In April 2025, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni (right) meets U.S. leadership without an EU mandate, a symbolic bypass of Brussels.

Preface

Europe’s unity, long considered inviolable, is visibly fracturing-and Giorgia Meloni’s recent visit to Washington marks a pivotal rupture. Meloni entered the U.S. capital not as an emissary of Brussels, but as the unapologetic leader of a sovereign nation pursuing its distinct national interests. Her actions carried neither the stamp nor the approval of EU bureaucracy; instead, they embodied pure national assertiveness. This strategic independence signifies more than mere diplomatic posturing-it signals the start of a nationalist rebellion against European centralism and the onset of a continent-wide reassertion of sovereign statehood.

Italy, by explicitly prioritizing its own interests, has set a stark example that challenges the very foundations of the European project. While Brussels remains mired in indecision and regulatory complexities, Meloni’s decisive maneuvers-whether in trade, defense, or technological alliances-have demonstrated a clear alternative path. This shift is neither isolated nor transient. Instead, it reveals deepening cracks within the EU, encouraging other nations to question the efficacy and necessity of centralized governance. Poland, Spain, and the Netherlands watch closely, poised potentially to emulate Italy’s assertive autonomy.

The precedent set by Meloni is profound and far-reaching, marking the end of an era dominated by bureaucratic consensus and signaling the return of a competitive landscape reminiscent of 19th-century geopolitics. Europe now stands at a crossroads: either reform and reinforce its unity swiftly or witness further fragmentation as countries reclaim their national sovereignty. Meloni’s "Washington gambit" did not merely bypass Brussels-it openly defied it, heralding a new era where national power supersedes collective inertia.

Meanwhile, in the United States, the situation is becoming increasingly dire. The Trump administration is aggressively dismantling democratic safeguards, invoking powers reminiscent of the infamous Enabling Act of 1933 in Nazi Germany. Under a sweeping new executive order, federal agencies-previously independent-are now directly controlled by the White House. All regulatory decisions require presidential approval, and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) can cut funding for agencies resisting presidential priorities. This order effectively abolishes the independence of institutions like the SEC, FTC, FCC, and FEC, placing critical functions such as election oversight and financial regulation under presidential control. Agencies dedicated to environmental protection, consumer safety, and public health are now politically compromised, with scientific research and regulatory enforcement contingent upon White House approval.

This unprecedented centralization of power dismantles the traditional checks and balances integral to American democracy. Federal bureaucrats must align strictly with the interpretations set by the president and attorney general, removing any remaining legal independence. The appointment of White House liaisons within every regulatory agency further ensures unwavering presidential oversight and political compliance. The United States is thus teetering on the brink of authoritarianism, as executive authority now overrides Congressional oversight, judicial independence, and institutional neutrality.

Europe's fragmentation and America's authoritarian drift represent parallel crises, highlighting a broader global shift away from liberal democratic norms toward nationalist and authoritarian governance. Both continents face critical junctures, and their outcomes will profoundly shape the global political landscape for decades to come.

Introduction

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s recent visit to Washington was no routine diplomatic trip – it was a geopolitical earthquake. She did not go as a representative of Europe, but as the leader of a nation intent on putting Italy first, even at the expense of European unity . In Washington, Meloni pointedly **had “no EU stamp, no Commission approval. Just raw national power.” It wasn’t a visit – it was “a rebellion” . Bypassing Brussels entirely, she sought deals on Italy’s terms, making clear that “Italy is DONE playing by Europe’s rules” . For the first time in EU history, a major member state effectively declared a kind of national independence from the Union’s collective foreign policy. This audacious move has cracked the façade of European unity, sending a signal across the continent: the age of acting through Brussels might be over .

