In her excellent book, Résister, the journalist for the independent media outlet Blast, Salomé Saqué, paints a portrait of the rise of fascism within Western societies. Systems considered to be democratic are now facing severe challenges. Authoritarianism is no longer confined to the East, as seen in Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, but is also steadily gaining ground in Germany with the AfD, in France with the National Rally, and in Great Britain with Nigel Farage. However, it was during Donald Trump’s second term in the United States that the phenomenon revealed its full and striking scope. We are witnessing the dismantling of public institutions, violations of the constitution, systematic disinformation campaigns, the denial of the rule of law, and the supremacy of presidential decrees.
The State Department has just approved new guidelines regarding human rights violations. These guidelines target access to abortion, LGBTQ+ equality, EDI policies, academic freedom, foreign limitations on freedom of speech and even countries that host refugees. These new guidelines have been sent to all U.S. embassies and consulates worldwide. They instruct American diplomats to consider these practices as human rights violations. In other words, if a country protects women, LGBTQ+ people, minorities, academic freedom or refugees, the Trump administration wants the world to believe that country is violating human rights.
Added to all this, from a conservative perspective and supposedly in the name of the majority, is a backlash against immigration, cultural wars, and identity politics, as well as an offensive against critical race theory.
While the left opposes fascism, it does not endorse the dominant neoliberalism. Neoliberals cloak themselves in antifascism to conceal their reactionary policies and warmongering (the Democratic Party, for example). They present themselves as adversaries of fascism and skillfully exploit it to obscure their own policies and disastrous record, which paved the way for fascism. Just as dangerous as fascists, pseudo-democratic neoliberals and neoconservatives are champions of US imperialism, promoters of war expansionism, and advocates of regime change under the guise of proselytizing for “Western values.” They call for the approval of imperialism under the pretext that Western regimes are “democratic,” unlike those of the countries they intend to bring under their control. In fact, each of these currents feeds off the other in an unhealthy symbiosis. Left-wing thinkers generally agree on this analysis, but they are not immune to interpreting international political reality in terms that highlight a supposed opposition between the defenders of “democracy” and those who oppose it or appear to oppose it. Does Salomé Saqué escape this criticism?
Birds of a feather flock together?
One could pursue an analysis like hers and observe that a reactionary international network has gradually taken shape. This, in turn, opens up possible alliances not only with Orban, but also with Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Reyep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, Narendra Modi in India, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in the Philippines, Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi in Egypt or Mohammed Bin Salman in Saudi Arabia.
For instance, Trump is exploiting the MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement to consolidate his authority over the country and is relying on ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) to forcibly deport immigrants although they are already well-integrated. In France, the “great replacement” theory betrays a loss of self-confidence and a retreat into identity politics that fuels Islamophobia. This is far removed from the outdated separatism of a Philippe Devilliers. Éric Zemmour, for example, does not hesitate to openly display a fully embraced Islamophobia. Hostile reactions to immigration are multiplying, targeting Arabs and Black people in particular.
Trump, the AFD, Orban—birds of a feather flock together. But Trump isn’t just attacking the rule of law within American society. He’s also trampling on international law in one fell swoop, hence his ambitions to annex Greenland, Panama, and Canada. Hence also the idea of expelling the Palestinians from Gaza and transforming the region into a Riviera for the wealthy.
Now, in the minds of certain left-wing groups, whether it’s Donald Trump’s United States or Vladimir Putin’s Russia, it’s all the same. While some representatives of the far right imagine Russia as a champion of the “white and Christian race” in the “civilizational war” they dream of waging (against Islam, in particular), conversely, globalist Western mouthpieces try to portray it as an authoritarian power to justify their expansionism, supposedly in the name of democracy. But it’s also important to recognize that viewing the international political situation as pitting “democrats” against those who oppose “democracy” is a dangerous pitfall that threatens the left as well.
