00:05:58.700I'd love to hear your top line thoughts.
00:06:01.820Well, I do think he makes it a little deliberately ambiguous where he is politically because he is a smart entrepreneur and he is appealing to different audiences simultaneously and I think signaling to different audiences.
00:06:15.980And also because we live in this age where most people don't subject themselves to like an hour and a half podcast, but just see the little clip.
00:06:25.840You can put out little clips that are very carefully edited to appeal to one particular group and then another clip from the same show to appeal to a completely different group, right?
00:06:38.980And so I think that's part of what's been happening is just the kind of clip culture, right?
00:06:44.160So we then project our values into what we don't hear. Right. So if you hear somebody who seems to care a lot about the genocide in Palestine, then you kind of assume that that person also cares about Palestinian human rights more broadly, might want to help Palestinian refugees, has more of an internationalist perspective.
00:07:07.320and you kind of fill in the blanks right so i don't think it's entirely clear but just in knowing
00:07:12.380we were going to have this conversation i did listen to some of the recent episodes in full
00:07:17.040of tucker carlson yeah didn't you did you do your homework i mean i have listened to a lot of tucker
00:07:22.620carlson over time but like the fact that i subjected you to that research beforehand i feel a little
00:07:28.220badly no i mean you know i have this weird thing right like i've listened to hundreds of hours of
00:07:32.960Steve Bannon. So it's good for me to diversify. I've been researching the right for a really long
00:07:40.040time. But I was struck in just last week, he interviewed somebody for an episode that the
00:07:46.940headline was Somali fraud expose, right? So I'm like, he's still doing that. Like,
00:07:51.980because in the clips that we see, he's often just off to say something like, well, I believe all
00:07:56.780people are equal. That's what conservatism is. I'm like, is it? Is that like, as a Catholic,
00:08:02.460I could not agree more with you. Yes. And what you're saying, I love all people,
00:08:06.840even the ones that don't like us. We have to love them all. And we have to recognize that
00:08:10.520we're required to. Yes. And then it's like, OK, so is that what Tucker now thinks? But no,
00:08:16.440he's still smearing entire groups of people by their ethnicity with headlines like Somali fraud
00:08:23.160expose. And he also was getting talking about the great replacement again. You know,
00:08:28.360was talking about Somali fraud in the context of the great replacement in that episode. He also was0.95
00:08:34.240talking about that it's, you know, he talks about how it's natural to have a preference for your
00:08:40.080racial group, right? So it's essentially Christian nationalism that he's doing. And I think he has
00:08:47.360been working very hard to break the ironclad relationship between the United States and
00:08:54.160Israel and also right-wing Christianity and Zionism. And he's been on a concerted campaign.
00:08:59.180And in that work, he's done some really revealing and I think important interviews with figures like
00:09:06.140Mike Huckabee, Ted Cruz, Avram Berg, the former speaker of the Israeli Knesset, where he asked
00:09:12.280questions that it would be nice if the New York Times asked them, you know, or if his old employer
00:09:17.860at Fox News asked them about what theology is guiding them, what the end game is. You know,
00:09:23.120here I'm thinking about the interview with Ted Cruz, where, you know, he was really getting at
00:09:27.640like, you know, what is the theological basis on which you are basing this idea that there is a
00:09:32.820duty to support the state of Israel, right? I was taught from the Bible, those who bless Israel
00:09:38.800will be blessed and those who curse Israel will be cursed. And from my perspective, I want to be
00:09:44.200on the blessing side of things. Of those who bless the government of Israel? Those who bless Israel
00:09:48.980is what it says doesn't say the government of it says the nation of israel so that's in the bible
00:09:53.460as a christian i believe that where is that i can find it to you i don't have the the scripture off
00:09:59.040the tip of mine you pull out the phone and use it's in it's in genesis but so you're quoting a
00:10:04.740bible phrase you don't have context for it you don't know where in the bible it is but that's
00:10:08.140like your theology i'm confused what does that even mean tucker i'm a christian i want to know
00:10:14.280what you're talking about like he got him on record on some really important things that
00:10:17.680nobody had gotten him on record before. Same thing with Mike Huckabee, where it was like,
00:10:21.060if we're using the Bible as the real estate deed, where does that stop?
00:10:25.080You've appealed to Genesis. Genesis 15 says it's Abram receives from God the news that
00:10:30.940his descendants will inherit the land. And you tell me as the theologian, if I'm getting this
00:10:35.240wrong, but from the Euphrates to the Nile. And that would include basically the entire Middle
00:10:41.040East. Christian Zionism. I want to go back because that's where we started. I'm not going0.90
00:10:44.260let you off on this because you have said it three times that god gave this land to this people what
00:10:49.840does that mean does israel have the right to that land because you're appealing to genesis yeah
00:10:55.020you're saying that's the original deed it would be fine if they took it all you know for this
00:11:01.880book that astra taylor and i have been working on for a year now on end times fascism you know we
00:11:06.800use those quotes because nobody else got these guys on record right i want to acknowledge that
00:11:11.960he's doing like, he's doing some journalism, that's really important. But what's the broader
00:11:15.960end goal for Tucker Carlson as a political figure, which is where this gets really complicated. And
00:11:20.320he his name comes up as a possible presidential candidate, right? And I think that the the goal
00:11:27.120is to break the Judeo Christian fusion, right? This idea that the US is a Judeo Christian nation,
00:11:34.960No, he says it's a Christian nation. And this idea that the sort of theological duty is linked
00:11:42.400to creating a greater Israel, he's trying to break that and basically throwing his lot in
00:11:47.440with the idea that the New Jerusalem is the United States, and that you want to bunker down0.77
00:11:52.860with your Christian nation. So it's very tied to fortress borders, and also the kind of ethnic0.68
00:11:59.040cleansing that we're seeing, you know, on the streets of US cities. That's part of the project.0.53
00:12:04.440I mean, he thinks there should be more deportations.
00:13:24.860Well, I saw the one Medi did, the gang up thing.
00:13:28.300You have been in the weeds with political slop content.
00:13:31.100It's nice to know that we're all there together.
00:13:33.780Jubilee, for those who don't know, it's a YouTube content farm that purports to foster honest dialogue and inspire human connection, but in practice makes videos like this one called, Is Being Fat a Choice? Fit Men vs. Fat Men.
00:13:48.340In it, Myron Gaines, a far-right podcaster who's representing the fit men side, says the following.
00:13:56.640Unfortunately, some people have emotional stuff that happened, traumatic stuff that's happened,
00:14:01.700so you can't discount and just say, oh, because they're fat.0.81
00:16:42.420I'm not saying that's good or bad.1.00
00:16:45.680Speaking of dead kids, she's a big fan of abortions.
