The Mask Has Slipped: moral clarity for an age of crisis
Mairi
On February 12th, we'll be hosting the Edinburgh launch of One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. Omar el Akkad has spent the last twenty years reporting from the ground-zeros of war and social justice issues - from Black Lives Matter protests, to climate change and Wars on Terror.
His new book One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is an indictment of the rot, racism and hypocrisy at the heart of the so-called liberalism of the west, by a journalist and novelist reflecting on how the mask of western morality slipped and shattered in light of the genocide perpetuated on Palestinians since 2023.
It's a book which - in spite of its slimness - holds so many threads and truths. In preparation for the night, we've put together a list of books which speak into a similar space - boldly laying bare the many ways in which our systems have failed us, because they were never meant to work for the majority of us in the first place.
Details about the event, including an introductory video recorded by the author for us, can be found here.
Linked Books

- title
- One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
- author
- Omar El Akkad

- title
- The Message
- author
- Ta-Nehisi Coates

- title
- We Are Free to Change the World : Hannah Arendt’s Lessons in Love and Disobedience
- author
- Stonebridge, Lyndsey

- title
- Who Gets Believed? : When the Truth Isn’t Enough
- author
- Nayeri, Dina

- title
- AZADI : Fascism, Fiction & Freedom in the Time of the Virus
- author
- Roy, Arundhati

- title
- Doppelganger : A Trip Into the Mirror World
- author
- Klein, Naomi

- title
- Tangled in Terror: Uprooting Islamophobia
- author
- Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan

- title
- Resist : Stories of Uprising
- author
- Page, Ra

- title
- Pirate Care : Acts Against the Criminalization of Solidarity
- author
- Graziano, Valeria

- title
- Moral Abdication : How the World Failed to Stop the Destruction of Gaza
- author
- Fassin, Didier

- title
- THE EYES OF GAZA
- author
- Plestia Alaqad

- title
- Visualizing Palestine : A Chronicle of Colonialism and the Struggle for Liberation
- author
- Anderson, Jessica