Nineteen-sixty-seven was a turbulent year. After the Arab World was shaken by the shocking defeat in the June War against Israel, Tariq Ali – political activist, writer, journalist, filmmaker – met Ghassan Kanafani, a Palestinian revolutionary poet and intellectual, at a Conference in Kuwait. He asked whether the PFLP (Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine) was opposed to negotiations with Israel on principle. Kanafani enquired whether Ali was aware of the history of Palestine:
“No,” I said. “I need to catch up.”
“Because of the Jewish tragedy in Europe, it’s difficult, but we Palestinians know once you stop seeing the conflict between Israel and Palestine as one between colonial settlers and a national liberation movement you’re politically finished. They will crush you. How can a neck ever negotiate with a sword on equal terms? You tell me.”
— You Can’t Please All, pp. 743-44
Fifty years on, having completed the second part of his memoirs, You Can’t Please All, Memoirs 1980- 2024 (Seagull Books, 2025), Ali still recounts this meeting to contemplate the Palestinian crisis. This volume comes 19 years after the first one, Street Fighting Years: An Autobiography of the Sixties (Seagull Books, 2006) and is a fascinating account of an eventful life well lived. It is, in fact, not merely a memoir, but also a timely and eloquent dialogue on contemporary global crises. Excerpts from a conversation after the publication of the book:
Let me begin with a question that will help put both the memoirs and the very act of writing memoirs in context. The 1960s was a decade where you were mostly on the streets protesting and raising your voice against the French occupation of Algeria (the Algerian War and subsequent independence, 1962), the Vietnam War (1955-75) which peaked during the sixties, the civil unrest in France and the Students’ Movement(1968), the Prague Spring (1968) in contrast to that the 1980s were more quiet. You researched, contemplated, theorised, wrote books. You published pertinent and controversial books like Can Pakistan Survive? The Death of a State (1983), The Nehrus and the Gandhis: An Indian Dynasty (1985), edited The Stalinist Legacy: Its Impact on 20th-Century World Politics (1984), an important volume anticipating the decline of Soviet Russia and discussing the future of communism. So, How did you navigate this change from being active on the streets to engaging in activism from behind the desk? Also very relevant for many academics around the globe now: how does one reconcile between academia and activism?
Well, the 1960s were a completely different decade. It was a different time altogether which demanded such actions. It was the decade of revolutions. There’s a reason I titled the first part of my memoirs as an autobiography of the ’60s. Europe was going through changes, the old orders were broken, dictatorships toppled. Recently, I have come across the work of Wilfred Burchett. Burchett is a legendary journalist who was an eyewitness to the Carnation Revolution and the end of fascism in Portugal in 1974. We have recently brought out the compilation from Verso (The Captain’s Coup: From Dictatorship to Democracy in Portugal (1974- 1976)). But in Europe, I think, in particular, the revolution ended in November 1975 with the defeat of Portugal. Of course, the Vietnamese then walked that road the same year. In April 1975, the Vietnamese took Vietnam.
The US was defeated politically, initially, and subsequently militarily. So they were exciting years, but it took some time for people to understand that there had been a setback and defeat. This was verified in the victories of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in the United States and Britain, respectively.
And so the pushback against all radical ideas, radical possibilities, even social democratic and left social democratic possibilities was closed down. And then neoliberalism took over the world. I mean they call it neoliberalism, though it is a form of capitalism made possible once again by a defeat suffered by the working class movements. So it wasn’t all one way. There was Nicaragua, the revolution in Nicaragua, which the United States crushed or attempted to crush with the Contras during the Reagan era, one of the more disgusting local operations carried out by the United States. And so, you know, it was a period of transition. But transition to what? And it turned out to be a transition to various forms of capitalism. I mean the Soviet Union collapsed and China took the capitalist road with great success. I note that the Chinese leader, Deng Xiaoping, had advised Gorbachev in Russia, don't let go of the party, you need an instrument to make change. And if you let go of that, the Soviet Union will suffer. Well, that turned out to be pretty accurate.
