BRUSSELS – Groups aligned with Donald Trump’s administration rallied against “online censorship” and “extreme environmentalism” as they took to the stage at an event held in the heart of the European Parliament earlier this week.

The meeting in Brussels comes amid reports that the U.S. State Department is poised to fund MAGA-aligned think tanks and charities across Europe to further Trump’s agenda overseas.
 
At the one-day conference run by the Political Network for Values (PNfV) on 4 February, speakers from the Heritage Foundation, the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), Family Watch International, and other U.S. conservative Christian groups defended what they described as “basic truths […] such as love of God, country and family.” 

The event was co-organised by the far-right Patriots for Europe (PfE) and right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), which have used their growing influence in the EU Parliament to undermine climate policies.

Trump-aligned groups spoke in defence of the absolute right to free speech, and against EU regulations designed to regulate hate speech online.

They were referring to the Digital Services Act (DSA), the flagship legislative package designed to hold big tech platforms to account for the harms they produce, including online hate and climate change disinformation.

The event has prompted concerns from Members of European Parliament (MEPs) that the Trump administration is realising its aim to cultivate “resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations” as set out in a White House National Security Strategy document published last year.

“Fostering far-right movements to destabilise the continent is no longer just a line in a White House strategy document. It is a political reality,” said Daniel Freund, a German MEP for The Greens.

“This week, the enemies of Europe, the adversaries of freedom, gathered in the European Parliament. These individuals call themselves patriots, yet they are nothing more than Trump’s foot soldiers. The event made one thing clear: Trump’s MAGA movement has established a political foothold in Europe. The answer must be a stronger, more independent Europe.”

’Backbone of the Trump Regime’

On Thursday, the Financial Times revealed that the Trump administration plans to fund MAGA-aligned think tanks and charities across Europe in an effort to spread “American values”. 

The Heritage Foundation, one of the most prominent MAGA think tanks, is credited with producing the authoritarian playbook known as Project 2025, the intellectual blueprint for Trump’s second term. That effort has helped to set the U.S. government on a path to “energy dominance”, which in practice means abandoning climate targets in favour of massively expanded fossil fuel extraction.

The MAGA groups at the PNfV event have a long record of attacking and attempting to undo progressive social gains on issues including gender, religion, and LGBTQ+ rights. Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) in particular was instrumental in the 2022 overturning of the constitutional right to an abortion that was guaranteed under Roe v. Wade.

An early version of the event’s programme showed both ADF and Heritage as sponsors of the event, along with the Foundation for a Civic Hungary, the official party think tank of Fidesz, the ultraconservative party of Viktor Orbán’s Hungary. This version was quietly removed from the PNfV’s website to show no sponsors, although speakers from these organisations remained on the updated programme.

The groups at the event identified removing regulation on X and other digital platforms sympathetic to right-wing views as a top priority.

One speaker from the European branch of the ADF, Adina Portaru, labelled the EU’s DSA “one of the most dangerous threats to freedom of expression online in the Western world today”. 

The criticism of Europe’s attempt to regulate hate speech online echoes comments made by JD Vance in his address to the Munich Security Conference in February 2025. He argued Europe’s biggest threat was the “threat from within”, partly caused by “digital censorship”. This, he argued, posed a bigger threat than Russia, at a time when Europe faces the escalating threat of Russian hybrid warfare on its eastern flank.

The ADF has itself made inroads into Europe, and has been quietly working with Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. Farage had rarely, if ever, mentioned abortion in his 31-year political career until May last year, when he called the UK’s 24-week abortion limit “absolutely ridiculous”. 

“The timing is shocking. While the rest of Europe is re-considering its links with the U.S. after the Greenland affair, here we have quite a few European far-right parties rubbing shoulders with the core of Trump’s hinterland,” said Kenneth Haar, researcher and campaigner at Corporate Europe Observatory, an advocacy group pushing for greater accountability in European institutions.

“The Heritage Foundation is not just a think tank. It is part of the backbone of the Trump regime.”

‘Revolution of Common Sense’

The PNfV event was the seventh “Transatlantic Summit” organised by the groups, a coalition of Christian conservative groups that brings together senior government officials, legislators, and well-connected civil society groups to fight progressive social gains. The group has active members in Europe, North and Latin America, and Africa.

In a programme handed out at the summit, the group’s president, Stephen Bartulica, a Croatian MEP, said the group “must promote what some have called a revolution of common sense.”

