Episode 132: Transatlantic Alliances of the New Right
Annett Meiritz
Handelsblatt
Annett Meiritz has been the U.S. correspondent for Handelsblatt in Washington since 2017. She previously worked for Spiegel Online for ten years, including as a parliamentary correspondent in Berlin. She studied history in Düsseldorf and spent a bridge year in Australia and New Zealand before starting her career in journalism. Meiritz is a Burns Fellow and a member of Atlantik-Brücke. In 2022, together with Juliane Schäuble, she published the book Guns n' Rosé about conservative women in the United States.
Eric Langenbacher
Senior Fellow; Director, Society, Culture & Politics Program
Dr. Eric Langenbacher is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Society, Culture & Politics Program at AICGS.
Dr. Langenbacher studied in Canada before completing his PhD in Georgetown University’s Government Department in 2002. His research interests include collective memory, political culture, and electoral politics in Germany and Europe. Recent publications include the edited volumes Twilight of the Merkel Era: Power and Politics in Germany after the 2017 Bundestag Election (2019), The Merkel Republic: The 2013 Bundestag Election and its Consequences (2015), Dynamics of Memory and Identity in Contemporary Europe (co-edited with Ruth Wittlinger and Bill Niven, 2013), Power and the Past: Collective Memory and International Relations (co-edited with Yossi Shain, 2010), and From the Bonn to the Berlin Republic: Germany at the Twentieth Anniversary of Unification (co-edited with Jeffrey J. Anderson, 2010). With David Conradt, he is also the author of The German Polity, 10th and 11th edition (2013, 2017).
Dr. Langenbacher remains affiliated with Georgetown University as Teaching Professor and Director of the Honors Program in the Department of Government. He has also taught at George Washington University, Washington College, The University of Navarre, and the Universidad Nacional de General San Martin in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and has given talks across the world. He was selected Faculty Member of the Year by the School of Foreign Service in 2009 and was awarded a Fulbright grant in 1999-2000 and the Hopper Memorial Fellowship at Georgetown in 2000-2001. Since 2005, he has also been Managing Editor of German Politics and Society, which is housed in Georgetown’s BMW Center for German and European Studies. Dr. Langenbacher has also planned and run dozens of short programs for groups from abroad, as well as for the U.S. Departments of State and Defense on a variety of topics pertaining to American and comparative politics, business, culture, and public policy.
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Jeff Rathke
President of AGI
Jeffrey Rathke is the President of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies at the Johns Hopkins University in Washington, DC.
Prior to joining AICGS, Jeff was a senior fellow and deputy director of the Europe Program at CSIS, where his work focused on transatlantic relations and U.S. security and defense policy. Jeff joined CSIS in 2015 from the State Department, after a 24-year career as a Foreign Service Officer, dedicated primarily to U.S. relations with Europe. He was director of the State Department Press Office from 2014 to 2015, briefing the State Department press corps and managing the Department's engagement with U.S. print and electronic media. Jeff led the political section of the U.S. Embassy in Kuala Lumpur from 2011 to 2014. Prior to that, he was deputy chief of staff to the NATO Secretary General in Brussels. He also served in Berlin as minister-counselor for political affairs (2006–2009), his second tour of duty in Germany. His Washington assignments have included deputy director of the Office of European Security and Political Affairs and duty officer in the White House Situation Room and State Department Operations Center.
Mr. Rathke was a Weinberg Fellow at Princeton University (2003–2004), winning the Master’s in Public Policy Prize. He also served at U.S. Embassies in Dublin, Moscow, and Riga, which he helped open after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Mr. Rathke has been awarded national honors by Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, as well as several State Department awards. He holds an M.P.P. degree from Princeton University and B.A. and B.S. degrees from Cornell University. He speaks German, Russian, and Latvian.
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Juliane Schäuble
Die Zeit
Juliane Schäuble has been DIE ZEIT's U.S. correspondent in Washington since June 2025. Prior to that, she worked for the Tagesspiegel for twenty years, including as head of the politics department and the last seven years in the United States. During this time, she wrote the newsletter “Washington Weekly.” Schäuble completed her master's degree in political science at the University of Potsdam. Her studies included a semester at the American University in Washington. She is a member of the White House Foreign Press Group and Atlantik-Brücke. In 2022, together with Annett Meiritz, she published the book Guns n' Rosé about conservative women in the United States.
