US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s ideologically loaded recent speech in Athens attempted to trace MAGA’s ideological roots back to ancient democracy. But emphasizing the West’s shared civilizational inheritance will not convince Europeans to embrace the hubris of the Trump administration’s imperial worldview.
ATHENS—On a recent visit to Athens, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio extolled ancient Greece as the foundation of Western civilization and drew inspiration for the United States today as the leader of the West. Rubio’s speech at the Pnyx, a hill west of the Acropolis where democracy was first practiced, was a bold and eloquent attempt to trace MAGA’s ideological roots back to Athenian democracy, as well as to Christendom, important discoveries, and imperial conquests. And it was about “us” and “them”: the West and the rest.