History Lessons About Combatting Polarization in 2024 with Fareed Zakaria

John Donvan
This is Open to Debate. I’m John Donvan, “Hi Everybody.” You’ve heard me say many times that Open to Debate takes the view that good argument can actually reduce polarization, and that may sound like a paradox, but we argue that it is not, because we are emphasizing, “Good argument,” by which we mean, “Argument that’s based on facts and reasoning, clear reasoning, logic,” even an ability to listen to one another with maybe the possibility of finding some commonground, delivering exactly that is our mission, and so is trying to understand better the sources of polarization, which we all know is more extreme in the US today than in most of our history.
Why is that, and for that matter, what does history itself reveal about those times when societies have been upended and torn apart by political discord? In this episode, I’m talking to Fareed Zakaria on this very question. Fareed is a well-known journalist who writes a weekly column for the Washington Post. He’s currently the host of Fareed Zakaria GPS on CNN, and in addition all- to all of this, he’s also a best-selling author many times over, and his latest book looks precisely at these moments of upheaval and change that I’m talking about. It is called, “The Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present,” but I promise we’ll spend most of our time in the present.

Fareed Zakaria thanks so much for joining me on Open to Debate.

Fareed Zakaria
Pleasure to be with you John.

John Donvan
And, uh, you’ve debated with us s- many, many years ago. It’s great to have you back again. I- if- if I were to look at one lens through which, I think, you present these, uh, stories of various revolutions, uh, over the last 400 years, one lens is that you look at the way in which revolutions have led to realignments of groups of people into parties, into movements, and how those groups of people, and parties, and movements have clashed with each other, learned from each other, evolved over time… to some degree, evolved into one another, but that, uh, I think, your basic argument is, “We are going through one of those times now,” but I’d like to get to your starting point in deciding even to look at this issue of revolutions, “How far back does your thinking go on this?”

Fareed Zakaria
So, I began to think about it about 10 years ago, um, and it was the rise of the Tea Party that got me interested, because I thought I was seeing something very unusual in American politics, which was a kind of bottom-up insurgency that was taking over really the most hierarchical party, uh, in the American political system. You know, there’s that old saying about presidential nominations, “The democrats fall in love,” you know, think of Kennedy, Clinton, Obama, but republicans fall in line. Uh, this is a party that five times nominated Richard Nixon on its presidential ticket. If you add Richard Nixon and the Bush family, basically (laughs) that’s most of the last 50 year, or 60 years, and yet this very hierarchical party was being upended from the bottom-up, and the issues that seemed to matter to the people, who were, who constituted the Tea Party, were not traditional republican issues, even though they talked a little bit about economics.

M- and there’s a very good book about this by Theda Skocpol, a Yale scholar. It turns out it was mostly a kind of cultural reaction and a cultural backlash to a very fast-changing America. So, it’s not an accident that the Tea Party springs up, uh, after the first Black family enters the White House. It’s not an accident that is comes after 30 years of massive expansion of globalization. It’s not an accident that it comes with the information revolution, that really transforms work, so that knowledge workers b- ge- get massively, uh, well-compensated, and people who work with their hands, uh, lose the kind of barnet- bargaining power that labor has often had.

So, all- so I was looking at that, at this and thinking, “So, this is a kind of cultural backlash to living through revolutionary times,” when has it happened before, and, you know, one thing led to another, and I find myself starting with the Dutch in the 17th century.

John Donvan
Well, okay, let’s talk about the word, “Revolution.” As you point out, the, uh, it- it’s meaning changed, I- I’m gonna (laughs) make an- a- a pun in advance here, it’s meaning changed about a 180 degrees.

Fareed Zakaria
(laughs), yeah, you know, it started out as a scientific concept moving on a fixed, in a fixed pattern on a set orbit, and returning to the original position, and very quickly it takes on this meaning that we now think of it commonly in- in, certainly in the political world of a- a sharp upheaval, a sharp break, but, you know, what I find interesting is that, i- it’s always had elements of both meanings. So, when the- the first, most, the- the first kind of major use of the word, “Revolution,” is, uh, Copernicus, who talks about, “A revolution,” and he’s talking about a revolution, uh, in the scientific sense, but what he is doing, his theories are revolutionary (laughs) in the, in the sense of breaking with the past, breaking with the idea that the earth was at the center of the universe, but you can even look at the modern use of the word, “Revolution.”

So many people who think of themselves as revolutionaries, are often promising to take you back. You know, think about Donald Trump, the most important words on his slogan is, “Make America Great Again,” so, it’s really a pol- a politics of revolution that says, “I’m going to take you back before all this upheaval. I’m gonna take you back to when things were quieter, and- and you didn’t feel this sense of deep disruption and alienation.”

John Donvan
But why did you start with the Dutch in 1600?

Fareed Zakaria
Because it really is the beginning of the modern world. Um, if you look at… a simple way to think about it is, average income, um, and we have, believe it or not, we have pretty good data for the last 2,000 years. Um, average income for people on the planet earth is flat for about 1,600 years of- of that period. It’s about 300 dollars per capita GDP, and then around the 1600s, it starts to move up, and then you see this extraordinary uptake, uh, I think, we’re now at about 5,000, uh, that’s the average for global income. The US is of course at 70 some- 70 odd thousand, but when… that happens first in- in, uh, the Netherlands, and it happens, because for the first time, uh, wealth creation for a society happens not because of agriculture or conquest, which are really extraction industries, but happens through innovation, and the Dutch have to innovate because they are, they have terrible land, it’s the m- least arable land in Europe.

