Latest / explore words discover worlds / Freedom for Whom? | Humza Yousaf, Myriam François, and Ebrhaim Rasool

Transcript

Freedom for Whom? | Humza Yousaf, Myriam François, and Ebrhaim Rasool · explore words discover worlds

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_06: Hello everybody, good afternoon.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_06: Good afternoon, good afternoon.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, I'm I'm uh I'm that guy.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_06: What a nice plug by Bradford Literature Festival uh for the book that I have coming out in the Torbandla, uh which I will come to speak at next year's BLF, I'm sure, about in more detail.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_06: But thank you so much for being here.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_06: The lights are astonishingly bright, but I think I can see most of you uh here.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_06: We are going to get stuck in very, very shortly, thank you.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_06: Uh we're gonna get stuck in very, very shortly into this fascinating, topical, provocative uh discussion.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_06: I'm largely just going to sit back and share.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_06: Two things I would say.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_06: One is it's very nice for once in my life to be the one asking the questions and doing the interrogation rather than being interrogated.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_06: But secondly, I was here this morning in this very venue, and I wasn't sure I would be allowed back in, given as the hairy Scotsman in the room I made a joke about the English football team.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_06: But I am here nonetheless.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_06: So thank you very much for your indulgence, thank you for your patience.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_06: I am genuinely delighted to be joined by some people, two people that I admire greatly, um, for actually very similar reasons, uh, because they're not afraid to speak out, and we will get to the nub of that in this uh session.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_06: So, this session, as you can see, freedom from whom when democracies become afraid, delighted to be joined by uh by Miriam Francois.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_06: Uh she is a documentary maker, uh, she's a filmmaker, a writer, journalist.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_06: Uh, but also, if you do not listen to her podcast, which again she will tell you more about, uh, then you are seriously uh missing out.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_06: She's the founder and CEO of MPWR Productions, which centralises on uh minoritized voices, and uh many documentaries she's made uh over the years.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_06: Uh debut documentary Finding Allah was Bafta Longlisted, but I was referencing it on the way here.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_06: One of the first documentaries, uh, or her first documentary I think that I ever saw was uh about Shribanitzan 2015.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_06: Again, still topical to this day.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_06: Uh to her left is a man who needs little introduction, but I will give him one anyway, uh, Ambassador Ibrahim Rusul, uh, who I've had the pleasure of getting to know over the last few years.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_06: You will also know him as, of course, an anti-apartheid activist, which we're going to delve into, uh, former premier of the Western Cape.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_06: I think we might have Khalid here, who's the opposition leader in the Western Cape.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_06: Um, but who knows, he may follow.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_06: No pressure, Khalid, but he may have to follow in Ibrahim's footsteps as the Premier of Western Cape, twice South Africa's ambassador to the United States, and of course, very famously in March 2025, the Trump administration declared him PNG persona non-grata and expelled him, uh, which again we will delve into.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_06: Uh, he has, I think, in my view, uh, somebody who has been involved in politics for 20 years, I view him as the Muslim uh community's uh foremost strategic political thinker globally, and I'm delighted to be joined by him.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_06: So, ladies and gentlemen, a round of applause for our wonderful uh guests.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_06: Let's get stuck in freedom for whom when democracies become afraid.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_06: Many uh in the United Kingdom, we are having this discussion at a time when over 3,000 people have been arrested for peacefully protesting against a prescription of Palestine action.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_06: We are at a time when people would suggest that there is freedom for speech freedom of speech for a select group of people.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_06: Um answering the very question at the top of this session, are we living in a democracy?
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_06: That alone could be the question, are we living in a democracy where there is equal freedoms and rights of speech and expression?
