Online Talk with Francis Fukuyama and Dr. Tobias Endler & Public Screening. U.S. democracy is exposed to unprecedented tensions: social polarization, disenchantment with politics, growing economic inequality, dealing with climate change, migration, and a general mistrust in institutions are affecting public opinion and are strengthening anti-democratic forces and voices in the country. As a response to these problems, the big question and fear is whether the USA, like so many political systems around the world, is moving into a so-called “democratic backsliding”. So what is the state of democracy in the country that has been regarded as a political role model in the world for over a century? Are we witnessing a “US-only phenomenon” here? And what impact will the result of the presidential election have on this long-standing trend?
Yoshihiro Francis Fukuyama is an American political scientist and Director of the Center for Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, where he also directs the Master’s program in International Politics. His research interests include developing countries, nation building, democratization, governance, international political economy and security issues. Fukuyama has commented on the most important issues in recent world politics and has established himself as a liberal thinker.
Moderation: Dr. Tobias Endler
In English
Location: Livestream online via www.dai-tuebingen.de/crossroads or Public Screening in the d.a.i. hall
Admission: free
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In cooperation with Landeszentrale für politische Bildung Baden-Württemberg, Radio Micro-Europa, M100 Sanssouci Colloquium, Tübinger Campusmagazin Kupferblau, Freies Radio Wüste Welle, Universität Tübingen
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TIMESTAMPS
00:00 Introduction
03:25 Fukuyama’s Definition of Liberalism
06:36 Liberalism and Democracy
08:50 Different Meanings of Liberalism
12:23 Shortcomings of Liberalism
18:18 Is Liberalism Being Threatened by Woke Politics?
22:53 Hypocrisy of Liberalism
26:00 Recent Protests at US-Universities
27:27 Justification of Liberalism
36:40 Definition of Populism
46:00 Elites in a Society
49:40 Encourage Younger People for Politics
54:00 Role of Joe Biden for Young People
59:00 Which Issue could decide the Election
1:03:30 Foreign Policy
1:08:50 Credibility of the United States globally
Professor fukuyama we have so many questions how secure is the liberal Democratic order can Society Decay go backwards how is the in between when we look at the US election those questions and more will be discussed with the infamous political philosopher Francis Pama tonight as we wait towards the 2024 US presidential elections a warm welcome to you Professor fukuyama we are thrilled to have you and moderator and to our moderator tobas enta welcome thank you for your time thank you very much my name is Katarina luta and I am the director of the German American Institute here in tubigan and I also welcome our audience in front of their screens and in our Hall at The Institute just behind me thank you for spending your evening with us the conversation we are about to have here is part of the German American institute’s Democratic Crossroad serious and takes place in cooperation with the London central build vber radio micro Europe M100 s colum Tuan campus magazine Kau F radio and the University of tuban thank you so much to our partners we couldn’t do this without you and with that I hand everything over to the two of you and joy and thank you well thank you very much Karina luta and to the entire German American Institute team in tubing welcome everybody to the third round of our Democratic Crossroads talk series welcome to all of you online around the globe and across Germany and to all of you on the ground at the DI in tubing it is my honor to welcome today’s guest Professor Francis fukuyama of Stanford University where he is the Olivier Nini senior fellow at the Freemont bogley Institute for international studies and also director of the fort dorsy Masters in international policy Francis fukiyama has written widely on issues in international politics and at least to the same extent on the state of liberal democracy but also the potential future of liberal democracy all of this we will touch on tonight our time and in the morning uh Frank your time on the California coast so once again welcome thanks for freeing up time for this good morning to California great to have you thank you very much Tobias it’s a pleasure to speak with you just quickly because this is important and this is some ground that will’ll base our conversation on Francis fukuyama’s most recent book is called liberalism and its discontents it was published in May 20 22 the German title is liberalism un or liberalism and its enemies and that itself is interesting why the German title would be enemies instead of discontents we’ll maybe get to talk about this too but then really Francis fukuyama is the kind of guest that has not been in need of a real introduction ever since the early 1990s when he became famous for his book The End Of History and the last man so let’s Dive Right In uh Frank we live in turbulent times many people are concerned about the state of the world concerned about the state of democracy and as we try to make sense of what’s going on there are a lot of big words out there that the people use a lot democracy populism authoritarianism and of course liberalism you also use that term liberalism a lot so Frank what do you mean when you talk about liberalism uh thank you Tobias yes that’s an important starting point um the word liberalism has different meanings in different parts of the world uh in the United States it usually means you’re left of center in uh Germany it canotes a center right position uh similar to that of the free Democrats uh that’s Pro bus anti- regulation and so forth uh my definition is broader than either of those it doesn’t so much have to do with economic policy so much as a presumption that all human beings have an equal uh uh entitlement to recognition of their dignity uh states provide that recognition by granting them rights basic rights to speech to organization to uh uh political participation uh and they and a liberal does not believe that one group of human beings is superior to another so in that sense it’s different from nationalism that would single out maybe one ethnic group or you know one particular uh uh people uh and the institutions that support liberalism are things like the rule of law that limit the power of the government to do things that are not lawful constitutions constitutional checks and balances that limit uh the power of the state liberalism by itself uh is usually paired with democracy but these are different institutions democracy really has to do with uh mechanisms of accountability like elections uh they often times are united in in uh in in common with each other but uh they can also be separate and one of the things that’s happened in Europe and in the United States is that the Democratic part of liberal democracy has been attacking the liberal part so this was most clear with Victor Orban in Hungary he actually said that he wanted Hungary to be an illiberal democracy meaning that Hungary would have uh elections uh would have popular mandates but he would use that mandate to restrict uh certain kinds of liberal uh Liberties uh because he wants Hungary to have a you know a Hungarian national identity Christianity becomes you know uh the dominant religion and so forth and so that’s the issue right now is whether you can preserve the liberal part of democracy thank you and you already touched on some of the you know attacks that we see coming from both the right and the left you mentioned Hungary uh attacks on liberalism as you see it and we’ll we’ll talk about this in some more detail a little bit down the road as we talk about the United States in 2024 obviously and the election cycle that’s long been underway and that’s sort of taking up speed let’s stick with liberalism for a second here you also mentioned democracy obviously and basically took the next question out of my mouth the way I understand you liberalism and democracy often go together but they don’t necessarily have to is is that correct could you imagine like