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Joe Rogan Experience _2497 - Gad Saad · Luke's English Podcast

0:02
Speaker 1: Podcast. Check it out the Joe Logan Experience Train, My Day,
0:06
Speaker 1: Joe Rogan podcast, by Night All Day. Oh so good
0:14
Speaker 1: to see you. What's happening, How you been doing great?
0:18
Speaker 1: Got big news? I'll talk big, very big.
0:21
Speaker 2: Before I started, Okay, drops the book suicidal empathy. Suicidal
0:28
Speaker 2: we use all the time. It's right, yeah, it is.
0:31
Speaker 2: It is a good quote, and it is a very
0:34
Speaker 2: accurate quote for the times. I like this. They're carrying
0:36
Speaker 2: a sign free the wolves. The lamb's carrying.
0:39
Speaker 1: Well. I wanted the cover to be as evocative as
0:43
Speaker 1: the concept.
0:45
Speaker 2: Right dying to be kind.
0:46
Speaker 1: There you go, and they are. Just in the last
0:49
Speaker 1: two days, there have been so many new cases of
0:52
Speaker 1: suicidal empathy that I regret that I couldn't include them
0:54
Speaker 1: in the book.
0:56
Speaker 2: But which ones?
0:57
Speaker 1: So did you hear about the one where the the
1:00
Speaker 1: guy who tried to assassinate President Trump? Oh?
1:03
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:03
Speaker 1: The judge then went and said, I am so sorry
1:06
Speaker 1: that you know you're not being treated nicely. You have
1:08
Speaker 1: a room without a window. This is just it's mean.
1:13
Speaker 2: Oh see, I don't think that that suicidal empathy at all.
1:15
Speaker 2: I think that's signaling. I think that's signaling that he
1:19
Speaker 2: wishes that that man was successful and that he supports
1:22
Speaker 2: his endeavor fair enough.
1:24
Speaker 1: The second example, actually today they've ruben shared it with me.
1:30
Speaker 1: It was the one where a felon of color who
1:33
Speaker 1: had just been released ended up pushing right and the
1:39
Speaker 1: previous person that he had been entangled with didn't want
1:42
Speaker 1: to whatever press charges because she didn't want another black
1:46
Speaker 1: man to be in prison.
1:47
Speaker 2: Oh boy, boy, boy, boy boy.
1:50
Speaker 1: So we can so I hope to get into the
1:53
Speaker 1: book in a second. But the other big news is
1:56
Speaker 1: that this past year I've been a visiting scholar at
2:00
Speaker 1: old Miss University of Mississippi. I had taken a two
2:04
Speaker 1: year leave from my school at Montreal. Starting this summer,
2:09
Speaker 1: we are moving permanently to Oxford. So the Lebanese Jews
2:15
Speaker 1: Canadians are going down to Oxford, Mississippi, and we're very excited.
2:19
Speaker 2: Wow. Yeah, yeah, So you're going to be there for
2:22
Speaker 2: two years. So as I worked three years, a green
2:25
Speaker 2: carter or a visa.
2:26
Speaker 1: Yes, So the previous two years that I did, it
2:29
Speaker 1: was a leave of absence, so I only have to
2:31
Speaker 1: get a t N visa. But now that we're moving
2:35
Speaker 1: where I applied for an eb one a visa which
2:38
Speaker 1: gets you a green card. It's one they're called extraordinary visas.
2:41
Speaker 1: You have to pass certain criteria to them.
2:44
Speaker 2: Extraordinary, aren't you?
2:45
Speaker 1: And rather easy on the ice and so and so
2:50
Speaker 1: that went through, thank god, and.
2:53
Speaker 2: So yeah, so we're very gratulations.
2:55
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, so and hopefully this will be a fast
2:58
Speaker 1: track to my inner spirit is American. But maybe we
3:02
Speaker 1: can legalize it and turn the sads into Americans.
3:05
Speaker 2: Wow, and joined you're going to join the team if
3:10
Speaker 2: you'll have me. Oh, we'll have you, come on. Welcome aboard. Yeah,
3:13
Speaker 2: we need more people that are thinking straight.
3:15
Speaker 1: So that's the big news.
3:16
Speaker 2: That's awesome. Man. Congratulations, that's a fantastic thing. That's beautiful.
3:20
Speaker 1: Do you want to get into the book and then
3:22
Speaker 1: we talk about other stuff whatever. So I thought maybe
3:25
Speaker 1: i'd give you because I know that you know the
3:27
Speaker 1: parasitic mind really well, and so I wanted to kind
3:30
Speaker 1: of contextualize this book in relation to that book. So
3:34
Speaker 1: we are a thinking and a feeling animal, right, Both
3:37
Speaker 1: our cognitive system is important and our affective system is important.
3:41
Speaker 1: For example, advertisers recognize that if I'm trying to sell
3:46
Speaker 1: you a mutual fund, I need to engage your cognitive system.
3:51
Speaker 1: Here are the seven reasons why you should buy my
3:52
Speaker 1: mutual fund. If I'm trying to sell you perfume, I
3:56
Speaker 1: don't tell you. This is what Harvard physiologists think about
4:00
Speaker 1: the science of all faction. Right, I need to engage
4:03
Speaker 1: your affective system. So in that case, I will show
4:07
Speaker 1: you a pretty girl on a horse with beautiful hair,
4:10
Speaker 1: and the brand name will be Misstele. Right, I'm just
4:13
Speaker 1: engaging your emotional system. Well, the parasitic mind was the
4:18
Speaker 1: story of what I need to do to hijack your
4:22
Speaker 1: cognitive system, your ability to think rationally, and hence there
4:26
Speaker 1: were all these parasitic ideas that destroyed your capacity to think.
4:30
Speaker 1: But for me to completely zombify you and hijack you,
4:34
Speaker 1: I also need to zombify your affective system. That's where
4:38
Speaker 1: social empathy comes in. So if I can hijack both
4:42
Speaker 1: your cognitive and emotional systems, you become a wood cricket,
4:45
Speaker 1: which we could talk about what that.
4:47
Speaker 2: References if you want what a wood cricket.
4:49
Speaker 1: So, the wood cricket is an insect that abhors water.
4:53
Speaker 1: It wants nothing to do with water. But when it
4:56
Speaker 1: is parasitized by a neuroparasite called the brain hairworm. Right,
5:01
Speaker 1: the hairworm needs the wood cricket to happily and merrily
5:06
Speaker 1: commit suicide by jumping into the water because that's the
5:10
Speaker 1: only way that the hairworm can complete its reproductive cycle.
5:14
Speaker 1: So once the hairworm hijacks the wood cricket's ability to
5:18
Speaker 1: think and to invoke its survival instinct, it erases its
5:21
Speaker 1: survival instinct, then it is owned by the hairworm. And
5:25
Speaker 1: so I use that principle to explain suicide empathy.
5:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, we've actually shown videos of that. It's very strange.
5:32
Speaker 1: It's amazing.
5:32
Speaker 2: Cricket really commits suicide. It jumps in the water, drowns,
5:36
Speaker 2: and the worm wiggles out of its body exactly, and
5:38
Speaker 2: that's how it's born exactly. And so many there's so
5:42
Speaker 2: many cases of that in nature indeed, yea.
5:45
Speaker 1: And so the way that I originally had the epiphany
5:48
Speaker 1: to use the parasitological framework, so parasitology is that it's
5:53
Speaker 1: just a study of host parasite interactions. So a tapeworm
5:57
Speaker 1: is a parasite, but that parasitized is my intestinal track.
6:01
Speaker 1: But a sub field of parasitology is neural parasitology. Those
6:05
Speaker 1: are the parasites that need to go into your brain,
6:08
Speaker 1: altering your circuitry to suit.
6:10
Speaker 2: Their interests, including ideas.
6:12
Speaker 1: And that's how I came up with the parasitic ideas
6:15
Speaker 1: of the parasitic mind. But in order to fully tell
6:19
Speaker 1: the story, I then have to say, but a lot
6:21
Speaker 1: of the mechanisms by which people seem to be completely
6:26
Speaker 1: hijacked in terms of their ability to think critically is
6:29
Speaker 1: really coming from an affective place. And so how can
6:32
Speaker 1: I explain that? And so what I argue in the book,
6:34
Speaker 1: And then we can drill down to endless examples if
6:37
Speaker 1: you want. I'm not saying that empathy is a bad thing,
6:42
Speaker 1: because even though the book is just dropping, there's already
6:45
Speaker 1: been maybe ten articles that have been hit pieces against
6:47
Speaker 1: the book, which, of course people it means people haven't
6:50
Speaker 1: read it yet, where they say, you know, here comes
6:52
Speaker 1: the dark jew who is trying to promulgate the idea
6:56
Speaker 1: that empathy is a bad thing. He's a neo con
6:59
Speaker 1: right guy, an Elon guy, Donald Trump Trump, Donald Trump guy.
7:05
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that empathy is bad. Empathy is actually
7:09
Speaker 1: a very important virtue to have in order for you
7:12
Speaker 1: and I to have a meaningful conversation. I need to
7:14
Speaker 1: put myself in your mind, and vice versa. That's called
7:17
Speaker 1: cognitive empathy. Right. Theory of mind is something that typically
7:22
Speaker 1: autistic children fail on very early in life. That's how
7:25
Speaker 1: you diagnose them as being autistic. So there's nothing wrong
7:28
Speaker 1: with well modulated empathy. The problem with empathy, like most
7:33
Speaker 1: things in life, is if there's too little or too
7:35
Speaker 1: much of it. Aristotle explained this to us thousands of
7:39
Speaker 1: years ago via his Golden Mean. If a soldier is
7:43
Speaker 1: not courageous enough, if he's cowardly, it's not good. If
7:46
Speaker 1: he's too courageous, he becomes a reckless martyr, that's not good.
7:49
Speaker 1: There's a sweet spot in the middle. I argue empathy
7:52
Speaker 1: follows exactly that rule. Too little of it, you're a psychopath.
7:56
Speaker 1: Too much of it, if it's hyperactive, if it is
7:59
Speaker 1: invoked the wrong situations toward the wrong targets, you end
8:03
Speaker 1: up with social empathy.
8:05
Speaker 2: Yeah. I don't even necessarily know if it's empathy. At
8:08
Speaker 2: that point it could completely becomes illogical and ideological. You
8:14
Speaker 2: just subscribe to whatever the ideology says and you ignore
8:20
Speaker 2: the reality. Like this man. They pushed that guy in
8:22
Speaker 2: front of the train, like this is a violent criminal,
8:25
Speaker 2: and he had been arrested numerous times, I think more
8:27
Speaker 2: than a dozen, and it was very clear there's something
8:31
Speaker 2: very wrong with this person. He probably shouldn't be just
8:33
Speaker 2: running free victimizing people. There was another one where someone
8:38
Speaker 2: pushed this old guy down and fly to stairs into
8:41
Speaker 2: the subway and killed him. Same situation, same kind of
8:45
Speaker 2: person that had been in and out of jail. You know,
8:49
Speaker 2: every one of these people starts off as a child.
8:51
Speaker 2: Every one of these people starts off as a baby,
8:53
Speaker 2: and I can only imagine what kind of household they
8:57
Speaker 2: developed in. I can only imagine what kind of abuse
9:00
Speaker 2: they suffered. I can only imagine what happened to them,
9:03
Speaker 2: and that's horrible. But once they reach adulthood and they
9:08
Speaker 2: start victimizing other people, we've got to do something as
9:11
Speaker 2: a society. Exactly now. I don't know what the tools
9:14
Speaker 2: are to rehabilitate a person like that, but I know
9:16
Speaker 2: that they're not being employed. There's not a whole lot
9:19
Speaker 2: of evidence of there's any successful program where they're taking
9:22
Speaker 2: a person like that and doing something with them that
9:25
Speaker 2: completely changes their personality and the way they interact with
9:28
Speaker 2: humans and releases them out in the world and become
9:31
Speaker 2: a much better person than they used to be.
9:33
Speaker 1: So I called them in the book. I call them
9:35
Speaker 1: blank slate felons, because if you remember the term blank slate.
9:41
Speaker 1: So in the Parasitic Mind I talk about social constructivism.
9:44
Speaker 1: Everything is so social construction. It's the tabula razap premise.
9:48
Speaker 1: We're born with empty minds, with no individual differences in
9:53
Speaker 1: our potentiality, and it's only our unique life trajectories and
9:58
Speaker 1: our unique patterns of socialviualization that end up making us
10:01
Speaker 1: who we become. Which, in a small sense that's true.
10:04
Speaker 1: My life experience in yours is an indelible part of
10:07
Speaker 1: who we are as individuals. But there are individual differences.
10:12
Speaker 1: People are born with different proclivities eventually of committing crimes,
10:17
Speaker 1: or of being NBA players, or of being the next Einstein.
10:20
Speaker 1: It's a very hopeful message, though, to start with the
10:22
Speaker 1: blank slate premise. Yeah, that's just accurate exactly, because if
10:26
Speaker 1: you and I are both parents, I would love to
10:29
Speaker 1: subscribe to the idea that if only I knew the
10:31
Speaker 1: exact schedule of reinforcement of my how to ensure that
10:35
Speaker 1: my child becomes the next Lionel Messi or the next
10:39
Speaker 1: Albert Einstein, he too can become that. That's a lot
10:42
Speaker 1: more hopeful than thinking, you know what, I don't think
10:44
Speaker 1: my son has the morphological features that are ever going
10:47
Speaker 1: to make him to be the next NBA star. He's
10:50
Speaker 1: too short, he doesn't have the right athletic tools. And
10:54
Speaker 1: so it's easy to understand why people can be parasitized
10:58
Speaker 1: by these ideas. This person of color was born into
11:03
Speaker 1: a white supremacist society, so he's already been victimized by society.
11:07
Speaker 1: And for you to now punish him by having him,
11:10
Speaker 1: you know, in the penal system, you're doubly punishing him.
11:13
Speaker 1: So shouldn't you give him a second chance? And by
11:15
Speaker 1: second chance, we mean one hundred and eighty six chance.
11:18
Speaker 1: That's part of suicidal empathy, But sociati empathy doesn't even
11:21
Speaker 1: apply to only that the victims of rape are themselves
11:26
Speaker 1: are suicidally empathetic towards their rapist. Can I share some
11:30
Speaker 1: of those incredible stories?
11:32
Speaker 2: Sure?
11:33
Speaker 1: So I start off in the book with an example
11:35
Speaker 1: from a Norwegian man who had been sodomized by a
11:39
Speaker 1: Somali migrant. Because the Norwegians are very kind and empathetic
11:45
Speaker 1: who they don't believe in long sentences. He served maybe
11:48
Speaker 1: I don't know, three years or four like a pretty
11:50
Speaker 1: short sentence for a rape of another man. When he
11:53
Speaker 1: was being released he was going to be deported, the
11:57
Speaker 1: victim of that rape had this you which existential angst
12:02
Speaker 1: and guilt because now that you know Ahmed was going
12:06
Speaker 1: to be released back to Mogadishu, he wouldn't end up
12:09
Speaker 1: being able to maximally flourish that like he should be. Well,
12:14
Speaker 1: our emotional system did not evolve to be empathetic toward
12:17
Speaker 1: our rapist. That would be an example of someone who's
12:20
Speaker 1: being suicially empathetic. Another great example what.
12:23
Speaker 2: Happened in that case?
12:25
Speaker 1: What in terms of whether he was deported or not.
12:27
Speaker 1: I think, I don't want to misspeak, but I think
12:29
Speaker 1: he was deported to the screams and lamentations of the victim.
12:36
Speaker 1: There is a woman who was raped in Germany, and
12:40
Speaker 1: when the authorities were trying to find out more about
12:44
Speaker 1: who the perpetrators were, she lied to them and said
12:47
Speaker 1: that they were speaking in German, even though they were
12:51
Speaker 1: speaking in Arabic and Farsi. Because if she had truly
12:55
Speaker 1: said what their language was, then those communities would have
12:59
Speaker 1: been marginal. And so you know, there's just an endless
13:02
Speaker 1: number of like a litany of these examples, and therefore
13:06
Speaker 1: suicidal empathy is really pervasive once you recognize the mechanism.
13:10
Speaker 2: But when you look at the root of that, how
13:13
Speaker 2: is it so common? Like what happens?
13:15
Speaker 1: So I think that that's a great question. I think again,
13:17
Speaker 1: it goes back to the one two punch of parasitic
13:19
Speaker 1: mind and soucidal empathy. In order for the fertile grounds
13:24
Speaker 1: to be available for suicidal empathy to barge in, I
13:30
Speaker 1: first have to have certain ideas that are implanted in
13:33
Speaker 1: your brain. So let me give you that sounds very abstract,
13:35
Speaker 1: let me give you a concrete example. Cultural relativism is
13:39
Speaker 1: a parasitic idea that I discussed in the Parasitic Mind.
13:42
Speaker 1: It basically says, who are you to judge the beliefs
13:46
Speaker 1: and the practices of another culture? Shut up brasis, right,
13:49
Speaker 1: so there are honor killings, shut up, there are child brides,
13:53
Speaker 1: shut up, there are female genital mutilations, shut up. Don't
13:57
Speaker 1: judge other cultures. Well, if you in turn that parasitic
14:01
Speaker 1: idea that it is not appropriate to ever judge the
14:04
Speaker 1: cultural practices of another culture. Then that renders you impotent
14:09
Speaker 1: when you're making judgments about who should be let into
14:13
Speaker 1: your country, about whether you want an increase of people
14:16
Speaker 1: who hold those views or not. That therefore, that leads
14:20
Speaker 1: to the suicidally empathetic position that all immigrants are equally
14:25
Speaker 1: likely to assimilate within the American ethos or the Western ethos.
14:30
Speaker 1: So we started off with internalizing a parasitic idea called
14:33
Speaker 1: cultural relativism, and that lays the foundation for then the
14:37
Speaker 1: suicidal empathy of open borders.
14:40
Speaker 2: Well, there's no pressure at all to assimilate. You're more
14:43
Speaker 2: than welcome. That's one of the weird things. More than
14:46
Speaker 2: welcome to establish a small community in Minnesota where no
14:49
Speaker 2: one speaks English exactly. You know, it's very odd. It's
14:52
Speaker 2: very odd that people want to come here, but when
14:55
Speaker 2: they come here, they want to essentially turn it into
14:57
Speaker 2: a smaller version, at least their neighborhood of where they
15:00
Speaker 2: came from.
15:01
Speaker 1: Right and a lot. I mean, if it were only
15:03
Speaker 1: that you don't speak English, I mean, to me, that's
15:06
Speaker 1: bad enough, and that you're not going to be part
15:08
Speaker 1: of the fabric of the greater society. But fair enough,
15:11
Speaker 1: that's not an existential threat. But if you're then going
15:14
Speaker 1: to be advocating for many of the cultural beliefs that
15:20
Speaker 1: are perfectly empathetical to the whole society, then we have
15:23
Speaker 1: a problem.
15:23
Speaker 2: Yeah. And a lot of the cultural beliefs that are illogical,
15:27
Speaker 2: they have to be based on something else, and generally
15:29
Speaker 2: that's religion.
15:31
Speaker 1: Indeed. Yeah, and you and I have talked, you know,
15:35
Speaker 1: very often about you know, Islam and so on some people,
15:39
Speaker 1: I think, I mean, I wonder what you think about this.
15:41
Speaker 1: Do you think more Americans are willing to have an
15:44
Speaker 1: honest and open conversation about this issue or are most
15:47
Speaker 1: still sort of the proverbial ostrich and they think it's
15:51
Speaker 1: ghost to talk about religion.
15:53
Speaker 2: Well, I think it's really divided in party lines. You know,
15:57
Speaker 2: people on the right are more than willing to talk
15:58
Speaker 2: about it. There's very few people on the right who
16:00
Speaker 2: are empathetic about some of the differences that these religions
16:07
Speaker 2: have and hold, and some of the rules that they
16:11
Speaker 2: would like to apply, like Sharia law. Whereas there's a
16:14
Speaker 2: lot of people on the left that are terrified of
16:17
Speaker 2: being called racist, terrified of being called islamophobic, or fill
16:21
Speaker 2: in whatever phobia, transphobic, whatever it is. They're just terrified.
16:25
Speaker 2: They're terrified of being labeled. And it's interesting because that
16:29
Speaker 2: side of the political spectrum, the people on the left
16:33
Speaker 2: are the quickest to pull the trigger and accuse someone
16:37
Speaker 2: of being something, being racist, sexist, homophobic, whatever it is.
16:41
Speaker 2: They're the quickest and the most vicious when it comes
16:44
Speaker 2: to attacking people based on them not not going along
16:50
Speaker 2: with whatever narrative that's been established, which is interesting because
16:55
Speaker 2: they're the ones that also like to call people fascists.
16:58
Speaker 2: But that is a form of fascism. It's not like
17:01
Speaker 2: if you look at fascism, it's it's essentially most people
17:05
Speaker 2: think of it as right wing authoritarianism, but it is
17:08
Speaker 2: also if you look at the definition of it, it's
17:11
Speaker 2: also a complete adherence to whatever narrative is being promoted.
17:18
Speaker 2: And you don't think about that when it's left wing,
17:21
Speaker 2: like left wing progressive, like left wing progressive. Fascism sounds
17:26
Speaker 2: like an oxymoron, but it's it's a mindset, and it's
17:29
Speaker 2: the problem is you're hiding this mindset in an ideology
17:34
Speaker 2: that you think is righteous. And this is you could
17:38
Speaker 2: say the same thing about religion because this is also
17:40
Speaker 2: what people do with religion because it is the right thing.
17:43
Speaker 2: It's the right thing to do, so throw the gay
17:46
Speaker 2: off the roof. Like yeah, it's like it's really kind
17:50
Speaker 2: of fascinating. Like when you see like queers for Palestine,
17:53
Speaker 2: you're like, hold on, Like it is a wonderful thing
17:58
Speaker 2: to empathize for the Palestinian people and to think that
18:01
Speaker 2: they shouldn't be bombed into oblivion. And I'm with you
18:04
Speaker 2: one hundred percent. But when you start supporting Hamas and saying,
18:08
Speaker 2: you know, we're queers for Hamas, like and I've seen that,
18:10
Speaker 2: I've seen trans people for Hamas, and it's like, good lord,
18:14
Speaker 2: what are you saying?
18:15
Speaker 1: So I've got I've got a whole verbatim transcript between
18:19
Speaker 1: a street interviewer. You know, these guys are just take
18:23
Speaker 1: someone off the street and they tape it, take his name.
18:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we were we just had a little technical glitch.
18:29
Speaker 2: So you were talking about one of those guys that
18:31
Speaker 2: interviews people in the street.
18:32
Speaker 1: So he goes and intercepts this woman who's at a
18:37
Speaker 1: I guess, like a you know, free Free Palestine, you know, rally,
18:41
Speaker 1: And he says, oh, you're you're for a Palestine. She
18:44
Speaker 1: goes yes. She goes, well, what do you think about
18:46
Speaker 1: their positions on, you know, queer people. She goes, well,
18:49
Speaker 1: I'm queer. He goes, oh, you're queer, So what do
18:52
Speaker 1: you think about what they would do to you? She goes, well,
18:54
Speaker 1: they would kill me, she goes, But then you still
18:56
Speaker 1: support them, she goes yes. He goes, but it doesn't
18:58
Speaker 1: bother you that your support a group that would kill
19:01
Speaker 1: you for the way that you are. She goes, no,
19:04
Speaker 1: the fact that they would kill me doesn't mean that
19:06
Speaker 1: they don't deserve my support. Well, that's the wood cricket, right,
19:10
Speaker 1: I mean, there is no evolutionary mechanism that says I'm
19:14
Speaker 1: going to build an affiliation with a group that I
19:17
Speaker 1: know would kill me. But she is so kind, she's
19:20
Speaker 1: so empathetic, she so transcends the earthly survival instincts that
19:25
Speaker 1: she has ascended to a higher plane of suicidal empathy.
