We see a fascist threat rising on the right. Right now we are at a moment when we are backsliding from that democratic consensus. And that these decisions are better made, and certainly more legitimately made, when everybody gets a say in them. In the last few hundred years, there was a radical turn where it became the dominant view that it is best when we make the future - people make the future - through debate and discussion and argument and then, acts of choosing. It was too hard, too complicated, too messy to let all of us make the future through debate and conversation and choice. GIRIDHARADAS: For most of human history, the dominant idea of how to make decisions about the future was that kings and queens and emperors and tyrants should do it. GAZETTE: Why is persuasion such an essential part of democracy? The interview has been edited for clarity and length. He will speak with Deval Patrick, the former Massachusetts governor and now co-director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Kennedy School, on Wednesday at the Brattle Theatre.

Giridharadas spoke to the Gazette about the book and what he’ll be working on as 2022-2023 Perrin Moorhead Grayson and Bruns Grayson fellow at Radcliffe. In his new book, “The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy,” the Harvard Radcliffe Fellow argues that debate is a bedrock principle of democracy that we cannot afford to abandon in the face of anti-democratic threats. neighborhoods are segregated by politics and different news sources shape views of different issues, many Americans see some among their fellow citizens as lost causes who aren’t worth engaging in political discourse.

Anand giridharadas new book