Towards an allied civil society network in Europe

Originally published by The Critic 

It’s now no secret that part of the Trump Administration’s strategy towards Europe includes reorienting elements of its foreign funding architecture toward civil society. Reversing Europe’s “civilizational erasure” from a top-down policy perspective has its limits; but what Secretary Rubio has realized is that it requires engagement at the level where ideas are formed, advocated for, and normalized in both government and among average citizens.

Civil society is the place where culture meets politics, where narratives take root and ideas are normalized or shunned. For decades, American funding — both governmental and private — has flowed into European civil society with a strong ideologically Leftist tilt. Progressive, Marxist, and anti-American organizations, backed by networks such as George Soros’s Open Society Foundations as well as funding streams connected to USAID and other U.S. government entities, have played an outsized role in shaping advocacy landscapes across the continent. Much of this came to light early 2025 when the White House published a list of some of the most egregious projects like $1.5 million to “advance diversity equity and inclusion in Serbia’s workplaces and business communities” and “$70,000 for production of a “DEI musical” in Ireland.”

Though important to point out that not every single previous funding project was harmful, the bottom line is that for decades, American taxpayers were financially supporting initiatives aligned with expansive interpretations of social policy, identity politics, and ruinous cultural transformation.

In practice, this support has been so overwhelming that it has marginalized the comparatively underfunded alternative viewpoints in European societies — particularly those that are Christian, conservative and patriotic.

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