Donald Trump’s administration is planning to spend $4 million to bolster right-wing media in Europe, part of a package of at least $25 million for civil society groups working on conservative causes in the region, according to four people familiar with the funding.
The grants risk deepening tensions between the Trump administration and European governments, some of which have already accused Washington of interfering in their domestic politics.
The U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL) says the funding is meant to strengthen transatlantic ties and promote free speech. It comes as European countries prepare for elections over the next couple of years, and as the Trump administration openly backs Europe’s populist right-wing and far-right parties.
This is an attack on Europe.
$4M is nothing. That’s like 50 bloggers in western Europe, or one regional rag with no readers. Or a Twitter troll farm in Hungary with 100 totally real humans and their handlers getting rich siphoning most of it off for themselves. A literal drop in the bucket.
The US has been funding foreign media for a century at least, steering narratives. It was part of their soft power strategy. This isn’t surprising. Where people are freaking out is due to the shift in alignment.
Isn’t this the shit they accuse Soros of?
You don’t understand. They say Soros uses his own money. Trump is using ours.
I don’t know why that’s better, but it seems to be.
And Russia
I made a meme echoing the hypocrisy and double standards of the right. They’re asleep when billionaires fund apocalypse-accelerating movements but roar when it’s billionaires funding progressives.
Why are tax dollars being spent for this? This is bullshit.
This is how those with the power have done it for ages and want it to remain. Scapegoat minorities and immigrants for all issues, make people angry, offer only hope of fix is to double down and be more harsh, austerity, sacrifice for country, etc, which gets more people fearful and go against what actually works better for healthy humanity, and for the dictatorship. Look at other current countries and in the past, and how maga has caused regression on human health and democracy measures. It’s a pattern visible if you’re awake.
Which is definitely why there should be laws in place that are enforced and respected to prevent this obviously depraved behavior.
Well SOMEBODY’s gotta use state funding to push facisim in Europe now that Orban’s out of office. /s
If Europe made a similar statement about bolstering left wing media in the US he’d go nuts accusing them of election interference.
They literally did this with a Canadian commercial airing a Raegan area
terrortariff statement and tried to blame us for interfering.Their kettle is charred.
Edit- Corrected spelling
That is actually a stroke of brilliance.
4 million is a lot of money, but it is also a pathetically low amount if you’re trying to make a dent in European politics
In fact, there are so many leftists in Europe -who would jump at the chance of publicly humiliating Trump- that I honestly believe you could raise 4 million just by starting some sort of kickstarter.
Europe wouldn’t do that to begin with, as Europe is right-wing.
Calling both the US and EU right wing definitely misses a metric fuckton of nuance though.
I wouldn’t say a “fuckton.” Both are imperialists, it’s just that the US is the imperial hegemon while Europe is secondary to it.
You’re talking about imperialism, which isnt synonymous with right wing; I was talking about domestic political orientation. Europe can participate in an imperial economic system while still being, on average, considerably further left than the US on welfare, labour rights, healthcare and regulation.
It may have moved right, and imo absolutely has, but that doesnt leave them at the same spot on the scale.
Imperialism as a stage in capitalist development is definitely right wing. Not only that, but fascist parties across Europe are rising. The fact that Europe uses imperialism to subsidize welfare while retaining capitalism, rather than pivoting to socialism, does not make them more “left.”
It feels like you’re confusing ‘more left’ with ‘left’. What makes Europe more left is the greater redistribution of wealth, stronger welfare states, universal healthcare, stronger unions and labour rights, larger public sectors and greater regulation of capital. You can argue those things don’t constitute socialism, but “left-wing” and “socialist” aren’t actually synonyms either.
Conversely, the US is further right through lower taxation and redistribution, a weaker welfare state, predominantly market-based healthcare, weaker unions and labour protections, less generous statutory benefits, greater reliance on private provision, and generally fewer constraints on capital. Again, none of that makes Europe socialist. It makes Europe relatively further left than the US on the conventional political spectrum.
I cannot consider rights that are explicitly built on the backs of the global south as “left.” Welfare under imperialist states is not the welfare created by a given society and redistributed, it’s built on the backs of the global south. Imperialist states aren’t regulating capital in the interest of their workers either, it’s done to protect capital. It’s also why safety nets are weakening across Europe, workers do not actually have power there.
Trying to argue that Europe is “more left” is more of a semantic argument. Both Europe and the US are built on imperialism and capitalism, and both are sliding further into fascism because of this.
So they’re funding the right-wing…
Oh I know there’s a big audience in Europe for that.
Now if only people with 1/2 a brain cell could tell the difference between right wing propaganda and actual news; we’d be living in a way better world.
Laughable amount compared to what Russia is spending on disinformation outlets in the EU. I am pretty confident that they would fund mostly those that are already supported plentifully by Russia anyway.
They’re going to use that to grow lemmy.
Lol $4 million. Good luck getting literally anything done in that space with such a small amount.
like an iceberg, what you can see (the $4m) is just a tiny part.
