We Need New Stories: The Myths That Subvert Freedom - Hardcover

by Nesrine Malik (Author)

In 2016, presidential candidate Donald Trump declared: "I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct." Reeling from his victory, Democrats blamed the corrosive effect of "identity politics." When banned from Twitter for inciting violence, Trump and his supporters claimed that the measure was an assault on "free speech." In We Need New Stories, Nesrine Malik explains that all of these arguments are political myths--variations on the lie that American values are under assault.

Exploring how these and other common political myths function, she breaks down how they are employed to subvert calls for equality from historically disenfranchised groups. Interweaving reportage with an incendiary analysis of American history and politics, she offers a compelling account of how calls to preserve "free speech" are used against the vulnerable; how a fixation with "wokeness," "political correctness," and "cancel culture" is in fact an organized and well-funded campaign by elites; and how the fear of racial minorities and their "identity politics" obscures the biggest threat of all--white terrorism. What emerges is a radical framework for understanding the crises roiling American contemporary politics.

Back Jacket

A malignant thread has been running through Anglo-American history, and it is made of myths. These are not myths that animate believers into a shared sense of camaraderie and direction. They are myths that divide and instill a sense of superiority over others. Nations are susceptible to these impulses when going through times of instability or subordination, when they become vulnerable to demagoguery, or fall to dictatorship. Again, myths are useful and comforting galvanizers. But when they take hold in democratic, ostensibly affluent societies, it is not a temporary madness, it is a culmination of events...These myths are spun by those who get to speak, who have the platforms, those who have historically accumulated the necessary influence and power. Those who, culturally, are defined as its vessels. Myths are spun out of several untruths, woven with skill, and their omnibus weights the narrative in favor of those who are not necessarily in power--it is less calculated than that--but of those who benefit from power.
--from the Prologue