US economist Joseph Stiglitz: ‘With Trump, it is conceivable that we could lose our democracy’

Born in Gary, Indiana 82 years ago, Joseph Stiglitz walks briskly with the help of a cane through the lobby of a hotel near the CaixaForum cultural center in Madrid, where hours earlier he has given a keynote lecture on the dangers of misinformation during a conference organized by the Media Observatory. The most recent book by the Nobel Prize-winning economist and student of inequality is The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society, a work in which he reflects on how one’s opportunity set “determines, indeed defines, a person’s freedom to act.” During his lecture on Tuesday, Stiglitz defended the legacy of the Enlightenment, which he said gave humans the tools to search for the truth and provide society with certainties.

Question. In your country, the neo-reactionaries who defend exactly the opposite, a Dark Enlightenment, seem to be winning the battle.

Answer. It’s a battle. But they’re not winning everywhere, not even completely in Europe. And in the U.S. we’re seeing protests against Trump’s policies in Los Angeles, New York, California...

Q. In light of the response ordered by Trump to quell the riots in L.A., do you think the United States is at risk of civil war?

A. I don’t think it is, but what is true is that with Trump we’ve seen things that we wouldn’t have thought conceivable just months ago. What I do see as conceivable is that we lose our democracy. Shutting down our universities, restraining the press... We’re already seeing actions that go in that direction in just a few months, and we’re only at the beginning of his term.

Q. How can the system stop this progress?

A. We don’t know. When a president disobeys judicial decisions, we enter uncharted territory. The system hasn’t been able to stop Trump.

Q. Do you think disinformation is the greatest contemporary threat to democracy?

A. The problem lies in its capacity for social penetration due to reasons that have arisen in recent decades, such as inequality, which causes disillusionment, or deindustrialization, and through neglecting and ignoring many people affected by such problems.

P. Many of these people are highly exposed to a constellation of influencers who post content related to current events, and who, according to UNESCO, in more than 60% of cases do not fact-check the information they share.

A. We’ve entered a dystopia where a multitude of channels are willing to entertain you with unreliable information that appeals to your emotions. Trump illustrates this model perfectly. He lies every day, and nothing can stop him.

Q. Joe Rogan, the world’s most influential podcaster, gave him a boost during his second run for the White House after having a long conversation on his show. Do you think Kamala Harris should have gone to the show too during the campaign?

A. It’s a hard judgment call, because it’s not easy to know how she would have handled that situation. What I do believe is that there should be more exponents like Joe Rogan on the progressive side.

Q. Why do you think progressive alternatives to Joe Rogan don’t have the same impact?

A. Early on, there were those types of figures on television, as well as comedians that made fun of the news. But today, polarizing messages that appeal to the emotions of people suffering from problems related to inequality have a greater impact.

Q. These messages put wokeism in the spotlight. Do you think the movement went too far and that is why it triggered so much anger?

A. It probably did go too far, but it wasn’t the decision of any individual but rather an uncontrolled social force. On the other hand, what Trump has gone against is a series of laws that promoted diversity, equity and inclusion, and which weren’t necessarily exclusionary. In any case, the political reaction to wokeism has been extreme.

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