00:05:44.240this is the most amount of minutes i've ever gone without getting into my uh official intro here we
00:05:50.680go this podcast is nothing if not a way to explore political issues through stories about celebrities0.91
00:05:58.640i think it's a slightly more fun and lightweight way to talk about things that suck and as a gay
00:06:05.600guy you know today i want to talk about liberal zionism which is and we'll give it a more
00:06:11.240comprehensive definition later, the belief that your politics can be fundamentally liberal
00:06:16.620and that you can support Israel as a Jewish ethno-state. Liberal Zionists might say things
00:06:23.540like, I support Israel, but I hate Netanyahu. Or Israel is the only place in the Middle East where
00:06:30.460you can have gay rights or women's rights, or you can fill in the blank with that one. Or,
00:06:35.300and this is what I hear a lot, what Israel is doing is terrible. The humanitarian crisis must
00:06:42.020end. But this is ultimately, of course, the fault of Hamas, and we can't just abandon our ally0.99
00:06:47.920Israel. Liberal Zionism is the style of Zionism adopted by the majority of the U.S. Democratic0.71
00:06:54.780Party. Consider the line Kamala Harris repeated incessantly during her 2024 campaign.
00:07:00.780Let me be clear. I will always stand up for Israel's right to defend itself. And I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself. At the same time, what has happened in Gaza is devastating. So many innocent lives lost. The scale of suffering is heartbreaking. Lots of passivity in that in that statement that she repeated over and over again, despite trying to lead the country.
00:07:25.060Liberal Zionism is the attempt to reconcile humane beliefs with what I think are inhumane ones.0.70
00:07:32.340It's contradictory, and the many, many millions of people who identify as liberal Zionists, including celebrities like Amy Schumer and Mayim Bialik and Jerry Seinfeld and Gal Gadot and Jamie Lee Curtis, have been tying themselves into knots to hold on to that identity as Israel's genocide worsens.0.54
00:07:52.560How can one continue to be a liberal and support something so illiberal?0.53
00:08:00.160Nobody better represents the impossibility of a liberal Zionist more than Deborah Messing,0.90
00:08:07.020the TV actor known for playing Grace in the early 2000s show Will and Grace,0.96
00:08:13.400and who has more recently starred in Not a Lot, Not a Lot.
00:08:18.140Once a beloved figure in the gay community who famously feuded with Donald Trump on Twitter,
00:08:24.460Debra has more recently become one of Israel's most vocal supporters,
00:08:28.640posting upwards of 50 Instagram stories a day.
00:08:32.260And like I said, I have been watching them all for months.
00:08:35.600And the rest of her politics have taken a pretty shocking turn from that, you know, liberal celebrity she once was.
00:08:42.800Today, we're going to talk about why maybe it's actually not that shocking that Debra Messing has become, among other things, sympathetic to Trump or to Benjamin Netanyahu, and why liberal Zionists are finding it hard to stay, well, liberal.
00:09:00.160To do that, I am so excited to be joined by two people who have taught me so much about
00:09:05.900this topic and who I think are so smart, Emma Vigeland from The Majority Report and Matt
00:09:19.640I love being invited to the liberal Zionist episodes because that is my lane.0.94
00:09:24.320They are my favorite type of Zionist because they are the most fake.0.99
00:09:29.180I will say that I'm excited for this episode because the conversations I've had with liberal Zionists have been among the most frustrating because it feels like this like Sisyphean, if I'm saying that correctly, exercise where you have to be very careful.0.99
00:09:47.440You've got to handhold a lot. You've got to speak about things in a very particular context, but you push that boulder up the hill. And as soon as you get up there, it's like, but Hamas, and then it falls all the way down. You've got to keep going back.0.95
00:10:01.420And there's very little historical examination of the apartheid, of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, of 1948, of the occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank and the rolling one state reality that Palestinians have been living under as second class citizens for our entire lifetimes and double that.0.89
00:10:22.180And it all starts for liberal Zionists on October 7th. And apparently, October 7th takes an outsized role in even that shortened time frame.0.60
00:10:32.720We're going to get into all of this in greater depth. And if you have no idea what we're talking about right now with liberal Zionism, you know, Deborah Messing's Instagram activity, we're going to make it all very clear. And my goal is for you to walk away from this understanding what our position on, quote unquote, liberal Zionism is and why it's an untenable position to maintain as displayed very well by Deborah Messing.
00:10:58.920But I think in my heart of hearts, I really just want to make this episode because there
00:11:03.120are so many people, like I said, like I grew up with in a Jewish community, a mostly liberal
00:11:08.800Jewish community who they're not, you know, Trump type Zionist.
00:11:13.980They're not, you know, cheering on we got to build waterfront property on Gaza.
00:11:24.620But it's like, there's not a lot of daylight between the actual policies they support and the ones that someone like Donald Trump is proposing and Bibi Netanyahu is proposing. And also, on a very personal level, I've watched a lot of those supposed liberal Zionists do what Deborah Messing has done, which is just slide to the right.
00:11:44.960You know, like the amount of people I went to Hebrew school with who were like going to like pride five years ago and whatever else. And now they're liking the White House posts about, you know, flattening Gaza on Instagram. It's it's so jarring. And it really does feel like a break from like childhood reality, which, Matt, I don't know if you can relate to that.
00:12:03.920Oh, 100%. I mean, that to me is when we talk about gaslighting and the feeling of, I guess, mass hysteria, you know, during this time, a big portion of that is people I know personally who have abandoned every moral that they had made a firm part of their identity in order to support a genocide.
00:12:28.620and and just how that contrast between having beliefs and abandoning them is just so uh it's
00:12:36.460so apparent that it makes you feel like you know what is this is this a bit like how can you go
00:12:42.380from being someone who you know made your whole thing uh white allyship during black lives matter0.67
00:12:48.940to i as a jewish person in america am at more risk if you think about it than any black person
00:12:56.700has ever been historically. Like, I've heard people make that argument. And these are people
00:13:02.180who at one point I considered to be thoughtful, intelligent people. So yeah, no, I feel you,
00:13:08.600man. I know a lot of people who to this day are just, their mind is melted from Zionism.
00:13:15.980And I think it exposes the inherent contradiction of liberal Zionism, which I know we'll be talking
00:13:23.020about more in depth. But the idea that liberal Zionists can, in a domestic context here, say,
00:13:29.700vote Democrat and speak about things like multiculturalism. And yet within the context0.62
00:13:34.360of Israel, they support an ethno-state maintained by dominance and by force and now by genocide.0.64
00:13:42.740And in my view, I believe in multiculturalism as an ethic, not just as an ethic in terms of
00:13:48.980what's right, and we shouldn't have segregation or apartheid, but because it engenders understanding.
00:13:55.560And in part, the reason that we're here and the Israeli population is so deeply radicalized
00:14:01.440and brainwashed, let's not be Pollyannish about what's actually being said, even within supposed0.95
00:14:07.620liberal Israeli circles within Israel, it's because they are segregated from Palestinians.
00:14:14.420And you can hear about ex-Zionists speaking about their experience. Oh, I went to the West Bank or I interacted with this Palestinian person. And that's what begins to shatter it for them.
00:14:27.000And that's why the Israeli government relies so heavily on capitalizing on anti-Semitism, I would argue fomenting it, and creating this notion that the only place that's safe for Jews to go is the racially segregated ethnostate that is a glorified aircraft carrier for the United States and our intelligence outposts in the Middle East.
00:14:54.540We're going to ping pong a little bit back and forth between Debra Messing and Israel, which as I say that, I realize like how jarring this outline that I've created is. But nonetheless, shall we ping pong back to Debra?
00:15:08.420I want to give a little bit of biographical info on Debra Messing so that I can really establish her to the listener as like this bastion of like liberal Hollywood type so that from there we can establish where she goes as she follows sort of this trail of Zionist breadcrumbs to a completely different place.
