The Vice President Who Denied Munich

J.D. Vance claims to mend fences with Europe—but his record of far-right flirtation and disdain for democracy speaks louder than his words.

In Munich, the Vice President called for unity—while backing forces that divide and undermine Europe’s post-war order. Yet despite J.D. Vance insisting that MAGA America and Europe are on the same “civilisational team”, his past actions show he’s building a new team—without democracy and without European allies.

Wednesday witnessed United States Vice President J.D. Vance attempt to mend fences with Europe and the United Kingdom as he returned to the Munich forum. His last visit loomed large—when he harangued European partners over ‘democratic backsliding’. So too did the leaked Signal chats exposing his invective about “bailing out Europe again” and loathing for “European freeloading.” Vance now insisted his comments came from a “friend” and shouldn’t be taken to heart. Evidently, they were the products of high emotion and extreme excitement—otherwise known as spontaneous sincerity. Nevertheless, Vance maintained we were all on the “same civilisational team,” and that cynical actors sought to drive a wedge between us. Yet his own rhetoric surely undermines any attempt at nuance or reframing. If the Vice President wants to know what is driving that wedge, he need only look in the mirror.

Denying Pittsburgh…

In 1936, while seeking re-election, Franklin Delano Roosevelt prepared to speak in Pittsburgh. He complained to aide Sam Rosenman that, in 1932, he had promised to balance the budget and cut spending by 25 percent. In office, FDR realised combating the Depression required increased spending and federal intervention. When he asked Rosenman how to handle questions about the broken promise, Rosenman quipped, “Deny you were ever in Pittsburgh.”

J.D. Vance tried a similar sleight of hand in Munich. “It’s not Europe bad, America good,” he insisted, claiming Europe and the US are “on the same civilizational team.” The problem is, Vance has said too much to shove the genie back into the bottle. Nor can he credibly deny his own record with any appeal to ethos. Listening to him reframe is like watching a magician who once dazzled the crowd by unleashing a dragon now frantically coaxing it back into an eggshell. Vance’s deficit in Europe is one of credibility. The spontaneous sincerity he has summoned has grown too wild to tame, but retreating means admitting he never controlled it in the first place. He is a man wedged between self-inflicted rock and hard place.

The more interesting question, then, is not his transparent backpedalling—but why he said and did these things in the first place.

Which “civilisational team” is J.D. Vance really on?

Selective Memory as Strategy

This is a man who posed with far-right AfD leaders hours after visiting a concentration camp. He criticised US media for labelling the AfD “Nazi-lite,” arguing the party is most popular in areas that resisted the Nazis. Yet AfD politicians have used Nazi slogans. In 2021, AfD member Björn Höcke, a former history teacher, was convicted of publicly using Hitler’s banned slogan “Everything for Germany.” AfD co-chair Alice Weidel has described May 8—the date of Nazi defeat—as a day of German loss rather than liberation. Vance, like Höcke, is informed enough to know these facts. So why pretend otherwise?

Vance claims the AfD is not far-right but appeals to anti-fascist instincts. Yet the claim collapses under scrutiny. The AfD’s base is strongest in what was once East Germany. In the 2021 federal election, it won second votes in Thuringia, Saxony-Anhalt, and Saxony. In 2025, it topped the polls in Thuringia. And in 1932—the last Reichstag election before Hitler’s dictatorship—the NSDAP secured 33.1 per cent nationally, dominating nearly all regions, including today’s AfD heartlands.

Ongoing research from Munich’s Ludwig Maximilian University shows clear links between areas that backed the NSDAP in 1933 and those supporting the AfD today. That such work is still ongoing should make even Vance cautious. His attempt to draw a neat line between anti-Nazi strongholds and AfD territory is disingenuous. Besides, the 1932 election was marred by NSDAP voter intimidation, and today’s socio-economic conditions are vastly different.

So why is Vance making these claims? It circles back to his idea of “civilisational teams”—and whose team he is really on. Spoiler: it doesn’t include Germany’s democracy.

A Team Without Democracy

We know, thanks to The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, who MAGA excludes from its global mission. “I just hate bailing Europe out again,” Vance texted in a Signal chat. “VP: I fully share your loathing of European freeloading,” replied Defence Secretary Hegseth. “It’s PATHETIC.”

In February 2025, Vance insisted, “No voter on this continent went to the ballot box to open the floodgates to millions of unvetted immigrants,” while denouncing the pro-democracy ‘firewall’ keeping the far-right out of power. Jewish author Anetta Kahane notes that Vance “deliberately forgets” Germany’s constitution protects democracy by banning discrimination. Kahane, who grew up in East Germany and founded the anti-racism Amadeu Antonio Foundation, says Vance knows exactly what he is doing. That a US Vice President seeks to undermine what Germans have “painstakingly built” is shocking. “We will not allow that to be contested,” she says.

“This democracy was just called into question by the US Vice President—not just German democracy, but Europe’s as a whole,” said then-German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius at February’s Munich Conference. “If I understand him correctly, he compares Europe’s condition to authoritarian regimes … this is not acceptable.”

It is clear that German democratic politicians, across the spectrum, are not part of Vance’s “civilisational team.” They see him as an adversary backing forces antithetical to European liberal democracy. And, from his own thumbs to Gods ear, Vance has shown he holds Europe’s mainstream in thinly veiled contempt.

Quod erat demonstrandum

In the end, Vance’s appeals to shared civilisation ring hollow because he has already redrawn its boundaries. His words and deeds make clear his “team” is not the postwar democratic order forged from fascism’s ashes—but something narrower, exclusionary, and destabilising. His flirtation with Europe’s far-right, disdain for democratic safeguards, and contempt for the political mainstream render his Munich overture less a gesture of reconciliation than a cynical sleight of hand. The Vice President may insist we are on the same side, but like FDR in Pittsburgh, the facts suggest he is denying he was ever in the room where he spoke the loudest.

Europe—and history—are unlikely to be so easily fooled.

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Dean M Thomson is currently a lecturer with Beijing Normal - Baptist University (BNBU), formerly known as Beijing Normal - Hong Kong Baptist University, United International College (UIC).

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