The left fights back: Change or lose may be the lesson

In 1944, when the Allies’ grandees were shaping the post-war world Joseph Stalin interrupted one of Winston Churchill’s sweep-of-empire monologues, in which he argued that Catholic Poland should be treated well so as not to alienate the Vatican, with one of his infamous invocations of realpolitik: “How many divisions does the Pope of Rome have?”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and Pedro Sánchez Pérez-Castejón may not have many divisions — military ones anyway — but in the darkening world of Trump, Putin, Erdogan, Orbán and those who would ape them, their victories are a reminder that the forces of the worst kind of insular, nativist nationalism — which should never be confused with patriotism — can be resisted.