Alan Johnson, editor of Democratiya, has written a must-read piece on Primo Levi. He observes:

Our 21st century dilemma is that we want to promote non-violent cultures and a wider global human security whilst retaining the ability to become warlike when challenged by the new totalitarians. That’s some task.

It is. And Johnson knows that to protect freedom and culture, sometimes our societies must resort to violent means. Intellectual elites on my side of the Atlantic postulate that eliminating our warlike impulses is what will save us from losing the paradise we have managed to erect in much of Europe. And that the totalitarians who clamor at our gates are nothing but the consequence of our warlike actions. But they are wrong. The totalitarian mindset exists independently of Western mistakes.

The challenge Johnson and others like him face in Europe is that our societies have forgotten that our readiness to fight is what saved us, and our willingness to appease is what damned us, in the past. Instead, today many live under the illusion that “a non-violent culture and wider global security” can be both promoted, spread, and consolidated without firing one shot. Not so.