The liberal order is facing its own 1968

From street unrest to populist gains, Europe’s widening divide between elites and voters is testing the liberal order shaped by the upheavals of 1968 The images of French and Italian cities gripped by unrest are shocking, while Albania is in turmoil, police are dispersing demonstrators in Argentina, and India’s protests show no sign of abating.

Add the upheavals across the Global South, and the parallels with 1968 become difficult to ignore.

That year, political and social unrest swept across much of the world almost simultaneously.

It was a less interconnected age, divided by the Cold War, yet similar movements erupted in countries with vastly different political systems as a remarkable synchronization of discontent took place.

Direct comparisons are inevitably imperfect, but many of the underlying grievances are familiar, such as inequality, problems in education, wars without clear objectives, and growing frustration with political elites unwilling or unable to adapt.

In 1968, the rebellion was largely directed against the conservative establishment, but while the protesters didn’t achieve everything immediately, their ideas ultimately prevailed and in both the West and the socialist bloc, the upheavals helped transform political and social life over subsequent decades.

Today, however, we may be witnessing the opposite process in the end of the political era that 1968 helped create.

Read more Will Europe wake up and stop at the edge of a liberal abyss? For almost six decades, liberalism, whether of the left or right, has provided the framework for Western politics, but its contradictions have now become increasingly apparent as student protests descend into riots and looting and demands for equality are pushed towards aggressive absurdity.

Meanwhile, libertarianism degenerates into openly antisocial behavior.

Governments are devoting themselves to preserving the existing order, employing everything from political manipulation to outright repression.

As in 1968, many protesters have lost faith in democratic institutions, yet there’s little evidence of a coherent revolutionary alternative, and what we see instead is an explosion of destructive energy.

The events of 1968 tested the resilience and adaptability of political systems, with very different results.

In Western Europe, governments initially suppressed the unrest but subsequently absorbed much of the protest movement into mainstream politics and, in doing so, they renewed their own legitimacy and broadened their social base.

The socialist system took a different path.