ABSTRACT
The end of history sure didn’t last long. As we noted in Chapter 6, a mere ten years after Fukuyama’s pronouncement
of “the end of history,” political discontent began to break out around the world, grabbing international attention with the 1999 Seattle protests at the World Trade Organization meetings. Few would contest the claim that Seattle marked the end of “the end of history.” But questions arise as to where this leaves us ideologically. Why were these protesters protesting? An answer suggested by our critical reading of Fukuyama’s myth is that the movements begun in Seattle were politics for politics’ sake. Bored by the end of history, wealthy, privileged Northerners protested against their own institutions as a way to fill in their own personal empty cores of liberalism. On this reading, anti-globalization protests expressed the internal contradictions inherent within liberalism.
