New York: United States Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has used a speech commemorating the D-Day landings of World War II to rail against the modern “invasion” of Europe by immigrants who hold “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 the Trump administration’s push for European leaders to crack down on immigration by sea.
“Sadly, today, different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies,” Hegseth said at the ceremony.
“Beaches in Spain, Italy, Greece and Bulgaria. Boats and men arrive. When will European capitals do something about that invasion? Or is it too late? I pray not and I believe not.
“The men who fought and died here restored freedom to Europe. That freedom must be maintained by this generation of leaders and warfighters, 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 preoccupation 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 Islamism, came amid fresh criticism from Vance concerning 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 21-centimetre Sikh dagger and was sentenced this week to life in prison with a minimum 21-year term.
The case was seized on by anti-immigration activists and politicians, despite the fact that both Nowak and his killer were British. Digwa falsely claimed to police that he was a victim of a racist attack by Nowak, and when officers arrived, they briefly treated him as a suspect before tending to his fatal injuries.
Vance posted on Friday (US time): “Henry Nowak died the same way a civilisation dies: abandoned, handcuffed by authorities who neither trusted nor cared for him, and accused of hate crimes he did not commit. His murder is as tragic as it is enraging.
“He should still be alive today, and he would be if the last few generations of European elites had stood their ground against the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants, 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 released a statement condemning people “trying to interfere in our democracy and seeking to stir up division on our streets”.
Speaking in Normandy, Hegseth said that without Operation Overlord – the code name for the Allies’ Normandy beach landing – we would not have the free world we know today.
“Together with our allies, America saved western civilisation,” he said. The Supreme Commander of the allies at the time was American General Dwight Eisenhower, who went on to become the 34th US president.
With AP
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Michael Koziol is the North America correspondent for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. He is a former Sydney editor, Sun-Herald deputy editor and a federal political reporter in Canberra.Connect via X or email.