It’s almost ironic, I found, that fascist women need more descriptive effort than fascist men (in the picture provided). Their roles are more complex and self-contradictory, since they are ostensibly aligned with nurturing and sustaining life rather than with the blunt dehumanization and domination that fascism demands. Besides, Meloni is the only one in the picture with almost nothing at stake. Yet, her recent call to abolish sex education for children doesn’t go down well with Italian families who prefer their sons and daughters to be well-informed and responsible.

Most amazingly, our brain develops mirror-neurons, separate neurons for each and every person we meet in life, modelling our impressions. For what it’s worth, I scribbled my brain’s decoding into a recent press photograph from August (The Guardian), where Trump echoes the Alt-Right’s ‘great replacement’ völkische theory openly in his policy papers. His advocacy of white male supremacy (Trump, of all in that species, an unfortunate weak sample based on his own ideology) explains how he sees his worst enemies not in dictators, murderers and state criminals, but in democrats, trans-people, immigrants, people of color, poor people, smart women, journalists and university graduates.

Original link: ‘Cultivate resistance’: policy paper lays bare Trump support for Europe’s far right’ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/05/civilisational-erasure-us-strategy-document-appears-to-echo-far-right-conspiracy-theories-about-europe

Looking into our near future, Jürgen Habermas reminded us recently in the ‘Süddeutsche Zeitung’ with a sense of urgency (like ‘do you guys get it?’) that, from now on, Europeans walk alone. Trump has ceremoniously handed in the geopolitical divorce papers between Europe and the US by siding with Putin.

One wonders what Hannah Arendt would comment today, who died on December 4th, 1975. I get reminded of her analysis in ‘The Origins of Totalitarianism’, especially her note that dictatorships do not suddenly appear, but grow from cultivated manufactured fear and the systematic erosion of truth, which feels uncomfortably prescient these days.

Original link: Jürgen Habermas, ‘From here on, we have to walk alone’ https://www.sueddeutsche.de/projekte/artikel/kultur/rede-juergen-habermas-eu-autoritarismus-usa-e353079/

Where systems fail, like America has fallen, the political becomes unavoidably, and often undesirably, personal. As democrats, as entrepreneurs, business leaders, European policy makers and private citizens, we all share responsibility for drawing and defending a clear boundary. We must make a stand against populists, and without hesitation: “No step beyond this line!” If this was only the whole story…

Beyond the justified reactions against authoritarianism, the more perceptive contemporaries in the room have recognized that threats to democracy are not only external, but also internal. A widespread lack of confidence in German leaders’ willingness and/or ability to implement much-needed deep social and economic reforms currently leads to the emergence of ‘communities of mistrust’ (‘Misstrauensgesellschaften’ by Aladin El-Mafalaani – my book recommendation for this season), making populism appealing to many people.

What we really, really would need to make this work (Frithjof Bergmann double-emphasis here), I believe, are communities based on trust, openness to new structural ideas, methods to reform. Leaders who can unite people, not divide them via petty party politics. Trying to convince privileged elites to sacrifice even the tiniest portion of their accumulated wealth is not an easy sell in hyperindividualised societies that are based on self- and lobby-interests, on individual and collective greed.

This is hardly Europe’s finest hour. But we do have all the opportunity to throw in our weight, big or small. And yes, as a founder and European entrepreneur, I do take this personal.

On the other side of the Atlantic, I sincerely hope that some of those who elected the monstrous national liability to power are aware that the transformation from the American Dream into an apocalyptic hellhole was not what was advertised. Herman Melville wrote a novel about the exact types of MAGA-politicians, which was published in 1857, long before they arrived. It is called ‘The Confidence-Man’ and it makes for a good read this season. The real question, beyond finding out to what unbelievable level Americans have been betrayed is: How can so much hatred by people against others ever disappear?