Why are we so afraid of the political right when the real crisis came first?
Across Europe, right-wing parties are gaining ground. Governments are changing, political alliances are shifting, and commentators warn about nationalism, populism, and authoritarianism.
But I am not particularly afraid of the rise of the right.
Not because it is harmless. Not because elections don't matter.
Because the right is not the cause. It is the consequence.
Its rise reflects deeper economic, social, and geopolitical failures that were already underway. Confusing the effect with the cause is like looking at a fever and blaming the thermometer.
A Narrative in Crisis
For decades, Europe lived inside a reassuring story.
Globalization would bring prosperity. Free markets would create efficiency. European integration would guarantee stability. Economic interdependence would make major wars increasingly unthinkable. Western alliances would keep us safe.
Then reality intervened.
Ukraine. The Middle East. Energy prices. Inflation. Rearmament. Stagnation.
The war in Ukraine exposed Europe's dependence on a fragile energy system. After abandoning Russian gas, Europe faced dramatically higher energy costs.
Whatever one's position on the war, the lesson is unavoidable:
Geopolitical decisions have economic consequences, and ordinary people eventually pay the bill.
Then came the Middle East.
The war following October 7, 2023, brought another conflict to the center of global politics. The widening confrontation in the Persian Gulf has added another layer of uncertainty to an already unstable system.
This is no longer just about war.
It is about energy, economics, social stability—and whether Western societies can absorb another major shock.
Europe Is Getting More Fragile
There is a contradiction at the heart of today's Europe.
Governments struggle to preserve living standards while committing more resources to defense. They talk about fiscal discipline and spending restraint while preparing for years of higher military budgets.
The argument for rearmament is straightforward: Europe must be able to defend itself.
Fair enough.
But there is another question.
What happens when societies spend years filling arsenals with weapons?
Military power can deter war. It can also magnify the consequences of miscalculation, escalation, or political failure.
The issue is not simply who has the weapons.
It is the kind of world we are building by accumulating them.
We Have Become Fragile
There is another vulnerability that receives far less attention.
The Italian psychiatrist Vittorino Andreoli wrote extensively about what he called the "fragile man." I would broaden the idea.
It isn't only men.
Human beings have become fragile.
Western societies have spent decades becoming accustomed to comfort, security, instant availability, and predictability.
We are not accustomed to deprivation. To waiting. To doing without.
Earlier generations knew scarcity in ways we can barely imagine.
For them, the problem might have been finding enough food.
For us, it can be losing a cellphone signal.
That sounds trivial.
It isn't.
Prosperity gives us comfort, but it also creates dependence on comfort. The more a society takes normality for granted, the harder it is to absorb its sudden disappearance.
We Are Not Ready for a Long War
Modern conflicts have exposed another weakness.
For years, we convinced ourselves that war could be quick, technological, precise, and decisive. Superior weapons would produce superior outcomes.
Afghanistan should have cured us of that illusion.
Twenty years of Western intervention ended with the departure from Kabul and the return of the Taliban.
The lesson was not simply military. It was psychological.
A society accustomed to prosperity and security struggles to sustain a conflict when victory is neither quick nor certain.
And that vulnerability becomes far greater when the enemy can strike back.
We are accustomed to thinking of war as something that happens somewhere else.
What happens when it doesn't?
What Happens When the Lights Go Out?
Imagine a genuine global war—not a distant conflict, but a confrontation between major powers capable of striking each other's territory.
What would they target?
Military bases. Command centers. Communications. Transportation.
And energy infrastructure.
Because destroying electricity means attacking the nervous system of modern civilization.
No power means crippled telecommunications, failed payment systems, disrupted computer networks, impaired water systems, stalled fuel distribution, broken supply chains, and hospitals forced onto backup generators.
The smartphone in your hand could become little more than a piece of glass and metal.
Italy experienced a warning in 2003, when a massive blackout left almost the entire country without electricity.
That was 2003.
There were no smartphones in everyone's pocket. Digital payments were nowhere near as pervasive. Our dependence on permanent connectivity was nothing like it is today.
Now it is 2026.
Imagine that blackout lasting days instead of hours.
And imagine that it wasn't an accident.
Imagine it was deliberate.
That is when we would rediscover something we have forgotten:
technology does not free us from physical reality. It makes us more dependent on it.
So Why Is the Right Winning?
This is why I see the rise of the right as a secondary phenomenon.
When people become poorer, more frightened, and less secure, they look for someone who promises to restore control.
The right understands this instinctively.
Immigration.
Borders.
Sovereignty.
Order.
Identity.
Enemies.
Simple answers are powerful when people are afraid.
But they do not necessarily address the forces producing that fear.
They can capture anger. Turn anxiety into votes. Give people someone to blame.
They cannot, by themselves, repair the economic and geopolitical structures underneath the crisis.
And the political center and left have their own problem: they often warn about the right without convincingly explaining why millions of people have become receptive to it.
That is the real political vacuum.
The right may offer simplistic answers, but at least it offers answers.
Its opponents too often offer explanations without a compelling alternative.
The Problem Is the Model
This brings us to the uncomfortable question.
For decades, much of the West embraced the idea that markets should regulate an ever-larger share of economic and social life.
Government intervention was reduced. Economic planning became suspect. Redistribution was treated as a distortion. Efficiency became the supreme virtue.
But a country is not a corporation.
And a society is not a marketplace.
When crisis arrives, we remember what the market cannot guarantee on its own.
Energy.
Water.
Healthcare.
Transportation.
Industrial capacity.
Strategic reserves.
Infrastructure.
Food security.
These are not merely economic assets. They are the foundations of national resilience.
This is where Keynes inevitably returns to the conversation.
Not as a relic of the twentieth century, but as a question:
Can a modern society really entrust its survival entirely to the invisible hand of the market?
The answer should not be ideological.
The real question is practical:
Where does the market work—and where must society retain the capacity to plan, protect, and prepare?
The Crisis Beneath the Elections
That is why the rise of the right does not frighten me nearly as much as the conditions producing it.
If Europe becomes poorer, energy remains structurally expensive, rearmament becomes permanent, wars spread, and economic insecurity deepens, the right will continue to find fertile ground.
Changing governments won't be enough.
Changing parties won't be enough.
Changing leaders won't be enough.
A structural crisis cannot be solved by changing the occupants of the palace.
The conditions themselves have to change.
And perhaps we are asking the wrong question.
We obsess over elections, polls, parties, leaders, and social media.
But what if the more important question is much simpler?
How resilient would our society be if tomorrow we lost the things we now take for granted?
Electricity.
The internet.
Electronic payments.
Fuel.
Logistics.
Heating.
Instant access to goods.
Security.
Peace.
A civilization is not truly strong because it possesses extraordinary technology.
It is strong when it can survive without it.
We have built an extraordinarily sophisticated civilization.
But sophistication is not the same thing as resilience.
And if the arsenals we are filling today ever have to be emptied, the question may not simply be:
Who won the war?
It may be:
How long can we survive when the lights don't come back on?