But by the natural turn of events, that is what happened. Hence, with this turnaround, sooner or later it was obvious that the communist parties of Europe and the rest of the world would collapse, and then would be followed by social democracy. However, social democracy is dead now! Their programme, whether in Germany or in Britain, has absolutely nothing in common with social democratic ideas. It is just a managerial programme, saying, give us a chance, we can run capitalism better than the conservative forces. It is a message, not being taken kindly in many parts of the world.
I mean the rise of the far right in Germany, in Italy, increasingly in Britain, indicates that there is only one way forward for these countries, and that is to have reactionary local policies especially, attacking migrant workers and refugees, which is not dissimilar to what was done by the Fascists in Germany looking for scapegoats. So that's the situation we’re in at the moment. To summarise, and to answer your question, we have to say that we lost the battle of the ’60s and ’70s and that was that.
Now following on from that, what was one to do, given that the large working-class parties had either collapsed or were in a state of collapse? India took longer, the communist movement in India took much longer to die, and people had become somehow delusional now. But once the CPI(M) was defeated electorally, it could never make a comeback. Despite many good people in the party, that collapse could not have been reversed. And so we have this strange situation in all the democratic countries of the world. Of course, the country where capitalism is doing best is China, a country where there is not even a trace of democracy. So this notion that democracy is linked to capitalism is rubbish. Democracy and democratic rights have to be fought for regardless of capitalism. Capitalism, the structures of capitalism, do not automatically help a democracy. And if it was felt that democracy threatened the rule of capital, they would end it. You would have authoritarian regimes of one sort or another, which we're beginning to see in the imposition of authoritarian measures in Europe as well.
Then the question arises, what to do in periods of defeat? It is a question you just asked. And my reply to that is to fight on as best you can, as long as you’re alive. Just don’t give up! And fighting on does not mean large demonstrations. Sometimes they’re impossible. So you fight on, on a small level, on a large level, on a regional level, on a national level, if you can. At the same time, for those embedded in universities, write, write to educate, write the truth. Tell your students that without understanding and acknowledging the truth, progress is impossible, which means we have to understand our own defeats. We have to understand why we were defeated and not expect that the past can return. It is now history. There will be progressive movements, and progressive causes. Their exact shape, size, and location still have to be determined.
Well, as we are on the topic of the global rise of authoritarianism and the far right, it strikes me that India is going to complete 50 years of the imposition of the Emergency (1975) this year. You frequented India in the early 1970s at least thrice. You visited Delhi in 1975 to lecture at Jawaharlal Nehru University, St Stephen’s College, etc., and met trade unionist George Fernandes and other opposition leaders. In 1983, you came back with a book project from Picador on India for which you were to interview a few individuals, including Indira Gandhi, as historian Romila Thapar suggested, to question her critically about her intention and her afterthoughts about the imposition of the Emergency. I know about that meeting and your interview with Indira Gandhi from the memoirs, but it did not mention the Emergency explicitly. So, did you get to ask her about the Emergency in that meeting? What was her reaction? Also, what are your thoughts about the episode, half a century after?
It was on the list of questions I had to ask. But it is quite interesting what happened, which I haven’t written about, because it didn’t seem so relevant. When I was talking to her about India, I said, India has had a continuous democracy now, since 1947, since it became independent. And she retorted, not continuously, don’t forget the emergency! So she reminded me, I mean, I was going to ask it anyway, but she jumped in and reminded me. And I said, in retrospect, do you think that was necessary? Or do you regret it? She said it was necessary. Things had gotten out of control, vested interests were stopping meaningful reforms. So I said, but these never really happened! Had they happened, you might have had some support. But the Indian masses, I said, the masses of continuous democracy voted you out. She replied, I know, and that was all! She wouldn’t say anything more. She did not want to be drawn out. And from her point of view, there were more interesting things to be discussed, such as Pakistan, the fate of the Bhutto family, etc.