The PNfV counts the President-elect of Chile, Jose Antonio Kast, among its list of former presidents. The Republican chair of the Iowa State Senate, Amy Sinclair, and members of Polish and Hungarian parliaments sit on its board. 

Kast, who delivered the single keynote speech of the day, spoke about defending “fundamental beliefs”, from “isms” such as “extreme environmentalism,” which allegedly “prioritises the environment over people”. He was introduced as having nine children – the second speaker to be introduced in this way.

Alongside calls to “defend the values of God, country and family,” speakers at the summit railed against a “far-reaching online censorship regime”. This, they claimed, was established by efforts to regulate hate speech online, which they said infringes on the “innate natural right of all human beings to free speech,” a “natural right that comes before the state”. Censorship was mentioned on average once every six and half minutes during the nine-hour conference, according to DeSmog’s analysis. 

Jay Richards, vice president of social and domestic policy at the Heritage Foundation, denounced the “white martyrdom” imposed on U.S. Americans who are, he claimed, “having his or her free speech violated”. Richards also cited the removal of Donald Trump’s former Twitter account for spreading the lie that the 2020 election was “stolen” by 46th U.S. President Joe Biden as an example of “white martyrdom”. 

The second Trump administration has banned the use of terms like “diversity, equity and inclusion”, “climate change”, “vaccines”, and “disability” from departmental websites across the U.S. government, while arresting and detaining people for actions including writing op-eds for a student newspaper.

“This conference confirms that there is a campaign underway against any kind of content moderation,” Kenneth Haar said.

“It is waged by ultraconservative groups, some of which belong to the MAGA-coalition. We are seeing a camp against European regulation emerge, with religious groups, people from Trump’s inner circle, and Big Tech emerge.” 

‘Totalitarian Act’

Attacks on the DSA were repeated throughout the day.

The DSA is a “totalitarian act” that “must be abolished” said Slovenian MEP Branko Grims, who closed his speech with “God bless Europe, and God bless Western civilization”.

Grims also called for the EU to revoke the €120 million fine it levied against Elon Musk’s X platform in December for breaching transparency obligations under the DSA.

Despite pleas from speakers that the attacks on LGBTQ+ rights were an attempt to “protect our kids,” none of the speakers mentioned the recent scandal enveloping X – that the platform’s built-in chatbot, Grok, has been digitally undressing people, including women and children, on command. 

While primarily focussed on free speech and reinstating “Christian values”, speakers also used their platform to attack climate targets in Europe, with one arguing that voters “demand realism and affordability in climate policy, but the Green Deal remains untouchable dogma”.

Tom Vanderdreissche, MEP from Vlaams Belang, the Belgian party pushing for independence for the Dutch-speaking Flanders, asked in his address: “Is there anyone who believes that the Green Deal will save the world when Europe only produces around 6 percent of global CO2 emissions?” 

This is a typical ‘Whataboutism’ argument made by those seeking to delay climate action, which tries to redirect responsibility for tackling climate change to other actors.

Other speakers from across the world bemoaned their frustration at being labelled “homophobic,” “transphobic,” “fascists,” and “extreme” for their opposition to LGBTQ+ rights. 

Ugandan MP Lucy Akello received widespread applause following her speech, where she identified as the victim of a hunt against those who seek to “protect family values”.

Akello is one of the MPs who called for Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act to be reinstated in 2023 after it was overruled by the courts. The act prescribes life imprisonment for homosexual sex and the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality”. 

Akello argued her actions were about “protecting our kids who were being coerced, who were forced into homosexuality activities”.

“Looking at the speakers and the organisations in this mix, tells me that when they say free speech, what they really mean is free hate speech,” Kenneth Haar added.

Later in the same panel, Guatemalan MP Ronald Portillo added that “people have a right to feel what they feel, even if it’s hatred,” in his defence of “fundamental rights”. 

Many of the speakers also complained of how Christianity had become marginalised in the West. The words “God” and “Christ” were mentioned 76 times throughout the day.

One address from British Catholic Priest, Father Benedict Kiely, included a call to “declare war on dumptyism,” a reference to the children’s tale of Humpty Dumpty, which he used to make a point about rediscovering the meaning of words. He also warned that “I’ll probably be arrested when I go home” for his address.

At the time of publication, he had not been.