history rarely repeats itself cleanly — but it rhymes, and sometimes it screams. According to Marcela Douglas Aranibar, Head of the Centre for Geopolitics, Peace and Security at UiT The Arctic university of Norway, the current global moment carries a deeply unsettling resemblance to the world that sleepwalked into World war II.

In a recent interview published in january 2026, she issued a stark warning: democratic erosion does not arrive with tanks — it arrives slowly, legally, and often with applause. What we are witnessing today, particularly in the united states, is not chaos — it is a methodical weakening of guardrails. And history tells us exactly where that road can lead.

🧨 THE PARALLELS WE CAN NO LONGER IGNORE

1. Democracy Doesn’t Collapse Overnight — It Erodes Quietly

The most dangerous authoritarian shifts do not announce themselves. Rule of law, judicial independence, and freedom of expression rarely vanish in a single act — they are chipped away incrementally. According to Aranibar, this gradual decay is precisely what makes it so difficult to detect early. By the time people realize something is wrong, the damage is already institutionalized.

2. Executive Power Stretching Beyond Its Limits

Under Donald Trump, presidential authority has increasingly pushed into gray zones — both domestically and internationally. The selective honoring of treaties, the politicization of sanctions, and the personalization of foreign policy mirror a pre-war european pattern where leaders treated international agreements as optional inconveniences.

3. When Treaty Violations Become a Political Tool

The comparison is chilling but deliberate. Just as Adolf Hitler repeatedly violated the Treaty of Versailles to test global resolve, modern treaty breaches serve as probes — measuring how much the international system will tolerate. Each unpunished violation normalizes the next.

4. The Disturbing Symbolism of Moral Endorsements

Aranibar draws a haunting historical parallel: Norwegian Nobel laureate Knut Hamsun publicly supported Hitler and, in 1943, gifted his Nobel medal to Joseph Goebbels. Fast forward to today, when María Corina Machado, recipient of the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, symbolically offered her medal to Trump. Different contexts. Same unsettling message: history has a habit of repeating its symbolism before it repeats its violence.

5. MAGA Is Not a Meme — It’s a Mobilizing Force

The MAGA movement is often dismissed as noise, but Aranibar urges against complacency. The events of the January 6 united states Capitol attack demonstrated its capacity to mobilize, radicalize, and challenge the democratic transfer of power. That energy has not disappeared — it has merely adapted.

6. Economic Pressure as Psychological Warfare

Trump’s tariff threats against Denmark and Greenland, framed around control and leverage, are described by Aranibar as “psychological blackmail.” This tactic — coercion without conflict — destabilizes alliances while avoiding open confrontation. For Norway, such moves directly threaten Arctic security and regional stability.

7. Academia and media Under Pressure: The First red Flags

Authoritarian systems rarely begin with censorship laws — they begin with intimidation. Pressuring dissenting academics, undermining journalistic credibility, and framing criticism as disloyalty are classic early warning signs. These are not coincidences. They are rehearsed strategies.

8. Why norway — and the World — Cannot Look Away

U.S. political shifts ripple outward through NATO, global trade, and Arctic geopolitics. When the world’s most powerful democracy weakens its own institutions, it destabilizes every democracy tied to it. Public anxiety, Aranibar insists, is not hysteria — it is rational awareness.

🕯️ FINAL WARNING

The world before World war II did not believe catastrophe was inevitable. It was believed that compromise would hold, institutions would restrain ambition, and norms would protect peace. They didn’t. Aranibar’s message is not that war is certain, but that democratic decay is never harmless.

history does not repeat itself because we forget facts.
It repeats because we ignore patterns.

And right now, the pattern is unmistakable.