a modern Western Society based on liberalism but with serious impediments to democracy or the other way around well uh liberalism without democracy and democracy without liberalism have both existed so if you think about the classic German rat uh that was a liberal State you had property rights you had uh individual uh rights that were protected by a rule of law but you didn’t have open elections in which all you know uh uh adults could uh could vote uh and that was very common in the 19th century in in many parts of Europe uh and you also today have many examples of illiberal democracies uh so again we’ll take Hungary as an example where uh the rule of law has been weakened there’s a lot of manipulation of Courts and Jud judges uh to suit the interest of fidz the ruling party but there has been a democratic election there may have been some complaints about fairness but basically I think most people would concede that uh you know fidz was supported by you a majority of hungarians and so that’s an example of an illiberal democracy and we’ll have to get back to this a little little bit later and ask you about the United States obviously that context and and the uh buz word of illiberal democracy we’ll get to this in a second just because you touched on the German meaning or the meaning in Germany of liberalism which you defined I think in very very quickly and and correctly so uh just as an aside maybe how come that liberalism has such a different meaning in the United States from what it used to mean and still means to most people in Germany what do what do you make of that it’s a it’s a rather funny change in meaning yeah yeah uh I think that I’m not sure of the actual historical uh designation liberal liberalism in the United States but uh I do think that liberalism is actually a foundational Doctrine in the US and in you know uh to a similar degree in in the uh in Britain uh because these countries were founded on what we would call loan principles John Lock the great philosopher uh was the apologist for the revolution uh uh the English Revolution uh that occurred in the um uh 16th century and then was Consolidated in the Glorious Revolution uh uh uh a few decades later where the supremacy of law and the supremacy of parliament over the monarchy uh were established and of course the American Revolution was based on a revolt against the power of the British Monarchy uh and the assertion by the American colonists that they had the right to govern themselves uh John Lock said that uh legitimate government is based on uh consent of the Govern and that’s been a foundational principle uh in the United States uh I think in Europe uh liberalism has been uh Associated uh with you know certain economic Doctrine um Ordo liberalism you know has been a powerful force in uh in Germany and I think it acquired this uh as I said right of Center uh significance that um you know liberalism really represented a certain attitude towards the market and the protection of market and property rights uh um and uh you know we we have a different term in the United States libertarianism that in a way is closer to liberalism as it’s understood in Germany where Libertarians really don’t like the government you know they want the government to stop regulating they want to give people the freedom in Social Circles to if they want to smoke they can smoke you know uh they can take drugs they can do all sorts of things without government interference uh and that’s a different form of uh the meaning of the word liberalism but it’s not the one I endorse because I actually think that governments are pretty important and their Authority is necessary in order to maintain a liberal order because if you don’t have a state that can enforce laws uh you know you don’t really have a liberal Society yeah and governments I think most of us would agree governments are important uh they have responsibility for the people that elected them into office and um as you went through that two to fource you know in the history of the term liberalism how it’s been evolving up until this day um you know I sort of I started thinking there are some big promis that come along with liberalism and you go about these promises in your book as well um and you you’re not shy you don’t shy away from talking about the shortcomings of liberalism as well so so let’s maybe move in that direction and see you you mentioned the Dignity of the human individual that’s crucial you mentioned the rule of law that liberalism is based on and Promises basically as we look at the shortcomings of of liberalism especially in the context of today you know the recent past and present um Frank aren’t the critics you know the critics of liberalism and liberal democracy right uh when they mention some of these shortcomings and when they state that maybe liberalism is not all that it that it claims to be so maybe you could take us through the shortcomings the main shortcomings that you that you detect well I think that the critique differs whether you’re on the left or on the right so the critique from the left is pretty straightforward it’s that liberalism promises to treat people equally under law but in fact they don’t ever live up to that and uh people continue to be discriminated against whatever the law says uh so the law doesn’t achieve its promise in the United States uh this became very evident to people in 2020 uh after the um Murder by a policeman of George Floyd this black man who was choked to death basically by a policeman in min neapolis uh and that underlined to people that you know the police do not treat black Americans uh the same as white Americans despite the commitment you know in the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal and so I think uh on the part of many people in the Progressive left uh they think that liberalism uh doesn’t fulfill its promises it’s weak it doesn’t really um uh you know because of the prohibitions of too much intervention in society by the state it doesn’t create enough of an equal playing field for uh people across racial ethnic gender uh and other kinds of lines and so that’s a pretty straightforward uh critique and I think any liberal would have to admit that uh that’s true that there is a big uh gap between the promise and the performance just quickly if I may because you mentioned the Declaration of Independence uh already and it says there’s also the pursuit of happiness in there right how does that square with the idea of equality SL inequality because a lot of people tend to read it like I’m not I’m not only allowed to pursue happiness it’s not only equal opportunities it’s equal outcomes yeah well that’s uh that’s certainly the uh part of the demand on the left you know we have this uh acronym Dei that’s very common in University and corporations diversity Equity uh and inclusion and the equity part is deliberately uh defined differently from uh equality as traditionally understood because traditionally equality meant equality of opportunity or equality of treatment but Equity means equality of outcomes and this is one of the um critiques of liberalism that was made from the left that uh you didn’t really have anything like Equity that if you looked at uh average incomes life expectancy you know incarceration rates all of these things that between blacks and whites uh the Gap remains still very very large despite the promises you know made at the time of the uh Civil Rights Movement um you know I guess my answer to that is that all of these critiques are true so all men are created equal Thomas Jefferson writes that in the Declaration of Independence but when the American Republic was founded in 1789 the only people who had a right to vote were white men who own property and I think a lot of the subsequent History of the United States has been the progressive expansion of who is considered a full human being with full rights and so uh the property qualification was dropped off in the early 19th century the American Civil War was really fought over the question of whether African-Americans could be citizens and that was theoretically settled in the 14th amendment in the 1860s after the Civil War but it took another Century for African-Americans to actually achieve uh equal voting rights you know so this was kind of a shameful aspect of