In Enlightenment terms, our democracies are switching from John Locke’s social contract to the bleaker Leviathan of Thomas Hobbes. We are on a menacing trajectory brought about by ignorance of our history, indifference towards society’s losers and complacency about the strength of our democracy. It has helped turn society into a contest of ethnic grievances, in which ‘awakened whites’ – as the alt-right now call them – are by far the largest minority.
