IMPORTANT NEW BOOKS:

Defectors: The Rise of the Latino Far Right and What It Means for America
by Paola Ramos
Pantheon,  2024

[Publication date: September 24, 2024]

AN NPR BEST BOOK OF 2024 • An award-winning journalist's exploration of how race, identity and political trauma have influenced the rise in far-right sentiment among Latinos, and how this group can shape American politics

“A deeply reported, surprisingly personal exploration of a phenomenon that is little understood in our politics: the affiliation of Latino voters with causes and candidates that would seem, at first glance, unwelcoming to them."—Rachel Maddow

Democrats have historically assumed they can rely on the Latino vote, but recent elections have called that loyalty into question. In fact, despite his vociferous anti-immigrant rhetoric and disastrous border policies, Trump won a higher percentage of the Latino vote in 2020 than he did in 2016. Now, journalist Paola Ramos pulls back the curtain on these voters, traveling around the country to uncover what motivates them to vote for and support issues that seem so at odds with their self-interest.

From coast to coast, cities to rural towns, Defectors introduces readers to underdog GOP candidates, January 6th insurrectionists, Evangelical pastors and culture war crusaders, aiming to identify the influences at the heart of this rightward shift. Through their stories, Ramos shows how tribalism, traditionalism, and political trauma within the Latino community has been weaponized to radicalize and convert voters who, like many of their white counterparts, are fearful of losing their place in American society.

We meet Monica de la Cruz, a Republican congresswoman from the Rio Grande Valley who won on a platform centered on finishing “what Donald Trump started” and pushing the Great Replacement Theory; David Ortiz, a Mexican man who refers to himself as a Spaniard and opposed the removal of a statue of a Spanish conquistador in New Mexico; Luis Cabrera, an evangelical pastor pushing to “Make America Godly Again;” Anthony Aguero, an independent journalist turned border vigilante; and countless other individuals and communities that make up the rising conservative Latino population. Cross-cultural and assiduously reported, Defectors highlights how one of America's most powerful and misunderstood electorates may come to define the future of American politics.

REVIEWS: 

"Ramos’s empathy is formidable. As frightened as she is by the defectors’ politics, she is always curious to learn more."

—Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times

"Defectors is a deeply reported, surprisingly personal exploration of a phenomenon that is little understood in our politics: The affiliation of Latino voters with causes and candidates that would seem, at first glance, unwelcoming to them. Paola takes us into the lives of Latinos who support presidential candidates with plans for mass deportations or lead efforts to ban books and stop diversity initiatives. She introduces us to Latinos who patrol the border as vigilantes and Latinos who marched on the Capitol on January 6th. From Miami and the Bronx to Arizona, New Mexico and the Rio Grande Valley, Paola shows us why the Latino vote is not just increasingly powerful, but increasingly in flux. It turns out the answers are there if you ask the right questions, and that is exactly what Paola does in this terrific book."

—Rachel Maddow, Emmy award-winning host of The Rachel Maddow Show and New York Times bestselling author of Prequel

"Defectors...casts aside the misguided notion that Latinos are a monolith and looks at the small but expanding part of the population moving steadily right. Through reporting trips and conversations with experts and psychologists alike, Ramos interrogates the idea that the Latino electorate is aligned with progressive values, writing about an Afro-Latino former Proud Boy leader, a Latino border vigilante, and Latino insurrectionists who participated in the January 6 US Capitol attack. As she persuasively proves, not all white supremacists are white."

—Vogue

"It's hard to fathom how any vulnerable group, be they Latinos, Black, or even white women, can consistently vote for conservative candidates who are hostile to their interests, and their humanity. In Defectors, Paola Ramos seeks to understand ultra conservative Latinos, and instead of lecturing them, explains how they've come to support violent authoritarianism.” 

—Elie Mystal, New York Times bestselling author of Allow Me to Retort

"With both humanizing compassion and sharp urgency, Defectors highlights the voices and ideologies behind our current political moment. Paola deftly shows how historical trauma and cultural values have caused a rightward shift among an increasingly politically active population and reveals why America's Latino voices will matter in this election more than ever, and in every election to come."

