"The anti-democratic New West of Trump finds more common ground with the tyrannies of Putin, Kim Jong Un and Prince Mohammed bin Salman than with most European democracies," Flanagan said during a speech at the Horizons of Peace event in Gdynia, northern Poland.
He said the "Old West," centred on Europe, is expanding to include countries such as Canada.
'Endless conveyor belt of untruth'
"We see both Russia and the US trapped in endless wars, both using the new machinery of social media and AI as an endless conveyor belt of untruth," he argued.
He warned against accepting the idea that power determines all human relations.
Referring to tech billionaire Peter Thiel, US President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Russian leader Vladimir Putin, he cautioned that their worldview could lead people to believe that the future was predetermined.
Flanagan said modern authoritarian systems combine totalitarian tendencies with new surveillance technologies. He argued that such systems required people to keep repeating lies produced by the system.
He recalled Russian attacks on sites associated with Ukrainian literature, which he said have destroyed large numbers of new Ukrainian books in recent months.
He warned that despair can become tyranny's greatest ally, arguing that people must resist the belief that evil is inevitable.
He closed by invoking Albert Camus' novel The Plague. Flanagan compared the return of authoritarianism to the plague, which never disappears permanently, and said people must decide whether they stand with it or against it.
He concluded that peace requires people to call cruelty, evil and the plague by their proper names.
(sp/gs)
Source: PAP