We have not begun to think through the consequences of the collapse of the old conservatism before xenophobia and charlatanry. A start can be made by considering what we can no longer instinctively take to be true.

Once we would have considered conservatives to be the natural enemies of fanatics. Their dislike of totalitarian theories, their belief in the rule of law, and their assumption that totalitarian movements had always been the West’s enemy had practical consequences. You can see what they once opposed in a powerful, almost lyrical, documentary, Watching the Moon at Night, by the Swedish filmmakers Bo Persson and Joanna Helander. They weave together the conspiracy theories of Nazism and the stories of the victims of its ghettos and camps with the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories of modern Iran and radical Sunni Islam and the stories of the victims of their terrorism. It is a warning of the danger of appeasing fascism in its old or new forms.

Watching the Moon at Night has been shown to the European Parliament and at film festivals around the world. It won’t surprise you to learn that it has proved too much for allegedly “liberal” Swedes, who wanted to see Israel demonised. Although the Swedish station Sveriges Television helped fund the documentary, it refused to show it on Swedish television. Once, you might have counted on conservatives to protest and announce their solidarity with the filmmakers and everyone fighting and dying in the struggles against the fascism of our time. I cannot see how they can do that now with a good conscience and straight face.

For me the most telling moment in the documentary came when a Warsaw academic, Joanna Tokarska-Bakir, who investigates pogroms and race hatred, spoke. She looked at the persistence of the myth that the Jews kidnapped children and baked bread with their blood. And, unwittingly, she gave a psychological description of what we now call post-truth politics. “Anti-Semitic statements are not factual,” she said. “Its long history cannot be explained only as a lack of knowledge. It’s when people dream, and you cannot argue against dreams with facts and education. People are possessed by dreaming.”

How can you expect Western conservatives to fight against such fanaticism when they have entered their own dreamtime? They dream that a bragging authoritarian oaf can make America great again. They dream that they can have the benefits of free trade without the costs of protectionism. They dream that they can lay all the faults of their society on foreigners and minorities. They dream a dark, self-satisfied dream, and their friends and fellow partisans lack the courage or the inclination to wake them with a well-deserved and long overdue slap in the face.