The West and its enemies

Isabelle Lasserre — Who are today’s anti-Westerners?

Frédéric Martel — To answer that question, we need to consider both the West’s traditional enemies and its new opponents. We have known the former for a long time; on the one hand, the traditional representatives of Marxism-Leninism and its various offshoots (Sovietism, Maoism, Castroism and all forms of far-left totalitarianism which, for various reasons, hate the West, Europe and sometimes France); on the other hand, the proponents of Islamism. I did indeed say ‘Islamism’, not Islam, which is a respectable religion, like most religions.

Added to these are new enemies who — and this is what is new about our era — are targeting the Western world and, above all, Europe, because Europe is said to have betrayed its own values, because it is said to be decadent, corrupted by ‘wokism’, feminism, liberalism and legalism, which are said to prevent it from protecting itself against waves of migration.

I. L. — Who are these new enemies? Can we name them?

F. M. — This kind of rhetoric is very prevalent among Donald Trump and his allies in the Republican Party, some of whom are ‘techno-totalitarians’ or supporters of the ‘Dark Enlightenment ’ (1) . But it is also found among three other political leaders. Firstly, in Javier Milei, who is offering figures such as Peter Thiel, the founder of Palantir (2), an Argentine refuge (3) organised around the West’s most enduring values to protect them – a Gallic village from which ‘woke’ movements would have been banished, even though Peter Thiel is openly gay – which is rather contradictory. Next, in José Antonio Kast, Chile’s new president, although I remain cautious, as he has only just been elected and we have not yet really seen him in action. Finally, we find this Trump-style rhetoric in Abelardo Gabriel de la Espriella, the brand-new president of Colombia. Of course, there are nuances between these three leaders. Nevertheless, we can observe a sort of reactionary arc stretching from Argentina to Chile, to Colombia and all the way to Donald Trump, the origins of which owe much to Viktor Orbán, who has just stepped down from power in Hungary after nearly sixteen years. We Europeans find ourselves in the middle of this arc, surrounded. This, it seems to me, is the defining feature of our era.

I. L. — All this criticism directed at Europe is also widely shared and disseminated by the Kremlin. What is the difference between Soviet anti-Westernism and that of Putin’s Russia?

F. M. — Marxism-Leninism, imposed on Russia over a hundred years ago, has taken various forms over the decades: Leninism, Stalinism, Brezhnevism… Their anti-Western – and, above all, anti-American – framework has become strongly anti-European, at least since Europe became associated with the market economy, capitalism and freedom of expression. The USSR made little secret of its hatred of democracy, political pluralism and the rule of law… This communist framework found echoes elsewhere, …