E89. Yascha Mounk Believes Free Speech is Not a Partisan Value

Yascha Mounk is the founder of Persuasion, an online community and publication for people who believe in the importance of the social practice of persuasion, and are determined to defend free speech and free inquiry against all its enemies. They seek to persuade people who disagree with them, rather than to mock or troll them. He and Bridget discuss the rise of the populism, why status anxiety is the strongest predictor of populist movement in society, the idea of white fragility, and why exhorting whites in the US to take on a strong collective racial identity is not the way to build a fair, multi-ethnic democracy in this country. They look at how many authoritarian leaders have come to power in the last 20 years, share their hope for the future, and examine the idea that many Americans don’t want to win the culture war, they want the culture war to go away.