MY first conscious political stirrings were prompted by the fall of the Berlin Wall.

While the symbol of Europe’s division and Stalinist tyranny was being dinged doon by thousands of East German hammers, I had a sense of pride in belonging to something bigger than myself – something called “the free west”.

We in the west had found the all-conquering formula. Liberal-democracy, the open society, the mixed social-market economy.

With this formula we’d won the Cold War and saved humanity from nuclear annihilation.

The victory came so unexpectedly. Just days before those scenes of jubilee, the Berlin Wall was a killing zone in the front line of that global ideological battle.

For the second time in a century, “we” had defeated the dark forces of a brutal totalitarianism. This time, however, we’d done it not with Hurricanes and Spitfires, but with blue jeans, coca cola and rock’n’roll.

Those behind the Iron Curtain didn’t want to beat us, they wanted to be us. From the dire straits of Soviet domination, they wanted a world of microwave ovens and colour TVs.

We looked forward with confidence to a peaceful, prosperous and free world. From now on it was going to be nothing but plain sailing. Maybe a little mopping up remained to be done here and there, and some pragmatic tinkering at the edges, but all the great ideological battles were over.

The Balkans, in particular, was a blemish on the face of this liberal-democratic triumphalism, but it merely showed that the victory was yet to be fully consolidated, not that it was ever in doubt.

It was not to be. In the 2000s, western liberal democracy was not only challenged from without by radical Islamist movements, but also began to crumple from within. The participatory democracy envisaged by the hopeful generation of 1989 morphed into a heartless and rootless globalising neoliberal capitalism.

Some did well out of this transformation, forming part of a new liberal cosmopolitan pan-European class of ambitious young graduates. Others – older, poorer, those whose skills were no longer in vogue – did less well.

That neoliberal hegemony lost its moral authority but none of its hard power in the 2008 financial crisis. It’s hard to accept tax loopholes for multinationals when your local library is closed, and tough to swallow bonuses for bankers when you are living with your parents because you can’t afford a deposit on a flat.

The anger, disaffection, betrayal, fear and moral indignation are real. The authoritarian populists know this and ruthlessly exploit it.

If liberal democracy doesn’t deliver a fair deal to ordinary working people then people’s disillusionment will turn to disgust, disgust to demagoguery and demagoguery inevitably to tyranny.

Moderate, pragmatic, centrist liberals who try to ignore those feelings, or who claim that those feelings are not legitimate or justified, will lose.

The word “fascism” has been overused and lost much of its currency, but there’s no better shorthand term for this new type of radical far-right authoritarian populism.

This is an “I don’t really care – do U?”, buffoon-turned-autocrat, made-for-TV fascism. It uses Twitter bots and dark money rather than jackboots and brown shirts, but it is just as vulgar, crass, demeaning, corrupting, fraudulent and corrosive as the fascism of old.

THE primordial task of all who support liberal-democracy and human dignity is to resist this new fascism.

We must make a stand for liberal democracy, representative and responsible government, free and fair elections, human rights, judicial independence, a politically neutral professional civil service, an open and pluralist society, a free and balanced media, fair treatment of all regardless of race and religion.

We must recognise that we are engaged, once again, in a fight for the survival of all that is true, honest, just, pure, lovely and of good report.

Freedom is in peril. Defend it with all your might. To win, we must remember that liberal democracy is rooted in a certain values and principles of human flourishing.

It makes ethical demands of citizens and leaders, calling for qualities of good leadership and good stewardship, a sense of public duty, responsibility and self-restraint.

It depends not on a ruthless calculation of interests in the pursuit of power, but on leaders having the decency to do the right thing and on citizens’ commitment to care that the right thing be done.

A written constitution is vital to declare those values and principles, and to translate them into working political institutions and enforceable legal rights and restraints. Yet a written constitution alone is not sufficient to stop this new fascism. In the wrong hands the letter of a constitution can be twisted and mangled until it kills. It is the spirit of the constitution that gives life to liberal-democracy. From this spirit alone can a perishing democracy be regenerated.

This column welcomes questions from readers