Downstream: The West is Over. Here’s Why w/ Pankaj Mishra

**Aaron Bastani** (0:08)
Trust in the media has not been particularly high in recent decades, but it's fallen to all time lows in the aftermath of the Gaza genocide. That's particularly true with liberal publications, it's particularly true with people who hold progressive values. But it shouldn't be understated, these are society-wide phenomena. People simply don't believe what they read, hear and listen to when it comes to the mainstream media. But what does that mean for our politics? Will things only become more polarised over time if that belief and credibility doesn't return? And what can the left and socialists do to create something different? Today's guest is a writer, historian, journalist. They wrote a fabulous book 14 years ago from The Ruins of Empire, shortlisted for the Orwell Prize. An amazing overview of global history over the last 150 years. More recently, though, they're involved in a new publication of magazine called Equator. I want to talk to them about why they set that magazine up. What on earth is going wrong with the media in this country?
And where next? Because so many of the shibboleths and presumptions of the 20th century are simply dissolving into dust. The world is transforming, but you simply wouldn't know that if you got all your information from the BBC, the Guardian and the Times newspaper. It's in fact transforming far more than I think any of us realize.
Pankaj Mishra, welcome to DownStream.

**Pankaj Mishra** (1:40)
Thank you, Adam.

**Aaron Bastani** (1:41)
Before we started, you said you don't often do these kinds of conversations, podcasts, etc. I don't blame you personally. However, you made something of an exception for Novara Media, not because of the fabulous curiosity of our audience, although that is of course true, but because you are involved in this project, Equator magazine.
I have to say, I was reading it over the last couple of days. The editorial at the top is really, really interesting. Tell me, tell our audience a little bit about Equator. What is it? Why did you feel the need to produce this particular thing now in 2026?

**Pankaj Mishra** (2:16)
I think Aaron, you are probably one of the very few people who understand very quickly when I say that the inadequacies of the mainstream media have become so intolerable over the years for many people who work inside those institutions, that so many of us have been dreaming of just a different way of describing the world, explaining the world. But could never really find the means, could never really come together to establish that or to create that institution, that necessary institution. It so happened that many of us who had been dreaming for a while were almost kind of forced to come together by the disastrous coverage of the genocide in Gaza. I think that really forced many of us to contemplate our existing commitments, writing commitments, journalistic commitments and make certain hard decisions like, do we want to continue working within what seemed like increasingly diseased outfits, increasingly compromised outfits, you know, covering up for the state of Israel, publishing fabricated articles, you know, constantly, constantly engaged in this exercise that involved lies, propaganda, systematic falsehoods.
I think it became very clear that you really cannot reform many of these institutions from within. And certainly the idea of reform itself seemed preposterous, presumptuous, that, you know, because you and people like yourself are in a minority within these institutions always.
So the only way forward was setting up a project like this, where you allow, you again give back dignity to the idea of truth, to the idea of exploration, to the idea of open critical thinking on a range of issues. I think, you know, quite apart from this now notorious coverage of Gaza on the part of the mainstream media, there was also realization amongst many of us, that the way in which the Anglo-American media was covering the rest of the world was profoundly insufficient, if not completely misguided at times, and that these institutions had committed themselves, invested in an idea of Western supremacy, moral, political, military, economic, and the idea that the rest of the world had no option but to follow the Western model. That whole assumption, that whole set of assumptions had been breaking, and had been breaking for a very long time, even before Brexit, even before Trump arrived. But there was really no awareness of this extraordinary loss of credibility. And as a result, the coverage of places like China, the coverage of places like India, was really shockingly incompetent in many of these esteemed, storied institutions of journalistic institutions of Anglo America. So I think it was imperative for us to establish something like Equator and give opportunity to this incredibly talented, very large global Anglophone intelligentsia that now exists across the world. That did not exist when I started out as a writer in the 90s, but now is a very large demographic. People who read, people who write, people who have access to the best things that are being said and taught in the world and have been taught and said in the world. So you're looking at an incredibly talented group of people who are profoundly underrepresented in the mainstream media today. Our task is to bring many of these writers and thinkers and artists into the limelight to present this new generation of writers and thinkers to the world at large. So very long answer to your question, but I think you can see the sort of different reasons, all connected, of course, that in a way almost forced us to start something like this.