Checkpoint: Marco in Munich – Five-Dollar Jingoism Meets A Two-Dollar Suit

U.S. Department of State

A month on from the Munich Security Conference, it’s hard not to be left smacking one’s lips, pulling a face and wondering, “Why does my mouth taste like I licked an ashtray?”

The origin of the problem is unfortunately the vast quantity of nativist smoke that the Secretary of State blew up the collective backsides of Europe’s wrinkled politicos, gathered to collectively ‘self-congratulate’ in the land of beer halls and pretzels. I’m sorry to tell you that said acrid smog is still lingering; do check on your pets, they have smaller lungs, after all.

Theoretically and in terms of intellectual honesty, it would be recommended to judge the quality of Secretary Rubio’s Munich deposit oneself, so that the reader might turn their no-doubt prodigious frontal cortex to matters of international security.

However, from the standpoint of keeping said frontal cortex free of hemorrhages, self-administered with the nearest piece of hardwood furniture, I would recommend against a viewing.

The reason for a desperately sought auto-lobotomy, is the sheer levels of stupidity, contradiction, and barely-veiled racism that leave one feeling as if human society was hobbling painfully in reverse. Welcome back 1950’s, bring on the ‘pep pills’, Red Scare and terrible psychiatry! 

This brings us to the first of many atavisms present in Rubio’s speech: fearmongering about communism. 

Despite Marco’s repeated references to “godless communist revolutions” and the “global catastrophe” of the “evil empire” of the Soviet Union, the global proletarian uprising has not yet claimed Europe, not even San Marino. Secretary of State Rubio makes clear that the conference was founded when “thousands of years of Western civilization hung in the balance” beneath the red menace. 

The inconvenient reality is that the conference was founded by a rabidly anti-fascist German aristocrat, who wished to prevent the return of war and nationalist violence through dialogue, a fact that remains conveniently forgotten. To elaborate, the amazingly-named founder, Ewald-Heinrich Hermann Konrad Oskar Ulrich Wolf Alfred von Kleist-Schmenzin, was so anti-Nazi he tried to suicide-bomb Hitler. This seems unbelievable, especially since the plot only failed because Hitler repeatedly postponed and then blew off the uniform inspection where Ewald was waiting with a briefcase filled with explosives. The WWII soldier was also the longest surviving member of the Von Stauffenberg July plot, having joined that assassination attempt too, before going on to found the conference in 1963. 

One wonders what such a man might have made of the moments in Rubio’s speech where he talked of securing the “vital interests of our people” in a “shared heritage” of “Christian faith” and “ancestry”, while gushing about the past “building of vast empires” and referring to the darker crimes in European history as “purported sins”. Personally, I think old Ewald-Heinrich’s briefcase hand would have been twitching. However, more will come later regarding the Secretary of State’s concerning racial animus and ultranationalist-like obsession with recapturing a golden age of conquest.

Which brings us nicely into the Secretary of State’s wilful deceit regarding any history or scholarship, both recent and ancient. Putting aside the complete reinvention of the history of the Cold War and of the conference he was speaking at, Rubio spoke near the beginning of his speech of “the mistaken beliefs” that arose after the fall of the USSR. When the Secretary of State referenced the “End of History”, he was referring to Francis Fukuyama’s work of the same name from 1989. 

In this the Japanese political philosopher argued that all institutions would gravitate toward a transnational rule of law, market economics and parliamentary democracy, which has not exactly come to pass. Though in some sense Fukuyama was not entirely wrong, as much of the world has, in the ensuing decades, sought to justify and frame itself in terms of liberal institutions and rhetoric, and the rise of markets even in communist-led China and Cuba speak to some degree toward the nuggets of truth in what Fukuyama’s wrote. 

Though now we are getting off-topic, since Rubio did not reference the much-cited and hotly-debated work of political thought to provide nuance. He did so crudely, mischaracterizing it in order to say that the “liberal” notion of “a rules based order” was so stupid as to be “a foolish idea that ignored human nature and over 5,000 years of human history.”

