Jerusalem Demsas is trying to make liberalism cool again. On the left, the ideology is often associated with tepidity and compromise, and a naive faith in civility and meritocracy. On the right, it is seen as an effete harbinger of diversity and national weakness.
Now, the former staff writer for Vox and the Atlantic has launched a new online magazine called the Argument, dedicated to reinvigorating liberalism. She garnered $4m of investment, hired a band of staff members and locked in high-profile contributors including Matt Yglesias, Derek Thompson and Matt Breunig.
“So many people who care about liberalism were doing it in such a boring way. They were just lecturing everyone,” she says. “Yes, everyone should read John Stuart Mill. I would love for everyone to become Amartya Sen-pilled. But more realistically and also more small-d democratically, you should actually engage with the issues that people are telling you are important to them.”
Unsurprisingly, her venture has its critics. The left-leaning Revolving Door Project characterised the Argument as “a factional publication committed to pushing strict adherence to centrist orthodoxy”—albeit more than a month before it had even launched.
But Demsas vehemently disputes the notion that “liberal” means “centrist”. “Liberalism is an extremely radical proposition,” she says. “The idea that people who are very different than you—Trump supporters, people on the left, of different religions, different nationalities—that all these people can coexist together and that it is better they do so. That’s the most radical proposition in the history of humanity!”
Demsas’s family are of Eritrean heritage and migrated to the United States from Ethiopia as asylum seekers when she was three years old. They settled in a diverse area of suburban Maryland. “Growing up, my friends were Peruvian, El Salvadorian, Chinese and South African,” she recalls.
While she acknowledges that some Americans have “legitimate concerns” about the perceived costs of federal migration policies, she emphasises the country-wide benefits of immigration and the openness of many Americans. As “centrist” politicians around the world increasingly treat immigration as a liability, her pragmatic optimism does seem radical.
According to Mill, a coexistence of people must come with a coexistence of views. When I ask Jerusalem about the tendency of some progressives to spurn “free speech” for those whose views they find offensive, she comes as close to disdain as her sunny demeanour allows. “I can’t draw a line that cuts out people who like Charlie Kirk, for instance, even if I wanted to,” she says.
“My goal is not to sanewash Charlie Kirk. But is your goal to persuade those people? If that’s not the goal, then you’re just preaching nihilism. And to me, that is a dead-end route for anyone who cares about these issues [such as trans rights], particularly those of us who have the privilege to speak in public.”
Contrary to Robert Frost’s definition of a liberal as someone who won’t even take their own side in an argument, wherever there is an arena for debate you’ll find Demsas speaking up. She is so committed to, well, the argument, that she encourages liberals to remain on Twitter/X— despite Elon Musk’s management—so as not to cede ground to the right, citing the need to influence lawmakers still on the platform.
She’s also happy to join her opponents’ podcasts and debate them on university campuses—but that doesn’t mean she’ll play nice with the “post-liberal” right. It was those conservatives who adopted that label, including US vice president JD Vance, who inspired her to launch her publication. “To those pushing for a post-liberal or anti-liberal perspective,” she says, “I say you’re really going to miss it when it’s gone, buddy!”
