As we face new and debilitating catastrophes caused by capitalism and nation-state politics, Saladdin Ahmed argues that our only hope is to create space for a new world by negating the existing order. To achieve this new society, Revolutionary Hope After Nihilism outlines a practical philosophy of change that rejects ideologies of false hope and passive hopelessness.

Drawing public attention to the decisiveness of the present historical moment, Ahmed introduces a critical theory of social emancipation based on post-Soviet revolutionary movements that have emerged at the margins of the global social order. The rise of socially and politically exclusionary movements in multiple parts of the world, ongoing ecological crisis, anti-Black racism, and the concretization of despair brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic demands a new approach to revolution which the author argues must be rooted in the experiences of the most oppressed in society. Realising the epistemological potential of emancipatory movements, Ahmed rejects dystopian nihilism and positions the margins and the marginalized as the solution to breaking out of capitalist misery for activists and scholars throughout the world.