One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

“And this language might protect the empire’s most bloodthirsty fringe, but the fringe has no use for linguistic malpractice. It is instead the middle, the liberal, well-meaning, easily upset middle, that desperately needs the protection this kind of language provides. Because it is the middle of the empire that must look upon this and say: Yes, this is tragic, but necessary, because the alternative is barbarism. The alternative to the countless killed and maimed and orphaned and left without home without school without hospital and the screaming from under the rubble and the corpses disposed of by vultures and dogs and the days-old babies left to scream and starve, is barbarism.”

El Akkad uses irony and parallel structure to expose the hypocrisy in how liberal-centrist rhetoric justifies violence. The repetition of “the middle” emphasizes his target—not extremists but self-proclaimed moderates—while the deliberate absence of commas in the list of atrocities creates a breathless, overwhelming effect that contrasts sharply with the sanitized language he critiques. The juxtaposition between detailed descriptions of suffering and the abstract concept of “barbarism” reveals how vague terminology enables moral distancing. This quote expresses the theme of The Moral Vacancy of Western Liberalism by showing how centrists use euphemistic language to maintain their self-perception as moral actors while accepting atrocities committed in their name.

“One of the hallmarks of Western liberalism is an assumption, in hindsight, of virtuous resistance as the only polite expectation of people on the receiving end of colonialism. While the terrible thing is happening—while the land is still being stolen and the natives still being killed—any form of opposition is terroristic and must be crushed for the sake of civilization. But decades, centuries later, when enough of the land has been stolen and enough of the natives killed, it is safe enough to venerate resistance in hindsight.”

El Akkad uses parallel structure and repetition to emphasize the temporal contradiction in Western attitudes toward colonized peoples’ resistance. The juxtaposition of present violence (“while the terrible thing is happening”) with future retrospection creates a powerful critique of moral convenience that shifts depending on historical distance. This passage illustrates the book’s theme of Future Disavowal of Present Complicity by exposing how societies that actively suppress resistance movements later celebrate the same resistance once enough time has passed, allowing future generations to falsely position themselves as if they would have been on the “right side of history.” El Akkad thus reveals the pattern of historical amnesia that enables people to distance themselves from ongoing injustices while maintaining the comforting fiction that they would have opposed similar injustices in the past.

“In the coming years there will be much written about what took place in Gaza, the horrors that have been meticulously documented by Palestinians as they happened and meticulously brushed aside by the major media apparatus of the Western world. As it stands, the death toll is quite literally uncountable—tens or hundreds of thousands of people, likely tens or hundreds of thousands more to be found under the rubble, or wasted away from disease and starvation imposed by an occupation force that seeks, actively and for all to see, their expulsion or else extermination. Here, when we name the dead, when we name these dead in particular, it is customary to note the number of children obliterated, because the men are assumed to be terrorists and the women might be terrorists or at the very least go on to create them. Whatever mainstream Western liberalism is—and I have no useful definition of it beyond something at its core transactional, centered on the magnanimous, enlightened image of the self and the dissonant belief that empathizing with the plight of the faraway oppressed is compatible with benefiting from the systems that oppress them—it subscribes to this calculus.”

El Akkad uses contrasting phrases (“meticulously documented” versus “meticulously brushed aside”) to highlight the deliberate nature of Western media’s dismissal of Palestinian suffering. The italicization of “these” emphasizes the dehumanization of specific groups, while the extended parenthetical definition reveals his frustration with Western liberalism’s self-contradictions. This passage addresses the themes of both The Moral Vacancy of Western Liberalism and Sanitized Language as Shield for Empire by exposing how the categorization of casualties serves to justify inaction and how euphemistic language distances Western audiences from confronting the violence carried out in their name. El Akkad reveals how media practices of categorizing victims creates moral distance that enables imperial projects to continue without meaningful resistance from those who benefit from them.

“One must also believe that, no matter the day-to-day disappointments of political opportunism or corruption or the cavalcade of anesthetizing lies that make up the bulk of most every election campaign, there is something solid holding the whole endeavor together, something greater. For members of every generation, there comes a moment of complete and completely emptying disgust when it is revealed there is only a hollow. A completely malleable thing whose primary use is not the opposition of evil or administration of justice but the preservation of existing power.”

El Akkad uses metaphor (the political system as a “hollow” entity) and the echo of “complete” and “completely” to convey the totality of disillusionment when idealistic beliefs collapse. The fragmentary final sentence structurally mirrors the broken realization being described, with its abrupt syntax reflecting the fracturing of faith in political systems. This passage illustrates the theme of The Moral Vacancy of Western Liberalism by highlighting the moment when individuals recognize that Western political frameworks, despite their lofty rhetoric about justice and human rights, function primarily to preserve existing power structures rather than to uphold universal moral principles.