Ties between far-right parties and movements in Europe and the United States are growing. Annett Meiritz and Juliane Schäuble join this episode of The Zeitgeist to discuss their forthcoming book Die Allianz der Neuen Rechten (The Alliance of the New Right; Publisher: Heyne), which examines how these movements are building networks, learning from each other, and working together. They also discuss how these movements are mobilizing culture wars and their influence on transatlantic relations.
Host
Jeff Rathke, President, AGI
Guests
Eric Langenbacher, AGI Senior Fellow; Director, Society, Culture & Politics Program
Annett Meiritz, U.S. Correspondent, Handelsblatt
Juliane Schäuble, U.S. Correspondent, DIE ZEIT
Transcript
Jeff Rathke
Welcome to all of our listeners, pleased to have you back with us for another episode of The Zeitgeist, and I’m pleased of course to be with my colleague Eric Langenbacher. Eric, good morning.
Eric Langenbacher
Good morning, Jeff.
Jeff Rathke
And we are most proud to have two authors with us, co-authors of a new book, and they are Annett Meiritz and Juliane Schäuble.
Annett Meiritz
Thanks for having us.
Juliane Schäuble
Hello from me, too.
Jeff Rathke
Annett and Juliane have been correspondents in the United States for a long time; Annette with Handelsblatt, Juliane for a long time with Tagesspiegel and now with Die Zeit—congratulations on the new job, by the way.
Juliane Schäuble
Thank you.
Jeff Rathke
And they have also just written a book which will be published, how soon?
Juliane Schäuble
September 10th.
Jeff Rathke
September 10th. OK, so this podcast will be released before the publication of your book and we are pleased to contribute to some buzz around it, perhaps because it’s a fascinating look at the connections between far-right movements in the United States and in Europe. What’s the title of the book?
Juliane Schäuble
Die Allianz der neuen Rechten, the Alliance of the New Right.
Jeff Rathke
OK, terrific. We look forward to talking through some of the major findings that you write about. Maybe just to start, can you talk a little bit about where the ties exist between far-right politics in Europe and what we might call the MAGA, Trump-led Republican Party in the United States?
Annett Meiritz
Well, the one thing that surprised us ourselves when we started researching that book is that they kind of exist everywhere, on any level you can imagine. They exist on a very low level when it comes to, for example, Instagram influencers. One of our German interview partners described how he went to a MAGA party and then he was recognized by the team of RFK Jr. and now he’s in touch with RFK Jr., and that’s how it works. They know each other. They have their WhatsApp numbers, they know their Instagram reels, so that is one level of networking. The other one certainly is on the diplomatic level, the higher level.
But the main thing is that this networking works around the official ways. You have the official ways, diplomatic ways through embassies, through diplomats and high-level politicians, but you also have this huge, huge layer behind it, mostly out of sight for anyone to see. And that was one of the most fascinating aspects we found out.
Juliane Schäuble
One example: there is also this consultant that advises companies, and he said they are asking him now, “Do you have any contacts to the AfD?” So it’s like people are trying to reach out to connect, and that’s probably a new thing.
Jeff Rathke
And that these connections exist, people might have noticed even earlier this year in a more prominent way when Vice President JD Vance was visiting Munich and met with the leader of the AfD Alice Weidel. But, who’s learning from whom? To what degree is there— beyond having connections—to what degree is there adaptation, strategic coordination, those kinds of things that you observe or document in your book?
Juliane Schäuble
It’s interestingly, it’s both ways a little bit. The MAGA movement have learned from Hungary, for example. Victor Orban is a person that was in contact and people around him and people here try to make contact with the Orban people for many years. What we have seen now—and of course our main focus was the connection with the AfD—is that the center parties had a hesitancy of reaching out to the Republicans before the election—to the MAGA Republicans before the elections. The embassy was hesitant to reach out to these people, so there was a loophole—
Jeff Rathke
Sort of a vacuum.
Juliane Schäuble
A vacuum for AfD politicians who just came. They come to CPAC, to the meeting of the ultra-conservatives around the country, they got the chance to go to Mar-a-Lago. That’s something center-right politicians did not achieve in the same way.
Annett Meiritz
I just might add what you described, that the AfD jumped right in. They did that and the thing is that the so-called Brandmauer, the firewall, we have in Germany does not exist on the American side. When I talk to people who do make these connections and invite AfD people to Mar-a-Lago, I asked them, “do you make a difference between a Christian Democrat politician or an AfD?” And they are like, “No, why would I?”
Juliane Schäuble
And one Republican, I would say a very conservative Republican, told me that he thinks that the answer is so easy because the program, the platform of the AfD is, like, 90% the same as the MAGA Republican platform, which I did not buy, but that’s what he believes or what he sells.