They have to reclaim it from the sea, and in doing that, they find ways to cooperate and to innovate, and then they have to, they invent ships, and they invent tall ships, and navigation, and that produces the first real burst of globalization, and then they inve- in- innovate financially. They create the first joint stock company in the world, The Dutch East Indies Company. They create the first stock market in the world, and they become the richest country in Europe, which means the- the richest country in the world. By the end of that century, Amsterdam is four times richer per capita than Paris. So, and then that produces political innovation, because they now start to think of themselves as different from the other pl- places.

It’s very interesting how identity often changes when you have these things. You get a kind of identity revolution as well. They start to think of themselves as Dutch. They start to think of themselves as protestant, not part of the Habsburg Empire, not part of, uh, the C- you know, Catholic Christendom, and the- the politic, the political innovation is you’re living in a world of kings and courts, and the Dutch have no king. They don’t even really have a prime minister or president of, what we will think, uh, t- today. It’s a decentralized s- uh, system, where g- you know, people basically, local chieftains, l- local, um, uh, merchants cooperate.

So, you put all that together, and it was the first modern nation, and then that Dutch model ends up, uh, getting transported to England, and- and- and that becomes the, uh, the most, the leading power in the world, and then globalizes the model everywhere, but the pattern that you see with the Dutch recurs, which is technology, uh, and economics produce massive disruption in society, this produces a identity revolution, scrambling the politics of the age, and it always produces a backlash.

John Donvan
So, that word, “Scrambling,” sounds like it’s the, it applies to everything. It applies to technology. It applies to the way people see themselves. It applies to the kinds of political innovations that they come up with. I think, that’s what you mean, uh, by the core characteristics of the revolution? So, an uprising-

Fareed Zakaria
E- exactly.

John Donvan
… is not a revolution. A revolt-

Fareed Zakaria
Exactly.

John Donvan
… is not a… yeah.

Fareed Zakaria
Exactly, and it’s, and it’s, and it’s my, you know, it’s w- g- g- what I’m doing is I’m creating a definition to help us understand why we are living through this kind of, these, this period of turmoil.

John Donvan
And part of the dynamic, and you’ve referred to this, things move in a certain direction, and then there’s a backlash, and the backlash is where that, you know, uh, what we’re going through now, polarization, uh, st- starts to find its seed. So, talk about, you know, even with the Dutch, was there a backlash to all of this modernization, uh, to all of th- this- this disruption, do we see that pattern coming in as early as 1600s?

Fareed Zakaria
Absolutely. So, the Dutch become, as I say, the most urbanized country in Europe, the wealthiest country in Europe. A country where they embrace diversity. They, for example, welcome Jews, and basically refugees from the religious wars in Europe were all welcome. There’s a f- a- a- a historian who says that, “Amsterdam was the most liberal city in the world in the 17th century,” and, I think, that’s reasonably true, and they developed a sense of, you know, “We’ve gone too far.” We’ve- we’ve destroyed our traditions too much. We need to go back to the old ways, and they, and there was a party called, “The States Party,” that promised, in a sense (laughs) to make the- the Netherlands great again, to say, “Let’s go back to when it was,” you know, when there was less chaos, less turmoil, and less of the social disruption.

So, it was, it was sort of the slightly more aristocratic party, but there were others saying, “No, no, no, let’s just move forward,” the- the aggressive capitalistic merchants who really wanted to keep pushing forward, and you see that same pattern recur in the Industrial Revolution in Britain. The old landed aristocracy, the church, the clergy, the traditional, uh, conservative, the Tory, uh, uh, Party in many ways starts out, is a reaction… a cultural reaction, a cultural backlash to the industrialization of Britain.

John Donvan
Does the word, “Polarization,” then apply to what happened in the Netherlands, and what happened in Britain during the Industrial Revolution?

Fareed Zakaria
Oh, I think, for sure-

John Donvan
Mm-hmm.

Fareed Zakaria
… because you have factions and the kind of political oppositional movements that so characterize modern politics. What tends to make this polarization more intense, and this is more true of our age, than it was of some of those, uh, other periods is that we are going through a period where the- the nature of the scrambling of our politics is that we are going from a politics that used to be defined largely along economic lines, so, you know, if you were left wing, you wanted more taxes, more government i- involvement in the economy, if you were right wing you wanted fewer taxes, less government involvement in the economy.

That divide has been scrambled, and now I argue that it’s more of a- a divide along cultural issues of kind of openness and closedness. Some, there are some economic issues there, openness to globalization, immigration, diversity, change, uh, you know, technology verses people who want to shut it down, and when in… politics becomes more cultural, it becomes much more polarized, because you can’t split the difference. See John, if you and I had to debate on economics, you wanna spend a hundred billions dollars, I wanna spend zero, there’s a number between that we can, we could compromise on, but how do you compromise on core issues of identity, like abortion, gay rights, even- even some things like immigration, right?

And that, in some ways is, well, you know, you see it when you’ve had religious divides, those tend to be the most polarizing, because there isn’t room for compromise.

John Donvan
We’re gonna take a quick break. Then when we return, we’re gonna hear quite an interesting interpretation of the American Revolution. I’m John Donvan, we’ll be right back.