American uh history women didn’t get the right to vote until the early 20th century uh and so you know there’s been this steady expansion of Rights uh in my view uh it’s important that we had this promise of equality because that’s what gave momentum to um social progress uh and the inclusion of more and more groups uh in um uh in who’s considered a full rights bearing human being but you know it’s still not a completed um it’s not a completed journey and we still have inequalities in treatment uh and certainly big inequalities in outcomes and I think that’s where many people especially young people today on the left get very impatient with you know with our liberal society and I and I’m grateful for you mentioning the left and that sort of left criticism uh of a liberal promise if you want one of the shortcomings and we already have a question coming in that I was going to say for later but I’ll take it now because it fits exactly to you know fits in with what you just said Frank um you know about like you call it a text on the left and on the right towards liberalism it could also be called criticism of you know liberal promises I I guess do you think that you know at least the idea of Classical liberalism that’s the question that’s being asked here is being threatened by the left through what is usually called woke identity politics or is it the other way around do you feel that they have a right to to say so because what they stand for is being threatened by a false promise of Liber ISM well they certainly have a right to make that case I think that uh however the agenda of identity politics at some point becomes very anti-liberal so there’s really two meanings of identity poit maybe we should back up a little bit and just give a little bit of the history of this sure in the 20th century what it meant to be a person of the left you know people on the left want greater equality but inequality was understood you know in large Marxist terms it was the big class division between Bourgeois and proletariat between managers and workers uh and so forth in the last few decades the understanding of inequality has shifted to narrower groups that are defined by race ethnicity gender sexual orientation um and you know the argument which is a true one is that the uh marginalization and oppression of these groups differs by what you are you know a black man is going to be treated differently from a white woman that somehow you know doesn’t isn’t allowed to achieve her potential you know because of patriarchal assumptions you know and and this sort of thing uh now if the focus on identity these narrower categories of inequality um are understood as uh efforts to mobilize people that are treated as a member of a group involuntarily by the larger society and what they want is inclusion in the broader liberal order that promises everybody equal treatment then that I think is a legitimate form of democratic politics that people should be able to organize uh they should be able to form groups and then Lobby and use the political system to achieve uh greater equality but there’s a different form of identity politics that says that your race gender sexual orientation is an essential characteristic about you that’s the most important thing that someone can know and the state has to treat you differently based on which one of these groups uh you’re in uh and that leads to you know let’s say affirmative action programs where you’re hired simply on the basis of your gender or your skin color you know without regard to to your qualities as an individual and that’s the point I think where uh woke politics or identity politics becomes illiberal because the fundamental premise in Liberal politics is that everybody is an individual and should be recognized you know as a equal individual with rights but also judged as an individual uh and not simply because you happen to be born in a group that you had no control over and I think that’s becomes very controversial in U you know in many societies where people feel that you know these formerly marginalized groups are being given Privileges and are being treated better than you know the majority population uh in the country that’s a lot of the opposition to immigration you know that we’re too solicitous of immigrants and we don’t treat our own people uh with equal respect or with equal benefits uh and that sort of thing that’s that’s at least what the perception of some people T tends to be right um and and and it’s certainly debatable but and we’ll get back to this during the second half of our talk also what the how the political right maybe um attempts to play patterns like this but uh it was interesting for me that you seem to touch on the the second of the three big shortcomings of liberalism that you mentioned in your book as you were speaking hypocrisy uh um you know basically May maybe you could explain what you mean by that shortcoming of liberalism and also because you mentioned you know you seem to allude to campus protest and and and certain groups in society that claim their rights um at times in very sort of straightforward uh ways also um I would be I would be interested whether you see that um that hypocrisy shortcoming of liberalism you know or or that people claim it in relation to what’s going on currently uh on us campuses for example is there do you do you think that people actually protest one of the shortcomings or more of the shortcomings of liberalism uh as these campus protests go on or is this um too far-fetched for you no I mean hypocrisy plays in both the left and the right critiques of what’s happening in uh in campuses today so um you know a lot of the pro Palestinian protesters in many universities are complaining that their universities are not actually open to all positions and that uh they’ve been too pro Israel in terms of their endowments and the companies they own stock in and in terms of the uh you know public uh positions they’ve taken but there’s also a uh conservative critique that the universities themselves have been U claiming that they were bastions of Free Speech but in fact fact uh you can’t say certain more conservative things about uh race gender sexual orientation uh that’s what cancel culture is about and if you’re a professor that you know takes a position uh even one based on a lot of evidence and you know research that violates some of these new Norms about the way we speak about uh these identity topics then it’s not just that you’re criticized but you’re shouted down and you’re you know you you face demands to be the university has to fire you or not give you a platform that where you can pursue these ideas I think that you know right now uh University administrators have to make this distinction I think it’s a legitimate one but they have to enforce a distinction between permitting freedom of speech where you get to uh follow the LI liberal principle that you know there’s a Marketplace of ideas and everybody should Express their uh views um but that that doesn’t cross over into actual uh harassment threats certainly not uh into violence and walking that line turns out to be quite difficult because a lot of Campus protesters you know have demanded that the university not permit certain people to speak uh you know they don’t seem to be that interested in actually having a calm discussion about the Rights and Wrongs of the current conflict in Gaza you know this sort of thing so I think there’s charges of hypocrisy uh from both sides at the present moment is this something just just out of curiosity because you’re at Stanford currently is this something you encounter at Stanford as well and how does the University deal with this because I was at Colombia only last week where where it all started and then later on at the University of Texas uh in Austin and again partly violent protests the police going in so a lot of problems a lot of challenges is this something you encounter at Stanford at the moment or not so much yeah we we’ve had an encampment at Stanford you know so these are pro Palestinian students that are living in tents you know in some public space and we had one that went on until I think March and then they finally closed that down uh but then um after the Colombia protest when the police moved in uh many other schools in solidarity