00:16:49.240Now, if that came from like a left wing figure, I'd be like, yes, I, I, as a celebrity political
00:16:55.620person would love to talk about Chelsea Handler being a Zionist.0.86
00:16:58.340But Shane Gillis is like his whole thing is that he's a racist.
00:17:03.320And so it just seemed like such a strange thing.
00:17:07.580But also, I think something that we're going to get into here is that the far right has a long history of sort of ping-ponging around between scapegoats.
00:17:19.880And I think what they are doing, while again, on the surface, it can look helpful.
00:17:25.660It can look like, yeah, call out Chelsea Handler is in this.
00:17:30.160And you see someone like Nick Fuentes doing this very explicitly.0.95
00:17:32.560they are man it's like fucking the ADL has made it like impossible for me to like talk about0.91
00:17:40.200antisemitism in this way well it's brutal right because you find yourself as you pointed out I'm0.99
00:17:45.700significantly older than you and I have been getting called a self-hating Jew and and facing
00:17:51.400people who equate criticism of the state of Israel criticism of Zionism with antisemitism
00:17:56.960and accusing me of being therefore an antisemite for since I was in college which was a really
00:18:02.180long time ago you know and now when you actually see far-right figures doing the thing that you've
00:18:08.560been accused of you're like you're speechless right you don't there's like the language that
00:18:13.260you need to describe reality is now has been so degraded that is no longer useful right and this
00:18:20.620has been going on with a lot of words right I mean I wrote about it in doppelganger just that feeling
00:18:24.960of speechlessness when Steve Bannon is talking about fascism and othering right you're like well
00:18:32.000what words are left, right? I think that's what you're talking about.
00:18:36.600I want to tell the story of Tucker Carlson arriving at this moment, which involves a lot
00:18:42.180of other people. And I think inherent to that story is the MAGA Civil War. Naomi, for those
00:18:49.060out of the loop, can you explain this sort of conservative Civil War eruption that I think
00:18:55.300has accelerated a lot in the wake of Charlie Kirk's death? I know you also wrote about this
00:18:59.260in your book. Well, I think it has a lot to do with what with this sort of economy that we're
00:19:04.060talking about, because it is an economy. The influencer economy is a huge one. And it's part
00:19:08.900of broader economy that is sort of feeding off of instability and crisis. And it accelerated
00:19:17.060during the pandemic, when people were everything was mediated through screens, lost their in person
00:19:23.800communities, were frightened, you know, are finding their parasocial relationship, I'm not going to
00:19:28.540explain the internet to you. And so you could explain anything to me, I would be very excited
00:19:33.680about it. But I do. I think that Trump came back to power, really using the right wing influencer
00:19:41.320sphere to his benefit, as we know, I mean, he, he sidestepped a lot of mainstream media and
00:19:48.620did the podcast tour, and it all worked fantastically well for him. Then it started
00:19:55.000to fall apart because for them, for the people, you know, who are making a living off of this
00:19:59.940and are building empires around it, it actually is not a good business model just to echo the
00:20:06.460president. I mean, that's what Fox News is doing. But that can't be what Tucker Carlson and Candace
00:20:12.700Owen are doing now that they don't have a boss, right? I mean, they're running their own companies.
00:20:16.500So I think that there were some real issues where people had splits over, including Israel. But I
00:20:22.220also think there's this broader issue where they're all competing with each other when they
00:20:26.920fight and they get clicks and i thought the left was brutal matt but would you really oh my god
00:20:34.580right because my whole life i've heard especially from like the center liberals who are like why
00:20:40.120don't we especially recently where it's like why don't we just fall in line why don't we just fall
00:20:42.960in line behind this candidate or that candidate vote blue no matter who yada yada yada yada left
00:20:46.540as purity testing you never stop hearing about leftist purity testing which okay a separate
00:20:52.580conversation but the adage right forever has been like the the republicans they just fall
00:20:58.740in line naomi klein i don't think so i don't think so and this is one of the like i mean there's so
00:21:03.780many things that social media has given us that are terrible but when it comes but they have also
00:21:09.820destroyed the right it has also destroyed the right and it is and i love it like i i love the
00:21:15.760MAGA Civil War. I think it is a tremendous gift. They have created a vacuum that if there was a
00:21:23.680functioning left party in the United States, it would be having a field day right now. Because
00:21:30.420as you know, I mean, they are so messy. They are accusing each other of being feds. They're
00:21:34.700accusing each other of being trans. They're accusing each other of all kinds of things.
00:21:39.380look tucker that's why i'm sitting here you know right i mean because we had a contentious dialogue
00:21:46.780well i thought you were a fed i was yeah and i thought you were a fed i was a fed yeah i'm not
00:21:51.760a fed you mentioned charlie kirk i mean charlie kirk was very much sort of a part of this things
00:21:56.520got very ugly between him and nick fuentes and it was really like who is going to be the most
00:22:00.760powerful influencer on the right and to get your piece of the action you've got to attack each other
00:22:08.480And then you have to have a collab, come back together, make peace.
00:22:11.780You know, they're just playing the game.
00:22:13.760I think that when Kirk died, it's worth remembering that the Trump administration thought that
00:22:18.800they were going to be able to use that to actually fix some of this because it predated.
00:28:34.020And so while the Gripers, they are first and foremost fans of Nick Fuentes,
00:28:39.580I think they are also sort of ground zero and perhaps the most extreme version of this emerging America First movement
00:28:47.760that seeks to go a lot further than MAGA.
00:28:50.420So I just want to add here that like while I love to see that Ben Shapiro's media company is currently falling apart, fired potentially half of its employees, his YouTube numbers, despite having like 18 million times more subscribers than I do, are lower than mine.
00:29:20.420Absolutely. I mean, this is why I said, you know, I love when the right splinters, because it's an opportunity for the left to put forward vision that explains some of the main issues that are being tapped into, but with an actual systemic analysis that talks about capitalism, that talks about how we ended up with what's being called the Epstein class, how we ended up with the billionaire class.