Welcome back to Open to Debate. I’m here with Fareed Zakaria, the journalist and host of CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS. We’re talking about his new book, “Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present,” and we’re talking a lot about what it all means for our present? I- I wanna keep going with this discussion about where we are in polarization, but take, before that take a little step back to the American Revolution, which interestingly, you say, was not really a revolution.

Fareed Zakaria
Yeah, the American Revolution is really a war of independence. If you think about it, the American Revolution does not fundamentally transform the social relations, the economic relations that sit at the basis of society, and even in many senses, the political re- uh, relations. So, the entire slave holding structure of the South is kept entirely intact, with the Bourbon aristocracy, but even outside of the South, the enormous privileges that accrued to white men who owned property, uh, were kept in place. There was an effort to have a kind of real revolution, which was the Whiskey Rebellion, but it’s put down, very (laughs) ve- very brutally, and so, you never get a- a, you know, reordering.

Now, if you want to look at the period that really changes America from the bottom-up, in a revolutionary sense that I mean it, I argue it’s the period from 1860 to 1880. That 20-year period, the Civil War, the end of slavery, the effort, not en- not successful of course to break the power of the Bourbon aristocracy in the South, the transformation of America from an agricultural country to an industrial country, and the scrambling of politics that takes place around that time, first the rise of populism, then the rise of progressivism, that’s real change.

John Donvan
What was that scrambling of politic?

Fareed Zakaria
So, you always have to say, when you’re dealing with America, and know- knowing that Annette Gordon-Reed is gonna come on this program, I say this, uh, I, you know, I’m- I’m hesitant to- to even speak too definitively on anything, uh, relating to this, but race is always a special factor in American politics and you, you know, so you can’t really put it aside, but for a moment, let me just talk about the- the way it scrambled politics in general in the Anglo-American world, which is that you start out with industrialization, with the left basically urging it on, and the right suspicious of it because it’s change. It means the end of the power of the landed elites, and by the end of the Industrial, e- uh, Revolution, what you find is the roles have flipped.

The left has gotten deeply concerned about the effects of untrammeled markets, and now the left wants more state intervention controls on markets, regulations that limit the power of markets, and the right has got very comfortable with this new plutocratic elite, industrial elite, and i- becomes the party of business, and the party of free markets and things like that. Theodore Roosevelt is the last conservative aristocratic, uh, you know, right of center politician who is pretty hostile to capitalism, and sees his role as regulating capitalism, and if you, if you look at him, and you compare him to Coolidge, the republican president only 10 years later, you see what has happened.

The- the right has completely embraced capitalism, and the left has completely embraced the idea that we- you know, the- the- the role of the left is to, uh, is to in someway check capitalism. Now, as I said, what I’ve left out of the story, is that there’s a huge piece of- of American politics and partisan pol- politics that has to do with your attitudes towards race, and that is, you know, that is the special, as Gunnar Myrdal called it, the American, uh, Dilemma, and the American Tragedy.

John Donvan
Let- let’s talk a little bit more about the current scrambling, and I think, it would be useful to set the table on this, to talk about the two meanings, in our current context of the word, “Liberal.” There’s a big “L” liberal, and small “l” liberal, and I think, it would be helpful for you to talk about that for a moment.

Fareed Zakaria
Yeah, the dominant use of the, of the word, “Liberal,” in- in my book, which is, by the way, the dominant use of the word, “Liberal,” in every country, other than the United States, is to mean the inheritor of the liberal enlightenment project, which is the project that- that li- limits the power of kings and courts, and an established church, and creates a world in which individuals have freedom, have dignity, have autonomy, have economic power. It’s the, it’s the underlying basis for liberal democratic market-oriented societies that, you know, that really have kind of transformed the world over the last 400 years.

In America it took on a particular context, which is, I would argue, within that liberal project, there has always been a debate among people who wanted more market, and people who wanted less market, uh, especially after the Industrial Revolution, and in America, we tend to mean, by liberal, you know, people who are, who wanna spend more, who wanna tax more, who wanna regulate more, and, uh, and we mean, by conservative, people who wanna do less, but as I say, that whole, that whole debate has gotten scrambled, because you look at Donald Trump, right, he’s against markets, he’s against trade, he’s in favor of big government spending.

He still has some libertarian twitches about lowering, uh, taxes, but for the most part, his populism is really the, kind of the opposite of the Reagan formula, which was, “Free markets, free trade, openness to immigration,” uh, celebration of all these forces that I’m describing, and a kind of general optimism that Reagan, uh, you know, kind of projected where Trump is a deeply dark pessimistic figure. He thinks America has been, you know, gone down a terrible path. He- he, that- and that’s where, and that’s the sense in which he’s fundamentally illiberal, because he views this liberal en- enlightenment project, I think, with much greater, well, much more jaundiced eyes than somebody like a Reagan or a Clinton.

John Donvan
So, are we- are we in a period of backlash, when you talk about Donald Trump wanting to go back to, uh, what, “Make America Great Again?” Is that a backlash manifestation?

Fareed Zakaria
Oh, I think, for sure. I mean, I think, if you-

John Donvan
And a backlash against what actually?

