Free Republic

Elon Musk and MAGA are already disrupting the status quo, and Europe seems ill-prepared.For the last decade or more, Europe’s governments have been trying to resist covert influence operations from adversaries like Russia and China. Now they have a very different challenge: Fending off overt efforts by Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s MAGA movement to seize territory, oust elected leaders and empower far-right causes and parties. Even before he retakes office, Mr. Trump is making threats — perhaps serious, perhaps not — to acquire the territory of NATO allies like Canada and Denmark. And Mr. Musk, the president-elect’s biggest financial...

The stage was set for war. Literally. Inside a small Tuscan theater with a mock-up of a World War I trench, Susanna Ceccardi, a rising star of Italy’s hard-right League party, was flanked by rival candidates for the European Parliament elections and firing angry salvos against a club she soon hopes to join. a person standing in a room: Graffiti in Brussels, where the European Commission and European Council meet. “This Europe must be changed, this Europe of bureaucrats, do-gooders, bankers, boats of migrants, it has to be changed,” Ms. Ceccardi, the 32-year-old mayor of Cascina, Italy, roared to smatters...