William Butler Yeats’s The Second Coming, written in the...

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William Butler Yeats’s The Second Coming, written in the aftermath of the First World War, has worked its way into the zeitgeist. As the stampede toward extreme politics accelerates in our own era, Yeats’s words resonate:

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;”

In a step back yesterday, it would appear that in Italy, the center-left thwarted a power grab by Matteo Salvini’s anti-immigrant League Party in the northern region of Emilia-Romagna.

Small victories are welcome, too.