“No tragedy is too great to shrug away now,” amidst our “every growing tolerance for calamity and violence,” writes Omar El Akkad in his new New York Times bestseller, One Day, Everyone Will Always Have Been Against This. On today’s show, El Akkad joins host Douglas Haynes to talk about his new memoir, which weaves the personal essay with cultural critique in order to grapple with the US’s support of Israel’s slaughter and starvation of civilians in Gaza.

The purpose of literature is to bear witness, says El Akkad, especially at a time when the world wants to turn away from the genocide in Gaza. El Akkad says that there’s no version of his new book that could sidestep his own complicity in this violence. But witness is the “tamest” possible thing, says El Akkad, in light of the anger he’s seen in response to his book, and that for him, “genocide is an absolute line.”

El Akkad takes an urgent look at the ways the media and government use language to turn people away from human suffering. He shares his frustration at Western liberal values and institutions, including the media. He describes speaking to journalists who feel limited by their outlets’ policies on language related to genocide and says that we’ve inherited a “shadow vocabulary” from the Iraq War, terms like “detainees” and “asymmetrical warfare.” Standing behind the supposed value of “neutrality” has done irreparable damage to the state of journalism, says El Akkad.

They also discuss how to imagine a better world and find ways to foster solidarity and resistance. El Akkad says that boycotts and joy are actions that the state doesn’t have a monopoly on. 

Omar El Akkad is a journalist and author of the award-winning novels American War and What Strange Paradise. One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is his first book of nonfiction. 

Featured image: cover of One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This.

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