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November 8, 2024 - 6:00pm
Donald Trump’s victory this week demonstrates that classical liberalism is on the decline, according to international relations scholar Francis Fukuyama.
The election “represents a decisive rejection by American voters of liberalism and the particular way that the understanding of a ‘free society’ has evolved since the 1980s”, the political scientist wrote in the Financial Times today. “Donald Trump not only wants to roll back neoliberalism and woke liberalism, but is a major threat to classical liberalism itself.”
Fukuyama is best known for his 1992 book The End of History and the Last Man, which argued that the triumph of liberal democracy over communism marked the end of conflicts over civilisational models, with Western liberalism projected to serve as the final form of government throughout the world. The 9/11 attacks and the ensuing wars in the Middle East inspired new criticism of Fukuyama’s ideas, as has the rise of populism throughout the West in the past decade.
The public intellectual is a longtime Trump critic, and warned in 2016 that the US was in “one of the most severe political crises I have experienced in my lifetime”, citing Trump’s desire to flout institutional rules. Trump’s first election victory in 2016 seemed like an “aberration”, an impression seemingly confirmed by his loss in 2020, according to Fukuyama’s new article. However, that the American people voted for him once again, “with full knowledge of who Trump was and what he represented”, showed the tides of history are once again turning, the author argued.
In the FT piece, Fukuyama suggested that the previous status quo was giving way to a “new era in US politics and perhaps for the world as a whole”. He attributed this largely to the working-class backlash against neoliberal policies.
From the Eighties onward, according to Fukuyama’s piece, free-market economics ushered in prosperity, particularly for the wealthy, while undermining the working class and strengthening industrial powers outside of the West. Meanwhile, the political Left replaced concern for the working class with an emphasis on a “narrower set of marginalised groups: racial minorities, immigrants, sexual minorities and the like”.
The shift away from liberalism is already making an impact on both major parties. Trump’s strong performance among the working class, including non-white male voters who historically favoured the Democrats, has prompted reflection within the Left-of-centre party, as internal critics argue it needs to lean into economic populism and distance itself from social progressivism. Even in the final months of the campaign, both Kamala Harris and Joe Biden distanced themselves from transgender issues and identity politics, as did down-ballot Democrats in competitive races. Both parties have also come to reject liberal immigration policies as American voters warm up to closed borders and mass deportations.
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SubscribeLiberalism failed. Liberalism’s successes were based on a bedrock of strong nations, Western civilization, and Judeo-Christian values.
Of course our elites ignored that completely and did everything they could to erode those things, wanted to replace nation, community, local culture, family and faith with atomized secular individuals living in a globalized, bureaucratized, homogenized world. The Right and the Left elites were both complicit.
Once the transformation went too far, liberalism can’t work, and we’re descending into tribalism.
Yoram Hazony is good on the bitter fruits of Enlightenment over-reach.
What do you mean by “homogenized world”?
Same global elites, same corporations, multi-national institutions quashing local gov’t into a common policy set, same restaurants, mass migration lowering wages for the laboring classes, diluting population differences, etc.
I think the world is a richer place when Austria contains Austrian people, eating Austrian food, patronizing Austrian business, under laws that Austrians prefer, while Japan contains Japanese people eating Japanese food, patronizing Japanese businesses, under the laws that Japanese prefer.
Most of this is nonsense. The west abandoned liberalism long ago, probably right around the time of his first book. If liberalism is defined in the narrow terms of free trade and tariffs, I suppose there’s a case to be made that Trump will set that back.
But Trump has maybe saved free speech by teaming up with Musk. If Harris was elected, the EU would have crushed Twitter by either imposing crushing fines or forcing Musk to bend the knee to censorship. Only a pro free speech govt in America has the political power to force the EU to reconsider.
Trump’s election has basically killed net zero, which is the most illiberal economic policy in decades. Gone are govt mandates on energy production and manufacturing, which is state control of the economy.
I’ll give Biden credit for one thing. He has supported strong anti-trust action that is a threat to global oligarchies and monopolies. I hope Trump continues down this path, but this was dead in the water with Harris anyway, because mega donor Reed Hoffman is strongly opposed to this agenda.
I support free trade, but you can’t have free trade with a country like China because it uses slave labour. China isn’t a communist state. It’s a fasc!st state because it has merged the interests of corporations and business.
