the United Kingdom or Marine Le Pen in France . In the light of these events , Fukuyama ’ s end of history appears as naïve as the presupposed end of all warfare in 1918 .
In Fukuyama ’ s defence , the original Hegelian idea of an end of history does not literally mean that the whole world will immediately embrace a single political system without any exceptions . Reducing it to this interpretation would be as fatal as reducing it to the end of historical events , as some might wrongly do . However , both of these understandings are flawed – the end of history is , in Fukuyama ’ s own words , ‘ the end point of mankind ’ s ideological evolution ’, the moment when one system proves to be the victor of history , being universally applicable and therefore an ultimate end to political and economic development of any country . From this perspective , the thesis can be true even if there are exceptions to it , because some countries simply might not have yet reached the final stage of development , or possess some specific characteristics that distinguish them from the rest of the world .
A frequent critic of Francis Fukuyama ’ s theory was the late President of Venezuela , Hugo Chávez . He considered his own political ideology , Chavismo , a rival to the ideas of liberal democracy , believing that he had created a new and alternative political system for the 21 st century , a next step in the ideological evolution which Fukuyama considered ended . Using the language of Hegel ’ s dialectic , Chávez believed Chavismo represented the compromise , Hegelian synthesis or concrete between the abstract ( thesis ) and negative ( antithesis ), extreme outbursts of liberal democracy on one side , and ‘ old ’ 20 th century socialism on the other . But this idea of the ‘ postmodern left ’ did not fulfil the most basic criterion of the end of history – universal applicability . In Francis Fukuyama ’ s own words , it was nothing but ‘ oil , oil , and oil ’ that allowed Chavismo to survive . In his 2006 essay , he further predicted that ‘ the postmodern authoritarianism of Chávez ’ s Venezuela is durable only while oil prices remain high ’, expecting the regime to inevitably collapse in the near future . And indeed , ten years later , this is just what we are witnessing . As oil prices fell rapidly in the past two years , the Venezuelan government under the new President Nicolás Maduro was unable to provide even the most essential goods for its citizens , leading to mass demands for a reform of the constitution : reforms that would lead the country to become a free-market , liberal democracy . The example of Venezuela is not a unique one , but it serves well to illustrate why certain models of government , even though they might be temporarily successful under certain conditions , cannot be used as a counterargument to Francis Fukuyama ’ s thesis about the dominance of liberal democracy .
‘ Democracy ’ s only real competitor in the realm of ideas today is radical Islamism ’ wrote Francis Fukuyama in 2008 , referring to the cases of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ’ s Iran and Osama bin Laden ’ s Al Qaeda , sources of the fundamentalism that was quickly spreading around the Middle East by that time . As he himself admitted , the war in Iraq and the country ’ s later development had a great influence on him , making him reassess many of his political views . But even though Fukuyama was doubtful when encountering the question of Islam , it does not necessarily possess a danger to the liberal democracy . In the words of Israeli historian Yuval Harari , ‘ God is dead – it just takes a while to get rid of the body .’ Affirming Nietzsche ’ s thesis , he argues that there is no future for fundamental ideologies that are based on an orthodox belief in God , as these have detached themselves from the development of society and technological progress . In other words , radical Islam has nothing relevant to say about the problems , dangers and opportunities of the 21 st century . Not only is it unable to answer the necessary questions of ethics in the field of biomedicine or computer science , it even lacks the potential to understand them . The Kafkaesque images of Islamic clerics refereeing a football match using sharia law in the Syrian strongholds of the Islamic State are a simple but strong example of the absurdity of such an ideology . Radical Islamism might be an appealing ‘ anchor of certainty ’ to some , but has nothing to offer globally as it fails to provide answers and guide people through the unprecedentedly quickly developing and changing world of scientific and technological progress .
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