19:29
Speaker 1: So it literally is straight out of what you said.
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Speaker 2: even their favorite takeout order, and it can show up
19:52
Speaker 2: in as little as twenty five minutes, even if you
19:54
Speaker 2: just remembered five minutes ago. The best part, you can
19:58
Speaker 2: add a video message and a personal note, so it
20:01
Speaker 2: actually feels like you planned it all along. Order on
20:05
Speaker 2: Uber Eats today must be twenty one or older to
20:08
Speaker 2: purchase alcohol. Product availability varies per region see app for details. Right,
20:15
Speaker 2: But in that situation, what they're doing is they're being
20:18
Speaker 2: motivated by what they see as a complete destruction of Gaza.
20:23
Speaker 2: So it's a different situation because if like there was
20:28
Speaker 2: no attacks on Gaza and Gaza was its own autonomous
20:33
Speaker 2: or completely separate state and it wasn't controlled by Israel
20:39
Speaker 2: and there was no conflict, I doubt they would have
20:42
Speaker 2: the same mindset, Like the mindset is coming out of
20:45
Speaker 2: watching the destruction of Gaza, and so then instead of saying, hey,
20:51
Speaker 2: we shouldn't just be bombing this city into oblivion and
20:54
Speaker 2: supporting this, instead they go all the way and support
20:59
Speaker 2: the ideology of the authoritarian rulers of this area, which
21:05
Speaker 2: is kind of kooky, but it's like it's but it's
21:09
Speaker 2: much like a religion. It's a you can abandon all
21:12
Speaker 2: logic as long as you adhere to and you have to,
21:17
Speaker 2: in fact, if you want to be accepted. And this
21:20
Speaker 2: is one of the things about the left, is like
21:22
Speaker 2: there's never someone left enough, and when you think you're
21:27
Speaker 2: left enough, they move the border, They move the boundary lines.
21:30
Speaker 2: The goalposts are like a mile further to the left.
21:33
Speaker 2: You're like, oh god, I got to support drag queens
21:36
Speaker 2: teaching kids now by themselves, no parental division, torking. It's
21:41
Speaker 2: like it just keeps getting nuttier and nuttier to where
21:45
Speaker 2: any protest of it is heresy. And that's where it
21:49
Speaker 2: gets very strange, and it behaves completely like a religion.
21:54
Speaker 1: Other examples of social empathy. So I talk of the
21:58
Speaker 1: book about something I introduce as cultural theory of mind. Right,
22:03
Speaker 1: So theory of mind is as I discussed earlier, it's
22:05
Speaker 1: at the individual level. For you and I to have
22:07
Speaker 1: a meaningful conversation, I need to be in your mind,
22:10
Speaker 1: and vice versa. Cultural theory of mind is the same principle,
22:14
Speaker 1: but it operates at the cultural level. So if culture
22:17
Speaker 1: a has a set of values that it adheres to
22:21
Speaker 1: and if it presumes that those values are processed in
22:25
Speaker 1: exactly the same way by the other culture, and that's
22:28
Speaker 1: a wrong presumption. I argue that that culture then lacks
22:32
Speaker 1: cultural theory of mind because it is assuming that its
22:36
Speaker 1: values transcend in exactly the same way to other cultures. Now,
22:39
Speaker 1: why is that related to social empathy? So if you take,
22:42
Speaker 1: for example, the values that we hold dear in the West, magnanimity, generosity, kindness, empathy,
22:52
Speaker 1: they're interpreted in other societies as weakness, weakness, weakness and weakness.
22:58
Speaker 1: And this is why I'm I don't remember if I
23:00
Speaker 1: mentioned this to you before on the show or not.
23:03
Speaker 1: In Arabic, when people would speak to me, I mean
23:05
Speaker 1: many years ago before, I mean, now they recognize me,
23:07
Speaker 1: so they're not going to be as forthright in their positions.
23:11
Speaker 1: But twenty five years ago they would all tell me
23:14
Speaker 1: the West as a woman to be mounted. Well, the
23:17
Speaker 1: reason why they're saying, I mean not all, but it
23:20
Speaker 1: was very common. It was a saying that it's often
23:24
Speaker 1: you know intimated.
23:26
Speaker 2: Was this when you were living in Lebanon?
23:27
Speaker 1: No, no, no, in Montreal, in Montreal, we should tell.
23:30
Speaker 2: People just my background, yeah, because it's you know, it's
23:34
Speaker 2: very pertinent.
23:35
Speaker 1: Sure. So I was born in nineteen sixty four in Lebanon.
23:40
Speaker 1: My family were part of the last remaining minuscule community
23:45
Speaker 1: of Lebanese Jews. Historically there was always a small but
23:50
Speaker 1: you know, a pretty vibrant Jewish community. Most of the
23:54
Speaker 1: Jews had left prior to the start of the Civil War,
23:58
Speaker 1: which happened in seventy five I was eleven, because they
24:02
Speaker 1: had already read the writing on the wall. So most
24:05
Speaker 1: of my extended family, my aunts, my uncles, my grandparents
24:09
Speaker 1: had left to various places, most of them to Israel,
24:12
Speaker 1: but some of them to Montreal, Canada. That's why we
24:14
Speaker 1: ended up going to Montreal ourselves. But my parents had
24:17
Speaker 1: refused to leave because they were very well entrenched within
24:21
Speaker 1: Lebanese society. They had nice business and so on. My
24:24
Speaker 1: older siblings. I have three other siblings. One is fourteen
24:28
Speaker 1: years older, one is twelve years older, and one is
24:30
Speaker 1: ten years older. The one who's ten years older is
24:33
Speaker 1: the Olympian judoka that played in that competed in the
24:37
Speaker 1: Montreal Olympics in nineteen seventy six. So they already had
24:42
Speaker 1: left Lebanon prior to the start of the Civil war
24:45
Speaker 1: because they had started facing some Jew hatred difficulties, and
24:49
Speaker 1: even in tolerant, progressive Lebanon. Unfortunately for me, being the
24:54
Speaker 1: last ten years younger than everybody else, I was still
24:56
Speaker 1: a kid. We got caught up once the civil war
25:00
Speaker 1: or broke out. Some really bad things happened during that
25:03
Speaker 1: first year, but then we were able, thank god, to
25:06
Speaker 1: escape to Montreal. But then my parents kept returning to
25:12
Speaker 1: Lebanon because they still had business interests, so they would
25:16
Speaker 1: go back to Lebanon from nineteen seventy five to nineteen eighty.
25:21
Speaker 1: On one of their return trips to Lebanon, they were
25:25
Speaker 1: kidnapped by Abunidhal's group Fadah, and some really bad things
25:31
Speaker 1: happened during their captivity, very much like the stuff that
25:34
Speaker 1: you hear about in October seventh. But luckily they weren't killed.
25:39
Speaker 1: They were able to be freed. I mean, they weren't
25:43
Speaker 1: freed through a commando operation. They were freed through the
25:46
Speaker 1: connections that my parents had. My mother's best friend was
25:51
Speaker 1: a Syrian woman, Syrian Muslim woman who was the personal
25:56
Speaker 1: dresser of half As, the the father of the one
26:03
Speaker 1: who was recently deposed, and so through him my my
26:09
Speaker 1: siblings reached out to this woman, her name was Essan.
26:12
Speaker 1: I think she's passed away now she got the father involved.
26:17
Speaker 1: He reached out to yas Adaphath, who was the head
26:20
Speaker 1: of the PLO back then. As I understand the story,
26:25
Speaker 1: yas Adaphah said, well, I don't even know whether they
26:28
Speaker 1: were with one of our groups. Let me, do, you know,
26:30
Speaker 1: make some calls. But at the time there was sort
26:33
Speaker 1: of a battle between Yaser Adapha and Abuni Daal, and
26:36
Speaker 1: he said if he if it's the Abuni dal gang
26:39
Speaker 1: that took him, you know, good luck. And it was
26:41
Speaker 1: the Abuni da group, but I'm guessing there was some
26:44
Speaker 1: money that was exchanged. My parents were freed. When my
26:48
Speaker 1: father returned, he had a temporary facial paralysis, akin to
26:56
Speaker 1: when you have a really severe stroke and your face
27:00
Speaker 1: is completely disfigured and asymmetric bar is that what it's called.
27:05
Speaker 1: But it was it got resolved and so for a while,
27:08
Speaker 1: I don't know how long it was, maybe a month
27:09
Speaker 1: or two, his face was completely asymmetric, probably due to
27:14
Speaker 1: the things that happened to him. And actually, I mean
27:18
Speaker 1: some of the stuff I may have prefoubly mentioned on
27:20
Speaker 1: the show But here's a part that I'm almost certain
27:23
Speaker 1: I didn't mention. At one point that the militia group
27:27
Speaker 1: was trying to get my parents to sign a confession
27:31
Speaker 1: letter that they are Israeli spies, which if you met
27:35
Speaker 1: my parents you would know that that's not a very
27:38
Speaker 1: likely reality, because it turns out that if they signed that,
27:43
Speaker 1: then they could legally execute them. And the guy who
27:46
Speaker 1: had started this whole thing was the owner of the
27:48
Speaker 1: building where my dad owned the store, and if they
27:52
Speaker 1: could now get rid of them, the store would, So
27:55
Speaker 1: it wasn't even like a religious thing. It was for
27:58
Speaker 1: one of the seven deadly sense of greed, at least
28:01
Speaker 1: as I understand that. And anyways, and so at one
28:03
Speaker 1: point they had separated my parents and they were trying
28:06
Speaker 1: to put a lot of pressure on each of them
28:09
Speaker 1: to sign this thing. And they go to my mother
28:11
Speaker 1: and say, you know, you know, admit that, you know
28:14
Speaker 1: you're a spot whatever Israeli agent, and she's like, are
28:18
Speaker 1: you crazy, I mean just to go ask my husband,
28:20
Speaker 1: you know, And they kind of mockingly say, oh, well,
28:24
Speaker 1: your husband has gone to join his God, meaning that
28:27
Speaker 1: they've already killed him. So then my mother is in
28:30
Speaker 1: her little cell, and you know, they're doing bad things
28:33
Speaker 1: to them. And she hears my dad late at night
28:37
Speaker 1: in some other part of wherever they were keeping him.
28:40
Speaker 1: He had a very whooping kind of cough, like a
28:43
Speaker 1: like a cough, as if like, actually, I have a
28:45
Speaker 1: similar cough. I used to be asthmatic, so I have
28:48
Speaker 1: this very deep and loud cough. And so she was
28:51
Speaker 1: hearing that cough, but she wasn't sure if she's just
28:56
Speaker 1: hallucinating this in her thoughts or whether it was real. Well,
29:00
Speaker 1: it turned out that it was. They hadn't killed them,
29:02
Speaker 1: but they were just trying to lean in on her.
29:04
Speaker 1: And so that's the background that I come from.
29:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you are very tuned in to what could
29:12
Speaker 2: possibly go wrong.
29:15
Speaker 1: Unfortunately. Yes, Yeah, And this is why, I mean, many
29:18
Speaker 1: times when I've come on this show, you know, I've
29:20
Speaker 1: talked about some of those difficulties that you know, all
29:23
Speaker 1: religions are not indistinguishable from each other. All religious I
29:27
Speaker 1: mean religions have certain features that might be transferable from
29:31
Speaker 1: one religion to the other, but there are many elements
29:34
Speaker 1: that are very specific to a given religion. Sure, if
29:38
Speaker 1: you're in extremest Jane, then you really take your using
29:45
Speaker 1: the sweeping thing when you know, when they walk they
29:50
Speaker 1: use a broom so that they inadvertently don't step on
29:54
Speaker 1: an ant and kill it. So an extremist, extremist, in
29:58
Speaker 1: quotes Jane, someone who really takes his religion seriously is
30:02
Speaker 1: someone who's going to be extremist in his pacifism. Right now,
30:07
Speaker 1: that religion has very, very different edicts about how to
30:11
Speaker 1: conduct yourself even when you're walking on a sidewalk, then
30:15
Speaker 1: maybe will an Abrahamic faith, whether it be Judaism or
30:18
Speaker 1: Christianity or Islam. So the idea that ultimately all religions
30:22
Speaker 1: are simply preaching the same indistinguishable thing in slightly different
30:26
Speaker 1: ways is simply not true. But it feels good to
30:30
Speaker 1: think that, right. It's empathetic for us to think that
30:33
Speaker 1: we shall never speak amongst mixed company about politics and religion.
30:37
Speaker 1: So therefore, if I start saying something that might be
30:41
Speaker 1: pejorative of another religion, that feels icky, That feels ghosh right.
30:46
Speaker 1: And that's why, by the way, earlier you mentioned that
30:49
Speaker 1: when we were talking about this, when I asked you,
30:52
Speaker 1: are Americans more likely now to talk openly about Islam?
30:55
Speaker 1: You said, well, the Democrats are more terrified to do
30:58
Speaker 1: so than the Republicans. Even the Republicans are to some
31:01
Speaker 1: extent suicidely empathetic because if you watch even the ones
31:05
Speaker 1: who very forcefully criticize Islam as being incongruent with, you know,
31:12
Speaker 1: American values, they'll always use linguistic coverage to protect Islam.
31:18
Speaker 1: So it's Islamism, it's radical Islam. It's radical. No, no,
31:25
Speaker 1: not at all. So a political Islam, and Islamism is
31:30
Speaker 1: an indelible, inherent feature of Islam. Much of Islam is Islamism.
31:37
Speaker 1: So if you do a content analysis of all of
31:40
Speaker 1: the canonical texts of Islam, which are the Koran, the Hadith,
31:46
Speaker 1: the deeds and the sayings of Muhammad, and the Sira,
31:49
Speaker 1: which is the biography of Muhammad, you could do a
31:52
Speaker 1: quantitative analysis of how often is it preaching brotherly love?
31:57
Speaker 1: How often is it really concerned about the infidel? How?
32:00
Speaker 1: And so Islam in its nature is political. Why. There
32:05
Speaker 1: are many reasons why, but let me just give you
32:07
Speaker 1: one and then if you want to drill down we
32:09
Speaker 1: can do so. Islam is a fully proselytizing language religion,
32:14
Speaker 1: meaning that it is incumbent in an ideal world to
32:20
Speaker 1: turn the entire world into the one true faith. It
32:25
Speaker 1: is a peaceful religion. If by peaceful it means the following. Eventually,
32:31
Speaker 1: the entire globe, every millimeter of the globe, will be
32:35
Speaker 1: united under the unifying flag of Allah. Now let's take
32:39
Speaker 1: for example, Judaism, and it's not because I'm Jewish, but
32:42
Speaker 1: it's just to compare. Judaism is precisely the opposites. It
32:48
Speaker 1: is an anti proselytizing language. You're not allowed to proselytize.
32:53
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, if you proselytize. Let's say
32:56
Speaker 1: I try to convince you, Joe, you know, why don't
32:58
Speaker 1: you join the tribe? And you say, you know what
33:00
Speaker 1: I think i'd like to.
33:01
Speaker 2: It's a grind.
33:02
Speaker 1: It's a grind exactly my uncle did it. Well, there
33:05
Speaker 1: you go, thank you. So it is literally in the
33:08
Speaker 1: canons of Judaism to try to dissuade the prospective convert
33:13
Speaker 1: to coming into the fold, because the idea is to
33:18
Speaker 1: have a costly signal of your commitment, your religious piety
33:23
Speaker 1: to want to join the group. So it is a grind.
33:26
Speaker 1: It's very hard. In Islam. You just have to say
33:29
Speaker 1: the one proclamation, the shahada one sentence, and you're in.
33:33
Speaker 1: Now try to get out. There are apostasy laws against
33:37
Speaker 1: you getting out. So the circuitry of Islam is one
33:43
Speaker 1: that is expansionist. That's why you have two billion Muslims.
33:47
Speaker 1: One out of every four human beings is Muslim, and
33:50
Speaker 1: it only took fourteen hundred years for that. So from
33:53
Speaker 1: a marketing perspective, as someone who studies consumer behavior, Islam
33:57
Speaker 1: is a brilliant marketing religion. It has found a way
34:02
Speaker 1: to get a lot of customers and adherents. Judaism sucks
34:07
Speaker 1: at marketing because the entire circuitry of Judaism is meant
34:11
Speaker 1: to keep it very, very small, and so which one
34:16
Speaker 1: is likely to lead to greater problems the one that
34:20
Speaker 1: is meant to ensure that all of us become Muslim
34:23
Speaker 1: or the one that says, even if your uncle wants
34:25
Speaker 1: to become Jewish, we're going to put the barriers so
34:28
Speaker 1: high that nobody will ever become Jewish. So we still
34:31
Speaker 1: have only fifteen million Jews roughly in the world, almost
34:35
Speaker 1: the same as we had before the Holocaust. So Judaism
34:38
Speaker 1: sucks as a marketing religion. Islam incredibly successful.
34:42
Speaker 2: In this country The concern with Judaism is the support
34:47
Speaker 2: of the Israeli military, right, that's the concern. The concern
34:51
Speaker 2: is the amount of influence that it has on the
34:54
Speaker 2: United States government. How we got into the Iran War.
34:58
Speaker 2: Why we give them so much influence over our military,
35:03
Speaker 2: over our decision making, over our politicians. I mean, APEC
35:08
Speaker 2: famously promotes and supports a tremendous amount of politicians in
35:14
Speaker 2: the United States. That's that's the big fear, is that
35:17
Speaker 2: there's an inordinate amount of influence that Israel has over
35:21
Speaker 2: foreign policy or our decisions and even our political structure
35:27
Speaker 2: in the country.
35:28
Speaker 1: Right. Several ways to tackle this, say the Iran war,
35:33
Speaker 1: take Israel out of it. Do you think that? Do
35:36
Speaker 1: you think there are multiple countries that would share in
35:41
Speaker 1: the recognition that probably Iranian regime that hasn't eschatology that
35:49
Speaker 1: basically says the end of times requires that there is
35:53
Speaker 1: sort of death to everybody before the final you know,
35:57
Speaker 1: a mom comes back. Would it be a good idea
36:01
Speaker 1: for the Brits or the Romanians, or the French or
36:05
Speaker 1: some of the other the Gulf countries? Would they be
36:09
Speaker 1: happy if Iran had a nuclear weapon? So to frame
36:13
Speaker 1: the issue, of the US as attacking or is involved
36:17
Speaker 1: in the attack on the Iranians. As the United States
36:22
Speaker 1: doesn't have personal agency, they're all wood crickets that are
36:26
Speaker 1: being puppeteered by this incredibly powerful lobby called Israel that
36:31
Speaker 1: simply doesn't pass the smell test. Of course, Israel has
36:35
Speaker 1: shared interest with the United States as most allies would,
36:38
Speaker 1: where they both agree that probably an Iranian regime that
36:42
Speaker 1: has nuclear weapons should would not be a good thing
36:45
Speaker 1: for world peace. And so because these two countries have
36:49
Speaker 1: maybe greater testicular fortitude than the NATO countries, it seems
36:53
Speaker 1: as though the Israelis are puppeteering the Americans. But do
36:58
Speaker 1: you really think that Donald Trump is sitting and saying,
37:01
Speaker 1: you know, had I not been such a weak guy
37:04
Speaker 1: with no personal agency, I wouldn't have fallen sway to
37:07
Speaker 1: the incredibly influential Zionist lobby.
37:11
Speaker 2: Well, it's not just incredibly influential. It's the amount of
37:14
Speaker 2: financial support they gave his candidacy, and again all the
37:18
Speaker 2: different politicians that are beholden to Israel. That's the concern
37:22
Speaker 2: that a lot of people on the right and on
37:25
Speaker 2: the left have here in America. So most people in
37:28
Speaker 2: America do not support this war. It's the large percentage
37:33
Speaker 2: of people think it was a bad idea.
37:36
Speaker 1: What are your thoughts?
37:36
Speaker 2: I don't think it's a good idea. Why But well,
37:38
Speaker 2: because first of all, it doesn't seem to have a
37:41
Speaker 2: clear resolution. Right. It's like we went over there because
37:46
Speaker 2: we were told that they were very close to developing
37:49
Speaker 2: a nuclear weapon. But if you've paid attention to what
37:52
Speaker 2: Netanyahu has said over the last few decades, it's always
37:55
Speaker 2: been they're a year away, they're two months away, or
37:58
Speaker 2: whatever it is. I mean, he's been doing this forever,
38:01
Speaker 2: ever since he spoke at the UN and had that
38:03
Speaker 2: giant cartoon bomb. Remember the fucking Looney Tunes bomb.
38:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, when he's.
38:09
Speaker 2: Put the percentage of Enrichmond of uranium. He's wanted this
38:13
Speaker 2: for a long time. There's also a deep concern that
38:18
Speaker 2: he is only in office because of the war, and
38:21
Speaker 2: he has corruption charges in Israel, and that in order
38:24
Speaker 2: for him to stay in power and for him to
38:27
Speaker 2: avoid during the trial, he has to continue war.
38:32
Speaker 1: Can I comment on that? Shore Let's suppose you go
38:37
Speaker 1: to see your physician and your physician says, hey, Joe,
38:40
Speaker 1: god forbid, it looks like your blood sugar is very high,
38:44
Speaker 1: and I'm going to classify you as now, never mind
38:46
Speaker 1: pre diabetic. I think you're diabetic. And if we don't
38:50
Speaker 1: manage your sugar levels, there will come a day where
38:54
Speaker 1: I can tell you exactly what's going to happen. We're
38:56
Speaker 1: going to have to amputate your extremities. You're probably going
38:59
Speaker 1: to lose your eyesight, you're probably going to have sexual dysfunction,
39:02
Speaker 1: and you're probably going to have some cardiovascular incident that
39:06
Speaker 1: doesn't happen on day two of you having been diagnosed
39:10
Speaker 1: with diabetes. Like, there's a trajectory and at some point
39:14
Speaker 1: there'll be a tipping point where until then none of
39:17
Speaker 1: the diabetes complications happened. And why am I saying all
39:21
Speaker 1: this Because I can't comment as to whether he's been
39:25
Speaker 1: lying all the times when he said there's two more
39:28
Speaker 1: years left, or one more year, or six more months.
39:31
Speaker 1: But surely we can grant the American government enough leeway
39:37
Speaker 1: to presume that if they thought that at this point
39:40
Speaker 1: it's the right time, and it is now intolerable for
39:44
Speaker 1: them to go another day with the current reality that
39:47
Speaker 1: they probably had some intelligence that suggests that they are close.
39:50
Speaker 1: So I can't comment whether Natan Yaho was pulling our eyes,
39:55
Speaker 1: but surely it can't be that the Israelis are so
39:58
Speaker 1: manipulative and they're popp tearing that they've pulled the wool
40:02
Speaker 1: over the American eyes. And really there's no danger that
40:05
Speaker 1: the Iranians were posing and we've convinced the Americans to
40:08
Speaker 1: go to war. Do you think that it is not?
