On the day that World War II began, September 1, 1939, the poet W.H. Auden described the preceding 10 years as a “low dishonest decade”. Might we borrow from him and recognise the 12 months to December 31 as a “low dishonest year”? Has there ever been one when so many lies were told and so many democratic hopes left unfulfilled? Has there ever been a New Year’s Day of such foreboding? And yet, so many carry on as if everything is normal. It’s not. This year, 2026, must be the year we wake up and avert potential disaster.

Think of the events of last year. So inured have we become to extraordinary developments that we struggle to recognise them as extraordinary any more. At least not until December 14, when the year had only two weeks to run.

Credit: Illustration: Joe Benke

In Europe in 2025, a major land war entered its fourth year. The familiar background to our news feeds, it seems prosaic, a given. But is it?

Watch the news tonight. You will probably see drones diving into apartment blocks in Kyiv, bitter street fighting in snow-bound Donetsk, or an oil tanker exploding in the Mediterranean. This is how the V1 rocket attacks on London of 1944, the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942 and the Battle of the Atlantic in 1943 looked to the people who experienced them. The past is catching up with us.

The BBC now estimates Russian deaths in Ukraine at between 243,000 and 352,000, and Ukrainian deaths at about 140,000. Adding injuries and prisoners of war takes the total casualties to somewhere between 1.5 million and 2 million. The war has so far lasted a month longer than Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union – which traversed many of the same battlefields. There is nothing ordinary about any of this. Why don’t we have a greater sense of foreboding?

Across the democracies of Europe, far-right parties are surging. Their common idea? Probably “remigration” – the idea that non-white people are conspiring to destroy European civilisation and should be forcefully deported. Not long ago, this familiar-sounding conspiracy theory was reserved for neo-Nazi sects; now it is sometimes openly touted by far-right parties contesting for power, like Germany’s Alternative For Deutschland (AfD). In Hungary and elsewhere, antisemitism is also being officially encouraged, often couched in attacks on Jewish businessmen such as George Soros.

It has even infected the official........

© The Sydney Morning Herald