Anand Giridharadas
Appearances
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
What I don't think most Americans realize is that puts you into the territory of being a completely different society. A society when, as in my childhood in India, where people would kind of assume success was evidence of connections, is a fundamentally different kind of society. You don't want to become that kind of society.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
I think there's two levels of it. One very sinister and one less sinister. So the sinister thing is a story you know very well. The last several decades... books like Dark Money by Jane Mayer, Evil Geniuses by Kurt Anderson really traced as well. There was a group of, frankly, a very small number of people, families on the right, that really got organized. Howell Memo is part of this story.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
Got organized, felt they were losing the country in the 70s, got organized, grabbed power, and they built a media infrastructure to go with it and kind of lubricate their machinery of government, their takeover of that machinery. And You know, that has been a very successful campaign.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
And unlike a lot of folks on the left, with the exception of you all, for sure, they understood the importance of media as part of that whole game. It wasn't an afterthought. It wasn't like a nice to have. It was essential to the work of building power.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
I think there's a less sinister explanation, which is worth thinking about, which is, I think, deep in its bones, the United States is built different. Right. I think we're not friends. You know, I lived in France also with a child. I still go there every now and then. The United States is not Sweden. You know, I don't think it's a collectivist as I like China.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
I don't think it's just the takeover of the right. I think deep because of how this country was settled. Lots of different things deep in the American bloodstream. This is the country settled by non-consensually and consensually by very hardy people who survived very tough journeys.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
Often people who came by choice were like the one brother in their Italian family who left when seven people were like, this village seems fine to me, right? And so over time- And then and then we had all this conflict, you know, over time, this country and there's some like fascinating genetic stuff about this.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
This country disproportionately attracted and and and the people who kind of survived the passage of this country were hardy, tough people who often. at a spirit of individualism that was different, meaningfully different from European countries. And that's fine.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
I think what a lot of folks who feel that way and feel some reverence for Elon Musk because they see it, therefore, as the kind of peak of that individualistic striving is that someone like Elon Musk, the way they operate, actually gets in the way of your individual freedom. And I think a lot of Americans haven't made that connection. They think of Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg or whatever.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
Yeah, maybe it's a little too much. Yeah, maybe they spend too much. But I can be them. They're a role model. They're in the lane far ahead of me and I'm trying to catch up. And actually, the better way to understand those people is they're your roadblock. Their success depends on you not realizing your dreams. Their success depends on you not realizing
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
getting that degree, you not having the freedom of healthcare you can count on to therefore sketch an idea on the back of a napkin and quit your job and go realize it. Their wealth and power is not some advanced team for your success. It is the opposition to your success.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
And that idea, I think, has been very hard to sell Americans on, not only because of this recent right-wing takeover, but because of this very deep thing in the American... And sorry to dwell on it, but I think this gives... the pro-democracy movement, some marching orders. This is a big organizing challenge that goes beyond beating the right.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
I think we have to educate the mass of American people about individualism and community and the ways in which just leaving the wolves free endangers all the lambs. And I think that's a really exciting media challenge for folks like us. And it sort of absolves us of just saying, you know, it's not just the right that needs to be overthrown. We have persuasion work to do among our people.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
You know, I'm such a junkie for these Substack Lives. I was just on another one where I was asking the questions of the great Anat Shankar Osorio. If you guys haven't had her on, she's absolutely incredible, as you know. There's so many things I could say to answer that.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
I'm going to focus on one idea that she really gave us a few weeks ago, and we were talking about it more today, that really blew my mind and may be helpful for your listeners. I think a lot of us have been feeling despair, powerless, kind of aghast at obviously what the right is doing, but I think profoundly undefended by democratic leaders.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
I think that's as significant an emotion in many people's hearts right now. I think it's why a lot of people come to you all. And what Anat helped me reframe, she said, you know, by all means, keep making the phone calls to Capitol Hill, keep marching, keep yelling at the Republicans, keep telling Hakeem Jeffries to grow a spy, all of that. Yes, keep doing it.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
But she said the most important form of activism people can do right now is not up there to the very powerful people. It is actually laterally in their community to solve the first problem of this moment, which is that most people think no one else feels the way they do.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
Most people think they're the one on the block who's afraid of what Elon Musk's doing, but everybody else is going about their life. I live in a very progressive place in Brooklyn, New York. If I were to walk down the street, and just judged by the atmosphere, it would appear that no one really cares that we're in an existential crisis for the Republic. It certainly looks like no one cares.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
There's no signs, there's no hats, there's no clothes, right? I understand, people are living their life. But her reframe was so powerful to me. The first thing you can do And we need symbolism. I think you all have the scale to maybe help people coordinate that. She suggested the slogan, free America. We need to free America from all these people, free America from these wannabe tyrants.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
But we also want an America that is free. So it's the end state as well as the action. We need hats. We need symbols. We need colors. We need, you know, she suggested a badge that says, I'm in the know. And people then ask you, in the know about what? And then it gives you a chance to, right? We need to kind of, she called it social proof.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
But this level of activism I think is neglected in a lot of conversations. Your first rung of activism is coalescing all the people around you who actually feel the same way you do. but there's a kind of first mover problem, right?