40:10
Speaker 2: Well, I wouldn't say there's no danger. Right. So here's
40:14
Speaker 2: here's one thing that we do know. They had said
40:17
Speaker 2: that their missiles could only reach a certain distance. That
40:21
Speaker 2: proved to not be true because of the Diego Garcia
40:26
Speaker 2: missile watch. Right, so they have missiles that are capable
40:29
Speaker 2: of reaching Europe and that was not something they had
40:33
Speaker 2: said before. We know that they have enriched their uranium
40:37
Speaker 2: beyond what they need for nuclear power, and that they're
40:42
Speaker 2: within striking distance of developing a nuclear weapon, right, But
40:47
Speaker 2: wasn't it true that they had put See this is
40:51
Speaker 2: it's hard to know as me as a person sitting
40:54
Speaker 2: on a podcast studio in Texas, exactly what they're ruling
41:00
Speaker 2: had been, but that they had only done this in
41:04
Speaker 2: order to avoid the possibility of them being attacked, that
41:08
Speaker 2: they would get close to a nuclear weapons so at
41:11
Speaker 2: least it would it would deter some potential attacks on them,
41:18
Speaker 2: and that they were doing this out of self interest.
41:23
Speaker 2: There's a large group of American politicians that did not
41:26
Speaker 2: want this war, that did not think it was warranted
41:29
Speaker 2: to attack Ran at this point, can I yeah?
41:33
Speaker 1: Okay, So I think I've mentioned on the show before
41:37
Speaker 1: this distinction between the antological ethics absolute statements. It is
41:42
Speaker 1: never okay to lie versus consequentialist ethics. It's okay to
41:47
Speaker 1: lie if it is meant to spare someone's hurt feelings. Right,
41:50
Speaker 1: So if your wife says, do I look fat in
41:52
Speaker 1: those genes? You put on your consequentialist hat, and you
41:54
Speaker 1: say You've never looked more beautiful because maybe she's put
41:58
Speaker 1: on a bit of weight, But you don't want to
41:59
Speaker 1: hurt her face, so you lie. And for most of us,
42:03
Speaker 1: we go through life in most instances putting on a
42:06
Speaker 1: consequentialist hat. Okay, And I'm going to link it now
42:08
Speaker 1: to our discussion to have, for example, a deontological principle
42:14
Speaker 1: that says that I am always an isolationist. You understand
42:17
Speaker 1: what I mean by here, denthological meaning that it doesn't
42:20
Speaker 1: matter what the environment is out there, I as America
42:25
Speaker 1: will never interfere in wars over there. That can't be
42:30
Speaker 1: an optimal strategy, right, Because So, for example, if you
42:33
Speaker 1: are adontological pacifist, you say, under no circumstances do I
42:39
Speaker 1: believe that violence is the solution. Well, what would usually
42:43
Speaker 1: happen to a society if it adhere to theonthological pacifism?
42:48
Speaker 1: They'd be eradicated, right, So it can't be that for
42:53
Speaker 1: some of these geopolitical issues there is a rule that
42:57
Speaker 1: in its nature is the intological. So many of the
43:00
Speaker 1: Americans that are anti this war are very, very staunchly
43:06
Speaker 1: steeped and sort of a libertarian slash theontological isolationist perspective. Now,
43:12
Speaker 1: in many cases I would completely agree with that position
43:15
Speaker 1: in that it's not the American's position to have to
43:19
Speaker 1: go and be the policeman of everywhere in the world.
43:23
Speaker 1: But let's contrast and say with when World War Two
43:26
Speaker 1: was about to happen, the appeasement strategy of Chamberlain. Right,
43:31
Speaker 1: this guy with the little mustaches, don't worry about it.
43:33
Speaker 1: I absolutely have no design to do anything bad. You swear, Adolph,
43:37
Speaker 1: It's all good. Yeah, don't worry. Promise you really don't,
43:39
Speaker 1: even though you're moving all of your stuff. You're a
43:42
Speaker 1: good guy, right, I can trust you? Yeah, yeah, of
43:43
Speaker 1: course you can. So appeasement only works if the other
43:48
Speaker 1: person is someone that can be fully trustworthy. It is
43:51
Speaker 1: almost incontestable that if the Iranian regime in its current
43:55
Speaker 1: form could ever cause great damage to everybody, not only Israel, right,
44:00
Speaker 1: I mean, the Gulf countries are not exactly putting up
44:03
Speaker 1: barriers against this war, because there also are the enemies
44:07
Speaker 1: of the Iranians. So it's undoubtable that, of course the
44:12
Speaker 1: Americans have the Israelis in their ear pushing for their
44:16
Speaker 1: self interest. But that's also called the reality of every
44:20
Speaker 1: nation on Earth. Every entity fights for its own interests.
44:26
Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean that the Americans are so lacking
44:29
Speaker 1: in personal agency, are so gullible, are so easy to puppeteer,
44:34
Speaker 1: that there must be this zion of slobby that otherwise
44:37
Speaker 1: is pushing us into an unnecessary war. Maybe another three years,
44:42
Speaker 1: maybe another five years, maybe another ten years, it would
44:45
Speaker 1: have resulted in a disaster. So if you are a
44:49
Speaker 1: universalist and you want the Iranian people to maximally flourish.
44:53
Speaker 1: Forget about Israel. Don't even mention the word Israel. Do
44:56
Speaker 1: you not want these ninety million people called Iranian who
45:00
Speaker 1: have a deeply rich historical, you know, heritage to flourish.
45:06
Speaker 1: I've had many graduate students who are Ringians in my
45:09
Speaker 1: classes and so on. They're some of the most modern, secular,
45:13
Speaker 1: outward looking Westerners that have been choked for forty seven
45:18
Speaker 1: years by a really nasty regime. So maybe we could
45:21
Speaker 1: celebrate that if all this goes well, ninety million people
45:25
Speaker 1: are going to be freed. And I could say that
45:28
Speaker 1: statement without ever invoking Israel. What do you think of that?
45:31
Speaker 2: Well, I think the reason why they're in the situation
45:33
Speaker 2: they're in the first place is because of the United States.
45:37
Speaker 2: It's because the United States and the British Petroleum Company.
45:40
Speaker 2: It's because they were trying to nationalize oil. That's what
45:43
Speaker 2: happened in the first place, Islamic revolution. Yes, this is
45:46
Speaker 2: how it started. In the first place, they realized that
45:49
Speaker 2: the British Petroleum Company was making a ton of money
45:52
Speaker 2: and they wanted to nationalize oil, and we got rid
45:55
Speaker 2: of them, and they installed this Islamic regime. And look
46:01
Speaker 2: at it, there's a lot of consequences for that down
46:04
Speaker 2: the road. Obviously, the worst side of it was what
46:08
Speaker 2: happened to the Iranian people. When you look at the
46:11
Speaker 2: photos and the videos of Tehran from like the nineteen fifties,
46:16
Speaker 2: the nineteen sixties, I mean, my god, it looks like
46:17
Speaker 2: a Western society. Women wearing skirts and everyone looks look
46:22
Speaker 2: very moderate and Western. And then it became this fundamentalist
46:29
Speaker 2: religious country that it is right now, this Islamic country
46:32
Speaker 2: that it is right now. They're under a regime that
46:37
Speaker 2: murders protesters. They famously murdered some high level wrestlers. There
46:43
Speaker 2: was an Olympic gold medalist of the United States. The
46:46
Speaker 2: UFC tried to get involved and try to keep him
46:48
Speaker 2: from getting murdered. Yeah, they do horrible things. There's no
46:52
Speaker 2: doubt about it. It's a terrible regime. But there's a
46:55
Speaker 2: really good argument that that terrible regime is in place
46:58
Speaker 2: because of the CIA and because of the United States government,
47:01
Speaker 2: because the British Petroleum Company, because we intervened, and we've
47:05
Speaker 2: done that in the past, we did that with Libya, right,
47:08
Speaker 2: this is the reason why Momar Kadaffi was out. You know,
47:11
Speaker 2: we had Russell Crowe who's a brilliant guy on the podcast,
47:15
Speaker 2: was explaining the history of Libya and how great it
47:20
Speaker 2: was for Libyan people when Momar Kadafi was in power,
47:23
Speaker 2: that if anybody wanted to get an education anywhere they
47:28
Speaker 2: had some certain skills or talent some certain area, they
47:31
Speaker 2: would fully pay for their education. Overseas, they gave everyone
47:34
Speaker 2: a house. Everyone who lived there had a home. That
47:36
Speaker 2: mean people were educated. They and he was trying to
47:39
Speaker 2: set up something akin to the United States, but the
47:41
Speaker 2: United States of Africa and you know, and they were like,
47:44
Speaker 2: we can't have any of that, and so they got
47:48
Speaker 2: rid of him and Libya became a failed state, like
47:51
Speaker 2: we have monkeyed in other countries for our own interest
47:55
Speaker 2: for a long time and with horrible consequences for the
47:58
Speaker 2: people in those countries. And I think Iran is an
48:01
Speaker 2: excellent example of that.
48:02
Speaker 1: So, how much of the Islamic regime coming into power
48:09
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy five, If you have one hundred points
48:13
Speaker 1: that you want to allocate to either it's the US
48:16
Speaker 1: that causes it versus there's an Islamic regime with its
48:20
Speaker 1: theology that is really nasty. How would you allocate the
48:24
Speaker 1: points in terms of you know the cause of that reality.
48:29
Speaker 2: That's a good question. That's a question that would be
48:31
Speaker 2: answered by historians rather than me. But I think there's
48:35
Speaker 2: no doubt that we played a major factor in that.
48:38
Speaker 2: Don't you agree with that?
48:40
Speaker 1: I mean, yes and no. So let me explain why
48:41
Speaker 1: I say yes and no. Okay, when you have a
48:44
Speaker 1: complicated geopolitical system, you can always look remember the old
48:50
Speaker 1: butterfly effect, Right, there's butterfly flaps its swings in the Amazon,
48:55
Speaker 1: and then how that reverberates into a cyclone somewhere else.
49:00
Speaker 2: Right, it's kind of bullshit.
49:01
Speaker 1: No, But I mean the principle of it's.
49:04
Speaker 2: Great if you don't understand how the weather works.
49:06
Speaker 1: Fair enough. But the idea that there are causal networks
49:10
Speaker 1: is such that in this complicated web of causal networks,
49:14
Speaker 1: you can always find a particular entity that you can
49:19
Speaker 1: try to link back all of the causes to that entity.
49:22
Speaker 2: But the overthrow of a foreign government and supporting an
49:26
Speaker 2: iatola to take their place, it's a pretty big factor.
49:30
Speaker 1: So that's why I asked you to allocate the hundred points.
49:34
Speaker 2: So I wouldn't be the guy to answer that.
49:36
Speaker 1: I'm going to answer off the top of my head,
49:38
Speaker 1: and it's completely speculative. So the numbers I'm going to
49:40
Speaker 1: say are not let's ascribe ten out of the hundred
49:44
Speaker 1: points to whatever powered the US wheels in that region
49:51
Speaker 1: to have allowed that regime to come in, But that
49:55
Speaker 1: regime carries the other ninety points of the one hundred
49:59
Speaker 1: because they are the ones who, for the next forty
50:02
Speaker 1: seven years implement the reality that the common Persian is
50:07
Speaker 1: going to experience. Everything in the world can ultimately be
50:12
Speaker 1: linked back to oxygen, to the United States, to the
50:17
Speaker 1: military complex to design a slobby because in some very
50:21
Speaker 1: facile way, all of those entities are connected in a
50:25
Speaker 1: meaningful way in this causal network. But is using OCAM's razor,
50:31
Speaker 1: is does it really make sense to blame For example,
50:35
Speaker 1: people say isis is really due to whatever Israel I mean,
50:41
Speaker 1: in some facile way, you could draw the causal link
50:46
Speaker 1: of how there was a vacuum that was created by
50:49
Speaker 1: the US when they debathized Iraq that allowed an extreme
50:54
Speaker 1: So do we blame ISIS on American policy or design
50:58
Speaker 1: a slobby or or does ISIS itself have any personal
51:03
Speaker 1: agency in terms of what it then does for the
51:06
Speaker 1: next ten years that it's in power. Do you see
51:08
Speaker 1: what I'm saying.
51:09
Speaker 2: I do.
51:10
Speaker 1: So this is the old story. I'm going to butcher it,
51:14
Speaker 1: but I quote it in the parasitic mind. For the
51:15
Speaker 1: man who has a hammer, he only sees the world
51:19
Speaker 1: as being made up of the nails.
51:21
Speaker 2: Right.
51:21
Speaker 1: So this is when you're you're presuming that there is
51:25
Speaker 1: greater explanatory power to a particular cause than there really is.
51:31
Speaker 1: Every look, I'll give you an example. Let's suppose that
51:36
Speaker 1: the night before an eventual dictator that was going to
51:42
Speaker 1: become a dictator, his parents felt particularly amorous that night.
51:47
Speaker 1: And what made them amorous to then eventually conceive that
51:51
Speaker 1: guy who became a dictator who killed three million people,
51:55
Speaker 1: is that they played Berry White music. Because very white
51:59
Speaker 1: music is baby making music. So it is, in a
52:02
Speaker 1: very silly way, absolutely true that had Verry White not
52:08
Speaker 1: been such a great singer with a deep voice that
52:11
Speaker 1: makes the ladies drop the panties, then those two parents
52:15
Speaker 1: of the eventual dictator would not have had sex that night.
52:19
Speaker 2: I will stop you right there, because I don't think
52:21
Speaker 2: there's sex that's ever been had because only of Verry White.
52:25
Speaker 2: I think people have been having sex since the beginning
52:27
Speaker 2: of time. I don't believe it. It's wonderful music. I
52:31
Speaker 2: don't think it causes sex.
52:32
Speaker 1: Do not criticize Berry Well.
52:34
Speaker 2: I'm not criticizing it just says great music. Yeah, I
52:37
Speaker 2: don't believe it. I think people getting it on from
52:40
Speaker 2: the beginning of time, and they probably would have done
52:43
Speaker 2: the exact same thing that night if it was Barry
52:45
Speaker 2: White or Barry man Alowe. I don't think.
52:47
Speaker 1: So, let's not put Arry White. There was some facilitating
52:52
Speaker 1: mechanism that rendered them amorous on that particular night. Whatever
52:57
Speaker 1: that mechanism is, it is absolutely true that we can
53:01
Speaker 1: lay the blame, some blame of that dictator eventually killing
53:06
Speaker 1: three million people. He would have never been born had
53:09
Speaker 1: they not had sex exactly at that moment.
53:12
Speaker 2: I think that's a bit of a stretch. But I
53:14
Speaker 2: think it's a bit of a stretch when you actively
53:16
Speaker 2: work to overthrow a democratically elected government.
53:20
Speaker 1: I mean, so this now we're talking about what when
53:22
Speaker 1: they well.
53:23
Speaker 2: Well, not not even democratically elected government, because Libya wasn't
53:26
Speaker 2: a democratically elected government, right like, not really like, let's
53:30
Speaker 2: be honest, right like, Putin's not really a democratically elected
53:34
Speaker 2: president of Russia. But you know what I mean, But
53:37
Speaker 2: we funded the rebels to kill Kadafi, right, that's it's
53:45
Speaker 2: our responsibility by Liberya fell. But if okay true in
53:49
Speaker 2: that position.
53:51
Speaker 1: Kadaffi, the way you made him out to be was,
53:53
Speaker 1: I mean, he was Robin Hood, right, Kadafi.
53:55
Speaker 2: Was no no, no, no, no, no, good for the people
53:58
Speaker 2: in many ways, pretty nasty guy. In other ways, there
54:01
Speaker 2: is no egalitarian, beautiful leader out there. They've never existed
54:07
Speaker 2: because the cold hard reality of running enormous groups of
54:12
Speaker 2: people that are in conflict with other groups of people
54:14
Speaker 2: is you're going to have to crack some eggs, and
54:16
Speaker 2: so you're going to do some terrible.
54:17
Speaker 1: Things, especially in those regions of the world where if
54:21
Speaker 1: you don't have an incredibly strong armed guy, then religion
54:25
Speaker 1: comes in and it becomes a strong guy. So you
54:28
Speaker 1: have it in Egypt, you have it with Saddam Hussein
54:32
Speaker 1: and would said than his son. So so those guys
54:39
Speaker 1: are if you're a universalist who wishes for individual liberties
54:44
Speaker 1: and freedoms to flourish for everybody around the world, then
54:47
Speaker 1: you're probably not supporting these guys.
54:49
Speaker 2: Right, Well, okay, we can use Sodom Mussein as an example,
54:52
Speaker 2: look a look at what happened there. I mean, it
54:54
Speaker 2: became a complete and total disaster, result in the death
54:57
Speaker 2: of at least a million innocent people. Yes, and didn't
55:01
Speaker 2: do anything positive in terms of turning that into a
55:06
Speaker 2: beautiful Western style democracy.
55:09
Speaker 1: But by the way that last sentence, I would argue
55:12
Speaker 1: that that's because of the Americans lack of cultural theory
55:16
Speaker 1: of mind, because they presume that the desire to have
55:20
Speaker 1: democracy around the world is exactly what everybody wants, and
55:23
Speaker 1: therefore they're culturally blind to the fact that other places
55:28
Speaker 1: around the world may not share our own affinity for democracy.
55:31
Speaker 2: Well, not just that, but culture ignorant to the fact
55:34
Speaker 2: that they're Sunni and Shia Muslims and they were going
55:36
Speaker 2: to fight with each other.
55:37
Speaker 1: Right yeah, now, but you okay, so the Americans come in,
55:42
Speaker 1: they create a bad set of ecosystems that permits for
55:47
Speaker 1: Isis to flourish. At what point would you and your
55:52
Speaker 1: causal link of explanations shift from the catalyst of the
55:57
Speaker 1: Americans having done something that allowed Isis to flow to
56:00
Speaker 1: then saying, starting a time t my causal weaponry is
56:06
Speaker 1: going to be targeting ISIS moving forward.
56:10
Speaker 2: Well, it's a good question, because like, why did ISIS
56:12
Speaker 2: flourish in the first place. Was it because of the
56:14
Speaker 2: removal of Saddam Mussein? Was it because of the overthrowing
56:17
Speaker 2: of the country. I mean, wasn't that it was? Yeah,
56:20
Speaker 2: so if that didn't take place, what would Iran and
56:24
Speaker 2: Iraq look like right now?
56:26
Speaker 1: Right? But so think about all of the people that
56:30
Speaker 1: have suffered horrifyingly as a result of ISIS. If you
56:36
Speaker 1: are a individual that's walking around who is the recipient
56:40
Speaker 1: of that brutality, what would make more sense if you're
56:44
Speaker 1: engaging in statistical inferencing, would it be to say, you know,
56:48
Speaker 1: the guy that's about to stick string me up because
56:52
Speaker 1: I looked at a girl wrong, and he's going to
56:54
Speaker 1: cut off my penis and my arms because I touched
56:56
Speaker 1: the girl. I really can't blame ISIS because really it's
57:00
Speaker 1: American foreign policy that intervene in Iraq. That's not how
57:05
Speaker 1: people navigate through their day.
57:06
Speaker 2: How did you get to that? Meaning the guy get
57:09
Speaker 2: his penis chopped off, in his arms chopped up?
57:12
Speaker 1: But you know how under shady Allah there are very
57:14
Speaker 1: strict rules about that governed the dynamics between men and women. Right,
57:20
Speaker 1: So I was just being hyperbolic. But let's say, whatever
57:22
Speaker 1: the punishment, you stole a loaf of bread under shaddy allah,
57:25
Speaker 1: we cut off your hand. Right, So, let's say you're
57:28
Speaker 1: a twelve year old kid who just stole a loaf
57:31
Speaker 1: of bread from the souk, and the ISIS commanders have
57:34
Speaker 1: caught you, and they are about two institute shaddy allah
57:38
Speaker 1: by cutting off your hand because you're a thief. Would
57:42
Speaker 1: it be natural for you or your parents, the parents
57:45
Speaker 1: of the twelve year old who are crying because they're
57:48
Speaker 1: about to see their hand, the hand of their child
57:50
Speaker 1: cut off, would they say, I really can't be upset
57:54
Speaker 1: at ISIS and their brutality because I ultimately ISIS only
57:58
Speaker 1: came in because of the geopilitic intervention in the United States.
58:01
Speaker 1: Do you do you think that that would be a reasonable.
58:03
Speaker 2: The whole idea sucks like the and that complete imprisonment
58:10
Speaker 2: of any group of people under a totalitarian regime is terrible,
58:15
Speaker 2: But that's its full The question is how were they funded,
58:18
Speaker 2: how did they get into the position that they got
58:20
Speaker 2: into in the first place, and how did they rise
58:21
Speaker 2: to power?
58:22
Speaker 1: But nothing can happen, but.
58:24
Speaker 2: How much of it is because of our meddling that
58:26
Speaker 2: they rose to power in the first place.
58:28
Speaker 1: So let's suppose we hadn't medaled. So we meddled, we
58:31
Speaker 1: meaning the United States. Let's say we, and I'm glad
58:33
Speaker 1: that I'm now including myself with we.
58:36
Speaker 2: We almost you're close, get there.
58:38
Speaker 1: So we meddled because whatever calculus, some of it was incorrect.
58:42
Speaker 1: Maybe there was no weapons of mass destruction. I mean
58:45
Speaker 1: some Hussein was a horrifying guy. I think if you
58:48
Speaker 1: need to rank all of them, maybe in terms of
58:51
Speaker 1: pure evil, he might have been the biggest of all
58:54
Speaker 1: the thugs. Right.
58:56
Speaker 2: Uh, And this is the Suns and the Sons.
58:58
Speaker 1: Are even worse maybe, right or you've heard of all
59:01
Speaker 1: the stories there. It's just really defies complete exactly. Okay.
59:07
Speaker 1: So now, if I am a typical Iraqi who is
59:11
Speaker 1: going about my business, I really would like to not
59:14
Speaker 1: live under Saddam Hussein's thumb, and I probably don't want
59:19
Speaker 1: to live under you know, isis thumb and an ideal
59:23
Speaker 1: world I could live with complete dignity and you know,
59:27
Speaker 1: liberty and so on. The Americans, with all of their miscalculations,
59:31
Speaker 1: may be naively thought that will come in and then kumbaya,
59:35
Speaker 1: we will create a new democracy in Iraq. They completely miscalculated.
59:41
Speaker 1: But the root cause of the daily evil that the
59:45
Speaker 1: Iraqis go through cannot be put on the broad shoulders
59:49
Speaker 1: of the Americans, because then that removes the personal agency
59:54
Speaker 1: of the actors in their daily lives that are causing
59:57
Speaker 1: them all the pain. But there is a reflex, and
1:00:00
Speaker 1: dare I say, forgive me as suicidally empathetic reflex that
1:00:03
Speaker 1: renders you somehow progressively sophisticated, if you always turn all
1:00:08
Speaker 1: of the world's ills on your own society.
1:00:12
Speaker 2: I agree with you and what you're saying, But the
1:00:15
Speaker 2: reason why we're there was not because we wanted to
1:00:18
Speaker 2: help people. The whole reason why they came up with
1:00:21
Speaker 2: this fake weapons of mass destruction narrative is because they
1:00:24
Speaker 2: wanted to control the oil.
1:00:27
Speaker 1: I really can't speak to that to you.
1:00:28
Speaker 2: You could be right, oh, one hundred percent, I'm right, Yeah,
1:00:32
Speaker 2: we're not doing that to help people. We didn't go
1:00:36
Speaker 2: to Iraq to help people. It didn't even make sense
1:00:38
Speaker 2: that we're in there. They weren't involved in nine to eleven.
1:00:41
Speaker 2: The whole idea was nuts.
1:00:43
Speaker 1: Okay, So let me.
1:00:44
Speaker 2: I think the whole weapons of mass destruction narrative was
1:00:47
Speaker 2: complete bullshit that was cooked up to give an excuse
1:00:49
Speaker 2: to go over there and take willfully.
