Evil Empire 87figures such as Ferguson to flourish, and that is why criticism drives
them to hysteria today.
There is hope, though. It is true that Trump has opened up space
for all kinds of intellectual racketeers, who pose as members of an
intellectual Maquis while trying to save or advance their professional
careers. These dead-end centrists—most of whom moonlighted as
laptop bombers during the Iraq War and often advised the Clintons,
Blair, Bush, and Obama—still dominate many high-circulation peri-
odicals. They present a huge but neglected problem. You can get rid of
incompetent or venal rulers through the democratic process, but there
is nothing you can do with the deadweight at the highest editorial
levels of mainstream media. These figures who were wrong or clueless
about every major domestic and foreign policy issue—from Russia in
the 1990s to Iraq and the financial crisis—remain entrenched, starving
the public of much-needed fresh ideas and compounding the political
calamity of elite centrism with a massive intellectual and moral failure.
But in response, the intellectual culture of the left is flourishing
once again after many barren decades—often outside its usual setting of
academia, in small magazines and webzines, including these very pages.
Many academics—a few names attest to their range: Amia Srinivasan,
Adam Tooze, Kate Manne, Samuel Moyn, Aziz Rana, Nancy Maclean,
Quinn Slobodian, Jennifer Pitts, Corey Robin—have stepped into the
fray with complex yet accessible analyses of the impasse we inhabit today.
Bold charlatans such as Jordan Peterson will no doubt induce awe at
the Atlantic, and Enlightenment-mongers such as Steven Pinker will
continue to impress many rich dullards, but they will also be taken to
the cleaners by historians and anthropologists.
wa: The Economist has labeled you the “heir to Edward Said.” How do
you respond to the comparison?