Vance shocks Europe with a message that he has long promoted at home

Washington: Vice President J D Vance's defense of a divisive far-right political party in Germany was the latest jarring example of his willingness to embrace a provocative political issue and showed how hard-line immigration policy has emerged as the thread tightly knitting together a global patchwork of populist movements.

The thrust of Vance's speech on Friday in Munich was a call for European leaders to broaden their tolerance for alternative viewpoints. But his address from inside a Bavarian hotel was certain to resonate back home among conservative and libertarian movements that have long seized on free speech battles in Europe to warn of dangers that could be looming for anti-immigration and anti-abortion activists in the United States.

Vance did not mention the far-right party, Alternative for Germany, by name, but the context was clear as he criticized a decision to bar certain political parties from the Munich Security Conference just over a week before Germany's national election.

Although elements of the party, also known by its German initials, AfD, have been classified as extremist by German intelligence, it appears to be on track for its strongest showing yet in a parliamentary election amid anger over immigration and rising prices.

Later in his speech, while castigating leaders in Europe broadly and Germany specifically for dismissing the opinions of some voters, Vance said, "There is no room for firewalls." That was a direct reference to how German party leaders have colloquially referred to building a "firewall" around the AfD with the aim of blunting the party's move into the mainstream.

Vance also met with the party's leader, Alice Weidel, during his visit to Germany, a spokesperson for Vance said.

Vance had offered tacit support for the party in December when he waded into the social media backlash to a comment from Elon Musk, who posted, "Only the AfD can save Germany." In his own post, Vance used his sharp-tongued online persona to mock criticism that Musk was promoting a dangerous group.

"It's so dangerous for people to control their borders," he wrote. "So, so dangerous. The dangerous level is off the charts."

On Friday, Vance's embrace of the far-right party was quickly rebuked by the Anti-Defamation League, which said in a statement that it was "deeply concerning" that Vance appeared to openly welcome a group with "an extremist agenda and a history that includes antisemitic, anti-Muslim, anti-democratic and xenophobic rhetoric."

Carl Bildt, a former prime minister of Sweden and now a co-chair of the European Council of Foreign Relations, described Vance's speech as a disappointment.

"At best it was totally irrelevant to European or global security concerns," Bildt posted on social media. "At worst it was blatant interference in the election campaign in favor of far-right AfD."

The combativeness Vance brought to the international stage in Munich was familiar to conservative activists and others in the United States. His first days as a vice presidential candidate were consumed by his criticism of "childless cat ladies." He drew headlines for weeks by promoting baseless claims that Haitian migrants were eating their neighbors' pets.

Vance also spent much of the 2024 campaign casting conservatives -- and Trump in particular -- as victims of censorship. He cited censorship as his reason for refusing to acknowledge Trump's election defeat in 2020, and blamed censorship of conservatives from liberals after the assassination attempts on Trump.

In Munich, Vance picked up on that theme, saying the biggest security threat to Europe was not Russia or China, but their own suppression of free speech as he urged leaders to embrace the rise of anti-establishment politics.

"There is nothing more urgent than mass migration," Vance said in Munich. He noted that roughly 1 in 5 people living in Germany moved to the country from elsewhere, and that the U.S. population also has a significant share of immigrants.

Peter B. Doran, an adjunct senior fellow at the nonpartisan Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said Vance was "planting his flag" in Europe on issues that "make good political sense for him back in the States."

"President Trump was elected on the promise that he would actively address the immigration crisis, and many Europeans are having buyer's remorse over the open immigration policies they have had for many years," Doran said. "Vance is bringing that gospel to the Europeans."