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_02: Well, let's start maybe by defining our terms, if I may.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_02: So I think when we start to think about the concept of democracy, we're talking about a political system where the will of the majority is reflected in the political decision making of the leadership that has been elected.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's safe to say that that link has been broken and has been broken for quite a long time now.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I was recently reminded of uh, you know, Nick Clegg's uh promises with regards to things like tuition fees.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_02: Time and time again, we see leaders who, in some cases, will actually just campaign on a particular issue once they get to power, Shaban and Mahmoud, no shade, um, you know, change significantly in how they then proceed once they're in power.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think there's a couple of things to kind of bring into the conversation.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_02: The one is the first is that, you know, the Epstein files have largely been treated as a sort of salacious story in the news.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I think they were also treated as what I would call a bit of a fry in the pan.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it was like the Epstein files, you know, the 1% that were released came out.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_02: There were a few sort of, you know, shock or horror conspiracy theories were allowed to abound because actually there was no time for journalists to really delve through the you know thousands of files that were released simultaneously.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_02: And then we sort of just all moved on.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_02: But actually, what the files revealed was that far beyond our formal political structures, there is a cabal, there isn't a group of people who operate beyond public purview.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_02: They meet, and in some cases, they meet and sexually abuse children very clearly, but in many cases they also meet to make decisions about the world and about our societies without any input or regard for the citizenry of the countries in question.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_02: And so I think that I would start by questioning, you know, whether we've really taken stock of what the Epstein Files tells us about the ways in which our democracies have, in many ways, become what I think of as window dressings for where power really lies.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_02: And this doesn't have to be a conspiracy theory.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_02: When we look at where power lies, you always look at the money.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_02: Where is money flowing?
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it's flowing increasingly to a very small number of large companies, corporations.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_02: Some of those corporations have profit margins that exceed the GDP of entire countries.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_02: And those leaders will, in some cases, go in front of other governments.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_02: So we can think of Mark Zuckerberg, for example, speaking in front of Congress, with Congress attempting to account him in some capacity, sort of saying, Well, I tend to think of you know Meta more as a government than I do as a company or corporation.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that was about as honest as he's actually been, which is that actually the corporations have reached such um you know huge proportions today, and that the power and confluence of power between those in positions of power and those in positions of uh economic power is reflected in things like the inauguration.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_02: Who was at the front seat of the inauguration?
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_02: It was, you know, the heads of large corporations who had been funding the campaign of the man who had won the election.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_02: So all this to say that I think it's very difficult to continue to claim that we live in a democracy by any of the terminology that I studied as a political scientist when it comes to that term.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_02: But I also wouldn't say that it's completely irretrievable.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_02: I just think that we have a serious fight on our hands.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_02: I could go on, but thank you.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_06: Well, that's really uh helpful.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_06: I um then want to go to Ibrahim around um this question that freedom of speech uh is selective.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_06: So we'll get many Muslims who will say, well, we can't peacefully protest against the ban on prescription on past and actions, just that that example again.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_06: But it feels like that's not a new thing, and I want to delve into your past lived experience.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_06: I think we're really honored uh to have you here given your experience.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_06: What was I mean, is any of this clampdown of freedom of expression and speech is it reminiscent of the apartheid era that you lived through and struggled against?
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_06: Or is that a dangerous comparison?
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_04: No, no, no.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_04: I think it's uh it's a provocative comparison.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_04: Um and I really want to say that I share the honor of being with Miriam once again.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_04: Um I've been on the receiving end of uh interrogations, and now we're equal.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_04: Um and thank you very much for doing this.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_04: But you know, I think that the issue of democracy is a sliding scale between its lowest common denominator, which is elections, and its highest common factor, which is inclusion, equality, dignity for all, etc.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_04: And if I were to be asked where on that scale would democracy sit today in the West, I would say that they're very close to the lowest common denominator.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_04: We have elections.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_04: So that's the first thing.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_04: What has brought this about?
