How the West’s promise of freedom created a world of anger

What the report says

Al Jazeera’s Deja Vu episode centers on writer Pankaj Mishra, who examines the roots of contemporary political anger. According to the publisher’s description, Mishra links today’s sense of grievance to the Enlightenment’s promises of liberty and equality and to the historical realities of empire, nationalism and capitalism that often undermined those ideals.

The episode asks how frustration grows when political and social promises are not fulfilled, and it suggests that this gap between ideals and lived experience has helped fuel unrest across the world. The framing also emphasizes a broader global shift: the Global South, in Mishra’s view, has increasingly turned Western political language and values back toward the West itself.

The program appears as part of Al Jazeera’s Deja Vu series and was published on 6 September 2026. The public material identifies Mishra as the featured guest and credits the episode’s production team, but does not provide a detailed transcript or additional case studies in the article text.

More broadly, the theme reflects a common contemporary debate in politics and history: whether modern anger is best understood as a reaction to inequality, broken promises, or the legacy of colonial power. The episode’s significance lies in connecting present-day polarization to long-running debates over freedom, modernity and global power.