Polish public figure, journalist, and dissident Adam Michnik made these remarks in an interview with Anton Borkovskyi, host of the Studio West program on Espreso TV.“From a historical perspective, we’re at a pivotal moment. On one hand, we’re witnessing the crisis (collapse) of the United States’ post–World War II image that has guided us all for nearly eighty years. On the other hand, what we’re seeing now is something entirely new and hard to define. It isn’t just about President Trump, who, by universal consensus, is capricious and unpredictable, never knowing what he’ll do or say from one hour to the next, but something broader, something new.”According to Michnik, this is a broader issue.“We are witnessing a ‘brown wave’ (a nationalist movement), which I would compare to both Nazism and Bolshevism,” he said. “At the core of this attempted transformation in America is a rejection of normal liberal parliamentary democracy. It’s a politics rooted in populism, nationalism, authoritarianism, and the curtailment of democratic freedoms. It’s an assault on institutions of higher education, independent media, and the judicial system.”Michnik emphasized that this is an effort to fundamentally alter the American system: “To create something different. It may use the same alphabet — but the essence is entirely different.”"I think American democracy will defend itself, but it has hard times ahead. Because this is not only the basis of populist leaders, but it is also the belief that people want to vote for what Trump is doing with immigrants, refugees, with everything that is a different project for the United States, reaching back to the American Constitution, whereas if I were looking for the primary source for what Trump is implementing, I would look among the radical right (advocating for traditional views) American parties, and not among the right-wing Reagan parties, those kinds of conservatives," Michnik said.According to Michnik, these people are not true conservatives, even if they claim to be. "They are national revolutionaries — and they are far more dangerous.""We’re seeing the same political project emerge in Europe: the hysterical rise of populism, xenophobia, and nationalism," he warned. "It’s visible in every European country. Sometimes it leads to Brexit; other times, to a coalition led by a party that traces its roots back to Mussolini in Italy. In France, it’s Marine Le Pen. In Hungary, it’s Orbán."Michnik notes that, on the other hand, there is China — seeking a new place for itself in the global order, calmly watching from the riverbank as democratic projects “bleed out and corpses float down the river.”“This, in my view, is the Chinese strategy. But I am not a pessimist, because even authoritarian projects have their limits and borders. Of course, Putin’s aggression against Ukraine plays a fundamental role here. I am a strong believer that Putin must lose this war. And therefore it belongs to the people who support the policy of our Polish government, this part of the policy of the European Union, that is, support Ukraine and the whims of Donald Trump.But naturally, everything still lies ahead. We’re living through a difficult moment — much like the 1930s, when Hitler appeared unstoppable, everyone feared him, no one could reach an agreement with him, Roosevelt hesitated to intervene, and it seemed there was no hope. But the future proved otherwise — there was hope then, and there is hope now. We must not give in to pessimism. We must calmly continue our work. I am convinced that Ukraine will win this war,” the journalist concluded.