What The Hell America!

On the surface, this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) was a garish pageant of jubilance and cruelty. But beneath this flashy exterior lurked something more serious: the outline of a transnational far-right coalition hell-bent on revenge.

What I witnessed in Washington, DC, in late February was a Republican Party that, despite largely being in control of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the US government, is still pushing a spite-driven narrative of victimhood and retribution to galvanize its base. Rallying around Donald Trump as a figurehead, the MAGA right is on a mission to purge the federal government and the American political landscape of its perceived enemies. Don’t be distracted by the carnival atmosphere: this political bloc takes itself very seriously, and it’s hard at work forming alliances with like-minded groups in other countries.

The halls of the Gaylord National Convention Center were home to a cast of colorful characters in a celebratory mood. An elderly group of five in yellow sequin jackets with giant glittering red letters hanging around their necks that, when properly assembled, spelled TRUMP. A woman dressed as the Statue of Liberty with the words “TRUMP TRIBE OF TEXAS” on her dress. A photo booth flanked with red ring lights and a cardboard cutout of the president giving two thumbs up. Three tattooed millennial crypto investors calling themselves “the Maga Boyz” decked head to toe in matching stars and stripes.

People cheered each other as they crossed paths. They enjoyed drinks and food in the giant atrium. They had won. It was time for a victory lap.

Frequently, the celebratory energy veered into sadism. One man wore a Native American MAGA headdress, a taunt to the woke police. Another donned an ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) jacket, lionizing the agency known for raiding workplaces and separating immigrant children from their parents. A photo backdrop labeled DEPORTATION CENTER depicted Trump and his new border czar, Tom Homan, standing in front of prison bars. Caged inside were Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Not pictured but implied were the millions of immigrants Trump has sworn to round up and deport.

But away from the lively expo floor and crowded halls, before the main events had even started, a more solemn gathering took place: the CPAC International Summit. There, foreign dignitaries and political figures sat around a U-shaped table to discuss the formation of what CPAC director Matt Schlapp called a “global coalition.” Present among them were ex–prime minister of the UK Liz Truss, the son of Brazilian ex-president Jair Bolsonaro, the head of a Mexican far-right party Eduardo Verástegui, the chairman of the Japanese Conservative Union Jay Aeba, and representatives of conservative organizations from Hungary, Korea, Australia, Italy, and Israel. Presiding over them was Steve Bannon, founder of the conservative outlet Breitbart, ex-chief strategist to Trump, and host of the War Room podcast.

Long an advocate for a “global populist movement” — though the language he used at CPAC shifted to “populist nationalist movement” — Bannon has seen much of his vision come to life in Europe, where the far right has been gaining ground with anti-immigrant fervor. He now wants to use Trump’s second term as an occasion to bring the movement’s lessons home. He doesn’t expect it to be easy. “We’re at war,” he explained, with “the deep state, the administrative state,” and “they don’t think they’ve lost yet.”

Bannon highlighted politicians like Bolsonaro (recently indicted for a coup plot) and South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol (currently being impeached for an attempted coup that saw him invoke martial law), comparing their struggles to those of Trump. Their enemies wanted them jailed and killed, Bannon warned. The solution, in his view, was to change the laws that have been used to prosecute far-right figures for their crimes.

To that end, he focused his speech on the far right’s perceived legislative obstacles. “They’ve got the judges. They’ve got courts,” he told the gathering. “They still have immense power. They still have the media.” This month, Trump instructed the Justice Department to terminate all remaining Biden-era US attorneys and purged top military lawyers — indicating that he and Bannon are on the same page.

The International Summit highlighted the rise of a far-right transnational coalition, a concept cemented by the speakers on the main stage. They included president of the Spanish Vox party Santiago Abascal, Argentine president Javier Milei, UK politician Nigel Farage, and Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni (who joined by video). Their speeches showed cohesion around several topics, one of which was “Western civilization” and its supposed pillars: Greek philosophy, Roman law, and Christian values. Common enemies, too, were invoked: “Islamists,” “terrorists,” “illegal aliens,” “anti-Semites,” and “Communists.” Lines about “cancel culture” and “woke ideology” almost felt ornamental compared to the venomous joy expressed at the idea of deporting, incarcerating, and killing people who belonged to these enemy categories.

The crowd at the International Summit roared when they were shown an air strike on Somali jihadists, small grainy shapes in satellite images of a mountainside disappearing in a cloud of dust. Cheers erupted at the idea that thousands of criminals (including American citizens) would be deported and indefinitely held in a sprawling Salvadoran megaprison with the help of President Nayib Bukele. Support for the Israeli military intervention in Palestine — considered a genocide by Amnesty International and other human rights organizations — received raucous applause. Israeli politician Amichai Chikli told convention-goers that his country was “teaching the West how to win a war.”

When Bannon called the Democrats “demonic,” a man sitting behind me in the audience exclaimed that they should be “sent to the gulag.” Bannon finished his speech by making the crowd promise to “fight for Trump” and performing a Nazi salute — a gesture so unmistakable that it prompted a French far-right politician to cancel his CPAC appearance despite Bannon’s insistence that it was just a “wave.” The horrifying alternated with the surreal as Milei handed Elon Musk a chainsaw on stage, which he waved around alongside a portrait of himself handed to him by an audience member.

The chainsaw was a perfect symbol of what undergirded this celebration of jingoistic cruelty: the desire for retribution. Trump told the audience that his ongoing purge of the federal government  — with the help of Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) — would get rid of “the fraudsters, liars, cheaters, globalists, and deep-state bureaucrats” that he believes have wronged him. He spoke these words to a crowd that included a sizable group of pardoned January 6 rioters, including members of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers.

I encountered a group of so-called “J6ers” in the back of the room as Trump was speaking onstage. “They destroyed my life and my kids’ lives,” exclaimed Rasha Abual-Ragheb, a single mother sentenced to two months of home detention and thirty-six months of probation for her participation in the January 6 riot. “So fuck you Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, shifty Schiff, DOJ, and FBI. We’re gonna get justice by law!”

Another woman in the group pointed her finger in the face of a group of reporters, adding, “The hunters will become the hunted now. Keep that in mind.”