—Ana Navarro, Emmy award-winning cohost of "The View"

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Paola Ramos is an author and Emmy-Award winning journalist. She is a contributor for Telemundo News and MSNBC, where she is the host of “Field Report.” Ramos is a former Correspondent for Vice News. Prior to her career in journalism, Ramos was the Deputy Director of Hispanic Media for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, a political appointee during the Obama Administration, and served in President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign.

She is also a former Hauser Leader in the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School, where she received her Master’s in Public Policy, and recently joined the board of trustees of her alma mater, Barnard College. She is the author of Finding Latin-X: In Search of the Voices Redefining Latino Identity. Ramos was born in Miami to Cuban and Mexican parents, grew up in Madrid, and currently lives in Brooklyn, NY.

 

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

“Close your eyes,” said President Joe Biden, imploring Americans to go back to that day. “What do you see?” He was on national TV addressing a divided nation a year after the January 6 insurrection, in which more than two thousand people stormed the U.S. Capitol. When people closed their eyes, they probably saw a sea of violent white Americans clenching their fists and contesting the 2020 election results, fueled by a desire to preserve their diminishing power amid America’s rapidly changing demographics. Or, in Biden’s words: “Rioters rampaging, waving for the first time inside this Capitol a Confederate flag that symbolized the cause to destroy America, to rip us apart.” But in my mind, I zeroed in on the Latinos—inconspicuous among the vast, loud crowd—a significant number of whom were also present that day to make their voices heard.
 

That curiosity is what prompted me to attend a small press conference in downtown Miami held the same day as President Biden’s address. When I arrived at around 4:00 p.m., a small crowd of Latino MAGA supporters were gathered outside of Miami’s federal courthouse, waiting for the event—meant to commemorate the anniversary of the Capitol riot—to begin. I wanted to make eye contact with the Latino insurrectionists.
 

They were young, old, brown, light-skinned, former Democrats and lifelong Republicans. Among them were members of Moms for Liberty, the right-wing “parental rights” group; the Proud Boys, an extremist white supremacist organization; the Miami Springs Republican Club; as well as ordinary Latinos hiding behind large sunglasses, black masks, and baseball caps. Some of them had attended the January 6 rally without entering the Capitol building, while others had never even set foot in Washington, D.C., but all found common ground in their support of the insurrection. After a short prayer vigil to honor rioters who had been sentenced to prison, Gabriel Garcia took the podium. All eyes were fixed on him.
 

Garcia was one of the people who appeared in my mind when I closed my eyes and thought about that day. He was a Cuban American from South Florida who had violently stormed the Capitol, proudly livestreaming his journey through the building on Facebook. Footage from that day shows Garcia basking in glory, perhaps elated to be accepted into the crowd of white supremacists. Yet, that January afternoon in Miami, Garcia, who had a Miami accent and immigrant parents, took a more somber tone as he reflected on and justified his presence at the Capitol. “If we don’t agree with the left, or the media’s bias, we get called ‘white supremacists’ or ‘racists,’” Gabriel told attendees and a few journalists present. He paused before adding, “Let me tell you something, there’s nothing racist about a guy called Gabriel Garcia.” His supporters nodded their heads or raised their American flags to the sky in agreement. That a Latino could be a white supremacist, or a racist was simply unfathomable.
 

Fourteen months after that press conference, on May 4, 2023, an Afro-Latino man who had as a boy dreamed of becoming a spy was found guilty of seditious conspiracy for his role in the insurrection. Throughout the years, I had followed Enrique Tarrio’s journey as the chairman of the Proud Boys, interviewing him as he became increasingly radicalized and obsessed with the illusion of white power. Even though Enrique would repeatedly deny he was a white supremacist—at times by noting that he was at least 40 percent Afro-descendant—he had turned into one of the far right’s most ardent spokespersons. Enrique wasn’t physically present at the riot, but the jury determined that he had played an even more significant role that day: He was one of the masterminds behind the insurrection.
 

