Good morning. Today, I’m talking to my colleague Jason Horowitz about how Europe’s far right is seizing on Charlie Kirk’s assassination. Also:
Plus, the things that defined David Bowie
Europe’s far right is claiming Charlie Kirk as a martyrOver the past decade, I’ve spent a lot of time writing about Europe’s far right: Marine Le Pen’s ascent in France, the Brexit vote in Britain and the rise of the AfD in Germany. In 2019, I took a road trip across the Continent and was struck by how much these movements differed from country to country. The Italian right was animated by immigration. In France, it was the urban elite’s betrayal of the rural left-behind. Polish nationalists were obsessed with all things LGBTQ+. It was that year that Steve Bannon, the then in-house ideologue for President Trump, traveled Europe’s capitals in an effort to unite the far right. That effort fizzled. But something is happening more organically now. After the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the American right-wing activist, I was eager to talk to my colleague Jason Horowitz, who spent the weekend at a far-right rally that saw the leaders of these parties converge from all over Europe. Katrin: Jason, you were at this far-right rally in Madrid last weekend with party leaders from across Europe and beyond. What were people saying about Charlie Kirk? Jason: There are these common themes you always hear about at these rallies. Immigration, sovereignty, an encroaching European Union. But the new thing that everyone was talking about was Charlie Kirk. That shouldn’t have been surprising, because lots of these parties have been developing a narrative — or mythology — of persecution for years, sometimes decades. And they took the assassination of Kirk as more evidence of their persecution. As one of the party leaders explained to me, they needed to “use him” for political mobilization. In a way, it would be political malpractice not to. Katrin: You were in Italy when Bannon tried, in 2019, to unify Europe’s far right, and it didn’t work. Could Charlie Kirk achieve, posthumously, what Bannon failed to do? Jason: Bannon had identified Italy as the center of the new populism in Europe, and I saw his effort up close to try and sign up people for this thing he had called The Movement. One reason it didn’t work was that Europeans had a sense it was primarily about Bannon. Charlie Kirk had a more organic online connection to many on the right in Europe, especially the young. He was in their phones, in reels translated into their own languages. That someone they sort of knew and watched was killed on camera was powerful. And one leader of a European right-wing party told me that it mattered that this had happened in America, which has in many ways taken the lead in the right-wing echo chamber. So they were more than willing to accept Kirk as a martyr of their own. Katrin: And what does that say about the state of the global far right? Jason: It shows that the right-wing ecosystem has already become more aligned. And that’s a result of social media and the immediacy of X and Instagram and YouTube. But it also reflects something more purposeful: A strategy of these parties to draw closer together. They make a point of speaking at each other’s rallies. They share the same issues. And the same politically useful mythology of victimization. So those factors make something as enormous in the United States as Charlie Kirk’s assassination reverberate in Europe and beyond. Interested in providing feedback on this newsletter? Take our short survey here.
Maximum pomp and minimum politics for Trump in the U.K.On the first day of his state visit to Britain, President Trump and his wife, Melania, traveled by helicopter to Windsor Castle, where they met with King Charles III and Queen Camilla and viewed items from the Royal Collection that relate to the U.S. “Wow,” Trump said as he looked at an item linked to American independence. Not everyone in Britain was happy about Trump’s visit or the royal treatment he received. Thousands of demonstrators gathered in London. See photos of the visit. For more: Do you think you can master the rules of palace etiquette? Take our quiz to find out.
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A rock chamber of secretsWhen David Bowie died in 2016, he left behind an archive of around 90,000 carefully boxed and cataloged items. Now, it’s available to fans at the newly-opened David Bowie Center in London. The objects get to the heart of who Bowie was, and his work ethic. There are the legendary androgynous costumes; some cherished childhood belongings, including a framed portrait of Little Richard; and an 1968 rejection letter from Apple, the Beatles’ record company, that reads, “we don’t feel he is what we’re looking for.”
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