Francis Fukuyama: History and Democracy | Doomscroll

A lot of the oligarchs that run Silicon Valley have switched sides. How serious do you take these weird niche political ideologies that crop up? Well, unfortunately, I think we have to take them a lot more seriously because that Overton window really is shifting. People are abandoning liberalism, but the uh main problem is that I don't see any consistent alternative.

Castle culture, it exists. I've seen examples of it. You know, I have friends that have been affected by it. that that's not living under Stalin's, you know, Soviet Union.

What do you envision that the Democrats could offer in 2028? Ah, good. All right. I I was waiting for that that question.

Been working up to it. Welcome to Doomscroll. I'm your host, Joshua Citadella. My guest is Francis Fukuyama, a scholar and political scientist.

He is a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogley Institute for International Studies and the Mossbacher Director of the Center on Democracy Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. He is a council member of the International Forum for Democratic Studies founded by the National Endowment for Democracy and he was a member of the political science department of the Rand Corporation. He is the chair of the editorial board for American purpose. Francis Fukuyama is the author of many books.

He is most wellk known for his 1992 work the end of history and the last man. Drawing on Hegel and Marx he explores the concept of teology the idea that history is a linear process where human societies progress through sequential socioeconomic forms. As Markx famously wrote feudalism was replaced by capitalism and would ultimately be replaced by socialism. But after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, Francis Fukuyama argued that Western liberal democracy was the final form of human government.

His thesis has been updated and revised many times since and remains a subject of debate up to today. He is considered by many to be the most influential political scientist of the late 20th century. You mentioned 2008 before. What is the chain of events that you see leading to the rise of Donald Trump?

Well, uh, there's actually two things that moved me to the left and that I think moved Donald Trump further to the right. So, uh, the first was the Iraq war and the second ...