It’s Not Only about GDP
A battle over the soul of the West. From faith to retrotopia: Vance, Christian populism and the crisis of liberal democracies. The spread of the American right.
In his latest literary undertaking, "Communion," JD Vance passionately recounts his recovery of a spiritual dimension against the temptations of worldliness and his subsequent conversion to Catholicism. But the U.S. vice president’s memoir, which serves as something of a sequel to his successful "Hillbilly Elegy," also contains a significant ideological core. According to Vance, “Western Christian civilization” has lost its sense of "the sacred"; “Faith has left public life.”*
And amid this “void,” a new creed took shape: “secular global liberalism,” with its “vocabulary of rights” detached from “religious foundations” — a harbinger of “racial conflict” and the crisis of “traditional marriage.”* According to the Associated Press, the book is something of a manifesto on the role of religion in politics. But it is also a step backward from the hard-won separation of throne and altar that our societies have cultivated since the Enlightenment — and that political Islam lacks entirely — or, if one prefers, a leap forward toward a Christianity centered entirely on identity.
Vance remains, after all, a rather unconventional Catholic: He has no qualms about admonishing the pope on matters of theology and just war. Much of the language he pours into his new faith is influenced by evangelical Christians, who form the activist base of the Republican Party in its MAGA incarnation and are among its key supporters ahead of the 2028 elections. They claim that “Satan is a veil drawn over the eyes of Europeans,”* while Islamization has already crossed our threshold. This message thus addresses both sides of the Atlantic.
We can therefore observe a not-so-subtle connection between the fiery American “J’accuse” against our “degenerate” liberalism and the strong support for Alternative for Germany among voters in eastern Germany. Not only because of the repeatedly demonstrated closeness between Vance, Elon Musk and the more presentable leaders of AfD, such as Alice Weidel. This connection intertwines two recurrent elements, as relevant in Thuringia as in the Rust Belt: social insecurity, in the form of declining employment and the erosion of the 20th-century welfare state, and “retrotopia,” in the form of nostalgia for an imaginary past idealized as a golden age.
These are the same forces that 10 years ago generated the first wave of sovereigntist populism: Brexit, sold to the British as a cure-all for every problem; Donald Trump’s “alternative facts” in the White House; Viktor Orbán’s triumphant autocracy in Hungary, and the rise of Marine Le Pen in France. In short, the new wind of the 21st century.
Since then, liberal democracies have failed to find effective countermeasures: An entire decade now seems to have been lost. All the ingredients of collapse were already on the table. A powerful wave of immigration, made more alarming by jihadist attacks in France, Belgium and Germany between 2015 and 2016. An initial financial crisis that became an economic crisis, dragging on long enough to affect the most heavily indebted countries — a consequence of unmanaged globalization.
A proletarianized middle class that is no longer a plausible social base for centrist policies. A rejection of woke culture and its excesses. The resulting tribalization of social media, which has proved decisive in spreading the false messages of countless populist pied pipers. And the progressive paralysis of the European Union, which, although capable of confronting overlapping crises such as the pandemic and the war in Ukraine and still safeguarding its precious heritage of civil rights, has gradually lost both its sense of self and its connection with European citizens, intimidated by the simultaneous pressure of the great autocracies of our time.
From this perspective, the German lesson speaks to us all because it offers reference points that every country must reflect on, especially with 2027 approaching, a year that will be electorally decisive for many. Steven Erlanger, chief diplomatic correspondent in Europe for The New York Times, observes that it is precisely this sense of insecurity that pushes many people toward narratives of the past: “when life is remembered as simpler, family structures seemed more defined and Western nations were largely Christian and less diverse.”
We are, as one can see, squarely within Zygmunt Bauman’s insights into “retrotopia” as a kind of senile disease of democracies. Across Europe, the rising far right has portrayed yesterday as invariably preferable to tomorrow and, at times, the ethical state as a caring uncle.
The problem is thus only partly an economic one: If German crypto-Nazis preach “more Bismarck, less Hitler,” glossing over the horrors of the Third Reich and reclaiming a national pride free of guilt; if France’s Rassemblement National glorifies Joan of Arc and downplays the Vichy regime; if some in Italy are reevaluating the “good man Mussolini,” while setting aside the Republic of Salò and the racial laws, then it means that not every human aspiration can be reduced to economics.
The preaching of toxic populism does not only fill an “empty heart,”* as Paul Taggart argues. It also makes a pantry emptied by inflation seem a little less bleak. The response, therefore, cannot be limited to promising gross domestic product growth or a balanced budget.
The point is not to turn back the hands of history. It is to respond to a demand for radical ideals, deeply rooted above all among the young, with the values of tolerance and solidarity that have sustained liberal democracies since the postwar era — as Pope Leo XIV today seems almost alone among world leaders in doing.
It is a search for meaning that perhaps should not be entrusted to transhumanism or to Peter Thiel’s hunt for the Antichrist: a dystopian patron whom Vance knows well, owing much of his journey from the Appalachian Mountains into Trump’s orbit to Thiel’s generous support.
