US State Department’s Sarah B Rogers Critiques European Hate Speech and Immigration Policies
In recent weeks, while former President Donald Trump has criticized the European Union and NATO, Sarah B Rogers, a senior official at the US State Department, has publicly challenged policies on hate speech and immigration in allied countries and expressed support for far-right parties in Europe.
Rogers has emerged as a prominent representative of the Trump administration’s increasing antagonism toward European liberal democracies. Since taking office in October, she has engaged with far-right European politicians, criticized prosecutions under established hate speech laws, and publicly highlighted sanctions against critics of hate speech and disinformation on major US technology platforms.
Serving as undersecretary of state for public diplomacy—a senior role established in 1999 to enhance relations between the US and foreign publics rather than governments—Rogers appears focused on appealing to a specific segment of foreign public opinion.
Her recent Twitter/X posts have included characterizations of migrants in Germany as a “barbarian rapist horde,” a critique of Sweden’s migration policy in relation to women’s safety, and an assertion that advocates of unrestricted immigration from developing countries have disproportionately influenced official knowledge production.
sought detailed comment from Rogers regarding these posts. In response, she stated that it would be defamatory to interpret her post on German migrants as describing all migrants, clarifying it referred to those involved in the Cologne attacks. She defended the phrase “barbarian rapist horde” as a reasonable description of the Cologne attackers and argued it should not be illegal to express such views.
Regarding her comment on Sweden, Rogers explained it was made in the context of media engagements where “women’s safety” was used to justify internet censorship. She clarified that by “official knowledge production” she referred to prestige media, academia, key NGOs, and their bureaucratic funders.
Experts on the European far right interpret Rogers’s commentary as indicative of a Trump administration strategy to support these movements. Léonie de Jongea, professor of far-right extremism research at the University of Tübingen, noted:
“The Trump administration has a vested interest in strengthening anti-democratic movements abroad, as doing so helps advance its own agenda while lending legitimacy to these actors and their activities.”
Georgios Samaras, a public policy lecturer at King’s College London, observed that following the January 6 Capitol riot, Trump’s disdain for mainstream institutions evolved from a tactical stance to a governing identity. He stated:
“His warmth towards far-right movements in Europe sits inside that same logic. It is culture export and it is power projection.”
Alliance with Alternative für Deutschland (AfD)
Since assuming her role, Rogers has reached out to Europe’s far right. The Financial Times reported that she met with right-wing opposition parties across Europe, aiming to fund MAGA-aligned think tanks and charities. A senior member of the UK’s far-right Reform party, who attended one such meeting, described Rogers as having access to a State Department slush fund to promote MAGA-style initiatives and support European organizations opposing government policies.
On 13 December, Rogers met with Markus Frohnmaier, a parliamentarian from the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), as documented in a post on Frohnmaier’s X account. According to the translated post, their discussion on the Trump administration’s new national security strategy made clear that Washington seeks a strong German partner.
Following criticism of this meeting, Rogers stated on 14 December:
“Unlike the Russian government (and the current German one), AfD took an anti-censorship stance in its meeting with me last week. One reason they’re gaining popularity in Germany.”
Rogers told :
“Mr Frohnmaier is the foreign policy spokesman for the most popular political party in Germany. He delivers AfD’s foreign policy positions in the Bundestag, and is the person German media call when they want a policy statement from AfD. For this reason, we talk to him in his official capacity to understand AfD’s positions.”
In 2019, Der Spiegel reported that Frohnmaier was the subject of a strategy paper sent from the Russian Duma to top leadership in the presidential administration, advocating support for his 2017 election candidacy to secure a controlled MP in the Bundestag.
Frohnmaier has frequently visited Russia and Russian-occupied Crimea since the 2014 invasion. In 2016, he attended the Yalta International Economic Forum in Crimea, where he met his wife, Daria, then a writer for the Russian pro-government newspaper Izvestia.
Regarding Frohnmaier’s Russian connections, Rogers commented:
“Allegations of ambiguous provenance that various media and political figures are ‘Russian assets’ have been a fixture of western politics since 2016. I sought guidance within the State Department and determined the claims of Russian ties were unsubstantiated – and in any event, not a bar to a meeting.”