Sooner or later it all comes down to semantics, and one of the favorite techniques of defenders of globalism has been to subtly alter the meaning of words over time. Liberalism doesn’t mean in 2020 what it meant in 1990, let alone what it meant in 1890. Some of that is the natural evolution of language, but the greater and more sinister part is because intellectuals like Fukuyama keep moving the goalposts, redefining what is ‘liberalism’ and thus ‘good’ with an eye towards their ideological endpoint, which is a global society under a government of unaccountable bureaucrats and ‘experts’ who, if they answer to anyone, answer only to those with enough money, influence, and education to gain access. It’s interesting that he’s suddenly differentiating between ‘classical liberalism’ and ‘neoliberalism’ and is even using the term ‘woke liberalism’ as the nonsense it is. Where was this three weeks ago I wonder? This is pure damage control. I think this time they may have finally figured out how badly they’re actually losing and how deep the resentment really goes. They called him a felon, a threat to democracy, an insurrectionist, and the people still picked him. If they prefer that, what must they think of us? This is a revelation long overdue, and quite late is the hour when they finally show some level of introspection, but better late than never I suppose.
The Financial Times is a major mouthpiece for globalists. I read another such doom and gloom article on there yesterday and the theme was basically the same. We lost. We can’t deny it anymore. They hate us, we aren’t going to win, so it’s time to circle the wagons, play defense, and save what we can, hence the sudden interest in differentiating between ‘classical’ liberalism and it’s newer, more politically toxic, meaning. It’s like when a nation loses a war, surrenders, and then begs for whatever clemency they can get.
It would help the article if a definition of classical liberalism was included. According to Wikipedia:
While not a perfect fit I consider Trump’s outlook to be rather closer to Classic Liberalism than that of Harris.
Of course if you are talking about ‘liberalism’ of the eighties then that was not the ‘Classical’ sort.
I agree, a modern liberal(a progressive) is the complete opposite of a classic liberal and very illiberal, they just don’t see themselves that way though.
I’m a former progressive and now just a liberal and also a classical liberal (you can be both). I no longer call myself a progressive, because they no longer represent the values of progressives I remember, like income inequality, which is the issue behind Trump’s win. Progressive s today are bat guano crazy. Gender, gender, gender. Identity, identity, identity. Did I mention trans women are women? This leaked into the fabric of the Democratic Party and scared moderates away. Democrats had turned its back on the working class years ago. The Republicans, the party of corporate America, are also to blame. They were the original free trade party and responsible in part for the hollowing out of manufacturing in America. (Bill Clinton, we are also looking at you for taking Daddy Bush’s NAFTA and signing it into law.) Anyway, I’m just tired. I’m almost 65-years-old, and I really miss my country. I can remember when Republicans and Democrats were friends.
Classic liberalism also includes what Peter Boghossian refers to as cognitive liberty – something once taken for granted but which progressive liberalism clearly seeks to deny. Progressive liberalism demands cognitive conformity, excommunication, and perhaps worse, awaits all who don’t.
Anyone who stands alongside those betrayed and left dismayed and powerless by the crushing tide of neoliberalism is a hero in my eyes.
Oh screw off Francis. All the American people have done is reject this modern “liberalism” that wears Classical Liberal values as a skinsuit. Your movement does not believe in anything other than government itself and resists all limits on is power. Funny how that sounds like the complete opposite when you break it down huh? No, what is really happening is Classical Liberalism is back with a vengeance and you, your associates, and your ideology is its greatest enemy.
Oh screw off Francis. All the American people have done is reject this modern “liberalism” that wears Classical Liberal values as a skinsuit. Your movement does not believe in anything other than government itself and resists all limits on its power. Funny how that sounds like the complete opposite of what you claim to support when you break it down huh? No, what is really happening is Classical Liberalism is back with a vengeance and you, your associates, and your ideology is its greatest enemy.
If this man was so wrong about the End of History why should anyone take him seriously now? We would have noticed if human nature had changed since his book was published. It didn’t so history moves along its familar grooves. The UN is as worthless as the League of Nations ever was and look how the EU is going tits up.
If anyone here has read the FT piece quoted in this article, did Fukuyama give any indication he considered the abandonment of the working class, in favor of globalism, a bad thing? Did he give any indication that an obsessive focus on certain minorities, such as the trans community, to the detriment of everyone else was a bad thing?
A rejection of neoliberalism at home and neoconservatism abroad, with a partial rejection of the transhumanism favoured by the Berkeley/Butler school and certain generations of feminists.
The voters weren’t rejecting classical liberalism. They were rejecting Kamala Harris. It was increasingly apparent that she was massively out of her depth for the world’s most powerful job. Better the devil you know. Trump might be a gangster, but he’s our gangster.
I hope he cancels major pieces of the federal government and depopulates the swamp.
Don’t get carried away, lads! The pendulum will swing back in 2 years after America is reminded of what a comically awful president Trump is.
Things were going great in the USA until the Chinese lab security failed.
Hey Chumpagne, how’s your neoliberal knee-jerk tonight? Suffering from tendonitis?
Awww….
Don’t try to get creative, our kid – doesn’t work for you.
Leave the witty comments to me.
Can’t do that, we’re still waiting for one.