In my opinion, it is a completely unnecessary move. She was basically shaken that she, who had been so popular in India, especially after the victory in Bangladesh (1971), was suddenly becoming unpopular. There was a huge railway strike (1974) and widespread unrest around the period, and she and some of her key advisors overreacted. But her overaction was without any clear-cut plan. What's the point? I mean, okay, we’re going to have an emergency and then do A, B, C, D, E, F, however much we might dislike it. If these things got done, most people would be happy. But nothing was done except a crazy manoeuvre to try and impose population control from above by forced sterilisations, especially in the Muslim areas of Delhi. I remember the slogan that students and others opposed to the emergency chanted in the streets of India, “Nasa Bandi Ke Teen Dalal, Indira Sanjay Bansi Lal.” A very popular slogan, evidently it was just a stopgap measure, unnecessary, injurious to democratic functioning and democratic accountability, achieved nothing except getting her expelled to prison. However, the opposition coalition that came into power, which included the current administrators of India, did nothing in turn. They did very little apart from imposing lesser restrictions on press freedoms in the 80s. The press became freer, more open during the period. But then she was voted back in again and so, this sort of humpty-dumpty politics carried on in the country.
Now, of course, it is a completely different situation that the success of the BJP has been creating a new ideological social consensus. People talk about the tech billionaires surrounding Trump. It is no different from the tech and other billionaires surrounding the Indian prime minister at present. There are equivalents in Pakistan of this business too, and in Bangladesh. So, it is this symbiosis between money, big money and big politics, that characterises most parts of the world now.
At least she acknowledged that she was wrong, which is hardly the case with most politicians today.
So, now moving on to the one recurrent theme in the memoir, also, probably the most pressing issue demanding contemplation currently. Let’s talk Gaza. So, what do you think of the ceasefire? And after Trump’s intervention, to an extent, when the US hegemony in the whole region is complete, what is your prediction, like how it is going to ultimately play out in the larger global political context, in the refugee crisis or the nuclear arms race?
I’ve written and spoken about Gaza non-stop in the past years. But, you know, the ceasefire, however it happened, I’m glad it happened. Not that I have any faith whatsoever that Benjamin Netanyahu and the Zionist cabal that runs that country are going to tolerate it for too long. War will break out again in Gaza. It is already carrying on in the West Bank, what they have agreed not to do for the time being in Gaza, they’re doing in the West Bank. And that is a process of creating what they regard as Éretz Yisra’él, the real Israel, the Israel of the Old Testament, and nonsense like that. So, they’re determined to create and keep in that part of the world this, let’s call it an “intrusionary state”, that intruded using the terrible crime committed against the Jews by the Europeans as the excuse. That excuse, I think, is now wearing off and one of the most encouraging things that happened over this last year was the fact that a large number of people came out onto the streets to demonstrate, except in India where nothing happened.
I agree. We did have some outrages in isolated pockets, including demonstrations led by student unions in a few central and state universities, as well as protest meetings organised by human rights organisations like the Association for the Protection of Democratic Rights in Kolkata, but nothing on a massive scale.
India is the only country in the world where there wasn’t a single large demonstration against what is happening in Gaza, and the regime linking Gaza in the minds of Indian citizens with Kashmir and general anti-Islamophobia worked. We have to say that it worked and it showed the total weakness of the Indian left, that even small groups of leftists or progressive people or humanitarians, call them what you will, failed to come out and protest what was taking place in Gaza. And this is dangerous not only for moral political reasons, this is a dangerous development, because if you can’t defend the people of a part of the world against whom crimes are being committed, will you be able to defend yourselves when the time comes? So I noticed this, I noted this before, that the lack of activity in India was a very serious regression.
There have been very active anti-war protests across leading university campuses around the world. There are ruthless suppression drives to counter these students’ rallies, too. Cambridge University, in a recent appeal to the High Court, sought to secure an injunction to prevent protest gatherings on campus for a period of five years, but they failed.
Yes, now in the United States, they were panicked by these student occupations and the courage of these students for coming out, opposing the violation of human rights in Gaza. Of all students, but especially young Jewish people, students and non-students, a new generation of young Jews growing up in the States who say that we don’t care about Israel, we have no links with it. It is a genocidal country which is committing genocide. Some very moving things have happened on that front, both in the United States and in Britain, where we had a very strong anti-war movement.
