Ta-Nehisi Coates says 'I don't give a fuck' about backlash for speaking on Palestine

African-American writer and public intellectual Ta-Nehisi Coates has said he doesn't "give a fuck" if he is sidelined in the media for calling Israel's war on Gaza a genocide.

In an exclusive and wide-ranging interview with Middle East Eye, the award-winning author discussed his new book, The Message, his evolving views on Israel and Palestine and the 2024 US election, amongst other issues.

For several years, Coates - who established a wide readership at The Atlantic, where he wrote about racism against African Americans - considered himself a liberal Zionist. In 2008, he even published an essay praising Israel called "The Negro Sings of Zionism".

But after receiving criticism for his 2014 essay "The Case for Reparations", which called for America to pay reparations for slavery and racial discrimination, drawing an analogy with Germany paying Israel reparations for the Holocaust, Coates said that he started to read more about the issue and begun re-evaluating his views on Zionism.

READ MORE: Ta-Nehisi Coates says 'I don't give a fuck' about backlash for speaking on Palestine