Whenever the full extension of liberal freedoms threatens the privileges of the powerful, liberal leaders have sought to restrict those freedoms because they have never truly been comfortable with the consequences of substantive equality.
This is how Niall Ferguson, an open defender of empire, becomes an in-demand pundit. Or how Thomas Friedman, who has variously championed the Iraq War, Israeli airstrikes on civilian areas , and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, still commands respect as a paragon of common sense. It would be better, Mishra feels, to listen to voices from the global south—he is particularly attentive to Asian intellectuals and earlier wrote a thoughtful book about them, From the Ruins of Empire.
Observing the close historical relationship between liberal ideas and imperial practice has led Indian, Chinese, and Japanese writers to political creeds that were more complex, less universalizing, and less fanatically individualistic. This is not just about diversifying the global intelligentsia. Seeing things from the vantage of the stepchildren, Mishra argues, reveals how insufficient the liberal obsession with formal processes has been.
And now, on cue, the oligarchs have seized the Oval Office. Bland Fanatics puts Mishra in the ring with opponents of various sizes. Yet the ones who draw out the fighter in him are not the crude villains. Confronted with Jordan Peterson, the Canadian psychologist who has urged the equivalent of the paleo diet in sexual relations, Mishra does his duty.
Mishra sees in Coates a fellow stepchild, whom he regards with evident sympathy. Having grown up in Baltimore during the crack epidemic and seen a friend killed by police in college, Coates knows full well the violence that liberal democracy allows. Yet Mishra believes Coates, now a literary star, is falling too easily into the gravity well of the liberal intellectual sphere. Such facets of power are all too easy to miss from a party at the White House.
And that, for Mishra, is ultimately the problem. The barbarians were never at the gate, Mishra observes. Shusha was the key to the recent war between Azerbaijan and Armenia. Now Baku wants to turn the fabled fortress town into a resort. By Daniel Immerwahr. Indian author Pankaj Mishra in September 21, , AM. Review Ivan Krastev. Tags: History , Liberalism.
What in the World? November 12, , PM. Making startling connections and comparisons, Age of Anger is a book of immense urgency and profound argument. It is a history of our present predicament unlike any other. Where does their rage come from, and where will it end? Mishra shocks on many levels. It is the kind of vision the world needs right now.
In his erudite new book, Mishra argues that our current rage has deep historical roots. By recognizing the existential roots of politics and tracing its antecedents, Mishra has made perhaps the most valuable contribution to the understanding of our turbulent age. In Age of Anger , Mishra has produced an urgent analysis of a moment in which the forgotten and dispossessed are rising up to challenge everything we thought we knew about the state of the world.
Published: 1 Jan Narendra Modi: the divisive manipulator who charmed the world. Published: 9 Nov How to think about Islamic State. Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar and the waiting room of history.
Pankaj Mishra signals the dangers of a one-size-fits-all notion of modernity. Published: 28 Feb An extraordinary account of rendition, captivity and torture reveals the radicalisation of the US military-intellectual complex. Published: 13 Feb The long read: We must move past the tired debate that pits the modern west against its backward other and recover the Enlightenment ideal of rigorous self-criticism. Published: 20 Jan The long read The western model is broken. Pankaj Mishra: The west has lost the power to shape the world in its own image — as recent events, from Ukraine to Iraq, make all too clear.
So why does it still preach the pernicious myth that every society must evolve along western lines? Published: 14 Oct Nationalist Scots embody a wider dissatisfaction with our top-down world. Published: 30 Aug
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