As life imitates art in this chaotic election year, a recent satirical German film helps illuminate the resurgence of right-wing, nativist populism across Europe, demonstrating how easily hateful ideas that should have been discredited decades ago can be cleaned up, repackaged, and slipped back into a country's national discourse. It is unclear what role right-wing extremism may have played in inspiring the senseless murder of UK Member of Parliament Jo Cox on June 16. Nevertheless, at a minimum, the harsh tenor of today’s political debate in Europe risks provoking violence. Tackling this crisis requires the European center to mount a robust first-principles defense of the liberal international policies and institutions that rebuilt postwar Europe and won the Cold War, while acknowledging where tough reforms are needed to address the genuine societal discontent at the root of these movements. At the same time, popular media must resist mainstreaming xenophobia and nationalist rhetoric, and instead challenge outrageous statements from the far-right, however slyly they may be packaged.

The premise of David Wnendt’s "Look Who's Back" ("Er ist wieder da")—a 2015 German film based on Timur Vermes’ 2012 satirical novel of the same name—is that a shell-shocked Adolf Hitler inexplicably wakes up in present day Berlin. After an anachronistic fascist-out-of-water comic first act, in which Hitler orients himself to the changes of the past 70 years, the character  becomes a national media sensation on the German reality TV and talk show circuit by striking all the right(-wing) chords of postmodern European societal insecurity. Cynical German TV producers seize on the protagonist’s unexpected popularity to drive up ratings, mistaking his actual odious views for an edgy comic routine. Novelty, spectacle, and scandal ensure snowballing media coverage, which give his dangerous beliefs a national platform.

That half of the movie alone would be worth watching as interesting if rather disquieting satire. But more powerful is Wnendt’s threading of unscripted footage throughout the film of the character interacting on the street with real Germans and tourists of today. Although you see many ordinary people shun a man walking around German public squares dressed as Hitler, others share their grievances on unemployment and immigration and nod their heads as the character suggests reinstituting labor camps or selective breeding as solutions. “Look Who’s Back” artfully poses the question of what is more unnerving: that people in one of the best educated, most prosperous, and most tolerant nations on the planet could still harbor simplistic, reactionary, and hateful sentiments; or that a garrulous and offensively charismatic TV personality could uncover them so easily.

Unlike in populist rhetoric itself, there are no easy scapegoats or silver bullets for today’s crisis of a resurgent far-right. The West must of course be vigilant against the malign foreign actors that quietly benefit from and support its rise and the fracturing of the political center in Europe. Yet, while a country like Russia can be viewed as opportunistically helping fan the flames (e.g. through loans funding Le Pen’s Front Nacionale in France or twitter trolls in St. Petersburg), it did not set the kindling or light the spark. The discontent at the heart of these movements is genuine among many people in Europe who do feel unmoored and vulnerable. For various reasons, these people do not feel or recognize the benefits afforded by a liberal post-war order anchored by open societies, free trade, social progress, institutions such as the European Union, or alliance structures such as NATO. A large part of the problem is that many of those who work within this system hold those benefits as a given. They take the progress Western societies have made for granted. In truth, recovery from the global financial crisis of eight years ago and ensuing Eurocrisis has been slow in coming and reached various European national economies and individuals unevenly. This lost decade comes on the heels of years of cumulative growth in Europe and has thus created a sense of inequality and unmet expectations akin to the socioeconomic conditions in which right-wing extremism flourished in the 1930s.

Some European centrist parties have responded by taking sharply right towards populist positions. This tactic appears to have backfired in several countries, boosting far-right parties (as in the case of Slovakian parliamentary elections in March), mainstreaming xenophobia in the public debate (as in France), or teeing up a wholly avoidable strategic blunder in the United Kingdom’s upcoming Brexit vote (a political own-goal in this year of Euro Cup). The European center would do better to define and mount a robust defense of its core values rather than shamefully (and apparently ineffectively) parrot those of the far-right.

This crisis presents a chance for those in system to challenge their assumptions so that they can appropriately modernize and improve the postwar system. On the economic side, this means better understanding the various structural, technological, and demographic roots of declining productivity and rising income inequality, as well as the strengths and deficiencies of our current policy toolbox to address them. On the security side, it means redoubling efforts to reinvigorate NATO to address the threats emanating from its Eastern and Southern flanks and bolstering the credibility of collective defense in the eyes of jittery transatlantic citizens and calculating adversaries. A hard scrub and earnest reform of the policies and institutions that have served most of the West well for the past 70 years will help us ensure benefits are more broadly felt for the next 70, and help update and strengthen the public arguments in their defense.

Part of making this argument also means inculcating in today’s generations a proper sense of historical perspective and an appreciation for “what could have been” had their Atlanticist forebears, surveying the global wreckage of two World Wars, not put forth up an international system that rejected isolationism and is guided by the values and norms of liberal democracies and multilateralism. This does not mean falling into the trap of the “End of History” triumphalism of the immediate post-Cold War 1990s, but instead giving a sober, basic principles defense of the best parts of the liberal international system and contrast them to what the past century has shown are the dreadful alternatives.

Finally, a new rigor is required in the policy analysis and broader societal conversation on these topics in the West to encourage audiences to ignore the spectacle of the messenger and keep focused on the content of the message. Voters must look past the slick packaging and smart suits of Europe’s new extreme right-wing parties and instead see their disgraceful heritage. And, as “Look Who’s Back” warns, the media must avoid embracing the sound and fury of these far-right populist campaigns as ratings-driving television or click-bait headlines (this no harmless tale told by an idiot), but rather relentlessly fact-check, dispute, and hold manipulative, nationalist politicians accountable for every claim they make.

Alton V. Buland is Country Director for Turkey, Cyprus, and Malta in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and holds degrees in modern European history and strategic studies from Harvard and the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. The views herein are his own and do not represent those of the United States Department of Defense or the United States government.

The views expressed in this post reflect those of the author and not that of the EastWest Institute.