US politics has gone insane. Why the worst ideas of the 20th century are back to haunt us

It’s the year 2026, and sometimes it feels as if we’re taking a nice leisurely walk through a Museum of Wretched Ideas.

Consider what’s happening in the United States. Tariffs raise prices and restrain economic growth, while the federal government embraces both Gilded Age corruption and a version of the spoils system.

A disturbing number of young people on the right are fascinated with fascism. An extraordinary 34 per cent of young people overall express a favourable view of communism, and young Americans are far more likely than their parents or grandparents to say that political violence is “sometimes OK”.

And hovering over American culture like a dark cloud is the rise of antisemitism on both the left and the right. Once again, ancient slanders are circulating through the culture.

Or consider what is happening abroad. Germany rearms to confront the Russian threat. Japan rearms to deter China. War rages in Europe and in the Middle East. Threats of territorial expansion haunt the world. Russia is trying to grab Ukraine. China continues to covet Taiwan. And the Trump administration, incredibly enough, has cast its expansionist eyes on Greenland.

When you step back and actually think about it, these trends are confounding. I mean, I can understand the temptation to return to some of the discredited ideas of the recent past, I guess, but to revive so many, all at once? And to do it so soon after those wretched ideas ravaged the world?

The answer lies in part in the interplay between two political sayings that are so oft-repeated that they have become cliches. When they should be top of mind, though, they seem to have lost their impact.

Here’s the first (and you can probably say it along with me), from George Santayana in 1905: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” We can argue about the precise historical parallels, but the echoes of the past are everywhere.

Here’s the second, from Winston Churchill in 1947: “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried.”

It is no coincidence that authoritarianism is once again appealing to people at a time when two things are happening at once. Liberal democracies are struggling to meet the needs of a substantial portion of their citizens, and entire generations have come of age with no living memory of the totalitarian horrors of the 20th century.

In other words, millions upon millions of people are enduring democracy as “the worst form of government” without the necessary balanced understanding (that citizens in the