“But this story, of beheaded babies, will in the early days of the genocide come to define an essential unburdening. Almost a quarter century earlier, reports of phantom uranium helped garner support for a war that killed upward of a million people. Now, once more, an essential truth of calamity journalism is made clear: In the earliest days, in the chaos that precedes systemic annihilation, it is not what the party deemed most malicious has actually done that matters, but rather what it is believed capable of doing.”

El Akkad uses historical parallelism to connect false reporting about Iraq’s weapons program to similar misinformation during the Gaza conflict, demonstrating how journalism can become complicit in justifying violence. His analytical tone conveys the systematic way media narratives construct enemy images based on potential rather than actual actions. The phrase “essential unburdening” suggests how such narratives function to absolve audiences of moral responsibility by dehumanizing victims.

“But this is centrism. This is the high-minded middle ground. The only serious, nuanced position, in such circles, is to plant oneself firmly halfway between what is assumed to be the standard left and standard right. Should one party propose stripping immigrants of all rights and the other propose stripping them of only some rights, the intellectually rigorous thing to do is to consider that what’s best is stripping immigrants of most rights. To compromise.”

El Akkad uses sarcasm and reductio ad absurdum to expose the moral failure of journalistic “centrism” when reporting on human rights issues. Through parallel sentences and escalating hypothetical scenarios about immigrant rights, he reveals how the pursuit of false balance distorts ethical judgment. The bitter irony in phrases like “intellectually rigorous” and “high-minded” underscores his critique of media neutrality as moral abdication. This quote addresses the theme of The Moral Vacancy of Western Liberalism by illustrating how journalistic principles of “balance” can normalize extreme positions rather than protect vulnerable populations.

“I understand this is just how things are, ethical double-jointedness being a necessary requirement for the daily debasements of modern political life. And yet I still wonder how someone can maintain this particular facade and sleep at night.”

El Akkad shifts to a more personal, reflective voice to express moral indignation at political hypocrisy, particularly regarding violence against journalists. The metaphor of “ethical double-jointedness” captures the contorted rationalizations required to simultaneously condemn journalist deaths while supporting policies that cause them. The final sentence’s simple, direct question cuts through complex political discourse to pose a fundamental moral challenge. This quote connects to the theme of Future Disavowal of Present Complicity by highlighting how current political actors perform concern while enabling the very atrocities they claim to oppose, thereby positioning themselves to deny responsibility in the future.

“As with all such acts of disobedience, the usual cavalry of talking heads emerges to note that these protests only inconvenience people, and that inconveniencing people is not an effective way to change their minds. Never is this logic applied to the past, to the demonstrations that shut down bridges to call for an end to segregation, for example. Because if applied to a moment already deemed righteous in hindsight, such an argument would be shown immediately for its spinelessness. But for now, it’s fine. For now, a motorist made late for work or a colonizer’s portrait disfigured provokes more of a political response than any number of dead foreign kids can.”

El Akkad uses sarcasm and historical parallelism to expose the hypocritical reactions to contemporary protests supporting Palestinians. The phrase “deemed righteous in hindsight” reveals how society selectively validates past activism while delegitimizing present movements that use identical tactics. The stark juxtaposition between minor inconveniences and the gravity of human suffering underscores the text’s irony.

“Either hundreds of millions of people have always been predisposed to the lure of the fascist, in which case the entire democratic endeavor is doomed anyway, or something of corporate liberalism has brought us here. Whatever the quality of its rhetoric, any politics that buckles at the prospect of even mildly inconveniencing the rich, or resisting an ally’s genocidal intentions, will always face an uphill battle against a politics that actively embraces malice. ‘Yes We Can’ is a conditional. ‘Yes We Will’ is not.”

El Akkad presents a damning false dilemma that exposes liberalism’s moral failures when it is confronted with genocidal violence. The contrast between Obama’s campaign slogan “Yes We Can” and the implied fascist alternative “Yes We Will” is an analysis of how rhetoric reveals underlying political commitments. The passage has a tone of controlled rage that builds through increasingly specific indictments, culminating in the decisive final sentences. This critique exemplifies the theme of The Moral Vacancy of Western Liberalism by arguing that liberal democracies’ unwillingness to challenge wealth or violent allies enables fascism’s rise.

