common problem for revolutionary movements but in the postwar era it’s tended to be a more significant factor on the left than the right simply because far right parties and ideas used to be consigned to the fringe.

So in the rest of this post I’ll look at how this global movement was formed, what the key fault lines are, and how they could lead to a more substantial breakdown over time.