00:29:44.580that provides that systemic analysis and also real solutions, real policies that are going to
00:29:48.800make people's lives better. I would be remiss if I didn't say that I think that the politician who
00:29:53.860has shown how to do this right is Zoran Mamdani, who, you know, talked to Trump voters the day
00:30:00.480after the election and basically said, OK, so you voted for him because the economy is busted and
00:30:07.660your life sucks and you're mad about U.S. wars and your tax dollars going to maybe bomb your0.97
00:30:14.600relative somewhere else. How do you feel about a rent freeze? And how do you feel about free1.00
00:30:19.060public transit? And enough people said yes. And 10% of people who voted for Trump voted for
00:30:24.020Mamdani. You know, that's part of the reason why he won. So I'm not saying that all those people0.99
00:30:28.880should be written off or that there isn't any overlap. The question is how you build those
00:30:32.900coalitions, right? So I think there is an opportunity here for the left. We know what
00:30:37.140it looks like. We know how to do it. Problem is, people in power in the Democratic Party don't want
00:30:41.660to do it. And you're absolutely right that what comes after Trump, if the right wins, is clearly
00:30:48.880a much worse version of Trumpism. And, you know, it's a truer form of fascism. And I think that
00:30:56.480that's what both Fuentes and Tucker Carlson are teeing up. Yeah. And Tucker can articulate sort
00:31:03.580of a more polite version of this, whereas Nick Fuentes is more bombastic. Nick Fuentes has said
00:31:10.220of his movement, quote, there are basically two things going on, white genocide and Jewish0.88
00:31:16.140subversion. So it doesn't really get more bald face than that. He's also said, quote,
00:31:22.160quote, my problem with Trump is not that he's Hitler. My problem with Trump is that he is not
00:31:28.040Hitler. Right. And I think a lot of the people who are angry at Trump are angry because he hasn't
00:31:33.020deported enough people or that he's just kind of making a show of it and not the numbers aren't
00:31:39.560there. They want the numbers because this is their economic policy. This is, you know, if you are
00:31:44.240willing to almost go there in terms of diagnosing the problem, it is genuinely very dangerous,
00:31:50.480Right. If you're willing to talk about the Epstein class, but you're not willing to talk about capitalism, that's what the Nazis did, essentially. Right. They talked about Jewish capitalism, which was, you know, this idea that capitalism had been perverted by the Jewish bankers or the, you know, that there was like if you could just purge this poison within the otherwise healthy body of capitalism, then things would be fine.0.87
00:32:19.540And that's what the project was. And they understood, you know, these dynamics always emerge when the system itself is in crisis, when people are hurting, right? That was the case in the 1930s after the First World War, after the punishing sanctions on Germany, the wreckage, and then the market crash of 1929, and people are really, really hurting. And socialism is rising, right?0.94
00:32:42.940You have the Russian revolution. You have a socialist worldview that says this has to spread to every country. You have elites who are terrified that it is going to happen in Germany, in Italy. And that's why they go after the communists and they go after the scapegoats, right? The vulnerable scapegoats.
00:33:02.300it's always a twin project right of going after the left going after the possibility of an
00:33:08.180alternative and it harnesses that ball of anger that is going to go somewhere right and the left's
00:33:14.140job is to make sure that the anger goes up at the system itself and the fascist's job is to take
00:33:21.000that anger acknowledge it and redirect it right redirect it at the scapegoats and also at the
00:33:29.280left. That's why Tucker's never going to be our friend. And the other thing that I think is really
00:33:33.940important to remember is that, okay, say he is running or he's going to back somebody who he
00:33:39.700believes will do a better job. He sometimes says he's too lazy to be president. May be true, may
00:33:44.420not be true. As we're seeing, you don't even have to be awake to be president. So, you know.
00:33:50.060I just, not to interrupt you, I just kind of think that Tucker Carlson is happy being like
00:33:54.620a rich podcaster. That is my reason why I don't right now think he's going to run for president,
00:33:58.700but I am very willing to be wrong. I don't know. I really don't know. I mean,
00:34:02.900you could have said the same thing about Trump. That's true. But he will certainly play a role
00:34:07.000in U.S. politics that is pushing this ideology, whether it's him or some surrogate. I mean,
00:34:12.840it could be Vance, right? I mean, they're pretty close and it remains to be seen.
00:34:16.740Something that you talked about in Doppelganger that really stayed with me, which I would tell
00:34:21.260people to go read that book, and they should, but I have also recommended that book in six
00:34:25.820different episodes of this podcast so you know get the new one it's almost yeah so get the new one
00:34:30.720it's the sequel I was so excited to see you were writing a book because I was like a I'm excited
00:34:37.400to read another Naomi Klein book and b when people are releasing their books they are more susceptible
00:34:43.560to taking the bait on podcast invitations we'll be back with Astra in September
00:34:49.240but one thing that you wrote about in doppelganger is how fascists are very good at taking large
00:34:58.400groups of people correctly helping them identify the problem and then giving them the wrong
00:35:03.800solution and in the context of that book you were talking about how it's like we don't have
00:35:10.420guaranteed health care in this country among a lot of other things and so it's very tempting
00:35:15.220to then buy into what like a Nazi wellness influencer0.51
00:35:19.000is selling you in making your healthcare
00:39:44.120Where he said, as we were saying in your office, pivot to tribalism. Basically, they saw the Brexit referendum as the beginning of an age of collapse, right? This is why Astra and I call it end times fascism, because they're sort of celebrating that this is all going down and they're all going to, whether they're going to colonize Mars or have the AI singularity or just have their sort of corporate city states.1.00
00:40:08.660You know, there's this sort of buffet of options. Peter Thiel is investing in all of them, right? And Epstein and Thiel were talking about it. And the way he articulated it was return to tribalism, right? It's interesting because Carlson has more in common with that worldview than he would like us to think, right?
00:40:27.800I mean, he's sort of standing up against the Epstein class, but they agree that this is what this era is about.0.71
00:40:34.020Return to what they call tribalism, which means everybody gets their little micro-ethnostate.
00:40:38.940And this is Carlson's great grievance.
00:40:41.440Everybody gets their identity politics but white men.
00:40:44.760This is what he's always complaining about.
00:40:46.740And this is where the great replacement ideology comes in, but this is also what Fuentes represents to all of them.
00:40:52.740He's the white guy who gets to have the identity politics that everybody else gets but them.
00:44:23.700The article described how these people who had blocked each other on Facebook over protests against trans brunches or like or like, sorry, drag brunches.