00:15:29.160so deborah messing is born in brooklyn to jewish parents and long story short again because
00:15:36.780specifics of her biography are not super relevant here she breaks into the acting scene in the 90s
00:15:41.940and she has some smaller roles she eventually stars in the fox sitcom ned and stacy which
00:15:48.680was canceled after two seasons and then after that stars as grace on the tv show will and grace
00:15:56.320i want to ask do either of you have like parasocial relationships with deborah messing
00:16:00.900as a celebrity because like i was a little bit too young to appreciate her at her peak like i
00:16:07.260was born when will and grace started oh that's right you're really you're really young in fact
00:16:12.780both of you guys are really young um i'm 40 so i uh knew deborah messing only from will and grace
00:16:21.380that is that's how I knew her I did I had no interest in her I mean the sitcom itself was
00:16:26.880not something that I watched I was more of a Drew Carey show fan never never watch Will and Grace
00:16:32.780but I knew about her as a supporter of the LGBTQ community and for my money that's really all I0.90
00:16:39.820cared about so I had a positive view of her until finding out that she is a rabid anti-Palestinian
00:16:46.460racist but deborah messing and i were once in the same room i love the plot thickens okay all right
00:16:54.180it does it does thicken a little bit i mean when i was in high school and then into college i was
00:17:00.200an avid practitioner of photography and when i was 18 when i was a senior in high school i was
00:17:06.800invited to the glad media awards in new york city and i grew up in new jersey so i could just take
00:17:12.800the train in and i was invited not because i was like doing any sort of like lgbt work at the time
00:17:17.040i was a high school student but i was invited as a photographer and i photographed deborah messing
00:17:23.440on that red carpet because she was there being honored for like her like lifetime of allyship
00:17:30.180to the lgbtq community deborah messing i mean she really did become a gay icon because will and grace
00:17:39.280was one of the only mainstream representations of LGBT characters on cable TV at the time.
00:17:46.820I think it's important to note that that isn't necessarily because the representation on Will
00:17:52.060and Grace was like good or complex or even kind. It was criticized a lot for its stereotypical
00:18:00.100portrayals of gay men, but it was one of the only portrayals. And just to contextualize that a
00:18:05.520little more, Ellen came out on her sitcom in April of 1997, which famously led to like so much0.99
00:18:12.260backlash against her. Her show was canceled and she was essentially blacklisted from Hollywood1.00
00:18:16.360for a number of years. Will & Grace aired one year after Ellen came out. So it was like really just
00:18:24.340sort of a right place at the right time situation to be like positioned as a gay icon. And in the
00:18:30.900show her character like she plays the gay guy's best friend so sort of from that she becomes
00:18:36.700an lgbt figure uh so much so that like have you guys ever seen her segments with billy eichner0.72
00:18:43.620yes i have seen those billy on the street yeah yeah yeah it's deborah messing uh you gays it's0.64
00:18:51.220deborah messing you gays yeah yeah see this is where my like kind of very online nature developing0.73
00:18:58.000in high school and slash college comes into to focus she was so beloved especially among gay men
00:19:05.680that billy eichner he had a recurring segment where he ran around with deborah messing and he
00:19:12.380would just like anyone he thought looked gay he'd be like it's deborah messing you gays and he would0.98
00:19:17.160film them being like oh holy shit it's deborah messing like are you ready deborah let's do it1.00
00:19:22.120Let's go. Miss, it's Debra Messing, you gay.1.00
00:19:52.120Yeah, I think that that era of like cultural openness kind of in the late Obama era, even leading into the resistance of Donald Trump in his first term, we are not there anymore. We are not there. We had problems then. We got some bigger problems now.
00:20:11.320Yeah. And that actually leads me into just like a point that I wanted to make here, which was like, do you guys think that there's something to be said for the way people attach like the label of liberal or progressive to people in Hollywood?
00:20:25.240I think oftentimes maybe because they came up during those Obama years where it was just like
00:20:29.880you were seen as liberal by default if you were a public figure. And then also, I think when it
00:20:34.780comes to people in entertainment, like because of their proximity to queer people working in that
00:20:40.300industry, like Kristen Chenoweth comes to mind, who recently said that her heart broke for Charlie
00:20:46.360Kirk, who she said she, quote, appreciated some perspectives of. No. Oh, you didn't know about
00:20:52.840this i know this broke my heart i love wicked and me too that woman can sing like nobody's business0.99
00:21:00.600that is uh every day it's a new one every day another fallen hero that sucks
00:21:07.620selma blair um also commented on like a charlie kirk tribute she said this incredible man who0.72
00:21:14.920would go into the cauldron of indoctrination and use logic to have dialogue i am sick for
00:21:19.840his family. I'm sick for all of us. The culture. Kristen Chenoweth responded to her and said what
00:21:24.680you said, Selma. I mean, I think that Hollywood is always positioned itself as or it's positioned
00:21:32.280its narrative as being on the forefront of things like civil rights, just progress in general. So
00:21:38.500because of that, everything that comes out of Hollywood is looked at countrywide through the
00:21:44.000lens of like liberal politics, you know, whether it's integrating films, you know, or giving
00:21:50.680awards to black actresses, you know, early, early on, at least Hattie McDaniel won the first
00:21:57.180Academy Award that a black woman had ever won. And that was early, you know, Hollywood likes to
00:22:03.700tout itself as liberal. And so everyone kind of gets painted as a Hollywood liberal, quote,
00:22:09.020unquote. And we, of course, know anyone who lives, I live in LA and grew up here. We know a lot of
00:22:17.120liberals. And liberal doesn't mean the same thing to me, that it does to the rest of the country.
00:22:24.360To me, I know a lot of liberal racists. And that, that is something that, you know, is supposed to
00:22:31.720be in conflict, but it's actually it's actually not. It's it just means that you you have some
00:22:38.460tolerance and you position yourself publicly as one thing. But behind closed doors, you're another
00:22:44.520thing. Right. And I would, you know, build off of that and say that there is an increasing
00:22:50.320contradiction as we're in levels of untold income and wealth inequality that rival the Gilded Age
00:22:58.560and that we're as a country helping our what functions as our colony commit genocide
00:23:03.120shout out to the gilded age by the way it's a great show and uh morgan specter morgan specter
00:23:09.540anti-zionist dsa member babe total total hottie but that was also a real period of history manna
00:23:17.320i know i'm teaching you things on this show today uh that's where we're at right now and liberalism
00:23:22.320is failing. And liberalism is the idea, right, that people can be whoever they want to be.
00:23:29.780But liberalism also applies to markets. So free market liberalism, neoliberalism,
00:23:36.000as it has been discussed. And that is inherently contradictory in this moment,
00:23:41.340where free markets have led us to a moment of fascism. And you see corporations capitulating
00:23:47.600to Donald Trump left and right. And so the people who are still liberals and not leftists are either
00:23:54.980kind of waiting around in some mild centrism that applies to nobody and is cancerous to the
00:24:02.960Democratic Party, but whatever. Or they're kind of flirting with the right wing at this moment,
00:24:08.920because there are some liberals, I would say, that have been radicalized. And even you see this with
00:24:12.960the Democratic Party base. They're changing their minds on this on this front. But the liberals that
00:24:17.820we're speaking about here, they're siding with Capitol. I want to talk a little bit about Debra
00:24:22.700Messing's feud with Donald Trump. First of all, it's important to note that Debra Messing's0.97
00:24:27.600relationship with Donald Trump starts back when she was on Will and Grace because Will and Grace
00:24:33.980aired on NBC back to back with The Apprentice, which made Debra Messing and Trump essentially
00:24:42.160colleagues. In the 2024 book Apprentice in Wonderland by Ramin Satuta, Trump is described
00:24:49.680as having an obsessive crush on Debra Messing, who was also friendly towards him and apparently
00:24:56.260thanked him for getting NBC's rating so high, thereby increasing the popularity of her own show.
00:25:01.920That's where his crush must have originated. A ratings-based compliment is all he ever wants.
00:25:07.300yeah that's right that's right this led trump to be extremely vindictive towards deborah when
00:25:14.080deborah came out against him during his 2016 presidential run famously this is not famously
00:25:20.200this is just famously to people who have been like googling deborah messing a lot over the
00:25:24.280last couple you can still keep saying famously i think it's funny it's like everybody knows
00:25:30.340the 34th instagram story that deborah messing posted last tuesday this is famous so there's a
00:25:36.140whole wikipedia entry about every single one of those instagram stories and i wrote all of the
00:25:41.580entries when trump held a beverly hills fundraiser for his 2016 run deborah called for a published
00:25:50.680list of every hollywood actor who attended so that they could be blacklisted this like really
00:25:56.180set trump off and we and and this makes sense to me i mean this even like comports with this
00:26:00.560narrative that he had a crush on her right because there's like kind of very few things that i think
00:26:05.720make him more angry than like and and this is for like frankly a lot of straight men sorry matt
00:26:10.940but uh you know like a woman that they fantasize about like wronging them in their eyes it makes
00:26:18.360men violent yeah i will say i've experienced that in my little corners of the internet i can't lie
00:26:25.060about that yeah well hashtag not all men obviously first and foremost matt lieb not on my get that
00:26:31.720bullshit off my podcast so you know between this feud which really like gets her going on social0.54
00:26:39.080media with all of you know her kind of anti-trump sentiment and the gay stuff etc etc deborah1.00
00:26:44.980messing really establishes herself as an outspoken capital l liberal celebrity she also early on way
00:26:54.320before october 7th albeit not nearly in the way that she does now she advocates for israel and so
00:27:01.600now I want to bounce back to liberal Zionism and I think I want to start explaining liberal
00:27:09.300Zionism by saying that like growing up in a Zionist synagogue in a Zionist community like
00:27:16.600I could have been described as a liberal Zionist. This episode very timely in fact is brought to you
00:27:25.180by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the FFRF.
