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In the grand narrative the West tells about itself, liberalism is the hero. It is the benevolent ideology of individual freedom, free markets, human rights, and a “rules-based international order.” It is the world of John F. Kennedy, the West Wing, and NGOs working for a better future. It presents itself as the universal destination of history, the final form of human political evolution. But for much of the world—the Global South in particular—this story is a fairytale. For them, liberalism has not been a liberator, but the “moral mask which a toughly acquisitive society wears before the world it…