00:44:35.340oh there we go there it's like trans brunch yeah drag brunch it was a drag brunch and it was like
00:44:41.000somebody who ran like a it was a christian facebook group and they they had been at war
00:44:46.200over a drag brunch simply to say that the last issue that brought this many people to like local
00:44:52.480community meetings were like it's the culture it's the culture wars it's what books to ban
00:44:56.980it's vaccines it's mask mandates it's all the things i wrote about a doppelganger but now
00:45:02.760people are coming together and say, no, we don't want that data center. And it's bringing communities
00:45:07.060together. And it's healing wounds from the pandemic, where people are like, okay, we all
00:45:13.160agree we need water, you know, we need, we don't want our electricity bills to go up. So there can
00:45:18.340be more AI generated slop, and it can replace teachers and doctors. And so, you know, there's
00:45:26.160work to be done. And like, I'm against the litmus tests and all of that. But I just don't trust these
00:45:31.880particular figures to lead that alliance, to lead that coming together. Well, I want to talk
00:45:36.800a little bit about the Israel of it all, because I led with that. And I think a lot of people are
00:45:41.580still like, but he's good on Israel, right? And it's like, it's a hard kind of, right? I told you
00:45:50.520beforehand, I was like, I'm making a Venn diagram. I'm not having Naomi Klein on my podcast and not
00:45:56.200making a Venn diagram. So, you know, just because someone's belief could look like yours does not
00:46:03.300mean that it is yours. And I don't even mean that it's like, oh, like maybe they arrived at your
00:46:07.380belief from a different place. It's like it is a different belief, I believe. I made this Venn
00:46:12.200diagram of the Groyper right, of which I would include Tucker loosely and then the left. Do you
00:46:19.600have the outline? You're not going to pull it up. You want me to. Sorry. Like I said, I don't have
00:46:25.360a producer for this podcast. It's just kind of like cobbled together with tape. Yeah, but you
00:46:28.860made a nice graph. Did you make it yourself or did you use AI? No, I made it myself. I just like,
00:46:32.920I like, I went to like Venn diagram.com and I like put in.
00:46:39.240Okay, good. On the Gruyper right side, unique to the Gruyper right, I wrote there America first,
00:46:45.460anti-immigrant, anti-LGBT, white supremacist, you know, very steeped in social conservatism,
00:46:51.740especially so with gender roles, anti-Semitism, and I wrote that they are billionaire friendly.
00:46:57.920And on the left, of course, pro-LGBT, pro-immigrant, racial equity, feminism, pro-worker, wealth
00:47:04.100redistribution, market regulation, stuff like that. What do these groups have in common?
00:47:09.560The Gruper right and the left both believe Trump is a fraud. I don't need to explain why the left
00:47:15.040thinks Trump is a fraud. I've told you that the Gruper right thinks that he's basically like
00:47:19.020a fake authoritarian who should be a real authoritarian. They're both anti-Epstein class
00:47:25.080and they're both anti-war and anti-Israel. Could you, in your best ability, and I can
00:47:33.740join you on this, explain why this faction of the right is anti-Israel?
00:47:38.780Well, they are against money going to Israel because they are isolationist. They are, I think,
00:47:48.600against what pro-Israel lobbying has done to U.S. politics in that they believe Israel has pulled
00:47:57.480the U.S. into all kinds of wars and they don't want to be fighting wars in other countries because
00:48:04.400they're isolationists once again. Like, I'm not sure they're anti-Israel and that they don't want
00:48:08.720Israel to exist. They don't want the U.S. to help Israel because they don't want the U.S. to help0.53
00:48:12.860anyone. Yes. And they're Christian nationalists. So they reject the joining of the Judeo and the0.52
00:48:21.700Christian. They just want the Christian. Did I miss anything? Yeah, I think that's right. I think0.99
00:48:26.100what you highlighted is so important that they are much more against the U.S. relationship with
00:48:31.380Israel than Israel itself. If Israel continued to function as like an apartheid segregated ethno
00:48:38.340state, I don't think Tucker would have a problem as long as our money was not going towards it.
00:48:44.560I actually have a clip that explains just that. I watched yesterday the two-hour conversation
00:48:49.960between Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes. So the fact that I am still here to talk to all of you
00:48:54.860is a miracle. Let's watch this clip where Tucker explains how he's, quote,
00:49:00.400always thought he has the most moderate view on Israel.
00:49:03.940I've always thought I have the world's most moderate position on Israel.
00:49:18.000So I think that illustrates what I'm saying pretty clearly.0.52
00:49:20.020I think it's important to understand that that also doesn't preclude being anti-Semitic
00:49:26.320and that there's a long history of fascists supporting Israel
00:49:30.500because they think that that's actually where all Jews belong.
00:49:33.440that they can have their ethnostate so that we can have our ethnostate, you know, our pure ethnostate.0.86
00:49:39.300But also that dumping all of the ills of capitalism onto a Jewish elite is a very old trick and a very useful one in terms of protecting capitalism.0.95
00:49:52.500So in times of crisis, when people are starting to ask deeper questions about an economic model that is screwing them over on a profound level,0.99
00:50:00.920like I don't think it's just going to be left at well let's just let Israel be Israel I think it
00:50:06.980will go beyond that because it's too useful in terms of protecting like the other thing on your
00:50:13.240chart right that it's a pretty pro-billionaire movement right and you know think about Tucker's
00:50:18.580relationship with Elon Musk you know when he lost his Fox show Elon was his lifeline he let him
00:50:24.340broadcast from X he was just quoting him the other day on the show about how Elon says that
00:50:30.600the U.S. is I think it was him or maybe it was his guest that the I think but I actually think it was
00:50:34.720I think it was Carlson saying that the U.S. was turning into South Africa and Tucker talked about
00:50:42.580people being necklaced which is a reference in South Africa to the during apartheid people would
00:50:49.900get burning tires put around their neck as a form of torture and murder so he was raising that
00:50:58.460prospect and invoking Elon so the richest man in the world I mean this is a populist right
00:51:03.240I mean he also somebody who who will talk about how much of a libertarian he is and how like
00:51:10.700during COVID how opposed he was to to vaccine you know talking about vaccine mandates being
00:51:18.060authoritarianism and vaccine verification apps being authoritarianism I haven't heard him say
00:51:23.300anything against what Palantir is doing, what his friend Elon did when he was running Doge
00:51:29.060and sent in people to hoover up Americans' personal data and use it to train AI or whatever
00:51:36.080they're doing. I mean, these are the most extreme violations of the most basic civil liberties,
00:51:40.840including, you know, what happened in Minneapolis. He may have been critical of what happened to
00:51:44.380Alex Preddy, but I didn't hear him say anything about people being stopped on the street because
00:51:48.760of the accent they had or how they looked and then having, you know, their doors kicked down,
00:51:54.020right? So simply to say, he has said very little about Peter Thiel, Elon Musk. It's very dangerous.
00:52:02.300It's a very dangerous person to make an alliance with. And like Tucker Carlson, among a lot of
00:52:07.180other things, he supported gutting USAID, which Elon did with Doge. And he supported gutting USAID
00:52:15.980for the same reason, I would argue, that he is broadly anti-Israel, which is that he just
00:52:23.200thinks that U.S. money shouldn't go anywhere except the U.S. Like, you know, one might
00:52:29.440ask of Tucker Carlson, why is one of the United States' most prominent critics of Israel
00:52:33.780not organizing for Palestine, not raising money for Palestine, not doing anything for
00:52:39.680Palestine, except sort of the occasional opining against Israel with increasingly fringe members
00:52:46.320of the American far right. And it's because he's not an anti-Zionist. And I'm not trying to be
00:52:52.540pedantic by saying that. Anti-Zionism is a decolonial movement centered around the human0.86
00:52:58.300rights of Palestinians. Tucker Carlson is a nativist and a white Christian supremacist
00:53:03.720who thinks that American Zionists' support for Israel
00:53:07.440threatens their allegiance to the United States,
00:53:11.160which is the only allegiance they should have.
