When J.D. Vance went to Munich in February, it seemed a bizarre bit of attention-seeking.

The US vice president told Europe’s leaders that their biggest threat was not Russia or China but came “from within”. He told them they were anti-democratic. He spoke up for the far-right Alternative for Germany party. A Russian propagandist cheered him for giving Europe a “public caning”.

Illustration: Joe BenkeCredit:

We can now see it was actually a foretaste of something much bigger – an official policy to export America’s ideological revolution.

The Trump administration is applying the values of Make America Great Again to US foreign policy.

The threshold moment arrived on Thursday (US time), when the US State Department gave notice officially that it was gutting its human rights bureau and creating a new “Office of Natural Rights”.

In its notification to Congress, the administration said: “the office will build the foundation for criticisms of free speech backsliding in Europe and other developed nations”.

For example? One of the Trump regime’s greatest gripes is against countries that ban hate speech, try to moderate online content, regulate social media or apply any sort of limits to the behaviour of US tech platforms.

To punish such countries – which, of course, include Australia – the US last week announced a visa ban on any foreigner who is “complicit in censoring Americans”, in........

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