There are three common factors in social science analyses that explain the emergence and consolidation of totalitarianism in European history: disillusionment with democracy, the deterioration of living conditions for a large part of the population, and the strengthening of antisemitism.
Antisemitism has been the common denominator in all the advances of obscurantism and irrationality, the growth of cultural and social monolithism, and the annihilation of democracies. Examples can be found from late antiquity with the predominance of the Roman Christian state, through the obscurantism of the Middle Ages, the Inquisition, the pogroms of the authoritarian Russian Empire, the Third Reich, and Stalinism, among others. On the contrary, the greater participation of the Jewish people in society has been and continues to be an indicator of democratic health, critical thinking, and humanism, as seen in the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Italian Risorgimento, the consolidation of European democracy, and the welfare state since 1945.
Currently, the crisis of democracy is very deep and multidimensional. It encompasses a crisis of democratic institutions: lack of separation of powers, aberrant electoralism, bureaucratization of public administrations, etc. It also includes a crisis in the implementation of public policies: growing inequality and poverty, failure of housing and sustainability policies, etc. And most importantly, a crisis of legitimacy because democratic values and the ethics based on them are in decline: pluralism, fraternity, equity, hope for a better future, etc.
Disenchantment with democracy is necessary, but not sufficient, for totalitarianism. These groups need to transform disenchantment into active support for their proposals, and to do so, they need to construct a monolithic majority “us” in opposition to a minority that is presented as responsible for all the social, economic, and political difficulties of a territory. They need to generate hatred and build social and political polarization. A minority to segregate and, through the process of segregation, legitimize their anti-democratic proposals: monolithism versus pluralism and rationality, enmity versus fraternity, intolerance versus coexistence, and repression versus security. A repression justified by a supposed danger from a minority and stigmatized enemy, but which is directed at the whole of society and at democracy itself.
Today, anti-Semitism—rejection of the Jewish people, which hides under a radical anti-Zionism—a total rejection of the possibility of the Jewish people establishing a democratic state—is joined by Islamophobia, which operates as anti-Semitism.
A key issue for the survival of democracy is preventive policies against antisemitism and Islamophobia, based on fraternity or friendship in the face of complexity and difference.
PhD in Sociology and PhD in History. Currently, he is pursuing a PhD in Philosophy at Ramon Llull University.
Director of Estrategies de Qualitat Urbana, S.L. President of the Foundation Ciudadanía y Buen Gobierno, and a founding member and coordinator of AERYC.