These things, of course, fade in the scale of things since the destruction of large parts of Gaza has been successful, since there have been these killings, brutal killings of citizens, especially the old, babies, even new-borns, children, their mothers, aunts, and grandmothers. You have the sight of hungry dogs trying to forage for food, and there have been images of dogs eating dead babies lying in the streets! This is Western civilisation at its worst, and it is shameless. I mean, what the Germans are doing now is going to set Germany back, many, many decades, back. To make up for the crimes they committed against the Jews during the Second World War, they are now justifying Zionist Jewish crimes against the Palestinians. It is not the fault of the Palestinians that this genocide happened. They would have been prepared at some stage, as early as the 1950s, the Arab leaders, some of them were prepared for a deal. But Israel saw its place as effectively becoming a relay of the Western imperialist powers, first Britain, and then as Britain declined, the United States.
And that is, in my opinion, the key function of Israel for the United States. It is largely a white army. It is an army they can trust. It is an army which uses the past, the tragic suffering of the Jewish people, to carry out a genocide against the Palestinians. This use of the word “genocide”, which has been controversial, has now been accepted by many, many scholars, courts of law, and the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Netanyahu has been condemned for these crimes. Yet, He walks free. He visits everywhere. No one cares.
Indeed, the Palestinians for years have been the victims of Europe’s historical guilt of Judeocide.
So all the hypocrisies of liberal imperialism and so-called humanitarian wars lie exposed. The importance of Trump is not that he’s very different, but that he says this publicly. What used to be said in private is now said in public. So Trump can openly say, well, let’s convert Gaza into a real estate paradise, and let’s see how that goes. Basically, they want to make Gaza into one of the Gulf states. Money center, an import-export hub, and a visiting site for tourists. But they should be careful from their own point of view, that Gaza is not Dubai. And there are people still who will resist for a long time to come against these indiscretions. Their resistance will not be continuous. It will be like we have seen it up till now. Nothing happens, and then suddenly the resistance launches an attack! And the whole world goes, Oh! Horrible resistance, cruel resistance. But why are they doing this? Then, they, who are the victims of this cruel and brutal Zionist occupation, are turned into the aggressors.
The number of people who believe in this propaganda in the Western world indicates the lack of education, which is the case now in most Western countries on this issue. The people are overtly critical of the Indian press and networks for being propaganda-driven. It is no different for most of Europe, and much of the United States, that what is being broadcast is fairly disgusting propaganda. And what is not being broadcast is what we see on Al Jazeera or social media networks. So it is not that people are in ignorance. Young people in particular, are addicted to these networks, and understandably so, because that’s where they think they get some truth, it is hard to trust the mainstream media. I mean CNN, not just the print media, CNN and BBC are two of the largest Western propaganda stations now. So this is becoming a global problem increasingly.
Ironically, they attack China for being undemocratic. The Chinese look at all this business going on, shrug their shoulders and say, who are you to tell us what to do and what not to do, when you have been backing what is going on in Gaza with any desire to stop the war. Take, for example, the Ukraine war – it is Trump who’s trying to stop it for his own reasons, but also because he and the team around him and those who support him do not believe that fighting Russia is or should be a major priority of the United States of America. So they’re trying to stop it. The Europeans, unwittingly and foolishly, backed a continuation of the war. They beatified Zelensky! He has been presented like a Jesus Christ figure in every European parliament. And now, his face is almost slapped in the Oval Office of the White House by the President and the Vice President. And it will end this war, but it could have ended, as you know, several months ago. The Gaza ceasefire could have been implemented at least six months ago. We now know Hamas didn’t change its terms. So the West is really exposing itself very clearly now.
No one can doubt this. So either you support them or you oppose them. I’ve opposed them for various reasons all my life and I’ve never regretted it.
And a lot of what we have said over the years is now being vindicated. Do you know the Americans can do what they want in the Middle East? They haven’t succeeded totally so far, but they’ve indicated that whenever they can. Most of the countries of the Middle East are effectively in one form or another conquered countries. A new form, a recolonisation process has taken place, different from the years of British occupation or French occupation, but as effective, if not more so, because of the deals with the local rulers, Sisi (Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, President of Egypt) in Egypt, MBS (Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, Prime Minister of Saudi Arabia) in Saudi Arabia, the little Gulf states which are of no purpose except for being used by the West. All of this is now going on and we have to see how to resist it, and the only place where the countries involved are defending their own sovereignties and quite forcefully, is China, Russia, India to a certain extent. I mean, India for all its problems and things that we dislike, is not a country without sovereignty. It does not exploit much of it, but it could have if there was a significant shift in Indian politics.