They are all on the wrong path. Russia is a country that has been terribly tested by the dismantling of the USSR, by the collapse of the state, by unbridled capitalism that impoverished it during the 1990s, and by Western efforts to turn it into a disjointed, vassal state, led by a puppet like Yeltsin, who would place its vast natural resources at their disposal. Its aspiration is to turn the page on this dark period of its history. It needs a strong state capable of preventing a return to the post-Soviet anarchy to which NATO policy aims to drag it back. In certain historical circumstances, collective survival takes precedence over individual liberties. Russia’s priorities are to restore a functioning state, raise the standard of living of its population, and safeguard its national sovereignty against external threats. Its regime is nationalist in the sense that it defends the nation against the Western policy of dismantling states (other than the United States) and dissolving nations into an Americentric globalist magma.
Blurring the lines between issues
According to Saqué, the left must wage a struggle against the extreme rightward shift in our societies. Governments, political parties, and movements that veer towards the extreme right all share an anti-democratic orientation, and she seems to be saying that this is as well the key to understanding international conflicts. If the rules of international law are violated, she appears to suggest that it is due to anti-democratic tendencies within our own societies. Hence the slogan Saqué proposes to unite the left, which concludes her brief presentation: “We are democracy!” she says.
While acknowledging the value of several aspects of her analysis, in addition to the left-leaning perspective that informs it, one cannot help but notice the risk of a problematic slide in such an argument. It is tempting to move from observations about the domestic policies of certain countries to drawing conclusions about geopolitics. International reality is then assessed from a perspective that contrasts “democracy” with countries governed by regimes deemed anti-democratic. Among others, the DIEM25 movement (Democracy in Europe Movement 2025), promoted by Yanis Varoufakis, is not immune to such a tendency.
From this point, it is but a short step to expressing outright hostility toward the Russian reaction in Ukraine, once Russian society is labeled authoritarian. The authoritarianism of Russian society could thus be presented as the source of a cavalier attitude toward international law. As a result, a certain segment of the left, initially seeking to combat authoritarianism, risks drawing erroneous and pro-imperialist conclusions on the geopolitical level. The first area of analysis serves as a springboard and moral compass for commenting on issues related to international relations. In doing so, the danger is that one could ultimately align oneself with the dominant Western neoliberal/neoconservative narrative.
From this perspective, one would have to use the lens of ideology and the internal political organization of the countries in question to understand how they adopt a particular position in international relations. It will then be claimed that if one is willing to violate the rules of one’s own constitution, one will also readily violate those of international law. The denigration of identity issues at the domestic level inevitably leads to similar denigration in foreign policy. The Russian intervention in Ukraine would therefore be a continuation of the conservatism practiced domestically within Russia.
So, international realities, a nation’s right to security regardless of its ideology, geopolitical threats, NATO expansionism and its militarization of Ukraine, the encirclement of Russia, and Western attempts to interfere and provoke a Maidan-like situation in Moscow are all ignored. Furthermore, the argument that authoritarian regimes flout international law because they violate their own constitutions is contradicted by the fact that neoliberals and neoconservatives flout international law without trampling their own constitutions, the very ones in which “rights and freedoms” are enshrined (but not necessarily respected). As we can see, there is no causal link between internal and external factors.
Some go even further in conflating domestic regimes and foreign policy. They want to believe that Trump, who systematically violates the rule of law, changed his policy toward Russia because of an affinity with its regime, portrayed as authoritarian. Trump and Putin, they claim, are fighting the same battle and are like two thieves at a fair. Those who argue in this way either do not understand or do not want to understand international reality: NATO has lost the war against Russia, and Trump is simply adapting to an inescapable fact because he has no other choice. The nature of the American and Russian regimes is irrelevant.
A flawed analysis
The tendency to project domestic political configurations onto geopolitical realities is invalid. It runs up against several significant difficulties. There is no direct link between a country’s domestic and foreign policy. In the 19th century, Great Britain was the most advanced liberal society, but this did not prevent it from being imperialist, behaving like a rogue state in its foreign policy, systematically practicing aggression and building a vast colonial empire. Since 1950, the United States has taken up the mantle. Having a well-developed model of a liberal society domestically has not prevented it from being imperialist, sowing death, desolation and chaos wherever it goes.