*Editor’s note: Although accurately translated, this quoted passage could not be independently verified.
In his latest literary undertaking, "Communion," JD Vance passionately recounts his recovery of a spiritual dimension against the temptations of worldliness and his subsequent conversion to Catholicism. But the U.S. vice president’s memoir, which serves as something of a sequel to his successful "Hillbilly Elegy," also contains a significant ideological core. According to Vance, “Western Christian civilization” has lost its sense of "the sacred"; “Faith has left public life.”*
And amid this “void,” a new creed took shape: “secular global liberalism,” with its “vocabulary of rights” detached from “religious foundations” — a harbinger of “racial conflict” and the crisis of “traditional marriage.”* According to the Associated Press, the book is something of a manifesto on the role of religion in politics. But it is also a step backward from the hard-won separation of throne and altar that our societies have cultivated since the Enlightenment — and that political Islam lacks entirely — or, if one prefers, a leap forward toward a Christianity centered entirely on identity.
Vance remains, after all, a rather unconventional Catholic: He has no qualms about admonishing the pope on matters of theology and just war. Much of the language he pours into his new faith is influenced by evangelical Christians, who form the activist base of the Republican Party in its MAGA incarnation and are among its key supporters ahead of the 2028 elections. They claim that “Satan is a veil drawn over the eyes of Europeans,”* while Islamization has already crossed our threshold. This message thus addresses both sides of the Atlantic.
We can therefore observe a not-so-subtle connection between the fiery American “J’accuse” against our “degenerate” liberalism and the strong support for Alternative for Germany among voters in eastern Germany. Not only because of the repeatedly demonstrated closeness between Vance, Elon Musk and the more presentable leaders of AfD, such as Alice Weidel. This connection intertwines two recurrent elements, as relevant in Thuringia as in the Rust Belt: social insecurity, in the form of declining employment and the erosion of the 20th-century welfare state, and “retrotopia,” in the form of nostalgia for an imaginary past idealized as a golden age.
These are the same forces that 10 years ago generated the first wave of sovereigntist populism: Brexit, sold to the British as a cure-all for every problem; Donald Trump’s “alternative facts” in the White House; Viktor Orbán’s triumphant autocracy in Hungary, and the rise of Marine Le Pen in France. In short, the new wind of the 21st century.
Since then, liberal democracies have failed to find effective countermeasures: An entire decade now seems to have been lost. All the ingredients of collapse were already on the table. A powerful wave of immigration, made more alarming by jihadist attacks in France, Belgium and Germany between 2015 and 2016. An initial financial crisis that became an economic crisis, dragging on long enough to affect the most heavily indebted countries — a consequence of unmanaged globalization.
A proletarianized middle class that is no longer a plausible social base for centrist policies. A rejection of woke culture and its excesses. The resulting tribalization of social media, which has proved decisive in spreading the false messages of countless populist pied pipers. And the progressive paralysis of the European Union, which, although capable of confronting overlapping crises such as the pandemic and the war in Ukraine and still safeguarding its precious heritage of civil rights, has gradually lost both its sense of self and its connection with European citizens, intimidated by the simultaneous pressure of the great autocracies of our time.
From this perspective, the German lesson speaks to us all because it offers reference points that every country must reflect on, especially with 2027 approaching, a year that will be electorally decisive for many. Steven Erlanger, chief diplomatic correspondent in Europe for The New York Times, observes that it is precisely this sense of insecurity that pushes many people toward narratives of the past: “when life is remembered as simpler, family structures seemed more defined and Western nations were largely Christian and less diverse.”
We are, as one can see, squarely within Zygmunt Bauman’s insights into “retrotopia” as a kind of senile disease of democracies. Across Europe, the rising far right has portrayed yesterday as invariably preferable to tomorrow and, at times, the ethical state as a caring uncle.
The problem is thus only partly an economic one: If German crypto-Nazis preach “more Bismarck, less Hitler,” glossing over the horrors of the Third Reich and reclaiming a national pride free of guilt; if France’s Rassemblement National glorifies Joan of Arc and downplays the Vichy regime; if some in Italy are reevaluating the “good man Mussolini,” while setting aside the Republic of Salò and the racial laws, then it means that not every human aspiration can be reduced to economics.
The preaching of toxic populism does not only fill an “empty heart,”* as Paul Taggart argues. It also makes a pantry emptied by inflation seem a little less bleak. The response, therefore, cannot be limited to promising gross domestic product growth or a balanced budget.
The point is not to turn back the hands of history. It is to respond to a demand for radical ideals, deeply rooted above all among the young, with the values of tolerance and solidarity that have sustained liberal democracies since the postwar era — as Pope Leo XIV today seems almost alone among world leaders in doing.
It is a search for meaning that perhaps should not be entrusted to transhumanism or to Peter Thiel’s hunt for the Antichrist: a dystopian patron whom Vance knows well, owing much of his journey from the Appalachian Mountains into Trump’s orbit to Thiel’s generous support.
*Editor’s note: Although accurately translated, this quoted passage could not be independently verified.
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