Thread by @PriyaSatia

Power & Publishing, a THREAD 1/n: Warm thanks to those who have helped share this essay. Its appearance marks the end of a 4.5 month struggle, which I share here, though perhaps risky—but we’re at a point where this is what needs to be said (conscious of lareviewofbooks.org/article/fascis…

writing this after a mass shooting of Asian women in the US & as British journalists & editors protest the Society of Editors’ denial of racism in British media).

I wrote the essay early Nov. & pitched it to UK outlets. After almost 2 months, a prominent Leftist magazine 2/n

said they’d be happy to print it, but a month later, on the literal eve of publication, reneged, citing a “delay” ordered by the editor-in-chief. I said, no problem, did they think weeks or months? *They never wrote back.*

Meanwhile, the handful of white male experts in 3/n

European history who set the unhelpful terms of the American fascism debate published essays every week in popular Leftist outlets in the US & UK.

It’s not that I’m entitled to be heard but that you’d think some outlet might have been eager to share the point of view of an 4/n

equally credible scholar speaking from the angle of British history, & of someone who wasn’t a white man. (The reneging magazine tellingly had me reframe my essay as a “direct response” to the men dominating the American debate (despite my more British preoccupations)). 5/n

I have been able to contribute to public debate much more than I ever dreamed as a girl from Muktsar via Los Gatos, for which I am deeply grateful—and still in wonder about. I began to try because I was writing a thesis on British intelligence-gathering in the Middle East 6/n

(later SPIES IN ARABIA) just as the “forever wars” began. But I struggled for years to get a foot in the door, until in 2009 a colleague, the brave & brilliant Irish journalist-historian Maurice Walsh, put me in touch with a friend at the Financial Times. They printed 3 pieces7/n

by me urging an end to drone strikes & the US presence in Iraq. Then, the editor I worked with left the FT, & I *could not get a reply* to my 4th submission. Later, when I had historical light to shed on gun legislation while working on EMPIRE OF GUNS, a Stanford colleague 8/n

put me in touch with an editor at Slate.

I always knocked on every door I could think of myself—cold calling & emailing editors—but again and again *contacts* have been critical. I did not have inherited media networks, & the increasing presence of women & people of color in 9/n

editorial positions & the academy has been critical to my ability to say anything. By their very nature, essays that push the envelope are hard to place; when they appear, you can bet it’s because a personal contact helped it slip through.

I have been a faculty member at 10/n

an elite institution for 18 years. I have an endowed chair. I have an agent & 12 years of experience doing public writing. About as powerful & secure a position a scholar can have. And the better my seat at the publishing table has become, the more clearly I see the extent 11/n

to which race & gender shape what gets said: What I earlier might have put down to a difference in rank or credentials, I can now more certainly diagnose as rooted in those power dynamics. Yes, the struggle to place essays may say something about me, how I write, what I 12/n

write about, my (lack of) “networking” skills. But, it is *also* a function of the fact that my networks simply can’t be as strong as those of the white boys’ clubs of the Right & Left, which allow even those with recent PhDs to publish essays in the NYT print edition. 13/n

Gatekeeping networks of patronage also shape media book review assignments. My book TIME'S MONSTER, which criticizes British nostalgia of empire, has repeatedly been given for review to South Asian men known to be center-right. Why? The LRB did commission a review from a 14/n

vocal anticolonial historian, Kim Wagner, but then refused to print his rave review (fortunately available on Medium & Scroll.in (also for those curious to assess the merit of that rejection)). My impression from recent months is that the very few pieces by 15/n

brown people in the New Statesman either address troubles in brown countries or argue that other brown people are wrong to pin racism on empire. (Pls correct me if I’m wrong.) Divide & rule still, I guess. This is "the Left"? To be sure the Guardian reliably gives space to 16/n

people of color who fearlessly call out racism & empire nostalgia (Afua Hirsch, David Olusoga, Priyamvada Gopal). Perhaps it’s merely that I’m neither British nor based in the UK—fair enough. But: white American men *do* get published in its pages. I have had essays rejected 17/n

there and then seen uncannily similar (perhaps commissioned?) essays by such men, despite their having less expertise on the subject, appear a week later. Meanwhile those men, speaking for the "Left" but blind to their own privilege, acknowledge their personal friendships 18/n

with one another in the pages of such publications without embarrassment (while some also, incongruously, fret about cancel culture). Can you imagine a group of women discussing fascism & American politics as friends in a prominent intellectual magazine? What would a public 19/n

conversation set by different demographics look like? Would intellectual debates align differently with grassroots political efforts?

It is very much possible that my struggle placing this essay in the UK was merely caused by bad luck or my comparative lack of some skill. 20/n

Yet, going by the life I've lived, I cannot shake the feeling that it is *also* evidence of that systemic prejudice whose more subtle workings we at times find difficult to pinpoint as they are unfolding. And of a growing fear, perhaps, in seemingly Leftwing British media, 21/n

of taking too strong a position against empire as Rightwing papers like the Telegraph have become bullhorns for government policies aimed at stopping constructive reckoning with the imperial past (and amplify ideologues over actual historians).

One might easily conclude 22/n

that when it comes to popular media, “Ye duniya agar mil bhi jaye to kya hai” #SahirCentenary, but in fact the struggle is itself the point (as Sahir would agree). As much as I might envy the seeming ease with which my white male peers are able to speak, I recognize that in 23/n

a world in which someone like me *had* comparable access, I very likely would not have much to say. (So, if you are struggling to get your perspective out, persist!) I am grateful for those who have been allies in supporting public writing women of color, in the US & UK. The 24/n

struggle to publish this essay drove home the importance of a thriving media environment. As much as I prioritized getting it out in the UK, I found fewer options there. Perhaps it's time for a new British politics & lit magazine? #Birmingham Review of Books? 25/25