A transatlantic far right?

far-right tactics – A conversation with Jan-Werner Müller traces how ideas travel from Hungary and elsewhere into the Trump coalition—especially the shared attack on universities, courts-first tactics, and a new global framing of domestic culture wars.

The first thing Jan-Werner Müller reaches for is not ideology as a slogan. It’s ideology as machinery—how power gets built, protected, and made to look lawful while it changes the rules of the game.

“Who are these people in the Trump coalition?” the interviewer asks. and Müller answers by refusing the comfort of a single label. The coalition. he says. is “very heterogeneous. ” with “all kinds of groups” and “very different agendas.” He also warns against treating the “post-liberals” as the whole story. even though they do matter in the circles around Vice President J.D. Vance. who has “been most invested in shaping an intellectually more ambitious agenda.” Müller describes Vance as someone who wants to appear “intellectually respectable. ” drops names. shows up at big conferences. and tries to provide “theoretical reference points. ” rather than operating in the mood of “the Silicon Valley world” or “more direct MAGA leaders.”.

Still, Müller says the coalition converges on one point: a deep dislike of universities “as they are,” and—using his phrasing— a desire to change them, “and I think it’s fair to say destroy them,” even if their reasons vary.

In Müller’s telling, the disagreement runs underneath that shared hostility. Some post-liberals. he says. resemble “relatively traditional communitarians. ” but with “a bit more of a hard edge” and a willingness to use state power to enforce what they view as correct morality. He points to Viktor Orbán’s Hungary as a key reference point. At the other extreme. Müller describes people who argue that “democracy isn’t the only game in town. ” and that if a system better promotes their version of Catholic natural law. it may be acceptable to “do away with democracy.” Even within that camp. positions vary.

That diversity matters, but the borrowed tactics matter more. Müller argues that the Trump movement has emulated what he calls “autocratic legalism”—being “careful to be seen to be following the law. going by procedures. ” while violating “the spirit of the law. ” reconstructing the system. and entrenching rule. He says Trump supporters spent the four years between 2021 and 2025 searching for “sometimes extremely obscure laws. ” including laws going back to “the 18th century that nobody had paid much attention to. ” with the aim of gaining maximum power for the executive. In that framing, Orbán’s defense against the European Commission—“look, everything we do is legal”—becomes a template.

But Müller draws a sharp line between this legalistic approach and Trump’s own style. Trump. he says. has also done things that are “obviously illegal. ” where “there’s no pretence.” He compares it to Trump’s conduct as a businessman: do something outrageous. create “facts on the ground. ” and force others to react—sometimes ending in settlements. sometimes in silence. Müller calls that strategy “very effective,” even as he says it is “very different” from autocratic legalism. He adds that figures like Orbán. and also Erdoğan. had to pay attention to international context. institutions. and “international public opinion”—while the United States. in his view. has fewer constraints even if many are horrified by the “destruction of international law” that the US is “now so clearly complicit” in.

The rhetoric travels too, Müller says. Saving “Western civilization. ” restoring “traditional morality. ” and sharing the same enemies—the repeated clichés about “liberal elites” and singling out George Soros—are not difficult to copy. “There is no doubt. ” he says. “a certain kind of knowledge about how to entrench far-right populist rule has travelled across the Atlantic.” The question is whether it works everywhere in the same way; Müller stops short of declaring victory or failure.

Speed is another difference the interviewer raises. Orbán has been in power “since for sixteen years. ” Erdoğan “for even longer. ” and it took them time to reach the point Trump has reached “after a year and a half.” Müller says yes and no. On one hand. people were “taken aback” by how quickly things were done—“how brutally. without attention to legal niceties.” On the other. he argues that an aspiring autocrat who comes to power a second time around acts differently. In Europe. he says this is the story of Orbán and Kaczyński: the second time they came to power. they were “better prepared. ” had “different personnel. ” and a “game plan.” They moved quickly to “hijack certain institutions right away. ” then followed up with “culture war. ” going after journalists. universities. and more—while first taking the courts.