Merely two days after Enrique’s conviction made national headlines, leaving pundits aghast that a Latino could carry such weight on the far right, thirty-three-year-old Mauricio Garcia made his way to the Allen Premium Outlets, just thirty minutes outside of Dallas. Immediately after stationing his car in the parking lot, Garcia got out and started walking toward people with his AR-15 in hand. From across the parking lot, Beatriz Leon, a Guatemalan woman, and her sister heard Garcia yelling, and then start firing at people, seemingly indiscriminately. Panicked, Beatriz quietly got inside her car, grateful that she had left her three young daughters at home. Garcia murdered eight people and wounded seven before he was eventually shot and killed by a police officer. After the carnage, Beatriz and her sister were safely escorted from the crime scene.
Digging into Garcia’s background in the aftermath of his death, the Texas Department of Public Safety quickly learned that he was a neo-Nazi sympathizer and self-described “full blown white supremacist.” He had left behind a long trail of social media posts and handwritten notes that painted a picture of a young brown man tormented by his identity, attempting to reconcile his Latino background with his white supremacist ideals. According to the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, Garcia had once posted a meme that depicted Latino children at a crossroads faced with the choice to either turn left toward “act Black” or right toward “become white supremacist.” Garcia had always chosen to turn right.
 

A year after the shooting, Beatriz told me that she still feels traumatized—frightened by loud noises and the darkness of nightfall. She has only been able to go back to the Allen mall once and doubts she’ll ever return. It’s too hard. To this day, Beatriz’s sister refuses to go out to public spaces where large groups of people gather, like malls or movie theaters. Both women are still terrified. And knowing that the shooter was Latino adds a layer of betrayal. “It hurts, knowing that we are the same,” Beatriz said when I asked how she felt after finding out that the shooter was a white supremacist Latino. “How is it possible that you can have so much hate in your heart towards your own people?”
 

From Gabriel Garcia to Enrique Tarrio to Mauricio Garcia, it’s clear that Latinos, too, can be white supremacists. We can espouse and push principles, systems, and beliefs that uphold racial hierarchies and preserve structural racism. I am convinced that the vast majority of the nearly 64 million Latinos in this country are driven by a desire for social justice and equality. As Latinos, our ancestors’ journeys to the U.S., although individually unique, were all sparked by the promise of greater freedoms. I believe those shared roots are what make us empathetic, open, and compassionate people. Yet, those roots are also what hold us hostage to our past—a past that’s marked by racial baggage, colonial traditions, and political traumas that can evoke a proclivity to white supremacy as we find our place in America. Gabriel, Enrique, and Mauricio are extreme, violent examples of this tendency, but their stories reflect the forces many Latinos are caught between—that of embodying a multiracial America or a white supremacist one; that of being victims or perpetrators; colonized or colonizers. As you’ll see in this book, Latinos, like all Americans, are caught between the pulls of progressive and ultraconservative political beliefs. We, too, dance on this spectrum.

The truth is that we are constantly negotiating the pressures of racial, cultural, and/or political assimilation. The day I got my acceptance letter from Barnard College, the big white envelope also included a welcome package for students of color. I was shocked to receive it. I remember asking my mother if she thought the admissions department had made a mistake: “Who do they think I am?” As a fair-skinned, seventeen-year-old first-generation Latina born in Miami, where being Latino was the norm, most people I grew up with looked and sounded like me: We all spoke English with a slight accent, spoke Spanish at home with our families, and lived unselfconsciously in the world as privileged white people. Unlike darker-skinned Latinos and Afro-Latinos in different parts of the country, many of us were never forced to question our racial and cultural identities. To suddenly feel othered, as Barnard’s welcome package seemed to indicate, just made me want to assimilate even more.
 

It wasn’t until I stepped onto Barnard’s campus in New York City that I realized that the image I had of myself was different from the way America saw me. As a light-skinned Latina with a Cuban mom and a Mexican dad, I had never really thought about myself in racial terms. In Miami, I lived in a Latino bubble where both class and skin-color privilege insulated me from my differences from mainstream America and distinguished me from other Miami Latinos often marginalized from the community, such as Afro-Cubans. This bubble of privilege burst on the first day of classes. While most of my peers took the mandatory freshman-year English Seminar in different auditoriums, I was told to go down the hall to the English as a Second Language classroom. I remember how ashamed I felt walking down that hall and how much I wanted to turn back toward the sea of white American students. Wasn’t I supposed to be with them? Weren’t they what success in America looked like, the very success I was being sent to an elite Northeastern college to achieve? Yet the moment I opened the door of the small classroom where ESL classes were being held and sat at a table full of first- and second-generation Mexican, Dominican, Salvadoran, Black, and brown students, I felt more at home than I ever had.
 