So, I wouldn’t write off everything, but I think we have to be realistic.
You mentioned how the apathy of the West and the failure of the justice system become evident, when Netanyahu, despite being called out by the International Court of Justice in Hague for breaching numerous laws and sanctions safeguarding human rights, roams free and unaccountable. So, in this current situation, what do you think about the utility of a global organisation or a forum like the United Nations? Do we require such discursive platforms anymore, or has the gulf between the dominated and the dominator become so prominent that such international platforms are losing their relevance now?
The United Nations, as it currently exists, is a preserve of the big powers that emerged after the Second World War. What is the Security Council, where all the key decisions are made? The General Assembly has no powers whatsoever, except powers to oppose the Security Council, like on the recognition of Cuba. But they’re ignored, completely ignored. Two countries are in favour of continuing sanctions against Cuba, the United States and Israel, and because the US has veto power, it is a foregone conclusion. As we’ve seen in Gaza, the feeling of the United Nations General Assembly is completely ignored by the Security Council because of the big powers’ veto. This veto provision may have been important after the Second World War given the complex socioeconomic situation of the world then, but today it is effectively a symbol of the hegemony largely of the United States. They use the veto at their own discretion in their own interest.
Now, the question then also arises, why should Britain and France be members of the Security Council? The Second World War is over. The country that should represent Europe in the United Nations, I mean, I’m speaking objectively, should be Germany. Japan and India from Asia should be added to the Security Council, regardless of what we think of their governments. Governments change, and from Africa, South Africa at the very least should be a member of the Security Council because it represents the underdogs and from South America, Brazil and other Latin American countries too. That would then bring about a shift. However, in a reformed UN Security Council, the power of the United States would become even more evident because as George W Bush said during the Iraq War (2003–2011), if we can get the UN to approve a war, fine! If we can get other bodies, fine! If we can’t, we will go at it alone. He aptly summed up the real situation of the world during the Iraq War. Now, interestingly enough, clearly, the United States had told Britain and France to abstain from this vote on Ukraine. So they didn’t veto a call for peace, immediate peace and ceasefire in Ukraine or whatever their statement was! Well, one can witness the sight of the United States, Russia and China voting together.
Simultaneously, it demonstrated that it is a preserve of big powers, which should not be the case. This expresses a certain reality of the world we live in today, and when it ceases to be when the Americans think it is completely useless, they will dump it. Similar to the League of Nations (1920–46), when it was abandoned because it couldn't prevent the invasion of Abyssinia (1935) by the Italians, and its subsequent failures. So, the United Nations could be toppled too.
Then what should take its place? Well, I don’t know. I personally think that it might be better for each continent to have its own equivalent of the United Nations, making decisions in relation to the continental countries without vetoes or even if it is allowed, it would have to be a majority. The continental nations then could come together once a year to discuss what is of interest to the world, climate change, and nuclear power. Things that concern the world, war and peace, the spread of weapons. All of these can be achieved, but one has to have the will to do it. If you look around by and large, what is happening is upsurges of nationalism in different ways, some not as bad, some pernicious.
Also, allied to this is the notion of national sovereignty, which very few countries have at the moment. There is not a single sovereign state in the Middle East, not a single one! In the Asian continent as a whole, you have two states which can be genuinely and meaningfully described as sovereign states, China and India. Pakistan is halfway between China and the United States, but very dependent on the United States via Saudi Arabia for its arms, and its overall economy. But I’m thinking…who else? Japan is an occupied state.
Australia is an occupied state. I mean, they are a sort of “white republic”. So, there are very few truly sovereign countries. The restoration of national sovereignty for these states, I think, is quite important. It is an interesting discussion that is taking place in the academia.
