Fareed Zakaria On How Tribalism And Right-Wing Reactionary Movements Are Shaping Our World

Welcome back everyone, ladies, and my next guest is a Peabody Award-winning author columnist and host of CNN's hit Zakaria GPS. His latest book is called Age or Revolutions. Welcome to Zakaria's Late Show, as I said, the new book is the era of revolutions. Right there, we'll get to that more in a moment, but first, know that on your show Zakaria did, uh GPS, uh, on CNN, he recently covered Biden's low approval ratings, which are just below 40%. at the moment. 393 something like that even though The economy is doing pretty well

right

now, especially compared to other countries.

Looking at the rest of the

world

, how does our economy compare to major industrialized nations

right

now? We are doing much better than any of the other major economies in the

world

to give you an idea. simple number in 2008 the eurozone, europe basically and the US economies were the same size today the US economy is twice the size of the eurozone economy If Great Britain joined the United States as the 51st state, it would be the poorest state in the Union. below Mississippi, so we're doing amazingly, but what's happened is, even so, people for a while said, well, we don't realize it, we're feeling inflation well for the last 18 months.

Consumer sentiment has been rising, but Biden's approval ratings remain flat and what's really happened is that our political identities are no longer shaped by the economy like they used to be for so many years, they're shaped by culture, class , religion, for all these tribal identities, and that was part of the reason. I wrote the book because I realized that this started with Obama, that there used to be the closest connection in predictive polling, which was, you know, your opinion on the economy, the president's approval rating is always about the same, now I mean, under Obama, the stock market tripled under Obama. his approval ratings didn't change much um in the book here era of revolutions spanning four centuries of revolutions in the Netherlands, France, Britain and the United States, there have been many revolutions, how did you choose these four and what?

I was trying to understand, I was looking at the president saying why are we having this cultural reaction and then I thought, I realized how many changes we had gone through, so I looked back at the past and wondered what were the other great moments that you had this kind of revolutionary change, you know the Industrial Revolution, which I call the mother of all revolutions because it really created the modern world. The Dutch are an interesting case because they are actually the first modern country, it is the country that invented. modern economy modern politics eh, this little country doesn't seem modern because when we think of the Dutch we think of windmills and wooden shoes, which is not the highest level of technology, but for its time it was quite cutting and you know, it It became the richest country in Europe and therefore the world in the 1580s and for 500 years it has basically been in the top 10, you know, richest per capita in the world.

It's an incredible place. I'm very, very high on the Dutch. and by the way, we live in a city that used to be called New Amsterdam exactly, a lot of people are high on the Dutch these days they beat me to the joke, they beat me to the joke, um, you. you say that the subtitle of this book is the era of revolutions, progress and reaction from 1600 to the present. What would you say the main modern reaction we are experiencing right now is? I think it's really about this whole thing, this identity thing. Yo, there is a reaction. against globalization there is a reaction against the open information revolution, you know, many people say that it is too much, that social networks are ruining our lives, but I would say that the beginning has been this, eh, we have really been moved, think about it, You know, throughout human history we've always had some group that's been at the top or at the bottom, but women for tens of thousands of years were second-class citizens and that's changed dramatically in the last 30 years, so think about it 10 15 20,000 years of history and then in the last 30 years we upset the basic structure of the family.

Well, let's look at right-

wing

reactionary

movements

around the world, whether it's Islamic fundamentalism, whether it's Christian nationalism, whether you know the ultra-Orthodox in uh. In Israel, the main concern is that women have often become too angry. You know, let's move. Xiin Bing gave a speech the other day in which she said that women basically need to get back in the kitchen and start making babies. Again, they really need to start having babies in China because they're having a demographic collapse there, and that allows it, but I don't think the ancestors would make the head of the Communist Party tell women to get back in the kitchen.

No, I don't agree with the president as much as I enjoy our Chinese customers. Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Chinese Communist Party? I am from Singapore, sir, the UN Security Council passed a resolution on Monday. Demand a ceasefire in Gaza thanks to the US abstention. The key is here. The key is that it is thanks to an extension of the United States. What does this extension of the United States mean that we haven't done before? What does that mean for Israel? What does it mean? sign for the people of Gaza and what the world sees of this.

I think it's a big problem. It is one of the first times that the United States has publicly taken a different position than Israel; has not supported Israel. You know, it happened before Reagan got very angry at the Israelis when the invasion of Lebanon happened and broke with them publicly, but it's weird and I think what it tells you is that the Biden administration is deeply frustrated with BB Netanyahu. They have supported the Israeli government, but have advised more caution, more humanitarian aid, more proportionate. War. I think you know the most important thing is that this is best for Israel because what happened is an overreaction to the terrorist attacks.

Frankly, Israel is overstepping, just like we did after 9/11 and Biden, one of the best things Biden said to Israel was to learn from our mistakes, you know, Donald Rumsfeld once said, I wish I had followed his advice, but he said you have To ask yourself with your actions, are you creating more terrorists than you killed with this action? And that's what I would ask the Isra government. Are you creating more terrorists than you are killing? Well, his new book Age of Revolutions is out. now to read zakari everyone, we'll be back