April 19, 2026 – If anyone wonders how it was possible that, while in 1944 a civilization was being cremated in Auschwitz and on the Baltic coast the German middle classes were enjoying the hot summer with overflowing joy, they need only look at the indifferent apathy of the current rulers of most countries in the world, and their educated representatives, in the face of the genocide in Gaza or the intimidation by the US president.
On April 5, President Trump called the Iranian government, which has kept the Strait of Hormuz—through which 20% of the world’s oil passes—”crazy bastards.” On April 7, on his social media account Truth, he declared: “Tonight an entire civilization will disappear.”
What is terrifying is not only the intention of a president of a nuclear power to prepare to exterminate “an entire civilization,” but also the silence and morbid fascination with which this monstrous declaration has been received by the dominant “public opinion” throughout the world.
Few were horrified by the public and official threat to murder millions of people—children, adults, the elderly—and devastate their culture, their history, their religion, their economy, their geography, their institutions, and their descendants, because all of that constitutes a “civilization.” Some rushed to see how this ultimatum had affected the international price of the oil and gas they consume in their countries. Others, indifferent, scrolled on their cell phone screens to watch a more humorous video, while a large number of powerful psychopaths set timers to count down the time remaining until they could witness the next spectacle: seeing Trump make an epic retreat, or witnessing live the apocalyptic extinction of a nation of 90 million people. It made no difference to them which it was.
If ever there was a country, an institution, or a public conscience that boasted of a moral superiority to prescribe the world’s good destiny in the name of some value—reason, “the West,” and so on—that morality is now buried in the mire of silent complicity with humanity’s most degraded and destructive impulses, which reign everywhere. The judgment that Iran has a theocratic and repressive government does not grant any other country the authority to “correct” that course, much less annihilate the entire nation. Since the Peace of Westphalia of 1648 and, later, the UN Charter, in its Article 2, every country has the sovereign right to establish its own political institutions.
So, if anyone wonders how it was possible that, while in 1944 a civilization was being cremated in Auschwitz and on the Baltic coast the German middle classes were enjoying the hot summer with overflowing joy, they need only look at the indifferent apathy of the current rulers of most countries in the world, and their educated representatives, in the face of the genocide in Gaza or the intimidation by the US president.
The comparison is not far-fetched. In 1943, SS chief A. Himmler, in a speech in Poland, outlined the operational plan for the “extermination of the Jewish people” (yadvashem.org). Substitute the word “people” with “civilization,” and you have the same genocidal pronouncement that has been leveled against Iran today. The difference is that Himmler indicated that this “would not be discussed in public.” Today, however, it is discussed through all media outlets, which makes the silence of the dominant “public opinion” all the more terrifying.
This is not necessarily a return to the times of classical fascism, but rather the unpunished return of the barbarization of those who are different, of foreigners, of the vulnerable. And, with that, of those who have the right to live or the obligation to die.
This shift in the boundaries of what is publicly normalized, institutionally tolerable, and indifferent or laughable according to the voter’s moral standards is striking. It is not solely related to the personal qualities of presidents who monopolize the performative power of official language. It is also a social predisposition toward the unthinkable and the abominable, characteristic of those times of collapse of the prevailing belief system and the temporary absence of a new one.
But how did President Trump go from planning the assassination of the leaders of a sovereign nation to announcing the possible extermination of a country? It could be said that, in less than a month, Trump and his cabinet went through three conceptions of the state, all of which failed to achieve their objectives.
The first, closer to monarchical absolutism, identifies a country’s regime with the person of the sovereign who, by religious or natural mandate, is the sole possessor of the power to define the norms and unity of a society’s life. In this case, beheading the ruler is to decapitate the political cohesion of society, turning it into a conglomeration of defeated and submissive individuals under the external sovereign who holds the power to determine the life, or death, of any other person in the country. Therefore, killing the Iranian Supreme Leader—Ali Khamenei—was the primary objective of the American bombing of Iran.
