European governments are terrified of Donald Trump’s threats on trade, Greenland and the future of Nato. But the biggest threat is not that Trump invades an ally or leaves Europe at the mercy of Russia. It is that his ideological movement could transform Europe from the inside.

A year after Trump’s return to the White House, his “second American revolution” is radiating outward into Europe. The Epstein files reveal how this began clumsily in 2018 with Steve Bannon; but it has become a much more sophisticated partnership with the second coming of Trump and the rise to power of JD Vance. The US National Security Strategy published by the White House in November called for strengthening the growing influence of “patriotic” European parties such as Reform UK, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN), Fidesz in Hungary and Vox in Spain. As with the communist movements of the cold war, these nationalist, populist and in some cases far-right parties are best understood not as isolated national phenomena but as expressions of a shared intellectual project – a movement that is, to varying degrees, now being reinforced by a foreign power.

The movement is often portrayed as backward-looking or reactionary, intent on restoring an imagined past. In reality, its strength lies in being radically contemporary – finely tuned to the political, social and intellectual conditions of the 21st century. I have spent the past 18 months trying to understand this movement, talking to everyone from bespectacled Hungarian intellectuals to freshly shaven young RN politicians in France, from Orthodox Jewish political philosophers to Maga diehards in the US. Based on this research, I am convinced that far from........

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