Donald Trump’s administration is planning to spend $4 million to bolster right-wing media in Europe, part of a package of at least $25 million for civil society groups working on conservative causes in the region, according to four people familiar with the funding.
The grants risk deepening tensions between the Trump administration and European governments, some of which have already accused Washington of interfering in their domestic politics.
The U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL) says the funding is meant to strengthen transatlantic ties and promote free speech. It comes as European countries prepare for elections over the next couple of years, and as the Trump administration openly backs Europe’s populist right-wing and far-right parties.
We’re just talking about different things. You’re arguing about whether Europe qualifies as meaningfully left-wing under a Marxist framework; I’m only saying Europe is further left relative to the US. They’re not contradictory claims.
I’m saying trying to say Europe is “further left” is more semantics than anything.
I mean, yeah, it’s a relative comparison. Calling one country richer, more democratic or more authoritarian than another is “semantic” in the same sense. It doesn’t make those comparisons meaningless.
Semantics aren’t the same as making relative comparisons. I’m saying you have to kind of torture our understandings of what makes something more or less “left” to a degree that is more destructive to our understanding than constructive to say that Europe is “more left” than the US.
I don’t think you have to torture the definition at all. If one society has substantially more redistribution, public provision, organised labour and constraints on capital than another, describing it as relatively further left is a perfectly ordinary and useful comparison. It’s perfectly reasonable to argue that Europe doesn’t go nearly far enough, or to be dissatisfied with its current trajectory, and id fully agree with you, but that doesn’t invalidate the comparison.