Shift in Activism from External to Internal Focus

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The insight highlights a shift in social and racial justice activism over the past 20 years. Previously, activism focused on tangible improvements, changing laws, and addressing external oppressions. However, a recent shift has moved towards a more therapeutic model, emphasizing internal changes over external actions.

Yascha Mounk and Nellie Bowles discuss her career at The New York Times and reporting on the ground from urban “autonomous zones” in 2020.

Nellie Bowles is a writer and reporter and the head of strategy at The Free Press, where she writes the TGIF column. Her book is Morning After the Revolution: Dispatches from the Wrong Side of History.

In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Nellie Bowles discuss how she came to chafe against the institutional culture of The New York Times and why she left; how new power hierarchies arose within media and institutions where small groups came to wield outsized power; and how the transformative ideas about power and society that became dominant in 2020 continue to hold great influence.

This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarit y .

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