TARIQ ALI ON WHY US LIBERALS BACK GLOBAL WAR, US-CHINA RIVALRY IN AFRICA, AND THE WESTERN DESTRUCTION OF LIBYA (MFG 054)


Author-activist-artist on Christopher Hitchens selling out, why the US didn’t wage war against Iran, and why corporate journalists are simply drones for war

Tariq Ali is an internationally renowned radical activist, author, and atheist. Born in Lahore, Pakistan, Ali lived in exile since the 1960s in opposition to Pakistan’s then-military dictatorship. A novelist, Ali has published four books of his “Islamic Quintet" which portray Islamic civilisation counter to Western orthodoxy, and the first two volumes in his "Fall of Communism" trilogy. Hes also written for the stage and the screen.

A longtime editor at the New Left Review, Tariq Ali has written and edited numerous books on history and politics including the classic The New Revolutionaries, The Clash of Fundamentalisms which investigates US power and its role in the creation of global terrorism, Pirates of the Caribbean: Axis of Hope, and his recent book, The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad, available from Verso.

In our conversation, he discusses, among many topics:

  • Why US liberals back Barack Obama’s agenda for global war
  • The US-China rivalry across the African continent
  • What would likely have resulted from what then seemed nearly inevitable: an American war against Iran
  • The complexities of the Western destruction of Libya and the re-demonisation of Qadhdhaafi

Many thanks to the International Centre at the University of Alberta for arranging the interview. Ali spoke with me in the lobby of the Hotel MacDonald on January 29, 2012. Note that Ali spoke with me a full year before the death of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez.


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To hear the patrons-only extended edition of my conversation with Tariq Ali, click this Patreon link to become a sponsor for a dollar or more per week.

By funding MF GALAXY, you get access to all extended editions of the show, plus video excerpts from selected interviews as they become available. This extended edition includes Tariq Ali discussing:

  • The shocking violence of Evo Morale’s government in Bolivia against indigenous protestors
  • The depth of the Bolivarian Revolution of Venezuela and elsewhere, and
  • Tariq Ali’s own political convictions over the decades.


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