 Of course, this argument was seriously challenged by the rise of fascism and communism in the 20th century and the conflicts that ensued.  But Fukuyama in 1989 was maximally situated to defend Hegel and to argue that these ideological alternatives to liberal democracy were essentially deviations from deeper trends.  According to Fukuyama, fascism clearly failed by the mid-century (16-17) and now, with the fall of the Soviet Union, it was evident that communism was also a dead end. Fukuyama states that the proximate cause of the Soviet regime's fall  was its lack of legitimacy with the governing elite (30–1). The elite lost faith in  the regime because they saw that it was ideologically bankrupt (31). 