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Quotes from Ash Sarkar

Bengal in the early 1930s was a hotbed of anti-British revolutionary activity - and women were at the heart of this insurrectionist moment.
~ Ash Sarkar
The left cannot be complicit in the marginalisation of Palestinian people in the interest of fighting racism. We can, and we must, do much better than that.
~ Ash Sarkar
There shouldn't be a barrier between rich and poor in terms of the kind of health care that they can access.
~ Ash Sarkar
The reason Brexiteers have been so effective is that they have made the fight about broad political values.
~ Ash Sarkar
Lots of us have been plugging away, building a platform to talk about libertarian communism and post-scarcity economics.
~ Ash Sarkar
But communism is the only thing which says all things should be brought into the hands of commons to benefit all people. In the past, you'd call that communism. I think in the future, we'll have to call that common sense.
~ Ash Sarkar
I believe that nothing so arbitrary as money should be able to come between a person and the means of survival. And that's a really fancy way of saying that it doesn't matter if you're poor - you should have top-quality health care.
~ Ash Sarkar
Our modern understanding of cultural appropriation is highly individualised. It's all about what Halloween costume you wear, or who's cooking biryani. But the way in which the idea was first used was to describe a relationship of dominance and exploitation between a global ruling class and a globally subjugated one.
~ Ash Sarkar
Offering a politician's non-apology that accepts everything but responsibility isn't the same as accountability.
~ Ash Sarkar
Not all cultural borrowing is a form of social violence: some of it is just cringe.
~ Ash Sarkar
Let me be clear: I recognise the necessity of tackling antisemitism in the Labour party head-on.
~ Ash Sarkar
Nothing in this life is certain aside from death, taxes and English literature graduates writing in the Guardian and spoiling your enjoyment of things you had previously thought were fine.
~ Ash Sarkar
It's important to recognise that opposing racism isn't just about presenting an alternative set of values; it's about looking at how the far right play on people's hardships in order to nurture a sense of enmity between white people and those racialised as migrants.
~ Ash Sarkar
As in health, so in crime - prevention is better than cure.
~ Ash Sarkar
I can't help but feel that trying to locate a universal femininity in either consumer culture or particular bodily functions serves as a way to opt out of dealing with the multiple processes that impede our full participation in society.
~ Ash Sarkar
So, there are lots of different reasons why people came out to protest Boris Johnson, but what they were united in was their disdain for a system which has imposed a prime minister who is deeply divisive on the rest of the electorate.
~ Ash Sarkar
If you want any hope of staying in the EU, or having a Brexit that doesn't mean capitulation to ethno-nationalism, you've got to tie it to a wider vision of political and economic transformation.
~ Ash Sarkar
Here's the problem with downplaying the radical nature of decommodification: when you empty something of political content, politicians are free to wield symbols as they please.
~ Ash Sarkar
While I agree that embracing vibrancy and joy is an essential bulwark against the left's tendency towards energy-sapping endless meetings, pop culture alone won't save us from racism.
~ Ash Sarkar
My great-great-aunt was a terrorist. I'm not talking about the sense in which the pacifist Mahatma Gandhi was branded a terrorist by the British parliament in 1932: Pritilata Waddedar was an active participant in armed struggle against the British state. She supplied explosives. She fired a gun. And I'm proud of it.
~ Ash Sarkar
No one but the ruling class wins in a culture war.
~ Ash Sarkar
Feminism isn't about curating or policing the boundaries of womanhood.
~ Ash Sarkar
Repressive measures taken by the British government to quell Indian nationalist agitation meant that expansions of the franchise regarding legislative councils were met by mistrust: Indian politicians in Bengal refused to participate in the 1920 elections, and formally adopted a policy of boycott and non-cooperation.
~ Ash Sarkar
Immigration has tremendously changed the fabric of this country. Immigration is what built our NHS, when Britain invited people from the Commonwealth, from nations it had formerly colonized, in order to rebuild this country after the ravages of the Second World War.
~ Ash Sarkar