The rest is dominated by the United States of America, and China is yet to reach there. They have created an army strong enough to defend China and its immediate borders and Chinese territories. India too, they can do what they want in Kashmir, but it is largely a defensive military. They haven’t completely allowed it to control everything, and nor can it.
So, even the only sovereign states have many problems within them, but they’re not aggressive in the sense of taking over countries. The attitude is not to go and occupy other countries. Like were they to do it to Pakistan, there would have been a nuclear war, full stop, and that would be the end of our region.
Yes, the situation in the whole of the subcontinent does not look so promising.
Even in Bangladesh, they haven’t managed to restore Sheikh Hasina to power. Now they can never do it because of the appalling revelations coming out of Bangladesh on how they govern, what they did, how much money they made, how corrupt they were, how the entire society from top to bottom was riddled with the cancer of corruption. So, this is the world we live in. Africa has a slightly different problem. The two large states, Nigeria, is a larger version of Bangladesh, and South Africa has its own issues. So, the lack of any concrete vision coming out from Africa, Asia, to an extent South America, did move forward a bit in that regard. Nonetheless, that has been crushed too, both electorally, and by US sanctions. So, all I can say is that we should never cease to struggle by whatever means are possible and realistic.
But then, by what means? How can one still be optimistic and have faith in the cherished values of democracy and civil liberties?
By explaining these things patiently, trying to create study circles and groups outside the structures of the official academy is extremely important because I refuse to believe that in different parts of the world there is not a minority which is against these things. Organising it in the same old way of creating politicians who behave just like right-wing politicians but with a different rhetoric is no longer enough. There are no magical solutions on offer, but that is not enough.
In the conclusion of the book, you recount your meeting with Ghassan Kanafani and how he explained that negotiations are intrinsically an extension of the power dynamics between two nations, hence how negotiations between two actors on unequal footing are fundamentally bound to fail. Do you feel similarly?
I had one meeting with Kanafani in the mid-60s at the Kuwait Conference on Palestine. It was very pertinent and very inspiring, and I miss the fact that I did not get to meet him again as he was killed by Mossad with his niece in a car. (Kanafani was assassinated on July 8, 1972, in Beirut by the Mossad, the Israeli foreign intelligence service in a car bombing). The best intellectuals, some of the best Palestinian intellectuals have been exterminated by the Israelis. So that means, at least, they understand the importance and power of ideas. Kanafani believed that the Israelis would never agree to the Palestinian demands and that negotiations with them were futile. The only language they would accept was the language of resistance. However, it was carried out and I have to say that he has been proved right.
You know, the only time Palestine is discussed seriously is when the resistance emerges. Now, calling it the resistance doesn’t mean that you support every single thing Hamas or Hezbollah do. You don’t have to support everything, but if you’re asked, which side are you on? Are you on the side of the colonial oppressor and its backers? Or are you on the side of the resistance with all its faults and weaknesses? My answer till now has always been I’m on the side of those who are resisting colonial occupations or re-colonisations. We may not agree with them on most things even, but at least they are resisting, whereas much of the left and the left-liberals have capitulated. As we have seen in the case of Palestine very clearly, Kanafani would not have been surprised by the PLO’s (The Palestine Liberation Organisation is a Palestinian nationalist coalition that is internationally recognised as the official representative of the Palestinian people founded in 1964) collapse and collaboration with the Israelis in the West Bank and in occupied Palestine as a whole. He was never a member of the PLO. He was part of the Popular Front, which, politically speaking, was a much better organisation.
I did an interview several months ago in 2024 with Rashid Khalidi, one of the leading Palestinian intellectuals. We titled that interview in the New Left Review, “The Neck and the Sword”, because that was the question Ghassan asked me at that time. He said, Tell me, Tariq, how can the neck negotiate with the sword? On these questions, he’s been proved right. Never, and I repeat, never, had Israel any intention whatsoever of creating either a viable second state or agreeing to a democratic single-state solution. So they have engineered a situation now when the only solution is what these groups are trying to do. What else is there? In some countries, what I’m saying to you can be considered illegal. In a few European countries, Germany, for instance, you can face serious legal consequences for what I have just said. These solutions that they’re creating, a Riviera on the Gaza, on the beaches of Gaza. How can it possibly succeed? You know, it can’t really.