Müller suggests the Trump story is “somewhat similar. ” with an important complication: “It is debatable whether we can talk about a captured apex court in the United States” in the way Europe can talk about the Constitutional Tribunal in Poland. He says that when Trump returned to power. he “already had a court that in many ways was to his liking.” Yet the overall pattern still looks familiar.

If there is a difference, Müller says, it may be personnel. Orbán. he notes. talked in 2010–2011 about creating a “new national system.” Even without fully succeeding. Orbán had resources—“experienced administrators and people with their own ambitions.” Müller says it still took time before they figured out how to transform universities “into foundations” with a view to “capturing and subordinating them.” In the United States. he argues. it still seems to lack “personnel for doing things in a systematic way.”.

For readers who want the political shift explained purely as capital’s interest—tax cuts. deregulation. standard Republican policy—Müller complicates the picture. He says Trump’s first win came with “ideologically charged talk. ” but actual policy followed the “standard Republican playbook”: “lower taxes. less regulation. ” plus “preferential deals for large business interests.” The second term. though. he says. frustrates “many in the big business community.”.

Müller puts less faith in big agendas than in a hunger for personal payoff. Trump, he says, “didn’t really have a big agenda to begin with.” What did he want?. “He wanted retribution. he wanted revenge. ” and is now “doing everything to make that a reality.” Müller lists “pet ideas” that came into the picture—especially tariffs. Then he maps out the interests that found room to move: he says Trump opened “space for extractive industries. for the fossil fuel industry. ” and argues that vice president’s commitment aligns with those interests. He adds that Trump benefited those with a “strong cryptocurrency agenda,” and those who wanted to push “unregulated AI.”.

There are also those who don’t like it but stay quiet. Müller says intimidation has worked: people feel Trump has “the levers of the federal government. ” and if they “stick their heads out. ” he will “come after them.” He cites law firms and. “unfortunately. ” “plenty of universities” as part of that story.

And yet. he concedes. there’s still enough to like for some—particularly tax cuts—because of “the billions that large corporations are saving because of last year’s legislation. ” alongside deregulation. That helps explain why big business may not be at the forefront of resistance even while it understands that “the destruction of the rule of law is ultimately not good.”.

Culture, in this conversation, isn’t limited to art and books. It is institutions: universities, journalism, and academic freedom. That’s why the interviewer’s question about the new national security strategy lands where it does. The strategy. Müller says. “very openly talks about US interference in the politics of other countries to support its own vision of a post-liberal order.” He notes the strategy describes the EU as “ideologically opposed” to the Trumpist project. The interviewer asks whether Trump’s foreign policy can be read as an internationalization of the domestic fight against wokeism.

Müller answers that there is an attempt “to globalize MAGA ideologically. ” calling it part of a broader “international of nationalists.” He argues that nationalist internationalism has a greater chance of happening when there are “clear material interests at stake.” A first example in Brazil. he says: it was one thing for Trump to claim that Brazil’s government and justices were treating Bolsonaro unfairly; it was another when Brazil “got serious about regulating Twitter.” He draws a parallel with the European far right: the logic is similar.

He then turns to social media regulation as an unglamorous driver of ideology. The “constant stream of claims” that Europeans are abandoning “Western civilization” because they no longer believe in “free speech. ” Müller says. is partly a pushback against what the European Union can do to companies “even of this size.”.

Müller also argues that MAGA rhetoric about such issues is hypocritical enough to be safely dismissed—especially when paired with what he calls “the incredible, unprecedented crackdown on academic freedom” in the United States.

That international reach creates another tension: the interviewer points out that Trump doesn’t play well with some of his would-be European allies. In Canada, conservatives’ proximity to Trump “clearly alienated their voter base,” and Müller says Denmark also showed similar effects. He discusses why fracture is possible within the European far right, and even among parts of the more moderate right.

Müller says Europe learned something early. “We’ve known since early 2017 that Trump himself is not exactly popular in Europe.” After Trump’s 2016 win and Brexit. there were predictions of an “unstoppable wave of populism.” But when Trump supported figures like Geert Wilders or Marine Le Pen. Müller says it “backfired.” People learned that “getting his endorsement is not a winner in Europe. ” and he implies that not everyone has absorbed that lesson.

