The political thinker became famous for declaring the triumph of liberal democracy. Thirty-seven years on, he explains what he really meant and why he made the rare journey from right to left
‘If he can make money in a tyranny, that’s fine by him’: Francis Fukuyama on Trump, democracy - and changing his mind
The political thinker became famous for declaring the triumph of liberal democracy. Thirty-seven years on, he explains what he really meant and why he made the rare journey from right to left There are not many public...
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The political thinker became famous for declaring the triumph of liberal democracy. Thirty-seven years on, he explains what he really meant and why he made the rare journey from right to left There are not many public intellectuals who can say they’ve been cited by Capt James T Kirk of the Starship Enterprise, but Francis Fukuyama is one of them. In Star...
Key points
- The political thinker became famous for declaring the triumph of liberal democracy.
- Thirty-seven years on, he explains what he really meant and why he made the rare journey from right to left There are not many public intellectuals who can say they’ve been cited by Capt...
- In Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, William Shatner’s character is in a reflective mood, and speaks to the Klingon chancellor.
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This story is part of the United Kingdom coverage. The original reporting source identified by the page is The Guardian. Publication date: September 2, 2026 at 05:00.
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There are not many public intellectuals who can say they’ve been cited by Capt James T Kirk of the Starship Enterprise, but Francis Fukuyama is one of them. In Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, William Shatner’s character is in a reflective mood, and speaks to the Klingon chancellor. “Some people think the future means the end of history,” Kirk muses. “Well, we haven’t run out of history quite yet.”
When the film came out in 1991 and in the years that followed, you’d often hear comments like that. They were nods to a thesis so famous it hardly needed spelling out. It debuted in a 15-page essay written by Fukuyama, then a 36-year-old thinktanker, which was published in the National Interest, a right-leaning journal of US foreign policy, in the summer of 1989. There was a question mark in the title: it was called The End of History?. In book form three years later, it became The End of History and the Last Man. But these were subtleties that, as we shall see, got lost.
Source: The Guardian
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