1:00:51
Speaker 1: So it's not they made an error. They knew it was.
1:00:53
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean, I think there's a lot of evidence
1:00:55
Speaker 2: to that. There's there's no evidence that they had weapons
1:00:58
Speaker 2: of mass destruction as described by everybody to give the
1:01:01
Speaker 2: motivation for US to support the war.
1:01:04
Speaker 1: Okay, So let mean maybe as the distinguished Professor of
1:01:09
Speaker 1: the Declaration of Independent Center for the Study of American Freedom,
1:01:11
Speaker 1: I hope University Misissippi will be happy that I'm defending
1:01:14
Speaker 1: the United States as a Canadian, not yet American, but
1:01:18
Speaker 1: in chill law soon. Is it not true that the
1:01:25
Speaker 1: default reality of every unit, whether it be an individual
1:01:31
Speaker 1: grouping a country, will typically, all other things equal, try
1:01:37
Speaker 1: to pursue policies that are in its best interest. Right,
1:01:41
Speaker 1: So when Trump says America first, MAGA and all this,
1:01:46
Speaker 1: that's what he's appealing to. Yes, So does the US
1:01:50
Speaker 1: ever do things that might be less than savory because
1:01:56
Speaker 1: they're pursuing their selfish interests one percent and we can
1:01:59
Speaker 1: come up right, But that makes them a country made
1:02:03
Speaker 1: up of these things called human beings. In other words,
1:02:06
Speaker 1: no society has ever been created that is made up
1:02:10
Speaker 1: of these utopian machines that as they navigate the world,
1:02:14
Speaker 1: they look to the other for their unless they are
1:02:16
Speaker 1: suicidally empathetic. So the US is made up of real
1:02:21
Speaker 1: human beings endowed with real brains, whereby they might say, hey,
1:02:25
Speaker 1: maybe if we take their oil and cancoct the strategy. Now,
1:02:30
Speaker 1: is that good or bad? We can debate it. But
1:02:32
Speaker 1: in the grand buffet of societies that have ever held power,
1:02:38
Speaker 1: does the U and never mind the power asymmetry that
1:02:42
Speaker 1: the US has vis a vis everybody else, is it
1:02:46
Speaker 1: the most restrained society ever? If the United States today
1:02:50
Speaker 1: said we need more beaches all the Caribbeans are becoming
1:02:55
Speaker 1: the fifty first state, could anybody do anything about that? No,
1:02:59
Speaker 1: yet they don't. So I think it would be good,
1:03:02
Speaker 1: certainly for Americans, and me, as an honorary American, to say,
1:03:06
Speaker 1: does America do sometimes things that are less than perfect
1:03:10
Speaker 1: in the utopian world? One hundred percent? Yes, You're right,
1:03:13
Speaker 1: I can see that. Does it wield its power in
1:03:16
Speaker 1: the most gentle ways compared to what it could do
1:03:19
Speaker 1: and compared to what other societies, if they had that power,
1:03:22
Speaker 1: would do. I think that America does pretty well. No,
1:03:26
Speaker 1: am I too? Am I too rosy about my views
1:03:28
Speaker 1: of America?
1:03:29
Speaker 2: Well, that's an interesting question because China doesn't meddle in
1:03:33
Speaker 2: other countries the way we do, and they have a
1:03:35
Speaker 2: similar military mind, not quite commensurate, but pretty similar. Like
1:03:41
Speaker 2: you don't see them invading other countries and doing the
1:03:44
Speaker 2: type of things that we do, and none of they
1:03:45
Speaker 2: threatened to Taiwan, but they believe the Taiwan is a part.
1:03:49
Speaker 2: They call it Chinese type a.
1:03:51
Speaker 1: Right, So I'm going to use here some Arabic words.
1:03:53
Speaker 1: I'll try to explain in English, but maybe to your
1:03:56
Speaker 1: Arabic listeners they'll appreciate it that Chinese have greater honey
1:04:01
Speaker 1: and nestnecy. They are duplicitous in the way they do
1:04:07
Speaker 1: that stuff, right, They cast, they caress you this way
1:04:11
Speaker 1: while they take right. So, yes, they are using a
1:04:15
Speaker 1: different modality to wield their power compared to the brash Americans.
1:04:21
Speaker 1: But let's not sort of romanticize what the Chinese could do.
1:04:26
Speaker 2: Right, Well, they're taking advantage of the openness of American society.
1:04:30
Speaker 2: They've infiltrated universities, they've infiltrated a lot of tech sectors.
1:04:35
Speaker 2: They've sold American military a bunch of cell phone towers
1:04:40
Speaker 2: that are surrounding military bases that may or may not
1:04:43
Speaker 2: be transmitting data. We've had to kick Huawei out of
1:04:46
Speaker 2: the country because it turns out that a lot of
1:04:48
Speaker 2: their equipment could be used for spying. They buy farmland
1:04:52
Speaker 2: all around military bases. They're doing a lot of things
1:04:55
Speaker 2: to take advantage of our silliness. But that's because we
1:04:59
Speaker 2: should have better laws to prevent you know what's essentially
1:05:05
Speaker 2: not our friends from doing that. Yeah, I mean, you
1:05:08
Speaker 2: can call them an enemy nation or whatever you want
1:05:10
Speaker 2: to call them, but we shouldn't be allowing a foreign
1:05:14
Speaker 2: nation that we are in conflict with to control land
1:05:19
Speaker 2: around military bases. That's just stupid. Yeah, but that's because
1:05:23
Speaker 2: of our capitalist society. You can't even you can't own
1:05:26
Speaker 2: a business in China. You can't go over there and
1:05:30
Speaker 2: buy stuff like you can't do it. You can be
1:05:32
Speaker 2: in business with them, and then you know what they do.
1:05:35
Speaker 2: They just kick you out and take over it, right,
1:05:37
Speaker 2: change the name of it and take over all the
1:05:40
Speaker 2: ip and you're gone, bye bye. And there's not a
1:05:42
Speaker 2: fucking thing you could do about it, because they don't
1:05:44
Speaker 2: have an open society like we do well.
1:05:46
Speaker 1: And think about I mean, if we're doing the ledger
1:05:48
Speaker 1: of sort of cruelty and evil, we could talk about
1:05:51
Speaker 1: how the US versus China wheelspower around the world, and
1:05:54
Speaker 1: how about internally domestically we had a guy called Mantseetung
1:05:57
Speaker 1: that was kind of pretty brutal. If we do the
1:06:00
Speaker 1: history of China in terms of how many millions of
1:06:03
Speaker 1: people were killed by that regime versus anything that's happened
1:06:07
Speaker 1: in the US. Has the US been perfect in the
1:06:09
Speaker 1: past two hunred and fifty years. Absolutely not.
1:06:11
Speaker 2: No, There's never been a perfect regime exactly. So it'snow
1:06:14
Speaker 2: perfect regimes and you know what they did just with
1:06:17
Speaker 2: their one child policy.
1:06:18
Speaker 1: There you go.
1:06:19
Speaker 2: I mean, there's a lot wrong with the way China
1:06:21
Speaker 2: does things, you know, But.
1:06:23
Speaker 1: So to me once, I maybe that's why University of
1:06:28
Speaker 1: Mississippi was keen on having me come. I look at
1:06:31
Speaker 1: the United States as someone who thank you for your
1:06:35
Speaker 1: earlier question about sort of where do you come from?
1:06:37
Speaker 1: God tell us your story. Some of the biggest defenders
1:06:40
Speaker 1: of the United States are typically it might sound paradoxical,
1:06:44
Speaker 1: but if you think about it, it's not. Are usually
1:06:47
Speaker 1: immigrants who have sampled from the wide variety of buffets
1:06:52
Speaker 1: of societies out there. Therefore, we know that the anomaly
1:06:57
Speaker 1: called the United States is truly an anomaly. Whereas the
1:07:01
Speaker 1: American wakes up in his life and he thinks that
1:07:05
Speaker 1: the liberties and freedoms that you have in the United
1:07:07
Speaker 1: States are just the default value. That's just the way
1:07:10
Speaker 1: it is. It isn't. That's what makes the United States great.
1:07:13
Speaker 1: So for me, by the way, that also explains why
1:07:17
Speaker 1: people think, for example, that I defend Israel because I'm Jewish,
1:07:21
Speaker 1: there is an element to that. I mean, most of
1:07:23
Speaker 1: my families in Israel. But it's really I defend Israel
1:07:27
Speaker 1: because many of its values are congruent with those that
1:07:32
Speaker 1: we hold dear in the United States. So, given the
1:07:35
Speaker 1: region of the Middle East, if I'm going to send
1:07:38
Speaker 1: my daughter or yours to some university to study, I
1:07:43
Speaker 1: would much rather for her to be in a society
1:07:46
Speaker 1: in Tel Aviv or Haifa than I would in many
1:07:49
Speaker 1: of the other places. So it's in that sense that
1:07:52
Speaker 1: I'm pro Israel. So if you ask me to allocate
1:07:55
Speaker 1: one hundred points to how much of my support of
1:07:58
Speaker 1: Israel is due to the fact that many of its
1:08:01
Speaker 1: foundational values are similar to those of the United States.
1:08:04
Speaker 1: Versus the fact that I'm Jewish and Israel is a
1:08:07
Speaker 1: Jewish state. I would say eighty twenty for for the latter,
1:08:12
Speaker 1: meaning that I am defending the civilizational values of Israel
1:08:17
Speaker 1: in a very very difficult and belligerent neighborhood. Does Israel
1:08:22
Speaker 1: always do things perfectly? No? Do they have politicians that
1:08:26
Speaker 1: are corrupt. Yes, have pedophiles who did bad things here
1:08:33
Speaker 1: try to go there and have aliyah, meaning get residency
1:08:37
Speaker 1: there and run away from the Yes. But it could
1:08:40
Speaker 1: also be the case that a bank robber or pedophile
1:08:43
Speaker 1: goes back to Thailand if there are no extradition mechanisms
1:08:47
Speaker 1: to bring them back to the United States. So my
1:08:51
Speaker 1: position of defending the United States or Israel or whomever
1:08:55
Speaker 1: else really stems from some foundational values of liberty and freedom.
1:09:00
Speaker 1: There is no conceivable place in the world where, given
1:09:05
Speaker 1: the neighborhood that Israel exists in, one would conceivably defend
1:09:10
Speaker 1: any of those other societies instead of Israel. If the
1:09:13
Speaker 1: metrics that you care about are personal liberties and freedoms,
1:09:17
Speaker 1: we can then debate specific policies and you'd be completely
1:09:21
Speaker 1: in your right to say I don't like when the
1:09:23
Speaker 1: Israeli government does this, but well, let me ask you,
1:09:27
Speaker 1: and forgive me for asking you a personal question. If
1:09:29
Speaker 1: let's say your daughter today said that I'd like to
1:09:32
Speaker 1: go and just study one year abroad, and it's going
1:09:37
Speaker 1: to be somewhere in the Middle East, you, Joe Rogan,
1:09:40
Speaker 1: how likely would you be to support her going in
1:09:44
Speaker 1: the Middle East to a university other than in Israel.
1:09:48
Speaker 2: That's interesting when you say the Middle East you mean
1:09:52
Speaker 2: like Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates, because I think.
1:09:56
Speaker 1: Okay, so I'll get you right, that's true. And by
1:09:59
Speaker 1: the way, I'm love the openness that many of these
1:10:02
Speaker 1: countries are exhibiting. And I'll tell you, I'll tell you
1:10:04
Speaker 1: a quick personal story and then I'd love to then
1:10:06
Speaker 1: hear you. I was approached by Alahaabilla. Aladabilla is the
1:10:13
Speaker 1: premier news network from their Saudi but they were actually
1:10:19
Speaker 1: located in Dubai and Riz Khan, who was the anchor
1:10:24
Speaker 1: that was flying from Dubai to interview me in Montreal
1:10:27
Speaker 1: for Alhadabilla, he used to be the main anchor I
1:10:31
Speaker 1: think at BBC Global or CNN Global. I said to Riz,
1:10:37
Speaker 1: are we going to be talking about things like Islam
1:10:40
Speaker 1: and this guys? He goes, yeah, yeah, feel free to
1:10:41
Speaker 1: talk about whatever you want. I said, well, I'm not
1:10:44
Speaker 1: worried so much about me, but you're going to have
1:10:46
Speaker 1: to go back to that region. Are you comfortable like
1:10:48
Speaker 1: can I? I mean, I'll be very professorial and proper,
1:10:51
Speaker 1: but i will say some difficult truths. He goes, say
1:10:55
Speaker 1: whatever you want. That aired. It was a two hour
1:10:58
Speaker 1: conversation where we, you know, we talked about all sorts
1:11:00
Speaker 1: of things, but we talked about Islam, and then he
1:11:03
Speaker 1: said they loved you. About a month or two later,
1:11:06
Speaker 1: another state, another show contacted me and I went also
1:11:10
Speaker 1: on an idea, and then they even wanted to offer
1:11:13
Speaker 1: me a show. Now the Saudi group is offering the
1:11:19
Speaker 1: Lebanese jew who's often been critical of some of the
1:11:22
Speaker 1: tenets of Islam. So I'm very optimistic about that. So
1:11:25
Speaker 1: I agree with you that if your daughter wanted to
1:11:27
Speaker 1: perhaps go to some places in the Gulf countries, you'd
1:11:30
Speaker 1: probably condone it and support it. But that would make
1:11:33
Speaker 1: it too easy. So let me choose which kind.
1:11:35
Speaker 2: He would be too easy, But that is the Middle
1:11:37
Speaker 2: East and there are Islamic countries.
1:11:40
Speaker 1: Because those countries are having a revival of modernity.
1:11:44
Speaker 2: Well, maybe that's what we should talk about, because is
1:11:47
Speaker 2: that possible with Islam that they could have a revival
1:11:49
Speaker 2: of maternity across the entire country. Like imagine if Iraq,
1:11:53
Speaker 2: Iran all these countries will run like Saudi Arabia or
1:11:57
Speaker 2: run like the United Arab Emirates, you would have a
1:12:00
Speaker 2: much more peaceful environment, wouldn't you.
1:12:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I'm gonna be done very optimistic. There is
1:12:06
Speaker 1: a package of cultural richness in the Middle East like
1:12:12
Speaker 1: no other. And I come from the region Arabics, my
1:12:15
Speaker 1: mother tongue, the spirit of generosity, the spirit of loyalty
1:12:19
Speaker 1: when you're in the group, the hospitality is like no other. Actually,
1:12:24
Speaker 1: I recently was telling some folks in Mississippi that the
1:12:28
Speaker 1: Mississippians remind me as though they were honorary Lebanese, because
1:12:32
Speaker 1: there's so it's that Southern hospitality really like over the
1:12:35
Speaker 1: top wanting to make you feel good. So there are
1:12:38
Speaker 1: elements of the Middle East that have such a fabric
1:12:42
Speaker 1: of richness that if we can mind that and quell
1:12:46
Speaker 1: all of the tribalism associated with religions. I think it
1:12:50
Speaker 1: could be one of the most fertile and rich places
1:12:54
Speaker 1: in the world. Now, it depends what we do with Islam.
1:12:57
Speaker 1: If Islam is something that you practice privately as part
1:13:03
Speaker 1: of a long historical narrative. So, for example, I'm Jewish.
1:13:06
Speaker 1: I'm very wedded to my Jewish identity, but I don't
1:13:10
Speaker 1: take many of the edicts of Judaism seriously in the practice.
1:13:15
Speaker 1: I don't light the candle at four twenty one for
1:13:19
Speaker 1: Shabbat because if four twenty two, God would be upset
1:13:23
Speaker 1: at me. But if I went to the Rabbi, he'd
1:13:25
Speaker 1: say it has to be at four twenty one. So
1:13:27
Speaker 1: I pick and choose cafeteria jew. I pick and choose
1:13:31
Speaker 1: the parts.
1:13:31
Speaker 2: That I wish to atfeteria Jews.
1:13:34
Speaker 1: Right like that, I don't practice some soft version of
1:13:37
Speaker 1: Judaism that allows for the eating of pork and shrimps.
1:13:43
Speaker 1: I simply say, I'm a glutton that likes to eat
1:13:46
Speaker 1: well and shrimps, and some pork tastes really good, so
1:13:50
Speaker 1: I'm just going to ignore those parts. I think. I
1:13:53
Speaker 1: think if Islam could allow for that cafeteria, which by
1:13:59
Speaker 1: the way, many Muslims do now, right like not that
1:14:03
Speaker 1: friends that are Muslims. Exactly, hundreds of millions of Muslims
1:14:06
Speaker 1: want to cause zero harm to Jews.
1:14:10
Speaker 2: So the problem is radical Islamism, like we were talking
1:14:14
Speaker 2: about before. So you're kind of radical.
1:14:17
Speaker 1: It's just Islam, and I choose to ignore the parts
1:14:21
Speaker 1: that I don't like. You're putting an appellation on Islam
1:14:25
Speaker 1: that is unnecessary. Islam is made up of many tenants.
1:14:29
Speaker 1: It's not radical Islam. There is no book called radical Islam.
1:14:33
Speaker 1: There's only Islam. I mean Erduwan said, there is no
1:14:36
Speaker 1: moderate Islam. There's just Islam. So is he an islamophobe? Right?
1:14:40
Speaker 1: So there is a bunch of tenets. There's the one
1:14:43
Speaker 1: that says kill kill, kill, kill, kill, take a break,
1:14:46
Speaker 1: continue killing. Fuck that. I'm going to ignore it because
1:14:49
Speaker 1: I'm a good person, right, Because there are mean Jews
1:14:51
Speaker 1: and nice Jews, mean Muslims, nice Muslims, so many.
1:14:55
Speaker 2: Astromization of it.
1:14:57
Speaker 1: So if there is a way to maintain the Islamic heritage,
1:15:02
Speaker 1: there's Islamic architecture, there's Islamic poetry, there's Islamic philosophy. There
1:15:08
Speaker 1: was a period under Islamic rule where many of the
1:15:12
Speaker 1: ancient texts from you know, Greek philosophy were safeguarded by Islam, right,
1:15:18
Speaker 1: so it's not as though that entire civilization is void
1:15:22
Speaker 1: of incredibly rich things, but there are unfortunately elements of
1:15:27
Speaker 1: the religion that are not congruent with Western values. If
1:15:31
Speaker 1: there is a way for us from this side of
1:15:33
Speaker 1: our mouth to honor Islamic architecture and poetry, and from
1:15:38
Speaker 1: this side of our mouth forget the parts that says kill, kill,
1:15:41
Speaker 1: kill everyone, then I think you could have wonderful, flourishing right.
1:15:45
Speaker 2: For it to evolve exactly. Yeah, I see what you're saying.
1:15:49
Speaker 2: You know, there's a really good argument that the reason
1:15:51
Speaker 2: why isis and these various radical organizations exist is because
1:15:59
Speaker 2: of the United States meddling in all these countries for
1:16:02
Speaker 2: decades and decades. You know, I don't know if you
1:16:05
Speaker 2: ever saw it, but Glenn Greenwald was on Bill Maher show,
1:16:09
Speaker 2: and Glenn, he's a very brilliant guy, and he had
1:16:13
Speaker 2: a very balanced take on it, and he was arguing
1:16:16
Speaker 2: with Bill Maher versus why they behave the way they
1:16:21
Speaker 2: do and making the argument that a lot of it
1:16:24
Speaker 2: was because of the United States intervening in their countries
1:16:27
Speaker 2: that we've been over there and meddling in their countries
1:16:30
Speaker 2: and being meddling in their policies and their government for
1:16:35
Speaker 2: so long that this is the reason why these things
1:16:37
Speaker 2: happened in the first place. And I don't know if
1:16:39
Speaker 2: you've ever seen it, might do a good thing to
1:16:43
Speaker 2: play it, because it was kind of interesting to watch
1:16:46
Speaker 2: Bill Maher kind of push back against it. But Glenn
1:16:48
Speaker 2: Greenwald is very well read and really understands the history
1:16:53
Speaker 2: of this region.
1:16:55
Speaker 1: I'm not a huge Glenn Greenwall fan. Many of the
1:16:58
Speaker 1: positions he's taken I've really liked. He does seem to
1:17:01
Speaker 1: have a bit of the self flagellation reflex when it
1:17:04
Speaker 1: comes to it all comes down to something that the
1:17:07
Speaker 1: US has done that's evil, or something that Israel has
1:17:10
Speaker 1: done is evil. So to our earlier conversation, there are
1:17:14
Speaker 1: features that isis believes in that they believe in independently
1:17:19
Speaker 1: of anything that the US could have ever done or
1:17:22
Speaker 1: will ever do.
1:17:23
Speaker 2: But if they were flourishing and we hadn't intervened in
1:17:26
Speaker 2: their country, do you think it's possible that the rest
1:17:29
Speaker 2: of them Middle East could be in a similar person
1:17:32
Speaker 2: And not to say that Saudi Arabia is perfect, right,
1:17:35
Speaker 2: the Jamal Koshogi thing is horrific. I mean that just
1:17:39
Speaker 2: that alone. This is a big criticism for a lot
1:17:41
Speaker 2: of the American comedians that went over there and participated
1:17:44
Speaker 2: in the Reaht Comedy Festival. Yes, like, do you not
1:17:47
Speaker 2: know what this regime did to an American journalist? But
1:17:53
Speaker 2: is it possible that these countries could have evolved in
1:17:57
Speaker 2: a very similar way? And if it comes for us? Yeah, no,
1:18:02
Speaker 2: no you don't think so.
1:18:04
Speaker 1: So Islam's existence fourteen hundred years.
1:18:06
Speaker 2: Right in those Why did these countries? Why does the
1:18:09
Speaker 2: United Arab Emirates? Why do they have a much more
1:18:11
Speaker 2: open society now?
1:18:13
Speaker 1: I mean there are all sorts of reasons. Maybe they're rulers.
1:18:17
Speaker 1: I can't speak.
1:18:17
Speaker 2: It is a lot of the rulers. They're much more
1:18:19
Speaker 2: progressive exactly.
1:18:20
Speaker 1: So they've taken a pill of pragmatism that says that
1:18:25
Speaker 1: we could still maintain our unique identity while turning and
1:18:30
Speaker 1: open arms to the West. And it takes courageous leaders
1:18:36
Speaker 1: to say this is how we can have these two
1:18:39
Speaker 1: things coexist. I could still be fully steeped in my
1:18:42
Speaker 1: Muslim identity, but I'm not going to look at the
1:18:45
Speaker 1: other as a dirty Kufar, right, the dirty non Muslim, right,
1:18:50
Speaker 1: and so good for them, that's great. But over the
1:18:53
Speaker 1: fourteen hundred years, so we're gonna we US is going
1:18:57
Speaker 1: to celebrate the two hundred fifty years soon, right. Islam
1:19:01
Speaker 1: has existed for fourteen hundred years, So we could very
1:19:04
Speaker 1: easily temporarily just go back two hundred and fifty years
1:19:08
Speaker 1: prior and remove anything that could be due to the US.
1:19:12
Speaker 1: Is that true? I mean empirically sure, okay, And if
1:19:15
Speaker 1: we want to remove Israel from the story, we just
1:19:18
Speaker 1: have to go to nineteen forty eight, and so that's
1:19:21
Speaker 1: seventy something years, and then anything that Islam would have
1:19:25
Speaker 1: done prior to nineteen forty eight could not be blamed
1:19:29
Speaker 1: on the Zionist entity.
1:19:30
Speaker 2: For sure. We could go back to the beginning of
1:19:33
Speaker 2: the United States, where the United States was being.