they reestablished their encampment uh I think that it’s been a kind of complicated tactical issue for University presidents so the Columbia president decided that the encampment was really uhu uh disruptive uh you know a lot of times they’re banging drums all night and you know not letting students into certain buildings and and this sort of thing and so they called in the police and that you know had the predictable effect of escalating the you know the uh uh the outrage against the administration and uh you know I think that that was probably a mistake in Stanford they’ve allowed the encampment to remain but it’s very much contained uh and you know they don’t bang drums and and they don’t disrupt you know that much activity uh and so therefore you know I think we’ve had a slightly calmer uh spring than many schools have I mean the way you phrase it I mean I just have to sort of ask you about the main justification for liberalism that you also list in in in your book because the way you describe it one would think uh that you know the United States as a country as a nation has reached a certain limit you know where where the promise of liberalism maybe doesn’t work that well anymore if you have to send in the police as a you know as a head of a big school or or university director against your own students that certainly looks looks weird from the outside but some of the main justifications for liberalism uh that you list in book my question will be you know do do these justifications still hold true in the 21st century and in 2024 especially as we move closer to to this year and and and events on the ground um maybe maybe you could walkus through the main justifications that you feel liberalism still holds yeah and explain why you chose these I think in a polarized and uh very divisive period like the one we’re in the the need for liberalism is all the more important liberalism uh began as a Doctrine in the mid middle 17th century so after the Protestant Reformation Europe was consumed in 150 years of religious Warfare and the argument of early liberals was that uh we need peace we need security of individuals despite the fact that they differ with regard to their religious confession and so the idea was to take uh this uh commitment to final ends as defined by a particular religious Doctrine out of public life you can believe whatever you want as a private individual but the state would be neutral with regard to whether you’re Protestant or Catholic or you know whatever uh and tolerance would be the chief virtue that you needed to survive in a liberal society and I think that’s still the case that uh we are in many ways more diverse today than uh in the 17th century in 17th century Europe it’s not just religion it’s ethnicity it’s race it’s uh you know with equal rights for women uh gender becomes an important you know dividing line and I think that liberal rules uh are the only ones that can permit uh everybody to live peacefully uh with one another uh you know India is a good example of where that’s being challenged right now because India was founded by nuu and Gandhi on liberal principles and I don’t see how else you can govern a country like that that’s diverse in terms of religion cast region language uh U so a liberal India basically allows people to tolerate everybody else what Prime Minister Modi and his Hindu nationalist party have been trying to do is to shift that national identity to one that’s based on Hinduism and that means you’re disenfranchising you know the 200 million Muslims that live in India and that is just a formula for you know long-term communal violence of which we’ve already seen you know unfortunate uh amount so you know liberalism in the first instance is simply a pragmatic way of getting people in diverse societies to live peacefully by imposing you know laws that require them to be tolerant and to treat each other uh you know tolerantly uh but when you challenge the principles of liberalism itself then you know liberal states have a problem because you need that framework in order to have a kind of peaceful coexistence of these diverse groups let let me challenge you a little bit if I if I may you know the way the way you describe it it sounds beautiful uh as an abstract principle but uh as we you know you you brought up India as an example I’d like to bring up the United States uh a country that we all hold deer but that’s certainly living through big challenges to put it mildly so the idea of liberalism to you know everybody is given a chance or a way to tolerate everybody else I think tolerate everybody else is the way you phrased it um that seems like a very you know like a principle very removed from a lot of people’s lives I mean uh a former president who’s running for office again now basically violated that principle all along the way and it led all the way to the to the assault on Congress on January uh 6 back then but how do you how do you justify the one of the main justifications for liberalism a moral justification about human dignity about tolerance given the fact that someone like him makes it you know into the highest office in the country violating a lot of people’s dignity along the way and up until this day women minorities disabled people and so forth how does that how does that even work together well I mean you know the threat of a populist like Donald Trump uh is a threat to the liberal principle itself and liberalism doesn’t have a solution to that I mean it’s it’s it’s meant to solve that problem but it it doesn’t mean that everybody will necessarily understand those principles and abide by them and I think that Trump is simply one of a whole series of liberal leaders that have been popularly elected in turkey and Hungary and Poland in you know Slovakia and many other uh uh places around the world and I think that you know liberals in a way uh have forgotten their own Origins and many people have taken liberal principles for granted uh you know that liberalism has produced a lot of peace and prosperity but only because people are willing to play by liberal rules and you know be tolerant uh and so forth but now you’re getting overt threats to you know liberalism so internationally now you’ve got two great Powers Russia and China that are distinctly anti-liberal and they’re actually um in the case of Russia using violence to overturn uh you know a neighboring liberal uh society and at that point you know liberals just need to fight back I mean literally in the case of Ukraine you know we’ve been providing weapons so that the ukrainians can defend their own uh liberal order in the United States uh in Poland in other places that have populist illiberal movements uh you know we have to use different means we have to use The Ballot Box and elections uh as a way of Defending that liberal order and what I find unfortunately very disturbing is that many people living in Liberal societies don’t understand that their own system is under threat in the United States uh you know to someone like me a political scientist it seems pretty clear that uh this is not a normal election that this is really an election to preserve the fundamental institutions of a liberal Society you have one candidate that lost the last election didn’t accept that loss and then summon a mob to basically use violence in order to stay in office uh this is something that happens in young democracies but it shouldn’t be happening in the United States but despite that you get all these Republicans now and Republican voters and Republican officials that try to minimize what happened on January 6th that say oh it was just a peaceful demonstration that got a little bit out of hand uh and they don’t blame Donald Trump for what was obviously a very deliberate effort to over turn an election yeah and so the fact that you’re living in a liberal Society doesn’t mean that everybody accepts those liberal principles and you know what’s remarkable about Trump is that this is the first time we’ve had a candidate in anyone’s living memory that didn’t accept this basic principle you know for example the orderly transition of power if you lose an election you concede that you’ve lost and you step down uh and that is a huge violation of the rule of law that um you know and that’s really what we have to defend here Mo