00:29:35.000That's a perfect way of describing it. I think liberal Zionism, as someone who was also formerly a liberal Zionist in America, at least I can only speak for myself and, you know, all of all the Jews of the West.0.93
00:29:49.620But liberalism and sort of progressivism and beliefs.1.00
00:29:58.700Was something that a good portion of Jews in America are quote unquote liberal, meaning things like like, you know, being pro-civil rights again, you know, not just for people of color, but also for gay people.0.99
00:30:15.740Liberalism in general, being big in cities.0.58
00:30:18.760So Zionism was also a belief that a lot of us had, which is, you know, Israel, the state for the Jews being a net good thing.0.84
00:30:28.700The connectivity between liberal and Zionist happens basically because you need a reason to believe in something that is inherently wrong.0.87
00:30:41.040This is my feeling about it, but a liberal Zionist is essentially a shallow thinker when it comes to this one particular issue of Zionism.
00:30:53.520It's someone who only wants to know enough about what Zionism is in order to justify it in a liberal way.0.77
00:31:03.420So it's using liberalism to justify inherently illiberal things.0.69
00:31:09.340And I think that's why the conflict, that contrast is so apparent. A liberal Zionist is someone who believes in all of the same leftward-leaning schlock that anyone else believes in, whether it's representation, politics, identity, politics, again, civil rights.0.72
00:31:30.720But when it comes to Israel, there's an exceptionalism.0.91
00:31:34.560There's something exceptional about it.
00:31:37.220It's not just that people having liberty to be the person they are is a good thing,0.92
00:31:41.660but that it is an inherently superior thing to the way that other people live in the East.
00:31:47.300And so liberal Zionists often will point out the fact that in Israel, we have all of these liberal beliefs.
00:31:54.380And it's one thing to say, yes, these beliefs are good.
00:31:59.680It's another thing to say that these liberal beliefs supersede ethical or moral principles that you may believe in with any other case.0.69
00:32:12.820It is a belief in Israel as an ethno state, and it's a Jewish supremacist notion. And in explicitly American context, it's one that can fit into the idea that you should support the Democratic Party, where it's a notion of ethnic or religious supremacy that still can be reconciled with, you know, calls for civil rights here domestically.
00:32:38.540And that contradiction is falling apart right now before our eyes.0.64
00:32:43.540I genuinely, I genuinely struggle to understand liberal Zionism because it's like, again,
00:32:50.100I think about like people I grew up around who are like, yeah, we hate Netanyahu.
00:32:54.000But Israel can function without the constant violence brought upon Palestinians by someone
00:35:06.740All pre-October 7th, yes. And it basically was the Warsaw Ghetto, and now it is an open-air
00:35:13.280concentration camp is what I would liken it to historically. And so that project and the
00:35:20.240attempt to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from the land and remove them from the Gaza Strip,
00:35:25.360which is on the water, it's beachfront property, as you'll hear from the Trump administration over
00:35:31.680and over again. It's important to Israel to try to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians so they1.00
00:35:37.320can take it. That would all be there without Benjamin Netanyahu. And the problem, as you0.78
00:35:42.060were both were saying is the concept of israel as an ethno state the concept of a state being
00:35:49.680defined by one's ethnicity or religion and what we talk about on my show and what leftists will say
00:35:57.600is that the only solution here is a one democratic state truly from the river to the sea where there
00:36:05.360is a united nations say commission that comes in oversees this so that it can reduce violence
00:36:11.620And there are truth and reconciliation committees about the participants in this genocide.
00:36:17.040And you bring Palestinians back and integrate them into Israel racially and ethnically so that they have full and equal rights and that they, too, have a right to return.
00:36:28.520That is a left wing, multicultural, truly even liberal vision of folks living amongst once another and learning from each other.
00:36:37.560And liberal Zionists don't believe in that.
00:36:39.540and that is where we talk about the contradiction who snaps i also think it's important to point out
00:36:46.660what exactly liberal zionists do believe in and it's actually there's a lot of different levels
00:36:53.300if you're talking about someone like deborah messing they might be i mean i think it's pretty
00:36:58.780clear that they are ideological zionists they're zionists first the liberal part is just um window
00:37:04.440dressing. For a lot of other liberal Zionists or people who I label liberal Zionists, I think0.61
00:37:12.000what that label to me means, at least for some of them, is they have a non-ideological and
00:37:18.900ignorance-based approach to talking about Israel and also dealing with it. It's like liberalism is
00:37:26.180almost therapeutic. For them, it's a deep need to still believe that they are on the right side
00:37:33.000And they are the good guys here. And I think some of them are doing whatever they can, whatever's possible in order to continue living in that ignorance.
00:37:45.080I think it's so interesting talking about the ways in which liberal versus like sort of openly right wing Zionists deal with the reality of like what has become of Zionism, which is obviously a genocide.
00:37:57.540When you look at the right, when you look at the MAGA movement, for example, you see them being like, yeah, we're going to flatten it. We're going to turn Gaza into a parking lot. We're going to build waterfront property. Whereas liberal Zionists will speak with a little bit of shame. Like, oh, you know, it's too much. There's too much human suffering. But also, this is what needs to be done.0.73
00:38:19.440like that's what i mean it's it you're so right it's window dressing and that's what i mean when
00:38:23.500i say like there's not a lot of daylight in the policy differences that both of these groups are
00:38:28.540pushing for which is why when you look at the democratic party which is made up almost entirely
00:38:33.160a liberal zionist and the republican party which is made up a right-wing zionist like there's no
00:38:37.880major anti-zionist party in the united states which is also i mean largely because they're
00:38:43.060all bought out by apac but you know that's another conversation maga zionists will say1.00
00:38:47.420they'll see the pictures of dead Palestinians, and they'll be like, fuck them. Whereas liberal1.00
00:38:52.440Zionists, democratic Zionists will see the pictures and say, oh, well, all casualties of war0.55
00:38:59.560are tragedies. It's a commitment to being sad publicly and doing nothing. And it's about a0.92
00:39:05.460hierarchy, too, of human life that is one of the more disturbing elements to me. And you see how
00:39:12.240so many folks in America are much more easily able to identify with Israelis who are closer in
00:39:21.820proximity to whiteness than to Palestinians who are portrayed as savages by our media. I mean,
00:39:31.100Islamophobia and what we have done to people's basic rights cracking down in this country in
00:39:38.780the wake of 9-11, the war on terror, what the Patriot Act meant, what the erosion of our privacy
00:39:44.060rights meant, what the militarization of our police meant, which was a lot of equipment that
00:39:49.660came back from Iraq and Afghanistan and resulted in increased brutality. It's all led to this exact
00:39:56.300moment that we're in right now. So it's really dark stuff. And I also do think it's important
00:40:01.560to point out that liberal Zionists within the United States are entirely disconnected from or
00:40:07.180at least are very much ignoring what liberal Israelis, so-called liberal Israelis, believe.
00:40:14.160There was a poll in Hebrew University of Jerusalem in June. I cite it all the time and I wanted to
00:40:19.160make sure I did on this show. 64% of Israelis agreed that there are, quote, no innocent people0.91
00:40:24.840in Gaza. That 64% agrees to a large extent. The poll published in Haaretz, they asked them to rate0.99
00:40:32.580their level of agreement. And they agreed to a large extent. 69% say that CNN and the BBC are
00:40:38.840biased in favor of the Palestinians. 50% of Israelis say Fox News is biased in favor of
00:40:46.140the Palestinians. Wow. I didn't know. I want people to sit with that for a second, because
00:40:52.740when we talk about how this has to come from the outside. That's why. That's why this is a
00:40:59.620population that has been entirely radicalized by decades and decades of racial and ethnic
00:41:05.660supremacy and apartheid and it's not going to come from within israel so netanyahu being gone
00:41:11.740not solving anything just look at those numbers i want to quote while we're here and then i promise
00:41:18.380we'll get back to deborah messing because i know you the listener have been missing her um
00:41:23.000man what have i become a podcaster yeah that's what you have become
00:41:32.540i want to quote ronnie barkan who calls himself an israeli dissident he's someone who
00:41:39.600is an activist and uh he he refused idf service among other things but here's what he said quote
00:41:46.560there is no israeli left and it has never existed the political map among the privileged class
00:41:52.780of Israeli Jews is divided along a psychological line of self-perception, which essentially
00:41:57.980includes only right-wing politics. While a so-called leftist discourse in Israel is usually
00:42:03.780perceived as revolving around liberal and humanistic values, no discussion exists concerning
00:42:09.620the deeply rooted supremacist character of the state, its inherent anti-democratic nature,
00:42:15.120nor the fate of those who have been disenfranchised, oppressed, subjugated, and terrorized for the
00:42:20.200past seven decades by Israel, the Palestinians. Israel is definitely not a democratic state,0.52
00:42:26.280but it is also not a Jewish state. Israel is only Jewish in the same way that South Africa was white.0.91
00:42:32.580It is not Jewish by religion, but only by supremacy. The so-called differences between0.91
00:42:37.700the left and right in Israel are not a result of differing values, but are tactical and cosmetic.
