We may well be witnessing the emergence of a global right-wing totalitarian agenda in some of the most powerful regions and countries in the world.
There is currently a great deal of fear, confusion and distrust towards the new US administration around the world. The Trump administration’s actions have been confusing and unpredictable, and its language does not resemble that of any previous US administration.
Instead, its language and actions resemble those of authoritarian leaders that the US has long sought to differentiate itself from, often reflected in the familiar refrain that the US stood as a global “beacon on the hill” for people around the world who aspired to live within democratic nation states.
The only consistent thread in the actions of the new US administration has been the steady march towards the implementation of Project 2025 through a deluge of executive orders, the dramatic assault on the US federal state, and attempts to capture key state agencies that cannot simply be dismantled.
What has been commonly referred to as a “revolution” in the popular media is anything but a revolution. It can be more accurately described as state capture.
That state capture and moves towards authoritarianism are well under way in the US is beyond doubt. The question that most of the rest of the world is concerned with is what kind of geopolitics and geopolitical order the US is trying to establish under the new US administration.
To date, it appears that a profound inversion of the pre-existing geopolitical order is being brokered by the new US administration. It has thrown some of its long-term allies under the bus, some to the wolves and has threatened the sovereignty of others, going so far as to make claims on their territories.
It is unclear, however, who exactly is driving this agenda. There are a number of different actors who have been invested with a great deal of power under the Trump administration who appear to be pulling in the same direction at times, and in different directions at others.
Geopolitical aspirations
Yet while the noise and confusion produced by the roller-coaster ride that the new US administration has taken the world on is dramatic and outsized, some perspective can be gained by taking a longer-term view of what has transpired in the global far right over the past few decades.
While the rhetoric of protectionism and isolationism is being deployed, these recent 180-degree about-turns in long-term US foreign policy are likely anything but a retreat from hegemonic ambitions within the global order. Instead, it is – or is likely to be – a wholly unprecedented assault on the geopolitical order that is very much intended to expand US influence and entrench its hegemony, albeit on new terms.
To achieve this new global agenda, however, its liberal egalitarian democracy – as well as those of its allies and other ideologically aligned nations – stands in its way.
Hence, while this disturbing turn – on the face of it – appears to be a bold attempt to capture the US state and establish an authoritarian regime for self-enrichment, as well as to avoid criminal and other charges faced by the leader (as is routine with authoritarian leaders), there appears to be much more than meets the eye when considering what the geopolitical aspirations of the new Trump administration may be.
To understand what these global aspirations may be, it is important to understand the distinction between authoritarianism and totalitarianism.
Specifically, it is important to understand how the political theorist Hannah Arendt understood the difference between them.
In Arendt’s judgement, authoritarian regimes restrict themselves to seizing autocratic control of a nation state, exercising extreme coercion, while mobilising existing institutions and traditional identities. That is, they work within the existing institutions and identities that characterise the nation state without attempting to reshape the entirety of society under a single ideology.
The Nazis
In contrast, totalitarian regimes are “pan” movements that extend beyond the borders of the nation state. They mobilise population groups across different countries and regions under a single, universal ideology and establish dominance over the social, cultural and private lives of individuals by completely erasing the multiplicity of identities and the institutions (particularly democratic institutions) that characterise the nation state.
In this framing, the Nazis were totalitarian because they mobilised an ideology that drew on earlier prototypes such as Pan-Germanism or Pan-Slavism to establish the idea that the Aryans were a master race that was destined to rule over, eliminate and colonise the rest of the world, controlling every aspect of everyday life.
Arendt was an astute observer and commentator of her times. Crucially, she lived the experience of totalitarianism and the lead-up to World War 2 in the 1930s. She was arrested for resisting the Nazis and was lucky enough to escape arrest thanks to a sympathetic police officer. She escaped to France but was later interned in a camp in Nazi-run France, which she also escaped. Thereafter, she lived the rest of her life in America.