most certainly so and and like you said this is something you would expect in young democracies maybe it’s to do with the fact that the United States is such an old democracy and some of its institutions are outdated and you also touch on this in your book obviously and uh you know with regard to the Electoral College and other institutions that might be in need of Reform but since you mentioned populism Frank a couple of times now now um I would like to sort of ask you could you Define populism for is because it’s another it’s another one of these big words out there you know somewhat cloudy that are hard to grasp and also would you say that Trump is a quintessential populist if there is such a thing sure well there are several uh possible definitions of populism I think the one that is the most relevant right now is that populists believe that you know in a sense the visible reality is is fake because it is being manipulated by uh Elites that are acting behind the scenes to you know to order things to their interest and not to the interests of ordinary people and that’s why many populists buy into conspiracy theories uh of various sorts that you know the election was really stolen that the um vaccines were all part of a plot on the part of uh you know Elites controlling the public health authorities that wanted to make people vaccinated or wear masks simply is a matter of power you know this sort of thing um you know that’s one uh sense of it the other is that you know populists believe in things that are popular but not necessarily good uh in the in the long run so uh you know you run a inflationary monetary policy before the election so that you know things will look really good but everything’s going to come crashing down you know in the long run and in fact that’s one of the issues in the coming election in the United States because Trump and people around him have been talking about removing the independence of the Federal Reserve uh which would be a disaster you know uh it meant that next time around uh if you have a trump appointed chairman of the Federal Reserve the money supply is going to expand interest rates are going to before the next election and you’re just setting up the ground for you know a disaster uh down the road and so those are a couple of different meanings but I really think that you know this opposition to Elites existing Elites is probably the key uh issue uh and it means that you can’t believe anything that’s said in the Legacy Media you can’t believe the government you can’t believe Public Health authorities because all of these are suspect now yeah thanks for mentioning this and also I think there’s a there’s a lot more to worry about as we look at the uh the project 2025 that’s out there right and and we can all read up online it’s some 900 pages I think of of ideas and Concepts I have sure want to I agree uh and we’ll get back to this in a second also in the Q&A section when we uh give our audience a chance to to ask more questions um just to to wrap up the idea of populism is populism always anti-democratic well um no I I think that in many cases uh you do have a problem with Elites that get out of touch with you know feelings of ordinary people and uh some forms of populism are actually quite uh important so for example during the Great Depression in the 1930s the elites really screwed up you know they brought about this economic catastrophe unemployment in the United States reached 25% so one quarter of the population didn’t have a job uh and there was a popular mobilization but that mobilization was used by Franklin Roosevelt and the Democratic party to put in place the foundations of the American welfare state so they created Social Security uh they created you know a state that could actually promote jobs and economic growth uh they regulated the stock market you know so that popular energy was directed towards actually constructing institutions that were very important in subsequent Generations but uh you know the current kind of populism that we face is um you know really disconnected from any concrete benefits to people so Trump you know kept railing against China and uh uh Imports and so forth uh but they actually increased under his presidency and you know he wasn’t able to actually achieve any of the kinds of uh objectives he set for himself uh the other thing that you know we should probably mention about the current nature of populism is that I think it really depends heavily on the internet and the kind of technological world that we are living in um you know it used to be that let’s say 30 years ago if you claim that vaccines were har F uh and that it was really a conspiracy of Elites to make people take vaccines uh first of all you wouldn’t have heard that argument made in in the mainstream media and you had many fewer media channels you know by which people could get information but today anybody can say anything they want and so if you uh go on to Google and you say our vaccines safe you’ll get 10,000 you know websites that will say oh no no they’re actually very dangerous and their conspiracy and and so forth uh and all of that is false uh but you know that’s what that’s what uh you know the internet has done where there’s really no uh quality control over the kind of information that that people get and that I think feeds populism because as I said populism is really the belief that the apparent reality that you’re looking at is not the real one it’s it’s something else uh and that you’re being manipulated behind the scenes and you know the internet makes it much easier to believe a a story like that let me thanks uh very much Frank um let me pick up a question that just came up as as you were speaking uh regarding populism where someone says uh you said populists talk about Elites and this person says as if they don’t exist my impression was rather like like leads are being seen as those are sort of pulling the strings behind the scenes means but um but the question is isn’t crony capitalism actually a great threat to democracy so so don’t populist you know some of the populist views that are being held might have a might have a point or certain element of truth no there’s there’s certainly a point but I think that the solution to that is kind of traditional social democracy basically you know where a state that has the legitimacy of you know having been elected uh actually regulates uh capitalism and creates rules uh you know that’s what you want a liberal order for uh but actual populists out there have actually promoted crony capitalism so Victor Orban I keep picking on him but he’s the chief example up there uh Hungary today is nothing but crony capitalism you know Orban and his family have enriched themselves as a result of their favoring you know of a circle of uh fidz supporters that um are rewarded with you know public contracts and so forth so if you want to uh do something about crony capitalism uh that kind of populist agenda is not um uh not what you want same thing with Donald Trump I mean the remarkable thing is he every other president first of all we didn’t have we didn’t have that many businessmen becoming president but uh everybody we had a lot of rich people becoming president and they would all uh divest yeah they they divest themselves of a lot of their assets you know put them in a blind trust uh Trump didn’t do that uh he kept operating his businesses and in fact he used his uh government office to promote his businesses uh and so everybody wanted to stay at the Trump Hotel in Washington and do events at Trump Golf Courses and so forth it was really Shameless exploitation of your public office for private purposes and that’s part of the reason he’s in the court all the time because he actually was in you know violating a lot of rules against uh that kind of double dealing um and so I think that the the uh charge of crony capitalism is a correct one it does exist in many modern liberal democracies but populism is really not the answer to that you know you you need a actually an impersonal state that can enforce rules against that sort of thing and enforce them and and just to stick with the idea of Elites because this person brought it up and we have another question sort of going in that direction um in Germany there’s a phenomenon you know