Arethe boom years freedom over and the forces of democracy in retreat? According to this column by Thomas Klau of Germany’s Financial Times Deutschland, with the world of ‘capital’ migrating toward authoritarian regimes like Russia and China and ‘decoupling’ from the liberal democracies, ‘democracy could be only a matter of an era, and not the end of history.’
“Supporters of a liberal, humanistic respect for basic democratic values now must do battle on many fronts – and their greatest – the USA – now constitutes one of the greatest battle fronts of all.”
By Thomas Klau
Translated by Julian Jacob
November 29, 2007
Germany – Financial Times Deutschland – Original Article (German)
Authoritarian governments are witnessing a renaissance that the democrats of the world must fight – and they must do so forcefully.
Eighteen years have passed since Francis Fukuyama gained worldwide attention and fame with his forecast of the “End of History .”
“What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such, wrote the American intellectual wrote in his essay, published in the revolutionary year of 1989. Mankind may have reached the end of its ideological evolution, namely, “the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”
Fukuyama long ago distanced himself from this analysis, and not a few of his statements now seem like hastily formulated nonsense. Nevertheless, for a long time they had an astonishing resonance. The Soviet dictatorship that competed with the liberal democracies had disintegrated into dust, and the USA was the shining proof that a working democracy and military superiority are compatible. After this experience with the Soviet bloc, the triumph of liberal government seemed imminent in China, Asia and eventually even Africa.
DEMOCRACY ON THE DEFENSIVE
Tempi passati [Italian for Time has past]. Nowadays the hope of democracy’s triumph no longer dominates. Quite the contrary – the fear of a lasting renaissance of authoritarianism now dominates. In Russia as in China, authoritarian central governments enjoy tremendous popular support thanks to strong economic growth; in Latin America, Venezuelan Hugo Chavez demonstrates that in the southern half of the continent, the long-term dominant trend toward more democracy is not at all irreversible. The situation seems even more dismal in the Arab countries, where almost everywhere, free elections would bring to power Islamic disciples of Savonarola , who would usher in democratic rule to achieve Puritanical terror.
In the central organ of the German Zeitgeists, the news magazine Der Spiegel, Dirk Kurbjuweit recently wrote of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s most recent visit to China and of the sense of loneliness on the part of democrats. And he asked a heretical question. “It’s getting exciting to see which side capital will gravitate toward in the future,” Kurbjuweit wrote. “Up to now it was on the side of democracy, since it has always been democratic industrial states which adopted the market economy. The Chinese model could eventually become an alternative. Man sometimes forgets that democracy could be only a matter of an era, and not the end of history.”
A Renaissance of Puritanism, a Renaissance of authoritarianism, and perhaps the decoupling of free-market principles from the principles of democracy – these are the messages heard by people today. And to this we must add the weakening of the fundamental values of democratic humanism, such as the ban on torture and arbitrary imprisonment in the United States. The wind has changed and it’s blowing in the wrong direction.
Founder and Managing Editor of Worldmeets.US