That classroom is where I became aware of myself as part of a national Latino community; where I became aware of myself racially and not just ethnically; where I became responsible for the privilege my skin, class, and immigration status carried; and where I started to understand how beautifully complex Latino/Latinx identity is in America. More importantly, it’s where I developed a sense of Latino solidarity and allegiance. Regardless of background, skin color, or class position, we had a bond defined by what you couldn’t see: All of us were building on our families’ legacies in America and bound together by the slippery concept of “Latinidad.” Our ancestors, grandparents, and parents left everything behind in search of freedom and opportunity. Some left because of poverty, others disillusioned by revolutions, and many to flee violence. They left by rafts and boats, by plane or by walking across borders. And they stayed and built lives here, even as the freedom they sought ended up being harder to grasp than they imagined when they bought into the American dream.
 

So, for the first time in my life, on that Upper West Side campus, not only was I aware of what made me different, I was proud of it. But what if, at that crossroad, I had refused to go down that Barnard hallway with the other Latino students? What if, like Mauricio Garcia’s online meme suggested, I had turned right toward the room that was less racially and ethnically diverse? That choice could have set me off on a different path in life, distinctively shaping my views and future. I would not have been alone. Defection has always been part of the Latino story in this country. That is why we can’t turn a blind eye to it now.

Racket, The: A Rogue Reporter vs The American Empire
by Matt Kennard
Bloomsbury Academic, 2024
(Second edition]

[Publication date: June 13, 2024]

While working for the Financial Times, investigative journalist Matt Kennard had unbridled access to the crème de la crème of the global elite. From slanging matches with Henry Kissinger to afternoon coffees with the man who captured Che Guevara, Kennard spent four years gathering extraordinarily honest testimony from the horse's mouth on how the global economic system works away from the convenient myths. It left him with only one conclusion: the world as we know it is run by an exclusive class of American racketeers who operate with virtually unlimited weapons and money, and a reach much too close to home. Owing to the very nature of the Financial Times, however, Kennard was not able to publish these findings as part of his day job. Enter The Racket, now in a fully updated second edition. This tell-all book, reported from all corners of the world, will transform everything you thought you knew about how the world works—and in whose interests. Kennard reports not only from across the United States, but from the United Kingdom, the Caribbean, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East. In doing so he provides startlingly clear and concrete evidence of unchecked, high-level, interrelated systems of exploitation all over the world. At the same time, through encounters with high-profile opponents of the racket such as Thom Yorke, Damon Albarn, and Gael García Bernal, Kennard offers a glimpse of a developing resistance, which needs to win. Now more relevant than ever, this 2nd edition contains a new preface by the author and a new foreword by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges.

 

REVIEWS:

“In this important book, Kennard explores the direct impacts of militarized, globalized American capitalism on some of the most battered parts of our world. With devastating precision and a formidable sense of urgency, he reports on corporate shock doctors in Haiti, imperialist drug warriors in Honduras, pillaging coal and mining giants in southern Africa and Appalachia - and so much more. Most importantly, he never loses sight of the the growing numbers of resistors holding on to their creativity and self-determination in the face of these forces.” 

―Naomi Klein

“Matt Kennard's perceptive direct reporting and analysis of policy aim to expose 'the racket' that dominates much of global society and to 'blow their cover.' His in-depth studies, ranging from Haiti to Palestine to Bolivia to Honduras to the destitute in New York City and far more bring home in vivid and illuminating detail the reality of life and struggles of much of the world's population, their defeats and victories, their suffering and vitality and hope.” ―Noam Chomsky

“Timely and readable. [...] Kennard ranges widely in his attempt to show the scope and depth of the Racket. From the 'disaster capitalism' imposed on an earthquake-traumatized Haiti to the undermining of democracy in Bolivia, Kennard lays bare the mechanics of the scam. [...] This book is a valuable tool for anyone wishing to engage in the worldwide struggle for justice.” ―New Internationalist

“Matt Kennard left his secure job with the Financial Times on a mission to expose the world financial system as a gigantic racket operated by the United States of America for the benefit of a tiny number of extremely rich individuals. [...] He has travelled the world, and has material to work on. There is no arguing with his Chomskyan analysis of the grotesque consequences of US financial imperialism in Latin America, or Washington's refusal to confront Israel over its maltreatment of the Palestinian population.” ―Peter Oborne, New Statesman