rightwing parties and also on the left and we have that peculiar combination the so-called clear front phenomenon where where left and right-wing people sort of agree and tend to work together on certain critiques of the elites so I’ll be interested in the United States what’s your view of that development do you you feel that the the elites sort of you talked about politicians that hold office obviously they would belong to the Elites in that that way of reading reality if you want but does this comprise also people like you who hold positions at the University so academic experts for example journalists media producers intellectuals do you feel that like like all of these actors in society are sort of being thrown into the same pot or do people differentiate have a problem mostly with politics that’s definitely happening and it’s a big problem in the following sense um you know many of the critiques that are being made by conservatives today are actually I think legitimate they they reflect legitimate problems so for example uh people coming across the southern border for the last several years they’ve been taking advantage of the Asylum laws uh you know they’re basically economic migrants but they’re claiming Asylum status and the United States then has to take them in that is a big problem and I don’t think Joe Biden has dealt with it uh adequately uh to get that border under control but the problem is that given how polarized the politics is if you as a person on the left say well we really ought to do something about the Border immediately all of your colleagues on the left are going to say ah you’re you’re defending Trump you know or you’re uh you know you’re adopting Trump’s uh uh policies and you know people don’t want to deal with that and so they just don’t say anything and they don’t make reasonable criticisms from the right because they’re being going to be accused of being extreme right uh and you know representing these populist uh views so that’s uh one of the reasons why we’ve kind of retreated into these more extreme positions on the far right and the far left because taking a position in the middle that’s saying yeah there is something to the conservative critique becomes much much more difficult MH so so let’s you know based on this Frank thanks so much so far this this is this is great let’s move into 2024 uh and the ongoing election campaign uh you’ve met mentioned a number of shortcomings I think you know in terms of institutions in terms of maybe a lack of trust uh in regarding those who really hold power or are running for power um one question that that just came in and maybe that’s that’s as good a starting point is as any is uh referring to the younger Generations uh which are getting more and more important obviously the Democrats have realize this somewhat sooner one could argue than than the Republicans but um just to sort of re raise that question if you look at the current state of political political Affairs in the United States and the upcoming elections how do you look at the younger generation also as as someone who teaches at a renowned University deals with young people on a daily basis um and and some of these people are disenchanted um how do you how do you encourage them to sort of become re-engage and active in the upcoming elections uh and not sort of repeat what what happened in in 2016 when a lot of young people afterwards said we we didn’t even go cast our vote because Hillary was going to win any anyway which which proved a tragic error so what what do you what is your message for these younger people how do you as a professor possibly also get that message across uh well it’s hard uh there’s several things contributing to that I mean one is Joe Biden himself uh you know he’s already in his age s and uh I think that a lot of younger people just feel that he can’t relate to them and they can’t relate to somebody that’s that of that generation uh you know maybe it would have been better if a year and a half ago he had announced he was going to step down and then there had been a contest for a candidate that was 20 years younger than him but unfortunately that’s uh that’s not happening uh I think that and then you know the the thing that’s happened since October 7th is that a lot of young people are actually much more left-wing and Progressive than their parents and certainly their grandparents that’s become evidence with all these uh protests in in many campuses but they’ve also bought into this form of identity politics and it’s interesting the only thing they’ve gotten angry about is when a non-white person is the victim of you know what they call settler Colonial uh uh violence uh and it’s potentially going to hurt uh Biden a lot especially in a state like Michigan which is a swing state it would normally vote Democratic but because there’s a lot of Arab Americans and a lot of young people that are really disillusioned with Biden’s middle east policies they may I don’t think that most of them would vote for Trump but they just may not vote at all and that could make a really big difference in the outcome of an election um I think that with to um your question of how to appeal to them yeah uh it’s complicated because you know what appeals to me is the threat to basic institutions but I think that that’s a hard argument to make uh because a lot of young people in a way take those institutions for granted like their freedom of speech or their ability to demonstrate uh could be threatened in a trump Administration you know he really wanted to use the Insurrection act to Tamp down on the protest that occurred in the uh 2020 after George Floyd was killed and if he were president during these campus uh uh encampments and protests you know he may have called out the National Guard or even the Army you know and just he wanted to show that he was in charge and their freedoms would be directly impacted but instead they turn their anger against Joe Biden you know who’s not doing that simply because I think they don’t understand the stakes and they don’t understand the potential for the country moving in a very illiberal right-wing nationalist uh Direction uh so I think that you still got to teach people about that and say you know do you really want that kind of intolerance because the threat you know is I mean some of these students are calling Joe Biden genocide Joe as if he’s responsible for genocide and you know I think it’s completely crazy given you know his actual positions but um you you somehow need to teach them that the real threat of uh authoritarian government is not coming from that camp it’s it’s really coming from the right at this point yeah and I agree you and I agree and I think most people out there one would think but you know to maybe turn this around and also pick up another question we we have a lot of questions coming in so this is this is this is just great do you think that Joe Biden though uh is the right guy who will sort of get the job done that you just described or you know another way that I think it’s it’s beautiful the way this is being phrased is what’s the role of emotion uh in the state of current social and political tension in the United States and also with regard to the elections this sort of reminds me of some of the shortcomings and Promises of liberalism that we talked about before also the ideal of rational discourse you know and relying on rational arguments Frank do you do you believe that someone like Joe Biden can pull this off and is appealing to people’s rational the way to win people over especially the young people or should there be more emotion in whichever way in there which is also risky right uh yeah that’s a complicated question to answer so it’s yeah you know Biden so far has been touting his accomplishments uh you know we have pretty full employment the econom is growing you know much more rapidly than almost any other uh rich country uh there’s a lot of technological innovation but that is not really getting through to people despite the fact that economic conditions are very good a lot of Americans seem to think that they’re very bad uh and it you know it’s just wrong but um it’s hard to convince them otherwise I think that there are a couple of issues where he could show strength as a leader that would appeal more