1:19:37
Speaker 1: Attacked by the Muslim Is that we talk about Thomas exactly? Yes,
1:19:43
Speaker 1: Thomas Jefferson exactly.
1:19:44
Speaker 2: Yes.
1:19:45
Speaker 1: So my point is we tell everybody that story. I
1:19:48
Speaker 1: don't know it too well, but Thomas Jefferson I think
1:19:52
Speaker 1: was being belligerent to some incursions of Muslim piracy or something.
1:19:57
Speaker 2: Like that, right right where they said that it was
1:19:59
Speaker 2: there right to do so.
1:20:00
Speaker 1: Exactly we were infidels, exactly right. I mean, Winston Churchill
1:20:04
Speaker 1: has some really savory quotes about what he thought about
1:20:08
Speaker 1: his interactions with Islam. That and now he's British, he's
1:20:11
Speaker 1: got nothing to do with the United States. This was
1:20:13
Speaker 1: well before the existence of the Zionist entity. It is
1:20:18
Speaker 1: part of the playbook to try to always blame some
1:20:22
Speaker 1: other agent other than our canons for why we're doing
1:20:26
Speaker 1: what we're doing. Right.
1:20:27
Speaker 2: I think that's why this is a good conversation. Right,
1:20:29
Speaker 2: this is very nuanced. We're kind of weighing out both
1:20:32
Speaker 2: sides of it.
1:20:33
Speaker 1: That's why I love coming on the show whenever you
1:20:35
Speaker 1: have me on. So if you crack, I don't mean you,
1:20:40
Speaker 1: but anybody who's listening to this crack a book to say, okay,
1:20:44
Speaker 1: let me look at the number of military conquests where
1:20:49
Speaker 1: Islam was the offensive party, right, not we were deep.
1:20:54
Speaker 1: For example, people say, oh, the Crusades, Well, the crusades
1:20:59
Speaker 1: were a retaliation to hundreds of years of Islamic aggression.
1:21:05
Speaker 1: It's not. It didn't come out of nowhere. But there's
1:21:07
Speaker 1: always what I call the amnesia of causality. People always
1:21:11
Speaker 1: forget what was the original starting point under Islam. As
1:21:16
Speaker 1: I said, the primary canonical requirement of Islam is to
1:21:22
Speaker 1: render the entire world Islamic. Now again, that doesn't mean
1:21:25
Speaker 1: that every Muslim believes this. That doesn't mean that every
1:21:28
Speaker 1: Muslim leader believes this. But we're talking about what's in
1:21:32
Speaker 1: the canons of the religion. It is a violently expansionist ideology.
1:21:39
Speaker 1: I mean, nothing could be clear. I've explained this previously
1:21:42
Speaker 1: on the show, but if you allow me, I'll explain
1:21:44
Speaker 1: it again. Islam has dual logic. Everything in Islam is
1:21:50
Speaker 1: broken down into two camps. There is Dad, a Hub
1:21:54
Speaker 1: and dal Islam, the House of Islam and the House
1:21:57
Speaker 1: of War. Any country that is not yet under Islamic
1:22:02
Speaker 1: dominion is classified as under the House of War. That's
1:22:08
Speaker 1: literally the words. Now, any country that has ever become
1:22:14
Speaker 1: under Islamic dominion ever and then Islam loses canonically, it
1:22:20
Speaker 1: must revert back to Islam. So el Andalucia, right Andalucia
1:22:26
Speaker 1: in the in current Spain was at one point controlled
1:22:30
Speaker 1: by the Moors, right Muslims. Therefore, when now you hear
1:22:34
Speaker 1: a lot of these Islamic extremist guys saying in Shallah,
1:22:39
Speaker 1: we will get back El Andalucia. It's because once it
1:22:42
Speaker 1: became ours, it must always belong to us. The same
1:22:47
Speaker 1: argument applies for Israel. Even though Israel has thousands of
1:22:53
Speaker 1: years of lineage of the Jews to that land as
1:22:56
Speaker 1: the indigenous rule owners of that land, the fact that
1:23:00
Speaker 1: then Islam took over that region, that means it belongs
1:23:06
Speaker 1: to Muslims. Now, we may tolerate the Jews to live there,
1:23:09
Speaker 1: but there can't be a Jewish state there canonically in
1:23:14
Speaker 1: the religion. Okay, So those are just facts. You could
1:23:18
Speaker 1: study the history of Islam to count Okay, there are
1:23:21
Speaker 1: currently fifty seven. Well, if you include the Pastilian territories
1:23:25
Speaker 1: in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation the OIC, there are
1:23:28
Speaker 1: fifty six or fifty seven countries that are part of
1:23:32
Speaker 1: that block that are Islamic. Each of those countries, once
1:23:37
Speaker 1: upon a time started with zero percent Islam, right, I mean,
1:23:42
Speaker 1: it wasn't magical, So Indonesia was not Islamic ones right,
1:23:47
Speaker 1: Libya was not right. Many of those countries were Christians,
1:23:50
Speaker 1: by the way, right, Egypt was Coptic, Christian, Syria was
1:23:54
Speaker 1: tons of Christians. Lebanon within my lifetime, I was born
1:23:59
Speaker 1: in a Christian majority country. Today, within my lifetime and yours,
1:24:04
Speaker 1: it has completely flipped to Muslim majority. So wherever Islam goes,
1:24:10
Speaker 1: sometimes it might take five years to flip it. Sometimes
1:24:13
Speaker 1: it might take five hundred years. But as the Taliban
1:24:18
Speaker 1: explained to us, the American soldiers have the watches we
1:24:22
Speaker 1: have all the time in the world. So it's a
1:24:25
Speaker 1: long project. So when Islam comes into the United States,
1:24:29
Speaker 1: it's not as though suddenly the United States of America
1:24:32
Speaker 1: is going to become under shaddya a law tomorrow morning.
1:24:35
Speaker 1: But if you have the imagination to extrapolate in two
1:24:39
Speaker 1: three hundred years, if you were to repeat Dearborn and Patterson,
1:24:45
Speaker 1: New Jersey, and Minneapolis into twenty more cities, fifty more cities,
1:24:51
Speaker 1: one hundred more cities, would you be living in the
1:24:53
Speaker 1: same United States?
1:24:54
Speaker 2: Right?
1:24:54
Speaker 1: And if not, is that a good thing or a
1:24:57
Speaker 1: bad thing?
1:24:57
Speaker 2: Well that's what people were. Some are very fearful of
1:25:01
Speaker 2: what's going on in New York City with Mom Donnie.
1:25:04
Speaker 2: I think it's a trojan horse. And then under the
1:25:07
Speaker 2: guise of progressivism and you know, democratic socialism, that you're
1:25:11
Speaker 2: going to open up the door and eventually you're going
1:25:14
Speaker 2: to have called a prayer in the middle of Times Square.
1:25:17
Speaker 1: Every day exactly. Well, listen, I'm wearing right now a
1:25:20
Speaker 1: Star of David, exactly as soon as I'm in New
1:25:25
Speaker 1: York and I go to one of those I mean,
1:25:28
Speaker 1: I don't as much anymore because my stomach is a
1:25:30
Speaker 1: bit more sensitive as I get older. But let's say
1:25:33
Speaker 1: one of those street vendors, I ride away, put away
1:25:37
Speaker 1: my Star of David because I'd love to have my
1:25:39
Speaker 1: shawma without spit in it. The fact that I now
1:25:43
Speaker 1: even think of that, and that that's a reflex that
1:25:46
Speaker 1: I have today. That's not a reflex I had fifteen
1:25:49
Speaker 1: years ago. What changed, Well, what changed are the demographic
1:25:53
Speaker 1: realities that causes that there's a greater number of people
1:25:57
Speaker 1: that are triggered by the Star of David. Demography is
1:26:01
Speaker 1: indeed destiny. So you and I could fully agree that
1:26:04
Speaker 1: most Muslims are perfectly lovely. And I mean I'm the
1:26:08
Speaker 1: first one to say this because I come from that culture.
1:26:11
Speaker 1: No Muslim has ever killed me, no Muslim has ever
1:26:14
Speaker 1: raped me. But I do know that I've spoken to
1:26:18
Speaker 1: many Muslims before I was known, and they knew who
1:26:20
Speaker 1: I was, who say things about the Jews that would
1:26:24
Speaker 1: make Hitler and Himmler go, Look, guys, we also hate
1:26:28
Speaker 1: the Jews, but I think this is too much Jew
1:26:30
Speaker 1: hatred even by our standards. So there is an endemic
1:26:34
Speaker 1: feature of Islamic societies that renders the Jew as the
1:26:38
Speaker 1: ultimate chaitan, the ultimate devil. He's demonic, right, It's everywhere.
1:26:44
Speaker 1: It dictates every interaction. I'll just give you a couple
1:26:48
Speaker 1: of examples. And chermil Chek, which is a red sea
1:26:53
Speaker 1: resort area in Egypt. And Jamie is welcome to fact
1:26:59
Speaker 1: check me if he wants. And I think in twenty ten,
1:27:02
Speaker 1: there was a spat of shark attacks on tourists in
1:27:07
Speaker 1: Shermanche Do you remember after the investigation by the Egyptian
1:27:11
Speaker 1: authorities what they concluded, No, I want.
1:27:14
Speaker 2: To take I guess no.
1:27:16
Speaker 1: It was that there is very very clear evidence that
1:27:20
Speaker 1: those sharks were Zionus trained. Because the word yes, sir,
1:27:25
Speaker 1: Because the way that you can harm the Egyptian economy,
1:27:29
Speaker 1: certainly in that region, is to render the tourism activity
1:27:34
Speaker 1: lesser if you have a you know, many attacks. And
1:27:37
Speaker 1: so I'm not saying every Egyptian thought this, but this
1:27:40
Speaker 1: was coming from the authority saying that there's really very
1:27:43
Speaker 1: clear evidence that those sharks were Jewish assholes.
1:27:47
Speaker 2: Well, hold on a second. Wasn't there some evidence that
1:27:50
Speaker 2: there was like illegal dumping of carcasses of animal carcasses offshore.
1:27:58
Speaker 1: As specific to that, I think that had.
1:28:00
Speaker 2: Something to do with the shark activity. Israeli conspiracy theory
1:28:05
Speaker 2: the attack spark conspiracy theory as possible Israeli involvement. Egyptian
1:28:08
Speaker 2: television broadcast claims from Salsanai government Mohammed Abdul Fadel Shosha
1:28:16
Speaker 2: that Israeli divers captured a shark with a GPS unit
1:28:19
Speaker 2: planted on its back, allegedly by Masad. Describing the theory
1:28:22
Speaker 2: as sad, Professor Mohammad Hanafi of suiz Canal University pointed
1:28:29
Speaker 2: out that GPS devices are used by marine biologists to
1:28:31
Speaker 2: track sharks, not control them remotely. Okay, but wasn't there
1:28:36
Speaker 2: something to do?
1:28:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what the last sentence speaks to what you said.
1:28:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, I ultimately thought the dumping of sheep carcasses there
1:28:42
Speaker 2: it is during the Islamic festival of how do you
1:28:45
Speaker 2: say that? How do you say the.
1:28:47
Speaker 1: Festival within oh A the Adha.
1:28:52
Speaker 2: On sixteen November was most likely explanation. That makes sense,
1:28:57
Speaker 2: that that's why there was so much shark activity, But.
1:29:00
Speaker 1: The fact somebody somewhere said, I think that's got Jewish
1:29:04
Speaker 1: signature all over it.
1:29:05
Speaker 2: Right, But there's people in the United States that think
1:29:06
Speaker 2: the world's flat, you know, I mean that doesn't make
1:29:10
Speaker 2: mean it makes sense.
1:29:11
Speaker 1: The capacity to be parasitized is hardly restricted to Muslim minds.
1:29:16
Speaker 1: Everybody has the capacity to believe stupidity.
1:29:18
Speaker 2: So I agree, But.
1:29:20
Speaker 1: There is something, there is a unique feature of the
1:29:23
Speaker 1: Muslim mind that tends to find causality in all maladies
1:29:27
Speaker 1: in the Jew. So and and by the way, I
1:29:30
Speaker 1: have a theory if I can share it with you
1:29:32
Speaker 1: here as to this is not just Islamic jew hatred.
1:29:37
Speaker 1: Why is it that so many societies end up turning
1:29:43
Speaker 1: their you know, animus towards the Jew? Can I share
1:29:46
Speaker 1: it with you? So here I'm going to use some
1:29:49
Speaker 1: of the my psychological backgrounds. So in psychology there's something
1:29:53
Speaker 1: called the self serving bias. The self serving bias is
1:29:57
Speaker 1: how we attribute causality to the wins and losses in
1:30:01
Speaker 1: our lives. So most of us will attribute successes internally.
1:30:07
Speaker 1: I did well on the exam because I'm smart and
1:30:09
Speaker 1: I studied hard, and excuse me, we will attribute failures externally.
1:30:17
Speaker 1: I did poorly on the exam because Professor Sad is
1:30:21
Speaker 1: an asshole, right, And you can understand why we would
1:30:24
Speaker 1: have evolved that Rosie prism. Life is tough. It's an
1:30:28
Speaker 1: ego defensive strategy. I do well because of me. I
1:30:31
Speaker 1: do poorly because of the cruel world out there. Now,
1:30:35
Speaker 1: imagine if we could find the culprit, and I'll explain
1:30:37
Speaker 1: why it is specifically the Jew. Imagine if we could
1:30:40
Speaker 1: find a culprit, a universal culprit for all of our
1:30:44
Speaker 1: individual and collective failures, and it's the Jew. But why
1:30:49
Speaker 1: is it the Jew? Why isn't it the Armenian? Why
1:30:51
Speaker 1: isn't it the whatever? Here, I'm going to use a
1:30:55
Speaker 1: term from Amy Chua. Do you know Amichua?
1:30:58
Speaker 2: No?
1:30:59
Speaker 1: Okay, I thought that she might have been on your show.
1:31:01
Speaker 1: Amychua is actually the mentor of JD. Vance. She was
1:31:05
Speaker 1: his professor of law at Yale. She's written several popular books,
1:31:10
Speaker 1: including the book on how to Raise Children as a
1:31:14
Speaker 1: Tiger Mom. Have you heard the Tiger Mom Book? You
1:31:17
Speaker 1: know this kind of tough parental Asian excellence and so on.
1:31:21
Speaker 1: So Amychua introduced the term. I mean the concept is
1:31:25
Speaker 1: not hers, but the term is hers market dominant minorities,
1:31:30
Speaker 1: meaning when you have a small, minuscule group of people
1:31:35
Speaker 1: in any cultural ecosystem that are boxing well above their
1:31:40
Speaker 1: weight class. Now, in many cases you'll have, for example,
1:31:43
Speaker 1: you have Lebanese non Jews, Lebanese who are the business
1:31:47
Speaker 1: owners all over West Africa. So they are fitting that
1:31:51
Speaker 1: market dominant minority. They're a small minority, but they carry
1:31:55
Speaker 1: all the business. Okay, So it's not as though it's
1:31:57
Speaker 1: only the Jew that's the only market dominant minority. Wherever
1:32:01
Speaker 1: you have market dominant minorities, you have animus towards that
1:32:05
Speaker 1: group because the greater group, many of whom are not
1:32:08
Speaker 1: being successful. Look at that group with animus with envy.
1:32:13
Speaker 1: The Jews, wherever they are, are always, by definition short
1:32:18
Speaker 1: of Israel, are always a minuscule group that is always
1:32:23
Speaker 1: boxing well above their life. There are several reasons, I
1:32:27
Speaker 1: think predominantly, it's really a punishing cultural of excellence. And
1:32:34
Speaker 1: if you want, I can share a story from my
1:32:35
Speaker 1: own personal background, and I don't know if I've ever
1:32:38
Speaker 1: shared on the show. So I did my undergraduate in
1:32:42
Speaker 1: mathematics computer science, pretty serious stuff. Then I did an MBA,
1:32:45
Speaker 1: both at top universities. Then I was going on to
1:32:48
Speaker 1: pursue my MS, Masters of Science and PhD. One of
1:32:52
Speaker 1: the places that I had been accepted for my PhD
1:32:54
Speaker 1: with UC Irvine, I ended up going to Cornell. At
1:32:58
Speaker 1: the time, my brother, the UDO player, was living in
1:33:01
Speaker 1: Newport Beach and he was keen to try to convince
1:33:04
Speaker 1: me after my MBA to work with him and you know,
1:33:07
Speaker 1: put on hold going on for my PhD. When my
1:33:10
Speaker 1: mother found out of his design to try to convince
1:33:13
Speaker 1: me not to pursue my PhD. When I returned to
1:33:16
Speaker 1: Montreal to their house, she says, can I speak to
1:33:19
Speaker 1: you in this room? And I'm thinking, am I in trouble?
1:33:22
Speaker 1: She goes, I want to talk to you. What's up? Mom?
1:33:24
Speaker 1: She goes, I'm hearing that you're thinking of maybe putting
1:33:26
Speaker 1: your studies on hold. I said, well, she goes, well,
1:33:29
Speaker 1: I just before you say anything, do you want people
1:33:32
Speaker 1: to know you as somebody who dropped out of school? So,
1:33:35
Speaker 1: now that's a very powerful story because in my mother's eye,
1:33:39
Speaker 1: having an MBA and then taking a break before I
1:33:43
Speaker 1: pursue a PhD was something that would bring shame to
1:33:47
Speaker 1: the family as someone who had dropped out of school.
1:33:50
Speaker 1: Now do you think that if a group of people
1:33:54
Speaker 1: have internalized that level of excellence, are they likely to
1:33:57
Speaker 1: be successful or not? If another group of people thinks
1:34:01
Speaker 1: that getting good grades is acting white, is that a
1:34:05
Speaker 1: recipe for success or not? Right? So cultural values matter
1:34:09
Speaker 1: for whatever reason. Whatever is in the water of the
1:34:12
Speaker 1: Jewish home, they tend to excel. So now wherever they are,
1:34:17
Speaker 1: they're doing really well well. I wanted to be an
1:34:20
Speaker 1: actor and play in The Avengers, and I didn't get
1:34:22
Speaker 1: the part. Who controls Hollywood the Jews. I wanted to
1:34:26
Speaker 1: get a small business loan, and I didn't get it
1:34:30
Speaker 1: because my numbers weren't quite correct. Who controls the banks?
1:34:33
Speaker 1: It's the Jews. So it becomes very easy to attribute
1:34:37
Speaker 1: or ascribe all of my individual and collective failures on
1:34:42
Speaker 1: this minuscule group of people. For all of my failings.
1:34:47
Speaker 1: Thomas Sowell, whom I know you appreciate yes, gave arguably
1:34:52
Speaker 1: the greatest one word answer that I've ever heard. At
1:34:56
Speaker 1: one point, he was appearing on some show. This is
1:34:58
Speaker 1: not too long ago, maybe twenty years ago. He's now
1:35:00
Speaker 1: ninety five, and I think it's a travesty that he
1:35:02
Speaker 1: hasn't won the Presidential Freedom Medal, and I pray that
1:35:07
Speaker 1: President Trump gives it to him before he passes away,
1:35:10
Speaker 1: because he's deserving of it. He was asked once Professor's Soul,
1:35:16
Speaker 1: what do you think it will take for people to
1:35:20
Speaker 1: stop hating the Jews? And he gave a one word answer,
1:35:24
Speaker 1: do you want to take a guess what it is?
1:35:26
Speaker 1: No fail? How did Thomas Sola get this? Because he's brilliant.
1:35:32
Speaker 1: If the Jews were suddenly no longer succeeding in ways
1:35:37
Speaker 1: that are anomalous to their per capita numbers, then maybe
1:35:44
Speaker 1: they wouldn't be as hate.
1:35:45
Speaker 2: Okay, let me give me an argument against that. Please Asians.
1:35:48
Speaker 2: Asians in this culture, in this society. It also box
1:35:52
Speaker 2: way above their way in the extremely disciplined family environment,
1:35:57
Speaker 2: pushed incredibly hard to succeed, but don't get nearly the
1:36:02
Speaker 2: kind of hate the Jewish people do.
1:36:04
Speaker 1: So you're right, in the United States that's the case,
1:36:07
Speaker 1: But in some of the ecosystems in the Far East
1:36:10
Speaker 1: where they are a minority, I think it's I don't
1:36:14
Speaker 1: know if it's the malaise. I can't remember the exact grouping,
1:36:16
Speaker 1: you have the almost the exact same animus for that
1:36:19
Speaker 1: group that succeeds a lot, And actually Thomas Sowell has
1:36:23
Speaker 1: done those analyzes. So in other words, the point is
1:36:26
Speaker 1: it is what I'm describing is not singularly relevant for
1:36:31
Speaker 1: the Jew, but it is universally relevant for the Jew
1:36:36
Speaker 1: because there is no other grouping of people that is
1:36:39
Speaker 1: as successful in as many places and yet minuscule in
1:36:43
Speaker 1: all those places. So the Armenians also get that treatment
1:36:48
Speaker 1: in some ecosystems, the Lebanese get that treatment. Indians get
1:36:52
Speaker 1: that treatment in some ecosystems. So it is not a
1:36:55
Speaker 1: unique feature of only animals towards the Jews. But the
1:36:59
Speaker 1: fact that in so many societies you turn to the
1:37:03
Speaker 1: Jew to blame your problems I think stems from that.
1:37:08
Speaker 2: Don't you think you could also make that exact same
1:37:10
Speaker 2: argument that those same people that are small in number
1:37:15
Speaker 2: but hyper motivated and hyper successful would also be much
1:37:20
Speaker 2: better at influencing policy in the country that.
1:37:23
Speaker 1: They live in, hence meaning that they're more likely to
1:37:27
Speaker 1: get the ears.
1:37:28
Speaker 2: Yes, the lobby, not just the ears, but donate money,
1:37:32
Speaker 2: you know, fund campaigns get the ear of the president,
1:37:35
Speaker 2: donate money towards his campaign fund him.
1:37:39
Speaker 1: I suspect that the answer is you're right.
1:37:41
Speaker 2: Yes, most people would say that that is absolutely the right.
1:37:44
Speaker 1: But also we could say that if we look at
1:37:48
Speaker 1: the philanthropy Jewish philanthropy compared to all other philanthropy, we'd
1:37:53
Speaker 1: probably score very highly, if not.
1:37:55
Speaker 2: The philanthropy we're talking about.
1:37:57
Speaker 1: Art philanthropy, hospital philanthropy, literary philanthropy for the art right.
1:38:04
Speaker 1: So in other words, look, so my family we moved
1:38:08
Speaker 1: to Montreal from Lebanon. We moved to Montreal for two reasons,
1:38:11
Speaker 1: well three reasons. Number one, Montreal is also French and Lebanon.
1:38:18
Speaker 1: Lebanon used to be a French protectorate, so you already
1:38:20
Speaker 1: spoke French in Lebanon in addition to Arabic. So that
1:38:24
Speaker 1: was one. Number two, the immigration policy for war refugees
1:38:29
Speaker 1: was maybe easier to navigate. Canada was a more welcoming
1:38:33
Speaker 1: country than say, maybe the United States. But number three
1:38:37
Speaker 1: is that my mother's sister had already emigrated to Montreal
1:38:42
Speaker 1: with her husband, and that husband became the director general
1:38:48
Speaker 1: of the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal, which is the
1:38:52
Speaker 1: biggest hospital in Montreal. It's the Jewish general right, So
1:38:57
Speaker 1: in other words, it is undoubtedly true, true. Probably I
1:39:00
Speaker 1: don't have the empirical evidence that probably the Jewish lobby
1:39:06
Speaker 1: does its job really well and effectively. But let's look
1:39:09
Speaker 1: at all of the other things that they also do well.
