The End of History

In 1989, after the sudden collapse of the USSR, Francis Fukuyama argued that we had reached “The End of History.” Communism had died, and with its death, liberalism had won. To Fukuyama, the 21st century would fulfill liberalism’s promises. Free markets would spread, democracy would flourish, and we would all live in a ever-expanding Lockean paradise.

Nowhere was this promise issued more loudly or more often than in the post-Soviet world. In 1993, John Earle wrote an optimistic report for the Central European University Press. In it, he argued that the birth and growth of markets in the former USSR would create western style democracies in short order. Of course, as we now know, he was very wrong.

Also in 1993, Boris Yeltsin bombed the Russian Parliament in order to maintain Autocratic control. Fearing the rise of a new Communist party in Russia, Bill Clinton supported Yeltsin in the Russian elections three years later. This decision — to support a mass murderer rather than risk a leftist resurgence — would ring as emblematic of liberalism’s global order. While hiding behind euphemisms implying democracy, peace, and progress, the West has waged three decades of war against the world, and has done so virtually uncontested. From Venezuela to Libya, the forces of liberalism have wreaked havoc in the name of progress.

Liberalism’s promise to peacefully move the world towards a new democratic order has been broken. Whatever its achievements in terms of market growth or newly indoctrinated wage labor, liberalism has been unable to bring about the end of history. And so, in order to hide this basic truth, liberalism hid history behind the politics of euphemism.

As Citations Needed has excellently unpacked, American liberals insist that the forever wars in the Middle East are “wars against Terror,” not wars against people. Venezuela may be visited by “boots on the ground,” not invading armies. Syria could enjoy a “no fly zone,” not the indiscriminate destruction of its entire airforce. Border camps are “migrant detention centers,” not concentration camps.

Liberalism failed to produce a global utopia, or even progress us towards a better world. It isn’t the end of history after all. And when a system founded on the promise of progress brings regression instead, history itself becomes the status quo’s greatest threat. Euphemisms are created to avoid comparisons with our past, to sabotage exactly the parallels which AOC was trying to draw. By constantly changing language and obscuring the truth, the liberal order can shield itself from comparisons to the past it was supposed to overcome. Concentration camps are called detention centers — not in spite of the historical similarities, but precisely because of them. This language was chosen for the express purpose of hiding exactly how completely liberalism has failed.

Faced with a choice between ideological shift and complete dishonesty, liberalism chose the latter. And so the Politics of Euphemism came to be.

If we want to make real progress, we must abandon this euphemism, and learn to face that history head on. There are concentration camps on our border, the world is dying, and capitalism cannot save us. Never Again is Now — it’s happening in our own borders. We have no choice but to fight.