emotionally so one of them again is that southern border issue you know he can say immigration is a good thing America is a nation of immigrants that’s an important tradition but we can’t let this happen without you know control we we need to manage that border and make sure that the people that come in are you know deserve to come in uh that’s something he could do the other issue has to do with the question of patriotism because um typically Democrats and the left don’t like to emphasize patriotism whereas you know Donald Trump literally wraps himself in an American flag you know at at every opportunity and I think the Republicans should not be allowed to steal the issue of patriotism uh in that fashion uh and so you know I think Biden could be much more vocal in you know uh talking about you know why the United States is great why he loves the country why other people ought to love the country and not criticize those who you know are patriotic I mean that’s a mistake I think a lot of liberal leaders make because liberals tend to believe in you know kind of universal human rights and therefore our country isn’t anything that special but I think that when you’re getting into the realm of emotion as you said you know that’s uh something that’s important to do is Biden capable of that well oh I guess one final thing yeah a lot of the support for Trump is not that people he he has a group of supporters that love them but many uh swing voters don’t love him but they really don’t like a lot of things that are going on on the left you know transgender rights advocacy um uh you know uh lgbtq issues and I think that it should be possible for uh Biden who’s always been a kind of Centrist to say yes we support these rights but you know we don’t believe the government should be out front you know promoting uh you know transgender you know bathrooms and you know and this sort of thing he could make a break with some of the U more outlandish uh things to come out of that Progressive ID form of identity politics Bill Clinton did that you know very well when he was running for president he uh there’s this black activist sister Soldier and Clinton just attacked her you know and said this is not America and this is you know not what we’re about and Biden could do that but he hasn’t and I think you know that would help a lot and that’s something that it’s a symbolic act but it does appeal to emotions and it signals what side of this cultural divide you’re on so so what I’m hearing is a good leader you know in quotation marks in these times will be someone who does not harp on economic success all the time which is a real fact I mean in Germany we wish we had that sort of growth we had that sort of energy Independence we could afford to export energy if we wanted to and so on like like you guys can so but but you would still say that that a good leader shouldn’t sort of harp on these successes all the time but should actually address these so-called culture issues SL identity politics in a different way or not let yeah no that’s basically it yeah I mean you can’t accept uh either the extreme hostility to Identity Politics on the right uh you know you’re not going to embrace white nationalism but you can also say that there’s something wrong and very ilber and unamerican about uh some of the manifestations of identity Politics on the left you know cancel culture and all of that sort of thing but then what I guess the question behind that question is and that’s something you touched on not and I thought was fascinating so the economy is doing well overall on average but somehow you said people don’t feel it people don’t sort of you know it’s not on their mind so much just something else bothering them so what is the issue that is going to decide the election in November if not the economy uh well some of the some of the most important considerations for voters are ones that uh neither candidate can do anything about the Biden’s age and his apparent you know the fact that he shows his age much more than Trump does you know that that you can’t do anything about if there’s a policy issue that you know could could really help it’s some combination of closing the uh Southern border and uh being much more assertive about supporting you know Public Safety uh walking back all of these demands to defund the police that came out after uh George Floyd in in 2020 just saying I’m in favor of you know Public Authority public security including security of borders uh we like immigration but we need to you know control it and and make sure that we’re getting you know the people we want rather than you know uh whoever decides to you know take advantage of a loophole in our laws I think those are probably the single most important things under the control of actual policy that Biden could be doing if this is among the most important things then then I mean what follows from this is uh is Biden’s VP candidate questions and what naturally I mean CA Harr is going to be on on the ticket again she was in charge or you know assigned assigned by Biden to take take care of the Border challenge what do you make of that I mean has she yeah I mean unfortunately UHA Harris is probably less popular than Biden and uh he again is sort of stuck with her I think if he wanted to change his VI vice president uh he would uh have he would have had to do it already some months ago uh so that’s not going toen happen um however uh the one thing she’s been doing lately is uh uh insisting on uh attacking the Republicans over abortion and that is one of the big issues that you know for example that was important in the Polish election you know the the liberal parties uh didn’t like this uh very restrictive abortion law that the the law and Justice party had pushed and similar thing is happening in the United States this overturning of roie Wade and the ability of Republican states to restrict abortion is very very unpopular and it’s unpopular with those middle class women in swing states that are critical uh you know to the upcoming election and it’s going to drive a lot of turnout and so she’s you know um the vice president has actually been pushing this issue and really blaming the Republicans for uh the repeal of roie Wade or the overturning of roie Wade and you know that may have an actual effect you know on the election it just might and and then you know maybe for the last part of our conversation Frank if you will uh another you know sort of issue SL field that that naturally we as you know coming to this from a German European International perspective will be interested in in relation to the elections and that’s foreign policy so um traditionally um and correct me if you see this differently foreign policy was not exactly the kind of issue that would decide an election or would win you an election in the United States you might lose it because of foreign policy do you think that things are differently this time for the fact that we have two Wars uh in Europe on the doorsteps of Europe going on uh another one on the horizon possibly China Taiwan um do you feel that foreign policy is going to be more important and what does this mean with regard to Biden and Trump I don’t think it’s going to be more important this time than in the past but in a narrow sense it will be we’ve already mentioned this that an important part of the left wi of the democratic party has been very opposed to Biden’s support for Israel uh and young people are much more prop Palestinian today than they were you know a generation ago and so that May that specific issue may hurt Biden if you can get a ceasefire by the summer and things calm down a little bit so you don’t see these nightly pictures of Palestinian children you know being bombed out of their homes then that might you know reduce the salience of that uh Ukraine you know I think some Republicans thought that there was a lot of popular opposition to supporting Ukraine and that’s turned out not to be true that actually 2third of the house and 3/4s of the Senate voted in favor of this Ukraine Aid act that was passed a few weeks ago so I think there still is uh support for Ukraine but that’s not going to motivate people to go to the polls there’s hardly anybody that uh is going to vote for Biden because of his position on Ukraine China uh even I mean