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_04: I think this is the post-globalization world.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_04: Because in globalization we celebrated all kinds of mobility.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_04: The mo the movement of capital.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_04: We press a button on our phone and millions can move to have it.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_04: We are able to order something today, and from China it will be here in a day or two.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_04: We love the mobility of technology and we enjoyed it.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_04: But when it came to the mobility of people, and people moved as fast as technology, capital, and goods, we created a plethora of isms and phobias to deal with the other that we didn't think we would see in our midst.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_04: And so, what we needed to do to deal with this other that we did not understand and to manage our nostalgia for the time when we were all looking the same, eating the same, praying the same, talking the same, etc., suddenly we had to manage this plethora of difference that we have amongst us, and so we A needed to scale down the issue of democracy to its lowest common denominator, and we had to reinvent the rules about what freedom means.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_04: And so in the fundamental question that the West asked itself in terms of what does freedom now mean when you've got all these different people, and so suddenly we are now beginning to say that how do we have democracy and freedom when there are people with different value systems trying to coexist in the pre-existing value system?
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_04: Can that freedom that we have cherished for ourselves, we've absolutiz it, we've made it your absolute freedom of speech, your absolute freedom of association, your absolute freedom to the rights of dignity and equality and all of those kind of things?
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_04: Now we are saying, can the two coexist?
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_04: If there's a Muslim with a different worldview, should they enjoy this freedom or should it be curtailed?
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_04: If there is black people, how do we get them to leave their cuisine, their culture, and their language at the border and then come in and be assimilated?
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_04: You're either British or you're nothing.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_04: We then unleash the surveillance thing to watch these people.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_04: We then create laws in order to curtail their movement.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_04: And so going back to why South Africa was so special in the 80s and 90s in the crafting of a Bill of Rights and a constitution is that because we were on the receiving end of the surveillance, of the intolerance of difference, of the absence of diversity, and and so forth, we planned for a diverse society, and so we spoke about how all national groups should have equal rights, how every person, irrespective of language, we we have the flag with the most colours in every country, six colours consolidating all our differences into that.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_04: We have an anthem with five different languages.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_04: We recognize 11 official languages, clumsy but absolutely critical, that when you lie on your deathbed in the hospital, when you're fighting for your life in court, you should be able to speak in the language that you choose in order to fight for your life.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_04: And so we were expansive under Mandela's leadership in how we understood democracy at the highest common factor and what free, but most importantly, you plan for it.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_04: America is what it is because its first and fundamental right is freedom of speech.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_04: We learned from that because we said the thing we were most deprived of was equality.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_04: So that's our first value in our bill of rights.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_04: The second thing is that when your equality is infringed, your dignity is infringed, and that becomes your second fundamental right.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_04: Your fourth one is that Islamophobia and even anti-Semitism were institutionalized under aparte, and therefore it became our fourth right.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_04: But freedom of speech is only our seventh one.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_04: It's the one that is subtended by conditions.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_04: You don't have the freedom for hate speech, you don't have the freedom to incite violence, you don't have the freedom to belittle each other, and all of and number seven is subsidiary to number one to six.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_04: You can be free in your speech, but not at the expense of someone's equality, not at the expense of someone's belief, not at the expense of someone's dignity.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_04: And we get it out of the courts, we have chapter nine institutions that look off after and arbitrate it rather than litigate it.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_04: Because we're in a period of really exploring each other's differences.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_04: And so to end, I think that we are in a crisis of democracy because we are at the lowest common denominator, we have elections and we are in a crisis of freedom because the freedom that we celebrated were never envisaged for the other to move from the periphery to the center.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_04: And now that it's in the center, we don't know what to do with this mobility of people because we are to cherry pick our mobilities, capital, goods, and technology, but not people.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_04: And so we now have an epidemic of isms and phobias.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_04: For every difference, we have an ism or a phobia.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_04: And that's the crisis of democracy today, that's the crisis of the world today.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_06: Very good.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_06: Very uh this is why I call her a treasure gem, as you'll see, ladies and gentlemen.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_06: Uh a lot in there to unpick, but I'm gonna come back to Miriam on a more domestic issues.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_06: I'm gonna come back to South Africa later with Ibrahim.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_06: I wanted to think about the current political context we're in.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_06: Uh you reference um Shibana Mahmud.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_06: Um she may or may not be Home Secretary in two weeks' time.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_02: Does it matter?
