Political Power in Marginalized Voices
30 years after declaring the end of history amid the triumph of liberalism, Francis Fukuyama now focuses on identity politics, as contemporary liberal democracies haven’t fully solved the problem of thymos, the third part of the human soul (with reason and desire), which craves recognition of one’s dignity. He sees two streams of identity politics unleashed by the French Revolution: the individualistic, demanding the recognition of the dignity of individuals, and the collective, based both on nationalism and religion. He sees the rise of identity politics this century as driven by the quest for equal recognition by marginalized groups. Nationalist or religious conservative groups are more appealing to many people than traditional left-wing ones based on economic class, as they can translate loss of relative economic position and sociocultural status into loss of identity. Fukuyama finds here the political driving force for the eruption of populist nationalism and radical Islamism. Given that contemporary identity politics divides societies into ever smaller groups by virtue of their particular “lived experience” of victimization and marginalization, the author posits that it is also possible to create broader and more integrative identities by promoting creedal national identities built around the foundational ideas of modern liberal democracy. This in the end will be the remedy for today’s populist politics.
Fukuyama finds the political driving force for the eruption of populist nationalism.