"It's the age of angst. There's so much anxiety, east and west, young and old, so many people are anxious right now, it's quite palpable. And I think in many ways, it's the golden era for demagoguery, for the populist demagogue to enter the stage and say: Just leave it with me. I'm going to make things simple for you."
"What's striking for me is the contrast between this really rich life that you find in literature and in academia, and the platitudes of politics. In literature there is an experimentation with genres and with cultures and with languages, and so you get this sense of complexity. You have almost the exact opposite happening in the political realm, where it's all about simplicity. It's all about being on message, not making it too complex."
Global anxiety across regions and ages creates fertile ground for demagogues offering simplistic solutions and clear messages. Political communication increasingly favors brevity, repetition, banality, and exclusionary rhetoric aimed at scapegoating migrants. Literature and academia embrace experimentation across genres, cultures, and languages, producing nuanced, complex representations. Writers navigate threats of censorship, the rise of populism, and the challenges of multiple identities when representing complex historical events. The tension between rich literary complexity and reductive political platitudes underscores struggles to preserve pluralism, historical truth, and inclusive public discourse in the face of authoritarian and exclusionary tendencies.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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