Dennis Glover ends his urgent new book on populism with a five-word warning: “Only history can save us.”
In just 191 pages, the Australian historian (pictured) drives the reader on an express tour of the 1920s, charting the rise of Hitler and Stalin, making the case that figures like Trump and Putin are cutting a similar course through the modern-day political landscape. Unless we act now, according to Glover, World War III will be upon us.
Repeat is divided into two halves: one which explores the interwar period, the other which looks at the present day. Much of the first half traces Hitler’s ascent from far-right fringe radical to totalitarian dictator. In 1919, he had a reputation as a livewire political outsider famed for his hostile rants. Twenty years later, as Germany’s dictator, he gave a speech about how war would bring about the “annihilation of the Jewish race.”
Glover attributes Hitler’s rise to power to a specific strategy: that “he had perfected the art of tapping the deep, dark well of resentment and fury that lay just beneath the surface of his audiences.”
It is this same strategy, Glover argues, that we’re seeing today with populists like Trump: personalities who exploit the public’s frustration at economic insecurity to gain political power, which they then use to dismantle democracy. Alongside Trump, and the armed far-right groups who attacked the US Capitol building on 6 January 2021, the second half of the book documents Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
One of Glover’s most striking assessments is that Hitler and Stalin, at the time, appeared “fallible and clownish”, just as Trump appears today. History tells us that we make a terrible mistake by laughing at him.
The solutions proposed in Repeat are tangible: if it’s economic decline and wealth inequality that creates the opportunities for the far right to gain traction, then redistribution of income is a democratic imperative. If the fascist’s enemy is the rule of law, then we must defend our legal frameworks like our lives depend on them. Because they do.
Repeat reads as though Glover was rushing to get it finished in such a fast-moving political climate. He skims over detail, almost tripping over his own sense of urgency, and the hastily added paragraphs on the genocide in Gaza at the end of this crammed book feel like a tick-box as opposed to further evidence for his argument.
Nevertheless, Repeat is a compelling read for audiences who do not have much time on their hands. With Nigel Farage’s face now appearing daily in our newspapers and Reform UK putting up even more far-right candidates for the upcoming local elections, we must heed Glover’s warning: “If something can happen once, it can happen again”.
Repeat is published by Allison & Busby and is available in paperback (£10.99)