“The Racket is a powerful tool for self-education: it offers essential information about the insatiable and sordid nature of global, elitist, exploitive, profit-blinded governments and institutions that have, together, perfected the task of making billions of people miserable, poor and fatally unhappy. It also offers testimony from activists and artists who are not giving in, giving up, or lying down.” ―Alice Walker

“I congratulate Matt Kennard for this brutally honest work. We need Kennard in this world (jungle) and other writers like him who have the courage and creative mind to expose the lies and deception of the Free Market, Free Elections, Free Choices, Democracy, Peace, Cooperation, Friendship, Partnership, Equality, Justice and other beautiful words hiding savage brutality, violence, terrorism, colonialism, and imperialism.” ―Nawal El Saadawi

“If I was editor of an old-fashioned newspaper, the kind that published and be damned, I'd hire Matt Kennard. The Racket is a front page story.” ―John Pilger

“Matt Kennard exposes the failure of US neoliberalism and a major reason why China's star is rising while American foreign policy is imploding into a black hole.” ―John Perkins

“Kennard is no conspiracy theorist. Whatever you think about his conclusions, this is a first-class piece of radical investigative journalism.” ―The Journalist

“[The Racket] depicts the U.S. system of economic control and exploitation as a violent, highly oppressive nexus of government power and private wealth. Kennard's global investigation of the effects on the ground of what is known variously as the Washington Consensus, neoliberalism, or, in Naomi Klein's phrase, 'disaster capitalism'-including severe poverty, loss of political autonomy, and war and terror as conditions of life-follows in the footsteps of previous critics of U.S. imperialism like Klein and Noam Chomsky. Kennard includes unusually candid interviews with members of the World Bank and other financial institutions. These and other sections from a journalistic perspective help elucidate […] such tragedies as Haiti's post-earthquake 'reconstruction' or aggressive mining operations in Africa and South America.” ―Publishers Weekly

“Contains […] vivid on-the-ground reporting from Haiti, Palestine and Egypt. [Kennard] reports on the depredations of mining companies and the baleful effects of the 'war on drugs' in Honduras, Bolivia and elsewhere, with many eye opening discussions of the minutiae of trade negotiations [...] as well as the privatised prison industry and the Occupy Wall Street movement in the US. To this extent, the book is a little brother to Naomi Klein's brilliant The Shock Doctrine, which showed in 2007 how civil wars and natural disasters in poor countries are routinely exploited by US and global business interests pushing for radical programmes of privatisation from which they intend to profit. (The same thing happened, Kennard notes, after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti.)” ―The Guardian

“Kennard's new book, The Racket, is an ambitious and sweeping account of how US-backed superpowers keep the poor poor and the rich rich. It's a kind of anti-capitalist manifesto, only without all the hipster-Marxist jargon that makes those kinds of books so inaccessible to the people who want to read them. In The Racket, Kennard speaks to everyone from earthquake victims in Haiti, to the leaders of big oil companies, to celebrities in a quest to find out how global, multilateral institutions like the World Bank and IMF create a world only conducive to the needs of private capital. He patiently explains to his readers how the US government controls banks and big businesses, enforcing their ideology on the rest of the world with the help of a brutal military and the sinister tactics employed by their intelligence agencies. Essentially, The Racket is the best noir thriller about shady mobsters you've ever read, and all the more terrifying because it's a book about US history.” ―VICE

“Matt Kennard has announced his presence on the scene as the next generation's John Pilger. […] Kennard deftly manages the balancing act between making judgments (in favour of people over profit and the progress of society) and of getting out of the way while he lets his interview subjects tell their own stories. The book spans the globe, and is strongest in its sections on Latin America – especially on Bolivia and the US-backed terror war against the leftist government there. But Kennard does a brilliant job of tying the strands together and joining the dots between disparate struggles against corporate greed and imperial power around the world.” ―Asa Winstanley, Middle East Monitor