“The moral component of history, the most necessary component, is simply a single question, asked over and over again: When it mattered, who sided with justice and who sided with power? What makes moments such as this one so dangerous, so clarifying, is that one way or another everyone is forced to answer.”

El Akkad distills complex moral philosophy into a single, piercing question through parallelism and antithesis (“justice” versus “power”). His rhetorical question directly implicates readers, while the adjectives “dangerous” and “clarifying” create a tension that captures the paradoxical nature of moral crisis. This passage reveals the book’s ethical center by arguing that historical judgment ultimately hinges on individual moral choices during critical moments. The quote connects to the theme of Future Disavowal of Present Complicity by suggesting that future generations will judge contemporary actors by their response to present atrocities.

“Language is never sufficient. There is not enough of it to make a true mirror of living. In this way, the soothing or afflictive effect of the stories we tell is not in whether we select the right words but in our proximity to what the right words might be. This is not some abstraction, but a very real expression of power—the privilege of describing a thing vaguely, incompletely, dishonestly, is inseparable from the privilege of looking away.”

El Akkad employs a metaphor of language as a “mirror” to establish its fundamental inadequacy in perfectly reflecting reality. He shifts from abstract philosophical consideration to concrete political analysis, revealing how linguistic limitations become tools of power. The juxtaposition of “soothing or afflictive” highlights how language can either comfort or disturb depending on its proximity to truth. This passage articulates the theme of Sanitized Language as a Shield for Empire by directly connecting vague, incomplete descriptions to the act of deliberately ignoring suffering, showing how imprecise language becomes a mechanism for evading moral responsibility.

“To watch the descriptions of Palestinian suffering in much of mainstream Western media is to watch language employed for the exact opposite of language’s purpose—to watch the unmaking of meaning. When The Guardian runs a headline that reads, ‘Palestinian Journalist Hit in Head by Bullet During Raid on Terror Suspect’s Home,’ it is not simply a case of hiding behind passive language so as to say as little as possible, and in so doing risk as little criticism as possible. Anyone who works with or has even the slightest respect for language will rage at or poke fun at these tortured, spineless headlines, but they serve a very real purpose. It is a direct line of consequence from buildings that mysteriously collapse and lives that mysteriously end to the well-meaning liberal who, weaned on such framing, can shrug their shoulders and say, Yes, it’s all so very sad, but you know, it’s all so very complicated.”

El Akkad uses repetition of “to watch” to create a sense of forced witnessing, positioning readers as observers of linguistic manipulation. Through a specific example from The Guardian, he demonstrates how passive voice causes “the unmaking of meaning.” The italicization of “complicated” mocks the convenience of the issue’s purported complexity that excuses inaction. This passage illustrates both the themes of Sanitized Language as a Shield for Empire and The Moral Vacancy of Western Liberalism by demonstrating how seemingly neutral reporting enables moral abdication, creating a direct causal link between passive language and the dismissal of suffering as too complex to warrant moral clarity or action.

“I’ve seen this person many times—they occupy a hallowed place in American culture, catered to by so many of the nation’s dominant cultural forces, from Monday Night Football to the Country Music Awards to the entirety of AM radio. It’s the person who in self-image professes to be a rule-breaker, untamable, wild—and in the next breath sides unquestioningly with every facet of state power. I’ve seen the Punisher decal on the bumper, the stylized American flag denoting the thin blue line: I’m an outlaw; also, anyone who disobeys the cops deserves to be killed.”

El Akkad uses first-person observation to establish authority while the repetition of “I’ve seen” emphasizes his direct encounters with this contradiction in American identity. Through specific cultural touchpoints (Monday Night Football, Country Music Awards) and symbols (Punisher decal, thin blue line flag), El Akkad highlights the paradox at the heart of certain American identities that simultaneously embrace rebellion and authoritarian control. The italicized juxtaposition at the end distills this contradiction to its essence. This passage illuminates the theme of Sanitized Language as a Shield for Empire by arguing that some Americans reconcile their self-image as freedom-loving individuals with their support for state violence against others.

“No, there is no terrible thing coming for you in some distant future, but know that a terrible thing is happening to you now. You are being asked to kill off a part of you that would otherwise scream in opposition to injustice. You are being asked to dismantle the machinery of a functioning conscience.”

El Akkad shifts to direct second-person address, creating immediate intimacy while addressing the reader. The passage opens with a refutation that subverts typical apocalyptic warnings, instead emphasizing present moral damage through the italicized “now” and the metaphorical language of “killing off” parts of oneself and “dismantling machinery.” The parallelism in the final two sentences reinforces the systematic nature of moral corruption.

