First the Threat, Then the Contempt – Turning Point AmericaFest as a Harbinger of Much More …

At AmericaFest , nothing was accidental, nothing loosely strung together. First Mike Johnson took the stage and made clear what this was about. He declared that a loss of the Republican majority in the House of Representatives would immediately lead to the impeachment of Donald Trump. No reference to democratic procedures, no context, no explanation. It was a threat. Elections did not appear as an expression of political choice, but as a danger. Oversight was declared the enemy, opposition an existential threat. Anyone who does not fall in line risks everything. The audience was given no arguments, but a clear expectation: loyalty is mandatory.

“If we lose the majority in the House of Representatives, the radical left will impeach President Trump.”

Hardly had Johnson left the stage when J. D. Vance followed. The tone remained harsh, the target shifted. One should honor father and mother, he said, instead of sending all their money to Ukraine. The sentence was not a slip, but a deliberate devaluation. Support for an attacked country was reframed as a moral failing. Solidarity appeared as an attack on one’s own family. Ukraine was no longer a place of war, but a pretext for bundling resentments. Anyone who supports aid, by this logic, is acting against their own people. The applause from this audience came instantly.

“We believe in honoring father and mother instead of sending all their money to Ukraine.” – Vance is drifting more and more into a religious conspiracy world and loses a piece of reality every day. A well known phenomenon among right wing extremists and right wing conservatives

Thus a clear sequence emerged. First fear turned inward, then contempt directed outward. First democratic oversight is delegitimized, then international responsibility. Facts played no role, neither did context. What mattered was the feeling. Turning Point AmericaFest provided the ideal space for this. A place without doubt, no room for contradiction. The right wing show ramp was built for these messages and nothing else.

Nicki Minaj is long more than just another right wing influencer. Her relevance comes from the past. The big hits, the cultural imprint - that lies years behind her. That is why her appearance at Turning Point USA surprises no one. For years she has drawn attention with transphobic tirades, conspiracy claims, and open MAGA proximity. Some of her claims are so absurd that only medical help could still make a difference. That she takes the stage precisely where resentments are deliberately sold to young people fits the image of the influencer. Minaj uses her reach not to question boundaries, but to tear them down with her right wing theories and fill her pockets. For a young audience this is particularly dangerous: her pop past becomes the vehicle for exclusion, C and B list celebrities become political cannons. This is not a rebellious pose, but right wing normalization with a chart face. “We have no problem cleaning up the scum if it comes to that. You’d better step carefully.” Such quotes need no further explanation, they are simply cheap.

Anyone who dismisses this as an American peculiarity is making it too easy for themselves. The patterns are long familiar in Germany. The AfD also regularly frames support for Ukraine as betrayal of one’s own population. There too, international solidarity is reinterpreted as a burden on families, as a luxury one allegedly cannot afford. It is the same language, only adapted to a different audience. First fear is built, then blame is assigned. First democratic procedures are discredited, then the ranks are closed inward.

And of course he could not be missing either: Donald Trump Jr. presented himself at AmericaFest as the cue giver for the next stage of escalation - and in doing so stuck closely to his own narrative of greatness, loyalty, and fight mode. He said he had feared the hall might again look “empty without Charlie” “like ten years ago,” when “this incredible journey” began, but now it was “literally twice as much as last year,” and even that had already been a record. This, Trump Jr. said, was “proof for you - for your patriotism, your courage, your will, and for everything Charlie stood for.” Immediately afterward he sharpened the political line even further: one was “the last stand of common sense,” this was “no longer the Republican Party,” but the “America First Party,” the “Make America Great Again Party” - and: “We are not going back.”

The United States show where this rhetoric can lead if it is not curbed early. Words do not remain without consequence. They prepare decisions, shift boundaries, normalize hardness. Germany should look closely. Not out of curiosity, but out of self protection. Anyone who believes these developments can be observed without being affected themselves underestimates their dynamics. The train is not American. It runs internationally. And anyone who watches too long will eventually be sitting on it.