Fareed Zakaria
… yeah, so, so, it’s a backlash, as I say, about a- you know, and particularly since the fall of the Berlin Wall. From the fall on- of the Berlin Wall to the invasion of Ukraine, 2022, you can say that that period, about 30 years, was a period of extraordinary, uh, movement in terms of liberalization of domestic economics, of trade, democratization of politics, I mean, you had, uh, you know, if you looked at Latin America. In 1985, Latin America was run by al- almost every country was a military junta. By 1995, every Latin American country, except Cuba, had held elections. Uh, you know, so the transformation in terms of liberalization, democratization, an information revolution that transformed societies and connected them, open platforms, or, i- in a, in a way the- the reaction is against all of that.
[NEW_PARAGRAPH]The, uh, the backlash is against all of that, but there is one central thing, and you can see it as the rocket fuel that propels right-wing populism in almost every country, and that’s immigration, and my theory about this is that it’s in some ways, of course it’s immigration is about immigration. People don’t want much this immigration and, you know, I get that, but I think, immigration has become a proxy for many of these larger changes, because, you know, how do you visualize or protest against the- the mo- movement of capital around the world, you know, hedge fund managers are rewarding and punishing countries by sending money and withdrawing money.

How do you make tangible the idea of the international flow of goods and services, digital products, these things are all varied abstractions, but human beings who come into your town, who look different, who sound different, who worship different gods, that’s real, that’s something that you can viscerally react to.

John Donvan
People who are opposed to immigration are often disparaged, labeled as, uh, “Xenophobic, narrow-minded, bigoted,” and you don’t apply any of those terms to those participating in that particular backlash, and I get a sense that you have some empathy for them, or at least some generous understanding of what motivates them, am I right about that?

Fareed Zakaria
Yeah, and you’re absolutely right. I think, that you have to recognize that, uh, there has been a lot of change, you know, the forces I’m describing have been very disruptive, and even immigration, we’ve had a lot of it. Um, and I say that as a, as a proud immigrant. In 1975 America was about 4.5% foreign-born. Today it’s about 15%. If you look at Europe, the transformation is even more e- extraordinary. Sweden must’ve been, in 1975, it must’ve been one or two percent foreign-born. Sweden is today 21 or 22% foreign-born. So, think of that transformation. You know, at least in the United States, we have a, we have a narrative that this is a society based on ideas, and as long as you subscribe to those ideas, it doesn’t matter what the color of your skin is, or the- the race or religion you come from.

That is not the- the founding mythology of Germany or Sweden. The founding mythology of Germany and Sweden is, “We are a bunch of people who grew up in these forests, and we worshiped these gods, and we had the same ancestors, and that’s why we’re a nation.” So, w- you know, when you start to see Brown-skinned people from Morocco worshiping a different god, who come from different places, who have different ancestors, it’s jarring. So, what- what I try to recognize is look, it’s a lot of change, and so, let’s give the most generous interpretation to what, you know, people are overwhelmed, they’re- they are disoriented, and they look at all that, and they’re looking for somebody to blame.

I do blame the demagogues. I think, you know, w- while I don’t blame the people who feel overwhelmed, and who feel disrupted, and who feel an- anxious, I think, politicians like Trump, whether- whether knowingly or not weaponize these things, demonize people, and that’s very sad.

John Donvan
As the world watches our culture go through this turmoil and a, and this- this polarization, this descent, this, uh, rise of what, uh, I think, you would call, “Illiberal, uh, tendencies,” in which, um, you’ve decided Donald Trump is, uh, maybe not the cause, but an active agent in the process, what- what does that do to America’s standing which has been, for 70 years globally we’ve been the, we’ve been the- the flag bearer for liberal democracy, what- what’s happening to our reputation and our ability to exert any kind of influence in a sort of soft power kind of way?

Fareed Zakaria
What’s very sad about it John, is that it’s hap- happening at a time when the United States is actually doing extraordinary well in the world. If you look at America, you know, economically, uh, if, you know, kind of the raw power of America, it’s- it really, it’s difficult to find a time in the last 50 or 60 years when it’s been, it’s been stronger. Uh, the United States, uh, in Eur- and Europe were the same size economically in 2008, at the start of the global financial crisis. Today the US economy is twice the size of the Eurozone economy. 30 years ago, US wages and European wages were the same. Today, US wages are $72,000, European average, EU wages are €45,0000.

If you look at the largest companies in the world, they’re all American. If you look at the largest banks, if you look at energy, the United States is now the world’s energy superpower. We produce more oil than Saudi Arabia. We produce more natural gas than Qatar. We are demographically the only rich country that is vibrant demographically, because of immi- immigration. We have the same fertility problems that all advanced industrial countries have, but we take in a million people into this country legally, and that gives it enormous vitality. These are amazing cards to play, but what has happened is, we have lost, we’ve lost faith in ourselves.

We’ve lost faith in that liberal enlightenment project. We are deeply divided, and a core part of that divide is people who say, you know, as I say, it’s a dark, pessimistic view of where America is. It’s, “Let’s turn inward, let’s become a fortress America,” and it’s very difficult to lead the world (laughs) if that is your attitude. Contrast that with Reagan or Clinton, who in different ways represented that kind of sunny, assured optimism that said, “Let’s- let’s keep moving forward. The United States will do fine, but we’ll bring along a lot of other countries along the way.”

John Donvan
But you look at what the Clinton presidency happened at a time (laughs) when, uh, in- in all ways American power and influence was firing on all cylinders. The Soviet Union had collapsed. China had not yet found its footing as an economic power. There was, as you describe in the book, a unipolar world. We were it. It was our chance to lead, and now clearly, that’s not the reality any further, and how does that impact even the way that we’re having this conversation about who we are?