“It is not without reason that the most powerful nations on earth won’t intervene to stop a genocide but will happily bomb one of the poorest countries on the planet to keep a shipping lane open. (As a matter of tactics, it is instructive to know that Western power must cater to a sizable swath of people who can be made to care or not care about any issue, any measure of human suffering, so long as it affects the constant availability and prompt delivery of their consumables and conveniences. As a matter of moral health, the same knowledge is horrifying.)”

In this quote, El Akkad uses litotes (“not without reason”) to introduce a critique of Western priorities through stark contrast between inaction on genocide and military action to protect commerce. The parenthetical structure creates a reflective aside that shifts from analytical (“as a matter of tactics”) to moral judgment (“as a matter of moral health”), with parallel construction strengthening the comparison. The juxtaposition of “instructive” with “horrifying” underscores the gap between strategic understanding and ethical evaluation. This passage bolsters El Akkad’s critique of The Moral Vacancy of Western Liberalism by exposing how Western powers prioritize consumer comforts over human lives, demonstrating their moral emptiness while maintaining a veneer of humanitarian concern.

“It’s all fiction, I understand—the novel, the speech within it, maybe the other speech too. But so long as there exists a Western self-conception that demands the appearance of purity at all times, it should be known that what shocks the most isn’t the cruelty or indifference. Many people’s governments are cruel, many people’s governments are indifferent. It’s this relentless parachuting of virtue. It’s these speeches and statements of eloquently stated concern for human rights and freedom and the demand that those who abuse human rights or withhold freedom be held to account. And it’s the way every ideal turns vaporous the moment it threatens to move beyond the confines of the speeches and statements, the moment it threatens even the most frivolous parcel of self-interest.”

El Akkad uses parallel structure and repetition to build his critique of Western hypocrisy, beginning three consecutive sentences with “It’s” to emphasize what he finds most troubling. The juxtaposition of “eloquently stated concern” against ideals that “turn vaporous” highlights the contrast between words and actions. This passage expresses the theme of The Moral Vacancy of Western Liberalism by arguing that Western nations prioritize the appearance of moral superiority while abandoning principles when they become inconvenient, revealing the performative nature of their commitment to human rights.

“I don’t know what this work is anymore. I read piece after lengthy, erudite piece about the need for a nuanced, both-sides discussion of a genocide, about how words are so easily weaponized, and we must be very careful because weapons can hurt—as all the while very real weapons raze entire Palestinian neighborhoods and their occupants. A magazine decides to pull a milquetoast essay that reads like an Israeli settler-colonial homage to The Blind Side, and writers line up to condemn the existential threat this kind of censorship represents to the future of literature itself.”

El Akkad employs irony and draws a comparison between rhetorical “weapons” and actual weapons destroying Palestinian neighborhoods to expose the disproportionate concerns of the literary establishment. The sardonic reference to a “milquetoast essay” and its comparison to The Blind Side adds a layer of cultural critique through allusion. This quote illustrates the theme of Sanitized Language as a Shield for Empire by demonstrating how calls for “nuance” and concerns about “censorship” function to distract from and diminish the reality of violence. In this way, El Akkad highlights how literary institutions participate in obscuring moral clarity about ongoing atrocities.

“It is a source of great confusion first, then growing rage, among establishment Democrats that there might exist a sizable group of people in this country who quite simply cannot condone a real, ongoing genocide, no matter how much worse an alternative ruling party may be or do. This stance boggles a particular kind of liberal mind because such a conception of political affairs, applied with any regularity, forces the establishment to stand for something. It suddenly becomes insufficient to say: Elect us or else they will abolish abortion rights; elect us or they will put more migrants in concentration camps; elect us or they will make your lives so much worse. What is the use, once elected, of doing anything of substance when what was necessary, the negation of some other hypothetical outcome, has by definition already been achieved?”

El Akkad uses escalating emotional language (“confusion” to “rage”) to highlight the American Democrat party’s reaction to moral dissent regarding the Gaza conflict. The rhetorical questions at the end expose the logical fallacy in the “lesser evil” political argument, revealing how this approach removes incentives for substantive action once elected. This passage illuminates the theme of The Moral Vacancy of Western Liberalism by arguing that the Democrats’ politics relies on negative positioning rather than affirmative values, creating a system where preventing hypothetical harm substitutes for pursuing actual good.