The difference between Hannah Arendt and many other observers of her time is that she fully anticipated the rise of the Nazis in Germany, even though she did not and could not imagine that the Holocaust would unfold at the time.
She developed a deep loathing for the German intellectual classes who downplayed, acquiesced, fell in line with and/or rationalised and justified Nazi ideology. She was clear-eyed in the moments that it mattered and actively resisted the Nazis.
Uncanny resonance
Many of her observations and analysis of the 1930s resonate uncannily well with the events that are transpiring today. Under threat from liberal progressivism for the past three decades or so, the far right has been steadily mobilising and building transnational relations that span across traditionally Western nations such as the US, UK and Europe, extending into Eastern Europe and Russia itself.
Many scholars and authors have tracked the evolution of the far right, but the critical thing to understand about it is that it spans across different countries and regions, and far-right activists and politicians have been actively networking with one another for the better part of three decades.
What is scarcely acknowledged and discussed in the media – whether traditional or new – is that Russia houses significantly large groups of neo-Nazis. They first rose to prominence in Russia in the 1990s.
Vladimir Putin has actively courted these groups – after some initial contestations with them (the history is complicated) – and they are now aligned with the Russian state and its ambitions.
As scholar and author Robert Horvath explains, the Kremlin embarked on a programme of “managed nationalism” that mobilised and empowered right-wing Russian ultra-nationalists – including neo-Nazis – to counter and diminish radical left-wing and pro-democrat opposition movements that were anti-Putin and his vision for Russia.
One noteworthy right-wing organisation – among many others – in Russia is the ominously named Russian Imperialist Movement; a far-right, ultra-nationalist, white supremacist organisation that is vested in the creation of a new Russian empire. Its paramilitary wing – the Russian Imperial Legion – provides military training to far-right militants and neo-Nazis from across the globe, including Finland, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Poland and the United States.
Generally, since the 1990s, far-right activists and politicians from around the world have been networking and organising between themselves and are now a globally interconnected movement that transcends national boundaries and regions of the world.
They share ideological frameworks, some of which are sophisticated enough to cohere with those of conservative political movements – as well as left-wing agendas such as anti-capitalism/corporatism and anti-globalism. They meet regularly, host conferences and are heavily digitally interconnected, sharing political tactics designed to gain control over national conservative political movements.
Social media campaigns
They have secured online spaces that they occupy and dominate, where their identities and ideologies are maintained and reinforced. On some platforms, far-right views are amplified. For example, Telegram has been accused of amplifying far-right views.
Larger platforms have also been impacted. Since Elon Musk took over Twitter/X and gutted its content moderation capabilities, hate speech and far-right views have measurably amplified on the platform.
Facebook is now following suit, taking its lead from Musk’s radical overhaul of Twitter/X, having quickly deferred to the Trump administration’s pro-free speech absolutism stance, and its anti- diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies.
The impact of this has yet to be felt in societies around the world, but it should be of grave concern that Facebook is embarking upon a drastic about-turn on its content moderation policies.
The far right has also devised compelling and convincing media campaigns that mobilise traditionalist, patriarchal values, fear of threats to white Christendom, white (and other) male paranoias over being displaced from the historical hierarchies they’ve occupied (ie, whether by different races or genders), as well as racialised nationalist fears of being “replaced” by people of colour.
As previously mentioned, they also engage in paramilitary training between different countries and regions of the world.
While there are regional and national differences between the far-right movements spanning the globe, even within their shared regions and nations, there are significant shared values between them.
Generally speaking, their shared values include the following; nationalism and sovereignty, anti-immigration, the primacy of ethnic and/or race identities, traditionalism and social conservatism, anti-elitism and populism, law and order (and/or authoritarianism/monarchism), economic nationalism and protectionism, anti-liberalism and anti-leftism, militarism and paramilitarism, religious and/or cultural identity, climate change denialism and environmental nationalism.