Meloni’s defiance comes at a precarious moment for the European project. The EU once strove to “speak with one voice,” but “Italy is speaking louder” now . With France beset by internal unrest and Germany politically paralyzed, Italy breaking ranks is more than just politics – it marks a shift in global power dynamics . Meloni has effectively flipped the script: instead of EU solidarity, we see the reassertion of the nation-state as the supreme actor. She flew to Washington not for photo-ops but to “rewrite the rules” and put Italy first , hammering out trade, energy, and defense deals “on Italy’s terms” without even informing Brussels . In doing so, Meloni signaled that Rome will not wait for the slow consensus of 27 countries when its own interests are on the line.

A Domino Effect of Rebellion

Observers across Europe immediately understood the implications. “This is how empires fall. One bold country says ‘ENOUGH.’ Others watch. Then others follow. Then the whole damn structure collapses.” The European Union, long touted as the triumph of post-war liberal order, now faces an existential test from within. Meloni’s gambit is inspiring imitators: “if Italy can negotiate solo, Poland will run. Spain will follow. The Netherlands will follow. The EU isn’t being reformed. It’s being dismantled, piece by piece.” Her bold bilateral play has shown every member state that Brussels’ authority can be defied with impunity.

For years, cracks have been growing in the EU’s foundation. Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Poland’s government have openly defied EU rules on democracy and rule of law. Brexit already demonstrated that departure was possible. Now Italy’s end-run around EU foreign policy further erodes the notion of an “ever closer union.” Italians cheered Meloni’s assertiveness as a long-overdue assertion of sovereignty – and indeed, “Italy is betting on itself…Italy isn’t waiting for Europe to figure things out” . Such nationalist fervor may prove contagious. In an EU where “everyone wants speed, everyone wants certainty” , the slow, consensus-driven Brussels process starts to look like a liability. Why slog through EU red tape when, as Meloni showed, a country can cut its own deals directly with a superpower?

This moment recalls the unraveling of past empires. We are witnessing an unum fracturing back into pluribus. “Let’s call this what it is: a giant crack in the EU”, an analyst remarked, “The EU isn’t being challenged – it’s being destroyed. Giorgia Meloni just fired the first shot, and Brussels can’t do a damn thing to stop it.” The implicit rebellion in Meloni’s Washington trip may well mark the beginning of the end for the European project. What started as a bold one-off visit could trigger a domino effect: other nations, emboldened by Italy’s success, may strike out on their own paths. The result would be a Europe reverting to a 19th-century-like system of independent powers, with all the rivalry and instability that entails. The “age of nations has returned”, as one observer put it grimly .

Philosophical Warnings: Plato’s Mob and Machiavelli’s Prince

History offers philosophical insight into this moment. Over 2,300 years ago, Plato warned in The Republic that unchecked freedom and populism in a democracy can mutate into chaos and tyranny. In his famous cycle of regimes, democracy-“full of freedom and spangled with every kind of liberty”-inevitably collapses under its own excesses . “Over time, this boundless freedom degenerates into herd hysteria…‘the state falls sick, and is at war with herself’,” Plato wrote . The passions of the crowd pave the way for a demagogue. “The insatiable desire for freedom,” Socrates observes in The Republic, “occasions a demand for tyranny.” In other words, mob rule (what later thinkers termed ochlocracy, or the tyranny of the crowd) is a gateway to the classic tyranny of one. The Athenian philosopher’s words sound eerily prescient: the very democratic freedoms Europe cherishes may be giving rise to a new authoritarianism. Today’s surging nationalist movements channel the crowd’s base instincts-anger at elites, fear of outsiders, impatience with deliberation-into a force that Plato would recognize as democracy’s lethal contradiction. “It’s the very freedom of democracy that opens the way to tyranny,” as one modern interpreter summarizes Plato . In Europe now, public frustration with EU bureaucracy and multicultural openness is breeding a desire for strongmen and unilateral action – a mirror of that ancient dynamic.