it’s it’s it’s not certain exactly what the debate is because both parties have turned very anti-chinese um I don’t think it’s necessarily going to be uh a critical issue for most voters except in the sense that there is a general perception that Trump is a tough guy and Biden is weak and that if there’s a future crisis you know Trump will be tougher I think that’s complete nonsense I think that Trump really does not want to use American power anywhere uh he doesn’t want to stay out he keeps calling Biden a warmonger um so I think if you actually want a tough foreign policy that supports allies around the world you’d vote for Biden but that is not necessarily the uh perception of many American voters I would agree and and all the John mccains and so on even on the Republican side are gone so so I don’t really see any support for that sort of foreign policy for for for the time to come um talking about foreign policy though in the context of the elections and Biden being somewhat torn uh you know where things are going to go because he has to try and arrange for the leftwing of the Democrat Party and and also the the more conservative wing of the Democrat Party and Biden seems somewhat torn uh in between what do you what do you make of that you know is is foreign policy just an example where we can see just how torn the Democratic party is and how hard Biden has to work for majorities or uh what you what do you make of that task I uh I think unfortunately that Biden is being too much influenced by what he perceives as a relationship between his domestic election chances and foreign policy now it’s probably true that that connection exists with regard to the Gaza war and so if they can get a ceasefire there sooner rather than later that’s going to help him on Ukraine uh you know they’ve made these really bizarre are statements like they wanted to prevent Ukraine from attacking oil refineries inside Russia because they thought that this would drive up gasoline prices in the United States first of all it’s a it’s a ridiculous assertion that’s it’s not going to have any effect on gas prices but in any event that shows a really warped sense of priorities where Ukraine is fighting for its National existence and you’re going to tell them to just hold off on your fight to save yourself you know until our election is over that I mean that just seems like a very misplaced set of priorities and I think in general uh it it’s kind of tragic but the ukrainians would not be in the dire situation they are now of course the Republicans are primarily responsible for the cut off of aid but Biden from the beginning could have been giving them you know better longer range more U you know lethal kinds of weapons to use against Russia and I think they’ve been uh excessively intimidated by you know the threat of escalation on the on the part of the Russians so there’s intimidation and maybe just for the last couple of minutes really uh um Frank before we before we wrap this up in terms of you mentioned intimidation um I was going to ask about credibility of the United States you know globally uh I I do recall a time and I think we we met back then also you know when when the neocon idea of the of the US role in the world was still was still pretty prominent and the idea that little like Cookie Cutter America’s everywhere is actually is is a good idea the world looks more like America makes it a safer place and that idea seems to be seems to be out the window but I I would be interested in what you make of this what about credibility of the United States globally as you look back on on Biden’s term has it increased has it declined well look um the biggest threat to American credibility is not anything that Biden can do it’s it’s the underlying polarization uh that’s what’s caused the cut off of Aid to Ukraine and I think it’s that polarization that is the single biggest source of weakness in America’s ability to lead and and you know restore order in the world because nobody can count on the United States when it’s that internally divided you’re at the point you know Trump said this explicitly that uh he didn’t regard any external enemy like Russia or China nearly as big a threat as Democrats you know I mean it’s it’s an unbelievable assertion you know that your your Rivals domestically are more dangerous than any foreign power um so uh as long as that polarization exists I think unfortunately um every every country that depends on America is going to be very very worried about you know the credibility of those commitments NATO you know is is obviously in big trouble right now because nobody can know whether the United States is actually going to even be a member of NATO in you know two three years um and so it’s very important I think for world order for the United States to get its house in order to firmly reject the kind of isolationism uh represented by Donald Trump and to you know return somehow to a consensus that the United States really needs to play uh a a major role supporting Global Security structure supporting a global trade you know a world of of global trade uh uh these are very very basic things if the world is going to be more stable in the future so so just to try and end on a on a somewhat uh optimistic note uh Frank if I may ask you uh you as an American um who also knows the outside world really well what is it currently you think in in 2024 um that that you know Germany Central Europe or something can look to the United States and say this is something that’s inspiring this is something how America deals with some very real challenges and maybe that you know that old idea of of American resilience coming to the for and sort of micking it out of that hole once again is there something that comes to mind where you feel yeah this is something that sort of gives me hope as Francis fukuyama this is where this is the way up well I do think that there is a chance that Joe Biden will not just win the election but he and the Democrats will actually win by a big margin uh you know I think that abortion issue has been very important I think in a lot of the by-elections that have happened uh in the last couple of years um it’s interesting actually that a lot of the state and local candidates in the Democratic party actually do a lot better than Biden himself does uh and so if they do extremely well in the coming election then maybe that would signal you know the beginning of the end for this kind of Maga Republican extreme right-wing you know movement within the Republican Party the other thing that’s happening is really American economic and technological leadership is still very very strong you know uh now the main focus is on AI but it continues to be the case that the American economy as you pointed out is doing much better than any other leading economy including China’s and uh you know that’s still something that’s a major strength of the United States that people ought to you know pay attention to well only last week someone in Texas told me Texas is doing so well including in the like solar energy Department that Texas should break free from from the United States so I’m not going to ask you about that that option maybe maybe next time we get to talk to you thanks okay very much Francis fukuyama thanks for taking the time for offering us a lens to to look through at the events that are going on on the ground and thanks for making the effort to be positive at the end we appreciate it very much thanks for thanks for this okay thank you very much Tobias bye-bye and thank you to all of you online and at the deie in tubing and for listening for thinking along for sending so many questions I think this is liberal democracy at its best and thank you obviously to the DI tubing and once again and our great team you’re fantastic everybody please mark your calendars June 4th is when our next conversation takes place at the Democrat Crossroads uh and the title of this event is going to be the UN de median so the power and or powerlessness of the media and obviously in the context of the US presidential elections we’ll be having Maria asri langa the US correspondent of the no and julus fintan of the European correspondent looking forward to this very much again thanks Francis fukuyama thanks everybody have a good evening okay bye-bye bye-bye