Bland fanatics : liberals, race, and empire

Bland fanatics Liberals, race, and empire

Pankaj Mishra

Book - 2020

"In America and in England, faltering economies at home and failed wars abroad have generated a political and intellectual hysteria. It is a derangement manifested in a number of ways: nostalgia for imperialism, xenophobic paranoia, and denunciations of an allegedly intolerant left. These symptoms can be found even among the most informed of Anglo-America.... Pankaj Mishra examines the politics and culture of this hysteria, challenging the dominant establishment discourses of our times. In essays that grapple with the meaning and content of Anglo-American liberalism and its relations with colonialism, the global South, Islam, and "humanitarian" war, Mishra confronts writers such as Jordan Peterson, Niall Ferguson, and Salman ...Rushdie. He describes the doubling down of an intelligentsia against a background of weakening Anglo-American hegemony, and he explores the commitments of Ta-Nehisi Coates and the ideological determinations of The Economist. These essays provide a vantage point from which to understand the current crisis and its deep origins."--

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Subjects
Liberalism.
Extremists.
Ideology.
Right and left (Political science)
Postcolonialism.
East and West.
Essays.
Genres
Essays
Published
New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2020.
Language
English
Main Author
Pankaj Mishra (author)
Edition
First American edition
Item Description
"Originally published in 2020 by Verso, Great Britain"--Title page verso.
Physical Description
218 pages ; 22 cm
Bibliography
Includes index.
ISBN
9780374293314
  • Introduction
  • 1. Watch This Man
  • 2. The Culture of Fear
  • 3. The Religion of Whiteness
  • 4. The Personal as Political
  • 5. The Man of Fourteen Points
  • 6. Bland Fanatics
  • 7. The Age of the Crisis of Man
  • 8. Free Markets and Social Darwinism in Murabai
  • 9. The Lure of Fascist Mysticism
  • 10. What Is Great About Ourselves
  • 11. Why Do White People Like What I Write?
  • 12. The Mask It Wears
  • 13. The Final Religion
  • 14. Bumbling Chumocrats
  • 15. The Economist and Liberalism
  • 16. England's Last Roar
  • Index
Review by Booklist Review

A columnist at Bloomberg View, Mishra is a prolific author of thought-provoking essays, 16 of which--originally published from 2009 to 2020--are collected here. They are opinionated, provocative, and amusing (ironically, these same words are often used to describe Mishra's bête noire, historian Niall Ferguson). Mishra's subjects vary, but many feature the uneasy relationship between West and East, about which, he shows, Westerners know precious little. While most entries are stand-alone pieces dealing with large issues (liberalism, imperialists, colonialism, whiteness, etc.), there are also some book reviews, including takes on Katherine Boo's Beyond the Beautiful Forevers, which he praises, and Jordan B. Peterson's 12 Rules for Life, which he most definitely does not. Very little, it sometimes seems, earns his approbation, and his essays are often controversial: in one, he savages Barack Obama, while, in another, he damns Ta-Nehisi Coates with faint praise, if that. Some readers may find his work reminiscent, in tone and style, of the late Gore Vidal's; like Vidal, Mishra is always worth reading, even when his opinions might seem untenable.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

In this insightful, persuasive essay collection, London Review of Books contributor Mishra (The Age of Anger) blames contradictions inherent within liberalism for recent social and political upheavals in Europe and the U.S. In pieces written between 2008 and 2020 and covering events including the Iraq War, Brexit, and the election of Donald Trump, Mishra faults Western leaders for continuing to claim that "liberalism is the only thing that can save civilization from chaos," even as their policies bring about "devastation" abroad and "terrorism" at home. He argues that "liberalism's complicity in Western imperialism" has been obvious for decades to intellectuals in exploited African and Asian countries, and laments the popularity of Niall Ferguson, Jordan Peterson, and other "unnerved" Western elites who "conflate their own relative diminution with a more general disintegration." Well-informed reviews of books by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Mark Greif, and Samuel Moyn identify some lights in an otherwise dim intellectual landscape, though Mishra stops short of advancing an alternative political and cultural ideology. Still, this erudite and dryly witty collection will help readers to make sense of the current age of discontent. (Oct.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review

Author of the best-booked From the Ruins of Empire and the multi-starred Age of Anger, Bloomsberg View columnist Mishra famously takes on the overwrought, divisive political conversation that reigns worldwide. These collected essays, which carry a fresh introduction by Mishra, range from the clinging roots of colonialism to the fear of Islam to the shift away from Anglo-American hegemony.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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