If Plato diagnosed the disease, Niccolò Machiavelli prescribed the playbook for those who seek to seize power amid the chaos. Machiavelli’s theories of statecraft glorified decisive, ruthless leadership – the kind that places raison d’état above moral or collective constraints. One can almost hear Machiavelli whispering advice into the ears of today’s nationalist leaders. Better to be feared than loved, he famously counseled , and indeed leaders like Meloni (and her ideological peers in Eastern Europe) prefer fear and strength to the soft power of consensus. Machiavelli also understood the propaganda of appearances. “The vulgar crowd is always taken by appearances, and the world consists chiefly of the vulgar,” he wrote . Modern demagogues exploit this mercilessly – offering simple slogans, scapegoats, and theatrics to a public hungry for clarity amid complexity. “One cannot overstate the childishness of the ideas that feed and stir the masses,” observed German historian Sebastian Haffner of the 1930s; “real ideas must be simplified to the level of a child’s understanding if they are to arouse the masses to historic actions.” This dictum, echoed by Machiavelli and tragically illustrated in the fascist era, is on display again. Europe’s rising nationalists reduce nuanced issues (immigration, economic stagnation, pandemic measures) to blunt, visceral appeals. They know that a crowd will rally behind emotive simplicities rather than abstract principles.

The Enlightenment thinkers who forged Europe’s liberal ideals would shudder at this turn of events. Voltaire, a crusader against ignorance and tyranny, warned of the deadly power of false narratives. “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities,” he wrote . Today we see how wild conspiracy theories and propaganda - absurdities about “evil EU globalists” or minority groups - fuel real-world aggression. Diderot, another Enlightenment giant, declared, “Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.” That grotesque image was a rallying cry against the absolutist Old Regime in the 18th century. Ironically, in the 21st century it is democratic institutions being strangled - not by priests and kings, but by demagogues and mobs. Diderot also observed, “From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.” Europe’s Enlightenment-era promise of reason is yielding to a fanaticism of the masses, a secular religion of nation-worship and grievance that threatens to slide into barbarism. The collapse of liberal institutions - parliaments, courts, transnational bodies - in favor of authoritarian nationalism marks a repudiation of the Enlightenment belief in rational governance and universal rights. It is as if the clock is rewinding to a darker time.

Echoes of the 1930s: Scapegoats, Violence, and the New Fascism

It is now happening in America just as it began in Germany in 1933-and it is poised to erupt across Europe again. At first, the Nazi regime deported those labeled as criminals, but soon, the economic burden of such deportations became too high. The Nazis shifted strategy: they began making life unbearable to push people out-this is when the infamous idea of deporting Jews, liberals, and homosexuals to Madagascar first emerged as a policy fantasy-then escalated to establishing concentration camps, and ultimately progressed to a systematic regime of extermination and resource plunder. What started with rhetoric evolved into starvation, sterilization, skull measurement, and extermination-not just of Jews and liberals, but of the sick, the Romani, and even “half-bloods” like the French. By 1945, every tenth German was dead, and the most common cause of civilian death in Berlin was starvation.

I wish I had never been forced to read any of them. And yet, works like those of Erich Maria Remarque-sorry for the tautology-are truly outstanding and remarkable for their clarity and for how convincingly they recreate the oppressive atmosphere of their time. These books do not merely recount history; they plunge the reader into the raw emotional terrain of fear, loss, and disillusionment. Their power lies not just in what they say, but in what they force us to feel. They are not comforts, but indictments-of what was done, and what we may be doing again.

What is the most terrifying is that in Nazi Germany, nothing was illegal. Every persecution, theft, and murder was backed by law. The horror wasn’t in breaking the law-it was in rewriting it. As Hannah Arendt and others would later emphasize, the banality of evil lay in how ordinary people, following ordinary rules, participated in extraordinary cruelty. The danger now lies not in broken laws, but in laws written without humanity.

Books such as The Night in Lisbon and Berlin Diary expose the dread of exile and the psychological toll of statelessness and starvation. If This Is a Man and The Drowned and the Saved depict the brutal, bureaucratic sadism of the camps, where starvation was meted out by design, and survival was not a right but a random accident. In KL and The Theory and Practice of Hell, we see how the camps operated not just as centers of extermination but as testing grounds for administrative evil. Gestapo and Backyard Dictatorship show how ordinary Germans became participants in surveillance, denunciation, and routine terror. Ordinary Men dismantles the myth that only ideological fanatics commit atrocities, documenting how middle-aged reservists became mass murderers through gradual desensitization.

