The Trump administration seems awfully serious about this “Western civilizational” thing.
If you somehow hadn’t caught on to that fact before this weekend, chances are you’ve gotten the memo now. On Saturday, America’s top diplomat strode up to the podium at the annual Munich Security Conference and waxed poetic about the bonds of history and culture uniting the New World with the old continent.
“We are part of one civilization—Western civilization,” Marco Rubio said early in the speech, which featured 12 uses of the word “civilization.” Whether you love or hate the Trump administration’s civilizational turn, the fact of its happening has been undeniable for months. And no, you can’t dismiss it as some Rubio-driven project.
Vice President J.D. Vance’s own speech at the same conference last year also gestured to a Western civilizational worldview, as I argued at the time, although it garnered a more hostile reception. Since then, President Donald Trump, Vance, Rubio, mid-level officials, and official strategy documents have repeatedly propounded a civilizational vision of America and Europe. That’s why I was able to report and write a feature-length magazine article on the topic and file it in January.
What, then, was the point of Rubio’s big speech?
One aim was to reiterate that the White House is operating within a new, civilizational paradigm of U.S.–Europe relations, and to elaborate that paradigm:
We are bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could share, forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry, and the sacrifices our forefathers made together for the common civilization to which we have fallen heir.
Another aim was to reassure the Europeans that America wasn’t turning its back on them:
We care deeply about your future and ours. And if at times we disagree, our disagreements come from our profound sense of concern about a Europe with which we are connected—not just economically, not just militarily. We are connected spiritually and we are connected culturally.
A third aim was to kick the Europeans in the rear so that they come along for the ride:
Under President Trump, the United States of America will once again take on the task of renewal and restoration, driven by a vision of a future as proud, as sovereign, and as vital as our civilization’s past. And while we are prepared, if necessary, to do this alone, it is our preference and it is our hope to do this together with you, our friends here in Europe.
Left-wingers were appalled. “Marco Rubio’s speech was a pure appeal to ‘Western culture,’” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) complained, making air quotes. “My favorite part was when he said that American cowboys came from Spain. I believe the Mexicans and descendants of African slave peoples would like to have a word on that!” (Fact check: no.) She added that “whiteness is an imaginary thing,” which I suppose puts white people in the same category as fairies, unicorns, and AOC’s deep knowledge of history.
Nor did neoconservatives like Jonah Goldberg seem pleased with Rubio’s speech, which kicked off a discourse they saw as racist—and which struck a nerve. Goldberg lost his cool on X during a debate about “white culture,” maligning some poor fellow named Golfguy21 as a “stupid peckerwood” for believing it exists. Wikipedia tells me that odd word is a “racial epithet used against white people, especially poor rural whites.” Evidently, whites are permitted to claim the culture of drinkin’ beer and shootin’ deer, but not the higher culture extolled by Rubio:
It was here in Europe where the ideas that planted the seeds of liberty that changed the world were born. It was Europe which gave the world the rule of law, the universities, and the scientific revolution… the genius of Mozart and Beethoven, of Dante and Shakespeare, of Michelangelo and Da Vinci, of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones… the vaulted ceilings of the Sistine Chapel and the towering spires of the great cathedral in Cologne…
Paleoconservatives are, in theory, the faction best equipped to process this rather unexpected effort to save Western civilization, and to support it. The legendary paleocons of yesteryear—Pat Buchanan, Sam Francis, Joseph Sobran—lamented the demise of the West and rise of the rest. They would have been thrilled to hear a U.S. official voice nostalgia for the centuries of Western expansion and bemoan the contraction of the West after the Second World War amid “godless communist revolutions” and “anticolonial uprisings.”
The White House apparently wants Americans and Europeans to adopt a very different, much more right-wing temperament than the one modernity has instilled in them. It’s a big ask. For decades now, the education system and corporate media have instructed whites to feel guilty about Western history, to make themselves smaller, less aggressive, harmless. The idea is that if you lie down in your bed underneath the covers and cry then maybe some big liberal in the sky will smile down on you and show mercy.
Rubio offered different advice: Don’t be such a wimp.
We do not want our allies to be shackled by guilt and shame. We want allies who are proud of their culture and of their heritage, who understand that we are heirs to the same great and noble civilization, and who, together with us, are willing and able to defend it.
All these passages are shocking, but not as shocking as what happened after Rubio was done speaking: The audience, comprising some of the most effete and xenophilic Europeans you’ll ever encounter, gave a standing ovation. “Mr. Secretary, I’m not sure you heard the sigh of relief through this hall when we were just listening to what I would interpret as a message of reassurance, of partnership,” a moderator told Rubio.
Mr. Moderator, I’m not sure you heard the message.
I’ve been trying to decode this message for over a year now, ever since Trump’s second inaugural address. “Above all,” Trump said, “my message to Americans today is that it is time for us to once again act with courage, vigor, and the vitality of history’s greatest civilization.” One conclusion I’ve drawn: The “Western civilization” framework is meant to generate coherence between Trump’s foreign and domestic policy programs, just as “democracy versus autocracy” did for Joe Biden.
Trump wants to make America great again, and he understands this aim as part of a broader effort to make the West great again, and that’s what it’s all about, Alfie. His plans to upsize the White House and build an Arc de Triomphe in Washington should be understood in these terms no less than his condemnation of Europe’s suicide by mass migration. Simply put, if you don’t like all the talk about Western civ, perhaps because you were expecting a sharper focus on foreign policy “restraint,” then you should consider that maybe you don’t like this administration.
And really, look at Donald Trump. Look at the totality of his life in business and media and politics. Does he symbolize restraint to you? Are you simple? The man used to split his time between a palace in Palm Beach and the top of a skyscraper in Manhattan with his name on it, cycling through leggy supermodels and eating three Big Macs every meal, before moving into the White House—which he’s currently turning gold!
I won’t lie (my job is to write and talk about politics while not lying): I reckon there’s a roughly 5 percent chance this all goes terribly wrong, with a big war or mass left-wing uprising or slide into actual fascism or some other calamity. And there’s a 90 percent chance nothing really changes. Perhaps three years from now, as AOC is being inaugurated as America’s first female president, cherry-strudel-eating Europeans will ask themselves: “Vy vere zee Americans acting so veeeerd during Trump?”
But that leaves a 5 percent chance that this actually works, that the White House leads a restoration of the West to its former greatness, and that America and Europe really do dominate the world for another “Western century,” as Rubio put it. Trump 2.0 is the only right-wing administration of my lifetime. Yet Americans and Europeans have been marinating in liberalism so long they’ve grown pruney. So what happens next? Stay tuned.
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