When Donald Trump returned to the White House in 2025, he seemed like the leader, or at least the dominant figure, of a globalized version of the MAGA movement, a worldwide network of far-right parties sometimes described as the “nationalist international.” We can make a long list, starting with Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in France, the not-quite-neo-Nazi Alternative for Germany, or AfD, and Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, along with other previously-fringe parties now creeping toward the mainstream in many different places.
If it strikes you that the term “nationalist international” contains its own contradiction, by the way, you’re miles ahead of JD Vance and Stephen Miller and the rest of the Trumpian pseudo-intellectuals, who still haven’t figured that out.