00:42:43.640For example, the way that the members of each group would like to portray themselves to the world.
00:42:48.140While the right-wingers unapologetically claim supremacy and dominance over the land, and, like most supremacists, care very little about their perception of the world, the so-called left creates and maintains a false narrative in order to maintain an illusion that Israel is a humane democracy.
00:43:06.040This is essential, both for outer appearances and self-perception.
00:43:10.280Absolutely. And if you listen to these protests that are happening in Tel Aviv and you'll hear someone who identifies as an Israeli leftist speaking, they want the war to end. They call it a war, obviously. And then you ask why? Well, they want the hostages back. OK, so a permanent ceasefire then. No, no, that's not the opinion of the Israeli left.
00:43:36.800the opinion is we get the hostages back. We trick Hamas basically into ceasefire terms. And then we
00:43:43.200go back in there and we do the final solution. Like because when we're talking about what's
00:43:47.400happening right now, I want to make this abundantly clear for the audience. You'll see these death
00:43:52.000numbers in the Western press. Those are only the people they've been able to verify. Those are only
00:43:58.920the people that have gone into the hospital and have been declared dead and have been identified.
00:44:03.300I have spoken to multiple doctors on my show, and I know Matt, I'm sure Alib has done similarly. If a whole house is bombed, what's the point if you have 20 dead family members in front of you of going to the hospital and having them officially declared?
00:44:18.460part of why israel is bulldozing the entire north is that they're ethnically cleansing it yes and0.90
00:44:23.760trying to create a quote buffer zone which just means taking the land but they are trying to
00:44:28.220destroy the evidence and we have hundreds and hundreds of thousands that are presumed dead
00:44:33.280right now but are not accounted for in the death toll and that is currently in my view
00:44:38.500upholding a lot of this liberal zionist hasborough bs that is manufacturing consent for the
00:44:46.500continuation of the genocide. Because if we saw these true death toll numbers, look, I don't have0.93
00:44:51.380too much faith in humanity anymore. I get it. But it is an absolute destruction of the entire
00:44:58.160population. And we are on our way there with the mass starvation as well. And if there's anyone
00:45:03.040listening or watching who hears some of this and thinks it's like a bit harsh and maybe
00:45:10.300question some of it just google gaza mass graves just do that and if you find articles about the
00:45:21.860fact that mass graves have been found uh realize that there is no justification for it like
00:45:29.980immediately that should i would hope so that that might change the way in which you are viewing uh
00:45:37.220some of the way that we're talking about this like hopefully you can start to like look at this and
00:45:42.640go like any side that's doing the mass grave is that's the bad guys we got to take the pin back
00:45:50.320out of deborah messing hell yeah yeah simply because i have too much here to get through
00:45:54.840yeah it should go without saying that nothing that we're describing here nothing that you've
00:46:00.240been seeing in the news over the last two years that is being done by israel to the palestinians
00:46:05.320is liberal. And the inherent contradictions to maintaining an identity as a liberal Zionist,
00:46:13.660quote unquote, the contradictions are too much. It is too much for most people to hold on to.
00:46:20.920And what we've seen, as I've said, a lot of people do, is just become plain old right-wingers.
00:46:27.880And to me, there's no better example than Debra Messing. So I started to really take an interest
00:46:35.060in Debra Messing's social media content, it felt to me that the political journey I saw her going
00:46:40.680down mirrored a lot of what I was seeing from like family and childhood friends. And I want to
00:46:46.920start on this, what I've called in the outline, the Debra Messing doom scroll with what I also
00:46:52.680called here my oh no moment, which was this video that Debra Messing made at this point almost two
00:46:59.780years ago with the israel activist and propaganda artist noah tishby and i'm going to play that
00:47:07.060video for you guys know why you feel safer here because you're home it really is it really is
00:47:13.440i don't want to go i don't want to leave
00:47:17.360i understand another close friend and people from the people that are here
00:47:23.360in israel this time is uh deborah thank you for being here as well
00:47:28.840oh it's a gift it's a gift to me and the people here are the most extraordinary people i've ever
00:47:36.920met in my entire life but the strength the optimism the resilience the courage i mean i
00:47:47.840literally i've never seen anything like it in my life this is to contextualize months after october
00:47:54.6207th happened months into the genocide that israel is waging on palestinians deborah messing goes to
00:47:59.900israel and she meets with this influencer named noah tishby she's like in tears in this video
00:48:05.520talking about like i'm home i never want to leave and when i saw that it was my oh no moment because
00:48:11.580noah tishby is another person that i've been tracking for a while whose content is just
00:48:15.380absolutely off the rails and incorporates as many celebrities as possible but there's something to me
00:48:21.400so and i don't mean to be like a youtuber who throws this word around so liberally but like
00:48:27.180there's something cult-like that was the first word i was thinking of go for it go for it go
00:48:31.900for it just the indoctrination of it the close talking the idea that any experience of traveling
00:48:40.640to a different country can transform you in such a way i mean we could go down a whole different
00:48:46.680conversation about tourism and how wealthy people use it as a substitute for spiritual experiences
00:48:53.720but israel is the uh number one example of that and then many many more things yeah except for
00:49:01.360the difference being that like you know when you uh stay at a resort in maui as like a white person
00:49:08.080It's not quite the same as someone using your blood and ancestry to say that actually, secretly, you belong here.
00:49:20.820It's a cult that actively recruits to a degree that I think a lot of us are still reckoning with.
00:49:26.860In that video with Noah Tishby, one of the things that she is saying is like, you're here, you're home, and you're here to stand up for your identity.
00:49:35.640And to me, that is the perfect encapsulation of the sort of the way in which liberal politics have been used to keep other liberals thinking, wait, is there like a woke way of doing an ethnostate?
00:49:52.880because standing up for your identity when people talk about you know identity politics in general
00:49:59.060we've mostly associated it with progressivism and you see the sleight of hand there where it's like
00:50:05.860oh but you can also use the very same politics to talk about your identity and you're you know
00:50:10.960you're you're being proud of your ancestry as a way in order to create an ethno state
00:50:17.360Deborah Messing strenuously opposes any sort of journalism happening in Gaza, which is true of Zionists in general, because, you know, any sort of just like objective filming of what's going on there is an indictment of Israel.
00:50:34.620So Motaz, a Palestinian, a Gazan man who really shot to Instagram fame for his journalism inside Gaza in the earlier months of the genocide. He was named GQ Middle East Man of the Year. And he sometime later fled Gaza for his own safety, which like it doesn't take a lot of thinking to be like, yeah, you want to get out of Gaza at some point, especially with like a target on his back by the Israeli government.
00:51:04.440because he has millions of instagram followers and so anyway deborah messing posts i don't know
00:51:09.060if you guys remember this she posts a video of him leaving and she captions it gq middle east
00:51:16.760man of the year and gaza quote unquote journalist leaves for qatar very interesting decision like
00:51:24.620skeptical emoji basically like mocking this guy for leaving and i just remember seeing this and
00:51:29.820like like what what beverly hills mansion are you typing this from you know yeah yes slay girl i
00:51:38.780mean this would be like if you know in the 1930s when the united states used our racial quota
00:51:46.020racist immigration system that was in place during that time to turn away uh boats of jews who were
00:51:52.920coming to the united states and uh were fleeing the nazis if she were posting around that time1.00
00:51:58.440she'd be like hell yeah usa get these jews out of here and why don't they even want to come here0.96
00:52:07.140don't they want to stick around with their own if things are so bad don't you want to support0.69
00:52:11.700your own people that's exactly what she'd be saying i think what makes it infuriating is that
00:52:17.460it's coming from somebody who like still gets to sit in brentwood and collect uh will and grace
00:52:23.600residuals for the rest of her life. Oh, you have to go to Qatar. Hmm. Seems like you were some sort
00:52:29.220of Gazan industry plant by Hamas, you know, which is just such a disgusting thing to say from someone0.92
00:52:36.100who was like, so clearly like rich and vying for more money. Debra also has it out for Bissan.
