Gefira 94: The future rises from the past

The end of history announced in 1992 by Francis Fukuyama did not last long: say, between 1992 and 2022. The end of history was understood as the global victory of liberalism and capitalism and the preponderance of the United States of America. Indeed, during the first half of the said period it looked like the world was moving in this particular direction, with all the players submitting themselves to the scenario. China was not yet recognized as a threat to the Western world, while a weakened Russia under Yeltsin and during the first years under Putin seemed a dead man walking. Yes, Russia, the heir to the once feared Soviet Union, did all she could to fit in with the Western world and become a partner among partners. Alas, the countries that emerged as victors from the Cold War – especially the United States – decided to make a big killing and do away with Russia altogether. Fate had it that Russia was blessed with a strong patriotic leader who – at first by no means anit-Western – challenged the new world order in which his country was to be kept in subjection (the 2007 Munich speech). The Western leaders kind of woke up to the possibility of the rebirth of a strong Russia and so they began carrying out their favourite operations inside Russia (Navalny, the Yabloko Party)and close to its borders (political upheaval in the Caucasus, in Belarus and Ukraine). Slowly, when push came to shove, Moscow decided that enough was enough and launched a pre-emptive military campaign in Ukraine (historically known as Little Russia). The world was shattered and new political and economic alliances emerged.

Though the liberals of all shades and hues kept Europe and the United States under their control and were in the process of transforming traditional societies into futuristic unisex – unsexed – transsex – you name it – nationless, raceless, classless, sexless and faithless homogeneous communities bragging about their – yes! – diversity and inclusion and equity, strong resistance began to grow at the grass roots and also among some of the self-styled elites. People decided that enough was enough and began to give more and more support to parties that were aligned with the wishes and dreams of common men and women. Such parties were of course denounced by the managers of the Western world as far-right, which in their parlance is supposed to be a strong political slur marking the opponents as pariahs. This must have added fuel to the fire: common people who unlike their elites did not lose most of their common sense responded by voting for “right-wing” parties with an ever greater desire. The managers of the Western world felt compelled to resort to cancelling or invalidating some of the elections in particular countries or fining and imprisoning political leaders who enjoyed popular support. Ideas were raised to delegalize a couple of parties, like the German AfD. Well, you can make a party illegal and you can even throw into a dungeon top “far-right” politicians, but what are you going to do with the tens of millions of the supporters of those parties? Are you going to imprison them all? to send them to… concentration camps? to delegalize them all?

To make things worse for the liberals, a backlash occurred in the United States: Donald Trump was elected president, and he immediately made null and void many of his predecessors decisions. Among them was his revolutionary assignment of only two sexes to people under his presidency! What a reverse!

It appears that history has no intention of coming to an end, as Francis Fukuyama predicted. History is history precisely because it continues to turn the future into the present, and the present into the past, layer after layer after another layer, with each layer remaining distinctive just as growth rings in a tree trunk, each telling its own story.