I, Claudia: US Funds Far-Right in Europe

The US State Department just launched a $5 million grant scheme to fund 
organisations in Europe — pushing "Western civilizational heritage," 
anti-migration narratives, and attacks on the free press. 

Right before Germany's September 2026 elections.

This is not a conspiracy theory. It is an official US government programme, 
published on state.gov, run by a bureau originally created to fight Soviet 
authoritarianism. That same bureau is now targeting allied democracies.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz had to warn Washington publicly : stay out 
of our elections.

In this episode of Over Here, Over There, we look at what is actually in 
this grant scheme, who is behind it, why Germany is uniquely placed to 
recognise the danger — and what it means when the country that spent decades 
lecturing the world about election interference starts doing it to its friends.

Key Topics

• US foreign policy funding in Europe
• Germany's response to US influence
• The role of the State Department in European politics
• Historical context of US democracy promotion
• The impact of foreign funding on European elections
• Germany's constitutional resilience against external influence
• The evolution of the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor
• Implications for US-Germany relations

Sound Bites

• "Germany had to warn the US not to interfere with its elections"
• "Developing civilizational bonds, democratic resilience and rule of law in Europe"
• "Germany's constitutional model was built to be hard to break"

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Transcript

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Germany had to warn the United States not to interfere with its elections. Take a moment with that. It wasn't Russia, not China. Germany had to look across the Atlantic at the country that rebuilt it after the war, that kept troops on its soil for more than 80 years, and say, "Please stay out of our vote." The German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said it at his summer press conference in Berlin on the 15th of July, and I quote, "We do not interfere in American elections. Conversely, I do not want the American government or institutions close to the government to interfere in German elections. 

Every word was chosen very carefully and underneath the politeness you could hear something harder. 

So, what happened you might ask? Well, two days earlier on the 13th of July, the US State Department published a grant scheme up to $3 million per project available to European charities, think tanks, and individuals. The program is called, and no, I'm not making this up, developing civilizational bonds, democratic resilience, and rule of law in Europe. civilizational bonds. That's the actual name on an actual government document. The money goes to those willing to push back against what the grant calls national sovereignty, migration, censorship, and lawfare challenges. All in line with, and I quote again, our common Western civilizational heritage. Applications close on the 12th of August. Germany holds state elections in September. The timing is, let's say, pointed. The man most closely associated with this scheme is Samuel Samson, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. His official State Department biography says his mission is to uphold America's Western civilizational heritage. He also published an essay on state department substack. Yep, the state department has a substack. Arguing that European governments have weaponized political institutions against their own citizens. It reads in parts like a very particular kind of internet comment section. 

Now, here is the irony that should make every German and honestly, yeah, in my view also every American citizen or US citizen stop and think. The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor was set up under President Carter in 1977 specifically to challenge Soviet authoritarianism. It supported dissident, for example, behind the Iron Curtain. It backed independent journalists living under repressive regimes. It was for decades one of the genuinely good things the United States did in the world. And Germany more than almost any other country benefited from that American commitment to democracy promotion. That same bureau is now being used to fund organizations in Europe that push the same political agenda as the far-right AFD. The State Department says the program is about free speech and democratic values. The funds, they insist, are not available to political parties. A former State Department official told the Guardian, however, that this is technically true, but that the scheme is designed to put the thumb on the scale of elections in Europe, giving an unfair advantage to right-wing parties with resources they would ordinarily not get. 

Well, from an American perspective, this looks probably like normal foreign policy. The US has been funding civil society groups abroad for decades. The National Endowment for Democracy has done it since 1983. The logic is if you believe in your values, you support the people who share them. The machinery is familiar. Only the values loaded into it have changed. And that is exactly the point that Germans shaped by a very specific history are in a better position than most to make. Germany wrote one of the most carefully designed constitutions in the world precisely because it had seen what happened when democracy is eroded from within and pressured from outside. The basic law was built to be hard to break. foreign funding of political actors is illegal. The idea that a friendly government, not an enemy, a friend, might try to tilt an election here is not treated as paranoia. It is treated as a warning worth taking seriously. 

There is something worth naming here that often gets lost in the outrage. Germany's constitutional model, its independent courts, its federalism, its built-in checks on executive power are something America once admired and in some ways helped inspire. The postwar German constitutional settlement was partly shaped by American advisers who believed that robust institutions were the best protection against the return of authoritarianism. That lesson has not aged badly. What has changed is that the institution America built to defend that lesson, the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, is now being directed at those very institutions. The German Chancellor Merz said what needed to be said quietly, probably diplomatically, the way you speak to someone whose goodwill you still need. Germany cannot afford a real confrontation with Washington, at least not right now. So, it objects firmly, politely, and we all will see what September brings. The bureau that once helped bring down the Berlin Wall is now in a different form trying to shape what grows in the space where the wall used to stand. That is, in my opinion, worth noticing over here and also over there. Thank you very much for listening and I hear you on the next one. Bye.