Bad omens: Will we return to the 1930s?

The coming year is unsettling. The final days of 2025 were filled with wishes for a happy new year, and we want to believe them more than ever, but a cold analysis of reality is decidedly pessimistic. It's better to prepare for this scenario than to ignore it. Last year, around this same time, we feared the arrival of the new US president. After a year, our worst fears have been realized. We have entered a new world where the three major global powers are led by autocrats or enthusiastic apprentices. The "soft" power of the European Union has proven to be softer than warm butter, while that of the US has become as hard as heavy weaponry. The three powers are on the verge of dissolving the European Union so they can negotiate with each member state and extract the best terms from this area of prosperity: lowering the living standards of its citizens promises to be an immense business for their corporations and their power. We have entered a true dystopia.

Despite the temptation to understand the future through the best science fiction written to date, history already offers us some rather important lessons. However much we may want to ignore it, we are entering a situation that echoes that of the 1930s. The rise of fascism and the possibility of consolidated democracies drifting into autocracies were realities of the 1930s, and they are taking shape before our eyes. Now, as nearly a century ago, the world—and especially Europe—is experiencing a very complicated situation, in which the solutions to the enormous challenges cannot be simple or pleasing to everyone. Fascism and authoritarianism provided simple and decisive answers to complex problems, and created new ones that no one dared to predict. We are approaching that same situation.

Large sectors of European society are deeply dissatisfied. Their standard of living is not rising but declining, or they simply feel abandoned—a situation largely unavoidable given the concentration of economic, political, and social activity in capital cities and major urban centers. The economic pie to be divided, once the exceptional compensation for the lockdowns caused by the Covid-19 pandemic has been dissipated, is shrinking. The war in Ukraine has impoverished a significant portion of the EU, particularly in Germany. The Trump presidency has given free rein to large US platforms and technology companies, undermining all the principles of competition expected to be enforced in a market economy, and aims to destroy European competition policy. We are moving toward a predatory form of capitalism, the same as what currently exists in China and Russia.

The dangers that European citizens may feel are real, but the fear of losing the well-being achieved or the well-being promised eliminates any will to resist. Everyone hopes to get out of it however they can. Worse still, many expect magical solutions. And here we return to the dangers of the 1930s, which are currently visible in the US, to everyone's bewilderment. In other words, the United States of today could be the Germany of the 1930s. The ambition to fully control its living space (the LebensraumThat says it all. The definition ofinternal enemies This is another chilling similarity. The leaders' shameless ambition for personal enrichment shocks us with its arrogance, yet we don't see a sufficiently strong internal reaction to put a stop to it.

Within Europe, the dominant phenomenon is the rise of far-right forces that are growing rapidly, with objectives that mobilize significant segments of the electorate, without the parties that could potentially lose their voters reacting. Nor are policies being modified to try to defuse the most mobilizing issues. The combination of immigration and housing conflicts is an explosive cocktail that invites radical solutions—Trump-style—even if they are counterproductive. A segment of the electorate is emerging that is frightened by so many threats—both American and internal European—and that may join those demanding radical changes to protect them. Those who want to expel poor immigrants because they see their welfare guarantees threatened are a significant segment of the electorate, which is abandoning traditional left-wing parties. Those whose small property rights are threatened may join the aforementioned group, motivated by the lack of political sensitivity from the governing authorities to protect them. Given that political forces are already playing this double game, and that their electoral prospects continue to rise, the governing forces should pay closer attention to what could become an explosive cocktail.