Watch your words before calling someone stupid—odds are you’re lining yourself up as the real fool. Still, I’m making an exception for this headline, cribbed and tweaked for a reason.
Francis Fukuyama—the American academic who shot to fame with his “End of History” in 1989—just dropped another grand theory, this time pinning down the roots of Western populism.
He’s no stranger to regular columns, with his “Frankly Fukuyama” series keeping academics and armchair pundits entertained. But his latest piece, “It’s the Internet, Stupid,” goes all in—blaming our age of global populism on the glowing phone screens in our pockets.
He isn’t alone. Post-Brexit, since Trump’s White House win, everyone from social scientists to barbers has lined up to try to decode the populist surge. Fukuyama rattles off the usual suspect
1.Economic inequality brought on by globalization and neoliberal policies.
2.Racism, nativism, and religious bigotry on the part of populations that have been losing status.
3.Broad sociological changes that have sorted people by education and residence, and resentment at the dominance of elites and experts.
4.The special talents of individual demagogues like Donald Trump.
5.The failiure of mainstream political parties to deliver growth, jobs, security, and infrastructure.
6.Dislike or hatred of the progressive Left’s cultural agenda.
7.Failures of leadership of the progressive Left.
8.Human nature and people’s proclivities towards violence, hatred, and exclusion.
9.Social media and the internet.
Sit back, Fukuyama says—he’s spent a decade pondering this puzzle, and his answer is all about that final culprit: the internet’s rise. It’s point nine—or bust. He gets there by process of elimination: dismiss one through eight, and voilà, only the net is left standing.
Here’s the rub: his philosophy is full of holes. He buys the nine factors on offer as gospel. Rule out eight, and bingo, you’ve got your winner. If the original shortlist missed the big reason, his whole logic falls flat.
The Past Still Bites
If you want to pop Fukuyama’s internet theory bubble, look no further than Nazi Germany.
Hitler’s brand of populism—the ugliest kind—fed off stoking hate, supercharged with nationalism, and plunged the world into chaos. The twist? Hitler had zero internet, not even a flip phone. His pulpit was the cavernous German beer hall—rowdy barns stuffed with hundreds, sometimes thousands.
Remember the Beer Hall Putsch? That was Hitler, 1923, storming Munich’s Bürgerbräukeller, itching to outdo Mussolini, tear down the Weimar Republic, and set up his National Socialist state.
Long before Facebook and memes, populists rallied bodies, not bots. The beer hall was their battleground—prime real estate for political disruption.
To be fair, today’s smartphones and the internet blitzkrieg ideas faster than any taproom. But pinning all modern populism on Wi-Fi? That’s not just off base—it’s clueless.
What Fukuyama misses is the biggest culprit hiding in plain sight: the Western democratic system itself. When voters give up on both party A and party B—when every debate feels staged, every outcome rigged, and personal fortunes just keep sliding—they turn to anyone outside the broken loop.
Back in Weimar Germany, political gridlock and World War I reparations crushed hope. People starved while parties dithered.
The Roots of Decay
That collapse sprouted from failure. But today? America’s breakdown is a product of too much “success.”
After World War II, America led the West into a slugfest with the Soviet bloc. External threats forced discipline. Even the “deep state” and power brokers played by the rules, putting the nation first. But when the USSR dissolved in 1991, Fukuyama was right there, chanting “the end of history” and the unbeatability of American democracy.
What happened next? The elites dropped the mask and the Deep State looted the spoils. The system broke down fast—hello, gerontocracy. Presidential tickets featured men well into their seventies; Congress, steered by octogenarian Nancy Pelosi, was deep in the grip of elder rule.
That’s just the visible rot. Behind the curtain, arms dealers and Wall Street call the shots. The 2008 subprime meltdown? Only Lehman’s CEO did the perp walk, while big banks cashed in on government bailouts.
Trillions printed, trillions owed—debt vaulted from $10 trillion in 2008 to $37 trillion now. Most of that fresh cash? Hoovered up by Big Tech, energy moguls, the arms sector. For the little guy, rising prices, tougher life, leaders hapless against immigration and drugs—just more symptoms of terminal decay.
When picking between party A and B means picking the same dead end, why not roll the dice on rebel party C? And that’s where Trump comes in.
Blind Spots and Hard Truths
Fukuyama’s 1989 blunder is back in 2025. He oversold American democracy, and still can’t admit populism is just the system’s death rattle. So he punts to a tired excuse: it’s the internet’s fault.
The lesson? Don’t be taken in by Fukuyama’s intellectual shell game. Hong Kong people once took the bait—trying to carbon-copy Western democracy brought the populist chaos of 2019. Now, we know better. Time to fix course, use the system we’ve got, ditch paralyzing opposition, and seize a constructive path forward.
Lo Wing-hung
Bastille Commentary
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