The excellent writer Anne Applebaum of The Atlantic wrote an interesting article about the recent parliamentary elections in Europe, and what they really meant.
Trump Is Not America’s Le Pen–He’s worse, By Anne Applebaum, June 11.
This excerpt from that article says a lot about we are confronting:
“Donald Trump is not like these politicians. The former president is not tacking to the center, and he is not trying to appear less confrontational. Nor does he seek to embrace existing alliances. On the contrary, almost every day he sounds more extreme, more unhinged, and more dangerous. Meloni has not inspired her followers to block the results of an election. Le Pen does not rant about retribution and revenge. Wilders has agreed to be part of a coalition government, meaning that he can compromise with other political leaders, and has promised to put his notorious hostility to Muslims “on ice.” Even Orbán, who has gone the furthest in destroying his country’s institutions and who has rewritten Hungary’s constitution to benefit himself, doesn’t brag openly about wanting to be an autocrat. Trump does. People around him speak openly about wanting to destroy American democracy too. None of this seems to hurt him with voters, who appear to welcome this destructive, radical extremism, or at least not to mind it.
American media clichés about Europe are wrong. In fact, the European far right is rising in some places, but falling in others. And we aren’t “in danger” of following European voters in an extremist direction, because we are already well past them. If Trump wins in November, America could radicalize Europe, not the other way around.“
A
thebigpicturereport ™ 
Thanks Arlen. For a less rosy – and I would argue more accurate – view of Anne Appelbaum and her pro endless war stance see https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/04/05/autocracies-are-bad-but-permanent-war-against-them-would-be-too/