Since the emergence of a robust millennial left in the United States after the 2008 financial crisis, there’s been a divide between the new cohort of socialists and older progressives. The celebrated Atlantic writer George Packer exemplifies this divide: a socialist in the 1990s and still committed to a broadly left economic policy but also hostile to what he sees as the excesses of young leftists. Packer is a major figure of interest in his own right, the author of important reported books, like The Unwinding and Our Man, both of which offer novelistic portraits of the United States in a period of imperial decadence.
To figure out Packer and his generation of left-liberalism, I spoke with David Klion, who, like me, has been a long-time Packer reader (and occasional skeptic). Topics embedded in our wide-ranging discussion: Irving Howe and his wars with the New Left, the rise of Clintonian Democrats, temptation, the lure of humanitarian warfare, the liberals and leftist-wingers who supported the Iraq war, Christopher Hitchens, George Orwell, Richard Holbrooke, the Harper’s cancel culture letter, and allied concerns.
That David and I are both contending with a body of writing that we each find admirable in parts and worthy of arguing seriously against in others makes, I think, for an especially rich conversation.
(Podcast produced by Julia Elinore Peterson, post edited by Emily M. Keeler)
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Podcast: George Packer vs the Millennial Left