The midterm monsters: A moment of danger — and opportunity for Europe and democracy. 

Stockholm Syndrome provides a useful metaphor for the world’s infuriating relationship with Trump. It’s almost a relief to arrive at that moment when the abuser behaves so outrageously that even the victim has to concede he’s a ‘bastard’, that they’ve been manipulated all along with false flattery, comforting familiarity (the special relationship) and coercion (tariff threats), whilst coasting on the ‘good chaps’ delusion that ‘he just wouldn’t do that (would he?)’. 

But he just has. Trump has just clarified that his true affinity lies, not with protecting Western democracy, but with Putin, the world’s leading strongman “criminal” and “thug”. ‘Melodramatists’ who, along with Mary Trump, spotted this years ago, feel grimly vindicated. 

Hearing Zelensky quietly acknowledging Trump’s alignment with Putin is heartbreaking. It’s also a historic moment in which we are finally cut loose from ‘the big deception’.

Flouting the Graham Act, Trump has relaxed sanctions on Russia and forged a diesel deal. He has also authorised delays to Ukraine’s supplies of patriot missiles, and is planning joint nuclear-powered data centres with Russia. He has defined Zelensky as the aggressor and punished Ukraine by playing with the Starshield surveillance flip-switch. When it’s off, the Ukrainian military fly blind, with devastating consequences for Ukraine’s citizens.

Russia’s mission to undermine Europe is long-standing. But it now looks clear that the White House plans to join the venture to replace the European liberal, rules-based order with ethno-nationalist, Christo-fascist, white supremacism. 

The midterms

In this context, the US midterm election is a two-act play (on 3 November and 3 January) representing the battle over liberal democracy. Trump has fallen from grace but still has numerous levers (including delaying election court cases and calling a state of emergency) to prevent a just result. And, since he has stuffed the Supreme Court with Republicans, we cannot be certain how the court will respond. 

If Trump succeeds in barring elected Democrats from being seated on 3 January, his mission alignment with Putin will place Europe and other middle powers under new pressure and send a deep, corrosive chill through the Western rules-based order. Europe will want to hasten its independence from the US, and strengthen military and economic cooperation, internally, and with sympathetic nations like Canada. But European military self-sufficiency alone is predicted to take 25 years and cost $1tn. 

Meanwhile, Russia could become a US proxy – an attack weapon against Europe which allows the US to maintain distance and continue fudging its NATO commitments. With US sanctions lifted, Russia is in a stronger position to attack countries beyond Ukraine. This aggression would unify Europe but also generate division around the crippling costs of defence in deeply cash-strapped countries. 

Europe is already embattled. Far-right parties are poised to take France, Spain and key parts of Germany. The mission to undermine Europe is under way. If Trump steals the midterms, European pro-Russia countries, factions and parties wanting protection are likely to step up their collusion with Russia in challenging ‘the corrupt West’. So, Europe could become even more vulnerable to internal extreme right, fascist take-overs.

We hope, but can’t assume, that Europe will remain united against an emboldened Russia that’s bolstered by backdoor US funding and propaganda assistance. Nor is Trump’s Russia alignment a fanboy quirk. If in doubt, listen to presidential wannabies, JD Vance and Marco Rubio, delivering menacing ‘civilizational erasure’ attacks on Europe in recent speeches.

Trump stealing the midterms may quicken the spread of fascism in Europe and impede the wider existential fight to preserve democracy. 

The perfect moment

Trump may have chosen this moment to abandon his thin veneer of loyalty to the rules-based order because his midterm polling is terrible. What better time to wrap oneself vicariously in the strength of a mafia strongman?

But it’s also a moment of unrest fomenting across Europe, that’s ripe for exploitation. Citizens of France, Spain, Albania, Italy, and Portugal are pushing back against neoliberalism’s broken promises (on housing, public services, living costs, and education). Feelings of anger and betrayal over governmental failure to deliver are spreading like summer wildfires, breeding riots and receptivity to the strongman solutions of fascism in equal measure.

The neoliberal ethos appears to be creaking under the weight of its own avarice, with the pernicious role of the super-wealthy becoming increasingly clear. Oligarchs, notably tech giants, are buying ideologies, governments and elections in order to block regulation and protect their assets against fair distributions of wealth. By aligning with fascist strongmen they seek to prevent democratic values from obstructing their financial interests. In this regard, Trump is just a predictable consequence, a sad puppet, of wider ideological forces. 

