Remarks by President Trump and Vice President JD Vance this month stirred concerns among traditional American allies in Europe, marking a significant test for the postwar order. At the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), international right-wing leaders celebrated this as the beginning of a global right-wing resurgence linked to Trump’s ongoing influence. Prominent figures, including British politician Liz Truss, expressed alignment with this movement, which seeks to challenge liberal institutions globally. Highlights included Trump’s controversial statements on Ukraine and meetings fostering ties with far-right groups, indicating emerging solidarity among right-wing factions across continents in their opposition to liberalism and shared national interests.
For long-standing American partners in Europe, comments made by President Trump and Vice President JD Vance regarding Ukraine and Germany this month marked one of the most serious challenges to the postwar order in many years.
However, for a group of current and former global leaders who convened this week at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland, these remarks signified something different: the emergence of a global right-wing revival that, with Mr. Trump’s potential re-election, is poised to fundamentally alter that order.
“We missed the first American Revolution in 1776,” stated Liz Truss, the Conservative MP who briefly held the position of British prime minister. “We aspire to be part of the second American Revolution.”
Ms. Truss was among over a half-dozen political leaders from various countries who made the trip to CPAC this week in Oxon Hill, Md., located just outside of Washington, D.C. This long-standing convention of American conservatives has historically contributed to right-wing movements within the GOP during the Tea Party and Trump administrations, but in recent years, it has expanded its ambitions to a global scale. The conference now acts as a hub for right-wing political movements across the Americas, Europe, and Asia, who increasingly view themselves as allies in a common struggle against the institutions and geopolitical norms that have prevailed since World War II.
In the last two weeks, Mr. Trump and his senior officials have challenged that order more openly and directly than any U.S. administration since the war’s end.
Marco Rubio, Mr. Trump’s Secretary of State, engaged in a lengthy four-hour discussion on Tuesday with Russian representatives in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, aiming to reset the relationship between the two leading global powers and pursue a resolution to the conflict in Ukraine. Concurrently, Mr. Trump referred to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as a “dictator” and held him responsible for Russia’s invasion in 2022.
This meeting took place just days after Mr. Vance, in a speech at the Munich Security Conference, compared the European Union’s regulation of online expression to Soviet censorship. He also engaged with the leader of Germany’s right-wing Alternative for Germany party, which has been historically marginalized due to some members’ associations with neo-Nazi rhetoric and a recent coup plot.
Mr. Vance defended his Munich comments during his appearance at CPAC on Thursday, joined by an array of international allies who took the stage afterward.
Global right-wing movement leaders — including prime ministers from North Macedonia and Slovakia, as well as opposition leaders from Poland and Spain — hailed Mr. Trump as a pivotal figure in a worldwide battle against liberalism that spans across nations and continents.
They portrayed their domestic adversaries — judges, online speech regulations, civil society initiatives, and mainstream media — as components of a global agenda aimed at undermining traditional values, faith, and free markets, while celebrating the new American president as a partner in this fight.
“He’s completely changing the international landscape,” remarked Balázs Orbán, the political director for Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s government in Hungary, during an interview at the conference.
In his address on Thursday, Eduardo Bolsonaro, a Brazilian legislator and son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, who faced charges this week for attempting a coup to retain power after losing the 2022 election, characterized his nation as “a laboratory” used to test the judicial targeting of conservatives, libertarians, and Christians — always framed as protecting democracy.
Particularly, foreign delegations at CPAC praised Elon Musk’s initiative to dismantle the United States Agency for International Development and its worldwide civil society programs.
These programs have historically received bipartisan support in the U.S., as well as backing from the European Union, which has partnered with the U.S. to fund independent media, rule-of-law initiatives, and, more recently, programs aimed at combating online misinformation globally. Nevertheless, these initiatives have drawn the ire of rising right-wing factions, which often find themselves at odds with them.
Mr. Bolsonaro, in his remarks, accused U.S.A.I.D. of “channeling resources into censorship, judicial overreach, and political persecution.”
Mr. Musk’s sudden alignment with these criticisms of the American development agency symbolizes the increasing impact of the global right on the conservative movement in the U.S. — a connection that was marked at CPAC when Argentina’s President Javier Milei, who has gained fame in the American conservative sphere, bounded onto the stage carrying the chainsaw he theatrically wielded during his 2023 presidential campaign.
This year’s CPAC may represent the most advanced realization yet of the vision of right-wing unity that some within Mr. Trump’s circle, particularly his former White House advisor Stephen K. Bannon, sought to cultivate during the initial Trump administration.
Mr. Bannon, who addressed CPAC on Thursday, threatened to splinter the coalition, raising his hand briefly at the conclusion of his speech in what was perceived by many as a reference to a Nazi salute — a gesture reminiscent of a similar salute made by Mr. Musk at Mr. Trump’s inauguration rally last month.
Mr. Bannon’s gesture, which he refuted as having any Nazi connotation, led Jordan Bardella, head of France’s far-right National Rally party, to cancel his scheduled CPAC speech for Friday. He stated that he made the decision “immediately” after witnessing Mr. Bannon make a “gesture referring to Nazi ideology.”
However, another international speaker scheduled for Friday, Mexican actor and political activist Eduardo Verástegui, leaned into Mr. Bannon’s provocation by raising his arm in a similar gesture at the end of his speech.
Speaking on Thursday, British politician Nigel Farage, one of the first foreign figures to connect with the right-wing factions of the Republican Party during the Obama administration, commented on the progress made since then.
“It’s incredible — 13 years ago, I was the only foreign speaker” at CPAC, expressed Mr. Farage, who played a significant role in the Brexit campaign of 2016, an early triumph in the global right-wing movement.
Other speakers followed Mr. Farage’s example in denouncing the European Parliament and EU bureaucracy, which they framed as part of a worldwide network of institutions biased against their movement.
“My government was punished for standing up to Brussels,” stated Mateusz Morawiecki, Polish Prime Minister from 2017 to 2023, when his right-wing Law and Justice Party was ousted by Civic Platform, a center-right political group.
Mr. Orbán, the Hungarian official whose government has served as a model for many similar political activists worldwide, noted that right-wing parties are not inherently inclined to collaborate as liberally affiliated movements tend to be. However, he argued that increasingly shared objectives — such as opposing immigration, prioritizing Christianity in public life, and skepticism towards the war in Ukraine — are uniting these diverse movements.
“It’s complex because if you are a national conservative, it indicates a desire for the best for your country, and your nation’s interests might conflict with those of others,” he stated. “But we still have to strive to identify these shared points — and there are now many, many of them.”