In one of the latest posts on Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s Substack, the authoritarianism expert discusses what happens when white supremacist views steer an illiberal government’s national security agenda.
Last week’s post on Lucid — headlined “When white racial rescue becomes a foreign policy and national security priority” — essentially lays out how authoritarian movements have used white supremacy to repress residents in their own countries, but also how these movements spread white supremacy beyond their borders to heighten their power.
It was written in response to the Trump administration’s behavior at the Munich Security Conference but also serves as a great primer to help understand the photos below, which were posted by a senior State Department official who welcomed far-right British activist Tommy Robinson — someone who has espoused racist and Islamophobic views — to agency headquarters.
NBC News noted Robinson’s history of fomenting violent extremism:
Robinson, 42 — whose legal name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon — is referred to as ‘the best-known far-right extremist in Britain’ by the anti-extremism campaign group Hope Not Hate. He is known for organizing high-profile demonstrations against immigration and Islam, which have occasionally descended into violence.
Robinson is an anti-immigration zealot who pleaded guilty in British court in 2013 to using someone else’s passport to enter the U.S. That is just one incident on his long rap sheet.
If not for his whiteness, Robinson would likely be among the people demonized as part of the Trump administration’s racist anti-immigrant crackdown, which has been disguised as a pursuit of the most hardened criminals. Instead, under a regime that echoes unvarnished white supremacist propaganda, he’s a cause célèbre.
Returning to Ben-Ghiat’s post, she explained why illiberal movements tend to align with white nationalist movements like the Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, which includes Nazi apologists:
Brick by brick, the edifice of protection against authoritarianism will be dismantled, and the memory of those bloody regimes sanitized. That way, a new Fascist order can come into being, and Europe can return to ‘greatness’ by restoring its White Christian identity. She specifically compares racist rhetoric from Italian dictator Benito Mussolini to language in the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy, released in November. And these similarities are vital to consider as we see Trump and their allies strengthening their ties to Europe’s far-right movements. In 1927, years before Adolf Hitler came to power, Benito Mussolini formulated a holistic plan to revive Italian greatness through White racial rescue and demographic expansion. It was framed as a means of protecting Italian autonomy and security in international affairs as well. ‘Cradles are empty and cemeteries are expanding,’ Il Duce declared. ‘The entire White race, the Western race, could be submerged by other races of color that multiply with a rhythm unknown to our own.’ Ben-Ghiat continues: The Trump administration’s National Security Strategy document comes out of this matrix, reflecting Great Replacement Theory and Fascist thinking. It identifies ‘civilizational erasure’ as Europe’s most pressing problem. ‘We want Europe to remain European, and regain its civilizational self-confidence,’ it states. To that end, the United States will prioritize ‘cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations’ – code for targeting multifaith and multiracial democracies on the continent. As if to drive these points home, one of the men Robinson met with during his U.S. visit this week was far-right influencer Jack Posobiec, who some may know for his occasional promotion of white nationalist rhetoric. (More on that here). Some may also remember Posobiec as the guy who told attendees at a conservative conference in 2024 that his goal is to “overthrow” democracy entirely. “Welcome to the end of democracy,” Posobiec said at the time, adding: “We are here to overthrow it completely. We didn’t get all the way there on Jan. 6, but we will endeavor to get rid of it.”
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog. 