00:52:44.840God, this is so she's so much worse than I knew. That's great. I knew she was bad, but fuck.1.00
00:52:53.120Yeah, well, hold on to your hats. So Bissan, if you don't know, first of all, you should definitely go follow her on Instagram. But she is a Gazan woman who has also been doing, you know, basically like social media journalism from inside Gaza since the genocide started. And she was nominated for an Emmy, which she actually won for her documentary and work.1.00
00:53:15.680But before she won, at the time of her nomination, Deborah Messing, along with Selma Blair and 150 other entertainment industry leaders, signed a letter calling for her to be removed from the Emmy nomination list.0.75
00:53:30.580This, Bissan, who is currently in Gaza City while Israel is doing a ground operation in Gaza City.
00:53:38.260I mean, this is this is someone who has braved genocide and reported it.
00:53:42.420And and like I mentioned, like put a target on her back for the Israeli government because she has millions of Instagram followers.
00:53:48.480These are some of the most sort of formidable figures from inside Gaza.1.00
00:53:53.620And once again, Deborah Messing from wherever the fuck she lives in L.A. or Manhattan or wherever.0.97
00:53:59.080I mean, it is a perversion of humanity and certainly of liberalism to behave this way.0.98
00:54:07.440and i think this is the interesting thing about this letter and the all the other letters that
00:54:13.540you see sorry to cut you off but i'm like i'm so excited for whatever you're about to say
00:54:17.640because i even made a joke on twitter recently i was like does deborah messing like does she
00:54:22.420still work or does she just sign open letters all day because it feels like every single day
00:54:26.900there's a new like pro-israel hollywood letter and it's always like deborah messing and a thousand
00:54:33.440other people you haven't heard of before yes i don't know of any other job she has other than
00:54:39.340signing these letters but there's an organization that she is at least affiliated with as she's
00:54:45.280signed multiple letters from creative community for peace what is creative community for peace
00:54:50.600so creative community for peace was essentially uh i think it was founded in 2011 as a direct
00:54:58.660response to the bds movement bds boycott divestment sanctions yeah bds which is a tactic uh that was
00:55:08.100used very successfully uh during you know apartheid in south africa of uh yeah getting
00:55:13.900people to isolate an apartheid state hoping to pressure their own government as well as the
00:55:20.140people of that state to be like hey no one's playing fucking rugby with us anymore this is
00:55:24.580So in 2011, as a response to the kind of growing popularity of BDS, they created Creative Community for Peace as a way to essentially be the counterpoint to any time someone wanted to publicly state that they were no longer going to be working with Israel.
00:55:43.600they are the ones who are constantly doing letters to hollywood whenever anything happens whether it
00:55:49.300was the jonathan glazer wins the academy award for zone of interest and gives his speech you know
00:55:57.100they come out and condemn him they uh condemned the uh oscar win for no other land it's anytime
00:56:03.520there's like a celebrity say something creative community for peace comes out and writes a letter
00:56:08.760saying how dare you and this really hurt our feelings and if there's one thing you should
00:56:13.760care about more than anything it is the feelings of hollywood elites that is a hallmark of liberal
00:56:19.260zionism is putting the most privileged people's feelings ahead of like the literal bodies and
00:56:26.000safety of palestinians it's also like a 1984 level of like perversion of language to call it creative
00:56:33.080community for peace oh yeah that's her favorite thing if you the listener see that an open letter
00:56:38.940was released by creative community for peace what are you going to think that means oh well
00:56:43.420these people want peace like this is a really random celebrity cameo but they've gotten all
00:56:48.300sorts of really random celebrities to get involved with creative community for peace
00:56:51.420one of whom timely because i just made an episode about dr phil was bahad bahabi
00:56:57.280you mean is that bad baby yeah but i'm really committed to pronouncing the age
00:57:03.400but had behavior posted for creative community for peace i don't know how they got her to do it
00:57:13.280i'm sure it was through a manager or whatever and and the caption because i'm sure she didn't
00:57:17.800think twice about what any of it meant not to let her off the hook i'm just saying this is how this
00:57:22.180stuff goes was in all caps, behavior supports peace. But you know, of course, what these people
00:57:28.800are actually with what these people are actually advocating for when every time they release
00:57:33.060an open letter signed by Deborah Messing, Mayim Bialik and 1200 people you've never heard of
00:57:38.100is squashing any nonviolent resistance to genocide. I mean, boycotting BDS,
00:57:44.340that's nonviolent resistance. Yes, yes, it is. It really shows that that is something that they're
00:57:49.580specifically afraid of you know the the idea that their peers in hollywood where everyone wears the
00:57:57.180mask of i'm a good person i'm a liberal i'm a progressive whatnot where all of the sudden
00:58:01.520they're going to be put to the test because if all of their peers decide oh you know what we are
00:58:06.340supporting an apartheid state we should be boycotting it um the same way we did with south
00:58:10.420africa then they are forced to either agree uh or be outed for the reactionary right-wing0.92
00:58:19.940psychopathic genocide supporting monster that they are and i think that is what people like0.61
00:58:26.380deborah messing probably fears the most is the fact that you know as long as hollywood
00:58:31.700uh and and her peers there all are in lockstep with the idea of like it's complicated it's sad
00:58:38.820but we should support israel then she's fine but if that were to change i think for her that is uh
00:58:46.440that's that's an attack on her identity because then she's forced to reckon with the fact that
00:58:50.880like well a huge part of my politics isn't liberal the way that i thought i was right
00:58:55.800a quick shout out to thank the sponsor of this episode rocket money rosh hashanah the jewish
00:59:04.140New Year just happened. And you know what they say about the Jewish New Year. It is a great time
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01:00:28.400slash fruity. Thank you so much to Rocket Money for sponsoring this episode. And now let's get
01:00:34.880back to it. In August of this year, I decided to do a Debra Messing check-in. I checked her
01:00:42.080Instagram story and she had reposted a video from Kelly J. Keene, aka Posey Parker, who is a British
01:00:51.300anti-transgender activist and immediately this caught my attention because posy parker is
01:00:58.240rather famous in the world of anti-trans activism to be clear this is different than parker posy
01:01:05.200right this is this is could not be more different from parker posy i'm so sorry to parker posy for
01:01:11.680posy parker yes me too and i'm almost offended that matt leib would ask such a question well0.95
01:01:19.000Well, I just found out Kristen Chenoweth's weird.0.86
01:01:21.620Posey Parker, she's called trans people a pernicious cult.1.00
01:01:25.300She's compared them to serial killers.0.74
01:01:27.360She has for years been very active in like the British far right,
01:01:31.820which also is like a prototype for the way that the American far right now attacks trans people.
01:01:35.740But I was like, what is Debra Messing, Debra Messing of 2017 GLAAD Awards, doing sharing Posey Parker?
01:01:45.220this is when i realized that she was very explicitly going on this like personal journey
01:01:51.600to the right and it's like i you know i talk a lot on this podcast about like grifters
01:01:55.740and people who are doing like audience capture that's like not what deborah messie is doing
01:02:00.320she's having like she doesn't need more money and she's clearly not trying to get any through
01:02:04.440this venture in my opinion i think she's just having like a very evident crash out this makes
01:02:09.700itself ever more visible when Zoran wins the primary, the New York City Democratic primary
01:02:15.860for mayor. And one of her first reactions to Zoran winning is,
01:02:22.080I have nothing against socialism. Don't know where you got that. I voted against M because
01:02:27.880he celebrated 9-11. Let that sink in. I love my country. My reasoning is not Islamophobia.