The success of this objective was spectacular. Trump announced military operations on February 28, and on March 1, the death of the Iranian leader was confirmed. But, contrary to all expectations, the government did not collapse, nor did the Iranian people take to the streets jubilantly waving American flags. It was assumed that, with the leader dead, the government would grind to a halt and Iranian society, which weeks earlier had taken to the streets to protest against the government for inflation and the collapse of economic income, would celebrate the ruler’s death. But none of that happened. Iranian society was plunged into widespread mourning.
With the absolutist interpretation of the governing body having failed, the focus immediately shifted to a Weberian conception of the state. According to this view, the state holds a monopoly on coercion, and thus ending this monopoly externally was presented as the means to collapse any form of government and even to annihilate the repressive machinery that supposedly “prevents” Iranians from celebrating American “liberation.”
Thus, in the following days, US and Israeli planes and missiles destroyed Iran’s air force, navy, and military command posts. And, true to their absolutist ideology, they assassinated the political and military leaders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the General Staff, the militias, and several ministers. But even then, the Islamic government did not fall, surrender, or disappear.
On the contrary, in a surprisingly decentralized and widespread approach, typical of guerrilla warfare—only now with drones, speedboats, and RPGs—the Iranians have neutralized the sophisticated US and Israeli air defense batteries deployed in the Middle East. They have damaged and forced the evacuation of the 13 US military bases in the Persian Gulf, relocating the 40,000 troops stationed there to work in civilian hotels or at bases in Germany and Italy (Wall Street Journal, April 8).
The failure of this way of conceiving the state as a mere apparatus of coercion over the population was already evident in Afghanistan, invaded by a coalition of “Western” countries. Between 2001 and 2021, the Americans spent $2.3 trillion to maintain their presence (Brown University, 2021). They deployed up to 100,000 soldiers and created a puppet army at their service with the support of the most powerful and sophisticated military organization in the world. But, in the end, they had to flee the country. A nation of shepherds defeated the nation of algorithms and finance. Something similar happened decades earlier in Vietnam, when a nation of peasant families also defeated the homeland of automobiles and household appliances. A society is not just its political elites, nor is a state simply the monopoly on violence.
A state is a form of societal unification, and a society is a dense web of cultural, historical, economic, political, moral, and religious ties among its members. It is also a way of enshrining the past and imagining a shared future. Institutions are only part of that network of ties, and the apparatus of coercion is only one part of those institutions. Thus, when the leaders of institutions are killed or the military is destroyed, believing that “the U.S. has wiped Iran off the map,” as Trump proclaimed on March 21, is a bloody naiveté.
This conceptual error has proven very costly for the Trump administration. By the end of March, the Financial Times estimated the cost at nearly $30 billion, without any attempt to change the regime or gain control of the Strait of Hormuz. Added to this is the breakdown of the Atlantic alliance, which Trump advised to muster the courage to fight for itself. Then there is the soaring price of oil, which will contract global economic growth. And, domestically, the scandalous 30% increase in gasoline prices will certainly have political repercussions in the November parliamentary elections.
All these failures have further clouded the Trump administration’s reasoning, leading it now to experiment with a racial conception of power. Drawing on Huntington—for whom the state is merely a vehicle for a higher unity called “civilization,” comprised of religion, shared history, customs, self-identification, and language—and whose superiority over others is measured by the “application of organized violence” ( The Clash of Civilizations , p. 58), they concluded that, to end the Iranian “regime,” it was necessary to eradicate Iranian “civilization.” And that is precisely what they have announced.
But how do you annihilate the culture, history, way of life, institutions, and religion of 90 million people “in one night”? Traditional forms of colonialism—catechism and acculturation—require decades or centuries. Killing them in concentration camps would take years. Wiping out a civilization overnight inevitably requires an atomic “final solution.” That is the underlying threat.
Finally, on April 7, Trump announced a two-week truce. Wall Street stocks rose again, the impending Armageddon was shelved, and global tolerance of barbarity hid behind a hypocritical silence. But, as in 1943, the world of “normalization” had already moved even further toward the abyss.
It is said that Trump, his words and actions, will not last and show the decline of an empire and the old world order. Yes, but they must also be seen as the fearsome tremor of the beginning of a new order. As Hegel reminds us, history always stumbles along the dark side of passions and selfish desires. That is why Trump is the very personification of liminal time.