1:39:11
Speaker 1: They contribute and so for example.
1:39:13
Speaker 2: Well, that's wonderful, but that doesn't take away from the
1:39:16
Speaker 2: influence that it has on our policies, on our political
1:39:21
Speaker 2: candidates on For instance, one of the reasons why mom
1:39:25
Speaker 2: Donnie won in New York City is because when they
1:39:29
Speaker 2: had the mayoral debate, he was the only one that
1:39:32
Speaker 2: said he's not immediately going to go to Israel, right,
1:39:34
Speaker 2: And a lot of people were shocked by that. They're like,
1:39:36
Speaker 2: why is everyone saying they're going to go to Israel
1:39:39
Speaker 2: when they win as the mayor in New York City.
1:39:42
Speaker 2: It didn't make any sense. And people are kind of
1:39:44
Speaker 2: confused by New York City's a mess, it's got a
1:39:46
Speaker 2: lot of problems. And this one guy said, I think
1:39:50
Speaker 2: I can serve Jewish Americans better by staying here in
1:39:54
Speaker 2: New York City and I'm not going to go to Israel.
1:39:56
Speaker 2: And everybody was like, thank god, someone said that because
1:40:00
Speaker 2: all the other candidates, it seemed, at least to me
1:40:03
Speaker 2: as an outsider, were being heavily influenced by the Jewish lobby.
1:40:09
Speaker 1: Maybe don't I really, why do they do that.
1:40:12
Speaker 2: They're not saying I'm going to go to England, They're
1:40:14
Speaker 2: not saying I'm going to go to France. They're saying
1:40:16
Speaker 2: I'm going to go to Israel.
1:40:17
Speaker 1: Right, I mean, is it surprising that if you have
1:40:20
Speaker 1: a group of people who have been historically persecuted the
1:40:24
Speaker 1: way that they have, By the way, I don't think.
1:40:27
Speaker 2: But it's running for mayor of New York City and
1:40:31
Speaker 2: they're saying I'm going to go to Israel.
1:40:33
Speaker 1: I think it's totally wrong. If there is a conflict
1:40:38
Speaker 1: between the best interests of the country that you reside
1:40:42
Speaker 1: in versus Israel, you should always side with the former.
1:40:46
Speaker 2: Understandably agree, But I think that the reason why they
1:40:50
Speaker 2: were saying that is they were being influenced by the
1:40:53
Speaker 2: people that were funding their campaigns. And I think the
1:40:57
Speaker 2: people in New York City recognize that and said, hey,
1:41:01
Speaker 2: there's something where they're not looking out for our best interests,
1:41:05
Speaker 2: They're looking out for the best interests of the people
1:41:07
Speaker 2: that are funding them, and those people have the best
1:41:09
Speaker 2: interests of Israel in mind above the interests of the
1:41:12
Speaker 2: United States. And this is the same sentiment that people
1:41:15
Speaker 2: have for why we invaded Iran and why we funded
1:41:20
Speaker 2: Israel while they're bombing Gaza, the same sort of thing.
1:41:23
Speaker 2: And I would I would say from October seventh on,
1:41:26
Speaker 2: you know, first of all, immediately afterwards, a tremendous support
1:41:29
Speaker 2: for Israel. I mean, it was a horrific attack, but
1:41:32
Speaker 2: the response I think has created a lot of anti
1:41:37
Speaker 2: Israel sentiment in the United States.
1:41:39
Speaker 1: Yes, do you think that other lobby groups that very
1:41:44
Speaker 1: feverishly lobby for their self interests would receive the same
1:41:49
Speaker 1: animus as the pro Israel lobby.
1:41:52
Speaker 2: So, for example, they're not connected to a specific country.
1:41:55
Speaker 2: That's the problem. This one group is connected to a
1:41:58
Speaker 2: specific country.
1:42:00
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's do specific country. I've been a professor
1:42:04
Speaker 1: for thirty two years, so I care about the ideas,
1:42:08
Speaker 1: the bad ideas that flourish within university's ecosystem. Hence parasitic
1:42:12
Speaker 1: mind source at empathy. If you do a histogram of
1:42:18
Speaker 1: all of the nations that contribute to try to alter
1:42:24
Speaker 1: the types of ideas that are promulgated on American campuses,
1:42:29
Speaker 1: Which lobby or which country scores way higher than anything
1:42:34
Speaker 1: you could ever hope for from age.
1:42:36
Speaker 2: That's a very good question, and I think that's a
1:42:37
Speaker 2: different thing because I think what you're talking about is
1:42:40
Speaker 2: influencing American education systems and that you could say China
1:42:45
Speaker 2: and Russia they.
1:42:46
Speaker 1: Both have the kataris sure.
1:42:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Well there's a lot of people that from
1:42:52
Speaker 2: other countries specifically influencing our education system and doing it
1:42:58
Speaker 2: within their best interests by donating a lot of money,
1:43:02
Speaker 2: by funding programs, by having a lot of foreign exchange students.
1:43:07
Speaker 2: So there's a big impact by other countries for sure,
1:43:10
Speaker 2: but they're not representing another country. Like, no one's saying
1:43:15
Speaker 2: I want to win New York City and then go
1:43:17
Speaker 2: to Beijing, right.
1:43:19
Speaker 1: Anybody who does that in the way you just said it,
1:43:21
Speaker 1: and my view is violating its most Well.
1:43:24
Speaker 2: The crazy thing is they all did it. They all
1:43:28
Speaker 2: did it except mom, Donnie Cuomo did it. They all
1:43:31
Speaker 2: did it, right, They all said I'm going to Israel.
1:43:34
Speaker 1: So I can't speak to that, I really can't.
1:43:36
Speaker 2: But do you understand why people people here, especially post
1:43:41
Speaker 2: October seventh, this negative sentiment because of the destruction of Gaza.
1:43:45
Speaker 1: Any lobby group vociferously fights for its self interest. That
1:43:54
Speaker 1: tobacco lobby spends all their time convincing doctors I'm talking
1:44:00
Speaker 1: forty years ago that there is no evidence that smoking
1:44:04
Speaker 1: is bad for your health.
1:44:05
Speaker 2: Pharautic drug companies and oxy cooto exactly.
1:44:08
Speaker 1: So the reflex for a group that has its own
1:44:13
Speaker 1: interests to promulgate are going to do exactly that. That's
1:44:17
Speaker 1: why they're called a lobby group. So if from this
1:44:21
Speaker 1: side of our mouth we care about the fact that
1:44:24
Speaker 1: there is a Zionist lobby, it cannot be that from
1:44:28
Speaker 1: this side of our mouth we don't care about the
1:44:31
Speaker 1: fact that there are Islamic based funding to all of
1:44:35
Speaker 1: the American universities that have parasitized your daughters and mine
1:44:43
Speaker 1: in ways that should be problematic because it's your.
1:44:45
Speaker 2: Please explain how they've done that.
1:44:47
Speaker 1: So any near East studies program also known as political
1:44:52
Speaker 1: science program, also known as government programs, So at Harvard
1:44:56
Speaker 1: you call it the Department of Government in this right,
1:45:00
Speaker 1: So all those schools will then produce kids. All those
1:45:05
Speaker 1: kids are called John Smith and Jethrow Rosco. But yet
1:45:11
Speaker 1: they are on the front line after October seventh, wearing
1:45:15
Speaker 1: their cafia stopping Jews from going to class, And that
1:45:19
Speaker 1: happened at UCLA and at Wellesley and at everywhere, and
1:45:23
Speaker 1: at Concordia University, my university. What caused that to happen?
1:45:27
Speaker 1: It's because there is one particular viewpoint that becomes the
1:45:32
Speaker 1: norm on university campuses when it comes to these geopolitical realities. So,
1:45:37
Speaker 1: by the same way that I can be frustrated if
1:45:40
Speaker 1: Mario Cuomo is concerned about going to Israel when he
1:45:44
Speaker 1: is running for mayor of New York, I should also
1:45:47
Speaker 1: be very concerned that all of these Islamic countries are
1:45:52
Speaker 1: having a free fall free for all with all of
1:45:55
Speaker 1: our children's things. But yet I don't see many people
1:45:59
Speaker 1: concerned about that. It is that double standard that then
1:46:02
Speaker 1: makes you go him, why are you, who lives in
1:46:05
Speaker 1: Iowa so concerned about it? Maybe there are really valid
1:46:10
Speaker 1: reasons for you to be concerned about the pro Israel lobby,
1:46:14
Speaker 1: and let's have a conversation about that. But then are
1:46:16
Speaker 1: you honest enough to have a similar discussion about other
1:46:21
Speaker 1: ways by which we tilt our policies and our children's brains?
1:46:25
Speaker 1: Probably not?
1:46:26
Speaker 2: Can you explain how this is done, Like, what do
1:46:28
Speaker 2: you think is happening in the universities where they're tilting
1:46:30
Speaker 2: people towards a pro Palestinian perspective?
1:46:35
Speaker 1: Well, I mean several ways. I mean, if it's directly
1:46:37
Speaker 1: through funding, you fund the thirty million dollar whatever, you're
1:46:43
Speaker 1: probably not going to have faculty members who are going
1:46:47
Speaker 1: to be incredibly vociferous. And there's anti Islamic rhetoric if
1:46:52
Speaker 1: you have that. I'll give you an example when I
1:46:55
Speaker 1: was potentially going to come. Maybe they don't want me
1:46:58
Speaker 1: to hear this, but so be it. When I was
1:47:01
Speaker 1: one of the places that I was being recruited at
1:47:04
Speaker 1: was potentially University of Austin, right, and I came called.
1:47:07
Speaker 1: I mean, they were going to make me an offer.
1:47:09
Speaker 1: The University of Austin doesn't have a tenure system. They
1:47:12
Speaker 1: have a constitution. It's a different kind of system. Of course.
1:47:16
Speaker 1: What allowed me to not be canceled. I would have
1:47:20
Speaker 1: been canceled thirty years ago for all the things that
1:47:21
Speaker 1: I say and all the things that I write, is
1:47:23
Speaker 1: that I was protected by tenure. And so I was
1:47:25
Speaker 1: very concerned about whether the fact that they don't have tenure,
1:47:29
Speaker 1: what happens if tomorrow, okay, and I remember having a conversation.
1:47:34
Speaker 1: I won't mention his name, but you can probably guess
1:47:37
Speaker 1: who it could be. Where I said, what happens under
1:47:40
Speaker 1: your constitution? If tomorrow you get a thirty million dollar
1:47:45
Speaker 1: donation from Mohammad Belttilal and he says, you know that
1:47:49
Speaker 1: little Jewish professor who's going on Joe Rogan and talking
1:47:54
Speaker 1: about bad things about Islam. That has to stop. His
1:47:58
Speaker 1: answer was the gentleman that I was my interlocutor, was well,
1:48:02
Speaker 1: we're on the same team. I fully support what you're saying. Well,
1:48:07
Speaker 1: you support what I'm saying until money talks, right, I
1:48:10
Speaker 1: can pick you a number, a donation number where you're
1:48:13
Speaker 1: no longer support with equal alacrity my criticism of Islam.
1:48:19
Speaker 1: Maybe it's one hundred million, Maybe it's two hundred million.
1:48:22
Speaker 2: Well, just given the people that I know that are
1:48:24
Speaker 2: the founders of the University of Austin, I don't know
1:48:27
Speaker 2: if that's likely.
1:48:28
Speaker 1: You mean there is no reservation price.
1:48:30
Speaker 2: It doesn't seem like they would be willing to go
1:48:33
Speaker 2: against the idea of Israel.
1:48:37
Speaker 1: Well maybe that maybe it's to you though, I mean
1:48:41
Speaker 1: it does, but it wasn't it wasn't sufficiently reassuring.
1:48:47
Speaker 2: Reassuring, Yeah, well, I can understand. I mean, if I
1:48:50
Speaker 2: was offered ten year or no tenure, ten years the
1:48:53
Speaker 2: way to go exactly, it's the only way you can
1:48:55
Speaker 2: have real intellectual freedom.
1:48:58
Speaker 1: And by the way to that point, So when I
1:49:00
Speaker 1: now got this beautiful position at University Mississippi, I don't
1:49:04
Speaker 1: have tenure there. I don't really care that much, but
1:49:07
Speaker 1: they put a clause in the contract that says that
1:49:11
Speaker 1: my rights to say, speak, and write whatever I want
1:49:16
Speaker 1: will be protected with the same staunchness that the First
1:49:20
Speaker 1: Amendment offers me and that tenure would offer me. So
1:49:23
Speaker 1: even though I'm not officially there a tenured professor at
1:49:26
Speaker 1: this stage of my career, I don't care, but they
1:49:29
Speaker 1: enshrined it. So to our earlier point, I think there
1:49:33
Speaker 1: is a way whereby I could put a load of
1:49:35
Speaker 1: money in front of you and say, so, how much
1:49:37
Speaker 1: do you now support freedom of speech? For godsad And
1:49:40
Speaker 1: I'm saying, maybe you're right that the University of Austin
1:49:42
Speaker 1: guys would never buckle to that, But Harvard Government Department
1:49:47
Speaker 1: did buckle. Columbia University under Edward said, you know that
1:49:51
Speaker 1: is Edward said. Edward said, was a kind of very
1:49:54
Speaker 1: pro Palestinian guy who was kind of a big shot
1:49:57
Speaker 1: in their political science department. All of his teachings at
1:50:01
Speaker 1: Columbia University were rather skewed in terms of being anti Israel,
1:50:07
Speaker 1: and so the students that come out are going to
1:50:10
Speaker 1: be a product of what we taught them. It's not
1:50:12
Speaker 1: surprising that they're all wearing CAFEA.
1:50:14
Speaker 2: And you think that this is directly because of funding
1:50:16
Speaker 2: and not because of what they've seen the horrors of
1:50:19
Speaker 2: what's happened in Gaza. Well, because I think that's what's
1:50:22
Speaker 2: turned most people that have no affiliation with any university,
1:50:27
Speaker 2: because it's not all university students that are reacting the
1:50:29
Speaker 2: way they're reacting. They're reacting because of what you could
1:50:32
Speaker 2: see when you see Gaza. I mean, it's obliterated, it's true.
1:50:39
Speaker 1: But we can go back to a time before October seventh,
1:50:42
Speaker 1: and I can point you the difficulties that I faced
1:50:46
Speaker 1: at Concordia at not being able to walk around on
1:50:49
Speaker 1: campus freely also held true before October seventh, So we
1:50:54
Speaker 1: know that we could eliminate in that case, right, So
1:50:59
Speaker 1: that goes to our earth your point, we can blame
1:51:01
Speaker 1: Isis for the US, But then I could take you
1:51:04
Speaker 1: to a time where the US didn't exist, which is
1:51:07
Speaker 1: called seventeen seventy six, Or are you gonna blame now?
1:51:10
Speaker 1: They can blame things in the Middle East on Israel,
1:51:13
Speaker 1: but I could take you to nineteen forty eight when
1:51:15
Speaker 1: it's not that. So it's a very facile reflex to
1:51:19
Speaker 1: always find that culprit. The reality is that any lobby
1:51:24
Speaker 1: group is by definition of the word lobby, is going
1:51:28
Speaker 1: to espouse positions that are in their self interest. I
1:51:32
Speaker 1: understand that it doesn't surprise me that the pro Israel
1:51:35
Speaker 1: lobby does that, as do the Cutaries, as do the Romanians,
1:51:39
Speaker 1: as do the Haitians. Everybody does it for various dynamical reasons. Yes,
1:51:44
Speaker 1: the Israelis are probably more in the ears of the things.
1:51:48
Speaker 1: Is that because they're demonic? No, because they have more power?
1:51:51
Speaker 1: Is that weird?
1:51:53
Speaker 2: Well, let me ask you this, sure, do you agree
1:51:56
Speaker 2: that anti Israel sentiment has ramped up since the response
1:52:00
Speaker 2: to October seventh?
1:52:02
Speaker 1: Absolutely, you may not like what I'm about to say.
1:52:06
Speaker 1: I think most of the anti Israel sentiments Ultimately, if
1:52:12
Speaker 1: you scratch enough the onion and peel enough the stuff
1:52:16
Speaker 1: is rooted in Jew hatred.
1:52:18
Speaker 2: Really, I do really, So you don't think that it's
1:52:22
Speaker 2: a direct response to people seeing what happened in Gaza. No,
1:52:25
Speaker 2: you don't think that has an impact.
1:52:27
Speaker 1: I've lived in the world before October seventh, and the
1:52:31
Speaker 1: world that I lived in and the jew hatred that
1:52:34
Speaker 1: I face, Right, I don't have Joe Rogan's platform size,
1:52:39
Speaker 1: but certainly, by the standards of most people have a
1:52:41
Speaker 1: huge platform. The massive, the orgiastic, the Himmler level Jew
1:52:48
Speaker 1: hatred that I have faced certainly proceeds by countless years
1:52:55
Speaker 1: the October seventh. So then, how would we explain why
1:52:57
Speaker 1: I'm called a parasite, pedophile, a child killer, a rat,
1:53:03
Speaker 1: a vermin? Why am I called those things? I had
1:53:06
Speaker 1: nothing to do with the ISRAELI? Oh give it.
1:53:08
Speaker 2: This is anecdotal, right, I mean we're talking about is
1:53:11
Speaker 2: The general sentiment in the United States has changed pretty
1:53:14
Speaker 2: radically since the response of October seventh. I've experienced it.
1:53:18
Speaker 2: I've experienced it with people that I know, experienced it online.
1:53:21
Speaker 2: People that never talked about Israel, never had anything bad
1:53:24
Speaker 2: to say about Jewish people, and now are just furious
1:53:28
Speaker 2: when they see what's happening at Gaza, and now they
1:53:30
Speaker 2: see what's happening in southern Lemanon where their Christian villages
1:53:33
Speaker 2: are being bombed.
1:53:34
Speaker 1: Were those people also mad at what happened to the
1:53:37
Speaker 1: six hundred thousand Syrians who were killed, which in event
1:53:42
Speaker 1: is the Lebanese and the Syrian Civil War. About six
1:53:48
Speaker 1: hundred thousand Syrians were killed.
1:53:50
Speaker 2: Okay, I don't know if they knew about that, but
1:53:52
Speaker 2: I think this is kind of a case of what
1:53:54
Speaker 2: about ism? Right, And I just we could go to
1:53:57
Speaker 2: that and we could talk about that, and maybe that
1:53:59
Speaker 2: should be public more. But what I'm talking about is
1:54:02
Speaker 2: the people that I've encountered in the United States that
1:54:06
Speaker 2: really generally didn't have an opinion about Israel at all,
1:54:10
Speaker 2: have had a very negative opinion about Israel because of
1:54:14
Speaker 2: the response to October seventh and because of what they've
1:54:16
Speaker 2: done to Gaza.
1:54:18
Speaker 1: So let me address the what aboutism? By the way,
1:54:21
Speaker 1: I'm loving today's conversation has a different timber to it,
1:54:24
Speaker 1: but it's keeping us sharp. I like it, so thank
1:54:27
Speaker 1: you for keeping me on my toes. Let's suppose that
1:54:33
Speaker 1: I had a rule in my head that says I
1:54:37
Speaker 1: only get incredibly irate and animated. If an MMA fighter
1:54:45
Speaker 1: commits a crime, but when I see the exact same
1:54:49
Speaker 1: crime committed by anybody other than an MMA fighter, I
1:54:53
Speaker 1: don't have the reflex to be upset. Would it be
1:54:57
Speaker 1: what aboutism? For you to say how come you got
1:54:59
Speaker 1: to set when the MMA fighter did this, but when
1:55:02
Speaker 1: the non MMA that wouldn't be what aboutism? Because what
1:55:05
Speaker 1: you would be saying is I want cognitive consistency from you,
1:55:09
Speaker 1: gad that if you're upset that an MMA fighter commits
1:55:12
Speaker 1: a crime, you'll be as upset when a non MMA
1:55:16
Speaker 1: fighter commits the exact same crime.
1:55:18
Speaker 2: Could you illuminate me on this Syrian thing?
1:55:22
Speaker 1: Yeah?
1:55:22
Speaker 2: So when the but I'm only vaguely aware of what happened.
1:55:27
Speaker 1: So there was a civil war that was started in Syria,
1:55:31
Speaker 1: I think in twenty eleven that where the various Islamist
1:55:36
Speaker 1: groups were trying to overthrow a sad and as a
1:55:42
Speaker 1: result of that dynamic, innumerable people Muslim on Muslim were
1:55:49
Speaker 1: completely ravaged, to the tune of about six hundred thousand. Okay,
1:55:54
Speaker 1: so let's let's let's put that here. So let's not
1:55:56
Speaker 1: call that what aboutism because you could easily say I
1:56:00
Speaker 1: am angry whenever.
1:56:02
Speaker 2: But it is what about ism, because we were specifically
1:56:05
Speaker 2: talking about jew hatred in this country being ramped up
1:56:09
Speaker 2: post or October seventh. I mean, it is what aboutism
1:56:13
Speaker 2: because we could address that. Yes, but this is one
1:56:18
Speaker 2: particular thing, one particular moment in history that has caused
1:56:23
Speaker 2: this extreme reaction, this anti Israel sentiment.
1:56:27
Speaker 1: The guy in Iowa who has never heard of the
1:56:31
Speaker 1: Middle East but got rightly upset at what he saw
1:56:36
Speaker 1: in Gaza. Why wasn't that guy, if he is a
1:56:42
Speaker 1: honest purveyor in his moral calculus of any innocence being killed,
1:56:48
Speaker 1: I'm asking you, I pose that question to you when
1:56:51
Speaker 1: he sees the thousands and thousands of Yemeni's that were killed,
1:56:56
Speaker 1: the children that were eradicated, much more than the tune
1:56:59
Speaker 1: of whatever happened in Kaza, every single individual. Let me
1:57:02
Speaker 1: go on record, you're.
1:57:04
Speaker 2: Talking about the drone bombing in Yemen. What do you think?
1:57:06
Speaker 1: There are many many There are many many different ways
1:57:09
Speaker 1: by which Yemenese have died as a result of the
1:57:13
Speaker 1: conflicts in Yemen. There are a huge number of people
1:57:16
Speaker 1: that were killed in the fight between Sudan and the
1:57:20
Speaker 1: South Sudanese. I mean, really, in the many hundreds of thousands. Right. So,
1:57:25
Speaker 1: if I am just an Iowa guy who my moral
1:57:29
Speaker 1: calculus operates according to the following rule, whenever I see
1:57:34
Speaker 1: innocent people being killed, it drives me crazy. I am outraged. Therefore,
1:57:41
Speaker 1: if that's the rule by which I navigate through the world,
1:57:44
Speaker 1: I will look at the October seventh victims and say,
1:57:48
Speaker 1: those Jews didn't deserve this. I'm pissed. I will look
1:57:51
Speaker 1: at the Gazens that were killed, who were innocent, and
1:57:54
Speaker 1: I'd say those Gasins did not deserve it. So far,
1:57:57
Speaker 1: so good, we agree. I will look at the Syrians
1:58:00
Speaker 1: and say that is not right. I will look at
1:58:03
Speaker 1: the Ukrainians that were being butchered endlessly by Putin and
1:58:08
Speaker 1: say that's spissing me off, and on and on. But
1:58:12
Speaker 1: if it would appear that my calculus is abiding by
1:58:17
Speaker 1: the no Jews, no news mechanism, then I have a
1:58:21
Speaker 1: right to say, how come you're focused only on when
1:58:24
Speaker 1: it seems that the mean Israelis are killing the beautifully
1:58:29
Speaker 1: peaceful Palestinians, and your moral outrage never gets invoked across
1:58:35
Speaker 1: all of the penelty of much greater disasters around the world.
