UKRAINIAN PRESIDENTIAL PRESS SERVICE/AFP via Getty Images
So it turns out that MEGA — “Make Europe Great Again” — is not just a slogan.
It’s not just a wistful line on caps worn by people on my side of the pond who wish we had a Trump-like figure to stir up Euro-politics.
No, it’s really happening. And its gun-totin’ chief is JD Vance.
Witness his glorious roasting of Europe’s leaders at the Munich Security Conference.
It was a delicious spectacle — a self-made millennial Yank torching the grey-faced technocrats of my sad, knackered continent.
He didn’t hold back. He eviscerated the assembled dignitaries for their failings on free speech, democracy and security.
He lamented “the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values” — words that will have resonated with millions of Europeans. I’m one of them.
It was on the freedom to speak that he made his most stinging comments.
“Across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat,” he told his startled audience.
He rattled off recent acts of outrageous censorship that would have made Stalin beam with pride.
He mentioned police raids in Germany on citizens “suspected of posting anti-feminist comments online.” Criticizing feminism is a blasphemy in woke Germany.
He reminded us that just two weeks ago, a Christian activist in Sweden was convicted for burning copies of the Koran — despite the fact that his friend had just been murdered for doing the same.
Vance looked righteously aghast that Sweden would do something as cruel as convict a man of the “speechcrime” his buddy had just been slain for.
He rebuked my homeland, Britain, for its tragic “backslide away from conscience rights.”
The “basic liberties of religious Britons” are being throttled, he said.
He gave the example of Christians being arrested for “silently praying” near abortion clinics.
This really is happening. This once great nation that gave the world such game-changing freedom warriors as John Milton and John Stuart Mill now erects “buffer zones” around abortion clinics in which you can be nabbed by cops for praying in your own head.
Never mind “thoughtcrime” — Britain has “prayercrime.”
Little wonder that Vance said he is most “concerned” about “our very dear friends, the United Kingdom.”
There’s now Soviet-style censorship in Europe, he said. He chastised the EU’s “commissars” — I literally whooped when he used that word — for censoring everything they don’t like.
The Euro bureaucracy hides “behind ugly Soviet-era words like misinformation and disinformation” to silence those who simply have an “alternative viewpoint,” he said.
Never a truer word. On every issue, from COVID to the gender ideology to mass immigration, what our overlords refer to as “misinformation” is usually just thinking that differs from their own.
Such stern policing of dissenting words is a menace to democracy, Vance said. “Dismissing people . . . shutting people out of the political process” — this is the “most surefire way to destroy democracy.”
Preach, JD.
He had stiff words for those who accuse Elon Musk of interfering in European democracy. “Expressing opinions isn’t election interference,” he said.
Then came his best line: “If American democracy can survive 10 years of Greta Thunberg’s scolding, you guys can survive a few months of Elon Musk.”
Game, set and match to the American.
Vance can’t believe what has become of “the Cold War’s winners.” With the fall of the Berlin Wall, Europe was meant to enter a new era of liberty and possibility.
Yet now we’re mimicking our old Soviet foes. You’re censoring dissidents, shutting down media, and even cancelling the results of democratic elections, he cried.
His final message? Trust people. “We shouldn’t be afraid of our people,” he said, “even when they express views that disagree with their leaders.”
And there it was: that old belief that ordinary people can make a pretty good fist of their lives and don’t need the machinery of state to push this way and that.
Vance’s speech wasn’t so much a breath of fresh air as a hurricane of good sense. It was a storm of reason that has left many in Europe wide-eyed and wanting more.
The liberal press is accusing him of “attacking Europe.” He didn’t attack us. He talked to us.
He urged us to rediscover those “blessings of liberty.” His speech was firm but it was kind. It was the pained plea of an old friend who’s worried we have lost our way.
He has shown just how fresh and daring the new Trump administration is.
Try to imagine Joe Biden doing what Vance did. It’s impossible.
First, because Biden lacks Vance’s verve and insight. His administration was a self-serving machine more concerned with hiding Biden’s frailties from the public than with rethinking the Western world.
And secondly, because Biden has far more in common with Soviet-lite Europe than he does with Vance’s infectious love of liberty.
Indeed, as Vance reminded us, Biden also “seemed desperate to silence people for speaking their minds.”
After hearing Vance, I’m wondering if that position of 51st state is still open. I know Canada doesn’t want it, but some of us in Britain might be interested.
How about it, JD — take us, your “very dear friends,” on your mission to restore the great virtues of the free West.
Brendan O’Neill is chief political writer for the British online magazine spiked.