Not long ago, the things Emmanuel Macron said this week would not have needed saying. Yet, addressing the European Parliament, the French president — barely 40 and not yet a year in office — sounded almost like a biblical prophet, warning of the rising fascination with antidemocratic and “illiberal” ideas, “the deadly tendency which might lead our continent to the abyss, nationalism, giving up of freedom.”

Mr. Macron did not mention anyone by name — not Viktor Orban of Hungary, not Jaroslaw Kaczynski of Poland, not the populists who won in Italy’s national election, not the far-right parties that have spread across Europe on hatred of immigrants, xenophobia, disdain for the rule of law, intolerance of dissent and suspiciousness of international cooperation. Nor did he name Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin, though they are clearly an inspiration and model for the European far right.

He did not have to. The struggle between the traditional values of Western liberal democracy and the new forces of authoritarianism, intolerance and nationalism has become a defining challenge of the times. Invoking the title of a well-known German trilogy by Hermann Broch about the deterioration of values in the years before World War I, Mr. Macron said: “I don’t want to belong to a generation of sleepwalkers that has forgotten its own past. I want to belong to a generation that has decided forcefully to defend its democracy.”