In early July German historian Thomas Zimmer was invited to deliver a lecture to the Academy by the Sea, an adult education center on the island of Sylt in the North Sea. Zimmer, until earlier this year an affiliate professor at Georgetown University, describes feeling bad about forcing people on an education-vacation to think about Donald Trump; his presentation focused on American national identity and “who gets to be ‘We the People.’” As his presentation – full of stark assessments and doubts about any quick return to “normalcy” – wound down, one of the participants demanded more: “something people could do, something to carry us all forward.”

Zimmer, who confesses to normally avoiding such questions, characterizing himself as very much not a politician or an activist, was nonetheless moved on this occasion to “offer something more.”

The anti-democratic radicalization of the Right has not been fueled by a sense of strength, but by a pervasive sense of weakness. They are feeling their backs against the wall. And they are reacting to something real: Our “Western” societies have indeed become more pluralistic, less white, less overwhelmingly Christian. In that sense, it was not the perfectly stable liberal democracy that suddenly fell into crisis (because such an order had never existed), but white Christian patriarchal dominance – what the Right likes to call the “natural order” – that has been coming under pressure.