FINISHED READING - One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad

"One of the hallmarks of Western liberalism is an assumption, in hindsight, of virtuous resistance as the only polite expectation of people on the receiving end of colonialism. While the terrible thing is happening - while the land is still being stolen and the natives being killed - any form of opposition is terroristic and must be crushed for the sake of civilisation.  But decades, centuries later, when enough of the land has been stolen and enough of the natives killed, it is safe enough to venerate resistance in hindsight."*

Omar El Akkad is a prizewinning writer and journalist, who has worked extensively in Canada and now the US. Born in Egypt, he understands from family experience, the moral tensions and the compromised situations individuals find themselves in when facing oppression or speaking the truth. Particularly when you are a journalist reporting on Israel, Palestine or in the Middle East. This book will puncture any self satisfied vanity we might hold of Western democracies being moral exemplars to the world. If there was a word to describe our governments implication in the committing of atrocities, often executed with our tacit approval, its - disingenuous.

"This is an account of a fracture, a breaking away from the notion that the polite, Western liberal ever stood for anything at all."*

This book is written to be uncomfortable to stomach for the Western reader. I've certainly found it brought me up sharp, its bracing, it challenged assumptions, yet at the same time was energising. Something gets freed up when your awareness grows beyond its current limitations. It vividly details the moral vacuum at the heart of Western democracy, our media, our governments, which also has its echoes within us. Prevented by vested interests from telling the whole truth. Hampered by twisted logic, untruth tellers, and institutional prejudices that the far right would have you believe do not exist. Racism that is barely named and shamed, or referred to as cultural pride. Genocide, a word that cannot even be mentioned when faced with it happening right before your eyes. Human beings robbed of their right to be treated fairly or justly, because they hold religious beliefs or come from a country the West wishes to ostracise or express disapproval of. Akkad is excoriating about the state of his own trade of journalism, often reduced solely to the dubious stoking of fury as clickbait. Everyone just fishing for website views, not persuading hearts or minds, let alone the pricking of consciences

"Jettisoning the requirement to report news in favour of inciting rage and fear and hatred of your audience before serving them up ads for guns and bunkers is a perfectly functional business model. It might not be journalism, might be the opposite of journalism, but the cheques clear." *

When it comes to war, resistance, opposition or rebelliousness, the West has developed a whole linguistic framework to talk about atrocities during combat with all the emotional shock and terror carefully removed or neutered. Words like 'collateral damage' which means innocent people were slaughtered - by accident, by incompetence, or most likely factored in as part of the military objective. We are sorry, but not sorry, some people were killed. In our elections we are frequently forced to hold our noses and chose a political party that seems the least worst option. We live in disappointed and despairing times, when few stand uncompromised by their evident lack of principle. And we wonder why voters are moving towards right wing populist disruptors. 

" It is not without reason that the most powerful nations on earth won't intervene to stop a genocide but will happily bomb one of the poorest countries on the planet to keep a shipping lane open."*

In the US there's the presumption that Republicans and Democrats are ideologically polls apart, but on foreign policy there is usually precious little to choose between them. If US voters hate the Democrats for anything its because they consistently fail to live up to their own 'caring' brand identity. Akkad discerns how Americans have a schizophrenic view of themselves, they laud and extol the virtues of the little guy outsider doggedly fighting for individual justice and freedom against the big guy, whilst they benefit from living in the largest most dominant economic empire on the planet, and this big guy throws its weight around imposing their free will on foreign 'little guys.' and their ability to have their own freedom and justice. Resistance to having this done to you, is just simply ungrateful, or lacking in respect.

"Victims of empire aren't murdered. Their killers aren't butchers, their killers aren't anything at all. Victims of empire don't die, they simply cease to exist. They burn away like fog."*

Omar El Akkad's writing is at times extremely cogent and forceful, it pulls no punches. He's not afraid of the sharply pointed analogy if this serves the point. If there is a subtext or underlying theme to this book, its a desire from a disenchanted heart - that we speak as we see, that we speak what we believe to be true, that we don't reduce everything to the blandest of worded compromises. In these days where those on the extremes of left and right politics engage constantly in a tit for tat culture war. Complaining about free speech being constrained, whilst constraining it, Libertarians and progressives both attempting to cancel those who hold disagreeable opposing views. If Western democracies are in decline its because both voters and politicians no longer have any sense of what they stand for anymore. And so we are served enfeebled politicians spouting platitudes. 

"Of all the epitaphs that may one day be written on the gravestone of Western liberalism, the most damning is this: Faced off against a nihilistic, endlessly cruel manifestation of conservatism, and somehow managed to make it close."*

This book is written with great fury and succinctness, there are far too many quotable paragraphs to copy them all out here. It is simultaneously deeply personal and universally applicable, which is what gives it such a compelling thrust where all the daggers are meant to go in. It documents the West's response to the genocide in Gaza and how it silences any narrative that speaks contrary to the acceptable one. Its one helluva book, that flips from riotous anger to clear headed insightfulness in the space of one sentence. Undoubtedly deeply felt, he cares and uses his passion and expressive skill to enable you to see through the obfuscations and the tricky use of language. When a lesser writer might want to soften the blows a bit, he doesn't. It can feel like  one long heart felt plea to remain open, to speak honestly, to hold fast to the notion that all humanity is worthy of respect. Because our leaders will try to convince us there is a hierarchy or worthiness.

"Know that a terrible thing is happening to you now. You are being asked to kill off a part of you that would otherwise scream in opposition to injustice. You are being asked to dismantle the machinery of a functioning conscience. Who cares if diplomatic expediency prefers you shrug away the sight of dismembered children? Who cares if great distance from the bloodstained middle allows obliviousness. Forget pity, forget even the dead if you must, but at least fight against the theft of your soul."*

CARROT REVIEW - 8/8

* All extracts taken from One day,everyone will have always been against this 
by Omar El Akkad, Published by Canongate, 2025