00:54:30.080This actually was real. Why would an Israeli soldier want to smash the face of Jesus?
00:54:38.840This is a country, we're often told, that is a safe haven for Christians in the region.
00:54:43.340How free are Christians to practice Christianity in Israel?
00:54:47.660American Christians need to reassess their support for Israel.
00:54:51.760And like, so the genocide, it might be a secondary concern of Tucker's or even a tertiary concern,
00:54:56.680but his main concern is the opposite of humanitarian yeah the point i just was making
00:55:03.140before i got distracted around you know whether or not he's running for president or whether what
00:55:07.900role he's going to play in the next electoral cycle and next few electoral cycles is simply
00:55:13.080that people should remember that when that when politicians are cobbling together an electoral
00:55:17.700coalition they say all kinds of things they don't believe or signal all kinds of things they don't
00:55:23.460believe. Trump did that with Latino voters. He did that with sort of maha moms, right? He put
00:55:29.260together the coalition that it would take to win. And I think that the kinds of little signals that
00:55:36.880people on the left are starting to get and like from Tucker Carlson should be viewed with a similar
00:55:43.160skepticism, that they are trying to cobble together some kind of an electoral coalition
00:55:48.540and believe that maybe he's really, you know, anti-war in the same way that they convinced
00:55:53.400themselves that Trump was anti-war or pro-Palestine, as you're saying.
00:55:58.000Another thing that Tucker says a lot is that Trump is controlled by Israel.
00:56:04.180This is sort of one of his central critiques of Israel.
00:56:07.840And I wonder what you make of that.0.58
00:56:09.420Yeah, I mean, I think it's a story that exonerates U.S. power, right?0.73
00:56:13.840I think anybody on the left who's aligning themselves with an ideology of American firstism should think hard about the role of U.S. foreign policy in the world and what it means to say that actually it's been, you know, Israel all along that is responsible for everything violent and immiserating that U.S. policy has done.0.67
00:56:37.080You know, the left response to this has to be internationalism. That's what the left is supposed to believe, which is the antithesis of any kind of exclusionary nationalism, whether it's calling itself America first or Christian nationalism, but especially American nationalism because of the blood on the hands of U.S. foreign policy.0.53
00:57:09.060And, you know, I was just explaining like one of Tucker Carlson's big critiques of Israel
00:57:13.340is that it's like people who have like American Zionists who have dual loyalty to Israel.
00:57:19.040They're like sort of breaking apart the American nationalist project.0.67
00:57:24.420And I want to mention here where someone like Nick Fuentes takes that a step further, or at least is more explicit, is Nick Fuentes will say this is a Jewish problem because he believes that Jews represent a unique threat to American Christian nationalism because they have an ethno-religious obligation to Israel.0.53
00:57:45.360They, Nick, someone like Nick Fuentes believes that Jews, because they are Jews, are allegiant to Israel. Therefore, they are, if they're in the diaspora, if they're in the United States, they are undermining sort of the American nationalism that should exist totally and completely within the United States. And so he does that sort of sleight of hand where this is actually a Jewish problem.0.69
00:58:09.060The idea that neoconservatism and Israel has nothing to do with Jewishness, Jewish identity, the Jewish religion, because clearly the state of Israel and the neocons are deeply motivated by that ethnic identity and their allegiance to Israel proceeds from that.
00:58:27.780There's like a natural affinity that Jews have for Israel.
00:58:31.520And he will say that to someone like Tucker Carlson virtually unchallenged.
00:58:35.960I want to also mention, insofar as Tucker Carlson is tactically useful in the short term, I was talking with my Palestinian friend about this.
00:58:45.840And he mentioned, you know, like, the largest pro-Israel coalition in the United States is the Christian Zionist base.
00:58:54.500There are more Christian Zionists in the U.S. than there are Jews anywhere.
00:58:57.960And so, like, the one sprinkle of credit I can give to Tucker Carlson, again, only on a tactical level, is that he is probably breaking apart that coalition.0.99
00:59:11.120Yeah, and I think coming back to what we were talking about earlier, this could be good.
00:59:16.720Like, it just depends on whether there is a left that can take advantage of that splintering, right?
00:59:23.680It's very important to break apart that coalition.
00:59:25.980I mean, it's something else that he's done very well on the show. You know, some people want to argue that it's just anti-Semitic to even talk about this, is that there's an increasingly powerful block inside Israel that really wants to rebuild the Third Temple, where Al-Aqsa is.
00:59:45.540And he had, as I said, Avram Berg, former Speaker of the House, on the show talking about how powerful this bloc is, you know, represented by Ben-Gavir and Smotrich.
00:59:57.340Sort of like the greater Israel people?
01:00:05.180This is where Christian Zionism and Jewish Messianic Zionism come together in their own strategic alliance, right?0.91
01:00:13.160Because in the Christian version of this story, you need all the Jews to go back to Israel to occupy the biblical lands that was promised by God to Abraham in the covenant.
01:00:26.840And this is what Tucker Carlson was talking about with Ted Cruz, right?
01:00:29.840This is all part of breaking apart this story.
01:00:32.640So you sub in the promise to Abraham, and then you say, well, that's a promise to the Israelites.0.72
01:00:38.300And then you say, that's a promise to modern day Israel.
01:00:42.580Once we start getting into the Bible of it all, I like have such a hard time.0.91
01:01:15.020Do you know a little bit about this?0.73
01:01:16.120I know a little bit about like, did Christian Zionists want the Jews to go to Israel so that like they can be saved and all the Jews can like burn in hell or something?0.61
01:02:03.640The other group thinks it's happening for the first time.