Fareed Zakaria
Oh, for sure, it’s a, it’s a huge part of the story. Look, um, you know, we don’t like to think of it this way, but culture follows power. You know, I grew up in an India that was very Anglophone. It was 20 or 30 years removed from British colonialism. Everybody looked up to Britain. Every, you know, god the- the, all the fiction I read growing up was all, uh, you know, Dickens and Evelyn Waugh, and, I- I came to America, I had never read Fitzgerald. I had never read Hemingway, because they were thought of as, you know, kind of (laughs) minor- minor authors in the canon of English literature, and now America’s, uh, In- India’s- India’s mostly Indian now. It’s, but to the extent that there’s any foreign country that has a, that casts a shadow, it’s all America.

Uh, an- and, you know, and I saw this happen, because, uh, in the ’70s the money dried up from Britain, so all the smart people used to go to Oxford and Cambridge, they started to go to Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford, you know, so- so, there was no-

John Donvan
You went to Yale, Yale was your [inaudible]-

Fareed Zakaria
… I went to Yale. I went-

John Donvan
… Yeah, yeah.

Fareed Zakaria
… I went to Yale, and we- I went there because, you know, I could get a scholarship there, and they, it, you know, 10 years earlier, the bright kids from my school had gone to Oxford and Cambridge, because they had scholarships, and so, when you, when you look at the, you know, the- the how power shapes the way you look at- at the world. To me, one of the interesting things about writing this book was looking at the species of Xi Jinping and Putin. Xi and Putin co- together and- and the Iranian [inaudible

] share this, uh, view Western liberal ideas as deeply corrosive and dangerous. They talk about how they don’t want their societies to adopt them.

So, there is a kind of cultural war taking place, uh, not just, uh, a- a great power, a- a return of great power c- attention.

John Donvan
Do you see a way forward to this polarization ultimately being resolved into something that’s, uh, where there’s more synthesis, where there’s… again, we’re able to find commonground and get along?

Fareed Zakaria
I think, there is a path. Look, I think, that the mistake people sometimes make is to assume there is a future out there that we know that smart people are meant to be able to predict. Well, there is no one future out there. I mean, it depends on what we do, and one of the lessons I took from the book is, you go through these periods of turmoil, you go through the change, you go through the backlash, and how you navigate through that really determines where you come out at the end? So, you can, you can navigate skillfully, as I would argue that, you know, k- uh, people like Franklin Roosevelt found a way to do through great crises, while at the same time, you know, I mean, remember, Roosevelt’s enormous compromise that he made… he never tried to really force change, uh, o- you know, to the- the whole Jim Crow setup.

It’s a wonderful reminder that, you know, everybody is making compromises as you navigate through these periods. You can do it badly, and the French Revolution which takes up, you know, 50 pages of the book, is a classic example of political elites pushing too much change, too radical, too abstract, too far, too fast, and having a complete backlash, or you look at the Iranian Revolution, which was a backlash to the Shah’s modernization. They’re in 37 years of backlash and still going strong. So, I think, there’s no question, it can e- it can end badly.

John Donvan
Do you think these are dangerous times, or- or are we?

Fareed Zakaria
Yeah, look, no, I think, I’m optimistic. I- I worry a lot. These- this, you know, the election in November is incredibly important, in terms of whether you empower the illiberal forces or- or the liberal ones, but in general the- the, if there is a mistake that liberals make, I think, it is to believe that history is on their side. If you look at the broad sweep of history over the last four or 500 years, certainly it has been one where it would seem as though, you know, liberal ideas have- have- have moved forward, but the danger is complacency. If- if liberals don’t fight for their ideas, and if they don’t persuade people, and if they don’t understand how disruptive some of their ideas are, they’re going to find that the backlashes can overwhelm.

So, my message is, “Do this carefully, but you’ve gotta fight for your ideas.”

John Donvan
And, as you mention that, I’m thinking in fact that you’ve debated with us in the past, as I’ve mentioned, we really try to bring people onto a stage, or a place like this to fight for their ideas, but what’s interesting is how often we find people refuse to have a conversation with somebody who disagrees with them, “Now I- I’m- I’m not gonna debate that person, I- I don’t wanna dignify their place on a stage,” what- what- what’s your assessment of that kind of refusal even to engage with the person on the other side?

Fareed Zakaria
Oh, I think, it’s fundamentally illiberal. I mean, I think, what you guys do is actually, in some ways, a, uh, one of the many symbols of the liberal enlightenment project, because what is liberalism about? Liberalism is fundamentally about saying, “We don’t know the answer, but we can set up a system that is fair and open, and equal,” right, f- the- the premise of liberal societies is, “We don’t know who should be the ruler, but we’re gonna set up a system called, ‘Elections,’ which allows for the process to be a fair way for people to choose.” What is the, what is behind freedom of speech?

We don’t know the revealed truth, but what we believe is that the contestation of ideas will get you to a better place than one person telling you, or one group saying, “I have a monopoly of wisdom and virtue, and you have to follow my way,” and so often the illiberalism takes on a- a form that says, “I know the truth. I have virtue. I have a monopoly of virtue on my side, and I don’t need to engage in this elaborate system that you have created,” and I think, I do think that’s fundamentally illiberal.

John Donvan
Okay, we have to take a break, but when we come back, we’re gonna be joined by some other individuals to add their questions to this conversation with Fareed Zakaria. This is Open to Debate. I’m John Donvan, and we’ll be right back.