Well, Mr Rubio, your administration’s cyclical political infighting, pederasty, obsession with building walls, brutalising of upstart citizens and displays of military strength, certainly bring to mind the Crisis of the Third Century. So I suppose you have me there.

One of the most baffling and contradictory takes of ‘Little Marco’ is the way that he frames international cooperation against singular nationalist states, while arguing for both sides.

His positions stagger drunkenly from assuring the audience that the UN still “has tremendous potential to be a tool for good in the world” before saying it “has no answers and plays no role” in important matters. Then it's back to castigating the bad actors who are allowed to “hide behind international law” before he is then praising collective Western civilization and the “transatlantic order.” One can find numerous times where Rubio flips from saying things like “We do not need to abandon the international order we co-authored” to then rounding back and saying “Global order can no longer be placed before the vital interests of our people and nations.” It leaves one’s head spinning, and wondering if Trump’s frequent u-turns have forced the Secretary of State to simultaneously adopt all positions on the topic just to cover his bases!  

On racial terms, Rubio’s speech also seems very keen to promote white supremacy while eliminating any discussion of the darker side of European history – again this is at a conference founded in opposition to Hitler, Europe’s most infamous ethnonationalist.

Rubio repeatedly stoked racial tensions by fearmongering about mass immigration, claiming it “destabilizes societies across the West” and “threatens the cohesion of our societies and continuity of our culture.”  He goes on to talk about the need to be “unapologetic in our heritage” and how Europe wonderfully sent out “Missionaries, pilgrims, soldiers and explorers” who “poured out from its shores”. Secretary Rubio loudly praises historical European mass migration while claiming other countries pose an existential threat in their migration patterns. How this child of Cuban economic migrants holds both ideas in his head without his brain leaking out of his ears is an anatomical miracle! 

Not to mention the obvious fact that those pilgrims, missionaries and soldiers caused the deaths of tens of millions of people, both by disease and deliberate murder! Something that Rubio references as “purported”, which means he basically calls the genocides involved ‘BS’. 

Surely, Rubio knows he is an honest-to-God cabinet official for a country where tens of millions of citizens are descended from victims of brutal transatlantic slave trading? Where millions fought in a civil war over that most basic human freedom?  He cannot sincerely refer to European colonization as a “spirit of creation and liberty that sent out ships to the seas”.

Were the ships that stacked fettered human beings like cord-wood full of “liberty”, Mr Secretary? 

He says America does not want European countries to be “allies shackled by guilt and shame but who are proud of their culture, who understand we are heirs to a grand and noble civilization.” I, as a European, understand not wanting performative people to self-flagellate over the sins of their distant forefathers, but surely that doesn’t require us to either engage in Neo-fascistic delusions of historic righteousness or paint these atrocities as just plucky individualism?

I could go on about Rubio’s presentation of the whitewashed history of his country and the entirety of Europe – his claims that European immigrants “transformed empty plains” being particularly egregious. Why are all the plains tribes, millions of buffalo and unique ecosystems that were destroyed classified as nothing, Marco?  

Why do you awkwardly talk up European ethnic groups like the ‘Scots-Irish’, French, English, Italians and Germans? It’s odd how other European groups like the Irish, Slavs or Jewish migrants that weren’t highlighted, were those same groups that remained only partially accepted by the nation's White Protestant majority. 

From Rubio’s red scare, to his racial invective and ignorance of history, he has reinforced all of Europe’s negative stereotypes about America and demonstrated that he has no understanding of his audience’s positions. Here appeared the sweaty, historically-uneducated, petrol-loving American, paranoid about communists and confusedly and aggressively ‘proud of his heritage’.

Sadly, a month on, this boorish and poorly-suited used car salesman is still in Trump’s cabinet – with all the political levers that come with it. His behavior in the Middle-East and the chaos sown from Turkey to Oman, should prove Mr Rubio and intelligent security dialogue are not just total strangers, but complete foreigners to one another.

Given the way some few handfuls of applause were given and the news cycle has moved on, a key fact must be faced.

Secretary of State Rubio, while he may hang around like a bad smell, is unlikely to be blown away on fresh political winds any time soon, no matter how much his positions, or rhetoric, stink.