Fascist noise and voting from experience

We cannot know how US events will unfold between 3 November 2026 and 3 January 2027. But this week’s remarkable election results from Serbia and Brazil give pause for thought. Against the odds, they followed Hungary’s earlier achievement and voted in progressive democratic leaders. Brazil’s election, for one, echoes America’s struggles – Lula’s win might have been considerably larger had his Trumpesque opponent, Flavio Bolsonaro, not meddled with the progressive vote (by, for example, halting buses to polling stations).

But there’s one pattern here that seems clear. On the one hand, European countries such Germany, Italy, France and Spain are courting extreme right parties because many of their citizens, especially the younger demographic, have no first-hand experience of fascism in living memory. They direct their hostilities instead to their incumbent leaders, the neoliberal ‘centrists’ (Macron, Merz, Sanchez, and the increasingly centrist Meloni) whose low growth, high public debt economies have crippled public trust.

By contrast, the citizens of Brazil, Serbia and Hungary have had recent experience of corrupt right-wing populist governments and extreme right dictatorships. They understand the painful consequences of falling for the remedies of these spin doctors. The US is on the same trajectory, with recognition gradually dawning over the midterms. 

And yet citizens seem to have difficulty extrapolating from the experience of other countries to their own. The US is an insular nation. So, perhaps we wouldn’t expect it to look outwards to the uncomfortable parity between its own Republican administration and the governance of other countries? But why aren’t those European countries currently toying with fascism learning from the ruinous experiences of Hungary and Brazil? 

The loud noise of propaganda and social discontent is difficult to escape. Also, fascism, as Melanie Klein notes, isn’t static; it’s a dynamic spiral which evolves to match the societies in which it occurs. Its latest iteration arrived by stealth because, contra the 1930s, modern societies disguise it better. We have algorithms instead of marching boots, bot propaganda farms instead of Nazi rallies, and predominantly right-wing press classified as ‘impartial’. Escaping the cunning of modern fascism is not straightforward.

A modern monster

Yet, each fascist phase, despite its changing historical face, has a shared feature. It is an expression of our ‘worst version of ourselves’. Matt D’Ancona 

“We are a demon-haunted species, striving to embrace the better angels of our nature” (Matt D’Ancona).

Trump, as a ‘demonic worst version of ourselves’ may be US fascism’s undoing. 

His recent abominations have tested even MAGA loyalty. Half-empty Trump rallies are testimony to the red lines being drawn against a leader who supported the live streaming of an execution, who shared a video, against the parents’ express wishes, of their mentally ill son being killed by a tiger, then mocked the event with his own AI version. America is finally stalling over a man who has violated the ‘America First’ ideal with flagrant expansionism and aggression (Venezuela, Greenland, Iran), who advocated “obliterating Iran”, who betrayed Ukraine, and who has littered the US with data centres and detention camps. 

To be candid, these actions may have appalled US voters less if the price of oil was lower. Let’s just be grateful for the co-incidence of high oil prices and Trump’s moral travesties. 

But Trump’s demonic extremism ultimately makes him a progressive asset. He has inadvertently fast-tracked the corruption and hollowness of neoliberalism and its failures. Symbolically, he’s an incarnation of ‘the thing in the raw’ – stripped of the ‘good chaps’ niceties, the pretend deference to the rules, and cod moral thinking, which together masked the system’s real incentives and successfully conned citizens into viewing it as the only and best way forward.

Now the world is seeing the bare-faced monster in all its glory. Trump has done us the favour of comprehensively removing the gloss – accelerating the truth by standing as a naked, ugly symbol of where unfettered neoliberalism ultimately leads – to world domination by an army of glitzy, shallow, dangerous, insane, uncontrolled menaces.

Like Francis Bacon’s ‘Pope’, he is screaming at us that change is now unavoidable if we want to survive.

Cliff-edge

America has repeated Klein’s nightmare spiral of fascism with ‘evil chaps’ now mocking their ‘good chaps’ theory of governance. Yet, despite the grip and creep of fascism, we have reasons for optimism – citizens can learn from experience, fascism can overreach and expose itself. 

As we barrel towards the midterms, we are by-standers waiting to see if the outcome will strengthen or undermine Europe and the international rules-based order. We are also observing a momentous symbolic power struggle between progressive liberal values and their opponents.

If the Republicans fail to win the House and even the Senate, then in the run-up to the new legislative session on 3 January 2027, Trump’s backers will do their utmost to manoeuvre the Supreme Court towards a swamp of legal grey areas. At this point, the fate of US and European democracy will be down to the wire, potentially hanging on whether Republican Justices of the Court listen to the better angels of their nature, stand their ground, and resist huge pressure to make partisan verdicts. The world’s eyes will be on them.

Image credit: Gage Skidmore – Creative Commons