Jeff Rathke
Let me follow up on one aspect of that, and then I’ll hand the mic to Eric. You talk about the ways in which people from the far right in Europe, in particular the AfD, took up contacts with Trump and his wing of the Republican Party. What about in the other direction? What are European far-right politicians learning from Trump and the MAGA movement in your observation?
Annett Meiritz
First of all, they get a platform. For example, when Nawrocki visited Donald Trump at the White House—
Jeff Rathke
—The newly-elected president of Poland.
Annett Meiritz
The newly elected president. But during the election campaign he was it was just a couple of minutes in the Oval Office. But those pictures: Nawrocki, Donald Trump. You saw them everywhere on social media. And so first of all, it’s kind of a publicity thing, a platform. You go, you don’t stand in the shadow of Donald Trump, but you might shine in his light, so to speak. That is one thing. Strategic wise, a lot of communication rhetoric. You see, the culture wars are a perfect example because in the United States, we see the culture wars going on for a long, long time. And now it’s coming to Europe even more and more. And that’s probably the most prominent or significant example of how they learn from each other and the European counterparts learn from the MAGA movement, I would say.
Eric Langenbacher
I would like to follow up on this. I think it’s one of the best findings of the book, just how dense the network between German and American right-wing actors actually is, because here in Washington, DC, we don’t see too many AfD-lers coming around, at least in our circle, so I thought that was really interesting. But my question is, besides publicity, what benefit is there from, especially on the German side, from these dense networks? So, a couple of times in the book you mentioned Elon Musk and his interventions in the German campaign. And I think one of your interlocutors said that it helped validate the AfD, so it was good electorally. But then somebody else said nope, they actually probably lost a couple of points because of how controversial Musk is. So, what’s the benefit that the AfD gets besides clickbait or Instagram hits or whatever it is that they use?
Juliane Schäuble
I think it’s a normalization. It’s somebody you can talk to, somebody that is allowed in the “holy halls.” I think, even if it didn’t play out in the last election, I think they play a longer game. They are preparing the grounds. People we talked to think that they will become part of a government anytime soon. Many other people say that’s never going to happen, but we don’t know yet. So, when we look back in a couple of years, this might have been where it kind of changed the direction, changed the course, and that’s where the other parties are having difficulties finding an answer to that challenge.
Annett Meiritz
I think it’s simply they become a factor you cannot ignore anymore. I remember a few years ago there was one AfD politician— I think it was only one AfD politician who was a guest at the German embassy here in Washington. And usually we journalists go to so-called background talks, and we meet with the politician. During the eight years I’ve been here in DC, I saw one background talk with an AfD politician, and back then only five other journalists came and were interested in what he had to say. I think it would be completely different now. I think there would be 30-40 journalists sitting there because the AfD is a factor you cannot ignore anymore, and if someone like Elon Musk, what is the English word? “Adeln”? Just makes them more popular, then you, even more, cannot ignore them.
Jeff Rathke
Well, and it’s of course unmistakable over the span of the last ten years, the far right in particular in Germany has gone from single-digit percentage point support to now in public opinion polls being around 25% or so. So that trend is quite is quite clear. In that way, Germany has kind of lagged the rest of Europe. You’ve had an expansion of far-right influence in most of Europe for the better part of two decades, even longer if you think about Austria, where you had the FPÖ in government a long time ago. Is Germany lagging still behind the rest of Europe? Is it a special case, or do you see the situation also among European far-right parties normalizing?
Juliane Schäuble
I think Germany is a special case because of our history. We see that. That’s why there is a firewall, why there is the Brandmauer, but Americans and others see it less and less—some of them, of course. So people say, “Yeah, but that’s so long ago. That doesn’t mean that you can keep a party out of out of power, away from power that has become so strong.” The issues are there. This party deals with these issues or addresses these issues. Dealing is the wrong word. And so that’s I think that it increases the pressure, but Germany is a special case compared to Italy, Austria, or France.
Jeff Rathke
And ultimately, we’re talking about nationalist movements, and national interests differ. Aside from perhaps the shared goal of European nationalist movements being anti-European Union, anti-multilateralism—
Juliane Schäuble
And anti-Americanism, too.
Jeff Rathke
Well, and that’s another key point here, are there natural limits to the ability of nationalists to work across national borders to achieve some reordering of global politics or at least of politics in advanced democracies like Europe, the United States, perhaps certain parts of Asia?