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
And everybody's like sitting watching your thing on their stream, on their couch by themselves, not realizing that the guy next to them is also watching your stream at the same time. And it is a very simple, doable form of activism. Not just to try to depose these high leaders who seem untouchable, but to try to create social proof in your community that a lot of people feel this way.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
Let's see each other. Let's know each other there. And then you go from there. That feels like wonderfully doable and incredibly important and foundational to the work ahead.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
I love what you guys are doing. I think you are role modeling a spirit of fighting that has essentially become absent. from the political left in this country and you are role modeling it back to life. And I so appreciate that. You know, it's funny you talk about that book, Winners Take All, which is my third book. I was joking the other day to a friend of mine, but I was only half joking.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
And thank you guys for, I think you're doing spinal development for the nation. And it's going to take a lot of spine going forward. So I really, really appreciate so much what you all are doing. I think in the long run of history, it's going to be viewed as very, very important.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
I was like, do I have the least successful career of all time? Because my first book, Four books, all warnings. First book about India, but the message was social change, even progress can be psychologically destabilizing to people in ways that we got to pay attention to. My second book was a warning about rising white resentment as the kind of dominant political force in the country, 2014.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
Third book was warning the billionaires trying to grab all the wealth and power by convincing us they're heroes. And the fourth book was about how the left was growing too insular and not devoted enough to persuasion. And so I sometimes reflect on the fact that I wrote four books offering four warnings and none of them were heeded by anybody. So, you know, but here I am. Here I am.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
Hope springs eternal.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
Well, just to go back to your billionaire thing, and then I'll come to the journalism thing, you know, 2018, long time ago, in the kind of dog-year reality that we're living in right now, when I wrote a book critiquing billionaires, and by the way, I wasn't just critiquing right-wing billionaires in that book. In fact, I focused on billionaires
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
who you and I might be more sympathetic to, to illustrate the point that even the good billionaires are problematic, right? Even the ones who have the same policy goals as you are problematic because to have that much money is to have a power over other, a level of power over other people that is inconsistent with the democracy we care about.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
And when I wrote that in 2018, so many Democrats, people on the left were like, Yeah, I get inequality is kind of sad, but like, why are you going after, you know, Bill Gates is doing some good work. And, you know, Jeff Bezos says he wants to give some money away and get really buff. And, you know, he needs some money to take Lauren Sanchez on dates or whatever.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
Like people were just like, couldn't understand. Yes, go after the really bad ones. But why, what is the problem with kind of billionaires in general? I got criticized for using the word oligarchs on MSNBC back then. And fast forward,
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
to now, where I think, as you say, the mask has come off, and what has become, I think, really, really clear to people is the thing that was very difficult to show back then, convince people of back then, which is that they don't just rule through evil, because that wouldn't be very effective, because there's not that many of them.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
They rule by cultivating this aura of heroism that lots of people buy into, and they need lots of people to buy into to have actually any power, right? Because... In France, I was just in France on a work trip a few months ago at a discussion about philanthropy. I asked the room, France has billionaires. Do any of your billionaires shape education policy in your country?