01:02:34.780I've chosen to live in the most beautifully diverse city in the world, the same people who
01:02:39.160did 9 11 did october 7th i just don't want a mayor who sides with terrorists oh and he wants
01:02:45.000to defund the police and he has no experience i will stop here i just want to ask do you guys
01:02:51.000know how old zaron mom danny was on 9 11 when she when deborah messing claims he was celebrating
01:02:57.040we are similar age uh so i think he's like nine nine years old right yeah he was 10 10 10 years
01:03:04.620old and celebrating 9-11. Tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk. I mean, to say out loud, the same people who did
01:03:13.6409-11 did October 7th is just so monumentally stupid and ignorant that the fact that she1.00
01:03:19.600continues to be a public figure that is sought after by anyone. Not that she's that sought after,1.00
01:03:26.200but, you know, still, I mean, is insane to me. She mentions here, like, Zoran wants to defund
01:03:31.460the police and she's against that she elaborates on this a lot in her instagram stories uh and and
01:03:38.360by the way i i just i just need a little credit from anyone watching like i just need a little
01:03:43.560credit because i've been watching these damn stories every day for so long and every time
01:03:48.060that there's a notable one just let you know my process i screenshot it and i sort it into0.85
01:03:53.260different categories in this folder that i have uh of like deborah messing hates zoran deborah
01:03:59.800messing loves the police deborah messing hates sex workers like i have i have these different
01:04:04.400folders so wow so you really are a historian are the folders um attached by red yarn from across
01:04:13.660i really shouldn't admit that i'm like losing it to this extent no it's good someone needs to do
01:04:20.860this you know data collection well but like i said it's this is literally helping me make sense
01:04:26.500of what's what has happened to like my childhood friends yeah yeah next screenshot okay so she
01:04:32.300reposted this so today we are calling on him to answer 10 simple questions him being zoran one
01:04:38.460do you apologize for calling the nypd anti-queer and a major threat to public safety two do you
01:04:44.120apologize for calling the nypd wicked and corrupt three do you apologize for saying no negotiating
01:04:49.600with the nypd and dismantle it and it goes on and on here you must apologize to the new york
01:04:56.480police department i am a liberal i mean there's nothing i think more liberal than being like
01:05:03.840you need to apologize to the police because because you said they were anti-queer like
01:05:14.880just there's who are you appealing to there you're you can only actually be appealing to
01:05:22.480the right wing but in her mind there's still part of her that's holding on to the idea that she's a0.54
01:05:28.220she's an ally she's a queer ally you know but that is so crazy and that's why i selected this
01:05:35.180one screenshot out of the 50 she posted that day because the modern lgbt rights movement was born0.70
01:05:42.640out of a struggle with anti-queer police that's what stonewall was yes deborah messing has had
01:05:49.740decades of being held up as a queer icon to learn that but now she's posting like repeatedly that
01:05:57.760like zoran i mean she also posted that same day i have here zoran must apologize for calling the
01:06:04.060nypd racist in 2020 this was the same woman deborah messing who in 2021 was posting because yes
01:06:12.060i scrolled down deborah messing's instagram to 2021 or and and in 2020 she was posting
01:06:19.300black squares oh hell yeah she was posting for brianna taylor for george floyd for elijah mclean
01:06:24.840all people who died at the hands of racist police she was posting justice for all these people
01:06:32.960she has abandoned all of that because frankly i would say because her adherence first and foremost
01:06:41.360to Zionism and to Israel has caused her to be so racist and specifically Islamophobic
01:06:48.800yes towards Zoran Mamdani that now it's like that supersedes any other belief that she ever
01:06:55.260had or posted about where it's like no now we actually love the police and now you can't say
01:07:00.440anything bad about the police you can't say that they're racist and if you do you must publicly
01:07:04.120apologize sorry I like I need to shut up and like let you speak because you're smarter than me but0.69
01:07:08.740But when I say that adhering to Zionism first and foremost as the most important part of your belief system will steer you right, this is what I mean.0.82
01:07:20.820Right. And I should note that Zoran is from India. His family originates from India, and he grew up in Uganda for a part of his life and then moved to the United States.0.92
01:07:32.780not from the Middle East. I mean, just telling on themselves over and over again about this kind of
01:07:41.480thing. And it's not unique, but it is interesting to me that many of these liberal Zionists use 9-110.61
01:07:48.980in a similar way that they use October 7th, which tells the entire story where, I'm sorry, but 9-11
01:07:56.440was, as somebody who grew up in New Jersey like yourself, Matt Bernstein, horrible, horrible,
01:08:01.740and so many people died. But we know why 9-11 happened. It was blowback from our policy of
01:08:08.600waging constant war in the Middle East. That is why there was a terrorist attack on our soil.0.63
01:08:15.420And they apply the very same non-logic or anti-logic, turn your brain off mentality
01:08:22.340to October 7th, where you can't have a systemic conversation about it. And let's just retreat
01:08:47.440How many more New Yorkers will you contain?
01:08:51.120How many more New Yorkers will you contain?
01:08:52.900Do you believe in the First Amendment?
01:08:55.460Do you believe in the First Amendment, Tom Holman?
01:08:58.260Which is amazing because that was Zoran before he ended up winning the primary, standing up as an assemblyman.
01:09:06.200She talks about how he has no experience.
01:09:07.560He was an assemblyman in Albany when he was yelling at Holman because he was standing up for New Yorkers who were being brutalized and their families ripped apart by ice.
01:09:18.400Tom Holman, who is the border czar, and he's unhinged for like yelling at the border czar.
01:09:24.520What is the right way to protest someone?
01:09:26.200what happened what happened to like liberal love is love no human is illegal deborah messing now
01:09:31.280you can't even like yell at the person in charge of deportations yeah i mean she's she's completely0.71
01:09:35.560like lost the plot here i mean at this point she is just clearly publicly abandoning her liberal0.79
01:09:41.100persona now i mean i didn't know the depths of her rightward shift but just posting from an
01:09:48.720account called today in america oh that's better than a lot of the other accounts she posts from
01:09:55.560I promise you, I mean, that is that is wild.
01:10:14.800But within the context of like a blue state, they function as Republicans.1.00
01:10:20.100And that's how I see Deborah Messing here.
01:10:22.700In keeping with this theme of the New York election, the next category of post that I was sorting a lot of my screenshots into was her strenuous campaign for Andrew Cuomo, which is ongoing at the time of this recording.
01:10:40.180Which is just so interesting to me, because Andrew Cuomo, if you're not super tapped into the New York election, the New York City mayoral election, which it does feel like the entire world is, Andrew Cuomo is not only a corrupt nepo politician on so many levels, but he's also been accused of sexual harassment by 13 different former female employees of his.
01:11:00.280And, you know, just a few years ago, Debra Messing was part of the Time's Up movement in Hollywood, which, among other things, demanded an end to workplace sexual harassment.
01:11:11.820And now she's posting, I mean, furiously every single day, like this one she wrote, for the sake of our city, we must elect Andrew Cuomo.0.99
01:11:21.940She goes from Time's Up to actively campaigning for a pervert.0.57
01:11:27.780For a 13-time sexual harasser who literally left office in disgrace before first explaining that, no, it's not harassment, I'm just Italian.0.97
01:11:45.560He's been crashing at his daughter's insanely expensive apartment to try to prove he has residency.0.99
01:11:52.800It is arguably the most pathetic campaign I have ever witnessed in my life.0.99
01:11:56.760Oh, so she's voting for the settler. Surprise, surprise.0.99
01:12:02.460But again, I have to use Israel and Zionism as a through line for this like major, major shift that this woman is exhibiting and espousing to her like 1.7 million followers.0.69
01:12:17.700Like this all stems from her belief in the ethnostate.0.58
01:12:22.140Yeah. I don't even think she truly believes there are any direct consequences from Zoran being someone who is, let's say, going to defund the police, which I don't believe he's committed to doing necessarily, or that she even thinks there will necessarily be more anti-Semitic hate crimes.
01:12:40.260What she's scared of is the normalization of a body politic and a political class that is openly critical of Israel, you know, in, I think, a realistic fashion, not in like, oh, you know, Netanyahu bad, but in a I will arrest Netanyahu if he sets foot in New York because that is the law in accordance with international law.
01:13:03.180I think for her, this is her doing everything she can to stop her liberal safe havens from moving more left than she is, you know, from making her the outsider.
01:13:16.260It's just an ironic turn because you can't help but like see, yeah, didn't you, you're, you know, a Time's Up person, you're posting black squares.
01:13:26.240And but when it comes to Israel, this is the one thing where you're willing to abandon all of it just so that you can remain at the vanguard of the most leftward allowed possible in like liberal society because she doesn't want to be abandoned by it.
01:13:44.120She's like Alan Dershowitz, you know, wanting to sue people at Martha's Vineyard for not letting him hang out.
01:13:49.060Or any conservative, any conservative we've ever, you know, heard of is obsessed with the idea that the Hollywood liberals or that popular culture thinks they're lame.
01:14:00.040You know, the Trump administration, the MAGA guys felt themselves for a little while because they have some podcasters on their side.
01:14:07.240But that's falling apart, too, because inevitably any kind of cultural enlightenment involves understanding other people's perspectives.
