End of History 2.0

 

30 years ago Francis Fukuyama penned his famous "The End of History?" thesis.
Fukuyama’s assessment of the unravelling of the Cold War and the triumph of Western Liberal Democracy and the free market economic system was all the rage at the time.
 It was easy to reduce the failure of the Soviet state-led political and economic model to being inferior to the more robust and free-flowing ideology of individual civil liberties and, of course, a minimalist state that enabled the invisible hand of the market. 1989 represented what Fukuyama described as
the “End of History”.

The storming of the United States’ Capitol Hill buildings on 6 January 2021 by pro-Trump supporters could come straight out of a Hollywood-style action movie script.
Predictable after four years of a presidency that can only be described as pop culture's ultimate reality TV climaxing in the Seizure of the Legislature. Had this taken place in any other country, the US may have sought to intervene, to uphold the principles and norms of a democratic dispensation. But, sadly, it did not. Rather, it was the country labelled as the leader of the free world and the beacon of hope for democratic freedom. This so called beacon was put out by domestic unhinged lunacy. 

The scenes that gripped the US capital must be interrogated and understood in terms of the lessons that this poses for the rest of the world as well. 
Although it would be easy to give in to the view that the US has now reaped what it sowed, this approach would be parochial, given the fragile state of democracy across the globe.
There are numerous examples to choose from, the latest being the contested electoral outcome in Uganda. But most democracies are under attack by a rise in some sort of antidemocratic far right extremism.
The point of departure for most societies is that in as much as democracy may be a necessary condition, the indelible issue is whether it is a sufficient condition.
The end result is what transpired on January 6.

The fragile conditions that underpin democratic dispensations are often driven by elitism and selfish interests. This was clearly on display as the “patriots” marched towards Capitol Hill, attempting to frustrate what should have been a smooth process of certifying the electoral college votes that confirmed Joe Biden as the 45th President of the United States.
Trump, after giving the rioters his blessing, drove in the opposite direction to sulk in the Oval Office. He is part of a privileged class that fans the flames of political disruptiveness and then retreats to a safe haven. None of these populist leaders value the lives of those who voted for them. 
 Trump is the real insurrectionist and must receive the appropriate state sanction for inciting an insurgency. Any other outcome is a recipe for tyranny.  

Intra-state instability has become an overarching source of insecurity for democratic states.
While the maxim dictates that democratic states do not go to war with each, the converse of that has become a more frightening reality, that the greater threat to democracies nowadays is from within.
If there was a single lesson that January 6 should teach us, it is that democracy remains an unrealized ideal to strive for, but the road towards its realization is not always paved with good intentions.