European Union
Globally, over the past 20 years, far-right politics have risen to prominence in different regions of the world, but most significantly in the European Union (EU). The list of EU (and former EU) countries that have experienced this upsurge includes Germany, Italy, Hungary, France, Sweden, Finland, Poland, Austria, the Netherlands, Spain, Greece, Belgium and the United Kingdom (where far-right politics was instrumental to achieving Brexit, the departure of the UK – by referendum – from the EU).
In North America, the United States has swung to the far right after Tea Party Republicans hijacked the Republican Party, later metastasising into the Maga movement when Donald Trump became its new candidate, and later, its unchallenged and unequivocal “strongman” leader.
In both the European and US far-right movements, the pan-identity that binds them revolves around a broader ethnic whiteness as under threat from multiculturalism and immigration of ethnically black, brown and Asian peoples, and replacement by them through racial mixing and demographic change.
In Latin America, Chile, Brazil, Argentina and Ecuador have experienced the rise of far-right politics. In East Asia and the Far East, India and the Philippines voted far-right parties into power in recent history, with the BJP still in power in India.
In the Southern Hemisphere, Australia and South Africa host significant – predominantly white – population segments that share the sentiments of the global far-right discourse through what has been termed “far-right translocalism”.
This pan resurgence of far-right movements has translated into political success at the polls across the world, but strikingly so in the European Union. According to Statista, in 2022, the countries where right-wing populists had the greatest success in Europe included Italy, Poland, Switzerland, Sweden, Hungary, France, Austria, Spain, Germany and the United Kingdom.
The US administration is openly backing the far right within Europe. They pose a fundamental – even existential – threat to the EU as a regional cooperative body. Indeed, Trump himself views the EU – erroneously – as set up precisely to threaten the United States. In his own words:
“The European Union was formed in order to screw the United States. That was the purpose of it!”
New global order
In reality, the history is completely the opposite – the US was very much behind the creation of the EU – but that doesn’t matter to the Trump administration as long as ordinary Americans believe the lie. Indeed, establishing a new global order may depend on it.
By proclaiming unabashed support for far-right parties in Europe, the new US administration may well be displaying its support for the emergence of a “pan” movement that can assert a new global political order, which in turn rests on the formation of a pan far-right bloc that spans the US, EU, Eastern Europe and Russia itself. If this analysis is correct, then in the bigger scheme of things, the conflict in Ukraine is small potatoes; it stands in the way of a bigger global agenda.
While Project 2025 itself does not explicitly reveal any such ambitions towards consolidating global far-right alliances, the Heritage Foundation – which produced the publicly available Project 2025 document “Mandate for Leadership” – has engaged closely with European far-right movements and political parties, and particularly the Hungarian President Viktor Orban, whose recipe for “illiberal democracy” (ie, through state capture) is now being implemented in the US by the Trump administration.
Steve Bannon
Perhaps the most significant indication, however, that these aspirations to consolidate global far-right alliances are real and being actively pursued can be revealed by studying Steve Bannon’s activities and worldview. Bannon is perhaps the most articulate and widely recognised far-right political figure in the US and was instrumental as his chief strategist in bringing about Donald Trump’s first presidential win in 2016.
He founded Breitbart News, and even detractors who’ve studied him closely agree that he is in many ways the genius of the US far right. Breitbart News played a key role in shaping the non-traditional media landscape and online public discourse that propelled Donald Trump to the presidency of the US in 2016, taking the world – and much of the US – by surprise. It exists within a “closed” right-wing media network that effectively insulates its audience within right-wing echo-chambers, rendering them particularly vulnerable to partisan messaging.
Bannon also played a key role in Cambridge Analytica’s support for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016. As co-founder and vice president of Cambridge Analytica, he oversaw Cambridge Analytica’s (illegal) collection of Facebook data that was used to develop high-resolution psychological profiles of US voters. These were in turn used to craft precision-targeted political messages at specific voter groups during the campaign.
