A hundred and thirty years ago, Friedrich Nietzsche penned three words that would haunt the West: “God is dead.”

It was not a celebration. It was a reckoning. Nietzsche was not just referring to a loss of faith — he was marking a rupture in the moral architecture of the Western world. No longer would kings or governments be legitimised by divine right; power now had to explain itself with reason, ethics, and logic. Morality became secular. Authority became rational. The Enlightenment had won, and humanity was free — or so we thought.

But what do we call it now, when those same governments that once prided themselves on rationality embrace the very irrationality they claimed to outgrow? When hatred becomes policy, and cruelty is defended as culture? When the language of ethics is hijacked to justify oppression, and facts are bent to fit fiction?

The West is not merely declining — it is repeating. And the parallels are as obvious as they are terrifying.

Today, “woke culture” is treated as a punchline. It’s the new scapegoat, the boogeyman for everything from failing schools to political deadlock. But if we strip away the slurs and slogans, we see something else: Cassandra. The mythical Trojan prophetess cursed to speak the truth but never be believed. Her warnings were clear. Her visions, accurate. But the people mocked her, shut her down, labelled her hysterical — and opened the gates to their own destruction.

What we now call “wokeness” — the deep, often uncomfortable insistence on justice, inclusion, decolonisation, and truth-telling — is today’s Cassandra. It speaks of rising authoritarianism, ecological catastrophe, institutional rot, and white supremacy. And just like in Troy, no one is listening. Instead, we sneer. We say it’s too much. Too sensitive. Too extreme. Meanwhile, the Trojan Horse is already inside the gates.

We’ve seen this before — in books, in black-and-white reels, in the stained glass of history. The militarisation of police; the glorification of violence; culture wars to distract from corruption; the targeting of minorities; the legitimisation of ethnic cleansing; The rise of a strongman; the fall of facts; propaganda machines; book bans; voter suppression; the hollowing of institutions.

Economic precarity fuels fascism. It always has. When people are hungry, angry, and afraid, they stop looking for justice and start looking for scapegoats. Just ask Europe in the 1930s. History isn’t subtle. It leaves us a manual, and we ignore it at our peril.

This isn’t just about Donald Trump. Trump was not an aberration — he was a product. A symptom. A mirror held up to a nation that had been sick long before he arrived. His rise, and the unwavering loyalty he commands, reflects something more dangerous than ignorance: desire. People wanted him. They voted for him knowing the cruelty, loving the chaos. He didn’t trick America — he revealed it.

And now, even as he faces indictments and disgrace, millions still cling to him. Not because they believe he’s right — but because he makes them feel seen in their fear, their anger, their imagined loss of status. Fascism doesn’t need facts. It only needs feelings.

Why do we keep doing this? Why do humans, even with centuries of blood and ash behind us, keep repeating the same catastrophic scripts?

Because we are not built for memory. We are built for myth. Because acknowledging history requires confronting complicity. It’s easier to blame outsiders than to fix ourselves. Because repetition feels safer than reflection. Because self-awareness is painful.

As philosopher George Santayana warned: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” But the West has gone a step further — it remembers, and chooses to repeat. The pattern isn’t just forgotten — it’s chosen. We’ve mistaken comfort for truth. Familiarity for safety. And that will kill us.

We live in a world where the oceans are rising, forests are burning, and mass extinction looms. Where science is begging us to change course. But instead of rallying to save our shared home, we are wasting precious time debating fascism. Again.

We should be innovating toward sustainability. Reimagining justice. Investing in collective well-being. Instead, we are arguing over whether teachers should say the word “gay” in classrooms, or if Black history is too “divisive” to be taught. We are fighting culture wars while the Earth screams in agony.

Denial is not passive — it is a weapon. It lets the powerful stay in power, and the masses stay asleep. It turns real crises into fake conspiracies, and fake enemies into real scapegoats. It numbs the collective conscience just long enough to ensure collapse.

This is not a call to panic — it is a call to wake up. The West is not falling because of immigrants, or feminists, or climate activists. It is falling because it has lost the will to confront itself.

Cassandra was not wrong. She was just early.
And now, she is everywhere — in protestors, scientists, whistleblowers, artists, youth movements — all warning, all shouting into the wind.
The question is: will we listen this time?

The fall of the West won’t be a single collapse. It will be a slow, confident walk into the abyss, ignoring the signs, mocking the prophets, laughing all the way down.

Cassandra screamed. They called her mad. And still, the horse entered the gates.