Annett Meiritz
There are similarities. We pointed out the differences, and I think they will not go away anytime soon. There will still be differences between the different right-wing parties or nationalist parties around the globe, but we have to keep in mind that all the countries where those parties are strong have the same problems. They are not doing great with the birth rate. They have all debates about migration. They have all kind of similar culture war debates. Western democracies are on a turning point. I’m not telling anyone anything new here at the table, but it is a fact that those differences between the parties might get a little bit overshadowed right now by the shared goals they have. So, the differences are there, but they have two or three big, shared goals that are very relevant in those Western democracies and that kind of sticks them together right now, I would say.
Juliane Schäuble
Of course with a U.S. president who sells “America First,” there will always be conflicts with all the other countries and all these governments or the parties that are not in power but trying to connect with the MAGA movement. They are trying to get, for example, lower tariffs or trying to get something out of it. Not always does that work out. I would even say almost never because he just he just wants his tariffs. So, this conflict is written in the relationship; that’s not going to go away.
Eric Langenbacher
There are many great discussions in the book, in my opinion, on migration, for instance on tech and AI, but I particularly like your discussion about free speech versus hate speech and the differences between American understandings of these rights and of German understandings. And my question is, there are lots of little tidbits that are interesting in the book. The one thing that I kind of picked up on was how especially politicians like [Robert] Habeck and [Annalena] Baerbock lodged all these complaints about hate speech or inappropriate things that were on the Internet. I think there was one anecdote that you mentioned about how Habeck basically sent the authorities against some 64-year-old pensioner in Bavaria. So my question is, to what degree do you think that the mainstream parties—in this case we’re talking about the Greens, but I think we you could make a similar case for some of the other mainstream parties—to what degree do they bear responsibility for the strengthening of the AfD in Germany or the MAGA movement here in the United States?
Juliane Schäuble
It is an interesting thing. We have to say for the root cause, violence and violent speech have gone up tremendously. I think there is a feeling of threat within mainstream parties. So politicians try to deal with that. I think there is an overreach sometimes, there is too much, maybe sometimes it’s not always worth trying to go the legal way. That’s the point, this debate about free speech and hate speech is also one that really divides the Anglo-Saxon countries and, for example, Germany. We have, also with our history, a totally different view on that. We have certain things you are not allowed to say. In this country, that’s almost a no-go. You can’t do that. So that’s also an old conflict, but it has become viral with all the social media, with all the trying to regulate these laws with hate speech laws. And I think, yes, that kind of fuels the right-wing movement.
Annett Meiritz
I might add that I think the so-called parties of the democratic center, they try to preserve something that in the heads of or in the minds of most people, is not relevant anymore. I’ll give you an example. Ten or fifteen years ago I wrote a whole essay for Der Spiegel back then about how the back then Pirate Party was attacking me online with a mean tweet. One mean tweet. Would I complain about this now, fifteen years later? No, it’s normal that you see the mean tweets. It’s normal that you see all this trash, I might add, and garbage online. So we all got used to it. And I think politicians like Annalena Baerbock or Robert Habeck try to draw the line in the sand: We cannot accept that, so we have to fight against hate speech. We have to do that. But I think in the minds of most people out there, this is not the thing they should care anymore about. They should care about how high our energy prices are, and so on and so on. So in the minds of the people, this is a fight that is already over. And I think some prominent politicians out there try to preserve that front. I think it’s important that some people do, but it’s still a fight that is very exhausting, and I’m not sure if it does them any good.
Juliane Schäuble
Can I add two things? First of all, I think this fight is lost, because everybody lives through the same thing. When you go online, you are in danger of getting harassed. People know that, and they think, why should politicians have a different power? And also, we have learned that right wing parties live off that energy that comes out of this. The legal battle strengthens them. So you have to think of the end, what comes out of you suing them? You’re actually probably helping them.
Jeff Rathke
Eric mentioned, and you’ve also referred to, the culture wars and I want to pick up on two aspects of that and hear your reactions: First, you highlight in the book the way that the United States government, the Trump administration, and in particular, the vice president have turned values issues into a vector of attack against European mainstream parties and European governments. In the past, this was always different. We talked about shared values as a way of moderating our policy disagreements. We reassured each other that we were in the same boat and that we had fundamental basic values that were the same, and therefore we could afford to disagree because we knew, ultimately, we had the same basic values. Now this is turned on its head, and the accusation, at least from some parts, I mean, Donald Trump has said relatively little about this. It’s mainly been Vance, and to a degree, Secretary of State Rubio, and then a whole lot of other people who may not be office holders. How do you see that change? And then the second thing is, does American-style culture war politics translate to a European context? Because if I think about the role that religion and religiosity plays in U.S. politics, it’s quite different in Europe. Also, the politics around abortion in the United States is rather unique. Yes, migration, clearly, there are commonalities. But in other areas, how do you see the limits to transferring this political technology, if you want to call it that?