Welcome back to Open to Debate. I’m here with Fareed Zakaria, journalist and host of CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS, and we’ve been talking about his new book, “Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present.” Uh, and now I wanna have, uh, some other folks, uh, join us in the conversation, and these are thinkers and writers who have been listening to the conversation, and who think and write about the kinds of things that we’ve been talking about, and first up, I’d like to bring in Shoshana Zuboff, who is, um, a scholar, and a writer, and an activist, and also Professor Emeritus at the Harvard Business School, also has a book called, “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power.”

Shoshana thank you so much for joining us on Open to Debate, and please come on in with your question?

Shoshana Zuboff
Thank you so much for having me John, and Fareed, um, I have always admired the way that you do not eliminate complexity in your work as a public educator. I’ve always really enjoyed watching your show and, uh, and listening to you, so it’s a, it’s a pleasure to be with you today. So, you write about the information revolution, you write about the internet revolution, and this is a kind of language that surprises me Fareed, because it really is a- a technologically-centered language, as if it’s the technology that is causing a revolution.

So, what I would like to suggest, that it’s not information or the internet, or the nature of the digital that is favoring inflammatory information and driving polarization, that in fact, as you were discussing Roner- Ronald Reagan a moment ago, that passion for open markets, free markets, radically free markets, corporations able to do whatever they wanted to do, that was an era where, as a result of that passion, our political leaders in the United States beginning here actually gifted the internet to private companies, so Fareed, if I pose to you that we’re talking about corporate power that owns and operates this milieu, even though we never elected them to govern, I’d like to ask you Fareed, can you think out loud with us about how do we cure the polarization that now infects the whole information space?

How do we move to a different way of being an information civilization, and how do we do that by using our democracy, which at the same time is, uh, is under threat from these very forces?

Fareed Zakaria
You know, Shoshana, you ask a- a very important question, and a- a- as you know, if you r- i- i- i- in reading that- that chapter on the information revolution, I have been very influenced by your book. I think you’re, you- you know, you’re asking in essence, two questions, one is, uh, “To what extent is the technology of the internet itself, uh, you know, have these effects of dem- uh, you know, in the democratization or empowering individuals, or polarization,” uh, and, “To what extent is it actually all, uh, uh, uh, a combination of political power and ideology, and- and policy choices that- that make it happen?”

And I do think, that the technology has some powerful effects of its own, that of course were allowed to play out because of certain ideological preferences, but look at my industry, media, so, if you looked at, uh, the media space 40 years ago, it was basically a cartel, and it was a cartel at the, at the highest level, where you had three networks, or four, if you add, uh, PBS, um, and they had ve- huge parts of the audience, and so, they knew that they had lots of democrats and republicans as part of their audience and independents, and they had to present a view, you know, a kind of worldview that was straight down the middle, broad enough that it could capture all those people, and the people listening had no alternative but to go to those three places, right?

And then you have basically the cable revolution, and then the satellite revolution, and then the internet revolution, and now people can choose where they wanna get their news, and what has happened? What has happened is everybody chooses the news that they want to hear, so, the first, most important thing that’s happened is, most people, it turns out, don’t want to hear about news. Mo- you know, so when people say to me, “What happened to the world of- of- of Cronkite and- and Edward, uh, R. Murrow, and, you know, even Tom Brokaw, when everyone was listening to the same news,” well, most of those people are watching ESPN. They’re watching sports. They’re watching entertainment.

What you’re left with are the politically-motivated people, and they tend to choose among the hundreds of op- uh, of options they have, and they si- they choose the silo that reinforces their views, doesn’t challenge their views. That is a consequence of the technology, the 400 channels, the 50,000 websites, that everyone can go where they want, e- you- you know, the people who were forced to listen to the evening news before they, be- because that was the half hour before they got to their favorite sitcom, that world has gone, but now… so we get to the, uh, the question of, “What could you do to try to limit the consequences of all this,” which have been to create corporations that benefit enormously from the siloized pola- polarized partisan, uh, view.
[NEW_PARAGRAPH]I- I fear that the technology here does have a life of its own, uh, that has allowed for the empowering of organized minorities, organized pluralities, that can weaponize their views, uh, push them and spread them very far, very fast, uh, and that what- what this technology does not allow for is that cartel-based middle, you know? The inde- internet has sort of, uh, been the great unbundler, you know, if you wanted to, if you wanted to watch (laughs), uh, eh, uh, A- ABC, you kinda had to listen to the news beforehand.

John Donvan
I- I- I- I have to, I have, I have to say as somebody who worked for the evening news on ABC, I hate to hear that, I hate to hear that people were forced to watch (laughs).

Fareed Zakaria
(laughs), well, you-

John Donvan
Fact, there it is, [inaudible

]-

Fareed Zakaria
… you didn’t have a lot of choices (laughs)-

John Donvan
… no (laughs).

Fareed Zakaria
… you didn’t have a lot, you know?

John Donvan
Shoshana, thanks very much for your question, I- I really appreciate it (laughs). Uh, I now, next wanna bring in Annette Gordon-Reed, who is an historian, and professor at Harvard, also a Pulitzer prize-winner and National Book Award-winner for her book, “The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family.” Annette, welcome to Open to Debate. Thanks so much for joining us, and what’s your question for Fareed?