“It’s difficult to live in this country in this moment and not come to the conclusion that the principal concern of the modern American liberal is, at all times, not what one does or believes or supports or opposes, but what one is seen to be. From this outcome, everything is reverse-engineered. Being seen as someone who believes in justice—not the messy, fraught work of achieving it—is the starting point of any conversation on justice. Saying the right slogans supersedes whatever it is those slogans are supposed to oblige. It makes sense—when there are no real personal stakes, when the missiles are landing on someone far away, being seen as good is good enough.”

El Akkad utilizes italics to emphasize appearance over substance in liberal politics. The final sentence uses ironic understatement (“it makes sense”) and spatial language (“far away”) to highlight moral disengagement when others bear the consequences of political decisions. This passage addresses the theme of The Moral Vacancy of Western Liberalism while also connecting to Future Disavowal of Present Complicity by showing how performative politics prioritizes self-image over meaningful action, allowing American liberals to maintain a façade of moral superiority while avoiding the difficult work of creating actual justice.

“It was a somewhat absurd half hour, but instructive to the extent that everyone involved seemed aware, in some sense, that ‘terrorism’ as a designation was of no value to the state without at least a certain degree of diaphanousness. After two decades of destruction in Iraq and Afghanistan laundered through the silencing power of the term, it is tempting to make the argument that ‘terrorism’ as a societal designation (meaning something that goes beyond the realm of legal terminology and into the realm of what we are willing to allow our societies to do and to become) is applied almost exclusively to Brown people. When a white man kills dozens of people in a concert or a synagogue or a school, it’s a crime. A hate crime, sometimes. But terrorism requires a distance between state and perpetrator wide enough to fit a different kind of fear.”

El Akkad uses parallelism and contrast to reveal the selective application of the term “terrorism” based on racial identity. The metaphor of “laundering” violence through language illustrates how terminology sanitizes state actions while the personification of terms having “silencing power” demonstrates language’s capacity to shut down moral questioning. This analysis of linguistic manipulation serves the theme of Sanitized Language as a Shield for Empire by exposing how terminology enables violence against certain populations while maintaining the fiction of moral righteousness.

“Except it is a love that cannot be acknowledged by the empire, because it is a people’s love for one another. Anyone who has dragged a relative out from under the wreckage of a bombed building, who has held a friend bleeding to death in the street while the officer who pulled the trigger looks on, who has watched their water poisoned, their land burned, their communities starved, is intimately well versed in love. But in the eyes of the empire such a thing can never be called love, because the directive was never in the first place, Love, but rather, Love me. In spite of it all, love me.”

El Akkad constructs an anaphora through the repetition of “who has” to catalog traumatic experiences that paradoxically demonstrate profound love. The italicized imperative “Love me” creates a stark contrast with the preceding depictions of genuine love, emphasizing the narcissistic demands of imperial power. This passage exposes the theme of The Moral Vacancy of Western Liberalism by revealing how empire demands admiration and gratitude from those it oppresses while refusing to acknowledge their humanity or their capacity for genuine communal love.

“How does one live, hearing the screams, bearing witness to the bodies? How does anything else matter? The fear of some comfort disappearing collides with a different fear—a fear that any society whose functioning demands one ignore carnage of this scale for the sake of artificial normalcy is by definition sociopathic.”

El Akkad uses rhetorical questions and the metaphor of collision to contrast two kinds of fear: the privileged fear of losing comfort versus the moral fear of participating in a sociopathic society. The parallel structure emphasizes the stark moral choice between convenience and confronting atrocity. This passage challenges readers to recognize how maintaining “artificial normalcy” during mass violence makes them complicit in systems they may later claim to have opposed.

“In the midst of the world’s first livestreamed genocide, when plain before the eyes of anyone who cares to look are shown the most visceral details, one of the few things that inspires any real panic on the part of most Western power centers is the prospect of reduced shipping activity through the Red Sea. For the moment, whatever will bring an end to this killing is worth doing, but one cannot help but ask: If the system to which I am forced to appeal responds only to attacks on its self-interest, what is there to hope for but that the next glaringly obvious injustice just happens to not quite perfectly intersect with that self-interest?”

El Akkad uses juxtaposition to contrast humanitarian catastrophe with economic self-interest, highlighting the moral disconnect in Western responses to global atrocities. The rhetorical question serves as both an accusation and a lament, challenging readers to confront the transactional nature of international intervention. This passage articulates the theme of The Moral Vacancy of Western Liberalism by revealing how economic concerns consistently outweigh human suffering in the calculus of Western power structures, suggesting that justice is only pursued when it aligns with financial interests.