Trojan Horse in Progressive Movements

In recent years, American protest movements have demonstrated unprecedented mass mobilization and political energy. However, amid this mobilization, the infiltration of poorly integrated external, force-oriented subcultures into protest ecosystems is becoming increasingly apparent.

Mamdani and Trump: Disappointment or Political Wisdom?

Mahmood Mamdani, long a symbol of critical analysis in foreign policy, exemplifies strategic thinking: his willingness to engage even with political adversaries, including Donald Trump, stems from an understanding that any internal destabilization reduces the space for democratic action and weakens society’s capacity for reform.

Today, this insight is more relevant than ever. We are dealing with structural risks for American progressive movements posed by Eastern European-origin, far-right diasporic networks that have aligned themselves with these movements and possess significant mobilization and force potential.

These groups are autonomous, disciplined, and ideologically cohesive. Their presence within peaceful protests creates a dangerous asymmetric alliance: the movement acquires a force wing that it not only cannot control but which it does not own ideologically or politically.

1. Historical Genealogy of Diasporic Far-Right Networks

Modern radical-nationalist networks of the Eastern European diaspora in the U.S. are not spontaneous movements but the products of long-standing institutional trajectories:

1. Cold War émigré organizations. Cultural and educational centers that evolved into guardians of identity.
   
2. Youth nationalist schools and camps. They create horizontal networks and stable identities autonomous from mainstream culture.
   
3. Professionalized combat environment. Since 2014, there has been an influx of youth with combat experience, creating paramilitary structures.
   

These trajectories form the network core: ideologically cohesive, emotionally mobilized, and capable of autonomous coordination.

2. Internal Logic of These Networks: Autonomy, Missionary Drive, Export of Conflict

• Ideological autonomy. Networks act independently, using the U.S. as a mobilization platform.
  
• Transported radicalization. Ideology is imported via educational programs, external emissaries, and combat experience.
  
• Parallel participation. They integrate into protests without recognizing leadership, determining their own course of action.
  
• Export of conflict. Their internal logic generates a high level of tension incompatible with peaceful initiatives.
  

3. Mechanisms of Infiltration into Protest Movements

1. Tactical superiority. Utilize discipline and combat experience to quickly gain influence.
   
2. Closed networks. Operate through their own channels, remaining autonomous.
   
3. Force curators. Control crowds, routes, and reactions to provocations.
   
4. Radical framing strategy. Their rhetoric transforms existential conflict into peaceful protests.
   
5. Window of violent escalation. Experienced participants can provoke or involve the protest in violence.
   

4. Undermining Liberal Movements

• Substitution of strategic objectives. Tactics replace strategy; protests lose focus on institutional change.
  
• Coalition fractures. Pressure on moderate participants leads to departures and loss of partners.
  
• Symbolic scene capture. Radicals become the visual center of the movement, even if few in number.
  
• Ideological dilution. Conflict-driven rhetoric shifts the movement’s value center.
  
• Criminalization. Episodes of violence create the risk of repression against the entire movement.
  
• Short-term mobilization replacing long-term strategy. Movements lose reform perspective, focusing on emotional drama.
  
• Inevitable conflict with the left wing. Ideological aggression of radicals generates internal contradictions, latent or overt clashes with left-wing participants, increasing movement fragmentation.
  

5. Risk Scenarios

1. Localized escalation. Minor episodes of violence change public perception of the protest.
   
2. Agenda substitution. Radicals set the tone, diverting attention from main objectives.
   
3. Coalition destabilization. Departure of moderates and loss of trust.
   
4. Externalization of violence. Individual radical actions trigger repressive measures.
   
5. Trajectory of long-term radicalization. Consolidation of radical culture and repetition of crisis patterns.
   
6. Internal confrontation. Conflict with the left wing reduces coherence and coordination, making the movement vulnerable to external threats.
   

Even without ill intent, these networks create a systemic threat incompatible with the values and strategy of progressive movements.

Returning to Mamdani’s Lessons

The joint briefing of Mamdani and Trump is not a weakness of either side; it demonstrates a different principle — strategic wisdom requires restraint in the face of external threats and understanding of internal dynamics.

From this perspective, Eastern European diasporic far-right networks, alien to American liberal and progressive culture, with their intransigence in conflict and ideological distance from movements rooted in social equality, cultural diversity, healthcare and public service access, pluralism, anti-racism, opposition to imperialist interventions and segregation, and the practice of nonviolent protest—which in their countries of origin has long become an endless, self-perpetuating internal conflict—pose a dual challenge:

1. External: destabilizing peaceful protests through autonomous force interventions.
   
2. Internal: generating inevitable conflict with the left wing due to ideological aggression.
   

Returning to Mamdani’s lessons, it is clear that the resilience of progressive movements depends not only on size and enthusiasm but also on the ability to distinguish allies, anticipate consequences of autonomous forces, and manage internal structural integrity.

Progressive protest cannot become hostage to a foreign nationalist agenda that has nothing in common with liberal programs, in pursuit of an ephemeral idea of a situationist international against totalitarianism.

The American left tradition is one of control, not destruction of institutions; negotiation, not conquest of internal enemies; expansion of democracy, not using the streets as leverage.

This is why Mamdani meets with Trump — not to share his views, but to prevent American democracy from disintegrating under pressure from overly diverse political energies competing for influence within the same protests.