Identity Politics: Dignity and Resentment. Francis Fukuyama

How Do We Fix It?

Successful politicians on the right and left often use anger and resentment to build support for their campaigns. "A lot of our politics is dignity politics," argues Stanford political scientist, Francis Fukuyama, our guest in this episode. "It's one group saying, 'look, you are not taking us seriously. You disregard our rights and we demand a different kind of world.'"

We discuss whether identity politics are damaging our democracy at a time of deep polarization when many national and global institutions struggle to respond to growing challenges.

"We have shifted from arguing about economic policies to arguing about identities," Fukuyama tells us. In his book, "Identity: The Demand for Dignity and The Politics of Resentment," he warns that unless we forge a clear understanding of human dignity, we will doom ourselves to continuing conflict.

We discuss other solutions, including the need for more civics education, national service, and the benefits of universal healthcare and other policies that help all, instead of focusing on a single group.

In the United States, “it’s better if both parties actually stick to broad social policy issues that they can argue about, rather than lining themselves up according to biological characteristics,” he says.

We examine Fukuyama's provocative analysis of populism, nativism, white nationalism, radical Islam, and authoritarian tendencies that threaten to destabilize democracy and international affairs.

Francis Fukuyama is probably best-known for "The End of History and the Last Man", published after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. His other major works include "The Origins of Political Order" and "America at the Crossroads"

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