01:02:05.700but they are agreeing to collaborate on the basics and they are deferring the big question about who
01:02:12.080burns in hell um until later okay so that's the alliance and and and it's an incredibly damaging
01:02:18.620alliance and this group is not the dominant group in israel but they don't have to be dominant in
01:02:23.640order to do some very very destructive things you know october 7th the name of the operation
01:02:28.920was was operation al-Aqsa flood and the reason why it was named that is because there had been so
01:02:36.580so many aggressive incursions onto al-Aqsa and so many things had happened to try to
01:02:43.440bring them closer to the fulfilling of this prophecy then we get into things like red0.99
01:02:47.720heifers importing them from Texas to the United to Israel it's very this is what I'm saying like0.99
01:02:53.620my brain has deteriorated I was literally about to say your your poor brain oh my0.98
01:02:58.900Okay, but the thing is, it's like, you know, I have a line in Doppelganger, quoting Philip Roth, saying it's too ridiculous to take seriously and too serious to be ridiculous. And I feel like that is the slogan of our age, because it is it is so ridiculous that you want to ignore it. But it's too serious to be ridiculous, because there are people with power who used to be quite marginal. Now, you know, they have positions in the Israeli government that put them in charge of the whole police, like Ben Kavir.0.99
01:03:26.280this is why it matters that he that that Carlson will interview Mike Huckabee who is the ambassador0.76
01:03:33.260U.S. ambassador to Israel who says I basically agree with this story and he's a Christian Zionist0.59
01:03:38.620so it is important to break apart this coalition it is an incredibly damaging and dangerous coalition0.88
01:03:45.220between U.S. evangelicals and messianic Zionists and settlers there's a whole industry that brings
01:03:54.000people from their megachurches in the United States to go walk in Jesus's footsteps and go to
01:04:00.220illegal settlements, develop relationships, volunteer, give money. It's a huge industry.
01:04:05.980And it does matter that people are trying to break it apart. They're breaking it apart so
01:04:11.180that everybody can have their own fortress ethno-nationalist states and they can do their0.53
01:04:15.860own ethnic cleansing in the United States. So we should not lose sight of that. But if there was
01:04:22.220a functional organized strategic left in this country they would use this opportunity we would
01:04:29.080use this opportunity to say okay we actually want to build a different kind of world rooted in
01:04:36.460universal rights and international law and solidarity and things like universal health
01:04:44.200care and a higher minimum wage and things that are going to make people's lives and abolish
01:04:48.200billionaires i mean there's a lot of things that we know we need to do um and this is can we talk
01:04:53.920about aoc for a minute yeah yes yes yes do it do it all right you you you set it up the way you
01:05:00.820want to do it i know i went on for a long time and i got to the red heifers which i shouldn't have
01:05:05.920you know but look there are people who go on podcasts shaking little bits of ash of burned
01:05:11.120red cows in america you know huge podcasts with millions of listeners next time we do this you
01:05:18.180have to tell me which like religious props to bring because i've started doing props you have
01:05:22.280to bring a dime bag of ashes later you'll explain to me why okay i'd like to take a quick break from
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01:06:53.960slash fruity. Thank you so much to Blueland as always for sponsoring this show. And now
01:07:00.020let's get back to the episode. In preparing for this episode, Naomi was like, I really want to
01:07:05.900talk about the AOC Marjorie Taylor Greene beef. And so here it is. This is the AOC MTG interlude.
01:07:13.220AOC was recently speaking at an event where she was asked about working across the aisle with
01:07:19.340political adversaries where she said this. I care about results. Now there are certain places
01:07:25.240where certain areas where I don't think that we should ignore some folks record on some of these
01:07:33.620issues right it's about where we we trust intent where we trust where those outcomes are going
01:07:38.960i personally do not trust someone like marjorie taylor green a proven bigot and anti-semite
01:07:47.300on the issues of what is good for gazans and israelis i know i don't think that it benefits
01:07:55.800our movement in that instance to align the left with white nationalists i don't think it's
01:08:03.420serves us. And so I think it's about looking at the context, the place, the results, the outcomes,
01:08:11.160intentions, and where we think that train would go. Now, this comment and the discourse that ensued
01:08:17.660will keep the lights on at Blue Sky for some time. Marjorie Taylor Greene is, if you're out
01:08:24.000of the loop, someone who was elected to the House of Representatives in 2021 as sort of a Trump
01:08:28.580sycophant and perhaps his strongest soldier and over the last year became vocally disillusioned
01:08:35.740with Trump's cover-up of the Epstein files and unwavering support for Israel, which she repeatedly
01:08:41.160called MIGA or Make Israel Great Again. That's kind of their anti-MAGA slur. Wow, I didn't know that.
01:08:47.780Yeah, MIGA. She was like, that's MIGA, not MAGA. Marjorie Taylor Greene resigned from
01:08:53.840government in january after trump began lashing out at her saying that she didn't want to make0.88
01:09:00.420her family endure the abuse this led to a lot of hot takes and naomi klein let's hear yours
01:09:07.500just kidding it doesn't have to be a hot take it doesn't have to be a take yeah yeah yeah i mean
01:09:12.220i don't particularly want to weigh in on the whether or not to trust marjorie taylor green
01:09:17.520or not you know i think i've said before she's been on a journey i don't know her i don't know
01:09:22.200exactly what she believes it's also just like a moot point in my opinion because it's like she's
01:09:25.700not in the government anymore but sorry continue yeah and i think she wanted to run for the senate
01:09:31.240in georgia i you know i don't know but i do do know that unlike some of the people we've been
01:09:36.320talking about she does talk about the corruption within the trump administration like that just
01:09:42.720the unbelievable level of self-enrichment and donors and so on um she occasionally gets it
01:09:48.240Right. No, I think the thing that really bothered me about the reaction was all were all these people saying, like, Marjorie Taylor Greene is so much more courageous than AOC.
01:09:59.180And yeah, and she sacrificed her whole political career for her beliefs.
01:10:04.240Yeah. Sorry, I don't mean to cut you off. I'm with you. I'm with you.
01:10:09.140That was the lion, right? Like Marjorie Taylor Greene sacrificed her political career to, like, stand up for what she thought was right.
01:10:17.180I just want to say Marjorie Taylor Greene did not sacrifice her political career. She quit
01:10:24.140as soon as her views shifted and she would have had any leverage to actually0.99
01:10:28.560enact change according to her new views. Yeah. And I think it's politically smart within
01:10:34.480MAGA to see that the sort of Trump train is crashing and there's going to be another wave
01:10:38.980and we'll see what she does. Right. But being able to be like I was one of the courageous ones,
01:10:43.760you know, if you're running in kind of a purple state is not a bad thing to be. So we'll see.
01:10:49.620No, I think what bothered me about it is, even though I think that AOC has made some big mistakes
01:10:55.180on Israel, you know, everybody was quoting the convention speech and the working tirelessly
01:11:01.000for a ceasefire was bad. Yeah, she carried water for Kamala's
01:11:05.780line about like, we're working tirelessly for a ceasefire.
01:11:09.020In Kamala Harris, we have a chance to elect a president who is for the middle class because she is from the middle class and she is working tirelessly to secure a ceasefire in Gaza.
01:14:49.620Far from being lambs led to the slaughter,
01:14:52.620Israel's soldiers have fought back with incredible courage.
01:14:56.740Reiterating this idea of blaming the victims.
01:14:59.220And the story that Molly tells in the book is really that it was a failure of solidarity on every level.