At a conference organized by the New York Times, Jeffrey Sachs dared to highlight the link between liberal democracies and the belligerent behavior they adopt on the international stage. While, in the 19th century, Great Britain was the most advanced country in terms of liberties, it was also the most aggressive internationally, and the United States replaced it in both roles from the 1950s onwards [1].
Furthermore, the analysis suffers from a short memory. If the conflict in the Middle East did not begin on October 7, 2023, the conflict in Ukraine did not begin on February 24, 2022, and American imperialism did not begin on January 20, 2025. The Americans have been violating international law for ages. Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and Bill Clinton had nothing against abortion, homosexuality, transgender people, critical race theory, cancel culture and identity politics. They were not attacking the rule of law. Yet it was under Bill Clinton’s administration that NATO expansion and the encirclement of Russia were decided. It was under Obama’s presidency that the United States bombed Syria, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan. Finally, it was under Joe Biden that the war in Ukraine took on catastrophic proportions, and it was also under his administration that the genocide in Gaza was perpetrated with impunity, with American complicity in this genocidal process. An approach that focuses on Trump’s excesses risks overlooking American imperialism as manifested under both Democratic and Republican administrations.
We have just discussed two reasons for resisting the temptation to assume perfect continuity between countries’ domestic and foreign policies, reasons that would explain both why Russia intervened in Ukraine and why the United States, under Trump, is more conciliatory toward Russia. It often happens that a society considered democratic domestically behaves like an outlaw in its relations with other countries. And Trump cannot be solely held responsible for the two wars waged by the United States: the proxy war against Russia and the war it fueled by militarily supporting the genocide in Gaza. Not to mention the endless wars waged for decades in the Near East and Asia.
There is a third reason to reject the hypothesis of a perfect fit between domestic and foreign policies. It has two aspects. First, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991, the Russian Federation plunged into such a severe economic crisis that the essence of Putin’s policy was to restore the country’s economic health and raise the population’s plummeting standard of living after years of unchecked capitalism. It was also necessary to restore state institutions in order to halt anarchy and rein in the oligarchs and organized crime. The Russians were grateful to him for this. They were very pleased to sell their oil and gas to Europe, which they saw as an economic partner rather than an enemy. This enabled an economic recovery that the country wanted to continue, not interrupt with a war that would cost lives. The Russians wanted closer ties with the European Union, and Putin had even floated the idea of joining NATO.
In short, although he imposed his authority on the country, he did not set out to conquer the world. It is the “democratic” United States that claims global hegemony. A more nuanced analysis reveals that what worried the Kremlin was the threat of a US presence on Ukrainian soil, with the establishment of CIA bases, biochemical warfare research laboratories and, potentially, missiles capable of reaching Moscow in minutes, all located on Russia’s borders.
The second aspect is that the US proxy war against Russia was not waged to defend democratic ideals. Nor are these the reasons behind the genocidal support for Israel. The democratic ideal is an ideological smokescreen used as an alibi to conceal US imperialism. It is precisely the economic recovery and the restoration of the Russian state that prompted the US to weaponize Ukraine in order to weaken Russia and attempt to drag it back into the chaos of the 1990s.
In short, projecting internal realities onto external reality leads to unfortunate extrapolations. These produce a fallacious, even apologetic, analysis of the imperialist policies of the United States, validated by their supposedly “democratic” system.
Conclusion
The framework that transforms geopolitical issues into a struggle between “democratic” and “authoritarian” regimes is faulty. Such an analysis ignores the long-standing reality of American imperialism, which not only goes beyond Trump alone. It is also dangerous because it lends credence to the idea that intervening in societies deemed undemocratic under the pretext of spreading “democratic values” worldwide could be justified. When mouthing the lies uttered by American neoconservatives.
Finally, and most importantly, this analysis is misleading because it obscures, through ideological rhetoric, the economic and geopolitical motives driving American hegemony. The struggle for democracy against authoritarianism is a legitimate one. But confusion can arise within the left precisely for this reason, when analyses conducted at the local level serve as a lens through which international conflicts are viewed. The risk is that of producing false analyses and aligning with American imperialism.
[1] See on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VP_SpW-DyQg&ab_channel=BryanVanNorden