Frohnmaier denied being controlled by Russia in 2019, calling the Der Spiegel documents “fake.” When asked if she disputed reports of his Russian ties, Rogers replied:
“I’m not denying the existence of the Der Spiegel reporting, but formed the view based on guidance that the allegation in the reporting (‘controlled’ by Russia) remained unsubstantiated in the seven years since it surfaced.”
Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), designated AfD a “confirmed rightwing extremist” force in May, enabling increased surveillance. This designation was criticized by the Trump administration, including Rogers’s superior Marco Rubio, who called it “a disgrace.” Earlier in 2024, JD Vance criticized Germany at the Munich Security Conference for the “firewall” preventing mainstream parties from forming coalitions with far-right groups.
Rogers’s meeting with AfD continues a pattern established by her predecessor, Darren Beattie, who met Frohnmaier in October 2023 and discussed shared priorities on cultural exchange and migration. Beattie was dismissed from the first Trump administration after attending a white supremacist gathering and speaking alongside white nationalist commentator Peter Brimelow.
In a 2024 post on X, Beattie wrote:
“Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work. Unfortunately, our entire national ideology is predicated on coddling the feelings of women and minorities, and demoralizing competent white men.”
Beattie is currently listed on the State Department website as Senior Bureau Official, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.
Samaras noted that US government contacts with parties like AfD serve to legitimize them and demonstrate a transatlantic alignment between the US and German far right, which is significant given Germany’s role in European power and historical memory of fascism.
Amplifying Far-Right Messaging in the UK
Rogers has also echoed far-right narratives in the UK. On 24 January, she shared a screenshot of a GB News broadcast titled “Met Police bans ‘Walk with Jesus’ march to avoid provoking local Muslim community,” captioning it:
“As mass migration disrupts societies, liberal political freedoms lose out. UK freedom of assembly is a recurring example.”
The march was organized by the UK Independence Party (UKIP), which has faced accusations of Islamophobia since Brexit. Organizers described the demonstration as a “crusade” urging supporters to “reclaim Whitechapel from the Islamists.”
UKIP’s previous attempt to organize a march in Tower Hamlets, a borough with a Muslim plurality, was called “The Mass Deportations Tour.” The Metropolitan Police invited UKIP to hold their march in a different part of London.
When asked about her comments on the Tower Hamlets march, Rogers explained:
“My tweet combined references to two marches: one protesting immigration policy, and one Christian evangelical ‘walk with Jesus’ march. I understood that both marches were organized by UKIP, and that illiberal-left commentators might view UKIP as undeserving of free-assembly rights.”
Other posts by Rogers suggest that far-right grievances abroad have influenced US policy toward allies. On 2 December, she wrote:
“As with America’s Somali fraud crisis, Britain’s rape-gang problem has been obfuscated by gaps – sometimes willful ones – in data collection. The same issue exists elsewhere in Europe. We’re going to help fix that.”
In response to a query, Rogers cited the UK’s Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse and a Minnesota fraud investigation as corroboration.
This post was a repost of a video by Jack Hadfield, who claimed higher sexual assault rates among “foreigners” in the UK. Hadfield’s figures were based on data from the anti-immigrant Centre for Migration Control, which critics have described as unreliable or debunked.
Hadfield, a former Breitbart writer, frequently contributes to right-wing UK outlets like GB News. In 2017, he was revealed as the administrator of a secret Facebook group, the Young Right Society, which featured openly racist and antisemitic commentary from about 200 far-right activists. At that time, Hadfield described the group as “a Fascist-Juggalo group with traditionalism interest” and identified as “on the moderate right” while advocating debate of all ideas, including alt-right views.
Rogers responded to inquiries about Hadfield’s past by stating:
“I don’t know what ‘Fascist-Juggalo traditionalism’ means, but this sounds like a joke? I do not excavate the undergraduate Facebook history of every reporter I retweet. Looking at it now, contemporaneous articles concede that Mr. Hadfield ‘may not have posted some of the more controversial content’.”
The November video of Hadfield was recorded at an anti-immigrant “Stop the Hotels” event in Chelmsford, Essex, which protested the UK government’s policy of housing asylum seekers in hotels. The protest featured right-wing fringe figures such as Lucy Connolly, who urged attendees to “keep fighting.”
