More than 30 years ago, I explained that if Russia were humiliated as Weimar Germany had been, a dictator would take over in Moscow and, like Hitler, threaten to invade us. That is what happened: the West refused to help Gorbachev, then Yeltsin; and finally refused to listen to his successor, Vladimir Putin, who had just come to power, Vladimir Putin, when, at the Munich conference in February 2007 and then in February 2008, he not only asked NATO not to expand too much towards the East, but also hinted that he was interested in a rapprochement with the European Union. In my opinion, he was right: Russia is a European nation; and one day it will have its rightful place in its institutions. We know what happened next: he was not listened to; and, as in Germany in 1933, a humiliated Russian leader, the same Vladimir Putin, threw overboard the timid democratic attempts initiated before him, installed a terrible dictatorship and is now trying to reconstitute the destroyed empire by force, and perhaps even more.
The comparison also applies, in a different way, to the United States: There, as in all seizures of power by tyrants, particularly that of Hitler, it all began with propaganda, fake news, demagogic promises to a middle class threatened with decline, the designation of imaginary enemies, the banning of the use of certain words, the stopping of certain research, the hunting down of the weakest and of foreigners, the calling into question of court decisions. Then, if we let it happen, there will be the arrest of judges (already loudly demanded by Elon Musk), journalists, writers and elected representatives, followed by the (already announced) invasion of neighboring territories and the war to conquer them.
Naturally, no comparison is valid. Today’s global situation is not at all the same as it was a hundred years ago. The means are not the same, the culture is not the same. Neither Russia nor today’s United States reproduce the patterns of Weimar Germany identically. And, to discredit any comparison of the contemporary situation with the rise of Nazism, many dismiss this comparison in a contemptuous manner with an Ad Hitlerum, or a Point Godwin, named after the person who, in the 1990s, claimed to demonstrate that the longer a discussion lasts, the greater the likelihood of Nazism or anti-Semitism being mentioned, which, according to him, were therefore only the ultimate arguments of those who did not have any.
And yet the reality is there: new dictators are threatening; and anti-Semitism is still there; And to brandish the Ad Hitlerum or the Godwin Point to discredit those who denounce them is to try to divert attention from what is really coming.
Yes, we must be on our guard; and those who were on their guard in the 1930s got out of it; individually by fleeing, or collectively by fighting. At the cost of tens of millions of victims.
Yes, what is happening in Russia today is very precisely reminiscent of what happened in the 1930s in Weimar Germany; and it could have been prevented by working towards a rapprochement between Russia and the European Union and by helping those who were promoting the democratic project, as was done in Poland and in all the other countries of Eastern Europe, and more recently with Ukraine. We can still do it.
Yes, what is happening in the United States also very precisely refers to what happened in the 1930s in Weimar Germany; and we could avoid continuing to slide down this slope by helping the Americans to fight for the survival of their democracy and by equipping ourselves in time with the means of our defense.
If we are not careful, we may soon be caught in a pincer between two expansionist dictators, both eager to plunder us, aligned with each other by an unspeakable pact.
And even more so because they support openly fascist and anti-Semitic candidates elsewhere in the world, such as Marian Motocu in Romania, and other democratically elected leaders who are unfortunately following the same path, including in Israel.
We Europeans, who have lived through this history so tragically, and who have paid so dearly for the lack of preparation and the blindness of our elders, cannot afford the luxury of contenting ourselves with smug optimism.
Will we be able to welcome and help those in these two great countries who are fighting to avoid being crushed by dictatorship? Will we be able to find within ourselves the courage from which everything flows? Will we be able to equip ourselves in time with the means to defend our values, our identity, our sovereignty? It is possible.
As Berthold Brecht, who, with Alexis de Tocqueville, best considered the risk of a dictatorship in the United States, said: “The womb is still fertile from which the foul beast has arisen”.