A New Politics of Freedom: Aziz Rana with Jefferson Cowie

Freedom has a dual legacy. On the one hand, it evokes struggles associated with the left, from abolition and anticolonialism to women's and queer liberation. On the other hand, it has long been a watchword of the right, from neoliberals to white nationalists.
In our new issue Reclaiming Freedom, Aziz Rana leads a forum on the path to a different politics of freedom. In the United States, he argues, reactionary meanings of freedom at home have been emboldened by U.S. imperial power abroad. But their hold isn’t absolute: we can break it by building new forms of collective agency and self-rule.
In this conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and forum respondent Jefferson Cowie, he discusses what freedom means and how to win it for all.
Aziz Rana is professor of law and government at Boston College. He is the author of The Two Faces of American Freedom and the forthcoming The Constitutional Bind: How Americans Came to Idolize a Document That Fails Them.
Jefferson Cowie is the James G. Stahlman Chair in the Department of History at Vanderbilt University. His most recent book Freedom’s Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance earned him the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in History.
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[@PoliticalEconomy101]

The Triad for the left should be equality, solidarity, and democracy. Forget freedom. Its completely worthless except for protecting property rights. Even Aziz's examples of liberation demonstrate the failure of freedom. Freedom gets us nowhere because it doesnt fundamentally change the system. We need to be talking about control, not freedom. Cant believe Aziz dosent know that any social contract that puts more obligations and duties on people will require sacrificing some freedoms.

[@republitarian484]

Aziz Rana isn't even an American.