When Fascism came into power, most people were unprepared, both theoretically and practically. They were unable to believe that man could exhibit such propensities for evil, such lust for power, such disregard for the rights of the weak, or such yearning for submission. Only a few had been aware of the rumbling of the volcano preceding the outbreak.

 — Erich Fromm, Escape From Freedom

The wave of right-wing populist victories that kicked off in 2016 surprised many of us. I’ll never forget hosting an election watch party with my friends, talking about how the incoming Hillary Clinton administration’s inevitable doubling down on neoliberalism would require a stiff response.

We all know what happened next. By 2018, virtually every major country on Earth was governed by a hard-right or hard-right-sympathetic government — the United States, Israel, India, Russia, Brazil, Italy, Britain, Turkey, Poland, and Hungary only being the most well known. While a rare-but-predictable combination of cruelty and incompetence led to the ouster of right-wing presidents in the United States, Brazil, and elsewhere, the future is unpredictably open in a way few could have predicted in the “end of history” era.