Author: Chris Aldrich

In this particular installment, Zakaria has some razor sharp analysis on world events. In particular he takes a look at the growing trend of populism and anti-immigration which is occurring in the world. He briefly dissects it and posits that while there are many variables potentially at play, the countries that are most effected have only one in common: migration and immigration.

While many politicians, pundits, and others indicate that the problem is economics (Sweden, Finland, and Denmark have excellent economies yet face growing populism), loss of manufacturing (Germany has a robust manufacturing sector), or even governments abandoning their workers (France goes to great length to protect its workers), none of these variables is common to all of the Western countries. Yet Japan has many of these same issues (and in particular a very poor economy for almost 20 years), but it isn’t suffering a populist movement because it isn’t dealing with the one issue that confronts all of the others: migration and immigration.

Charlie Rose indicates that there’s more detail in Zakaria’s recent Foreign Affairs article Populism on the March: Why the West Is in Trouble, [1] which I can’t wait to read.

Zakaria’s argument is underlined by Rose’s final guest Viet Thanh Nguyen, who discusses his debut novel, The Sympathizer, [2] which won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. At the end of the interview, Rose asks (almost as a complete afterthought) Nguyen about his experiences with immigration with respect to the Vietnamese in America. Nguyen indicates that the United States had similar painful immigration issues and distaste for the Vietnamese moving into America in the 1970s and early 1980s, yet 40 years on, no one seems to be as up-in-arms and these immigrants have not only assimilated well, but are generally doing very well in American society and culture.