Help, we are living in troubled times. Unless there is a massive change of heart on the other side of the Atlantic it looks increasingly likely that Donald Trump could be the next US president and leader of the free world (as the post was also known during the dark days of the Cold War). This is the man who infamously said that he wanted a “total and complete shutdown” on Muslims entering the US, and although he is now trying to back-pedal by changing the focus to banning immigration from countries known to be unfriendly to the US it is becoming increasingly apparent that what The Donald wants The Donald tends to get.

You would imagine that such an illogical not to say racist demand would raise a storm of protest and so it has - but only up to a point. His Democrat challenger Hillary Clinton said that Trump’s policy was “reprehensible, prejudiced and divisive” and would only exacerbate relations with the Muslim world. Brave words and to be expected from a known liberal but they hardly cut the mustard in a country in which police regularly shoot young black men for little or no reason – 1,134 gunned down in 2015 and more to come this year. Small wonder that this sorry feature of US life featured so prominently in Clinton’s acceptance performance because if any group should feel disenfranchised and alienated from mainstream society it is the victims of American gun happy cops.

Unfortunately for all of us they are not the only ones to find themselves too long in that condition of alienation. Wherever one looks these days democracy is in a state of crisis and flux and all the indications are that it’s not going to get any better any time soon. In fact from the point of view of history things can only get worse. Take a long hard look at all the evidence for this alarming deficit and it seems as if the world has spun unevenly on its axis and has somehow ended up in 1930s Europe when fascism was not a hateful instigator of mass murder and genetic engineering but a curious social and political experiment, albeit one performed with pantomime uniforms and Wagnerian sets. There is plenty to suggest that we are in danger of going back to that horrible past and none of it is encouraging. In fact it’s quite the opposite.

In the Normandy cathedral town of Rouen an elderly Catholic priest was done to death by two young Muslims a week after another deranged young man used a truck to mow down 84 innocents in the city of Nice. Across the Rhine in Germany the country is still reeling after four equally violent attacks in a week which left ten people dead and many more injured in separate gun, bomb, axe and machete attacks. Three were in Bavaria and one was in Baden-Wuerttemberg. Police cannot say if they were related in any way but there was a common factor in that the perpetrators were Muslims.

Apart from the shooting in Munich - which looks likely to have been more akin to a US-style spree killing - the Islamic State claimed responsibility for these atrocities, although it is impossible to say if the leaders of the self-proclaimed caliphate actually directed all of the attacks or were merely jumping on the band wagon after the event. In common with so many incidents of this kind the Islamic State has become a kind of ghastly franchise whose guilt or innocence is impossible to prove or disprove. Al Qaeda acts in much the same way with the result that both organisations have become synonyms for atrocities. Only one sinister fact stands out - the fast tempo of the terrorist attacks across Europe seems to suggest to the suggestible an unassailable fact: namely that young and alienated rootless refugees from imperfectly integrated migrant communities across Europe are beginning to turn on their host countries with bloody results for those who have the misfortune to get in their way.

It does not take a maestro to understand that things will only get worse if societies attempt to deal with the problem by using the chain-mailed fist, employing a flawed belief that the price of freedom has to be an inevitable reduction in individual rights. In fact that backlash has already begun. A recent survey in France shows that eight out of ten normally sane people would be quite happy to accept tighter controls on the immigrant community even if that entails infringing civil liberties or ignoring them altogether. The news from Rouen and Nice will only have reinforced that intolerance and there could be worse to come elsewhere in Europe as countries under threat go to the polls. In Austria next month there will be a rerun of the second round of the presidential election and there is every chance that the far right candidate Norbert Hofer will win the vote he narrowly lost earlier this year. This is the guy who has been spotted wearing a blue cornflower badge – a clandestine Nazi symbol in the 1930s – and who boasts about carrying a Glock 9mm automatic pistol while on the campaign trail.

If Hofer does triumph – and the odds are strongly in his favour – it will give solace to other pan-European right-wing politicians who will be trying to persuade the electorate to vote for them next year. People like the populist and ultra-nationalist Geert Wilders the leader of the Dutch Party for Freedom who once compared the Koran to Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf and who is busily hoovering up support across the Netherlands amongst those who warm to his message that Europe needs to be “de-Islamised”. Or Marine Le Pen leader of France’s far right Front National who once compared the influx of Muslims to occupation by the Nazis during the Second World War and who is set fair to reach the final round of the French presidential elections. Or Frauke Petry of the centre-right Alternative for Germany Party who advocates shooting refugees at German border posts and who could give the increasingly vulnerable Chancellor Angela Merkel a bloody nose next year. Or Matteo Salvini the leader of the socially conservative Northern League party in Italy who compared a left wing opponent to an inflatable sex doll after she requested humane treatment for immigrants and who could cause an upset in October’s constitutional referendum in Italy.