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, you've just submissive my question.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_06: So my question was for the Prime Minister in waiting who be reformed Echo Field, can't be dismissed.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_06: Do you hold the hope that there may be a different direction under Andy Brno when it comes to democracy, when it comes to freedom of speech, when it comes to taking on the very divisive and damaging rhetoric that comes from those in the hard right and the far right in this country, I I think you're asking me if I believe that real change comes from political leadership, and I don't.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um I have never really believed that.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_02: I believe in people power.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_02: If you watch my show, it's that the reason that I do the work that I do is because I actually believe that real power is vested in each and every one of you, and actually in the potential that each and every one of us carries to uh subvert in every space uh the norms that the political powers rely on us to uh abide by uh in order for things for them to pursue their um agendas, which don't typically, uh in my lifetime at least, haven't aligned with anything that I think of as progressive for the majority of people.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_02: So I think for me the the bigger question is whether or not we think that political leaders in any of the Western democracies actually have the power themselves to curb the major corporations which our entire economies now rely on, right?
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's where there's a lot of nubs uh when we look at things like regulation, for example, of big tech companies.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_02: We're often being told that, oh, the reason that we can't regulate big tech is because it's just oh so complicated.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_02: But is it because it's complicated, or is it because they hold us literally by the balls, to put it, you know, in curt ways?
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_02: I think that the reality of where we stand today is that regardless of who we elect, we are, to your point, Ibrahim, um, in many ways servants to big capital and to the requirements of big capital.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_02: And I would argue that, for example, not to make any excuses for Shabana or anyone else, um, I remember speaking to David Lamy when he was in the opposition in a room at Sky News and saying to him, you know, if if you get to power, you know, you will take a stand on what's happening in Gaza, you will, you know, stop arm sales.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_02: And he was like, of course we will.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_02: Of course we will.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_02: Fact, that conversation actually actually occurred, David.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sure you recall it, uh, because I was very polite in my communication.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I think that the point is we can either choose to believe that when Shabana or you know David get to power, that they suddenly become these evil demons who have no principles, or we accept that actually our political system is subservient to uh a larger set of uh economic interests that they can't uh move around currently without us being impacted as a country very significantly.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_02: So if you think of like the macro and the micro equivalent of this, I'd look at things like what happens to companies or to individuals who speak out, for example, um against Israel, right?
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_02: Speak out against the apartheid state of Israel.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we see people lose their jobs, we see companies getting defunded in various ways.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_02: Are we to imagine that this is not exactly what happens to governments that take this stand?
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, do we not think that there's an impact if these countries, I mean, you've been in political uh power, you know how this goes.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so if it's not gonna come from the top, the question is, I think, much more importantly, instead of sitting around idly believing that the little ballot box that you fill in every four years is going to change the world, I think we have to really start taking seriously what it means to live in degraded democracies.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_02: So, Freedom House does this annual report.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_02: For the last 20 years, they have traced the deterioration of democracy and freedom around the world.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_02: And the largest deteriorations, the most rotten democracies, and now the biggest rot is happening within Western democracies.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_02: That's us right here.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_02: The rot is happening at acute speed within our societies.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_02: And I think rather than expecting anyone from above to save us, I think we have to start understanding what it is that's causing the rot.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_02: We have to start educating ourselves about how we can organize in spaces of resistance, and I really mean that.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_02: I think it would be absolutely naive to not take very seriously the ways in which the largest technology companies in the country are increasingly in bed with our governments in ways that essentially facilitate the panapticon of surveillance states.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_02: We've always lived in various forms of surveillance states.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I jokingly talk whenever I speak at public events, usually I say, welcome to all my friends and the spooks who've been sent to watch us.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_02: It's a fact that in every space they're there.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_02: But now in our data-driven, in our algorithmic worlds, in the digital spaces where we all exist.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_02: And if you're a millennial like me or Gen Z, you're spending anywhere between four to seven hours a day minimum on in front of screens.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_02: If you're Gen Alpha, that's even higher.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_02: So your lived reality is spent within a space that is monitored at all times by companies who have a vested interest in sharing that, not just with commercial companies, but with governments.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_06: And when we're expecting that saying, to interrupt, but are you not perpetuating that by having a podcast that's on YouTube and Instagram and all the digital corporations and making an income out of it as well?
