Tariq Ali, an Anti-Imperialist Life
In a new memoir, Tariq Ali recounts his work and activism across the end of the Cold War era and the era of neoliberal globalization. He spoke to Jacobin about what it means to be an anti-imperialist in a changed world.
Tariq Ali at his home in London on July 15, 2003. (Cambridge Jones / Getty Images)
Tariq Ali’s new book, You Can’t Please All, is a follow-up to his “autobiography of the ’60s,” Street-Fighting Years. These new memoirs covering the period from 1980 to 2024 reflect the author’s prolific activity and span a uniquely broad range of topics. They take in everything from Latin America to Pakistan, Perestroika, Britain under Margaret Thatcher and after, the author’s family background, cultural interventions on TV and on stage, cricket in the postcolonial era, a political reading of Don Quixote, and much more.
Ali’s account testifies to the deep change the world has seen since the global post-1968 retreat. Reflecting on his own trajectory, it explores the ways in which revolutionaries, mass movements, and intellectuals responded to a new situation.
Interviewed by Stathis Kouvelakis for Jacobin, Ali focuses on the running thread of his political life: anti-imperialism, and its meaning in the post–Cold War period of globalized neoliberal capitalism.
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