The new pope is latest sign that the world rejects Trumpism
From Vatican City to Canada, Trump increasingly represents everything people of goodwill oppose.
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Last week, following the death of Pope Francis, Chicago-born Cardinal Robert Prevost was named pope by his peers at the Vatican. He took the name Pope Leo XIV — widely seen as a reference to Pope Leo XIII, a pontiff remembered for his reforming spirit and for his encyclical on the rights of workers.
The new Pope Leo also shares Francis’s commitment to the rights of migrants. Like Francis, he has criticized the Trump administration in general and JD Vance in particular for their cruel anti-immigration policies.
In short, the new pope, like the old pope, does not support MAGA’s christofascist nationalism. MAGA, confronted with the fact that they do not control everything or everyone, responded in their usual fashion — by wailing and gnashing their teeth.
Trump’s former chief strategist, gutter propagandist Steve Bannon, said “it is shocking to me that a guy could be selected to be the pope that had the twitter feed and the statements he's had against American senior politicians.” Conspiracy theorist and Trump intimate Laura Loomer shouted on social media that Leo was a “WOKE MARXIST POPE.” Rabid Trump supporter and former crypto CEO Ryan Selkis accused Leo of “suicidal empathy” and of being an “American who mostly posts en español.”
Popes are, of course, not generally disqualified for criticizing American political figures. Nor are they disqualified for demonstrating empathy or speaking Spanish. Still, the Vatican had to know that selecting an American, reform-minded, pro-immigrant pope would be perceived by Trump and his followers as a rebuke.
Trump is currently the leading exponent of dehumanizing anti-immigrant rhetoric, and of Christian fascism, in the world. He underlined his view of Christianity as an adjunct to his own personal power after Francis’s death when the official White House account tweeted out an AI image of Trump robed as the new pope. (Catholics were not amused.)
It doesn’t seem like an accident that the Vatican has chosen a pope who embodies and extols a very different vision of Christianity than the one currently prevailing at the White House. Leo’s first homily pointedly referenced the Biblical phrase “a city set on a hill” — a phrase Ronald Reagan used to refer to America, but which the pope reads as a reference to the Church.
Nor is the Vatican alone. Trump’s uniquely clumsy illiberalism makes him a perfect foil for opponents of fascism across the globe. His vacuous, bellowing American nationalism appeals to at least some in the US. But for everyone who isn’t in the US, it just feels like bullying — and there is a powerful incentive to affirm one’s own independence and legitimacy by standing up to it.
Trump vs. the world
The Vatican is not a democracy and its decisions are reached in private. Cardinals also have incentives to deny that Trump influenced them one way or the other (and sure enough, at least one has denied it). The dynamics of global anti-Trumpism, however, have been clear in a couple of important liberal electoral victories in countries that historically have been US allies.
The recent Canadian national election is the first, and clearest, example of the anti-Trump backlash. Before Trump’s election in November, the Canadian Conservative Party looked ready to cruise to victory on a global wave of anti incumbent sentiment and exhaustion with almost ten years of Liberal Party rule under Justin Trudeau. In some polls the Conservatives were up by as much as 27 points.
But then Trump won. He immediately began threatening Canada with annexation, putting in place high tariffs and claiming that to avoid them Canada needed to become “the 51st state.”
Suddenly, Conservatives, with their links to and sympathy with the American right, became identified with an attack on Canada’s sovereignty, while the Liberals became the party of Canadian patriotism. Trump made sure no one missed that dynamic when he endorsed Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre on the day of the election (April 28) in a social media post that again called for Canada to become the 51st state.
Poilievre rebuked Trump, but the damage was done. Liberal Mark Carney won the election handily. His first speech repudiated Trump by name. Meanwhile, Poilievre embarrassingly lost his own seat in Parliament.
A similar dynamic played out in the recent Australian election. Trump has not directly threatened Australia. But his bizarre, aggressive tariff regime had made him the enemy of basically every country in the world. That means that any party cozying up to Trumpy right-wing anti-immigrant fash-adjacent politics is associated with toxic Americanism.