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_02: If you think people make an income on YouTube, good luck to you, mate.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um I suggest you try your own podcast on YouTube.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_02: Um that's not how people who Unless unless you're on like you know 10 million views, no one's making income on YouTube, just to be clear.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_02: The majority of the content on YouTube is um actually driven to the right very significantly.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_02: So although most of the content on YouTube is left-wing, the algorithmic drive on YouTube has been uh shown to increase the uh visibility of right-wing content.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_02: 58% of what gets pushed out by the algorithm on YouTube is right-wing content.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_02: We are operating in a post-media space where essentially you have the choice between highly controlled uh broadcasters and what we call legacy media spaces and new media spaces that are also highly controlled.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_02: Neither of them escape control, they're just different spaces to navigate.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_02: And so for us, for example, on YouTube, yeah, you're absolutely right.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_02: We we have real concerns about the way in which our content is demonetized regularly.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_02: Anything that speaks about Gaza is an obvious one, but all of our Epstein content was demonetized, and that's why we've now created our own platform, which is www.thetnetwork.co.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_02: So thank you for that prompt, which means that you can come to us directly.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_02: But of course, none of this will save us in reality.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_02: We all have to start using technologies in much more individualized ways to figure out how we can create spaces of resistance within them.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_02: I was interviewing somebody recently who was advocating for localized VPNs, VPNs that you set up in your local community that only have the people in your local community with them, aka, they do not have the overarching surveillance dimension to them.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_02: We've got to start thinking about how we can use AI not just as tools that make us dumber, literally, because that's what the studies show is happening with AI, but also how can we be constructing our own AI bodies that are going to help us and enable us to take on the challenges of the surveillance state, which is you know far beyond, I think, what most people realize in terms of its um sort of encroachment into our private sphere.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_06: Thank you.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_06: Very helpful.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_06: Um and want to go back, uh Ibrahim, not to South Africa, but to the United States.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_06: Um, a lot of people have uh know know the story of the PNG status, and I want to ask you whether that's um a symptom, you know, you becoming persona non grata, a symptom of um what we're seeing across Western democracies.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_06: But I suppose before I get to that, I want to delve into a bit of the human story.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_06: Um I've had the pleasure of getting to know you over a couple of years.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_06: I've heard you strategize, I've heard you talk on political theory.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_06: But as Ibrahim Rasul, the man, the individual, family man, married, children, grandchildren, alhamdulillah.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_06: What was it like?
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_06: Well, first of all, how did you find out that you were about to be made PNG?
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_06: Was it the tweet?
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_06: Was it a phone call?
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_06: Was it a back channel?
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_06: And in that moment, how did you feel that you suddenly were thrust into the spot?
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_06: They already had a public profile to an extent, but of course thrust into the public, where ambassadors try to, of course, keep a little bit more of a lower profile.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_06: How did that feel for you?
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_06: And what were the impacts on your family if any?