This was exactly what my next question was about. As academics or as sensible individuals, many a time when we raise our voice against the suspension of humanity in Gaza, we are countered, but then how do you justify the actions of Hamas, aren’t you then denouncing violence selectively? So, I think here your position helps. When you choose a side, you choose a side, when you have to make a choice between the oppressor and the oppressed, it always has to be the latter. You might not agree with all their actions and their ways of resistance. As you wrote that you do not support all their decisions, but you will never condemn the Hamas publicly.
Moving on, what do you think would have happened if there had been unity in the Arab world, as was the case during the Six Days’ War in the 1960s? Now, at best, we can say the Arab world is united behind the stripes and the stars. There has hardly been any concrete action from West Asia, except half-hearted measures. Egypt has allowed some pro-Palestinian demonstrations, and Jordan too did not put a ban on Anti-war rallies, but hardly did anything substantial. Will it not help the cause of the Palestinians if governments from the region took some bold and affirmative positions?
I have just written an essay in the latest issue of the New Left Review called “Conquered Lands”, which goes into great detail on these questions you’re asking. The answer is that if the Arab world had been united, even if 80 per cent of the Arab world had been united, this could have been resisted. However, the American control is unchallenged in the region. All of Egypt has been bought off. The Jordanians are effectively an Israeli-American protectorate. The King (King of Jordan, Abdullah II) was almost trembling and blinking his eyes nonstop when he was in the Oval Office. On that front, he could have learnt a few tricks from Zelensky and behaved more courageously. The fact that not a single Arab government with the exception of Yemen came out and supported the Palestinians and their cause is a reflection of the state of that part of the world, of that region, which the US now controls having broken up three sovereign states, Iraq, Libya, and most recently Syria. What I think now is going to be argued behind the scenes is that the Americans might say to the Saudis and the Gulf states and Egypt, ‘Oay! We won’t run Gaza then. If you’re so opposed, you go and fix the situation yourself. Get the Arabs to do all the dirty work of expelling the Palestinians from their own lands.” Well, we need to see what happens. It is very difficult to predict at this point.
Lastly, as we talked in length about forming a public discourse not manipulated by the reactionary, capitalist elements in society, I need to ask you about the role of a good publisher or the function of independent publishing houses in spreading awareness about important global predicaments. In that connection, let’s discuss NLR or the New Left Review. NLR has been one of the leading mouthpieces when it comes to unmasking the Anglo-American aggression in the Middle East, especially from the 2000s with Perry Anderson as the editor, where you contributed quite a lot of articles, from 2000 onwards, like Throttling Dictatorship (2000), Recolonising Iraq (2003), Afghanistan: Mirage of a Good War (2008) to name a few. So, how do you think that these alternative publishing houses can remain relevant in the face of a constant crunch in funds and infrastructural support? How can they withstand the stifling competition from the big publishing giants and the corporate houses with capitalist backing?
What are the ways they can survive?
The New Left Review has been in existence for a long time. It was set up in 1960 by a group of left-wing British intellectuals, Edward Thompson, Stuart Hall, Ralph Miliband, and others. It was not initially conceived of as a Marxist magazine. It was a magazine that was open to all forces of the left and others who wanted to contribute to it. Of course, the editor decided what went in and what did not. In 1962, there was a financial crisis, and Edward Thompson began to interview new people for the editorship. In my latest memoirs, there’s a chapter called “We Have an Editor!” (pp.72-81), which is Edward Thompson’s letter to a colleague expressing how pleased he was that they had found someone! A young, dynamic Perry Anderson, and was very confident that the magazine would move forward. If you read that letter written in 1961, late 1961, I think, of EP Thompson, you get a pretty good idea, it was very prescient. So Perry became editor in 1962 and the magazine has carried on, with some troubles, with debates, with splits caused by the crisis, the world situation, the collapse of the Soviet Union. We have carried on and on in a culture that does not sustain or support left-wing thought, serious debates on all issues, yet we have still kept the magazine going.