Connolly had recently been released from prison after serving 40% of a 31-month sentence for stirring up racial hatred in a July 2024 post that included incendiary language about immigrants. The post followed a murder falsely attributed to illegal immigrants and preceded the 2024 UK general election.
Connolly became a cause célèbre on the right, describing herself as a “proud nationalist” and receiving support from figures like Nigel Farage, leader of Britain’s Reform party.
Rogers has defended Connolly in recent podcasts, echoing narratives similar to Farage’s. On the Tech Right podcast, Rogers said Connolly’s post was “pretty inflammatory, but it would have been unambiguously legal in the United States,” characterizing her as “a bereaved mother who’d lost a child. She saw three little girls murdered for no reason.”
Regarding these comments, Rogers wrote:
“Those comments are accurate. For more on why Connolly’s tweet would be legal in the United States, see Brandenburg v Ohio,”
referring to a 1969 US Supreme Court decision that struck down an Ohio law used to charge a Ku Klux Klan leader.
De Jongea commented:
“Complaints about hate speech legislation are a familiar trope among far-right actors. Such laws are routinely framed as evidence that liberal institutions are suppressing free expression, a narrative that reinforces their broader claims of political victimhood.”
Samaras added:
“Advocacy for free speech on the far right was never a neutral commitment to open debate. It is a claim to special permission. The move is to turn a buzzword into a crusade so they can dominate public discourse while framing any limits on harassment and incitement as censorship.”
Targeting the “Censorship-Industrial Complex” with Visa Sanctions
Rogers has also been the public face of the administration’s imposition of visa sanctions on individuals described by her and Senator Marco Rubio as part of the “censorship-industrial complex.” These individuals have also drawn criticism from Elon Musk and prominent Republicans.
This approach has revealed that the European Digital Services Act (DSA) and the UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA) are targets of the administration, as reported by the Financial Times.
On 23 December, Rubio announced sanctions on “five individuals” whom he accused of attempting “to coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize, and suppress American viewpoints they oppose,” warning that their presence in the US posed serious foreign policy risks.
Rogers named these individuals in a thread on X, alleging their actions and characterizing the DSA and OSA as efforts to “expand censorship in Europe and around the world.”
One individual named was Imran Ahmed, chief executive of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) and a US permanent resident. Rogers accused him of being a “weaponized asset” aligned with the Biden administration’s efforts against US citizens.
On the same day, Rogers reposted a digitally altered photo of herself wearing a Santa hat with the caption “Hey McSweeney. Merry Christmas,” referencing Morgan McSweeney, then chief of staff to UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and a Labour Party official.
Both posts became evidence in a lawsuit filed on Christmas Eve by Imran Ahmed, naming Rogers and other Trump officials, including Rubio, as defendants.
On 24 December, federal judge Roberta A Kaplan issued a temporary restraining order preventing Ahmed’s deportation.
On 22 January, a Justice Department attorney representing the Trump administration defendants requested a delay in discovery and indicated the defense would challenge the venue and jurisdiction of the court.
Ahmed stated:
“America is a great nation built on laws, with checks and balances to ensure power can never attain the unfettered primacy that leads to tyranny. I believe in this system, and I am proud to call this country my home. I will not be bullied away from my life’s work of fighting to keep children safe from social media’s harm and stopping antisemitism online.”
The visa sanctions followed a December 2023 speech by Missouri Senator Eric Schmitt, who described the OSA and DSA as “a full-scale bid for control of American public discourse, seeking to impose hard-left ideological strictures on our nation from abroad.”
Schmitt called for visa restrictions against “this global censorship regime’s apparatchiks,” specifically urging the State Department to revoke visas of foreign censors like Imran Ahmed.
reported that Schmitt employed Nate Hochman last February, a figure linked to far-right controversies, including dismissal from Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign after producing a video containing neo-Nazi imagery, and later promoting conspiracy theories in a think tank associated with Marco Rubio.
Samaras characterized Rogers’s statements and the US government’s outreach as strategic:
“If Project 2025 is a domestic template, this is the exportable version. Attack European governments, destabilise, cheer on the most reactionary forces, and you increase the odds of electoral change that benefits the far right in France, Germany, the UK, Spain and elsewhere.”
