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 that doesn’t consider you fully human. 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. One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against
This chronicles the deep fracture that 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 El
Akkad's heartsick breakup letter with the West. It is a breakup we are watching all over the
United States 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.
