The metaphor of World War II bombs resurfacing in the dried riverbeds of European rivers, drained by the climate crisis, is used these days. A projectile that has reached today without exploding, as a legacy of an era in which totalitarianism bled Europe, lends itself to an obvious interpretation: history is knocking at the door again as a warning.
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The image is suggestive, irresistible. It could even be used to mark a before and after in the course of the continent, if it were not because the warning comes late: the entire territory of that European state that is Ukraine is sown with recently manufactured explosives; there was no need to wait for vintage bombs to come to light to realize that we are playing with fire. This is confirmed by the insightful novelist Theodor Kallifatides in an interview published in the Culture section: “I have never been so aware of living through such a frantic stage of war preparation.”
The far-right AfD, which is more extreme than other European far-right groups, achieved an undeniable victory yesterday in the elections of the German state of Saxony-Anhalt and could come to govern. The rapid rise of a party with leaders who have flirted with the Nazi past and do not hide their sympathies towards Vladimir Putin’s Russia has a disturbing interpretation at the federal level, since the same AfD leads the polls in the general elections amid the collapse of the parties supporting the governing coalition.
Yesterday’s result casts a new shadow over the future of a frightened Europe, on the eve of French presidential elections in which the also far-right Marine Le Pen is a favorite.
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Let us return to historical memory. It is recalled these days that Hitler also came to power thanks to the ballot box. On this subject, it is interesting to read the essay Thirty Days to Power by Henry Ashby Turner Jr., reissued by Edhasa. The author argues that, although the genocidal dictator benefited from broad electoral support, it was almost palace intrigues and political rivalries that facilitated his access to the chancellery.
That is indeed a lesson from the past that there is still time to learn: to what extent political fragmentation and the condescension of democrats towards the far-right can pave the way to disaster.
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