Donald Trump, crowned as the messiah of the reactionary international

WashingtonWhen Donald Trump's return was still only a possibility, the Republican promised "revenge" from the stage of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) and was warming up for the Republican primaries by saying that migrants "are polluting the blood of our country." A year later, "revenge" sits in the Oval Office, and on the CPAC stage, words have become deeds: Steve Bannon's Nazi salute and the fraktur-like typography used by the Nazis on Elon Musk's MAGA cap.

In the 20th century, the trivialization of evil and dehumanization was the German Adolf Eichmann answering that he was only following orders before the court that later convicted him of crimes against humanity. Now it is a photocall at a CPAC in a deportation center where attendees take photos to post on Instagram while, on Trump's orders, thousands of unaccompanied migrant minors They must face alone the judges who order their deportations. The cries and fear of People deported to Nogales turned into a meme. The other is a digital intuition, not a concrete body of flesh and blood.

Two days after he gave the Nazi salute, people continued to line up at Bannon's booth this Saturday to take photos with him. The former national chairman of the far-right group Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio, was also in the halls of CPAC thanks to Trump's pardon. Of the more than a thousand people convicted for the assault on the Capitol, Tarrio had the longest sentence: 22 years. People stopped him in the hallway to congratulate him and ask for photos.

Fifty years after its creation, the CPAC has become the compass that points north in the advance of a reactionary international that has crowned Trump as its messiah. The tycoon first took control of the Republican Party to turn it into his party, and now stands as the global standard-bearer for the advance of the extreme right. "Our movement is thriving, fighting, winning and dominating Washington like never before," the American president celebrated.

The president has repeated the same old repertoire, criminalizing migrants and attacking traditional media. "MSNBC [a television network] is a threat to democracy," Trump said, after celebrating that he has also revoked the temporary protection status for Haitian migrants, a measure that he applied to Venezuelans who had TPS, an immigration benefit that granted them legal status.

Trump has counted on the support of his right-hand man, Elon Musk; his Latin American fan, Javier Milei; and some representatives of the European far right, such as the British Nigel Farage or the Italian president Giorgia Meloni, who has shown that moderation is just a facade. The leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal, who wants to make his European and Spanish version of the ""Make America Great Again", but at the slightest opportunity he does not hesitate to kneel before Trump and justify their tariffs, which will harm Europe and Spain.

"The world is already more like how they dreamed it a year ago," Abascal celebrated on Thursday. A world in which the social consensus that existed around the rejection of the symbolism of a totalitarian regime that culminated in the Holocaust has already been broken. Imitating the exact gesture of the Nazi salute that Musk made during Trump's inauguration, the Mexican actor Eduardo Verástegui followed in his footsteps and repeated the salute from the CPAC stage. Nazi symbolism has made its way among the speakers at the conference on the eve of the Bundestag elections, in which polls project the neo-Nazi party Alternative for Germany as the second force.

Before speaking, Argentine President Javier Milei stopped Trump on the red carpet: "We are at a turning point in history in which the spirit and the idea materialize in a person." The Argentine praises Trump for being the beacon of a movement that promises to "take the opposite path to give power to the citizen and take it away from the State," while on Thursday the official White House account on Instagram published an image of a crowned Trump with the caption: "Long live the king". On Friday, during the meeting with governors from around the country, the president said: "We are the federal law." Similarly, during the joint interview on Fox, Musk attacked the separation of powers and defended: "If the president's will is not implemented [...], it means that we do not live in a democracy".

Trump has repeatedly floated the idea of a third term, despite the Constitution's ban on it. "And I'm told I'm not allowed to run [for re-election]. I'm not sure. Is this true? I'm not sure," the US president said during a dinner with Republican governors on Thursday. A booth with a black sign and an image of Trump impersonating a Roman emperor also stood in the halls of CPAC. The sign read: "Third Term Project. For Trump in 2028 and Beyond!"

At this year's Republican National Convention, a large Heritage Foundation sign at the Milwaukee airport welcomed attendees. think tank The ultraconservative is the one behind Project 2025, a program that Trump denied knowing about during the campaign. Now, some of the contributors to the drafting of the document, such as border tsar Thomas Homan or Russell Vought, hold positions within his new government while the president is applying many of the chapters in the manual.