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…
You say you object to the slogan, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Where in the lands between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea do you think Palestinians should not be free? You say this slogan is a “call to violence to destroy the state of Israel.” If a demand for…
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,…
Why are US-China relations deteriorating? What are the impacts of growing anti-Asian racism on Asians Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) living in the US? And will the new Cold War with China replace the US War on Terror? In this interview, Tobita Chow argues that the rise of China as an economic power has become…
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.…
In this report, it is argued that a politics of abolitionism offers the best approach to overcoming the failures of US national security policy. Applying an abolitionist approach not only domestically within the US but also to agencies of global security will be an essential part of reconceptualizing the notion of security. An abolitionist framework…
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…
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…
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…
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…