Some time ago Medium published an article by Tobias Stone. It was called ‘History tells us what may happen next with Brexit & Trump.’ It caught the attention of Radio On’s Adrian Shephard, who, as a Brit living in Berlin, has reasons to believe that Brexit is not the next best thing coming from the UK some sixty years after The Beatles went to Hamburg.

An excerpt from the article might give you an idea what Tobias Stone tries to say.

“(…) The collapse of the Roman Empire, Black Death, Spanish Inquisition, Thirty Years War, War of the Roses, English Civil War… it’s a long list. Events of massive destruction from which humanity recovered and move on, often in better shape.

At a local level in time people think things are fine, then things rapidly spiral out of control until they become unstoppable, and we wreak massive destruction on ourselves. For the people living in the midst of this it is hard to see happening and hard to understand. To historians later it all makes sense and we see clearly how one thing led to another. During the Centenary of the Battle of the Somme I was struck that it was a direct outcome of the assassination of an Austrian Arch Duke in Bosnia. I very much doubt anyone at the time thought the killing of a European royal would lead to the death of 17 million people.

My point is that this is a cycle. It happens again and again, but as most people only have a 50–100 year historical perspective they don’t see that it’s happening again. As the events that led to the First World War unfolded, there were a few brilliant minds who started to warn that something big was wrong, that the web of treaties across Europe could lead to a war, but they were dismissed as hysterical, mad, or fools, as is always the way, and as people who worry about Putin, Brexit, and Trump are dismissed now.”

This article and more by Tobias Stone

Adrian decided to read it out. You can hear his reading at an hour that suits you best.

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