US election: My appeal for European courage to do things differently
Dear friends,
I want to be completely honest with you: writing this email to you is difficult. Continuing on with the next EU Commission hearings this morning is difficult. Reading the worried messages from my friends in the US is extremely difficult. The election of Donald Trump has left us all waking up to a new world.
It would be easy to hide away and retreat. But women, minorities and all those in the United States who do not fit into the world view of Trump, Vance and Musk cannot hide. The people in Ukraine that Trump wants to hand over to Putin cannot hide. And that is why we in Europe must not hide and retreat, but must face this new era with courage and unity.
I will be in the US from 17 to 24 November to hold talks at the White House, with US congressmen, civil society organisations and civil rights activists. What can we in Europe learn from this election campaign? How can Europe uphold the banner of democracy – including in cooperation with civil society and the opposition in the US?
One thing is clear: with a majority in the Senate and Supreme Court and a not unlikely majority in the House of Representatives, Trump, as president, can transform the US unhindered, both internally and externally, over the next two years. Project 2025 has provided the blueprint for this authoritarian revolution. This is what is coming. 2025 will not be like 2021, when Trump was unprepared and there were still people around him who curbed the worst ideas.
But with all that awaits the U.S. and the world, this election also shows us how he was able to win and why Harris was not. I want to start this discussion with five theses, to be continued in the weeks and months that follow.
- It is not enough for the economy to grow if the people do not feel it in their pockets.
The big issue in the election was the economy: although the US economy is doing better than it has in a long time, thanks largely to Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, millions of jobs have been created and industry has settled on a massive scale, the people are not seeing the benefits. In exit polls, 80% of Trump voters say they are worse off than four years ago. They continue to feel the price increases triggered not least by the Covid pandemic and Russia’s war of aggression, whether it’s in food, rent or petrol. The economy is booming, but it’s not reaching them, and at the same time they see others getting richer and richer. This is breeding ground for populism and polarisation. That is why, in these times, neither Germany nor Europe needs a balanced budget forced upon the society by austerity, but a social justice policy that allows everyone to share in the wealth.
- Playing off immigrants, blacks and Latinos bears fruit
On this breeding ground of social injustice, the issue of migration and immigration thrives. With his sentence ‘Immigrants are taking black jobs,’ Trump has clearly described this perfidious strategy. Time and again, his campaign played up this point, and in doing so managed to get more black and Latino Americans to vote for Trump and the Republicans than before. This strategy is used by the New Right everywhere, from Le Pen to the FPÖ and AfD, to convince post-migrant voters by instilling fear of the ‘new’ immigrants. They are successful at this. And the more the democratic parties buy into the narrative that ‘immigration is a danger,’ the more they reinforce it.
- Attacks on women and appeals to men work
Trump’s misogyny is almost legendary. The mere fact that a convicted rapist can become president is unbearable. Vance’s ‘childless cat lady’, who makes it clear that women without children are worthless to him, is part of this. The effect? In this election, more men than expected went to the polls and voted for Trump. Trump, Vance and Musk always addressed them directly, and it worked. At the same time, women’s support for Kamala Harris was not strong enough. Men have taken back untethered power. This shows two things: firstly, democratic parties need to think about how they address young men in the future. Secondly, it is more important than ever to protect women’s rights, without ifs and buts.
- Elon Musk and the digital platforms were Donald Trump’s best running mate
On all these points, one could object: these are just feelings, not facts. Trump does want to lower taxes for the rich, many people are objectively better off, etc. And that is precisely the point. Those who are still on Musk’s Twitter/X could see almost daily how the platform has changed since the takeover. Misinformation, manipulation, hate and digital violence, especially against women, are the order of the day there and have played a particularly important role in this US election campaign.
In the run-up to this election, the other digital platforms have also changed their moderation, and they are increasingly becoming amplifiers of misinformation and hate, while facts have less and less reach. I have explained how targeted disinformation works in the US election campaign using an example. Disinformation, fed by Russia, China and other authoritarian states. And that will get worse and worse in a second term for Trump, with Elon Musk probably in his cabinet.
At the same time, the tech bros from Musk to Peter Thiel to the venture capitalists Andreessen and Horowitz supported Trump to prevent any control over their business. In the US, they won. They now want to implement this in Europe as well. We in Europe must stand up to this and enforce our good laws to defend the freedom of our citizens.
- Europe needs courage and cohesion now, not Trump clones
For Europe, a Trump-Vance-Musk USA means radical upheaval. The announced tariffs will place even more strain on the European economy and societies. If the US also withdraws its support for Ukraine, Europe will be left to support Ukraine alone against Russia. A Russia that is already doing everything it can to undermine European democracy and that might threaten NATO borders in a few years. It is therefore all the more important for Europe to stand together courageously, instead of adopting the strategies of Trump, Orban and Co. and allowing itself to be further divided. In concrete terms, for my political area this means consistently defending and implementing European rules in the digital space. And at the same time, we need to become less dependent on tech companies in the US and China by building our own European infrastructure, from clouds to social media to artificial intelligence.
As you can tell, I am determined to move forward. No hiding away, but instead moving forward with courage.
In this spirit,
yours sincerely, Alexandra Geese