How the West’s promise of freedom created a world of anger
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Analysis
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Context piece
- The Deja Vu podcast examines why political anger appears to dominate the contemporary world.
- Author Pankaj Mishra links that anger to tensions between Enlightenment promises of liberty and equality, and the forces of empire, nationalism and capitalism.
- The episode explores how the Global South has turned Western ideals back against the West.
Why does anger seem to rule the world today? The next episode of Al Jazeera’s Deja Vu turns to author Pankaj Mishra for an answer rooted in the history of modern political promises.
Mishra traces the current age of anger to the collision between Enlightenment ideals of liberty and equality and the realities of empire, nationalism and capitalism.
The episode asks what happens when those promises are broken, and when the Global South turns Western ideals back against the West itself.
Mishra appears as the episode’s featured guest. Mohamed Hassan, Marcos Bartolomé and Sonia Bhagat produced the episode, Alexandra Locke edited it, Adam Abou-Gad served as engagement producer, and Alex Roldan designed the sound. It was published on September 6, 2026.
About this summary
Originally published by Al Jazeera. Summarized and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.
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