What The Economist Gets Wrong About Liberalism
Free trade and free people didn’t enable the rise of the West.
Bannon understands history better than the Economist.
Photographer: Sean Gallup/Getty Images
Last weekend in London, the Economist braved angry protesters to host Steve Bannon, the former White House chief strategist, and white nationalist, at the magazine’s “Open Future” festival. The week before, outrage on social media and threatened cancellations from invited speakers had forced the New Yorker to cancel a similar public interview with Bannon.
The Economist has been a self-conscious flag-bearer of Anglo-American liberalism since it started publication 175 years ago. As its editor wrote in a note justifying her invitation to Bannon, it’s important to subject “ideas and individuals from all sides to rigorous questioning and debate.”