“Kennard decided to leave his comfortable job at the Financial Times and start to do some real journalism instead. The Racket, his second book, is very much the result of this transformation and it is nothing sort of marvellous. Angry, scornful and yet optimistic about the potential for change, it's a socially engaged and often autobiographical exploration packed with solid research and interviews with those on the class-war front line. [...] A polemical, first-hand expose of the corporate elites who rule and ruin the world for the rest of us, ex-Financial Times journalist Matt Kennard's The Racket is investigative journalism at its best. [...] Covering the Turkish repression of the Kurds, the continuing US-led plunder of South America and the downtrodden of the US itself, the book makes a good case for Kennard being a true heir to John Pilger and the older generation of muckrakers.” ―Morning Star

“Following Amy Goodman's dictum that 'the role of journalism is to go where the silences are,' Kennard fires off incendiary dispatches from the parts of the world rarely covered by the Western mainstream media. [...] [T]he book focusses on Turkey's US-backed ethnic cleaning of the Kurds and US attempts to undermine progressive change in Haiti, Honduras and Bolivia. Like the best work of John Pilger, George Monbiot and Naomi Klein, The Racket is investigative, passionate journalism with a purpose – to defend the powerless against rapacious power. A hugely important tour de force, it will inform and inspire resistance movements for years to come.” ―Ian Sinclair, Red Pepper

“Investigative journalist Matt Kennard's The Racket is an exposé of the murky collusions between global high-finance and the militarised US state in the post-war era. Kennard traces the expansion of US corporate power across the globe, using case studies from Palestine, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico and more to illustrate the pernicious and far-reaching impact of the US 'imperial mindset.' A former Financial Times journalist, Kennard identifies the US as the primary actor in enforcing 'the racket', or the system whereby capitalist elites are buttressed through the violent suppression of labour unions, social movements and political groups in selected US satellite states. Nowhere is this more evident than in US intervention within 'America's backyard' of Latin America. Kennard explores in eminently readable prose the self-evident brutality and futility of the War on Drugs in Honduras, links between US multinationals and the Colombian paramilitaries and anti-labour union governments, and the dynamic resistance presented by anti-imperialist Morales and the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) in Bolivia.” ―Olivia Arigho Stiles, Alborada

“This is radical journalism of the highest order. A very useful book.” ―Socialist Review

“Matt Kennard threw away a cushy career with an establishment newspaper just to let you in on a secret: you don't get the story, you get the cover-up. From Egypt to South Africa to Washington to London, Kennard lets us in on the details of buried truth.” ―Greg Palast

“A brilliant atlas of what Kennard calls 'heavy history' - the hurricane-like path of global destruction wrought by neoliberalism and wars against the poor.” ―Mike Davis

“A crucial exposé of the powerful, of injustice, and of the war against the poor. It should inspire all of us to fight back.” ―Owen Jones

“This firecracker of a book, written by a former insider journalist who realised the true, exploitative agenda of corporate media, unleashes a gonzo journey across the world of US empire. From Palestine to Bolivia and America to South Africa, reporter Matt Kennard provides a roadmap of deformed economics, state violence and inspiring resistance. The Racket's key message is that another, more just world is possible when political and media courtiers of power recognise their own complicity in Washington's destructive policies in the name of 'development,' 'humanitarian intervention,' and 'liberation.' Read this book, be startled and then take action.” 

―Antony Loewenstein

“The Racket is tough, angry, relentlessly researched and riveting, in the grand Chomskyan tradition but with the added value of the journalist's mobility and on the spot coverage. Kennard's range is wide, both geographically and topically, but with a single target-the depredations of the US superpower's corporate and political elites on their own home turf and abroad that the lap-dog media rarely touch.” ―Susan George

“Matt Kennard reveals the criminal and ruthless dynamics of global imperialism. His analysis is richly researched, keenly illustrative, and consistently on target. May this book get the wide readership it deserves.” ―Michael Parenti

“Drawing on his wide-ranging in-depth investigations of exploitation and resistance from Haiti to Tunisia, Matt Kennard provides a valuable portrait of the structure and dynamics of the world's biggest criminal enterprise. Uncovering the linkages among corporate power, free trade agreements, the International Monetary Fund, and military hegemony, he offers a clinical analysis of how the American racket operates but also inevitably triggers resistance. A masterpiece of engaged journalism.” 

―Walden Bello

“The Racket is a well-researched political tour through weaponised corruption and tyranny, destitution, robbery, mass murder and concluding in the censoring of the arts in the United States and Britain. Matt Kennard puts no deodorant on the reptiles waste in the imperial barnyard.” 

