Book Review: One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad

“It is a hallmark of failing societies, I’ve learned, [the] requirement that one always be in possession of a valid reason to exist.” Near the beginning of his book, author Omar El Akkad says this in reference to Egypt in the 80s after the death of Sadat, but it is immediately clear that he also means to call to mind several parallels in today’s world. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is a bleak book that takes a rightfully dim view of global geopolitics and isn’t afraid to spread the blame around, as no one person or political party is responsible for how things got this way. It’s also a deeply personal and highly engaging read, that most will get through in a day and immediately consider rereading.

El Akkad worked most of his adult life as a reporter and as a result has seen a lot of recent history’s most contentious and dangerous places up close, such as Taliban-led Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, both of which he discusses here. But it’s the story his father told him of Egyptian soldiers harassing him as he was returning home from work one night that has stuck with him most and shaped his “overarching view of political malice: an ephemeral relationship with both law and principle. Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power. Otherwise, they, like all else, are expendable.”

While it has wide-reaching implications, the core focus of the book is Israel’s recent violent incursion into Gaza. He begins by necessarily recalling the horrific attack Hamas’s military wing carried out on October 7, 2023, an act that no moral person could ever condone. But then Israel’s disproportionately large response is discussed. Its indefensibility is laid out plainly and its place in a long, ongoing line of state-sanctioned violence against minority groups is dissected and analyzed.

He is justifiably angry over the myriad injustices he describes in this brief tome and many readers will find themselves feeling the same as they read. It isn’t all directed where they expect either. Sure, the usual people and groups pop up here, but he asserts that everyone bears at least some of the blame, including the liberals who purport to care about such things but then do nothing, or in some cases further contribute to the problems, and then wonder why they are losing support amongst the oppressed. On the recent statements and actions of the Democratic Party he concludes, “It can’t be both rhetorical urgency and policymaking impotence.”

The book isn’t all doom and gloom however. Thankfully, he wraps up by giving the reader some hope that their actions and voices matter, even when it can become so easy to feel like they don’t. We are being increasingly conditioned to tolerate worse and worse in nearly all aspects of life and all we need to do to change things is stop accepting it. We are at a precipitous moment in human civilization, and it behooves us all to start paying attention. One way to do so is by reading this elegant, enraging, enlightening entreaty. ★★★★★