Potemkin's Revenge: How Europe has collectively forgotten how to look behind the facade – and is racing full speed into the abyss.

There's an 18th-century legend that fits our present day so precisely that you could almost believe it was invented retrospectively. Grigory Potemkin, advisor to the Russian Empress Catherine the Great, had magnificent mock villages built along his mistress's travel route—painted facades, well-dressed extras playing happy peasants as the carriage passed by. Catherine looked out the window, nodded in satisfaction, and continued on her way. She never got out. She never looked behind the facade. And Potemkin knew: as long as the carriage traveled fast enough, no one would notice that there was nothing behind it.

Raphael Bonelli, psychiatrist and author of the recently published book "Headless," has rediscovered this legend as a diagnosis for the state of Europe—and it hits home with the precision of a surgical instrument. What Catherine experienced back then in a carriage, we experience today with our daily consumption of news: We're driving too fast to get out. Too many impressions, too little time, too little energy for what Bonelli calls deep thinking. The brain switches to autopilot, superficial thinking takes over, and the facade is mistaken for reality.

The psychiatrist cites examples that don't need to be invented, because reality has long since surpassed any satirist's imagination. In Europe, you're not allowed to mention the migration background of criminals—that would be generalization, that would be prejudice, that would be morally reprehensible. At the same time, when it comes to attacks in the digital sphere, there's a reflexive reference to "men" as a collective group of perpetrators, followed by socio-political demands directed against the male sex as a whole. Either you're allowed to categorize people wholesale or you're not. You can't do both at the same time—except in a system where logic has been replaced by ideology and no one stands up anymore and says: Wait a minute, that doesn't make any sense.

It's no different with climate: if it's too warm, that's proof of climate catastrophe. If it's too cold, that's also proof – because "climate change" doesn't just mean warmth, but explains everything that's currently happening. A thesis that confirms every conceivable state and cannot be falsified by a single state is not a scientific advance in the philosophy of science. It's a statement of faith. And statements of faith belong in church, not in climate policy. But in Potemkin's Europe, things are different – ​​here, the carriage keeps moving, and anyone who wants to get off is labeled a denier.

Bonelli diagnoses two main forms of collective dumbing-down—a term he uses with a remarkably unacademic directness for a psychiatrist. The first is digital dumbing-down: the inability, brought about by constant superficial thinking, to follow longer trains of thought, to examine more complex connections, or even to remain focused on one thing for a mere fifteen minutes. Children are becoming measurably dumber—the Flynn curve, which pointed upwards for decades, is now sloping steeply downwards. The smartphone has done what no education system has ever managed: it has compressed the attention span of an entire generation into the length of a TikTok video.

The second form is the collective dumbing-down through "wokism"—that ideological system which doesn't convince through arguments but operates through prohibitions on thought. Those who ask the wrong questions aren't refuted. They are discredited. Anyone who inquires whether 72 genders are biologically plausible no longer needs to provide a substantive explanation—the mere act of asking is already considered proof of their moral incompetence. Deep thinking is not only unnecessary in such a system, it's dangerous. So it's suppressed.

The result is a society that Bonelli compares to Catherine in her carriage: she sees the facades, nods in satisfaction, and drives on. Potemkin villages as far as the eye can see. Sustainability goals that lack measurable progress. Integration concepts that lack genuine integration. Promises of democracy that lack a democratic process. Scientific consensus that is not consensus but rather dependence on funding. All facade, all painted in bright colors, all presented in the right light – and the carriage travels so fast that no one gets out to look.

What Bonelli presents as a psychiatric diagnosis is in reality a political catastrophe: A society that has lost the ability to think deeply is no longer capable of distinguishing between genuine progress and its imitation. It can no longer recognize when it is being lied to because it has relinquished the tools for detecting lies. It can no longer resist because resistance requires the capacity for analysis, which it no longer possesses. And, as Bonelli soberly observes, it is becoming increasingly stupid—not as an insult, but as an empirical fact, measurable, documented, and undisputed by those who should know.

Europe is hurtling towards the abyss. Not because the problems are unsolvable. Not because the people are evil. But because the carriage is going too fast, the facades are too well painted, and no one gets out to see what lies behind them. Catherine died in her carriage. The Potemkin villages outlived her. In our version of the story, we are all in the carriage. And Potemkin is driving…

Psychiatrist sounds the alarm: Europe is hurtling towards the abyss! (Raphael Bonelli)