01:14:14.900And that is the death of right wing thought.
01:14:17.060And so like Israel, like the state of Israel, and like, honestly, this moment of fascism that we're living in right now in the Trump administration, the right wingers, they want to fortify. They don't want to expand. They are in the lockdown bunker mode.
01:14:33.260And that's how she clearly views like the threat of a political coalition in one of the most Jewish cities in the world, by the way, that voted for Zoran overwhelmingly, saying F you to Israel and we'll arrest Netanyahu if he steps foot on our soil.0.89
01:14:50.760And I feel very proud that New York is hopefully heading in that direction.
01:14:53.940Zoran Mamdani also supports decriminalizing prostitution and sex work, you know, and I hope I'm not like too much in my own bubble when I say this, but like, that's like a pretty popular, progressive policy.
01:15:09.720And there's like so much research and data to show that it is simply about keeping sex workers who are plentiful, regardless of what the law allows, by the way, to stay safe and to have recourse if they're in a violent situation or something like that.
01:15:25.500Debra Messing is again she strenuously opposes this and she posts a lot about like what's gonna
01:15:33.280happen to our city when Zoran Mamdani decriminalizes sex work she posts a video I watched a lot of0.95
01:15:41.480fucking videos that she posted guys and this this one this one kind of took it for me so I'm gonna0.93
01:15:46.640play it for you and this was a video she posted in the wake of certain nations at the UN recognizing0.99
01:15:53.960a Palestinian state. I want you to remember today, September 21st, 2025. I want you to
01:16:01.380remember today when there comes a time that you cannot practice the religion that you want to
01:16:07.940practice. I want you to remember today when women cannot go to school, when you cannot love who you
01:16:15.020want to love when um books are banned when women have no rights i want you to remember today
01:16:26.160and now some of you aren't going to like that i'm saying this but what i could be describing
01:16:30.920could be the extreme left or the extreme right and i realize that what i am describing today
01:16:37.460is the free palestine movement well look you know it's liberal zionism in a video0.89
01:16:43.320She is right about the mandatory hijabs that are being sent out.1.00
01:16:50.960I knew that whatever was about to come out of your mouth was going to be sarcastic.1.00
01:17:13.320But it's just wild to me that it's like, I want you to remember this, this day.
01:17:17.880And it's like, you mean when some people recognized Palestine, I want you to remember it as the day in which women lost their freedoms in which, you know, or I want you to remember this day is when we lost our religion.
01:17:31.900Like, all of that stuff is still based on a purported liberal ideology, right?0.99
01:17:39.600She's not yelling at the camera, the dang Muslims are going to come in the savage hordes that they are and destroy our women. No, it's got this nice liberal sheen to it. Like, remember, this day is the day in which book burning became legal, like, as if this person would not be leading a whole library of book burnings, if it were in Palestine, if it were in Gaza, you know,0.99
01:18:03.640That's, to me, the core tenet of liberal Zionism is we must uphold the importance of women's rights, of gay rights, of, you know, multiracial, multicultural society that includes everyone and values the lives of everyone except Palestinians.0.74
01:18:19.560They must die for said society to exist. And like that, my friend, is not how liberalism works.
01:18:24.480Well, they're betraying the truth there. They're talking about so-called Western civilization.
01:18:30.380It's Western civilization versus the scary, scary Arabs. It's a replication of capitalism. The West exploits the global South and particularly the Middle East has been exploited for the past hundred or so years for its oil resources. And so we demonize the population there as savages.1.00
01:18:52.660Well, and in that sense, it is how liberalism works. In that sense, it is almost a more true and reality based definition of those values, because what we look at, you know, as like liberal values is most of the time very much economics based.
01:19:10.520So it's the idea of integration as being a good thing, not because on a moral level, but on an economic level. You know, it's the idea that people should have more rights as to be, I guess, more free consumers. It's the freedom to consume, right? So in a way, she's mirroring any other liberal at any time since liberalism, you know?
01:19:33.340It's liberalism versus liberation is a pretty decent way, I think, to sum it up.
01:19:38.640Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I think this is the problem with the term liberal in general is we kind of do use it as a catch all for the left or for progressivism.
01:19:48.080But, you know, in truth, the same way we look at the Democratic Party in either New York state or California, we don't look at it as like, oh, they've got a D next to their name. They must be a liberal. It's like, no, it is all context based.
01:20:03.160Where are you from? If it's a blue state, you got some far right wing Democrats. You know, it's the same type of thing. It's like liberalism is it's it's a badge when you're in the center of empire. I'm a good emperor.
01:20:19.660And it is collapsing upon itself. And that's why there's the rise of fascism, but also hopefully leftism.
01:20:25.640yeah those contradictions are not things that people i think can live with for that long which
01:20:30.800is why you're seeing people like deborah messing turn into open fascists and she's going to drop
01:20:35.960the pretense at some point i assume i think it's dropping and in moving on with the deborah doom
01:20:41.800spiral uh i love it i love it no i am i'm very interested i'm like invested now we now reach
01:20:52.160the death of charlie kirk oh boy which deborah posts about i i actually cannot tell you how
01:20:58.840many times she posted about i i lost count oh my goodness i'm seeing just the sheer number here0.99
01:21:04.260she was mourning this man within an inch of her own life dude it's like fucking morse code0.96
01:21:11.240like it's well you know what i i had a friend i had a friend and sometimes we would talk about0.98
01:21:17.780when people would have crash outs on instagram we would call it grains of sand because do you
01:21:25.080know where i'm going yeah yeah yeah the top bar that shows all the little dots for how many
01:21:30.020instagram stories you've posted each one would get so small that they'd look like grains of sand0.81
01:21:34.940yeah that's why i'm saying it looks like fucking morse code to me because i'm just like0.55
01:21:38.840save our ethno state oh man charlie kirk dies and deborah messing she's posting every you know0.91
01:21:50.020teary-eyed tiktok memorial that exists with like the slow piano in the background and the
01:21:55.620compilation slideshows of him and his wife and children she among other things this was really
01:22:02.600interesting to me she posted an explicitly anti-abortion memorial post from live action
01:22:08.540which is an anti-choice organization but the thing that i really want to highlight here
01:22:13.320is the feed post that she dropped a written carousel emma take it away i couldn't sleep
01:22:22.040last night the assassination of charlie kirk is so horrifying and devastating the idea that
01:22:28.780disagreement could justify erasure oh my god can you imagine is barbaric i know it's only in
01:22:36.120hypotheticals only in hypotheticals and the fact that so many are celebrating it is horrifying
01:22:42.540violence and murder can never be acts of virtue they can never be justified as violent resistance
01:22:48.540those who commit killings may see themselves as heroes as liberators as resistors as they chant
01:22:54.580resistance by any all means necessary but they are not they are murderers this is terrorism i mean
01:23:00.800it took like what three slides for this to become a uh free palestine parable i'm sorry i don't mean
01:23:08.900to cut you off but she's like first of all we're gonna make this entirely about israel but second
01:23:13.120of all i'm gonna condemn violence but it but but the violence that her quote-unquote side commits
01:23:20.360I mean, you can't make it up how hard she has to work to ignore that.
01:23:25.140For her, violence against Palestinians is like natural.0.90
01:23:28.880It's the way tides go in and go out.1.00
01:25:35.540I mean, I feel like that's something you don't usually get, which is someone just openly
01:25:42.920saying i am no longer liberal like i think i feel like we got that with what dennis miller after 9 11
01:25:49.060and like you know for the most part it's like you get these like tortured why i left the left
01:25:55.220youtube videos and whatnot but from a celebrity who you know is considering themselves to be a
01:26:01.400liberal someone who's famous for being a liberal you don't usually get them saying i am not a
01:26:06.220liberal but she is also hedging by saying i'm politically homeless you know well yeah i should
01:26:10.680clarify that i mean do one of you want to explain what it means literally every single time someone
01:26:15.540said they're politically homeless it just means they're right wing yeah it's like when people say
01:26:19.760like listen i don't believe in labels i'm not left wing i'm not right wing but what i believe0.95
01:26:24.520is and then it's a bunch of right wing shit you know or it's like i believe in just enough0.95
01:26:29.840progressivism but also close the borders i should deport as many people as possible it always means0.99
01:26:37.180I have a empathy holdout for one marginalized group or more. That's always what it means.0.99
01:26:43.720And for political influencers, it means what Dave Rubin did, leaving so-called the left to go to
01:26:51.220the right. What Anna Kasparian is doing right now, politically homeless. Oh, the trans people,1.00
01:26:57.780the activists are so crazy with their language. I'm moving towards the right. Usually happens1.00
01:27:04.040around people's mid 40s when it's time to cash in Ezra Klein I wouldn't say he's saying he's
01:27:10.640politically homeless but he's right now playing footsie with the far right and is whitewashing
01:27:17.100Charlie Kirk's image in post don't make me do my Ezra Klein voice again please do it
01:27:22.620hello hello and welcome to bit fruity that's great it's great
01:27:31.700nailed it so um yeah that's it's it's a branding exercise and it is one that is quite lucrative
01:27:39.180because as i you know sit in the majority report studio right now i can tell you less money on the
01:27:46.220left uh there are no billionaires coming around and saying hey we want to fund this show it it's
01:27:54.180when people get to a certain point in their careers they become politically homeless very
01:27:57.980conveniently and checks seem to follow yeah and and i want to reiterate like this is actually a
01:28:04.360rare instance on this podcast where i'm not accusing deborah messing of becoming a grifter
01:28:08.620I think we are watching someone very authentically just lose their grip on their own sort of self-perception as a progressive person.
