From 11:09 to 11:14 yesterday, I thought Francis Fukuyama was dead. Many people were fooled when an X account seemingly affiliated with Stanford University announced the legendary political scientist’s passing. Unfortunately, I was among them. It was later revealed that the account was a hoax made up by Italian joker Tommaso Debenedetti. Minutes later, Fukuyama himself wrote to X: “Last I checked, I’m still alive.”

Debenedetti, who I could not immediately reach for comment, had previously made many fake death announcements, including of economists. Amartya Sen (still alive), pseudonymous writer Elena Ferrante (still alive), Cuban leader Fidel Castro (dead as of 2016). In 2012 Debenedetti said: Guard Stating that his aim is to reveal how badly the media does its job, he said: “The Italian press does not control anything, especially if it is close to its own political line.” But deceiving people undermines the idea of ​​shared truth, which is the cornerstone of liberal democracy.

The fact that this hoax targeted Fukuyama, one of the greatest defenders of liberal democracy, made the situation even more striking. In 1989, with communism on the brink of collapse, Fukuyama wrote “The End of History?”, arguing that modern liberal democracy had surpassed all viable alternative political systems. He published an article called. He argued that humanity had reached “the end point of humanity’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the ultimate form of human government.” (He later expanded the article into a book. The End of History and the Last Man.)

Francis Fukuyama: More evidence that this really is the end of history

So how durable is liberal democracy? Although Americans enjoy greater material prosperity than their ancestors, fears of political violence are rising and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is using authoritarian language. Fukuyama had foreseen the potential for trouble in 1989. “The end of history will be a very sad time,” he wrote at the time. “The worldwide ideological struggle, which evokes audacity, courage, imagination and idealism, the struggle for recognition, the willingness to risk one’s life for a completely abstract goal, will be replaced by economic calculations, endless solutions of technical problems, environmental concerns. and meeting sophisticated consumer demands… Perhaps at the end of history, the prospect of centuries of boredom will serve to begin history once again.”

Curious about what Fukuyama thought about yesterday’s hoax and our current political moment, I requested an interview. The following transcript has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Jerusalem Demsa: It’s great to find you alive and well. How are you feeling?

Francis Fukuyama: Yes, this was an unusual event.

Demsaş: How did you learn about your “death”?

: I think one of my former students tweeted that this was happening and that it was a hoax. Then I went back and looked at the original tweet, and then it went viral and everyone was tweeting about it, so I decided I had to pretend that I was actually still alive. That’s why it got so much attention.

Demsaş: What was your reaction when you saw it?

: I couldn’t figure out what the reason was and I also couldn’t understand why anyone would take the time to tweet like that. It was a pointless exercise. I think the other reaction was that X or Twitter had become a cesspit of misinformation and so it seemed like a perfect thing to happen on X that might not happen on other platforms.

Demsaş: Do you know who Tommaso Debenedetti is?

: NO.

Demsaş: He is an Italian who claimed responsibility for a number of hoaxes, including the fake death of Amartya Sen. Guard Years ago the Italian press didn’t control anything. This seems, I guess, part of his broader strategy to expose problems with fact-checking in the media. What do you think of this strategy?

: First of all, it wasn’t very successful. The fact that you are promoting something like this on Twitter may not tell you much about the media. I can tell you that people debunked this within seconds of it being posted, so I’m not entirely sure what kind of weak link this reveals.

Demsaş: This kind of information ecosystem seriously undermines liberal democracy, doesn’t it? If common truths disappear and it becomes difficult for voters to convey their feelings about the world, culture and economy to the elected officials, the legitimacy of democratic signals will weaken.

: When I wrote my book Trust In the mid-1990s, I described the United States as a high-trust society. This is completely wrong right now. And most of this actually comes from the internet or social media. This is a symptom of a much broader crisis, and it’s really hard to know how to get back to where we were 30 years ago.

Demsaş: Does the democratization of the media erode trust say anything about the strength of liberal democracy?

: Classical democratic theorists said that formal institutions and popular participation alone were not enough, and that you had to have a certain amount of virtue among the citizens for the system to work. And this remains true. One of the virtues currently not developed is the desire to control sources and not pass on rumors. I caught myself doing this; When you see something, if it fits your previous desires, then you’ll probably ship it right away and not worry about the consequences.

Demsaş: Next week is the election between Trump and Kamala Harris, and there are many of the normal policy differences between the two candidates. When you look at why people make their decisions they will often point to things like inflation, immigration or abortion. But there is also a distinction on the issue of democracy, isn’t there? Why does it feel like there’s this longing for a more authoritarian leader in a democracy like the United States?

: What’s really frustrating about the current election is that so many Americans think it’s a normal election because of policy issues and they’re not paying attention to the underlying institutions because that’s what’s really at stake. What is truly most damaging is the erosion of these institutions. In a way, it doesn’t matter who wins the election because the damage has already been done. In earlier years, there was a spontaneous trust among Americans that gradually eroded. Even if Harris wins the election, it will still be a burden on society. So the stakes on this issue are much, much higher than on the issue of partisan politics. And I think the most disappointing thing is that 50 percent of Americans don’t see it that way. We don’t see the deeper institutional problems at stake.

Demsaş: We are in an age of great prosperity; Tons of consumer choices, access to products and services, bigger homes, bigger cars. George Orwell once wrote in his 1940 review: My StrugglePeople have a desire to fight for something bigger than these small policy details. (“Whereas socialism and even capitalism more reluctantly said to people, ‘I offer you a good time,’ Hitler said to them, ‘I offer you struggle, danger and death,’ and as a result an entire nation throws itself at their feet,” Orwell observed. ) Does this desire create a problem for democracies?

: There’s actually a line in one of the last chapters. TEnd of History Here I said something almost exactly like this: If people cannot fight for peace and democracy, then they will want to fight against peace and democracy, because what they want to do is struggle and they cannot recognize themselves. as full human beings as long as they do not join the struggle.

Demsaş: Inside End of History“People have proven that they can endure the most extreme material hardships in the name of ideas that exist only in the spiritual realm, whether it is the divinity of cows or the nature of the Holy Trinity,” you wrote. And I worry that liberal democracy cannot provide the kinds of ideas that will make people want to stand up for themselves or fight for it. Does it feel like you’re doomed?

: I don’t think anything is doomed. This is the problem of peace and prosperity. This just causes people to accept (things) as they are. We have gone through periods of complacency punctuated by major crises. And in some previous cases, these crises were severe enough to remind people why the liberal order was a good thing, and then they returned to it. But then time flies and you repeat the cycle; People forget why liberal institutions are good, and then they remember.

Demsaş: After Trump beat Hillary Clinton in 2016, my friends said: Do you think your view of the American public would change if 120,000 people in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania voted differently? And if Trump wins again, I wonder if that’s a question we should ask ourselves. Does it really say that much about people’s views on democracy?

: It has much deeper effects. When he first won, he did not win a majority of the popular vote. You can write this as a period. But now everyone in the country has a lot of information about who he is and what he represents. So the second time around it will be a much more serious indictment of American voters.