Description

This public lecture will explore the history of two currents within the antiracist movement. The first tradition emerged as a reaction to Nazism. Focusing on individual behavioral changes, it has laid the foundations for today’s liberal anti-racism with its diversity trainings and Hollywood activism. The second more radical tradition - inspired by anticolonial thinkers such as C.L.R. James, Claudia Jones and Frantz Fanon - understands racism as a system embedded within broader economic and political structures, linking it to colonialism, imperialism and capitalism. In this book presentation, Arun Kundani delves into the questions of what systemic racism actually means; and why antiracism without anticapitalism will always remain superficial?

About the speaker

Arun Kundani is a researcher at the Amsterdam Transnational Institute, living and working in the US. Described by The Guardian as ‘one of Britain’s best political 
writers’, Kundani has published works with The Nation, The Washington Post and The Intercept. He is the author of several influential books such as The End of Tolerance: Racism in 21st Century Britain (Pluto, 2007) and The Muslims are Coming! Islamophobia, Extremism, and Domestic War on Terror (Verso, 2014).

His latest book What is Antiracism? And why it means Anticapitalism was published in 2023 by Verso Books and appeared in Dutch in January 2025 at EPO Uitgeverij.