One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This — Omar El Akkad (2025 National Book Award)
The 2025 National Book Award winner for non-fiction by Omar El Akkad. A 208-page polemic about the gap between Western liberal ideals and the reality of complicity in atrocities, primarily through the lens of Gaza. The title — from a viral tweet El Akkad posted in October 2023 — captures the thesis: history always retroactively condemns atrocities, but in the moment, silence prevails.
**One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This** is a 2025 National Book Award winner for non-fiction by Omar El Akkad, a Canadian novelist and journalist who previously wrote for The Globe and Mail. Published February 25, 2025 by Knopf Canada, 208 pages. ## The Thesis The title comes from a tweet El Akkad posted in October 2023 that went viral. The core argument: throughout history, society retroactively condemns atrocities — slavery, apartheid, internment camps — but in the moment, the same society that will later claim moral clarity stays silent or actively participates. The book examines this pattern primarily through the lens of the Gaza conflict, extending to Western imperialism more broadly. ## What It Is A polemic aimed at Western centrists and liberals who El Akkad argues remained silent during events they will later claim to have opposed. The book contrasts images of violence with the author's own experience raising children safely far from conflict zones — using the juxtaposition to interrogate complicity through comfort and distance. ## Reception Compared to James Baldwin's *The Fire Next Time* for its moral urgency and rhetorical force. Critical reception was overwhelmingly positive, described as "passionate, poetic and sickening." The National Book Award win was seen as a statement piece by the judges. ## Context El Akkad's previous work includes the novel *American War* (2017), a speculative fiction about a second American civil war driven by climate change and resource scarcity.