01:15:06.680It was a failure of, you know, multiracial movements to stick together.0.75
01:15:11.740And also failures of solidarities in the United States and Canada and all the countries that shut their doors to Jews so that Palestine seemed to be the only safe place. Right.0.62
01:15:24.220But the story of we were weak, now we are strong is part of what justified alliances, Zionist alliances with anti-Semitic fascists in the interest of the Israeli state.
01:15:38.000so this story i mean i was saying before this is an old story of like when solidarity fails
01:15:43.740you find your bully right i mean you even think about it in a kind of schoolyard context how do
01:15:48.860you protect yourself when you're vulnerable you find your your tough guy you know and so it really
01:15:54.540is solidarity multiracial democracy we're all you know we all keep each other safe or a world
01:16:02.260of warring ethnostates where everybody finds their fascists, finds their bully. These are
01:16:08.320the choices ahead of us or with us now in this moment. It's not ahead. It's now.
01:16:14.480I also, with respect to Marjorie Taylor Greene, just want to point out that it's not even really
01:16:21.580a transformation. Marjorie Taylor Greene isn't necessarily a groyper. I think she would probably
01:16:27.400say she's like too old for that. But she's griper adjacent in her politics and even in her1.00
01:16:33.300opposition to Israel. I mean, she she's a little better than some of the others. She does seem to
01:16:38.180have a genuine humanitarian concern for the genocide on Gaza. She's, you know, and the fact
01:16:43.280that the liberal establishment has left, as you said, the lane wide open for her to be the person
01:16:49.240talking about that on CNN is insane, horrifying. But she's still extremely anti-immigrant.
01:16:56.880she's still anti-vaccine. I think she's on Twitter right now recommending like ivermectin for the
01:17:02.560hantavirus. She is very anti-abortion, very anti-trans. In her resignation letter, she was
01:17:10.020like, I joined this to get the men out of women's sports. You know, it's like she's also very proud
01:17:15.380of her work with Doge and says that, you know, that things started to go bad when they didn't
01:17:19.800go far enough with Doge. So I think we're sensing a pattern among these people that it's like
01:17:24.960these beliefs that have the aesthetic of some sort of thing that looks like some of what we
01:17:31.480practice on the left are not. And, uh, you know, as recently as last summer, when Zoran won the
01:17:37.040primary, Marjorie Taylor Greene posted, did you see this? She posted an AI generated image
01:17:43.200of the statue of Liberty covered in like a burqa. Yeah. I think you're right. What you said before1.00
01:17:51.020that why are we talking about her? She's not in politics right now. She's now an influencer.1.00
01:17:57.400We can't read her mind. You know, she said some good stuff. She said some absolutely
01:18:01.400atrocious stuff. Why would we speculate about whether she's really changed or not changed?
01:18:07.340It's a waste of time. One thing that I think is clear is that there's going to be something after
01:18:12.660Trump. There are going to be people who are going to try to fill this vacuum. And they're going to
01:18:18.640try to fill it by saying, we are not going to do the things that hurt you that Donald Trump did,
01:18:25.660right? Because that's just smart politics. So it will be a kind of an anti Epstein class,
01:18:32.480post MAGA MAGA. And I think that we can anticipate that they will be talking much more
01:18:39.920specifically about being anti corruption, because there has been so much corruption in this
01:18:45.000administration um is absolutely unprecedented the the looting that's going on so they will have to
01:18:51.780be claimed to be anti-corruption and i think that the other thing that's really struck you know
01:18:57.140astra and i as we've been doing this research about what makes this fascism different than
01:19:01.840it's like a passover question why is this fascism different than other fascisms and one of the
01:19:07.120things is that it has not offered really anything but vicarious cruelty to its base right
01:19:14.400and not to get nostalgic for Mussolini but that's the part they'll clip
01:19:21.380no look there's no there there is no nostalgia for 20th century fascism but it was a kind of
01:19:31.700a Fordist fascism that had an offer to its base if you were part of the in-group you got material
01:19:38.520benefits right it wasn't all memes you got like a nice home that they stole from the Jews or the0.54
01:19:44.060Slavs, right? You got social programs, you got big public works, whether we're talking about0.99
01:19:49.820Franco, Mussolini, or Hitler. I mean, look at even what Israel, by their land theft, has given0.95
01:19:55.100Israelis. And that's what Tucker's mad about, right? That's what made me think about it, right?
01:19:59.680It made me realize that I think that the next stage of this will make more serious social
01:20:04.580welfare offers, right? And that will be called a bipartisan coalition, because we'll all agree,
01:20:11.680right it'll seem like we can agree we agree that Israel is a genocidal state and we also agree that0.91
01:20:17.760people should have health care social security and it's going to be really important to understand0.97
01:20:22.460this history that that is not the coalition that we need to make what we need is actually to have
01:20:28.740a genuine left offer that doesn't throw anyone out and that's what what Mamdani has showed
01:20:35.520can work you know in the context of a city and it can also work in the context of a country
01:20:40.360That's where Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes are headed.
01:20:45.260And we should be ready for it because people are going to try to tell us it's progressive and it's not.
01:20:54.900I just want to really make light of something that we've mentioned, which is the way that like liberal Zionist institutions have paved the way for Tucker's rise and Nick Fuentes' rise and Marjorie Taylor Greene to look like a reasonable person.
01:21:10.020And I think nothing represents that better than this viral clip from an interview that Tucker did with the editor-in-chief of The Economist, wherein she asks him the following.
01:21:23.420You are critical of the government of Israel. Do you believe in Israel's right to exist? Would you consider yourself a Zionist in that narrow definition?
01:21:31.740What does that mean, a right to exist?
01:21:33.500The existence of the political state of Israel as it has existed.
01:21:36.900But it has a right. What does that mean?
01:21:37.900But you think it should continue in its existence as a state right now.
01:21:41.980So you do not agree with Iran, for example.
01:21:45.200Let me just ask, since you asked me the question, it's fair for me to get you to define the term so I can answer it.
01:23:55.620And he said that's what Western civilization stands for.
01:23:59.660That was one of the things that stood out to me, that Western civilization stands for that. I mean, I'm not so sure it does. Like, I'm not so sure that that's what the history of Western civilization shows us, because genocide has been committed in the name of Western civilization many times.
01:24:18.420And what he's actually describing is universal human rights and international law. And I would like to ask Tucker Carlson if he believes they have a right to exist.
01:24:29.660Yeah. I want to ask him if he thinks the UN has a right to exist. You know, the Genocide Convention is a product of that post-Second World War II infrastructure that was a response to genocide committed in the name of Western civilization, in the name of Western values against pollutants.
