9781844677573-the-obama-syndrome-pb

The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad

by Tariq Ali
A prescient dissection of Obama’s overseas escalation and domestic retreat, fully updated.
Written early in 2010 and initially published in September 2010, The Obama Syndrome predicted the Obama administration’s historic midterm defeat. But unlike myriad commentators who have since pinned responsibility for that Democratic Party collapse on the “reform” president’s lack of firm resolve, Ali’s critique located the problem in Obama’s notion of reform itself. Barack Obama campaigned for the presidency by promising to escalate the war in Afghanistan, and his economic team brought the architects of the financial crisis into the White House. Small wonder then that the “War on Terror”—torture in Bagram, occupation in Iraq, appeasement in Israel, and escalation in Pakistan—continues. And that Wall Street and the country’s biggest corporations have all profited at the expense of America’s working class and poor.

Now a thoroughly updated paperback continues the story through the midterms, including a trenchant analysis of the Tea Party, and Obama’s decision to continue with his predecessor’s tax cuts for the rich. Ali asks whether—in the absence of a progressive upheaval from below—US politics is permanently mired in moderate Republicanism. Already called “a comprehensive account” of the problems with Obama (The Huffington Post), this new edition is sure to provide a more “powerful boost to Obama dissenters on the left” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette).

Paperback, 156 pages

ISBN: 9781844677573

September 2011

$12.95 / £7.99 / $16.00CAN

Other Editions

Ebook, 224 pages

ISBN: 9781844678280

September 2011

$8.99 / $16.00CAN

Hardback, 168 pages

ISBN: 9781844674497

October 2010

$16.95 / £9.99

Reviews

  • “Ali is smart as fire.”

    – Ian Epstein, New City

  • “Ali remains an outlier and intellectual bomb-thrower; an urbane, Oxford-educated polemicist.”

    – The Observer

  • “The Obama Syndrome will be a powerful boost to Obama dissenters on the left.”

    – Bob Hoover, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

  • “The Obama Syndrome documents the collapse of the Myth into a thousand pieces.”

    – Vijay Prashad, author of The Darker Nations

Blog

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    By / 16 November 2012 / 2 comments

  • Tariq Ali on Democracy Now: European Union awarded Nobel Peace Prize despite ties to NATO, crippling austerity cuts

    Has the Nobel Peace Prize Committee jumped the shark? In what seemed an early April Fool’s prank, the Committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to the European Union for, in the words of chairman Thorbjoern Jagland, its historic role in transforming Europe "from a continent of wars to a continent of peace." This honor was bestowed despite the EU’s savage push for immiserizing austerity on Spain, Italy, and Greece—cuts that have led to violence on the streets, and the participation of many of its member states NATO military interventions in Afghanistan and Libya.




    Today, on Democracy Now!, Tariq Ali, author of many books including The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad, discussed his reaction to the Committee’s decision, stating:

    To give the prize to the European community, at a time, effectively, when economically, it is promoting unemployment, creating real class divides in virtually every country in Europe, where it has led to enormous violence on the streets of Greece, because of the policies being pushed by the EU ... it is a complete and utter joke.


    Visit Democracy Now! to watch the interview in full.

    By Jose Martinez-Flores / 12 October 2012 / post comment

  • Verso Authors at the 2012 Brooklyn Book Festival!



    Verso Books authors will appear on panel discussions alongside over 280 distinguished writers and thinkers at this year's Brooklyn Book Festival, the borough's seventh and largest international literary conference to date. Writers and book enthusiasts are expected to stage a veritable take over of Brooklyn, as the festival has expanded to twelve venues from Willamsburg to Gowanus presenting over 140 panels from September 17-23rd. 

    From David Harvey on American cities in the new economy, to Simon Crithley on the quest for the conversational sublime and Tariq Ali on the global revolution, we sincerely hope you visit our outstanding authors as they discuss and debate some of the most pressing issues of the moment. 

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    By Molly Osberg / 05 September 2012 / 1 comment

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