The final installment of my trilogy.
There’s a chilling statistic that’s been making the rounds - apparently, 16% of young men and 13% of young women aged 16 to 26 aren’t averse to the idea of a strong dictator. That should send a shiver down the spine of anyone with a smidge of historical awareness. How on earth did we get here? Has the social contract crumbled to the point where tyranny seems preferable to democracy? Or is there something deeper at play - a loss of generational memory that once acted as a bulwark against authoritarianism? I’d wager it’s a bit of both, and we’ve got a lot to answer for.
Let’s start with the obvious: the social contract has failed many of these young people. They’ve grown up in a world where housing is a pipe dream, job security is a quaint relic, and the political class seems more interested in its own survival than in solving real problems. They’ve watched governments dither and prevaricate, launching endless consultations and inquiries that lead nowhere. Is it any wonder they’re yearning for decisive action? And who’s more decisive than a dictator, right? The image of a strongman who can cut through the red tape and make things happen is undoubtedly seductive when you’ve never been taught to fear the consequences.
But here’s the rub: they haven’t been taught. The generational memory of dictatorship and its horrors has faded, and with it, the instinctive wariness of authoritarianism. I had teachers who had served in WWII. They weren’t reading about it in books; they’d been there. They’d seen the consequences of unchecked power, and they brought that experience into the classroom. History wasn’t abstract to us. We heard firsthand accounts of what happens when a nation falls under the sway of a dictator, and we were taught to be sceptical of anyone promising easy answers through strong-arm tactics. We also had TV programmes on WWII, like All Our Yesterdays and The World at War, as well as endless WWII films.
That connection is gone, and while history textbooks can tell you what happened, they can’t convey the visceral reality of it. They can’t replicate the moment when your teacher - who once faced enemy fire - looks you in the eye and tells you why you must never, ever fall for the rhetoric of tyranny.
And let’s not underestimate the importance of family narratives. Many of us grew up hearing stories from parents or grandparents who lived through the wars. Those stories weren’t just about battles; they were about the moral choices people had to make in the face of authoritarianism. They were about neighbours disappearing overnight, about the slow erosion of freedoms, about the banality of evil creeping into everyday life. Those stories taught us that democracy, flawed as it is, is worth fighting for.
But what happens when those stories aren’t passed down? When the last WWII veterans have gone, and with them the firsthand accounts of what dictatorship really looks like? What happens is what we’re seeing now: a generation that views democracy as just another option, one that hasn’t delivered for them. And when democracy looks broken, authoritarianism starts to seem like a viable alternative.
This isn’t entirely their fault. They’ve grown up in a world where populist strongmen have dressed themselves in the language of pragmatism and common sense. Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Donald Trump in the US - these aren’t caricatured villains in jackboots, they’re men in suits who frame their authoritarian tendencies as practical solutions to broken systems and, without that historical connection, it’s easy to fall for it.
We need to confront this generational amnesia head-on. It’s not enough to rely on textbooks and documentaries. We need to ensure that the stories of the past are passed down in ways that resonate. We need to make it clear that the lure of the strongman is a siren song that leads to disaster. We need to remind young people that the freedoms they take for granted were hard-won, and that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.
Most importantly, we need to rebuild the social contract. We need to show this generation that democracy can work for them, that change is possible within a democratic framework. Otherwise, they’ll continue to look for alternatives - and the alternatives they’re considering should terrify us all.
The last generation that understood the true cost of dictatorship is fading away. It’s up to us to ensure that memory doesn’t fade with them.
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