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Synopsis:
From award-winning novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad comes a powerful reckoning with what it means to live in the heart of an Empire which doesn’t consider you fully human.
On Oct 25th, after just three weeks of the bombardment of Gaza, Omar El Akkad put out a tweet: “One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.” This tweet was viewed over 10 million times.
One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This chronicles the deep fracture which has occurred for Black, brown, indigenous Americans, as well as the upcoming generation, many of whom had clung to a thread of faith in western ideals, in the idea that their countries, or the countries of their adoption, actually attempted to live up to the values they espouse.
This book is a reckoning with what it means to live in the west, and what it means to live in a world run by a small group of countries—America, the UK, France and Germany. It will be The Fire Next Time for a generation that understands we’re undergoing a shift in the so-called ‘rules-based order,’ a generation that understands the west can no longer be trusted to police and guide the world, or its own cities and campuses. It draws on intimate details of Omar’s own story as an emigrant who grew up believing in the western project, who was catapulted into journalism by the rupture of 9/11.
This book is his heartsick breakup letter with the west. It is a breakup we are watching all over the U.S., on college campuses, on city streets, and the consequences of this rupture will be felt by all of us. His book is for all the people who want something better than what the west has served up. This is the book for our time.
Review:
Omar El Akkad’s first book of nonfiction, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, is one of those books with many huge ideas packed into a small book. At less than two hundred pages, El Akkad breaks down the reasons why the political parties of the Western governments are letting down the world by the way that they act toward global tragedy. He uses the war in Gaza that started in October 2023 as a backdrop to every point in his argument. The way he explains this is that Western Liberals are just as guilty in their response (or lack of response) as the conservative party. In fact his his eyes, they may be worse. The Liberal party issues statements that they care about the Palestinian people but then sign along with the bills to fund the opposite side while they watch all of the Palestinian children die, get crippled, or starve. El Akkad also spends time discussing why fear is one of the driving factors in attitudes toward the Middle East, particularly Muslim countries, how by turning our backs to one atrocity, it makes it easier to turn our backs on all future atrocities because it turns into conditioning, and how both parties in the United States needs to overhaul the way they respond to conflicts and construct their foreign and domestic policies.
This book should anger any reader in the United States that has any type of political leaning, Omar El Akkad pulls back the curtain and lays out the ugliness behind both parties and how our complacency has gotten us to this point. When a book brings up a real emotional response, particularly a nonfiction book that brings up anger by anyone who reads it, it is wise to take a minute and try to figure out this response is happening. Personally I am a liberal leaning person, but I am also aware that the things Omar El Akkad describes are true. For years I have said that the difference between Republicans and Democrats in America is that Republicans will tell you to your face that they don’t like you. On the other hand, the Democrats will tell you to your face that they have your best interests in mind, but then turn around and prove that to be a lie. Omar El Akkad gives examples of this kind of behavior, proof that this idea is true, and that many Western liberals see something terrible happening across the globe and become immune to it, and this callousness and indifference is worse than being hateful and rooting for one particular side.
One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This won the National Book Award for Nonfiction, and I am kind of shocked considering this is not a book that really paints a good picture of America’s place in the world. It does not say that the United States is a lost cause, but it does say that at the rate he West is going, the government will grow weaker and weaker. There are very interesting arguments and points that are made throughout the book, and it is one of the books that demands to be reread because I have barely scratched the surface of the content in this review. There are many good topics presented in a voice that is upset and frustrated with response to the Middle East by the West, particularly by the country that boasts to being the most powerful and best country in the world. The government of the United States has major, glaring flaws, and by not discussing and fixing these flaws, the government will eventually crunble.
“The argument in favor of voting for the lesser evil is frequently made in good faith, by people who have plenty to lose should the greater evil win. But it also establishes the lowest of benchmarks: Want my vote? Be less monstrous than the monsters.” p. 59
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