One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

From award-winning novelist and journalist comes a powerful meditation on what it means to live in the heart of an empire from the lens of an immigrant.

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is an urgent and necessary reckoning about what it means to live in the West today.

On October 25th, 2023, 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 more than ten million times.

As an immigrant, Omar El Akkad believed the West would be a place of freedom and justice for all. But in the past twenty years, reporting on the various Wars on Terror, Ferguson, climate change, Black Lives Matter protests, and more, and watching the unmitigated slaughter in Gaza, he has come to the conclusion that much of what the West promises is a lie.

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is a chronicle of that painful realization, a moral grappling with what it means, as a citizen of the U.S., as a father, to carve out some sense of possibility during these devastating times.

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is a searing critique of Western imperialism yet a book filled with hope and the desire for a better world, perfect for fans of Nathan Thrall, James Baldwin, Elif Shafak, Yanis Varoufakis, Edward Said and Ece Temelkuran.

“Is this the most urgent book you can read right now? Yes, it is. Is this the most moral book you can read right now? It sure is. Is this the most eye-opening book right now? Yep. Is this the most needed book for our times? Absolutely.” - RABIH ALAMEDDINE