The Weekly Forum - 25 April
28 april 2025 | Forum for Democracy Intl
FVD International’s director, John Laughland, was delighted to be invited for a long interview with the conservative news outlet Nieuw Rechts (New Right) in Utrecht last week. The conversation turned mainly on East-West relations, specifically Russia. John insisted that ‘Russia’ was nothing but a pretext, or a cudgel, with which to beat European and American conservatives. We saw this with Russiagate (2016-2019) and the first Trump indictment in 2019; we have seen it again in Europe with the cancellation of the Romanian election earlier this year and the ongoing threats against Hungary. Russia is ‘the other Europe’, a mythical space either of infinite possibilities (as during the Enlightenment when French philosophers imagined it was a blank slate they could draw on) or of strange, dark and dangerous demons which loom over us, as during the Cold War and now. These various fantasies dangerously distract attention from a very important reality, which is that Russia is by far the largest country in Europe, both in terms of surface area and population, and that it is not going to go away. We are going to have to live with it, one way or the other.
Is Donald Trump a globalist or a sovereignist? Eric Verhaeghe, editor of Le Courrier des Stratèges in Paris, thinks he is the former. FVD International is honoured to publish an English translation of his article. Verhaeghe argues that sovereignists in Europe are wrong to welcome Trump’s policies. He claims that those policies are designed to increase American dominance over the rest of the world and not to permit the emergence of a multipolar world based on mutual respect and sovereignty. This article was then the subject of a subsequent debate between the author and various commentators including John Laughland.
Read Eric Verhaeghe’s article here
Watch the debate between Eric Verhaeghe, John Laughland and others here (in French)
And what about the Pope? The man who, when he was elected, said that Rome had gone to the other end of the earth to find its bishop, always portrayed himself as an outsider - including by choosing a name which no other Pope in the last 2,000 years has ever taken. But what is so new about this? We have had ‘outsiders’ and progressives in politics now for generations; why is it suddenly interesting to have that inside the Church? John Laughland gave an interview to RT on the day of the Pope’s death to explain that it is not the role of the supreme pontiff to do new things but instead to breathe new life into old things and to make sure they are handed on intact to his successors.
Watch John Laughland's interview here
We discussed the papacy on The Forum this week with Marc Fromager, former director of Aid to the Church in Need, and the conclusion was pretty negative for poor old Francis, may God rest his soul. As Donald Trump makes his way to Rome, let us pray that the next pope Makes the Church Great Again!