01:24:49.940And so, yeah, he can run laps around her and everybody can be thrilled with it. But I liked Momdani's answer to that question better when he said, I believe in international law and every state should abide by it. And if they abide by it, then they should exist, which was a better way of getting around that gotcha question. And there's lots of different ways, but I think people are so sick and tired of it that anytime anyone stands up to it, it's going to go viral. And, you know, that's what happens.0.53
01:25:18.980Yeah, and I don't say that he's running laps around her to, like, do some crazy Tucker Carlson praise. I think it's very easy, like you said, to just get around this question with, like, a normal answer of, like, I believe in international law.
01:25:32.180States don't have rights. There's lots of ways to get around it.
01:25:36.200Yes, Francesca Albanese has also done an incredible answer to this. So has Ta-Nehisi Coates, ones that are based in human rights frameworks. But what kills me, what drives me crazy as someone on the left is that the dishonesty of these institutions that are like sort of like Zionist first because they are whatever, allegiant to these systems and capital and all of that other stuff.
01:26:04.820They have left the lane wide open for these people to swoop in and look like the rational
01:26:10.620ones in the situation when, as we've described over this episode, they are leading people
01:26:16.640You know, if you look at what someone like McFuentes believes, which as I've explained
01:26:20.480is that like Jews are Israel, Jews' support for Israel is downstream of their ethnicity.0.84
01:26:26.360It is inherent and it is therefore a danger to the American nationalism because they have0.92
01:26:31.680loyalty, whatever, whatever, whatever. When he says that this is a Jewish issue and that Zionism
01:26:38.840is a Jewish issue, he's speaking the same language as all of these sort of like ardent, staunch
01:26:47.180Zionist defenders at these institutions. Zionists like those at the ADL, Jonathan Greenblatt,
01:26:53.660who I've covered on this podcast, or at the New York Times, or Jake Tapper and Dana Bash at CNN,
01:26:59.340who I would argue have done more than almost anyone to assist the rise of figures like Fuentes,
01:27:06.120Tucker, Candace, and the like by insisting on these falsehoods and these conflations and their
01:27:11.980sort of undemocratic attempts to silence any dissent, especially within liberal circles.
01:27:17.380And like, this is what drives me crazy is I feel like these people have made the rise of a Fuentes
01:27:21.980or a Tucker inevitable, you know? I think they have. I think this has been a group project.
01:27:27.040And, you know, we like we are more than two and a half years into a genocide that coalitions of the left have failed to stop.
01:27:39.880And I think we are now in a moment where people are looking around going, are there other alliances we can make that might be?
01:27:49.840And I think from the beginning, there have been people who have had that perspective, that it's really about just finding strength.
01:27:57.040And like I said, Israel itself is a product of that kind of thinking, right? And this is what Molly gets at in her book so well, that the Zionists and the Bundes were at war because they had radically different visions of safety, right?
01:28:13.140The Bundesidee of safety was the safety and solidarity and transforming the world wherever we live in multiracial alliance with other working people, with other working class people.
01:28:28.700And the Zionist vision was a fortress vision in alliance with powerful imperial actors.
01:28:37.980So, yeah, we've been brought to a really bleak place. I think that we need to double down in our work as anti-Zionist Jews, and that work is disentangling Judaism from Zionism, because that fusion of faith and nationalism is incredibly dangerous.0.80
01:28:59.160It's also dangerous in the United States, which is what Tucker Carlson is doing.0.70
01:29:03.740It's a fusion of Christianity and American-ness, nuclear-powered, you know, by any means necessary.
01:29:11.800So, there are alliances to be made with people of faith who are Christian, who are trying to disentangle their faith from what J.D. Vance is trying to do with it, right?0.72
01:29:23.480I think the Pope is trying to do it, you know?
01:29:26.520i think there's i think there are interesting alliances that we should be making that some of
01:29:31.060them are are tricky and unexpected like i don't think we should be just looking for people who
01:29:35.200agree with us on everything yeah but i don't think we should be making alliance like i don't think
01:29:39.960we should be trying to take on one form of supremacist ethno-nationalism by making alliances
01:29:46.280with people who believe in another one because i don't think that's going to end well but you're
01:29:50.300absolutely right to point out that we would not be here if that vacuum wasn't created by the
01:29:56.940Democrats, if Zionism hadn't fused Judaism with an ethnostate. And then people like Nick Fuentes
01:30:06.740and Tucker Carlson say, well, you're the ones who said, you know, you're the ones who said Judaism
01:30:11.540is Israel. So we have a lot of work to do. And I think what worries me is that, you know, when
01:30:18.060people make alliances with anti-Semites, you know, I worry that people who have been, you know,
01:30:25.120part of the anti-Zionist Jewish organizing world will sort of start to turn away. And
01:30:32.040I think that that would be a mistake because I think that there are lots of people who are
01:30:37.040trying to do politics differently. And like Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, the campaign he's
01:30:43.200building. I think there are a lot of candidates who are trying to forge another kind of politics.
01:30:48.840I think we should, you know, get out there and support them. It's not all bleak. It's not all
01:30:53.580bleak. It's not all bleak. And, you know, just to conclude, a lot of people do ask me there,
01:30:59.920you know, because the adage has always gone in these like mainstream Jewish institutions like
01:31:05.440the ADL, where they're like, the best way that you can, you know, stand up against anti-Semitism
01:31:11.720is like be louder about your support for Israel and like wear like more necklaces about it or
01:31:17.380whatever. But I think like I would really just like to argue again that like the best thing that
01:31:24.600in my opinion you can do to fight anti-Semitism is continue to fight this conflation. Because
01:31:30.240this conflation that people like again like Dana Bash continue to insist on every night on CNN
01:31:37.320is the same conflation that Nick Fuentes is making
01:31:41.420when he's sitting down with Tucker Carlson.
01:31:43.540And it is that conflation that they are then using
01:31:47.360to justify what could be an extraordinarily anti-Semitic future
01:31:55.020That's like the most coherent I think I've ever felt in my entire life.
01:32:00.100It was really good. It was really good.
01:32:02.940No, I mean, you know, I was just thinking,
01:32:04.600I was just thinking about how to say this0.69
01:32:05.880because it's so fucking complicated.0.90
01:32:07.320But thinking about the 1930s in the United States, you know, fascism was rising and figures like the ones we've been talking to America first ism was rising.0.96
01:32:18.360And it was, you know, a moment when the U.S. could have gone could have gone fascist itself. Right.0.59
01:32:24.980And the U.S. has gone fascist itself. Right. I mean, it's like this thing of could it happen here? It did happen.
01:32:31.220I mean, the Nazis learned, studied the Jim Crow laws to write the Nuremberg laws.0.66
01:32:37.380They didn't invent fascism, even if they gave it a proper name.