The Third Reich in Power, The Nazi Seizure of Power, and They Thought They Were Free reveal the bureaucratic banality with which fascism embeds itself, often unnoticed, until resistance becomes impossible. The Law Under the Swastika and Hitler’s Beneficiaries demonstrate how legalism and bribery cemented complicity. Defying Hitler and Alone in Berlin illuminate the futility and nobility of resisting tyranny alone. Inside the Third Reich and Eichmann in Jerusalem chart how the architects of genocide rationalized their crimes. The Holocaust: A New History and The Kindly Ones remind us of how swiftly barbarism can become systemic.

Before the Deluge, The SS: Alibi of a Nation, and The Good German expose how scapegoating liberals and Romani, or protecting collaborators, leads to cultural complicity. Mother Night and Life and Fate challenge readers to confront the lies we tell ourselves in order to survive inside totalitarian structures. Man’s Search for Meaning is the whisper from the abyss: even in hell, there is agency-but also the quiet death of meaning itself when no truth is defendable and no life is safe.

History’s alarm bells are ringing the loudest from the 1930s. The current shift in Europe carries unmistakable parallels to the rise of fascism in interwar Germany and Italy. Then, as now, economic anxiety and fear of decline radicalized ordinary citizens. A classic study of a small German town’s Nazification concluded that “it was the Depression, or more accurately, the fear of its continued effects, that contributed most heavily to the radicalization of [the] people.” Fear of poverty and instability drove voters into the arms of extremists promising restoration of greatness. In our time, the Eurozone crises, growing inequality, and now stagflation and energy shortages have left Europeans fearful for the future – fertile ground for radical solutions and the blame game.

One hallmark of 1930s fascism was scapegoating: identifying “enemy” groups to unite the majority in hatred. The Nazis perfected this tactic, portraying Jews as a treacherous cabal responsible for Germany’s woes . They stoked antisemitic conspiracy theories and nationalist myths to redirect popular anger away from the regime’s failings and toward a vulnerable minority. History shows that such toxic rhetoric starts small – with slurs and insults – but escalates steadily. “Antisemitism often starts as rhetoric…with scapegoating or insults. But history has demonstrated that it can escalate to broader discrimination, dehumanization, mass violence, and genocide,” notes the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum . In November 1938, that escalation hit a notorious flashpoint on Kristallnacht, when Nazi paramilitaries and mobs, intoxicated by years of propaganda, attacked Jewish businesses, synagogues, and homes across Germany. Windows were smashed, shops looted, synagogues torched; about 7,500 Jewish businesses were vandalized and over 1,400 synagogues were burned in a single night of orchestrated mob terror . Tens of thousands of Jews were hauled off to concentration camps . What had begun as hateful words culminated in nationwide organized violence. By then, it was clear that the Nazi regime had crossed from tyranny into outright barbarism.

Today’s Europe has not descended to that depth – and we must hope it never does. But the patterns of scapegoating are visible once more. Immigrants, refugees, and ethnic or religious minorities are demonized by far-right parties as the cause of crime and social ills. Liberal “elites” in Brussels are lambasted as enemies of the common people, just as Weimar-era reactionaries railed against the “November criminals” who supposedly stabbed Germany in the back. Such rhetoric of betrayal and victimhood creates a climate where demagogues can justify extraordinary measures. We already see vigilante attacks on immigrant communities in some countries, hate crimes on the rise, and mainstream politicians borrowing the far-right’s talking points. The stage is being set wherein any economic shock or security crisis could unleash mob violence against scapegoated targets – whether they be immigrants, political dissenters, or EU officials painted as villains.

