New York: US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has used a speech commemorating the D-Day landings of World War II to criticize the modern “invasion” of Europe by immigrants who have “different ideologies.”
The remarks, made in Normandy on the 82nd anniversary of the Allied beach landings that began the liberation of France and Western Europe from the Nazis, compounded pressure from the Trump administration for European leaders to crack down on immigration by sea.
“Unfortunately, today, different European beaches are assaulted by different dangerous ideologies,” Hegseth said at the ceremony.
“Beaches in Spain, Italy, Greece and Bulgaria. Ships and men arrive. When will European capitals do something about it? that invasion? Or is it too late? I don’t pray and I don’t believe.
“The men who fought and died here restored freedom to Europe. That freedom must be maintained by this generation of leaders and fighters, or what they fought for was merely temporary.
“As our great President Ronald Reagan once said, freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.”
The issue of European immigration has been a concern of the Trump administration since Vice President JD Vance’s incendiary speech at the Munich Security Conference early in President Donald Trump’s second term.
Hegseth’s reiteration of the message and his implicit comparison of 1930s fascism with modern Islam came amid fresh criticism from Vance over the death of British student Henry Nowak.
Nowak, 18, was stabbed to death in December by Vickrum Digwa in Southampton, on the south coast of England. Digwa, 23, stabbed Nowak with a 21cm Sikh dagger and was sentenced this week to life in prison with a minimum term of 21 years.
The case was seized upon by anti-immigration activists and politicians, even though both Nowak and his killer were British. Digwa falsely claimed to police that he was the victim of a racist attack by Nowak, and when officers arrived, they briefly treated him as a suspect before treating his fatal wounds.
Vance posted on Friday (US time): “Henry Nowak died the way a civilization dies: abandoned, handcuffed by authorities who did not trust or care about him, and accused of hate crimes he did not commit. His murder is as tragic as it is infuriating.
“It should still be alive today, and it would be if the last generations of European elites had stood firm against the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of immigrants, many of whom despise the West and the people who love it.”
Those comments earned him a rebuke from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, whose office issued a statement condemning people who “attempt to interfere with our democracy and seek to provoke division on our streets.”
Speaking in Normandy, Hegseth said that without Operation Overlord – the code name for the Allied landings on the Normandy beach – we would not have the free world we know today.
“Together with our allies, the United States saved Western civilization,” he said. The Supreme Commander of the Allies at the time was American General Dwight Eisenhower, who became the 34th president of the United States.
with AP
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Michael Koziol is North America correspondent for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. He is a former Sydney editor, deputy editor of the Sun-Herald and a federal political reporter in Canberra.Connect via unknown either email.