He recalls that the AfD made a big show of saying: “elect us. ” and “we’re going to join the Board of Peace. ” using German taxpayers’ money to do so. Müller doesn’t believe those moves were popular. He contrasts that with the approach of Georgia Meloni. which he describes as a different kind of game: being close to him enough to serve as a “transatlantic mediator. ” presenting herself as a “real European stateswoman. ” rather than promising to implement whatever Trump wants. In his view. even on purely political terms. anything moving in the direction of Trump’s demands is “clearly a mistake in the European context.”.

From there, the conversation widens into ideology. Müller insists on keeping concepts distinct. “Post-liberal is not the same as populist. ” and “populist is not the same as far-right.” He argues that it’s possible to be far-right without claiming to speak for a “homogeneous people. ” pointing to “elitist far-right actors” whose rhetoric isn’t always the same.

National context. he says. shapes what opportunities exist for far-right figures to present themselves as the only authentic voice of a people. In places where a culture war is already underway, it’s easier for populists to position opponents as outsiders. He adds that nearly all these actors converge on at least a couple of substantive similarities. including targeting Islam and Muslim refugees—something that can be “activated very easily.”.

He resists the urge to call everything an unstoppable populist wave. That kind of framing, he says, is “profoundly unhelpful,” because it leads to endless election-by-election questions about whether the tide is advancing or receding.

The interviewer asks about “reactionary centrism. ” the idea that a meaningful opposition to Trump would need to move toward the center by adopting positions of MAGA supporters on cultural issues. including immigration and trans rights. to win swing voters. Müller explains that “reactionary centrism” describes intellectuals. journalists. and sometimes politicians who locate themselves in a center between “two extremes” presented as equivalent or similarly dangerous. People who push back. he says. argue that criticism of universities is not the same as equating Trump with “cancel culture. ” and that believing they are the same is a “profound failure of political judgement.”.

He describes how the more sophisticated version of reactionary centrism answers that counterargument: maybe it’s not the same. but one caused the other; the Left’s “endless ideas about diversity and genders” forced the other side to go further right and vote for Trump. In Müller’s view. “empirically” these claims are hard to sustain. because they excuse backlash by portraying it as natural and inevitable.

Anti-corruption fronts appear next. Müller agrees that opposition parties must take up “unprecedented corruption” and oppose it not merely as strategy. but because “a moral wrong is being committed.” He also challenges a political assumption: far-right populists who get power promising to fight corruption will be punished if they become more corrupt than the people they criticized. Müller says that assumption often proves false. He points to “Jörg Haider” in Austria for many years and where the FPÖ is today. In his framing. anti-corruption alone is naive; in Poland and Hungary. economic growth flatlined and the cost-of-living crisis was “very noticeable for people.”.

That leads to the role of social media. The interviewer asks how much of the populist moment can be addressed without tackling social media’s structural polarization of public opinion and its us-versus-them framing. Müller urges caution about “technological determinism. ” saying it is too simplistic to treat printing press. radio. or television as predictable machines for war. fascism. or McCarthyism.

Instead, he argues that every technology creates different affordances and there is no single political outcome predetermined. He says extreme events in the US “were not inevitable” and argues that the cliché that “whatever happens in the US is going to come to Europe sooner or later” is “nonsense.” Each media infrastructure builds on what came before. What happens. he says. can be traced to earlier media—talk radio and cable TV in the 1980s and 1990s—and regulatory decisions under the Reagan administration.

In Europe. Müller says. it matters because while people may have good reasons to criticize public television and radio in many European countries. it is “extremely important to preserve them.” He adds that populists campaign against them. including via a referendum in Switzerland and a big AfD campaign arguing that all taxpayers’ money would go toward “leftwing journalists to spout random opinions.”.

The interview ends with a note of guarded hope. Müller’s final word is simple: “we hope for the best.”

MISRYOUM Culture News Jan-Werner Müller Trump coalition J.D. Vance post-liberals universities autocratic legalism Viktor Orbán Erdoğan courts academic freedom culture war MAGA George Soros Western civilization national security strategy EU Twitter AfD Rassemblement National Georgia Meloni reactionary centrism anti-corruption fronts social media polarization