Audio: Interview with Law and Disorder radio show
A discussion with WBAI’s Law and Disorder radio show on the new graphic booklet Homeland Security: Myths and Monsters.
Homeland Security: Myths and Monsters
With illustrations by Anuj Shrestha and co-authored with Mizue Aizeki. This is the century of homeland security. The federal government created a monster. They said it would keep us safe. The monster hatched in November 2002. It was named the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). An appetite for control and conquest was in its DNA.…
Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò: Who feels secure? Racial capitalism and global security
How did we end up in a place where security is understood in the narrow terms of policing? Why does this kind of security fail to make a large part of the population feel safer? And can we imagine a society where my security is not the opposite of your security? In this thought-provoking video,…
Deepa Kumar: The racist roots of the War on Terror
In this fascinating conversation, Arun Kundnani interviews Deepa Kumar who traces the longer historical and racist roots of the War on Terror that in the last 20 years has killed at least one million people. They discuss how Arab and Muslim communities were racialised and targeted well before 9/11 and what interests this dehumanisation served.…
What is racial capitalism?
Text of a talk by Arun Kundnani at the Havens Wright Center for Social Justice, University of Wisconsin-Madison, October 15, 2020 A more detailed and updated version of the argument in this lecture can be found in my book What is Anti-racism? And Why it Means Anti-capitalism, published in 2023. A video recording of this…
For Black Panthers, Radicalization Entailed Self-Transformation
As a new generation rises up against racist police and vigilante violence, organizers are thinking through how to build a mass movement that fully engages the most marginalized. Useful lessons can be found in the history of the Black Panther Party, if one reaches beyond the imagery of leather jackets and shotguns. Susie Day’s new…
From Fanon to ventilators: fighting for our right to breathe
To neoliberal states, the pandemic is a racialized security threat and a market opportunity. Our fight is for the right to breathe — in every sense. Ruling elites are pursuing the convergence of two dreams in their response to COVID-19: a state dream and a market dream. The state dream entails emptying public space of…
Don’t Expand the War on Terror in the Name of Antiracism
Co-authored with Jeanne Theoharis Declaring white nationalism a form of terrorism won’t combat white nationalism — but it will grant more arbitrary powers to a carceral state that preys on the most vulnerable. Over the last few months, there have been growing calls to categorize white nationalism as a form of terrorism and to extend…
Book review: Incarcerating the Crisis by Jordan Camp
There is a growing acceptance in the US that the war on drugs has led to a system of mass incarceration which, in many ways, resembles the Jim Crow system of segregation and disenfranchisement – as Michelle Alexander has argued. Even the conservative billionaire Koch brothers, who, over the last few decades, have backed almost every…
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…