01:28:20.200And I think that's oftentimes what politically homeless means, too.
01:28:23.480It's like, I am right-wing, but I am struggling with my own self-perception as someone who isn't as progressive as I thought I was.
01:28:33.100Yes, because this is the the entire thing is like most people are, quote, politically homeless, not in like a in a label way, but as in an ideological way, they are just regular people.
01:28:47.140Most people have a myriad of politics that go one way or the other, and they like vote for, you know, I vote for Republicans because I always like Republicans.
01:28:55.680I vote for Democrats. But when you are someone who is like Deborah Messing, who their politics is very much identity based and not just, you know, in terms of her Jewish identity, I mean, her identity as a Hollywood superstar celebrity where she's getting GLAAD awards and, you know, she's held up as an icon for her to say she's politically homeless.
01:29:18.500What she is essentially saying is that the brand that I've built up over all of these years no longer really applies.
01:29:26.960And you can see that so much of her politics is based on presentation.
01:29:32.440It's based not on any inward morals or ethics, but on what exactly she's going to present to everybody.
01:29:55.140I mean, we've established that Deborah Messing has, as it were, left the left.
01:29:59.220But she just posted one the other day that I could not spare from this outline, which was this.
01:30:05.700Can anyone remember the last time a Jew or Christian stabbed, beheaded, shot, bombed, burned, blew himself up or ran people down in a car or truck while yelling Christ is king or God is great?0.96
01:32:06.480And that's the core of what she's saying there, because these governments that may have in1.00
01:32:12.880majority Muslim countries. She grants them no legitimacy, even if they have a legitimate1.00
01:32:17.260structure. I mean, Hamas, for example, was elected and did provide services for people in Gaza,
01:32:24.980despite the fact that they are not the resistance group that I would like there.
01:32:29.260The Israeli government liked them because they thought they could demonize them more because0.99
01:32:32.580they were more expedient visions of the barbaric Muslim that they're trying to portray.0.99
01:32:38.760and deborah messing and these zionists are you know more than willing to go along with it because0.85
01:32:44.140that's truly how they feel and you know in terms of this like total revisionist history i mean it's0.88
01:32:49.940not even history it's like can i remember the last time a jew stabbed beheaded shot bombed burned
01:32:56.100like it's not even history today that happened uh in gaza today but what's worse is the fact that0.71
01:33:06.620What she is aligning herself with is, I think, for her and for a lot of liberal Zionists, it is the idea of their identity being a separate and protected group.0.72
01:33:21.300And that needs to be maintained at all costs.0.71
01:33:25.740And she is going to find, I think, a really brutal wake-up call.
01:33:31.400The right wing in this country has only gone further, further right.0.99
01:33:34.620And that includes actual anti-Semites who want to see the downfall of Israel, but not because they give a shit about the Palestinians, but because they believe that Jews are inherently bad.0.99
01:33:47.980They view Jews in the same way that she views all Arabs, specifically Palestinians.0.99
01:33:53.740And I look at this and I go, do you even see where this is going?
01:34:00.120Do you understand where you are leading, not just yourself, but everyone else?
01:34:06.720This ideology does not end with you living happily ever after.
01:34:36.440But I did this because, like I said, I think she's really vivid and public and extreme, but not uncommon example of how fervent Zionism, even the liberal flavor.
01:34:48.260And oftentimes I find especially the liberal flavor because it's sort of disguised itself, leads you down the path to MAGA hood.
01:34:56.860Like I said up top, like I feel like liberal Zionism, it's like a waiting room of an ideology that, you know, you could say that Deborah Messing and Matt and myself sort of all started in the same place a long time ago, being raised in that ideology.
01:35:11.440and i i guess i just want to end by like because i'm thinking again about like the people i grew
01:35:17.520up with and the people who are still clinging to this liberal zionist identity but no longer
01:35:21.280can explain it because it's it's inexplicable and i want to give those people if they happen
01:35:26.360to be listening to this like an off-ramp that is not the deborah messing route but that is the
01:35:32.740anti-zionist route you know obviously i'm not speaking uh as a jew here but anti-zionism
01:35:39.560is a belief in humanism and of shared multiculturalism it's a belief that the
01:35:48.800colonization of another land should be left in the dustbin of history it is a belief that
01:35:56.100the safety of all of us is intertwined and that we have a shared humanity and that our collective
01:36:03.900spirituality is scarred by what i mean i i honestly get emotional even just talking about
01:36:09.700what we have done there and what our tax dollars have gone towards and you can it's not too late0.80
01:36:15.040wash your hands of this by educating yourself in a variety of different ways you can read from
01:36:22.300anyone from rashid kalidi's books to understand the the true history here other jewish historians
01:36:30.100I would highly recommend Avi Schleim. I would highly recommend the work of Ilan Pape. And in terms of an American Jew who's been doing great work on this, you have Peter Beinart, who has a book that came out recently that I would encourage people to read.
01:36:45.300There are not many white South Africans who admit openly these days that they were pro-apartheid. And there will come a time when that's a very similar moment for Zionists in this country and in other parts of the West. Don't be that person.0.57
01:37:01.480And just to piggyback on that, I do think that, you know, the reason you are, if you're a liberal Zionist listening to this and wondering if you're going down the wrong route, the reason why you are a liberal Zionist specifically is because you do on some level have the capacity for shame.
01:37:18.460If you would like to avoid that shame, if you would like to avoid it, I think now would be a good time. Now is a good off ramp. At this point, it is agreed upon by not just the UN, but by every human rights organization inside and outside of Israel that Israel is an apartheid state.0.59
01:37:38.620The UN just said that it's a genocide, what's going on. And that is also something that B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, has said as well. You're not doing yourself any favors by staying ignorant to it. And in fact, you are doing immense psychic harm to yourself.
01:37:57.280just look at deborah messing uh if you are afraid of the word anti-zionism just educate yourself
01:38:06.980and also i think you're going to find the demons in your mind that you maybe picture who are
01:38:12.800going to these like pro-palestine protests whether they be arab or anti-zionist jew i think you'll
01:38:19.720find that they are um some of the most principled ethical um hot uh sexy jews and non-jews you've0.94
01:38:32.040ever met yes so i think i think now is it's better late than never in some aspects uh and so there0.99
01:38:41.200are other routes just look at just look at debra don't you don't want that for yourself don't look
01:38:46.640that much don't look as much as matt uh and you know having to categorize it like that i don't0.98
01:38:52.260wish that on my worst enemy my boyfriend's gonna be so happy i'm done looking at these fucking0.84
01:38:56.180instagram stories man i'm done oh good i do want to end this episode with a short clip that i'm0.94
01:39:03.440going to insert of susan sarandon the context here being that in 2016 susan sarandon was a
01:39:10.860bernie supporter and deborah messing was a hillary supporter they went at each other pretty hard over
01:39:16.520that. And this is what Susan Sarandon had to say on the matter. Well, after a while, I just said,0.98
01:39:23.840Deborah, come on, report me to the homeroom teacher and let's just let this go. And I think
01:39:30.260she kept going, but I don't know. Is she not working? What's going on? Matt and Emma, thank
01:39:35.640you so much for joining me today. Absolutely. So happy to be back. Thanks so much, Matt, for having
01:39:42.040me on i appreciate you both so much this was a treacherous but very necessary episode for me
01:39:50.160to make if you the listener have made it this far i so appreciate you i hope if nothing else
01:39:57.220it was entertaining and that we could all learn something together that i have been like
01:40:01.580it's just been stewing i've been like stewing in this for so long as you can tell i love you so
01:40:07.800much i can't wait to see you in the next episode and until then stay fruity