Annett Meiritz
First of all, I think it was very smart of Vice President Vance to put a finger on the culture issue wars because it’s about emotions and it’s much more powerful than reciting the NATO treaty. The second he said that everybody was going crazy, and for a good reason. Second, I think that Donald Trump is officially kind of staying out of it and never officially endorsed the AfD is also smart because he has to keep his options open and he has to deal with Friedrich Merz right now, this is his counterpart. Third, on your question on the culture wars: some things, like religion or abortion might work in the United States but not in Germany. But I think other issues like traditional family values, however you define them, the nuclear family. Birth rates, as I mentioned before, is a big issue on both sides of the Atlantic. Also transgender, I know it’s a niche topic, but it is about emotion in this case and I think you can still find many, many topics where both sides kind of inspire each other.
Juliane Schäuble
And as we have seen in Germany just recently, the debate about abortion is also not over yet in Germany. There was kind of a truce. There was a break in the debate, but it still had the ability to “cancel” a candidate for the Supreme Court. We couldn’t put that in the book because it just happened after we turned it in. But it really is the same debate, a similar debate as we see it here.
Eric Langenbacher
Well, as our time starts to come to an end, I wanted to circle back to what we were talking about towards the beginning, which is the deep network at many levels between right wingers in the AfD in Germany and in the MAGA movement. There were so many names that came up here that I hadn’t thought about since the 1980s, like Gloria von Thurn und Taxis for instance, who apparently is a player again—good for her. But there were all these other people that I just had never heard of and so I’m wondering: who are the people that we should be looking out for in terms of exerting influence behind the scenes, behind the facade? For instance, you talked about this Beat Zirpel and Leonard Jäger, who I’d never heard of before but apparently are quite influential. I have heard of not Naomi Seibt before, too, but I don’t think too many people would know about her. Who are the personalities that we should be looking out for in terms of actually exerting influence?
Annett Meiritz
Well, you might see Naomi Seibt on the street here in Washington, DC, because she lives in Washington, DC, now. Beat Zirpel is a very interesting person, a young entrepreneur, he used to be in communications, and he’s the one who brings all the German influencer scene together and connects them with the American influencer scene. And what struck me the most is that this is a generation that is international. They’re very fluent in English. He showed me his little camera. And I’m like, what is that like? It fits in my pocket and it was a very professional, high-resolution camera, so they know their technical stuff. This is the future of networking, so he’s definitely, certainly an interesting person. Just follow all those influences on Instagram for a while just to see what they’re doing. On a political level, of course, keep in mind who might be more powerful in a couple of years in the next German election. Like all the AfD politicians we have right now, you have to factor in everyone, frankly. Did I forget anyone? JD Vance, this is obvious.
Juliane Schäuble
It’s not only in the political level, it’s also on the business level. That’s what I mean, you have people who are who are having their interest in achieving certain goals. Not all of the sources we talked to we named because some of them don’t want to be officially there but it is I think it’s happening on many levels. I also think it was huge in the election and in the campaign, and now they also watch how strong the AfD stays. I mean, if the AfD is rising again, I think there will be even more interest; if they are stagnating then they also have to try to find people they talk to in the CSU and CDU. And that’s going to be interesting. Who is coming? Who is networking? Who will be the ones who maybe are going to meet with JD Vance or others? So that’s something we are going to watch in the next couple of months.
Jeff Rathke
OK, so plans for an English translation of your book?
Juliane Schäuble
We hope so.
Jeff Rathke
Because you know our listeners out there, certainly if you read German, I highly recommend you grab a copy of this book September 10th. For our English speaking and English reading listeners, you’ll have to wait to get the book in your hands. But for those who read German, I think it’s a fascinating look at the new networks on the right in Europe, not only in Germany and in the United States and well worth the read. I want to thank you, Juliane Schäuble, Annett Meiritz, for taking time to be with us today.
Juliane Schäuble
Thank you for having us.
Annett Meiritz
Thank you for the conversation.
Jeff Rathke
And Eric, we will then say goodbye to our listeners until the next episode of The Zeitgeist.