Another parallel is the erosion of the rule of law. Under Nazi rule, Germany’s vaunted legal institutions were twisted to serve an absolutist state – a process detailed in works like The Law Under the Swastika. Hitler’s government passed sweeping decrees that nullified civil liberties, purged the judiciary of independent judges, and redefined justice as whatever served “the Führer’s will.” In our era, democratic backsliding in Europe similarly often begins with legal warfare: packing courts, undermining judicial independence, flouting international law. Authoritarian-leaning regimes within the EU have pushed laws muzzling the free press and cracking down on NGOs. The difference is one of degree, not kind. The Nazi example stands as a warning of how quickly a modern legal system can be subverted when those in power treat laws as tools of convenience rather than restraints. When Italy or any state asserts it will simply do as it pleases – “no Commission approval” – it chips away at the edifice of norms and agreements that uphold a rules-based order.

Critically, the public acquiescence to these changes in 1930s Germany was often quiet and gradual, not sudden fanaticism. Writer Milton Mayer, interviewing ordinary Germans after the war, noted how incremental change lulled the populace: “Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained…one no more saw it developing day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.” People who “were not against National Socialism in principle” accepted ever more extreme measures because each next step didn’t seem much worse than the last . By the time the enormity of what had happened was clear, it was too late to resist. This is perhaps the most chilling parallel to the present: the slow normalizing of illiberalism. Bit by bit, the unthinkable becomes thinkable. Yesterday’s outrage (say, open defiance of EU laws or virulent hate speech by officials) becomes today’s new normal. Citizens, focused on day-to-day concerns, may not notice the point at which their democracy has slipped away.

As Europeans today watch leaders bend or break democratic norms, Mayer’s words should resound: “Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered…‘Resist the beginnings’ and ‘Consider the end.’ But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings.” It is a nearly impossible demand to expect average people to recognize in a timely fashion that this policy, this election, or this emergency decree is the start of something awful. Yet the lesson of the 1930s is that by the time the “great shocking occasion” arrives that finally galvanizes opposition, it may come as an irreversible fait accompli . The metaphorical corn has grown above everyone’s head. Europe in the 2020s is not Weimar Germany, but the risk lies in complacency - in assuming “it can’t happen here” even as the guardrails of liberal democracy are dismantled one by one.

American Ochlocracy: The Transatlantic Collapse of Democracy

This crisis is not Europe’s alone. Across the Atlantic, the United States is experiencing its own dangerous drift towards illiberalism, exposing the fragility of the world’s oldest modern democracy. The shock of the January 6, 2021 Capitol attack still reverberates in American politics as a warning of how mob passions can explode into violence at the heart of government. In Plato’s terms, it was a spasm of ochlocracy - the rule of the mob - shaking the foundations of a republic. Lawmakers of both parties, “shaken after fleeing for their lives,” looked upon the wreckage and realized the republic they knew was crumbling. Even Republican leaders who had long indulged populist anger were aghast: “the mob was fed lies…they were provoked by the president and other powerful people,” admitted GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell in rare candor after the riot. At that moment, mainstream Republicans and Democrats alike could see the emergence of a new kind of regime in America – one that openly channels the base instincts of the crowd, discarding the checks and balances of liberal democracy.

This erosion of democratic safeguards is not merely rhetorical. It is codified. As stated in Section 6 of President Trump’s 2025 Executive Order, "independent regulatory agency chairmen shall regularly consult with and coordinate policies and priorities with the directors of OMB, the White House Domestic Policy Council, and the White House National Economic Council." In other words, so-called 'independent' agencies are now obligated to align their priorities with the executive branch, stripping them of autonomy and making them subject to political oversight. This undermines the structural independence that was meant to protect American governance from partisan dominance and transforms these agencies into extensions of presidential will.