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_04: So thanks very much.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_04: Um Rushida and I were driving back back from Annapolis on a Friday afternoon when suddenly my phone started lighting up, and it was former ambassadors to South Africa that had picked up on ex Marco Rubio's um ex on Canada at the late afternoon when officers close, declaring me persona non grata and calling me a race painter and all of those kind of things.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_04: And and and and and so that was it.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_04: And then there was the request from the State Department to come and see them urgently, but I was not going to make it, and I sent my deputy, who insisted that you go because they suspect that picking up the PNG order, the persona non-grata order, may want to involve some humiliation.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_04: And it was Ramadan and and all of those kind of things.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_04: So that was essentially this.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_04: But I think that the disquiet came because at four that morning, South African time, or four US time, it was 10 o'clock, I was engaged in a fairly big webinar with South African intelligentsia, which had been infiltrated by an old um rival of mine from Cape Town that I beat in the election for the premiership of the Western Cape.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_04: He was the strategist for the leader of the opposition.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_04: And um and and and he had infiltrated as anonymous, and he put it out and tagged Donald Trump, Bravo Rubio, everyone, in a 12-second clip out of a two-hour webinar, um in which I spoke about a supremacist instinct at work, which describes why they're doubling down on a white genocide in South Africa when everyone palpably knows there is no such thing.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_04: And that was it.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_04: So my major surprise was how thin-skinned the US government and Donald Trump in particular is with the idea of a supremacist instinct at work.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you're not allowed to contradict the official narrative anymore, and your story ran counter to the official narrative.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_04: So the official narrative was that.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_04: US AID had been closed, all the research into HIV vaccines, etc., had been completely brought to an end.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_04: 30% tariffs had been put, factories were closing in South Africa, and at that point an ambassador has to choose to do orthodox diplomacy, or what we call in South Africa the diplomacy of Ubuntu, the diplomacy of accountability, mutual um accountability to each other.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_04: And I think that in explaining, I chose very clearly because what more could you lose if you've lost your trade, your aid, and um you're not even allowed into the government um of the United States.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_04: And the only people coming in were your white supremacists from South Africa, and around Donald Trump were four important white supremacists Elon Musk to be the deal, etc.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_04: You're on a battle to nothing, and so truth is what you salvage um out of that.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_04: So, be that as it may, that's not a a major loss.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_04: I've um Jacob Zuma removed me as Premier because I oppose this corruption.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_04: Um I've we were ejected from the coalition government of the Western Cape because we were doing too well, according to the old apartheid um party.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_04: So I've never been accused of that actually, but uh nonetheless.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_04: So so so so so so all in all it's it it it wasn't a big thing, but personally, you do go through a moment of self-reflection.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_04: You do want to you do want to succumb to the temptation to second guess yourself.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_06: Did you kick yourself at all?
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_04: Public webinar, no, ambassador, diplomacy.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_04: No, I think I think that um when my government back home started becoming fearful of the reception I would get.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_04: A hero's welcome.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_04: When they became afraid of that, it just calmed all the fears and all the doubts within me.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_04: Because just explain that reception, because that was, I mean, unprecedented when you arrived back and yeah, no, I there were just thousands of people at the airport, including Khalid and and others.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_04: Um and there were yeah, I I I I just think that um it was the kind of heartbeat of South Africa that I knew from the anti-apartheid struggle.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_04: That's what our heartbeat about.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_04: And very importantly, the fact that we did not give in on a case against Israel, charging it with genocide in the inter- that was the refrain in 22 offices.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_04: I entered in the House of Congress and in Senate.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_04: Everyone wanted us to withdraw our case, to get out of PRICS, to stop the talk on de-dollarization because of its threats to um corporate the corporate world, etc.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_04: And we and I had one instruction double down on all of these things.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_04: Those are non-negotiable.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_04: And I think that my my my my supremacist instinct was the culmination of a range of those kinds of things.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_04: But most importantly, and this relates to the point that um that I think um Maryam makes.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_04: I think we mischaracterize, and I'm speaking more boldly than I should, we mischaracterize the contests in the Western world.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_04: We still think in orthodox terms that the battle in the USA is Republican versus Democratic.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_04: We think in orthodox terms that the battle year is between Labour and Conservative and Reform and so forth.