COLLEVILLE-SUR-MER, France — John Kerry said D-Day commemorations and the Second World War stood as a reminder to the world that terrible things happened when tolerance and cooperation broke down.
Sitting in front of rows of American graves, the former secretary of state and senator for Massachusetts told the hosts of MSNBC’s”Morning Joe” he was deeply concerned about attacks on NATO and the European Union. President Trump has demanded NATO countries pay more for their own defense and praised Brexit, Britain’s exit from the European Union.
“For the last two years, Nato has been under attack,” said Kerry, 75. “The value of the European Union is under attack. The EU came together not as an epic program or fly-by-night thing. It was the outgrowth of World War II in order to stop Europeans from killing each other.”
He said he thinks what’s important to take away from the ceremony is that, as “facts are being erased from the public dialogue” and extremism is being embraced, there are “elements of fascism reappearing by virtue of the one ideology, statism” in Europe.
Adopting a familiar liberal attack line against Trump, he added that “facts are being erased from the public dialogue.” Populist nationalism — which Trump has championed — was a dangerous force.
But when asked later about the target of his criticism, Kerry denied it was the American president. “This isn’t about Trump,” he said, standing a few hundred yards from Omaha beach where tens of thousands of American and Allied troops stormed ashore.
“It’s about the sacrifices and the extraordinary contribution to global co-operation and to an understanding of how countries can live together and how we can get beyond war and the sacrifices that were made to get there,” he said.
He continued: “This is not a place to talk about Democrat or Republican or anything political. It’s a place to talk about the values themselves, and what young men gave their lives for, and the unity — the vision of Europe that came out of that.”
Speaking ahead of an event at the Normandy American Cemetery, Kerry avoided mentioning Trump by name, but his words were a clear chiding of the president and a warning to populist leaders resurgent around the world.
“At a time when Europe is challenged, when people are pulling at institutions, I think it’s particularly important to focus on and think about what was accomplished here,” he said.
The E.U. was formed in part to prevent the world spiraling into war again, he said, yet was now under increasing attack. “We don’t want to go back to everyone fending for themselves.”
Instead, he said, the shared commitment to democracy and freedom displayed on the beaches of Normandy 75 years ago should serve as inspiration for tackling the world’s problems today — from Ebola in Africa to climate change, problems that required global cooperation.
“We have a challenging world and this place to me at least is a statement about sacrifice and commitment in order to find a way to cooperate together to solve those kinds of problems.”
Kerry told the Washington Examiner how he first came to Normandy two years after the war at the age of four. His mother’s family estate had been destroyed by German forces.
Her forbears, the Forbes family, made their fortune from trading opium and tea between North America and China in the 19th century. They owned an estate, Les Essarts, in Saint Briac in Brittany.
The Nazis turned the into a headquarters during the occupation and destroyed it as Allied troops approached after D-Day. French locals were credited with helping to save heirlooms from the estate.
Like many American families, Kerry said, he grew up in a family that lost loved ones in the war: “But it’s not about those people. It’s about the bigger issue of what was at stake at that moment, when tyranny, fascism, the lack of tolerance, when sectarianism and religious extremism and other extremes were being used to separate people, to kill people.”
