From Repeat: A Warning from History (Richard Glover, 2024) p4-5
In this short book – short because we need to digest its message quickly and respond immediately – I set out to show the uncanny similarities between then and now: our unwillingness to see things until it’s too late; our vulnerability to demagogues; the anger of our “betrayed” electorate; the hate-laden speeches of our populist leaders; their shocking brutality towards opponents; the ugliness of our cultural battles; the spreading poison of racism; the steady disappearance of the concept of the truth; the return of war with its medieval massacres and mass bombing of cities. Ultimately, I want people to grasp just how extraordinary and ugly current events are compared to those of just a couple of decades ago, and how totally inadequate our responses. I want the world to recognise that in many crucial ways, the big failures of the 1920s and ’30s are already upon us, and that we have to act now on the lessons of those failures to prevent the greater horror of the 1940s also repeating. I provide no step-by-step program of action; action must respond to fast-changing events. Instead, I sound an alarm. Because before we can save our world from the savage triumph of the populists, we need to wake from our slumbers and recognise the dangerous reality we now inhabit: a world edging ever closer to repeating 1939.
My story concentrates on the patterns of politics observable in the West, mostly in Russia, Ukraine, the rest of Europe and the United States. But readers will recognise where the lessons of the 1920s and ’30 have relevance across the world, where nationalist strongmen with nativist agendas are entrenching their long-term power: in the religious exclusivism of Narendra Modi’s right-wing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP); in the aggressive territorial revanchism of Xi Jinping’s determination to absorb Taiwan and restore China’s past greatness; in Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s authoritarian presidential rule in Turkey; and in Indonesia, where the newly elected former military officer Prabowo Subianto is entering the presidency with a notorious record of human rights abuse. All will be watching to see whether, in such an unpropitious environment, democracies have the resolve to defend their liberal values or surrender them to populist challengers.
Tgk1946's Blog 