One thing binds together these leaders. All are Eurosceptics who are attracted to the idea of holding referendums on their country’s membership of the EU and who are unafraid of voicing ultra-conservative views about immigration. It goes without saying that all were greatly encouraged by the outcome of the EU referendum in this country where the debate always comes back to that unspeakable “I” word. Like a bad smell it hung over last month’s EU referendum and was probably responsible for so many people in this country voting for Brexit. This has been explained away as a howl of rage against the political and financial establishments or as a ballot box protest against metropolitan values but the harsh reality is that much of the bile against the EU came from a dislike of open borders and a dread of unfettered immigration. Even in Kirklees the Yorkshire constituency of murdered Labour MP Jo Cox who campaigned for the UK to remain in Europe voters still plumped to leave the EU by a margin of 55% to 45%, following a decent turnout of 70%. Nobody seemed particularly surprised by the outcome as the desire to quit the EU was most strongly expressed in England across the midlands and the north. The real surprise was that so many people had come to believe that a vote to remain was a foregone conclusion.

As happens in any plebiscite in which rival views are expressed the campaign stirred some violent emotions and awakened ancient hatreds. Listening to some of the Brexiters’ views on immigration was not an edifying experience and it was not really to be wondered at that their xenophobia was eagerly taken up by right-wing ideologues preying on their belief that open borders spell doom. This kind of Little Englander approach added nothing to the argument but, worse, it sullied it by suggesting that somehow immigration was the root cause of all the ills being suffered by this country and that it had to be dealt with, whatever the cost. Quarantine us from the effects of immigration and all will be well became a well-worn refrain throughout the campaign. Sad to say, that point of view will only be reinforced by what has been happening last week across Europe and beyond – think of Iraq and Syria both riddled with violence and easy prey for the suicide bomber. This is point where The Donald comes back into the equation.

His views on the way to deal with Islamic immigration are rightly thought to be repugnant but they are widely held and not just in his own country. In a world in which the old certainties are no longer trusted and where even politicians (especially politicians) are held in low esteem opinions of the kind peddled by Trump quickly gain legitimacy, thanks largely to his wealth, power and influence. That only adds to the democratic deficit by vesting so much power in one individual. It is also all too easy to use the “I” word carelessly and unthinkingly and to hide behind its catch-all flexibility - but therein lies the danger of creating further casuistry. As we have seen in Turkey following the recently failed coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan cracking down on dissidents is not the answer and his authoritarian response to his critics is only making matters worse by creating a climate of fear and tension across the country. That cannot be good for anyone anywhere as the hegemony of the right can only inspire further atrocities thereby creating a vicious circle in which violence begets further violence. Meanwhile the cumulative effect reinforces public demands for even more repression and so the cycle goes on and on, a relentless succession which defies all attempts at braking. The portrayal of Muslim communities in western countries as a perpetual fifth column risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. It alienates people from each other just as the attacks themselves do. Ironically that is the aim of any terrorist organisation trying to bring down a legitimate government.

So, what is to be done to restore equilibrium? One approach is to try to get to the heart of the matter by understanding the fears that swirl around immigration especially from the war-torn Middle East where much of the violence has been instigated by outside meddling, not least the US-UK led invasion of Iraq in 2003. In the past two years, partly in response to that action, much of the angst has been created by the adherents of the Islamic State. As it exists at the moment this body seeks to establish a physical caliphate and, despite recent military reverses, it continues to control large areas of land in Syria, Libya and Iraq, including Iraq’s second city, Mosul. Less well understood is its genuine belief in the proximity of the apocalypse, the anticipation of a defining conflict between believer and unbeliever which will usher in a new age of the righteous.

In that purlieu life is cheap. Millions of people might die in the process but the extremists believe it will be a price worth paying if a global caliphate is achieved and sharia law imposed across the world. This is not just the lure of paradise with its lazy promise of eternal physical luxury, it is the evidence of their own lives in which warfare is the norm and death is an everyday companion – and in which the west can hardly avoid censure as it has produced much of the violence. Even if those mixed up in this maelstrom do not witness violence directly or on a daily basis it can be found on their television or computer screens and the sound can always be turned down to avoid hurting sensibilities. In the internet age you don’t have to listen to the screams.

At its most basic, from a historical perspective this situation represents a direct assault on the ethics of the Judaeo-Christian liberal tradition with its insistence on the sanctity of human life, so different from the squalid reality of slitting the throat of a priest in his eighties in a church in a quiet French town. Less knowingly, and as barely comprehended by those who fear mass immigration and shudder at the thought of new and unknown people arriving in the neighbourhood, this is nihilism in its purest form and it is something which has to be resisted if the democratic deficit is to be recalibrated within our lifetimes.