As communism seemingly disappeared from view at the end of the
1980s, in a sudden and unexpected blow-out, there was plenty of triumphalism
around in the west. The most infamous
was perhaps that of Francis Fukuyama, a US state department career man turned
historian. He got his publishing break
with a book called “The End of History and the Last Man”. The end of communism, he suggested, meant
that man’s ideological evolution, the very stuff of history, was over. Western liberalism had won. Nothing seemed to appear on the horizon to
challenge its by then unquestioned dominance.
Francis Fukuyama has continued to publish books on the
history he thought had ended but his original thesis looks more and more messy
the further away we get from the 1990s.
Here we are in March 2018 and the retreat of liberalism is
pretty much full-on. The authoritarian
march of Putin and Xi is matched by their less consequential peers and puppets,
men such as Erdogan in Turkey, Assad in Syria, Maduro in Venezuelas. Meanwhile, the challenge from within continues,
as liberalism is broadsided in its own realms by such as President Donald
Trump, Hungary’s Victor Orban, Poland’s Morawiecki and the onslaught of
populist parties like Five Star in Italy or AFD in Germany.
The problem of liberalism is further exacerbated by the
feebleness of its defending leaders.
Angela Merkel has been holed beneath the political waterline by her poor
election showing last November, and the 5 months it has taken since to
establish a workable government. Britain’s
Theresa May is wholly occupied in withdrawing her country from the last great
international liberal project, the European Union. As she does so, her supporters attack both the
courts and those elected MPs who disagree with their hard Brexit ideology. Only President Macron of France and Prime
Minister Trudeau of Canada seem to be charismatically manning the bridges in defence
of liberalism, and Trudeau suffered a set-back with a ludicrous recent tour of
India that exposed him more to ridicule than respect.
As liberalism struggles to assert itself, the vacuum it is
leaving becomes all too readily apparent.
Nothing this week has been so redolent of the enfeebled nature of a liberal
state than Britain’s position as the recipient of a chemical attack by
Russia. You can hear the suppressed,
gleeful laughter in the Kremlin even as Putin and his acolytes seek to po-facedly
deny any links to the attack by nerve agents on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal
and his daughter Yulia.
Over in Syria the misery of Eastern Ghouta is testament to
the consequences of America’s abandonment of its role as liberal guardian.
The wanton destruction of Yemen stands as witness to the
removal of restraint by any liberal leadership over the one time client states
of the middle east.
In Italy the people vote for parties led by clowns, one a
former artist of the genre and another the corrupt, criminal buffoon who
brought clowning into the prime minister’s office; the rise of both a stunning rebuff
to liberalism and its leaders.
While liberalism retreats the dictators stand triumphant, and
the laughter of Donald Trump as he admires the right to rule for life acquired
by China’s Xi Jinping is the maniacal noise of the inmate who has finally
stolen the keys to the asylum.
If as Fukuyama suggested the triumph of liberalism
represented the evolutionary end point of mankind’s ideological and political
journey, then the species has apparently managed to find a post-evolutionary
slope to speed down afterwards.
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