―Gavin McFayden

“This new edition of Matt Kennard's explosive book should be obligatory reading for anyone interested or involved in politics. I cannot praise it highly enough ... The Racket is a vital source of information about what is happening on a global scale to entrap us all in the empire's web of deceit and megalomania, if only we are prepared to open our eyes.” ―The Morning Star

“This book is essential reading for those interested in understanding the levers used by the US to customise the world to fit its purpose, from instigating coups in countries like Bolivia, to the painful, wholesale restructuring of Haiti in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake … This is an urgent, revelatory work - a must-read for anyone who wants to better understand the times we live in.” ―Middle East Eye 

 

 
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

 
Matt Kennard is co-founder, and chief investigator, at Declassified UK, a news outlet investigating British foreign policy. He was a fellow and then director at the Centre for Investigative Journalism (CIJ) in London, UK. He has worked as a staff writer for the Financial Times in Washington, DC, New York, and London. He is the author of several acclaimed books including Irregular Army (2012), and co-author (with Claire Provost) of Silent Coup (2023).

Darkening Blackness: Race, Gender, Class, and Pessimism in 21st Century Black Thought
by Norman Ajari
Translation by Matthew B. Smith

Polity, 2024

[Publication date:  February 6, 2024]

The concept of Afropessimism does not refer to Black people, but rather to the likelihood of white society overcoming its own negrophobia, and to a radical distrust in white narratives of inclusivity. What if the ideas and reforms we regard as progressive were just the new and shiny face of racism? In the time of Black Lives Matter, the unswerving dehumanization and killing of Black people form the bedrock of our civilization. But a vast anti-Black collective feeling also manifests itself as a more insidious shared unconscious, hidden from view by the doctrines we deem as emancipatory. This book challenges the simplistic and pacifying aspects of current African American thought. It puts forward alternatives to intersectionality, poststructuralism, and radical democracy, which are often prioritized in the Black analysis of race, gender, and class.

Accessible, historically informed, and politically alert, this book offers a critical analysis of the groundbreaking theories and strategies that radically reimagine the future of Black lives throughout the world.

 

REVIEWS

“Norman Ajari’s Darkening Blackness is a masterful defense of Afro-American pessimism and Black Male Studies against the misguided view that ‘pessimism’ means hopelessness and eternal defeat. Instead, pessimism is treated as meaning the rejection of fantasies, especially the fantasy that says one more revision will alter insidious white racialized civil society and intrinsically unjust Euro/American institutions. Step into Ajari’s theoretical world and step out unburdened by fantasy.”

--Leonard Harris, Purdue University

“For those who still do not understand that the pessimism in Afropessimism is not an emotional dispensation but a meta-critique of the first principles of Western thought, Norman Ajari’s Darkening Blackness is required reading. His analysis of Black Male Studies will have as many people nodding their heads as shaking their heads, which is the first step toward rigorous and honest debate.”

--Frank B. Wilderson III, Chancellor’s Professor of African American Studies, University of California, Irvine

“An empirically informed and theoretically provocative explanation of the ontological negation that characterizes the Black social condition. Beyond the boundaries of the dominant rubrics of race-gender theory, Ajari's penetrating analysis culminates in the articulation of a normative commitment to Black Autonomy (Pan-Africanism) that has the potential to trigger a creative pinnacle in Black thought centered on the notion of self-defense.’’
--Miron J. Clay-Gilmore, Ethnic and Racial Studies Journal

“By presenting the Black Radical tradition and putting the emphasis on Afro-American pessimism and Black Male Studies from a Pan-African perspective, this book does much more than describe these theories but gives an understanding of the Black Radical tradition from the perspective of its negativity, taken as a power.’’
--Charles des Portes, Ethnic and Racial Studies Journal

“Ajari does what is necessary, which is expanding the scope of Afropessimism and, in so doing, making sure that it is in the ambit of the Black radical tradition, including its many iterations.’’

--Journal of Literary Studies

“Ajari's persuasive argumentation with indisputable historical and theoretical facts makes his work an impressive literature on black studies’’

--Chrysanthus Ogbozo, Theoria

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Norman Ajari is a lecturer in Francophone Black Studies at the University of Edinburgh.