The world is truly entering a new phase of intolerance and dictatorship

Is the end of democracy nigh? This question is not new. Indeed, after Francis Fukuyama controversially wrote that humankind had reached the end of history, the debate has shifted more significantly towards the clash of civilisations and the threatening demise of democracy. Fukuyama thought that with the fall of Communism in the Soviet Union the benefits of democratic models of government would diffuse – almost on their own fuel – to every corner of the globe.

When Fukuyama in 1989 talked of the end of history, he does not suggest that life itself comes to a grinding halt and that humanity is frozen in permanent present moment. Yet there is a sense in which he borders closely to this. He is basically telling us that there will be no more new development models. The Smithsonian free market political economy has emerged victorious over competing paradigms. Henceforth, historical transformation of society in the model envisaged and discussed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels of the Communist Manifesto fame will cease. The only transformation left will be the transformation of dictatorial societies into democracies.