  Due to their close proximity, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds (SMC/LMC)
provide natural laboratories for understanding how galaxies form and evolve.
With the goal of determining the structure and dynamical state of the SMC, we
present new spectroscopic data for $\sim$ 3000 SMC red giant branch stars
observed using the AAOmega spectrograph at the Anglo-Australian Telescope. We
complement our data with further spectroscopic measurements from previous
studies that used the same instrumental configuration and proper motions from
the \textit{Gaia} Data Release 2 catalogue. Analysing the photometric and
stellar kinematic data, we find that the SMC centre of mass presents a
conspicuous offset from the velocity centre of its associated $\mbox{H\,{\sc
i}}$ gas, suggesting that the SMC gas is likely to be far from dynamical
equilibrium. Furthermore, we find evidence that the SMC is currently undergoing
tidal disruption by the LMC within 2\,kpc of the centre of the SMC, and
possibly all the way in to the very core. This is evidenced by a net outward
motion of stars from the SMC centre along the direction towards the LMC and
apparent tangential anisotropy at all radii. The latter is expected if the SMC
is undergoing significiant tidal stripping, as we demonstrate using a suite of
$N$-body simulations of the SMC/LMC system disrupting around the Milky Way.
These results suggest that dynamical models for the SMC that assume a steady
state will need to be revisited.