Annette Gordon-Reed
I’m glad to be here. My question is, “Are you optimistic,” and, “If you are, why are you optimistic about the future of the United States?” You mention that cultural problems, cultural differences are much more, um, difficult, much harder to resolve than economic ones, and when people talk about, “Make America Great Again,” what they’re referring to is a time period when people of color, women, other people, marginalized people couldn’t contribute to the conversation. What has happened is that as things have become freer for those f- folks, uh, people feel threatened by all of that. We can’t have a compromise like FDR not signing, you know, ant- signing onto anti-lynching, uh, bills and so forth in order to- to maintain the South, people aren’t gonna tolerate that today.

And so, we have this great diversity which we saw as a strength, and it was, but it was the strength at a moment when essentially one group of people dominated over all of the other people who were out there feeling marginalized.

John Donvan
As an add-on to that question, is- is what Annette talking about actually very much the source of the, of the tension that we’re experiencing in terms of polarization today, fundamentally?

Fareed Zakaria
Yeah, I mean, look, it’s a great question. I don’t think it’s the only thing going on. As I say, I do think that underneath it there’s the economic tur- anxiety, the turmoil, the dispossession, the- the- the fact that people who don’t have college degrees, for example, just have no pricing power in the labor market anymore.

They’re, uh, uh, a lot of this backlash is exactly as Annette says, a kind of a- a backlash against the- the rising, uh, the rising power and the presence of women and minorities and things, I think, that, you know, uh, uh, as- as, you know, in the book, I- I argued that the feminist revolution is much, uh, i- is much more disruptive than people realize, much more important, and much more disruptive, because it really changes a, uh, uh, a pattern that has been true for all of recorded history, that women were second-class citizens, in every society, in every p- anywhere you went in the world, and we fundamentally upended that.

So, why am I optimistic? I think, I’m optimistic, because I believe that w- we are grappling with these problems, and a large part of particularly America are women (laughs) and minorities, and are having their voices heard, and as you say Annette, it’s impossible to do what FDR did, because these people are not second-class citizens anymore, so what is one of the things that I see as actually potentially a hopeful sign, it is the fact that Blacks and Hispanics are finding voice not just in one political party, and are therefore going to contribute to this kind of settlement in both, so why is that happening?

As best we can tell, a- a bunch of Hispanics are discovering that given that we are in an age of cultural politics, on a lot of those cultural issues, they’re quite conservative. You know, these are, these are God-f- uh, uh, fearing, they’re Catholics who, you know, have certain views on- on abortion and gay rights, obviously true of Blacks as well, and is a result, you will have to find some settlement.

You know, the Republican Party will not be able to engage in as much of the dog whistling as it has in the past. Democrats will have to understand that, you know, that people can have vie- uh, different views on this. So, my optimism comes from the fact that we’re really trying to build a kind of universal nation, where everyone is participating, and I think, the ultimate source of my optimism, the forces of shear reaction, and racism are actually in a minority in today’s America, frankly of- uh, a fading minority.

John Donvan
Uh, Annette, are- are you persuaded by that case for optimism?

Annette Gordon-Reed
Well, a- a bit, because I- I don’t think we have very much of a choice to be, to try to be as optimistic as we can, but it- it just seems, uh, a bit naïve for people to think that you- you really do have to bring out that this was, this sort of consensus was bought at the, uh, you know, at the- the discrimination against lots of people. I don’t think we have any choice but to- to- to think, to go forward.

John Donvan
I think, I hear from Fareed a case being made that on these issues that- that actually, you know, go to identity and rights, that- that there can be a compromise between the old way and some new way, and I- I’m wondering, do you see compromise possible on- on, you know, such s- kind of transcendent issues?

Annette Gordon-Reed
Well it- it depends. It depends on what we’re talk- if we’re talking about voting rights, if we’re talking about in- basic American, you know, citizenship, there can’t be a compromise on that, and I- I- I do think that what would have to happen is that you would have to persuade a number… as many whites and other people, uh, you know, who- who have power, uh, to go along with people, to have empathy for people who are feeling that they are marginalized, so it- it- it depends upon building the- the- the base of people who want a sort of universal, the, a notion of univer- uh, of- of- of Americanist for everyone, and that requires changing some people’s minds.

Fareed Zakaria
Let me suggest that one way to think about this may be that we’re- what- w- what I’m hoping for is a broadening of ideas that allow for some kind of, uh, you know, almost (laughs) Marxian synthesis here, so if you think about something like the unconscionable way in which the bottom quartile of American peo- Black, white, Brown, are- are- are, you know, are failed by the education system. Is there a way to find a, you know, uh, i- innovations that allow for someway of breaking the monopoly of a school system that really has failed? I mean, if you look at the latest data with two billion dollars poured into the school system after COVID, it- it- it- it al- you know, it almost barely m- moved the needle on reading and math, which- which tells me, we have to… all of us, come to realize, “It’s not just about money.”

Or, you know, on something like housing, I, one of, one of the most shameful aspects of the United States, in my view, is that ever since Lyndon Johnson, we have never really tried to desegregate housing in America. Johnson tried, Nixon when he comes in reaps a white backlash to all, to all of that, and nobody has ever tried, and we are still in terms of, you know, how we live, we’re about as segregated as we were in 1971, ’72, and so-

John Donvan
And- and yet, and- and yet you’re optimistic (laughs)?

Fareed Zakaria
… is there a way-

John Donvan
So?