Bannon understands full well how powerful the big tech platforms can be in swinging democratic outcomes in favour of the far right.
Bannon has been actively cultivating global far-right alliances, particularly in Europe, but also in Russia. In 2017, Bannon founded an organisation called “The Movement”, which was based in Brussels. The Movement’s purpose was to unite right-wing populist and economic groups in the EU and support them in their opposition to the EU’s political structures. It provided support services such as polling, messaging advice, data targeting and think-tank research.
In 2017, Bannon made efforts to support, coordinate and advise right-wing populist European parties in their contestations with – and for – the EU as a supranational institution by increasing their support for the European parliamentary elections.
His efforts back then met with mixed success, with some European far-right leaders expressing their indifference or reluctance, leading to its demise in June 2019. What is clear, however, is that Bannon was making significant efforts to unite the US and EU’s far-right political movements as recently as under a decade ago.
Bannon openly expressed his views that the EU lies at the heart of what needs to be dismantled to pave the way for the new global order, stating that:
“The beating heart of the globalist project is in Brussels. If I drive a stake through the vampire, the whole thing will start to dissipate”
Bannon has also met and engaged with Russian far-right figures, most notably with Aleksandr Dugin in 2018. Dugin is a Russian nationalist and political theorist who advocates for “Eurasianism”. Eurasianism is a geopolitical concept that positions Russia as central to uniting various ethnic groups in opposition to Western liberalism. Dugin’s ideas have influenced Russian political thoughts, particularly around efforts to expand Russia’s geopolitical influence on the global stage.
Trump, Putin and global dominance
It might well be that the Trump administration’s about-turn in US policy towards Ukraine, which has witnessed the US now openly siding with Russia and its leader Vladimir Putin – who Trump regards as a friend with whom he shares foundational values – may be a precursor to a global realignment that reasserts the US’s global dominance in a new way.
And it is not just Trump’s shared values with Putin that indicate this shift.
The Republican Party’s new US administration – and the Maga base that supports them – share the same worldview and values for the most part. Central to these values is the explicit fear that the dominance of white Christendom is under threat from mass migration (ie, people of colour) and the proliferation of progressive social and cultural values around the world through “globalism”.
Maga Republican Senator Marjorie Taylor Green expressed this foundational sentiment when defending Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as follows:
“The Ukrainian government is attacking Christians … Russia is not doing that. They’re not attacking Christianity. As a matter of fact, they seem to be protecting it.”
The far-right express disdain for democracy, often claiming that authoritarianism and monarchism are better systems of government. They also would like to re-establish – in their revisionist, nativist understandings of their national histories – the primacy of Christian values in their countries.
The Russian state under Putin is precisely such a state. It is a far cry from what Russia was under the Soviet Union. The Russian state now resembles Tsarist Russia and has explicit imperialist ambitions. It is very closely linked to the Russian Orthodox Church and gains legitimacy from its explicit support. Indeed, the Russian Orthodox Church played a key role in legitimising and brokering support for the war on Ukraine.
This church-state alliance aligns very closely with what the far right regard as the kind of government and state they prefer, despite all their pretensions to free speech absolutism and freedom from overbearing governments and states.
Viewed from this perspective, it is not difficult to imagine the formation of a pan far-right bloc – or axis – that spans from the US to the EU, and into Russia itself. While this might be impossible for centrists, progressives and the left to imagine, it would not be the first time in history that they were caught off-guard by far-right, fascist forces.
As Tony Blair once pointed out, in the contest between left-wing fascism and right-wing fascism, it is the right-wing fascists that usually win out.
Collective denial
When momentous changes are underfoot, there is a tendency towards “normality bias”, ie, to downplay or explain away these changes as not presenting a significant threat to things as they are. The movie Don’t Look Up! is perhaps the most powerful satire of our tendency to enter into a state of collective denial when collective disaster looms large.
