Exactly 100 years ago, the world set itself on a path to tyranny and war. This time, we can pull back from the abyss.
Observing the world right now, does it all seem horribly familiar? Tank battles, antisemitic massacres, the bombing of tightly packed cities, facts hard to sort from lies?
Vladimir Putin has embarked on the most brazen trashing of international norms on the Continent since Adolf Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941.On that occasion, a clock started ticking. But let’s go back a century. It was 1923, and in Munich, a nascent Nazi Party, led by a ridiculous street corner agitator named Adolf Hitler,. It failed.
Over the next six years, populism and extremism spread its appeal across Europe. Not just Hitler, but Mussolini, Franco and Stalin preached hatred and consolidated their power. The term “propaganda” began to take its now familiar meaning and, as George Orwell argued in. Dictators became commonplace, accepted, even respectable. Tick, tick, tick...
To me, it feels like we’ve gone from 1923 to 1939 in under three short years. Will we wake up, finally, to the possibility that history might just be repeating after all?Think of Ukraine. Some 600 days in, it’s off the front page, barely making it onto the evening newsAnd yet, an enormous Ukrainian offensive to liberate the country is ongoing, Russian missiles are nightly destroying cities and killing scores of innocent people.