It didn’t start in 2000. In 2000, we relaunched it after the defeats that were being suffered in Europe, the collapse of the Soviet Union, with China’s turn to capitalism, etc., as outlined within the magazine itself. We remain the only, I mean, one of the few serious magazines that defends consistently people struggling against imperialism and people trying to work out alternatives currently within the framework and without the framework that exists.
So, I’m very proud that I've been a member of this magazine for a long time and have been close to it for an even longer time, and we have kept this magazine going. In 1970, we launched the New Left Review and a publishing house called New Left Books. This initially produced high-quality hardbacks, translating all the key texts from the European languages into English, which had not been done before. Thus, making available important theoretical intellectual discussions that were taking place, and that had a mega success both in Britain and the United States of America. It has been written about many times and has been decisive. Also, I must say here that the fact that Seagull Books, which is another publishing house I support and feel very close to, has carried on doing this. Naveen Kishore is a very gifted publisher and has managed to raise independent funding to create the German list, the French list. So many of the things that Verso cannot afford to do because it has been difficult to raise money for translations, Naveen has done, which makes us very happy.
I mean, some people think that Verso in some way is jealous of or hostile to Naveen. That’s not true. I mean, we are very pleased that Naveen created Seagull Books, and Perry Anderson and I are very proud of what Seagull Books is doing.
I was there at the time of creating the expanded Seagull and Naveen, and I talk quite regularly, and then they just took off. We still talk, of course, about what should be published, but not as much as we did in the early years of Seagull.
So, I am part of Verso and its share, and we have made sure, collectively, that we keep the publishing house going. But I am also very proud of the fact that Seagull Books exists and makes available important works, many of which Verso couldn’t have published for financial reasons. So, it is good on that front that at least two of us exist.
There are other smaller ones, but these two, I think, and the fact that Seagull Books is based in Kolkata is also not unimportant, because it straddles both worlds since English is the universal language, (given the domination of the US Empire) it means that books go everywhere and are read by scholars everywhere. In other words, continuity is extremely important, and both New Left Review and Verso have the philosophy that if a text has come in, or a manuscript, it is of extreme importance and value, even if it is not a text written by someone on the left, as is often the case these days, it should be published. We are completely against cutting off debate and discussions.
Like recently, we had a very fruitful debate on climate change in the magazine, with different views being expressed, which was then published by Verso as a book, which is doing reasonably well. (Who will Build the Ark?,) these are achievements I’m very proud of. And they’ve only happened because we preserved a style and a political approach that encouraged debate and discussion on most issues under the sun. And let’s hope the new generations and the generations that follow will carry on because I have to say that I am not in favour of what is known as cancel culture, which is the first recourse of many young people, otherwise very good. But they think that by trying to prevent the publication of a book they don’t agree with, for whatever reason, the dissemination of certain ideas can be contained. Obviously, it could be argued that the whole of the culture produced after the Renaissance is either sexist or racist. It could be argued. So what do we do? Burn all that stuff? Cancel it?
No. You learn from it negatively and positively and carry on because the only people who benefit in the long term from this so-called cancel culture are the state. They can cancel anything and are increasingly doing so in the Western world as well. You can’t say this on a university campus. You can’t write this, etc. What is that but cancel culture? How can we ever compete with the states? And my line has always been, in private and in public, that if there’s a book that needs to be answered, answer it. Write an alternative book. Don’t say don’t publish it. If you don’t like it, don’t read it. It might be offensive today.
My response to all that is, if it is offensive, you think it could be offensive, don’t read it. Starve yourself of some culture. It is a ridiculous way, I think, of approaching life in politics because basically, you're saying we’re going to seal off debate in how you’re going to fight these damn racists who are now making refugees and immigration into a big issue without reading their work and replying to it and saying what pernicious rubbish it is. This applies to India, of course. It is a very large country where a lot of nonsensical things are being published in terms of the history of the country. We only have Romila Thapar, who's an old friend and a fantastic historian. However, we need, from your generation, people like Romila who will carry on. Even if they're alone, they will fight back. Not necessarily with their fists, but with their fingers.
Manaswini Sen is an Assistant Professor of Modern South Asia in the Department of History, Easwari School of Liberal Arts, SRM–AP University, Amaravati.