1:58:39
Speaker 2: Why is that, well, I think initially in October seventh,
1:58:43
Speaker 2: people were very outraged at the attack on the Israelis.
1:58:48
Speaker 2: They were horrified at what happened who The videos that
1:58:52
Speaker 2: we saw were terrible videos of people cheering in the
1:58:55
Speaker 2: streets when they were bringing the Israeli captives. But then
1:59:00
Speaker 2: the difference between the capability of the Palestinians in Gaza
1:59:05
Speaker 2: versus the Israeli army, which is one of the most
1:59:08
Speaker 2: ferocious and capable armies in the world, and the devastation
1:59:12
Speaker 2: that they did to Gaza, the city, just the city alone,
1:59:15
Speaker 2: where you see apartment buildings, hospital, everything just blown to smithereens.
1:59:20
Speaker 2: There's a complete difference in power. What you're talking about
1:59:25
Speaker 2: in Syria, I'm assuming this is a civil war between
1:59:28
Speaker 2: the civil war, similarly armed people killing each other.
1:59:31
Speaker 1: Well, it's the government versus militia.
1:59:34
Speaker 2: Right, but similarly armed people. So you're not seeing that
1:59:37
Speaker 2: with Gaza and Israel. With Israel, you're seeing United States
1:59:42
Speaker 2: funded Israeli military, which is insanely capable destroying an entire city.
1:59:49
Speaker 1: Fair enough, I I you see howes are very tough,
1:59:52
Speaker 1: there's no question, But.
1:59:53
Speaker 2: The reality of the numbers is very tough too, because
1:59:56
Speaker 2: we don't even know how many people are dead.
1:59:58
Speaker 1: We could talk about the numbers you want a second,
2:00:00
Speaker 1: but let me ask you this, if October seventh hadn't happened,
2:00:06
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not being flippant, I'm not playing games.
2:00:08
Speaker 1: I'm really honestly asking if October seventh had not happened,
2:00:13
Speaker 1: how many of the innocent Palestinians that tragically perished would
2:00:19
Speaker 1: have perished.
2:00:21
Speaker 2: That's a good question. Probably it would have never happened.
2:00:25
Speaker 2: There probably would have been a bombing in Gaza. You
2:00:28
Speaker 2: know that we could get really dark here because there's
2:00:30
Speaker 2: a lot of people that believe that it was allowed
2:00:32
Speaker 2: to happen so that they could have an excuse to
2:00:35
Speaker 2: attack Gaza.
2:00:37
Speaker 1: But that goes to our earlier point.
2:00:39
Speaker 2: It gets it gets goofy and I'm not the person
2:00:41
Speaker 2: to comment on that because I don't really know. But
2:00:43
Speaker 2: there was stand down or so we know that we
2:00:45
Speaker 2: know that some of at least some of the army
2:00:49
Speaker 2: was told to stand down.
2:00:50
Speaker 1: Well, I actually had the former director of the Mossad
2:00:54
Speaker 1: on my show M and his name is Yosi Cohen,
2:00:58
Speaker 1: and I was like, yo, see what how does how
2:01:01
Speaker 1: did it happen? And the best of My understanding in
2:01:06
Speaker 1: terms of what I've told is that you know, shit
2:01:09
Speaker 1: happens and someone falls asleep metaphorically speaking, right, and so
2:01:13
Speaker 1: it was a gigantic But anyways, if youre not you,
2:01:19
Speaker 1: but if someone is of the conspiratorial mind mindset, there
2:01:23
Speaker 1: is nothing that I could share. But speaking literally to
2:01:26
Speaker 1: the former Mozad, the former director of Mozad, he said
2:01:29
Speaker 1: it was a catastrophic you know, failure of where everybody
2:01:34
Speaker 1: is kind of asleep. But my point is this.
2:01:37
Speaker 2: Right, but let me stop you there, please, because if
2:01:39
Speaker 2: I was the former head of Massad, the last thing
2:01:42
Speaker 2: we would tell you is that, well, we allowed it
2:01:45
Speaker 2: to happen because we've been wanting to blow up Gaza
2:01:47
Speaker 2: for a long time and take it over and turn
2:01:50
Speaker 2: into a big resort. You would never say that, right, right,
2:01:53
Speaker 2: And we also know that on record, and Yahoo has
2:01:56
Speaker 2: said that they fund Hamas so they can control the
2:01:59
Speaker 2: size of the flame because they don't want the Democrat
2:02:02
Speaker 2: democratically elected people to take over and turn Palestine into
2:02:07
Speaker 2: a state.
2:02:08
Speaker 1: So you don't, I don't think there's something in that. Yeah, true, Well,
2:02:12
Speaker 1: Israel left, if I'm getting my history right, they left
2:02:15
Speaker 1: Gaza in two thousand and five, right, is that the
2:02:18
Speaker 1: right number? Am I getting that? Right? So from two
2:02:21
Speaker 1: thousand and five till twenty twenty three or maybe two
2:02:25
Speaker 1: thousand and seven, So someone will correct me in the
2:02:27
Speaker 1: comments section. For many many years Israel left and there
2:02:30
Speaker 1: was no problem in the region, right, is that true?
2:02:35
Speaker 1: I don't know you well, there was no problem. I
2:02:37
Speaker 1: mean then there was a catalyst, an event happened. Now
2:02:42
Speaker 1: we can debate whether it was proportionate, whether it could
2:02:47
Speaker 1: have been you know, adjudicated differently. We can discuss all
2:02:50
Speaker 1: that and all that. You can discuss it without ever
2:02:54
Speaker 1: worrying about being called anti Semitic. It's totally within the
2:02:57
Speaker 1: fair bounds of having those conversations. But what is true
2:03:01
Speaker 1: is that if Israel wanted to eradicate Palestinians, it would
2:03:09
Speaker 1: take them a lot less time than when you and
2:03:13
Speaker 1: I have been talking on the show. By orders of magnitude,
2:03:16
Speaker 1: it would take fifteen seconds. But they didn't do that, right,
2:03:19
Speaker 1: They don't do that as a matter of fact, Johnson.
2:03:22
Speaker 2: But they kind of have in Gaza. Gaza is done.
2:03:27
Speaker 2: There's almost nothing left it. So the numbers that I've
2:03:30
Speaker 2: seen videos, yes, right, you've seen what it looks like
2:03:32
Speaker 2: when they fly overhead. We could show some videos, so okay,
2:03:35
Speaker 2: the most recent videos, So they show the drone videos
2:03:38
Speaker 2: of flying over Gaza. It looks like a nuclear bomb
2:03:41
Speaker 2: hit it. It just they did it slowly, They did
2:03:44
Speaker 2: it over years, just consistent, constant bombing, and there's almost
2:03:47
Speaker 2: nothing left of it.
2:03:48
Speaker 1: Right.
2:03:48
Speaker 2: And there's also been this crazy talk of putting resorts there,
2:03:53
Speaker 2: you know, and Trump said, Trump, Yeah, we saying that
2:03:55
Speaker 2: we're going to turn it into the what did he say,
2:03:57
Speaker 2: something of the something you know, like Monte Carlo something crazy?
2:04:03
Speaker 1: Right. Again, it's totally fair to discuss what constitutes proportional
2:04:09
Speaker 1: thing and so on. But I take a broader view,
2:04:12
Speaker 1: which is Israel exists, and you have two choices. You
2:04:18
Speaker 1: can keep creating generations of your people whose whose entire
2:04:25
Speaker 1: daily animation of terms of their objectives is to eradicate
2:04:30
Speaker 1: that place, or you could recognize that every single millimeter
2:04:34
Speaker 1: on Earth has at some point been owned by someone else.
2:04:38
Speaker 1: Is that? Is that not true? I mean, is the
2:04:41
Speaker 1: definition of history not the accounting ledgering of who owned
2:04:45
Speaker 1: what when? Now, in every other conflict that has ever
2:04:50
Speaker 1: existed throughout all of human history, there is a winner
2:04:55
Speaker 1: of that conflict and a loser, and people move on.
2:05:00
Speaker 1: Just hear me out. I lived in Lebanon. I grew
2:05:04
Speaker 1: up in Lebanon. We had to leave under imminent threat
2:05:08
Speaker 1: of execution. It's very unfortunate. We lost everything. We moved on.
2:05:13
Speaker 1: We made a life for ourselves. Our home was stolen
2:05:16
Speaker 1: by Palestinian people. I never held any animus towards Palestinians.
2:05:21
Speaker 1: I moved on with my life. One day I was
2:05:24
Speaker 1: interesting enough to have the privilege of appearing on Joe
2:05:27
Speaker 1: Rogan's show. My daily animation is not to go and
2:05:31
Speaker 1: kill people for things that were done to us, and
2:05:34
Speaker 1: very few people have had things happen to them as
2:05:38
Speaker 1: what happened to us. Right, Jews were exterminated in the Holocaust,
2:05:42
Speaker 1: it didn't create an endless litany of Jewish terrorists throughout
2:05:47
Speaker 1: the world trying to get back. So in every part
2:05:50
Speaker 1: of the world. We are now in Texas, that land
2:05:53
Speaker 1: was owned by someone else before the United States came along.
2:05:56
Speaker 1: We are sitting quote on stolen land, and Canada that
2:06:00
Speaker 1: we are sitting on stolenn It's called history. Most people
2:06:04
Speaker 1: are able to move on and say, hey, the dice
2:06:08
Speaker 1: went this way or that way, let's hold hands and
2:06:11
Speaker 1: let's build a better future. You can't do that if
2:06:15
Speaker 1: canonically the Jewish state should not exist, right, doesn't Hamas
2:06:21
Speaker 1: say in their charter every Jew that is anywhere, we
2:06:25
Speaker 1: will find him and get him. So did that make
2:06:28
Speaker 1: sense that they would be the leaders of that region.
2:06:31
Speaker 1: Wouldn't it have been much better for them to train
2:06:34
Speaker 1: their kids to becoming neuroscientists and podcasters and classicists and physicians.
2:06:40
Speaker 1: But that's not what they chose to do repeatedly for
2:06:43
Speaker 1: nearly eighty years. The minute that that clicks and they say,
2:06:48
Speaker 1: you know what, you have this part, we have this part,
2:06:51
Speaker 1: let's shake hand and let's be one family, the problem
2:06:55
Speaker 1: will go away. So I agree with you. The images
2:06:58
Speaker 1: are very jarring, right, I'm also a very empathetic, loving guy.
2:07:05
Speaker 1: But I also know the reality, which is I've never
2:07:08
Speaker 1: heard Jews saying let's kill all Muslims. I always hear
2:07:14
Speaker 1: the opposite. Jews are an existential affront to Islam. Mohammad
2:07:21
Speaker 1: on his deathbed said, promise me that you will rid
2:07:26
Speaker 1: Arabia of Christians, but really the Jews. So how could
2:07:31
Speaker 1: you have a coexistence between two people when one people
2:07:35
Speaker 1: wants to eradicate the other. So did Israel overreact? I'll
2:07:41
Speaker 1: leave future historians to decide that, what do you think?
2:07:45
Speaker 1: I think that given what they were trying to achieve,
2:07:49
Speaker 1: they did the best that could possibly be.
2:07:51
Speaker 2: So as you do best would eliminate the entire city.
2:07:55
Speaker 1: No turn, there's been about seventy thousand dead. Is that
2:07:58
Speaker 1: the right number?
2:07:58
Speaker 2: We don't even know.
2:08:00
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the numbers that I've seen.
2:08:01
Speaker 2: It was the accounting. Who's who's to know how.
2:08:04
Speaker 1: Many many numbers are coming from the Hamas? That's true too, okay, but.
2:08:08
Speaker 2: If you just look at the destruction, the buildings that
2:08:11
Speaker 2: have been leveled, the sheer volume of destruction.
2:08:15
Speaker 1: There were two cities called Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They were
2:08:20
Speaker 1: fully nice.
2:08:21
Speaker 2: What about it?
2:08:21
Speaker 1: And then it was the bottle.
2:08:24
Speaker 2: We didn't have to do that either, and we could
2:08:26
Speaker 2: you could say that that was a horrific thing because
2:08:28
Speaker 2: Japan was about the surrender.
2:08:30
Speaker 1: Well, and we were like, for the American let's.
2:08:33
Speaker 2: Practice, let's see how these things work again, that's the
2:08:36
Speaker 2: least let's show you that we have nuclear bombs. That's
2:08:39
Speaker 2: the least generous interpretation of that. I think it's a
2:08:42
Speaker 2: pretty accurate demonstration.
2:08:44
Speaker 1: I've heard anything else.
2:08:45
Speaker 2: What have you heard?
2:08:46
Speaker 1: I've heard that they did the calculus of if and
2:08:49
Speaker 1: by the way, it could be a very cold, callous calculus.
2:08:53
Speaker 1: But what I've heard is that there is a very
2:08:55
Speaker 1: clear pro pro con thing where if we do this,
2:09:00
Speaker 1: this many people would die. If we go on in
2:09:03
Speaker 1: the war and it takes that much more before they surrender,
2:09:06
Speaker 1: there'll be this many dead drop those bombs.
2:09:10
Speaker 2: It's possible. Yeah, it's possible. So do you think that
2:09:12
Speaker 2: if Israel didn't kill seventy thousand people and completely destroy Gaza,
2:09:17
Speaker 2: that more than seventy thousand people would have died during
2:09:20
Speaker 2: the same time period.
2:09:20
Speaker 1: No, I'm not applying that same calculus of Japan. What
2:09:23
Speaker 1: I'm saying is images of destruction are very vivid to
2:09:28
Speaker 1: our brain.
2:09:28
Speaker 2: Right. Wait, don't you think?
2:09:30
Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean that that's the information that I
2:09:35
Speaker 1: use to establish the what is morally righteous?
2:09:40
Speaker 2: What else can we use other than information.
2:09:43
Speaker 1: We can use? What is the existential calculus that animates
2:09:47
Speaker 1: each society? One society says will even help you build
2:09:52
Speaker 1: a better society. Just please, don't spend all your time
2:09:56
Speaker 1: screaming about eradicating every last one of us. The other
2:10:00
Speaker 1: society says, I don't think so if we're ever strong
2:10:04
Speaker 1: enough to kill all Unfortunately, we were only strong enough
2:10:08
Speaker 1: to kill twelve hundred of you, and boy that was
2:10:11
Speaker 1: orgiastically pleasing. But if tomorrow, God willing, hey, maybe the
2:10:15
Speaker 1: Iranians have nuclear boonds, we can eradicate all you assholes.
2:10:18
Speaker 1: My god, the world.
2:10:19
Speaker 2: Was so this is Hamas saying that, right. And the
2:10:22
Speaker 2: people that live in Palestine that were killed, these seventy
2:10:27
Speaker 2: thousand plus people, how many of them do you think
2:10:29
Speaker 2: were Hamas well?
2:10:31
Speaker 1: The numbers that I hear is that it was one
2:10:33
Speaker 1: to one ratio, which apparently is a pretty good ratio album.
2:10:36
Speaker 2: Where are those numbers coming from?
2:10:39
Speaker 1: I mean, like you want me to give you the reference?
2:10:40
Speaker 2: I don't know, no, I mean, is it coming from Israel?
2:10:43
Speaker 2: Is it coming from Hamas? Is it coming from Palestine?
2:10:45
Speaker 1: So there's been so the one I'm going to use
2:10:48
Speaker 1: is from John Spencer. Do you know who that is?
2:10:52
Speaker 1: John Spencer is a war urban war researcher. I think
2:10:57
Speaker 1: he's at What's the military where they trained the military
2:11:03
Speaker 1: West Point. He's a professor of urban warfare. He's come
2:11:06
Speaker 1: on my show and based on whatever analysis that he's done.
2:11:11
Speaker 1: He's not. He's not Jewish, he's not uniquely prosigonist. Is
2:11:15
Speaker 1: that he's he's saying. And again, I see, to whomever
2:11:19
Speaker 1: knows better about this than I do, I don't know
2:11:21
Speaker 1: all the details. He said that the ratio of civilian
2:11:26
Speaker 1: to you know, fighters killed in the Gaza war is
2:11:31
Speaker 1: better than you know, most other comparable situations.
2:11:35
Speaker 2: So Hama said, thirty five thousand.
2:11:38
Speaker 1: It's one to one.
2:11:39
Speaker 2: So Hama said, thirty five thousand militants in Gaza.
2:11:43
Speaker 1: If that if the one to one number is right,
2:11:46
Speaker 1: and seventy, that's what it would be.
2:11:48
Speaker 2: And so all those buildings needed to be destroyed because
2:11:52
Speaker 2: at least one out of one was.
2:11:54
Speaker 1: So let me ask you this. Let's suppose I think
2:11:57
Speaker 1: it's totally reasonable that you'd be upset all these people
2:12:01
Speaker 1: died innocently. Well, I think for.
2:12:02
Speaker 2: Most people that see it would be upset.
2:12:04
Speaker 1: Right, fair enough. What give me the specific details of
2:12:09
Speaker 1: how you would go about getting your hostages back given
2:12:15
Speaker 1: the reality.
2:12:16
Speaker 2: So give me what many hostages did they get back.
2:12:19
Speaker 1: In terms of alive or dead. Yeah, I don't know
2:12:23
Speaker 1: the exact numbers, but is it something in the order
2:12:24
Speaker 1: of like thirty forty alive and all the other ones
2:12:27
Speaker 1: were dead. Does that sound like the right number. I
2:12:29
Speaker 1: don't know whatever it is. It could be fifty, it
2:12:32
Speaker 1: could be one hundred, it could be two hundred. So
2:12:35
Speaker 1: I am representative of Israel. I need to get those
2:12:40
Speaker 1: people out. Let's suppose that Hamas had said, here are
2:12:44
Speaker 1: all the people that we have kidnapped, and we are
2:12:47
Speaker 1: returning them to you and putting down our arms. Would
2:12:50
Speaker 1: Israel have caused the destruction that they would have caused
2:12:53
Speaker 1: that they did cause? I don't know, but what do
2:12:56
Speaker 1: you think?
2:12:56
Speaker 2: Probably not right if they did that.
2:12:59
Speaker 1: So nothing happens in a vacuum, right, it's not there
2:13:02
Speaker 1: isn't something, But it's not.
2:13:03
Speaker 2: Just because they wouldn't have done that, does it justify
2:13:07
Speaker 2: what they did? What does it say here? Final release
2:13:10
Speaker 2: total returns One hundred and sixty eight hostages were returned alive,
2:13:13
Speaker 2: including eight rescued by the idea of the bodies of
2:13:16
Speaker 2: eighty five hostages were repatriated after they were killed during
2:13:19
Speaker 2: their captivity. US deal broker that landa cease fire in
2:13:27
Speaker 2: a swap for nearly two thousand Palasanian prisoners. So they
2:13:30
Speaker 2: swapped some of them.
2:13:31
Speaker 1: Well, let me actually speak about the swap issue. I
2:13:34
Speaker 1: discussed this in Suicidal Empathy. Sinwar, who was the architect
2:13:38
Speaker 1: of October seventh. Do you know his background, his story?
2:13:42
Speaker 1: Sinwar was a ardent militant whose entire life has been
2:13:47
Speaker 1: animated with eradicating Jews, not Israel, all Jews from the world,
2:13:51
Speaker 1: because there's a hadiz that says, in Islam, the world
2:13:55
Speaker 1: will not stop until every Jew that is hiding behind
2:13:59
Speaker 1: the tree is found and killed. And they refer to
2:14:02
Speaker 1: that hadiz from Islam, not radical Islam, Islam. He was
2:14:08
Speaker 1: taken in one of those sweeps of Palestinian militants to prison.
2:14:14
Speaker 1: He was diagnosed with a brain tumor, a deadly terminal
2:14:18
Speaker 1: brain tumor. The Israelis, you know, the mean Israelis, who
2:14:22
Speaker 1: are killing everybody because the hippocratic oath, in their view,
2:14:28
Speaker 1: supersedes any other calculus. The Israeli neurosurgeon doesn't say, f
2:14:34
Speaker 1: this guy, he's killed. You know, tons of my fellow
2:14:39
Speaker 1: coreligionists screw him, let him die, They operate on him,
2:14:44
Speaker 1: and they save his life. Right, So let me ask
2:14:47
Speaker 1: you this, Joe. If you and I let's put ourselves
2:14:50
Speaker 1: in the mind of right, I was saved by the
2:14:54
Speaker 1: hands of the Jewish Israeli neurosurgeon. Otherwise I would have died.
2:15:00
Speaker 1: Then he was let go in one of those swaps.
2:15:03
Speaker 1: Would that have not bought you sufficient existential empathy to say, probably,
2:15:10
Speaker 1: I shouldn't then spend the rest of my life being
2:15:13
Speaker 1: the architect and repay the largesse of the Israeli neurosurgeon
2:15:18
Speaker 1: by doing October seven. Yet it didn't bide him that empathy.
2:15:22
Speaker 2: Right, So he was swapped in an earlier time.
2:15:25
Speaker 1: He was swapped in an earlier deal. Just you could,
2:15:27
Speaker 1: Jamie could look it up. You could do sinoar Si
2:15:30
Speaker 1: n War. He was one of the guys who you
2:15:34
Speaker 1: saw him in one of those rubbles and a drone
2:15:37
Speaker 1: comes in and he's covered in rubble and then they
2:15:39
Speaker 1: take him out. Right, Well, if you and I, if
2:15:43
Speaker 1: I could put myself in your mind, if if we
2:15:46
Speaker 1: had been ardent haters of a group, and then that
2:15:50
Speaker 1: group had shown us tremendous compassion and generosity by literally
2:15:55
Speaker 1: saving our lives, that might have shut off my hatred
2:15:59
Speaker 1: to that group. For example, Bridget Gabriel, the Lebanese Christian
2:16:03
Speaker 1: woman who grew up in the Lebanese Civil War, like
2:16:06
Speaker 1: I did. Had always been taught as a Lebanese Christian
2:16:10
Speaker 1: that the Israelis are terrible and evil, they're the problem
2:16:13
Speaker 1: for the whole region. But then she escaped to Israel,
2:16:18
Speaker 1: was welcomed in Israel. She completely flipped because she saw
2:16:22
Speaker 1: that they were nice human beings that treated her well,
2:16:25
Speaker 1: and then her brainwashing was no longer there. Well, if
2:16:29
Speaker 1: I've literally taken a brain tumor out of your brain
2:16:33
Speaker 1: in that brain of yours, could I have not bought
2:16:36
Speaker 1: a bit of existential empathy for the Jews? It didn't.
2:16:40
Speaker 1: What do you think of that?
2:16:42
Speaker 2: Well, I think that person was probably deeply radicalized to
2:16:46
Speaker 2: whatever their ideology was, and that wasn't enough, Like saving
2:16:50
Speaker 2: them wasn't enough. It gave them. It was probably a
2:16:53
Speaker 2: law giving them another opportunity to kill more Jews exactly.
2:16:57
Speaker 1: So, don't you think But that's just, you.
2:16:59
Speaker 2: Know, one person, and one person saved them. I don't
2:17:03
Speaker 2: think it necessarily changes the relationship between Israel and Palestine,
2:17:07
Speaker 2: particularly because Palestine was denied statehood. It's not a country
2:17:12
Speaker 2: in its own can't do things that other countries can do.
