I was struck by the instant solidarity Black Lives Matters protests in Europe and the enthusiasm in adopting very specifically American language and imagery by the protesters in London, Paris and Berlin, over the last few days.

It is fashionable to write off ideas like the West as outdated. But there is, even if the politics drifts, still a common and actually deepening shared Instagram, celebrity, internet culture built on socially deep English as second language, across Europe beyond the Anglo world.

America the evil? There were protests at the US Embassy. But the Europeans are also claiming the perceived good America, including the BLM slogan, to protest and shame their own governments. They are protesting with one America against another, to change their societies.

Even in decline and crisis that good America, the European protesters want to be in solidarity with, remains morally magnetic and indispensable to the British, German and French sense of self. Not for nothing that Trump is reported as almost domestic news in German newspapers.