Faced with the new America that the two Frankenstein doctors Trump and Musk are creating, one of whom sees the world map as a hypermarket full of appetizing and all purchasable products (Greenland, Canada, Panama), while the another wants to place in Europe the leaders that suit him, the European Union and the United Kingdom are getting closer.
On January 9, Emmanuel Macron visited Keir Starmer. In this new “Trusk” era, this creature born from the brains of Trump and Musk, the French and the British have more interest than ever in getting along. The Prime Minister, because he seeks, without uttering this cursed word of Brexit whose effects have weighed down the British economy, to strengthen a resurgent axis with the European Union, at a time when the continent is threatened by Russia and where the “special relationship” with the United States, stated by Churchill in 1945, has clearly lost its vigor. The president, because his failed dissolution and his political weakening give him little time to leave a positive record on history. His visionary and constant actions for the sovereignty of the European Union and, beyond that, for a “political community” of the continent, are the trump card he can play. His disagreement with Olaf Scholz and the collapse of the Franco-German tandem play all the more in favor of closer ties between the two nuclear powers of Europe, France and the United Kingdom, in the face of Putin’s war in Ukraine.
Fake news and algorithms
Keir Starmer has recently forged a bond of a different nature in Europe: apart from the fact that they are both social democrats and precisely for that reason, he and Olaf Scholz have in common that they are Elon Musk’s favorite targets on his social network X. The British Prime Minister has been the subject of hundreds of false tweets. Begun during the August 2024 racist riots in England, they now accuse Starmer of being complicit in the system of rape and prostitution of underage white girls by criminals of Pakistani origin. This is false: as attorney general, Keir Starmer played a decisive role in the fight against this phenomenon, as early as 2013. But Musk manipulates his fake news, its algorithms and its 212 million followers transformed into militiamen who use their retweets as weapons of harassment and intimidation. He proposed voting on X: “Should America free the British people from their tyrannical government? According to the Financial Times, he consulted local accomplices to get Starmer to resign “before the next general election”.
The German chancellor was called by Musk, on X, “crazy”, “incompetent imbecile”, “absolute idiot”. Taking ownership of the campaign for the German elections on February 23, Musk is running alongside Alice Weidel, head of the list of the far-right AfD party, like him anti-immigration, anti-woke, anti-liberal democracies, anti -European Union. On X he declares that “only the AfD is capable of saving Germany” and on Hey, where have the Brexiteers, Frexiters and other liars gone who denounce interference (from Brussels) in national affairs? Never in the world has a private person had as much power as Elon Musk, never in the world has a personality serving a national government interfered like Musk does in the affairs of states foreigners. Where are the barkers “Take back control” ? Their silence deafens us.
Dazzled eyes
The European Union is not much better. Faced with Trusk, and this is one of the main objectives of the Trump-Musk, it is divided. The Italian Giorgia Meloni, who skillfully knows how to be as European in Brussels as she is Europhobic in Rome, gazes at the billionaire with dazzled eyes and discusses with him a 1.5 billion euro contract for a satellite network which would short-circuit a European project. The Hungarian Viktor Orban swears by his friendship with Trump, who sees in him the inspiration for the “illiberal democracy” of which he dreams. It is time for Europeans to mobilize and for Keir Starmer to establish the post-Brexit United Kingdom’s “special relationship” with the EU, rather than with an America reduced to the state of Trusk.
Marion van Renterghem is a senior reporter, winner of the Albert-Londres prize and author of “Piège Nord Stream” (Arènes)
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