Soheila Najand
August 18, 2026
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Francis Fukuyama spoke of the ‘end of history.’ He did not mean the end of historical events; his larger claim was that Western liberal democracy, in the competition among major political systems, had become the final horizon of humanity’s political evolution. The unipolar world under American hegemony was, for a long time, the political embodiment of that same self-confidence — as if history had found its path, and the only remaining task was to extend this order to the rest of the world.
But three decades later, one might speak of another meaning for the ‘end of history’ — a much darker one.
If a hegemonic order can engineer not only states and economies, but also the human perception of good and evil; if it can, through media, language, sanctions, psychological warfare, and the division of the world into camps of ‘friend’ and ‘enemy’, bring a human being to the point where they applaud the torture of another human being solely on the basis of the victim’s political identity — then what ends may not be history itself, but rather the moral independence of the human being.
A human being, before being a member of any party, nation, religion, or political camp, is a social creature. Behavioural studies and cognitive sciences have shown that empathy, reciprocity ,and sensitivity to justice are among the most fundamental capacities of human social life — traits whose rudimentary forms can even be observed in other social mammals.
Human civilization was supposed to expand these capacities, not shrink them.
But modern propaganda can intervene precisely at this point.
Cognitive engineering does not first tell a person: ‘Be ruthless!’ It does something more subtle. First, it removes the victim from the sphere of empathy.
The victim is no longer ‘a young person’; they are a ‘government religious eulogist’. The other is no longer ‘a human being’; they are a ‘mercenary.’ That other is not a ‘citizen’; they are a ‘regime apologist’.
And at that very moment, an act that would be abhorrent if committed against an unnamed human being can be presented as justifiable — or even worthy of encouragement — when committed against someone placed in the ‘enemy’ camp.
That is why the reaction of some Iranians to the horrific killing of a young religious eulogist is, for me, not merely a political event. This incident, and especially the encouragement of violence against the victim, is a warning sign concerning the cultural and moral state of society.
One can be deeply angry at the Iranian government.
Iranian society has abundant reasons for such anger: corruption, embezzlement, repression, inefficiency, inequality, and forms of harsh, neoliberal capitalist policies that, alongside devastating foreign sanctions, have placed the lives of millions under immense pressure.
But none of these make the torture and killing of a human being morally acceptable.
And it is precisely at this point that one must distinguish between ‘political anger’ and ‘moral destruction.’
If I condemn torture when it is committed by the state, but encourage the very same torture when it is committed against someone I consider affiliated with the state, then my standard is no longer human rights. My standard is the political camp I belong to.
Here, ‘us and them’ has replaced ‘the human being and the act.’
This is the same fundamental logic that makes sectarian violence and organizations such as ISIS possible: before destroying the body of the other, one must first destroy their humanity.
ISIS itself was not born in a historical vacuum. Official and research sources trace its organizational roots to Al-Qaeda in Iraq and the immense instability created after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq and subsequently the Syrian war. Thus, the structural responsibility of Western interventionist policies in creating an environment in which such forces were able to grow is a serious and well-documented issue. (CIA)
But the issue is larger than the history of any single organization.
What I call ‘ISIS-ization’ (Daeshification) here is not a religious identity; it is a moral condition: the moment when the humanity of the other is so effaced that mutilating, burning, or torturing them no longer evokes revulsion.
This condition can be religious, secular, nationalist, and can even present itself as ‘libertarian’ or ‘pro-freedom.’
Hegemonic liberalism is not immune to this danger, either.
The great paradox of the unipolar order is precisely here. An order that presented itself as the bearer of universal human rights was simultaneously able to regularly divide the world into two spheres: human beings whose suffering must be seen, and human beings whose suffering can be ‘collateral damage’; states that have a right to defend themselves, and states whose defense is labeled a ‘threat’; violence that is ‘terrorism,’ and violence that is called a ‘liberation operation’ or ‘counter-terrorism.’
When this logic is repeated for decades, it does not merely change foreign policy. It enters the human mind.
This is where a new kind of world war takes on another meaning.
War does not necessarily begin with a formal declaration of world war. It can be transferred into the heart of societies: through sanctions, psychological warfare, intelligence operations, social polarization, and the reinforcement of boundaries between ‘friend’ and ‘enemy.’
In such a war, victory is not merely the seizure of territory. If a society can be forced to divide itself into two irreconcilable camps, a major part of the work is already done.
An outside force no longer needs to carry out all the violence directly; society can begin to tear itself apart.
And perhaps this is the darkest possible reading of the ‘end of history’:
Not a world in which humanity has finally attained freedom, but a world in which a dominant order has so thoroughly acquired the power to define good and evil that a human being can, at the very moment they speak of human rights, take pleasure in the torture of another human being.
At that moment, the issue is no longer the Islamic Republic, America, Israel, or a religious eulogist. The issue is the human being itself.
If we reserve empathy, reciprocity, and justice only for those who belong to the ‘us’ camp, then these are no longer human values; they are tribal privileges.
And civilization begins precisely at the point where we can say: even my enemy is a human being. Perhaps true resistance against psychological warfare and social engineering begins with that same sentence.