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Are Magazines Failing to Cover the New World Order?

A conversation with Gavin Jacobson, one of the founding editors of Equator, a new publication that is trying to make sense of the world after the West.

Frustrated by the Western media’s coverage of the war in Gaza, a small group of writers and editors banded together for the purpose of offering a more global periodical for thought and culture as opposed to what they perceived to be the provincialism of Western media outlets. Last fall, that magazine launched. It is called Equator. 

In seeking to move beyond the limited coverage of Western magazines, they equally sought, in their own words, to “spur claims made on behalf of a supposedly unitary ‘Global South.’” But how can such a balancing act be achieved? And what are the intellectual influences behind such an approach? The Nation sat down with one of Equator’s founding editors, Gavin Jacobson, to discuss Equator’s political vision, intellectual inspirations, the interventions its hopes to make. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

—Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins 

DSJ: The editors of Equator give an intriguing explanation for the publication’s purpose, namely that it is inspired by “the passing of a grand illusion: the illusion that the whole world was on a trajectory, however delayed or disrupted, towards Western modernity.” Can you elaborate on that mission statement?  

GJ: The illusion refers to the idea, triumphant after 1989, that every society, however different its history or culture, would eventually converge on the political and economic model of the Anglo-American West, that liberal democratic capitalism was the form that all successful modern societies must ultimately take. The Indian sociologist Ashis Nandy captured this perfectly when he observed that the West’s message to the rest of the world has long been: “our present is your future.” It was a tenet with profound implications because it determined which political systems were classified as “developing” (read deficient) versus “developed” (read arrived), or those who had moved into the era of “post-history” and those who remain mired in the strife-ridden zones of the “historical.” Most significantly, it constrained what could be imagined and built across the world, foreclosing political alternatives before they could even be articulated.

It’s clear that this illusion, which included a kind of moral primacy that the West arrogated to itself, has been losing credibility for years—and in much of the world it was never believed—but Gaza irrevocably shattered it beyond any possibility of recovery. The genocide hasn’t jolted the West into either awareness or guilt; there is only the instinct for self-preservation. It’s similar to what Karl Kraus observed about the First World War: “What is revealing is not the occurrence itself, but the numbing that supports and allows this.” What we’re witnessing now is the end of the West’s ability to set the terms of reference for everyone else.

DSJ: Equator, if I am not mistaken, indicates dissatisfaction with contemporary magazines?

GJ: Well, for a start, I don’t think Equator would ever print the line, “it is possible to kill children legally.” But more fundamentally, a magazine like The Atlantic, for instance, is successful precisely because it serves power so reliably. It’s where the national security establishment launders its positions through respectable prose, where wars get justified through sophisticated moral casuistry. It does a brilliant job of being the house journal of the American ruling class.

The Atlantic also assumes its readers want to understand the world in order to manage it and to know just enough about Mexico or Egypt or Brazil to formulate policy. Equator assumes our readers want to understand the world because they’re part of it, because their lives and futures are bound up with people and places that a lot of media treats as peripheral.

The deeper difference is that The Atlantic and magazines like it still believe that American power is fundamentally benign, that the post-1989 settlement was basically sound and just needs better management. Equator starts from the recognition that this order is both dying and unlamented, and that what comes next is already being imagined and built by people The Atlantic doesn’t bother to read or really think about.

DSJ: Does Equator take a stance on terms like “Global South,” “the West,” etc.? Is there utility in using these terms?

GJ: Our editorial declaration explicitly rejects the idea of a monolithic “Global South.” That term, while politically useful in certain contexts, flattens vast differences and creates a false unity. Nigeria and Indonesia and Bolivia have radically different histories, political systems, and relationships to colonial power. Treating them as a unified bloc replicates the totalizing logic we’re trying to escape. Similarly, “the West” is a constantly shifting category. These terms are more ideological than geographical because they describe relationships to power, not fixed locations. That said, we use these terms strategically, with awareness of their limitations. When we talk about “post-American” or “non-Western” perspectives, we’re pointing to the end of a particular hegemonic formation where a handful of Atlantic powers determined the terms of reference for everyone else.

What we’re really interested in is what my colleague Pankaj Mishra described in a recent conversation he had with the musician Ali Sethi: “a certain........

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