In her book, Twilight of Democracy: The Failure of Politics and the Parting of Friends, conservative writer Anne Applebaum – who is perhaps the most insightful and cogent observer and analyst of the fragmentation of the conservative right that has unfolded over the past two-and-a-half decades – tracks the emergence of Trump’s movement and its rise to power.
She observes that while many US citizens tend to think of the arc of progress as linear and vectored in the direction of increased progress, the US founding fathers were more sanguine in their understanding of human nature. That is because they drew on the Greek literatures to inform their perspectives, and the Greeks understood history as circular.
It is for this reason that the founders built in the very many checks and balances in the American Constitution and political system. They knew full well that the Republic was likely to come under threat from despotism/despotic forces or personalities in future administrations.
These checks and balances are now under a full-scale assault within the US, in what constitutes the most fast-moving, radical and visible attempt at state capture of any state in recent history.
Implications
Returning to the objective of this piece, however, for the rest of the world, the questions revolve around what the implications for the global order are. It is difficult to imagine that the right-wing thinkers and strategists who came up with Project 2025 and had the political acumen to get it mainstreamed so quickly would not have devoted any thought to what America’s place in the global power hierarchy should be as well.
This piece draws together a range of observations to make the case that we may well be witnessing the emergence of a global right-wing totalitarian agenda in some of the most powerful regions and countries in the world.
It is not a prediction but an alert, based on strategic analysis, of what may be transpiring or what the intentions of the new US administration – and their far-right allies – may be.
What isn’t clear is who exactly might be driving such an agenda, and whether Donald Trump himself understands it as well as they do. It may be that Donald Trump is riding the tiger, but that the tiger has its own broader ambitions. That would render him the useful idiot of Project 2025 and the emergence of far-right politics in the US.
The scarier prospect is that he may be wittingly identified with the emergence of such a politics and the society it seeks to create. According to Applebaum, Donald Trump’s father was once arrested at a Ku Klux Klan rally in the 1920s. During Trump’s first administration, he refused to disavow the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke.
He has openly courted and supported white nationalist groups and leaders in the US, defending the white nationalist protests against “replacement” in Charlottesville, his overtures and pardons to the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers for the 6 January Capitol riots, even dining with Nick Fuentes – the American white supremacist, far-right activist and pundit – at his Mar-a-Lago residence.
It may be that releasing the 6 January rioters was a signal to far-right paramilitaries to assist his administration by committing “extra-legal violence on his behalf”, as argued by Professor Carolyn Gallaher.
Deeper agenda
Whichever is the case, the actions of this administration indicate that it is indeed focused heavily on implementing Project 2025. Thus far, its interactions with the EU, Ukraine and a variety of other allies are deeply troubling to allies around the world.
Analyses of these events have largely been restricted to conjecture based on the character of Donald Trump, ie, that he is transactional, vainglorious and expects to be treated like a strongman leader akin to a monarch.
These may, however, belie a deeper agenda, one that threatens to upend the past five decades of progressive sociocultural and political progress through the deceptive mainstreaming of a new totalitarian agenda. One which forwards a far-right agenda, but with skilful, issue-based messaging that can reach a broader audience that cuts across the spectrum of the conservative right and traditionalists, into the centrists, even attracting some left-wingers.
The US’s disruptive break from historical norms and democratic institutions is cause for considerable concern. It threatens to shake up the very foundations of what the traditional Western conservatives and progressives (ie, liberals) regarded as institutions set in stone. The question of whether this is a democratic project at all is now nakedly unavoidable.
A US-led totalitarianism is a very scary prospect indeed. It has vast powers, especially militarily. If the dream of global white supremacy ever had a moment in which it could win out in totality, this is it.
If what this piece argues for is valid, then Europe is a key piece of the puzzle in forming a far-right bloc – with the US serving as its battering ram – and is under threat from the most dangerous and formidable forces that it has faced since World War 2. DM