Are we set to make the same mistakes again?
From a broad view, the two biggest political trends over the past few years have been the radicalization of the left and the right.
The radicalization of the left became undeniable after October 7th, 2023. In response to Hamas’s horrific attack on Israel, antisemitism surged around the world. Many left-wing political parties and politicians not only turned a blind eye to this antisemitism, but aided and abetted it by making common cause with deeply regressive radical Islamists, and by participating in ‘protests’ that were thinly veiled attempts to demonize and intimidate members of the Jewish community.
Unfortunately, something similar has happened on the right. Some prominent right-wing media figures – particularly Tucker Carlson – have descended into open praise for fascist states like Russia, and have fuelled antisemitic narratives. Carlson even produced a fawning interview with a ‘historian’ who spreads a nazi-friendly, propaganda-laden view of WW2.
Meanwhile, incoming US President Donald Trump employed the most aggressive authoritarian rhetoric of any major party US Presidential candidate in a generation. Rhetoric about the ‘enemy within’, punishing and jailing opponents, shutting down media networks he disagreed with, demonizing democratic allies while praising hostile dictatorships, and pursuing ‘mass deportations,’ much of Trump’s campaign was a clean break from the historical norms and values that had long-defined the United States.
The most concerning aspect of all of this has been the reaction. Many have responded with a shrug. On both the left and the right the tolerance for antisemitism, the expansion of state power, the punishing of opponents, and extremist rhetoric have grown in leaps and bounds. The taboos against antisemitism and authoritarianism are crumbling.
And while some may cheer the end of these taboos in a mistaken sense that it represents a new era of ‘openness,’ the opposite is the case. We are seeing a collective closing of the minds of many in our society.
The WW2 generation fades away
It’s no coincidence that the taboos against antisemitism and authoritarianism are falling just as the generation that lived through WW2 fades away.
While some people who were born in the 1930s and 1940s are still with us, very few of those people were old enough at the time of WW2 to have been aware of what was happening. And the generation that saw the lead-up to the war and fought in the war are almost now all entirely gone.
What this means is that our civilizational memory of the consequences of authoritarianism and antisemitism is now fading away. Much of it exists now only in media that aren’t consumed by younger generations. Many who experienced WW2 didn’t want to talk about it, for understandable reasons. But this meant that the chain of knowledge was broken, and there was nothing to pass down to future generations.
Remember, those who lived through the lead-up to WW2 saw the world be filled with authoritarian strongmen who promised national dominance, promoted economic fantasies, drowned their populace in lies, promised to punish opponents, restricted the rights of critical media organizations, and governed through personality cults rather than institutional norms. They also saw the surge of antisemitic mobs and the targeting of Jewish People.
And they saw what that led to. They saw the horrific levels of violence and death. They saw the industrial-scale mass murder undertaken by authoritarian states. They saw that hateful authoritarian rhetoric turned from dangerous words to dangerous actions. They saw promises of economic miracles turn into despair. They saw that antisemitic mobs weren’t sated by merely intimidating Jewish People, but instead wanted mass death and genocide. They saw that promises of ‘peace’ built on sacrificing small nations to bullies only led to more horrendous wars down the road.
They saw all of this, and when the war was over, they built a world that prioritized individual rights and freedoms, free trade, strong alliances between democratic nations, and a recognition that antisemitism and authoritarianism had to be turned into taboos rather than indulged.
And now, most of the people who built this world are gone.
The question now is whether we are going to through their accomplishments away and relearn the lessons of the past at horrific cost, or whether enough civilization knowledge remains for us to adjust course and return to the better angels of our nature before it’s too late.
Spencer Fernando
Photo – YouTube