Fareed Zakaria
… well, I think, again, that, you know, may- maybe it’s not such a good thing for all, you know, all Blacks or Hispanics to be in one party where they can be taken advantage of in that way, where there’s, you know, I’m just hoping that there could be some ways in which we get to more innovative new ideas that fall out of the- the old, uh, trap, but where you are now trying to cater to the rights of these communities, because as I say, I do think, what’s different now is they can’t be silenced, just as Annette was saying, they are, they are not second-class citizens, they are first-class citizens, and they are part of both political establishments, potentially.

John Donvan
Annette, thank you very much for your question. I have saved time in the program for one more. So, it’s my pleasure to welcome Kathryn Cramer Brownell. Kathryn is author of, “24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News.” Kathryn teaches at Purdue, and Kathryn, thanks so much for joining us on Open to Debate, and please come in with your question?

Kathryn Cramer Brownell
Thank you so much for having me. I wanna talk about the incentive structures that are under guarding, uh, polarization as a political project, and also as a business project, and so I’m wondering if you can talk about, you know, what to do about the fact that so many businesses benefit from polarization, from stoking that outrage, as well as politicians, um, and political parties have really built this in as a political tactic that they also benefit from?

Fareed Zakaria
It’s a great question, because I do, I do agree, “Incentives are at the heart of this.” Look, there’s some of the things you can’t change that much, uh, you know, in terms of business. I think, it’s hard to- to- to change those incentives, but at the heart of this system, the incentive structure is built around two things, one, the redistricting of congressional districts, which means that you don’t actually have to worry about a challenge from the center or the, I, or- or, you know, the other side of the spectrum, all you have to worry about is a challenge from the more extreme wing of your party, and if you, if you add to the redistricting problem that, you know, if primary voters are roughly 10% of mo- uh, most voters, you’re catering to the most extreme, the most, the most engaged, so the, my big fix would be to try to end redistricting and force, you know, kind of sensible, uh, districts that courts often have been able to do and nonpartisan boards have been able to do, and the second is to have open primaries for everybody.

We’re not gonna be able to get rid of primaries, uh, but what we could do is s- hugely change the incentive structure, because if every primary in every, uh, state is open, then all of a sudden, you could face a challenge from a more moderate force, and it’s not just a qu- a question of worrying about your left flank or right flank.

Kathryn Cramer Brownell
But I, know, I- I think, that that’s something that a lot of the scholars have pointed to as- as a clear solution, but what about the- the challenge of actually implementing it, because those who benefit from the political system, uh, don’t necessarily wanna change the rules, mm?

Fareed Zakaria
Yeah, this is like why- why don’t we expand the UN Security Council-

Kathryn Cramer Brownell
(laughs).

Fareed Zakaria
… because the people who are on (laughs) the security council, who would have to vote for it (laughs)-

Kathryn Cramer Brownell
Mm-hmm.

Fareed Zakaria
… are the ones who would be di- disempowered by that change? Um, look, I think, that if you look at some states increasingly what you’re seeing is that they are, they are moving in that direction, and, I think, this may be an ar- ar- area where you need a ground swell, because you’re right, the- the- the two-party duopoly, uh, is not gonna do it, because the people in power have come to power through this very, uh, polarized, and I would argue, corrupt system, so, you- you know, it’s very hard to get the people who have benefited from it to change, and so, we need a Hail Mary, and maybe the Hail Mary is the initiative.

John Donvan
Kathryn, thank you very much for your question. Fareed I- I wanna wrap-up the conversation by just reflecting on the fact that you’ve been out on book tour for quite a while now, for several months… just wondering, what have you learned from your journey through book tour land, which has taken you through many conversations in many cities?

Fareed Zakaria
Probably that everyone feels that they are living through revolutionary times. Most people don’t like the polarization. Most people, I think, are searching for some kind of compromise or synthesis, uh, but there’s a great deal of uncertainty the, in the air, and I think, one of the central reinforcing messages I got is, people find this level of change, this level of progress, this level of revolution deeply unsettling, and pro- produces anxiety, even for people who are benefiting from it. We all look at this world and think to ourselves, “My goodness, you know, can we, can- can this train stop at some point so that I can get off, (laughs)?”

John Donvan
Fareed Zakaria, thank you so much for joining me today on Open to Debate, and again, I wanna remind everybody listening that your booked is called, “Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present.” I also wanna thank everybody who took part by asking questions, Shoshana, Annette and Kathryn, thank you so much, you got us to even more interesting places. One more time, Fareed Zakaria, thank you so much for joining us.

Fareed Zakaria
It was a huge pleasure John. I really enjoyed it.

John Donvan
And a big thank you to our audience for tuning into this episode of Open to Debate. I wanna remind you that it’s a nonprofit working to combat extreme polarization through civil, good debate. Our work is made possible by listeners like you, by the Rosenkranz Foundation, and by supporters of Open to Debate. Our chairman is Robert Rosenkranz. Our CEO is Clea Conner. Lia Matthow is her chief content officer. Elizabeth Kitzenberg is our chief advancement officer. This episode was produced by Alexis Pancrazi and Marlette Sandoval. Editorial and research by Gabriella Mayer and Andrew Foote. Andrew Lipson and Max Fulton provided production support.
The Open to Debate team also includes Erik Gross, Gabrielle Iannucelli, Rachel Kemp and Linda Lee. Damon Whittemore mixed this episode. Our theme music is by Alex Clement, and I’m John Donvan. We’ll see you next time on Open to Debate.