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
And the entire room started laughing. I was actually asking a serious question. They treated it like I'd asked if bananas shape education policy in their country. They didn't understand the connection between having been successful in business and being successful in policy. I have a friend who's a venture capitalist in China.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
He once said to me, and he's a citizen of the United States also, I think dual citizen. He said, I'm a rich guy in China, and I'm a rich guy in the United States. The difference is, in my native country of China, No one thinks my views about public policy matter.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
Whereas when I fly to America, my second country, not even where I was born, being a rich guy, my thoughts about who should be in power or what policy suddenly become very, very important. So that notion of wealth buying the right to shape what this society is like, that is what oligarchy is. And I'm happy we're living in a time in which I think more and more people get it.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
And it's very related to the media point because we're in a world in which the infrastructure of reality is is owned by more and more by oligarchs. And we've seen the oligarchs to be spineless people in general who are so scared of Donald Trump. You think Jeff Bezos would not give Lauren Sanchez to Donald Trump if that was the tribute that Donald Trump demanded? There is nothing they won't do
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
to cultivate Donald Trump. So we're living in a world in which the ability to even just find out what is happening is mediated by a bunch of fraidy cat oligarchs who should be self-confident and brave because that's the whole point of having that much money, but instead are the biggest pansies you could find.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
It's a great point. First of all, I share that view with you. If I ever had that much money, I don't know that I would be buying yachts first or 50 houses first. I can assure you the first thing I would do if I had that much money, I mean, I'm kind of already doing it, so maybe it's not a big change, but the first thing I would do would be to shed any fear of anybody.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
If that is not the point of that money, I don't know what the point of that money is. If it is not to liberate yourself from living under the imagined thumb of anybody else, what is the money doing for you? So that's kind of point number one. In terms of what they are actually afraid of, it's actually very revealing. Yeah.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
So part of why I would argue that nobody should even have a billion dollars is because if you understand how markets work and how competitive markets work in a free society, it's actually quite hard to make that kind of money.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
And the reason it's hard to make that kind of money is if you're onto something, we all learn this if you study econ 101, you're onto something that's kind of a good thing to be onto, right? You create a, you create a sub stack. People like it. People notice that it's growing. Well, you know what happens? A lot of other people start doing it. Right?
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
If you're selling umbrellas on the street in a rainstorm, unfortunately, you don't get to go it alone. People will notice. The next time the rainstorm comes, there are going to be 10 times more rainstorm umbrella entrepreneurs. And that drives prices down and makes it really hard for one person to clean up everything.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
So if you end up with $300 billion in a supposed market economy, I'm oversimplifying a lot here, but I think this is important. If you end up with like $300 billion or even $10 billion, probably you didn't just show up in a competitive marketplace and have something really good that you were offering because that kind of doesn't explain why that wasn't cut into by competitors.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
Probably you did some things to limit the entry of other competitors into that arena, to have monopolies on something, to monopolize, let's say, government contracts that fed you and not others. And if you look at all these guys and you actually break into what they have done,
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
they they're it's all based on stepping on other people right um and so what they are afraid of is the fact that they actually cannot sustain that level of wealth without affirmative action for billionaires right they need like that fortune is not based on their product being awesome It's not.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
That fortune is based 90 plus percent of the time in some kind of predatory or aggressive behavior that they need not to be regulated, not to be investigated, not to be unionized against. So they are, in a way, very, very vulnerable and dependent because their entire structure depends on kind of special perks and special privileges. So in a way, they're not masters of the universe.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
In a way, they are right to be afraid because what they're really afraid of is competing on an open market.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
No, I'll respond to that in the following way, taking us a little bit outside of this country, because it's sometimes helpful to look from the inside out. My family's from India. I was born in this country in the United States, but my parents immigrated here.
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
When I was growing up, you go to India as a child, I noticed certain cultural differences in the way people speak about life, opportunity, jobs, businesses. And in India, there was this thing, it's still there, it was certainly even more there back in the 80s, where everything was about connection. So if you did anything successful, the assumption is... Well, who did you know?
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
Did you know somebody? How did you get that? It's a very sad thing. In a highly bureaucratic, it was then kind of in a socialist phase. Now it's in a capitalist phase, but it's sort of the same. The assumption was if you've made money, Come on. You had to know somebody, right? And that's so corrosive to have a whole society where people look at success that way. That's what we're becoming, right?
The MeidasTouch Podcast
Ben Meiselas and Anand Giridharadas on Fearless Reporting
We're becoming a society where if you're like a 25-year-old Gen Z kid with a brilliant idea in Bushwick, New York, it's going to be pretty hard for you. to get the capital, get the stability, get the runway to do it. But if you're already a rich guy who already has those connections, you're in.