What has emerged in the U.S. is a style of politics uncannily parallel to Europe’s nationalist surge. Truth is treated as optional; what matters is what the crowd can be led to believe. All the techniques are on display: grandiose myths of a stolen past greatness, scapegoating of minorities (immigrants, racial others) for society’s problems, and anti-elite, anti-institution rhetoric that undermines trust in the very pillars of democracy. America’s democratic collapse is still incomplete – institutions resisted in 2020–21 – but the erosion is unmistakable. State by state, electoral rules are being skewed to entrench one-party control, extremist factions gain ground, and political violence threatens to become routine. Both of the major U.S. parties have elements alarmed by this degeneration. But one party in particular, the Republicans, have undergone a profound transformation: from a traditional center-right party into a populist vehicle for an “aroused crowd”. Many establishment conservatives now find themselves, like Dr. Frankenstein, terrified of the monster they helped create. The shock on McConnell’s face when he spoke of the mob at the Capitol – a mob that included constituents and activists from his own party – said it all. The realization came that American democracy could die not at the hands of a foreign enemy, but by suicide from within, driven by mass hysteria and demagoguery.

Plato would nod knowingly at America’s plight. In his schema, democracy unchecked leads to an excess of factions and perspectives, each blinkered by narrow interests, which a demagogue can then manipulate to “overmaster democracy.” The American republic, polarized into hostile camps and drowning in misinformation, seems to be living out this prophecy. The crowd’s base instincts – tribalism, fear, the craving for simple answers – are being indulged to the extreme. It has given rise to what the ancients would recognize as the most unstable and dangerous form of governance: mob rule harnessed by aspiring tyrants. This is worse even than a stable tyranny, in Plato’s view, because it carries the violence and unpredictability of the many, like a storm that can neither be fully controlled nor easily dissipated. Such ochlocracy can quickly become tyranny once a charismatic “protector” seizes the moment . The world saw this in 1933 when a fervid democratic electorate in Germany handed power to Adolf Hitler, who promptly used that mandate to extinguish democracy. One shudders to imagine an analogous scenario in a future U.S. election – and yet it no longer seems implausible.

A Global Warning from History

The events unfolding on both sides of the Atlantic amount to a grave warning: the liberal democratic order that prevailed since the end of World War II is facing a systemic collapse. What we are witnessing, through moves like Meloni’s nationalist rebellion and the rise of mob politics, is the dissolution of the very institutions and norms that were designed to prevent a repeat of the 1930s catastrophe. The European Union, NATO, the United Nations, constitutional checks and balances – these liberal institutions were built on the ashes of fascism and war, an Enlightenment project updated for modern times, meant to channel humanity’s worst impulses into peaceful cooperation and lawful governance. Now, piece by piece, they are being abandoned or subverted in favor of raw power politics and authoritarian nationalism.

History does not repeat exactly, but it echoes. We hear the echo of the 1930s in populists’ fiery rallies and their cults of personality; in the scapegoating of “others” for complex problems; in the erosion of truth and the rule of law; and in the frightening willingness of political partisans to countenance violence. We see economic hard times once again breeding radicalism and demagogues exploiting crises – whether a pandemic, a migration wave, or inflation – to suspend norms and grab extraordinary powers. We see great power tensions and resource struggles re-emerging: Russia’s war in Ukraine, for example, has been framed by the Kremlin as a nationalist crusade and has spurred fears of energy and food shortages, precisely the kind of resource insecurity that in the 1930s drove nations to conquest. The international solidarity that might meet such challenges is faltering as each country turns inward. “New trade paths without EU red tape…country-first policies…a decentralized Europe” is one vision being cheered by nationalists , but its mirror image is a world of every nation for itself – a world eerily similar to the one that plunged into world war in 1939.

Yet, forewarned is forearmed. We are not helpless passengers on a predestined ride to tyranny. The lessons from authors like Primo Levi, Milton Mayer, and Sebastian Haffner – who personally witnessed democracy’s collapse into fascism – must be heeded as urgent pleas across time. Levi, survivor of Auschwitz, devoted his life to reminding the world of the Holocaust’s horror so it would never happen again. Mayer’s interviews implore us to be vigilant early. Haffner’s memoir Defying Hitler shows how an ordinary citizen can resist the seduction of mass movement madness before it’s too late. Their testimonies, alongside the philosophical warnings of Plato, Machiavelli, Voltaire, and Diderot, form a chorus from history: do not underestimate this threat. Liberal democracy, once lost, is painfully difficult to restore.

