Pankaj Mishra writes for the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, the New York Times Book Review, and the Guardian. He is the author of Butter Chicken in Ludhiana, An End to Suffering, Temptations of the West, and From the Ruins of Empire.
On Monday, March 30, Salah Sarsour, President of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee (ISM) was stopped by a dozen vehicles and arrested by 10 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents who first took him to the Broadview Detention Center in Illinois, and then to the Clay County Justice Center, near Terre Haute, Indiana.
The first round of the local elections took place against a backdrop of widespread creeping fascism in France and comes after a brutal offensive by the far right, during which the traditional ‘Republican’ right has decisively broken from much of its historical framework and values.