The right-wing Liberal party in Australia looked set to take advantage of anti-incumbent sentiment and cruise to victory until (and you may have heard this before) Trump got elected, started throwing tantrums, and — ta da! Labor leader Anthony Albanese won a second term as prime minister, while Liberal leader Peter Dutton couldn’t even hold his own seat.
“Our government will choose the Australian way, because we are proud of who we are and all that we have built together in this country,” Albanese said in his victory speech. That was a not very subtle suggestion that the right-wing Dutton was choosing the American, Trump way instead.
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Germany has not had an election since Trump’s victory last November, but its leaders have also shown clearly that they think anti-Trumpism is good politics.
The German government recently classified the far right, neo-Nazi AfD party as extremist, which gives the government additional powers to surveil the group. The Trump administration, of course, rushed to defend German neo-Nazis. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio attacked the German decision, praising the AfD’s racist anti-immigrant stance as opposition to “the establishment’s deadly open border immigration policies.”
Germany was not cowed, though. Instead, the German foreign minister responded directly to Rubio, pointing out that the decision on extremist status is made by independent courts, and that “we have learnt from our history that right-wing extremism needs to be stopped.”
No doubt the German government looks at Canada and Australia and concludes that electorally, the surest path to victory right now is getting the Trump administration to declare you an enemy.
Global opposition matters
Trump’s unfailing ability to make everyone his enemy benefits liberals in Canada, Australia, and Germany, who are trying to fight their own right wing because they don’t want to end up like us — a quasi-fascist state racing towards economic disaster and human rights atrocities.
But Trump’s global weakness also has repercussions at home. In the first place, any model of resistance — any sign that Trump is not all powerful — helps build more resistance. Trump threatened Canada with annexation, and Canada responded not by folding, but by thoroughly repudiating him. Vance and Rubio tried to bully Germany, and Germany told them to crawl back into their bunker and stay there.
Trump claims he’s making America stronger; he insists no one can defy him. But here are people defying him, and they seem better off for it, not worse. It makes him look weak — and people are a lot more comfortable defying a president who seems weak than one who seems strong.
Global opposition also has concrete benefits for the anti-Trump coalition. A Canada that defines itself in opposition to the Trump regime is a Canada that’s going to continue to welcome people who need to escape from Trumpism. That includes LGBT refugees. It also includes people like philosopher and antifascist academic Jason Stanley, who recently left Yale for the University of Toronto.
Trump’s mockery of the Catholic Church, and the Church’s appointment of an American pope unacceptable to MAGA, may also erode an important part of Trump’s coalition. White Catholic voters are a reliable Republican constituency, and last year Hispanic Catholics — who lean Democratic — shifted towards the GOP by a few points. But if MAGA and Trump continue to frame the new pope as an enemy (which seems pretty likely) they may well end up alienating some of their own allies.
Trump losing abroad is not the same as Trump losing at home, and neither Pope Leo nor Mark Carney nor anyone else can save the US from what its own voters have done to it. But we all live in the same world, and what happens abroad does affect what happens here. Any pushback against Trump is helpful and hopeful. Maybe if enough people elsewhere vote to reject Trumpism, we finally will too.
That’s it for today
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Thanks for reading.
Also, Janet Mills, the governor of Maine, flatly defied the bully. See you in court she said. Trump and his bully boys from DoJ caved.
The book Opus by Garath Gore (about the right wing dark money cult Opus Dei) ends with the following paragraph. “If Francis dies before real reform happens - and if his successor proves unwilling or unable to carry out his initiative - then Opus Dei will emerge from its near death experience invigorated and defiant… The movement will plow forward with its plans to re-Christianize the planet… Gay Marriage, secular education, scientific research and the arts will fast become the next targets.” I’m guessing that Pope Leo XIV is no who Opus Dei would have chosen. Let’s hope that he follows through with what the good Pope Francis started.