2:17:15
Speaker 1: Do you know what, Bill Clinton, who is not a
2:17:17
Speaker 1: Republican said regarding Palestinian statehood. Well, he said, I I'm
2:17:23
Speaker 1: paraphrasing him. I killed myself, bent myself backwards to give
2:17:28
Speaker 1: them almost everything that they wanted. This is sort of
2:17:32
Speaker 1: the Oslo Accord, and yasa Araphat was not interested in
2:17:37
Speaker 1: a two state solutions.
2:17:38
Speaker 2: Well, let me ask you this, if you were the
2:17:40
Speaker 2: head of Israel, how would you handle it? You mean
2:17:43
Speaker 2: moving forward?
2:17:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, in my in my utopia, it would be to
2:17:50
Speaker 1: try to catch the brainwashing that happens straight out of
2:17:55
Speaker 1: the womb, where the type of animus that is ship
2:18:00
Speaker 1: regarding the Jews is so outlandish that it would make
2:18:05
Speaker 1: Hitler and Himmler squirm in unease. If you can get
2:18:10
Speaker 1: rid of that brainwashing, you will learn to see the
2:18:13
Speaker 1: other as an equal human being.
2:18:16
Speaker 2: Could I interject there please? Do you think that the
2:18:19
Speaker 2: bombing of Gaza and the destruction that's so clearly visible
2:18:24
Speaker 2: to everyone would actually stop that? Do you think that
2:18:31
Speaker 2: the bombing of Gaza would maybe make more people radicalized,
2:18:37
Speaker 2: that would make more people want to attack Israel, that
2:18:41
Speaker 2: would give.
2:18:41
Speaker 1: Them You're right that you are creating a new generation
2:18:45
Speaker 1: of terrorists. But again it's your choosing to decide where
2:18:50
Speaker 1: to place the causal point. Gaza existed fully, peacefully for
2:18:58
Speaker 1: twenty plus years without anybody dying. The day that they
2:19:03
Speaker 1: decided to do what they did resulted in a retaliation,
2:19:08
Speaker 1: which we can discuss whether it's good or not enough
2:19:11
Speaker 1: or too much. That is true at the root of
2:19:14
Speaker 1: the problem is an open society that allows for the
2:19:19
Speaker 1: expression of all religions. When I was in Israel two
2:19:23
Speaker 1: months ago, I was in well all over Israel. I
2:19:27
Speaker 1: gave a talk in Tel Aviv, and I gave a
2:19:29
Speaker 1: talk in Jerusalem. I spoke more Arabic in Jerusalem than
2:19:34
Speaker 1: I did English or Hebrew or anything else.
2:19:36
Speaker 2: To your point, I think Israel is only seventy three
2:19:40
Speaker 2: percent Jewish, exactly, look at look that up.
2:19:44
Speaker 1: Please use maybe maybe eighty percent, but your number would
2:19:48
Speaker 1: even prove my point of view.
2:19:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I might be wrong, but it's not
2:19:52
Speaker 2: one hundred percent, that's for sure. And there are Arab
2:19:57
Speaker 2: and Muslim communities in Israel that are tolerated versus not
2:20:03
Speaker 2: having a Jewish community.
2:20:04
Speaker 1: And parlerated, fully embraced. So I can show you the Valedictorians.
2:20:10
Speaker 2: Let's see, Jewish population is large.
2:20:13
Speaker 1: Normal seventy eight. See I said eighty seventy.
2:20:15
Speaker 2: Three, seventy three percent of the population, So what's the
2:20:18
Speaker 2: seventh is Jewish? Including Look right there Israel Bureau of Statistics.
2:20:23
Speaker 2: So it was right, seventy three percent of the population
2:20:26
Speaker 2: is Jewish. Five hundred and three thousand people living in
2:20:28
Speaker 2: the West Bank beyond israel self defined borders. Recent updates
2:20:31
Speaker 2: of September twenty twenty five. So total population at ten million,
2:20:34
Speaker 2: one hundred and forty eight thousand, with Jews and others
2:20:38
Speaker 2: at seven million, seven hundred and fifty eight thousand.
2:20:42
Speaker 1: Right, So let's do a few analysis. Many, many validictorians
2:20:47
Speaker 1: of universities graduate their Muslim some of them are in
2:20:51
Speaker 1: his Jab. That's happening in Israel. You go to medical school,
2:20:56
Speaker 1: the valedictorian that's chosen is a woman in Asia? Does
2:21:00
Speaker 1: that seem like it's animus? INDI knicit in the Parliament
2:21:05
Speaker 1: of Israel. There are tons of Muslims that serve Right,
2:21:09
Speaker 1: as I was walking around all over Jerusalem, everybody that
2:21:13
Speaker 1: I was interacting with was in Arabic. They were fully
2:21:18
Speaker 1: Israelis who were Muslim, Right, I have tons of pictures
2:21:22
Speaker 1: with all of them, some of them recognized me. There
2:21:24
Speaker 1: was no animis why because they've internalized the reality that
2:21:29
Speaker 1: I am part of a country that is made up
2:21:32
Speaker 1: of It's a Jewish majority country, but it's a place
2:21:35
Speaker 1: where everybody has equal rights. Right there are people who
2:21:39
Speaker 1: serve in the highest judiciary that are Muslim. Is there
2:21:44
Speaker 1: an Islamic country where the opposite could be said?
2:21:47
Speaker 2: I don't thinks not. It's also interesting when you look
2:21:51
Speaker 2: at the statistics of the polling statistics of people that
2:21:55
Speaker 2: support the war with Iran in Israel versus the United States,
2:22:01
Speaker 2: and it's way more people support the war. And you know,
2:22:07
Speaker 2: obviously I live in America and I'm immune to the
2:22:11
Speaker 2: effects of being surrounded by people that hate me and
2:22:14
Speaker 2: want to blow me up. I could only imagine what
2:22:18
Speaker 2: that's like for the national psyche of living in a
2:22:22
Speaker 2: place like Israel, being surrounded.
2:22:24
Speaker 1: By Paradoxically, though forgive me for interrupting you, Israeli score
2:22:29
Speaker 1: as of one of the highest on the happiness scales,
2:22:34
Speaker 1: So in a sense, it goes against what you say.
2:22:36
Speaker 1: And I think I've got an explanation, and you know,
2:22:39
Speaker 1: tell me what you think of it. When I am
2:22:42
Speaker 1: spending my entire existence to your point possibly being eradicated tomorrow.
2:22:49
Speaker 1: I don't have the luxury to debate what constitutes male
2:22:53
Speaker 1: or female. It creates a laser focus about what's important
2:22:57
Speaker 1: in my life.
2:22:58
Speaker 2: My kickboxing coach, my kickboxing Koch Shooky, he's from Israel,
2:23:02
Speaker 2: and I went over his house once for dinner and
2:23:05
Speaker 2: it was crazy, like they're dancing and playing bongo drums,
2:23:09
Speaker 2: and I was, you know, I was saying, American. I'm
2:23:11
Speaker 2: saying to him. I go, why, I go, why are
2:23:14
Speaker 2: you guys so happy? I was like trying to figure
2:23:15
Speaker 2: it out. I go, is this just uniquely? He goes,
2:23:18
Speaker 2: it's in Israel. Everybody's happy because you know, you could
2:23:23
Speaker 2: die any day, so just have a good time, and
2:23:26
Speaker 2: so you go. That was his mentality. And I never
2:23:30
Speaker 2: forgot that because I remember thinking that, like Matt and
2:23:33
Speaker 2: he went back to Israel, he's there right now.
2:23:34
Speaker 1: Have you been to Israel?
2:23:35
Speaker 2: No?
2:23:36
Speaker 1: You know what I suggested, It doesn't seem like a
2:23:38
Speaker 1: good time to go.
2:23:39
Speaker 2: It seems like it's a little dangerous.
2:23:40
Speaker 1: I mean in that sense, yes, but go there and
2:23:43
Speaker 1: live live out the vibe. Look, it's an incredibly gay
2:23:48
Speaker 1: tolerant place right Tel Aviv, short of San Francisco, New York, Montreal.
2:23:53
Speaker 1: It's one of the most queer friendly places. It's very bohemian,
2:23:57
Speaker 1: it's you know, reggae music playing. Israelis are in French,
2:24:01
Speaker 1: you say bon vivan, good livers.
2:24:03
Speaker 2: But it's also is Israeli society doesn't universally support the
2:24:08
Speaker 2: war either exactly.
2:24:10
Speaker 1: But that speaks to the fact that there is a
2:24:12
Speaker 1: multiplicity of reality. It's an open society, right, I mean
2:24:17
Speaker 1: there are there are Muslim guys who will go in
2:24:20
Speaker 1: front of this kinesset and will say things that would
2:24:24
Speaker 1: never be tolerated in any other society. So is Israeli
2:24:28
Speaker 1: society perfect? No? But is it the beast and the
2:24:31
Speaker 1: monster and the demon that you see as a caricature?
2:24:35
Speaker 1: I mean, nothing could be further from the truth.
2:24:36
Speaker 2: But do you think that perhaps the more right wing
2:24:41
Speaker 2: authoritarian aspect of the Israeli government is a problem in
2:24:46
Speaker 2: how Israel's perceived in the rest of the world, and
2:24:49
Speaker 2: this over response in Gaza, the way they're bombing southern Lebanon,
2:24:53
Speaker 2: that this is feeding into this.
2:24:56
Speaker 1: Look, there's been there, there have been government in Israel
2:25:00
Speaker 1: covering the whole gamut of political orientations. And while to
2:25:05
Speaker 1: your point, I think there is greater animis towards Israel
2:25:07
Speaker 1: today than maybe in the past. I've always known there
2:25:11
Speaker 1: to be Israeli animus in many places. For example, at
2:25:15
Speaker 1: my own university, well, which I'm will be leaving shortly,
2:25:19
Speaker 1: Concordia has been colloquially referred to as Gaza University for
2:25:24
Speaker 1: twenty five plus years. Benjamin Natanyahu in two thousand and
2:25:28
Speaker 1: two was not able to speak there. They shut him
2:25:31
Speaker 1: down and they cancel him. And this is when he
2:25:34
Speaker 1: was then a private citizen. Now this is in two
2:25:36
Speaker 1: thousand and two.
2:25:38
Speaker 2: So why did they say they were shutting him down.
2:25:40
Speaker 1: Well, because it's the Zionus entity and the same talking points, right,
2:25:45
Speaker 1: you just change what is the culprit. So now we
2:25:48
Speaker 1: say it's the devastating images of Gaza, But twenty years
2:25:53
Speaker 1: ago it would have been an other stories.
2:25:55
Speaker 2: So the reality that's that university, I don't necessarily that
2:26:00
Speaker 2: was universally thought of in terms of like if you
2:26:04
Speaker 2: went to all the other different schools.
2:26:06
Speaker 1: No, you're absolutely right. But now that I think comes
2:26:09
Speaker 1: from two sources. The first source was when I told
2:26:11
Speaker 1: you earlier that the brainwashing that's going on American campuses
2:26:15
Speaker 1: where Jethrow is now also wearing the caffea also. But
2:26:19
Speaker 1: the demographic realities of the West in general, including the
2:26:24
Speaker 1: United States, are such that we've let in people from
2:26:28
Speaker 1: those societies at a much greater number than in the past. Right, So,
2:26:32
Speaker 1: I mean, you know the Pew Survey. You know Pew Pew,
2:26:37
Speaker 1: So there's a non partisan survey company that, if anything,
2:26:43
Speaker 1: tends to lean more towards progressive. They did a survey
2:26:48
Speaker 1: global survey of animus towards Jews, not Israel Jews. This
2:26:54
Speaker 1: is I think twenty ten, and they had a whole
2:26:57
Speaker 1: bunch of Islamic countries that were hold. Now, let's suppose
2:27:02
Speaker 1: I told you that we pulled people in Indonesia or
2:27:05
Speaker 1: in Libya or in Jordan and ten percent expressed, you know,
2:27:11
Speaker 1: very serious Jew hatred. That would be an arresting number.
2:27:14
Speaker 1: You'd be a wow, one out of ten hates the Jews.
2:27:16
Speaker 1: That's a lot. Do you know what the average numbers were?
2:27:19
Speaker 2: Just pick a number in which countries.
2:27:21
Speaker 1: So in many but I'm talking now mainly the Middle
2:27:25
Speaker 1: Eastern countries, so not Indonesia or Malaysia, which also we're
2:27:29
Speaker 1: not loving the Jews, but we're not nearly as hostile
2:27:32
Speaker 1: towards as Jews. I'm talking Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, you
2:27:36
Speaker 1: know those kinds of countries. What was the average number
2:27:39
Speaker 1: and Jamie can pull it up.
2:27:41
Speaker 2: And when when the question was asked, how was it phrased?
2:27:44
Speaker 1: I don't remember these outwards, but it was like do
2:27:46
Speaker 1: you hate Jews? Not do you hate Jews? But do
2:27:49
Speaker 1: you hold favorable or disfavorable. It's enough that there is
2:27:54
Speaker 1: animus but not I don't think the word hate was used.
2:27:57
Speaker 2: And is it Israel or.
2:27:59
Speaker 1: Is a Jews?
2:28:00
Speaker 2: Just choose?
2:28:01
Speaker 1: Guess what the percentage was, like, just give me a
2:28:03
Speaker 1: not like, oh, it's ninety five and up? Whoa right?
2:28:14
Speaker 1: So if we sampled a thousand people from.
2:28:16
Speaker 2: Syria and it's hate they hate Jews?
2:28:19
Speaker 1: Have I don't remember because negative, negative opinion, dis favorable, dislike,
2:28:25
Speaker 1: whatever the whatever it is. It's a it's a measure
2:28:28
Speaker 1: of your either proclivity, affinity, or disdain for the Jew,
2:28:33
Speaker 1: whatever the wording is. If you get ninety five, ninety seven,
2:28:38
Speaker 1: ninety eight percent of polled people saying that they don't
2:28:43
Speaker 1: like the Jews, and now you let into your country,
2:28:47
Speaker 1: your host country, hundreds of thousands if not millions of
2:28:51
Speaker 1: those people. Do you think that jew hatred is going
2:28:55
Speaker 1: to go up or go down? So in Quebec, for example,
2:28:59
Speaker 1: as I may have mentioned previously on the show, Quebec
2:29:02
Speaker 1: had a very open policy towards Islamic immigration. And the
2:29:08
Speaker 1: reason that in Quebec it was so is because the
2:29:11
Speaker 1: most important sense of personhood in Quebec is that you
2:29:15
Speaker 1: maintain your linguistic identity. We are French. We don't want
2:29:19
Speaker 1: to be subsumed by the mean English language. Yes. So therefore,
2:29:24
Speaker 1: since many of the immigrants coming from Islamic countries were
2:29:28
Speaker 1: also Francophone, in their infinite wisdom, the Quebec government said, hey,
2:29:33
Speaker 1: you know, here's a great idea. There was a nineteen
2:29:35
Speaker 1: ninety seven civil war between the Algerian government and hardcore
2:29:40
Speaker 1: extremist Muslims. The latter lost, so they were fleeing from
2:29:45
Speaker 1: getting killed by the Algerian government. Why don't you open
2:29:48
Speaker 1: the borders for them to Quebec. The decapitations will happen
2:29:54
Speaker 1: only when they say bonjour to you, So given that
2:29:57
Speaker 1: they will address you in French before they behead, you
2:30:00
Speaker 1: don't worry about it. Let them all in. I'm obviously
2:30:02
Speaker 1: being facetious, but the point is that hundreds of thousands
2:30:06
Speaker 1: of Islamic immigrants came to Quebec. I started seeing the changes.
2:30:12
Speaker 1: A lot more women in ji jabs, a lot more
2:30:15
Speaker 1: dangerous to go to campus, a lot more requirements for accommodations,
2:30:20
Speaker 1: prayer rooms, public prayer.
2:30:22
Speaker 2: When you say dangerous in what way?
2:30:25
Speaker 1: Specifically? To me?
2:30:26
Speaker 2: Dangerous going to campus and were.
2:30:28
Speaker 1: Well, I'm somewhat of a known entity who doesn't mince words,
2:30:33
Speaker 1: and so I started getting a lot of death threats.
2:30:36
Speaker 1: The first set of death threats I got were in
2:30:39
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, where for that semester I had to follow
2:30:43
Speaker 1: a protocol to walk on campus with security. They would
2:30:48
Speaker 1: lock the door so that the students could leave but
2:30:50
Speaker 1: not come back in. So I had to check in
2:30:53
Speaker 1: with the security. That lasted for about a semester, and
2:30:57
Speaker 1: I mean literally I would lecture and then I would
2:30:59
Speaker 1: be ushered out. My wife would be waiting for me,
2:31:02
Speaker 1: and I would sort of let out a deep breathe
2:31:05
Speaker 1: like sigh that thank god I survived another week.
2:31:08
Speaker 2: Did you ever experience like people trying to get at you?
2:31:11
Speaker 1: So the only so all of those threats were online,
2:31:16
Speaker 1: that necessity, but then we had to file with Concordia
2:31:19
Speaker 1: a Montreal police report. So on, in twenty twenty two,
2:31:23
Speaker 1: I had in person threat. So a guy came up
2:31:28
Speaker 1: to me. I was walking with my den So twenty
2:31:31
Speaker 1: twenty two, so four years ago. He must have been nine.
2:31:33
Speaker 1: I was walking with my nine year old ten year
2:31:35
Speaker 1: old son, and this guy looks at me. He goes,
2:31:38
Speaker 1: are you god sad? I said yes. Then he kind
2:31:41
Speaker 1: of composes himself to kind of deal with the hatred
2:31:45
Speaker 1: he feels, and he goes, I'm not going to do
2:31:48
Speaker 1: anything to you out of respect for your son today.
2:31:52
Speaker 1: And so then the detectives got the footage of that,
2:31:57
Speaker 1: you know, because it was outside of the about that
2:32:00
Speaker 1: and then and then by the way, I couldn't They
2:32:02
Speaker 1: didn't want to show me a lineup of things, of
2:32:06
Speaker 1: possible things, because it would be racist to do so.
2:32:11
Speaker 1: So the process of a police lineup, which is the
2:32:13
Speaker 1: most fundamental mechanism of identifying a perpetrator, was viewed as
2:32:18
Speaker 1: racist because the guy who levied the death threat to
2:32:20
Speaker 1: me was black. I think he was maybe Somli. He
2:32:22
Speaker 1: looked so Mali. So I took a two year leave
2:32:26
Speaker 1: from Concordia University, and I'm now leaving in large part
2:32:31
Speaker 1: because it became difficult for me, if not impossible, to
2:32:34
Speaker 1: be a high profile Jewish professor who supports the right
2:32:38
Speaker 1: of Israel to exist.
2:32:39
Speaker 2: And you think happens in the future to Concordia and
2:32:43
Speaker 2: just to Montreal in general, with this influx of people.
2:32:48
Speaker 1: It's a slow death. It'll take. You have to have
2:32:51
Speaker 1: the imagination to extrapolate into a distant future. So if
2:32:55
Speaker 1: you today go to your friend who's got that steakhouse
2:32:59
Speaker 1: on that street, I don't know if you want to
2:33:01
Speaker 1: mention it in Montreal, right, would you walk around and
2:33:05
Speaker 1: think that it's all Islamic? Of course not. But it's
2:33:07
Speaker 1: a drip, drip, drip, It changes, right. So, for example,
2:33:12
Speaker 1: until very recently, the Quebec government was fully tolerating the
2:33:17
Speaker 1: public prayers Islamic public prayers all over the place. Unt
2:33:21
Speaker 1: recently and now they passed the law banning it. Well,
2:33:25
Speaker 1: why did you need to wait till then? Why didn't
2:33:28
Speaker 1: you listen to me when I was standing on top
2:33:30
Speaker 1: of the mountain screaming into the void, saying this is
2:33:33
Speaker 1: what's going to transpire.
2:33:34
Speaker 2: But do you understand that you have more of an
2:33:38
Speaker 2: understanding of these things, more knowledge about these things, and
2:33:42
Speaker 2: to these people that are trying to get elected and
2:33:45
Speaker 2: that are dealing with their constituents. So this is a
2:33:48
Speaker 2: politically dangerous thing to bring up.
2:33:50
Speaker 1: I get it, But then you're engaging in suicidal empathy.
2:33:53
Speaker 2: Well it's also they're just they have their own personal.
2:33:56
Speaker 1: And they're traumatic. I get it. But you know the
2:34:00
Speaker 1: reason why I love and now I'm going to get
2:34:02
Speaker 1: threats for this. The reason why I appreciate Trump is
2:34:06
Speaker 1: precisely because he implements things that most politicians wouldn't have
2:34:11
Speaker 1: the testica of fortitude to do. But that's what you
2:34:14
Speaker 1: want in a great leader, right. Most people come in,
2:34:17
Speaker 1: do their time, parasitize the system, and then leave having
2:34:20
Speaker 1: accomplished nothing. The reason why Donald Trump has had not one,
2:34:25
Speaker 1: not two, but three assassination attempts, that is a testament
2:34:29
Speaker 1: to the fact that he is a danger to the
2:34:32
Speaker 1: status quo. Why because he does things whether you agree
2:34:36
Speaker 1: with him or not. He's bold, he's fearless, he doesn't
2:34:40
Speaker 1: give a shit. To your point, most politicians would rather
2:34:43
Speaker 1: go la la la. I don't want to hear it
2:34:45
Speaker 1: until it's too late. The playbook is very clear, depending
2:34:50
Speaker 1: on the number of Muslims in a society, you can
2:34:54
Speaker 1: exactly predict the level of conflict. And that statement that
2:34:59
Speaker 1: I just said holds true notwithstanding the fact that most
2:35:03
Speaker 1: Muslims are perfectly lovely. Both those statements are both vertical.
2:35:07
Speaker 1: So when you are zero two percent, you're just a quiet,
2:35:12
Speaker 1: exotic minority. When you're three to five percent, you become
2:35:15
Speaker 1: a lot more engaged politically. When you become six to
2:35:19
Speaker 1: ten percent, you start creating shadi yah nogo zones. We
2:35:23
Speaker 1: don't want your dogs here. This is not tolerated in
2:35:27
Speaker 1: our zone. Look at Britain, look at France. So in
2:35:30
Speaker 1: the same way that I can predict the trajectory of diabetes.
2:35:35
Speaker 1: And no, I'm not saying that Muslims are I'm drying
2:35:38
Speaker 1: an analogy, nurse. Okay, I am explaining a trajectory. So,
2:35:43
Speaker 1: if you wish to protect the liberties that make the
2:35:46
Speaker 1: United States so uniquely wonderful in the full range of
2:35:51
Speaker 1: societies that have ever existed, recognize that all religions are
2:35:55
Speaker 1: not equally likely to be congruent with the American excs experience.
2:36:00
Speaker 1: If you do, you'll survive. If you won't, your future
2:36:04
Speaker 1: descendants will rue the day you were born.
2:36:07
Speaker 2: All right? Should we handle that?
2:36:10
Speaker 1: Love being with you?
2:36:11
Speaker 2: Love being with you too.
2:36:12
Speaker 1: It was a great conversation, very lively. Thank you, sir.
2:36:15
Speaker 2: Suicide Empathy It is available now. Did you read the audiobook?
2:36:20
Speaker 1: I did, yes, and I constantly said that Joe Rogan
2:36:25
Speaker 1: would beat the shit out of me if I didn't
2:36:27
Speaker 1: do it.
2:36:27
Speaker 2: I would not do that, but I wouldn't be right
2:36:29
Speaker 2: you slightly. But I'm happy. I'm happy that you did that.
2:36:32
Speaker 2: Thank you always. Good to see you, brother, all right
2:36:34
Speaker 2: by everybody.