Why Europe’s far right has split with Trump over Greenland
NUUK, Greenland — A year ago, a few days before Donald Trump took power again, the leader of the Danish People’s Party visited Mar-a-Lago. Morten Messerschmidt believed that he and Trump shared a common view on the perils of European integration. Together, he told local media at the time, they could make the West great again.
In Europe, as in the United States, Messerschmidt believed that it was “national suverænitet”—national sovereignty—that, over the centuries, had given countries large and small the tools to build their culture, traditions, and institutions. These are the values that conservative movements across the European continent are fighting to protect.
But Messerschmidt now finds himself on the defensive. The far-right politician is suddenly distancing himself from a US president who repeatedly over the past year has launched aggressive moves to annex Greenland, targeting Danish borders that have existed for around 300 years.
Trump this week backed away from his military threats against the island. “It’s full access — there’s no end,” he said in an interview with Fox Business on Thursday. Asked if he still intended to acquire the island, Trump replied: “It’s possible. Anything is possible.”
Despite Trump’s fixation on Greenland since his first term, he refused to meet with Messerschmidt at Mar-a-Lago last January. Instead, the Danish politician found himself discussing the issue with Marla Maples, the president’s ex-wife.
“Presenting myself as someone who serves a cause other than Denmark and who would sympathize with threats against our kingdom is unhealthy,” Messerschmidt wrote on Facebook over the weekend. “It’s slander.”
The Danish People’s Party is one of several far-right groups in Europe that have aligned with Trump’s MAGA movement in their fervent opposition to immigration and related issues, suddenly in rebellion against an administration it once considered an ideological ally.
The president’s moves now require them to reconcile their alliance with Trump with a core tenet of the political right, that nationalism is largely defined by people and place over historical periods — or, as Trump often said on the campaign trail, “without a border, you don’t have a country.”
“Donald Trump violated a fundamental promise of his campaign, namely not to interfere in other countries,” Alice Weidel, co-leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, said in Berlin. His colleague added: “It is clear that the methods of the Wild West must be rejected. »
The rift could jeopardize the Trump administration’s own stated goals for a future Europe that is more conservative and aligned with the Republican Party — a plan that relied on strengthening the same parties that are now questioning their ties to the president.
In its National Security Strategy, released in November, the White House said it would “cultivate resistance to Europe’s current trajectory among European nations,” hoping to restore “Europe’s civilizational self-confidence and Western identity.”
And it’s unclear whether the president’s decision to walk back his most aggressive threats will be enough to contain the diplomatic damage. “The process of reaching this agreement has clearly damaged trust between allies,” Rishi Sunak, former prime minister of the United Kingdom and leader of its Conservative Party, told Bloomberg on Thursday.
Trump’s pressure campaign urging Ukraine to accept borders redrawn by a revanchist Russia had already strained relations between his entourage and European far-right movements. But several prominent right-wing leaders say his aggressive stance toward Greenland amounts to a bridge too far.
In Switzerland on Wednesday, responding to growing concerns about the project, Trump made further threats, warning European leaders that he would “remember this” if they blocked a U.S. takeover.
“Friends can disagree in private, and that’s fine, that’s part of life, part of politics,” Nigel Farage, leader of Britain’s far-right Reform UK party, told House Speaker Mike Johnson in London earlier this week. “But for a US president to threaten tariffs unless we accept that he can take over Greenland by some means, without even seeming to get the consent of the people of Greenland – I mean, that’s a very hostile act.”
In France, the leader of Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party said the United States had presented Europe with “a choice: accept dependence disguised as partnership or act as sovereign powers capable of defending our interests.”
With overseas territories spread across the Pacific, Caribbean and Indian Oceans, France has the second largest maritime exclusive economic zone in the world after the United States. If Trump can seize Greenland by force, what is stopping him or any other great power from conquering the French islands?
“When an American president threatens a European territory by exerting commercial pressure, it is not a question of dialogue, but of coercion. And our credibility is at stake,” declared the young leader of the party, Jordan Bardella.
“Greenland has become a strategic pivot in a world returning to imperial logic,” he added. “Give in today would set a dangerous precedent. »
