The great unravelling

They had never left - just rebranded. Wrapped in faux populism, the old forces of fascism returned, promising simple answers to complex problems

Troy Nahumko

Friday, 28 March 2025, 11:33

For a moment, it felt like we had won. The bad guys were relics. Fascism was a lesson Spanish schools didn't teach, and liberal democracy was what all the cool countries were wearing. We mistook the tide's ebb for an ending. But history doesn't work that way. Now, as the waters rush back, certain Spanish regions goosestep towards erasing memory laws, unmarked graves, and pretend the past never happened. We are increasingly stranded - blinking, unprepared, and watching democracies around the world gasp for air.

Across the border, the French - so refined, so patronising - look around at crumbling democracies and say, "Perhaps we should take back the Statue of Liberty." Maybe they should. At this rate, someone will hawk her for scrap before Trump's term is out.

In the early years of the new millennium, the illusion of progress was intoxicating. The Great Bank Heist exposed the con artists who had hijacked the global economy, and we thought justice would come. Handsome leaders with good hair arrived promising to rebuild what had been gutted. Obama told us, "Yes, we can." Canada's Trudeau grinned, "Because it's 2015." The Vatican's new Argentinian rediscovered the Sermon on the Mount under Ratzinger's mountain of bling. Here in Spain, Pedro 'El Guapo', as CNN swooned, spoke languages and didn't remind us of Aznar's mustached sneer. We bought the illusion. Hope was a brand, and we bought in bulk. But the fix was already in. A few symbolic sacrifices - some CEOs in handcuffs, a billionaire tech bro villainised—but the system remained intact. The rich got richer, the poor got lectures on "resilience", and the working class clung to the scraps.

Progressivism, once a bar fight of collective rage, turned inward. Economic justice took a backseat to linguistic purity tests. The streets emptied, and Twitter mobs took over. Pronouns replaced pensions. And El Guapo had a fling in Waterloo, signing over the country to independentists whose bigotry makes Orbán blush. And while the left fractured, the far-right sharpened their knives.

They had never left - just rebranded. Wrapped in faux populism, the old forces of fascism returned, promising simple answers to complex problems. Billionaires weren't the enemy - they were the sponsors. Why waste time with democracy when autocracy gets results faster? Russian oligarchs, Gulf petro-princes - no longer pariahs, but the blueprint. Social media, once a tool of revolution, became the perfect mechanism for mass sedation.

Now, the wreckage is everywhere. Public services collapse while we argue over identity politics. Life expectancies drop. Floodwaters rise, drowning 227 people - not because of austerity or a president enjoying an illicit sobremesa, but, we are told, because of immigrants. The bad guys, maskless and gloating, use our disillusionment against us. If democracy means empty wallets and corporate looting, maybe - just maybe - the six-time bankruptcy champion and his Spanish counterparts, wrapped in flags and cradling crucifixes, have the solution.

A quarter-century after the Y2K panic that never was, the real catastrophe unfolds. You can climb the Statue of Liberty, squint at the horizon, and - if you have the right kind of eyes - see where the wave of progress once crested before rolling back into the abyss. The boot is raised, the wolves are hungry, and the nightmare we thought dead is awake, rabid and grinning. The air is thick with the acrid stench of burning rights and resurgent demagogues draped in stolen patriotism.

The wolves are here. The question is: do we still remember how to fight?

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