‘The structures of capitalism do not automatically help a democracy’: Political activist Tariq Ali

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.”

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...

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