The Trump administration released its “National Security Strategy” on Thursday night, but the document reads more like a manifesto advocating for white supremacy than a supposed national defense plan.
The document calls on Europe to restore its “Western identity” and “civilizational self-confidence,” echoing the language of white supremacist movements. It also advocates against migration to the United States and Europe, which has long been cited as a goal of supremacists seeking to purportedly preserve white culture.
The Trump strategy argues that Europe faces “civilizational erasure” and blames organizations like the European Union and other international groups that supposedly “undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence.”
White supremacists have historically argued that white civilization is under assault from non-white infiltrators who are undermining existing governments. The document gives a stamp of approval to the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which Trump has previously endorsed while opposing the migration of non-white people to America.
Vice President JD Vance, shown in November.
This theory has inspired numerous acts of violence, including the 2022 mass shooting at a grocery store in New York, a 2015 mass shooting at a South Carolina church, and a 2018 mass shooting at a synagogue in Pennsylvania, among others.
The national security document also offers praise for the “growing influence of patriotic European parties,” which is clearly a reference to bigoted, nationalist parties like the Alternative for Germany party, or AfD. The German government has labeled AfD as a “proven right-wing extremist organization,” and AfD leaders have used Nazi slogans and engaged in Holocaust denialism.
Vice President JD Vance has complained about criticism of AfD, writing in May, “The AfD is the most popular party in Germany, and by far the most representative of East Germany. Now the bureaucrats try to destroy it.”
National security strategies do not typically offer wholesome endorsements of white nationalism.
In 2022, when then-President Joe Biden released his strategy, he called for a more robust strategy on diplomatically confronting Russia and China, and for domestic investment to shore up American strength. He also focused on fighting climate change, an ongoing threat to national security.
The new Trump document is just the latest front in which this administration has chosen to embrace racism and white supremacy, and it adds to the litany of actions Trump has undertaken to support bigotry and to attack the existence of non-white people.
Not only does the document echo the racism of Trump, who has spent years publicly advocating bigotry, but it sounds very much like the handiwork of senior White House aide Stephen Miller, who is arguably the most virulently racist figure in Trump’s inner circle.
Now they want the world to share in their bigoted approach.
