“The Cold War is not over, and there is still some local bloodshed, but people are sheltered and view it as summer hailstorms on a sunny day,” wrote Italo Calvino in 1961, speaking of the perception of history in those years. If we wanted to describe the mood of the contemporary political scene in a nutshell today, we would have to say that the impression of being safe has completely disappeared.
Today, we have the opposite impression, that of being in the midst of a complex crisis, of which populism and cultural wars are the most visible aspects.
This book attempts to interpret this by reflecting on some decisive events and symbolic figures, starting with Donald Trump. At the same time, it reflects on certain basic premises of contemporary politics, and in particular on the idea that Western societies are no longer able to imagine an alternative other than the authoritarian degeneration of liberal democracy or disorder.