The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy

The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds, and Democracy
ISBN-10
0593318994
ISBN-13
9780593318997
Category
Political Science
Pages
352
Language
English
Published
2022-10-18
Publisher
Knopf
Author
Anand Giridharadas

Description

An insider account of activists, politicians, educators, and everyday citizens working to change minds, bridge divisions, and fight for democracy. The lifeblood of any free society is persuasion: changing other people's minds in order to change things. But America is suffering a crisis of faith in persuasion that is putting its democracy and the planet itself at risk. Americans increasingly write one another off instead of seeking to win one another over. Debates are framed in moralistic terms, with enemies battling the righteous. Movements for justice build barriers to entry, instead of on-ramps. Political parties focus on mobilizing the faithful rather than wooing the skeptical. And leaders who seek to forge coalition are labeled sellouts. In The Persuaders Anand Giridharadas takes us inside these movements and battles, seeking out the dissenters who continue to champion persuasion in an age of polarization. We meet a co-founder of Black Lives Matter; a leader of the feminist resistance to Trumpism; white parents at a seminar on raising adopted children of color; Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; a team of door knockers with an uncanny formula for changing minds on immigration; an ex-cult member turned QAnon deprogrammer; and, hovering menacingly offstage, Russian operatives clandestinely stoking Americans' fatalism about one another. As the book's subjects grapple with how to call out threats and injustices while calling in those who don't agree with them but just might one day, they point a way to healing, and changing, a fracturing country.

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