All over Europe, the current trend is to swear, boycott and turn away from America. But before you burn that Stars & Stripes you just ordered from Amazon, consider taking a look in the mirror at some of our own problems.
On the surface, cutting ties with America makes sense: buying American weapons will come back to bite us, and now that Musk is interfering in our elections (and that boycott is working, by the way), it's hard to show up at Tesla.
Search for European Tech Alternatives after Trump's Return
How an independent software developer launched a directory of European tech companies to support Europeans looking for alternatives to American services.
The reasons for this anti-American wave are unlikely to lie in the emotional upsurge of the European supranational spirit, although European integration may well become a side effect.
The ugliness of the Trump White House is a wake-up call to the West about what we already know: our daily lives depend on a small group of powerful oligarchs and authoritarian rulers (some of whom are European).
They do not share our values, they want to destroy our laws, and we are becoming more and more aware that they plan to use their means to achieve this goal.
The obvious reaction then is to try to deprive them of these resources economically. But we must not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Two examples:
There is a migration from Elon Musk's X to Bluesky. Bluesky is a less toxic version of Twitter and much nicer to use, but it is still an American company. If you want something in Europe, you need to look at Mastodon, which has a terrible user experience. Should we boycott Bluesky then? I would say no.
Its CEO, Jay Graber, believes in creating a (good) open-source protocol for social media. This would ensure that the future of social media is less toxic and less controlled by a few men than it has been to date. If that doesn't convince you, perhaps her defeat of Zuckerberg in a Latin T-shirt will.
The messaging app Signal goes even further. This week, it emerged as the channel that several senior Trump officials used to discuss bombing the Houthis in Yemen. Why do they use Signal and not WhatsApp? Because Signal takes privacy seriously, and no one trusts Mark Zuckerberg to do the same.
Signal Event: Why US and European Officials Rely on Messaging App
No intermediary, including service providers and even Signal itself, can access the message.
Signal takes this so seriously that its CEO, Meredith Whittaker, said she would rather pull the service from the country than undermine encrypted communications. Why would she say that? Because Sweden, France, and the UK have all taken legislative steps this year to threaten our privacy, and it’s only March.
This is an American woman and an American company standing up to European governments to protect Europeans' right to privacy.
Whittaker is not the first and, hopefully, not the last American willing to help Europeans.
The United States intervened decisively to support and then liberate Europe from a regime of racial genocide during World War II (and soon after began to dismantle racial segregation at home and in its military).
The US also played a crucial role in providing the initial sparks for European integration (the European Payments Union, the Marshall Plan), and the CIA even financed European federalists. At home, however, the US’s own liberal values were under threat as the political classes went mad over the witch hunt against communists known as the “Red Scare.”
Germans in Kaiserslautern fear the withdrawal of the local US military base, which effectively funds the entire region. But its very existence reminds us that for decades we have thrived on this military presence and the nuclear deterrence that underpins it.
Those days may be coming to an end, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that every American is an enemy. If anything, the current moment highlights a common enemy of people on both sides of the Atlantic: the plutocrats. I’ll trade advice with any European on how to reduce their dependence on them, and with any American who believes the same.
Round up
Economy – Russian assets frozen in the EU should be used to pay war reparations to Ukraine, European Council President Antonio Costa said on Tuesday, in remarks that contradicted Belgium's recent warning that confiscating the funds would constitute an “act of war”.
Tech – The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief recently found himself in the middle of a Signal chat between senior Trump administration officials about the bombing of Yemen. But why were they using Signal in the first place, and not WhatsApp or another messaging app?
Energy – The European Commission has strengthened the bloc's protection against foreign steel imports by scrapping key flexibilities and cutting the gradual increase in free import quotas to almost zero.
Health – 12 Member States have written a new joint letter to European Health Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi expressing concerns about the EU tobacco law review and calling for legislative proposals to be published this year.
All over Europe
France – Catering establishments should avoid serving soy-based products because of the health risks associated with their consumption, ANSES, the French food safety agency, recommended yesterday.
Germany – After activists staged a protest at his family farm, front-runner for agriculture minister Günter Felsner has announced he will not run to become Germany's next agriculture minister.
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