The collapse of the European project and the rise of mob-driven authoritarianism are not just a regional issue or transient politics-as-usual. They represent a fundamental and global challenge to the modern world’s core values. If Europe succumbs to the temptations of ochlocracy and tyranny, if America follows suit, the light of freedom will dim across the world. As Voltaire implied, believing absurdities leads to committing atrocities . We are edging toward the abyss of absurd beliefs and atrocious outcomes. It can happen here, and it can happen again – unless people of good will, across all nations and parties, stand together to defend the ideals of democracy, truth, and human rights.

The hour is late, but not past hope. Meloni’s dramatic declaration of independence from the EU may yet jolt pro-European forces into action to reclaim the narrative. The outrage of January 6 has also spurred many Americans to reaffirm their commitment to the rule of law. But hope must not breed passivity.

While Europe dithers, Russian boots are now deployed in Paris. The French Republic, the only nuclear-armed country in the EU, finds itself paralyzed not by foreign invasion, but by internal betrayal. Moscow-backed ultra-right militias operate freely, destabilizing the Fifth Republic from within. France’s nuclear arsenal, small and politically shackled, offers no shield against asymmetric subversion. There is no deterrence when the enemy is already inside the gate-financed, armed, and encouraged by a regime in open war with the West.

The Kremlin understands this, and it is executing the doctrine of infiltration, not invasion-just as it did with America, which has already fallen to Kremlin boots. France, in its naïveté, continues to play by the old rules of diplomacy, refusing to acknowledge what has already begun: a war for European sovereignty. The frontline is no longer in Ukraine. It is in Marseille, Lyon, Paris. And the French state, paralyzed by legalism and appeasement, is ceding ground without resistance.

We are not witnessing a rebirth of nationalism. We are watching the careful euthanasia of democracy.

The fight for liberal democracy is now existential. It will require courage worthy of those who fought fascism the first time-urgency equal to the resistance of 1940. The alternative is no longer theoretical. It is here. The dominoes of freedom are falling. One more slip, and we will wake to find the Enlightenment extinguished. The collapse of liberal institutions is not approaching-it is underway. Resist now, or be ruled forever.

***

Sources:

1. Faruk Arslan, “Europe Isn’t Leading. It’s Losing Control” - LinkedIn post on Meloni’s Washington visit
2. Plato, The Republic (Book VIII) - Analysis of democracy’s decline into tyranny
3. Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince - On ruling through fear vs. love
4. Denis Diderot, Encyclopédie (1751–1772) - Critique of absolutism and fanaticism
5. Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary (1764) - On absurd beliefs leading to atrocities
6. Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933–45 (1955)
7. William Sheridan Allen, The Nazi Seizure of Power (1965)
8. Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963)
9. Primo Levi, If This Is a Man (1947); The Drowned and the Saved (1986)
10. Erich Maria Remarque, The Night in Lisbon (1962)
11. Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning (1946)
12. Sebastian Haffner, Defying Hitler: A Memoir (2000)
13. Eugene Kogon, The Theory and Practice of Hell (1950)
14. Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich in Power (2005)
15. Claudia Koonz, The Nazi Conscience (2003)
16. Wolfgang Sofsky, The Order of Terror: The Concentration Camp (1993)
17. Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men (1992)
18. Peter Fritzsche, Life and Death in the Third Reich (2008)
19. Götz Aly, Hitler’s Beneficiaries (2005)
20. Inga Clendinnen, Reading the Holocaust (1999)
21. Helga Schneider, Let Me Go (2001)
22. Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (1961)
23. Martin Gilbert, The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War (1985)
24. USHMM - https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/
25. Wikipedia: Kristallnacht - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristallnacht
26. U.S. Senate Record - Mitch McConnell, January 6 speech - https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record
27. Executive Order - https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/ensuring-accountability-for-all-agencies/
28. White House Fact Sheet - https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/02/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-reins-in-independent-agencies-to-restore-a-government-that-answers-to-the-american-people