Israel, US campuses, and the fragility of the coloniser

No-one in their right mind turns to the United States for moral leadership. Even so, the degradation of US public culture over recent weeks has been something to behold. The Biden administration is fully participating in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, sending every weapon Israel asks for and deploying military force to deter other countries from coming to the aid…

Islamophobia in the US is rooted in its unconditional support for Israel

Tracing the rise of Islamophobia, from the 1973 oil embargo to Trump’s election to Hamas’s attack, Arun Kundnani argues that support for Israel is central. But Americans are finally starting to see through the smokescreen of anti-Muslim propaganda. Anti-Muslim racism rests on a simple truth: to justify US foreign policy in the Middle East – in particular,…

What could a progressive alternative to the failed “war on terror” look like?

Fifteen Terrorism Acts in the last 20 years have created an oppressive and racist legacy. The left must not shy away from promoting a new vision of “security”, argues a new report out this week. Twenty years ago, a backbench MP called Jeremy Corbyn criticised a new Terrorism Bill that Tony Blair’s Labour government was…

Race and America's Long War book cover

Book review: Race and America’s Long War by Nikhil Pal Singh

Until recently, US academia maintained a strong division between the analysis of racism and the analysis of capitalism. The former flourished within certain limits while the latter was neglected; each was artificially separated from the other. But that is no longer true. A body of work has emerged in the last few years that draws…

Draft paper on Islamophobia as lay ideology of US-led empire

In this draft academic paper, Islamophobia is analyzed as a “lay ideology” that offers an everyday “common sense” explanatory framework for making sense of mediated crisis events (such as terrorist attacks) in ways that disavow those events’ political meanings (rooted in empire, racism, and resistance) and instead explain them as products of a reified “Muslimness.”…

Violence comes home: an interview

ISIS’s recruits are not corrupted by ideology but by the end of ideology. More radicalisation, in the genuine sense of the word, is the solution, not the problem. After the Paris attacks, what are the logical and tragic consequences of war with no geographical limits? In this interview, published by openDemocracy, the ramifications of the…