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_04: We do the same mistake in Germany, the same mistake in Hungary, um, everywhere.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_04: The battle in the world today is between incumbency of elites and insurgency by wounded whites.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_04: And that's the fuel that drove Donald Trump to victory.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_04: He first cannibalized the Republican Party and yet got rid of the gentlemen um in the Republic, the Bush legacy, um and and all of them.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_04: Explain what you mean by winded ways.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_04: People for whom the world has fundamentally changed.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_04: Um the assumptions of Anglo-Saxon um hegemony in the world, where your English was taken for granted.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_04: It's not being contested by Arab-speaking Arabs and Hispanic-speaking Spanish and all of those kind of things, where your cuisine was taken for granted, um, where your cultural norms were all intact, um, and and and and and so forth.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_04: And so there was this grievance that I think that had been brewing.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_04: And when the grievance has a political overtone, so for example, in the USA, if Texas had a majority of minorities, that is about 80 electoral um college seats that is never available again um to put those kind of dynasties in place.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_04: So but I think that and it's the grievance that copiness feed off because they don't feed off people's aspirations and hopes, they feed off your fears and grievances.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_04: And therefore the exploitation of that means one thing.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_04: But the point that I'm coming to is that if we understand that year is a battle between an insurgency that cannibalizes firstly its own party and puts it on an irrevocable path, and then begins to win an election that cannibalizes the opposition parties, then you begin to understand and it's not an insurgency that is happy to be homebound.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_04: It comes here and it elevates its favorite figures like Farage.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_04: It goes and campaigns for alternative Deutschland, it goes to Hungary and goes for the final rally with Orban, fortunately in a losing cause.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_04: Um it campaigns for Marine Le Pen to be freed from charges, it tries to instruct Lula not to prosecute his predecessor, who's part of that.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_04: And so what you've got to see is the export of a kind of MAGA revolution.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_04: And so that I think is what we need.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_04: And therefore, the repository the response to it is not simply playing dominoes with it.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_04: We've got to play chess.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_04: And and and so on the one hand it involved resistance, but on the other hand, it is to see hope.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_04: And that's what we specialize in in South Africa.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_04: We see hope in the darkest corners.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_04: We had a slogan when apartheid was at its worst, freedom in our lifetime.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_04: And that drove us forward to be able to see that we are going to we are going to take it.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_04: We don't know when, but we are.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_04: But that every act of even recruiting one person to your cause is a victory.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_04: Every little space, every township you reclaim is a victory.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_04: Every media opportunity you uh you you galvanize is a victory.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_04: And so we mustn't see things in only big terms.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_04: These are incremental ones, and then suddenly the apartheid state edifice collapses.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_06: And so to end, you said to end about four times, you're becoming a politician, from ambassador to politician.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_06: I said it once.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_04: But the point is that I think we need to think in new creative and strategic ways about what it is that we that we do.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_04: Can we afford to be single-issue campaigns only?
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_04: Or is there the aggregation of campaigns?
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_04: Are we all chipping away?
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_04: At it, so many of us believe so strongly in only this campaign that we make it the measure of everything.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_04: If you don't say anything about Palestine, but you're fighting in the House of Commons, you're a sellout.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_04: If you don't do this about women, what how can I take you?
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_04: Um if you don't attack a corporate America, I can't trust you.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_04: And and I think we need a conductor for an orchestra that must have many instruments, must have many voices, and only when we understand that each instrument and each voice is chipping away at the edifice will we combine our efforts because they rely on the fragmentation.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_04: There are the Palestinian Solidarity people, they are the anti-corporate America people, there are the um feminists, there are the Islamists, and we never find the common yimchi amongst us.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_06: Very good, very good.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_06: Um, Maria, I'm gonna come to you for the last question from me, and then I'm gonna open up.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_06: Uh, we're gonna have a very hard stop uh at five um for lots of different reasons.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_06: So we're very keen to get some audience questions, so begin to think about them, and I'll take them two or three at a time.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_06: Uh before I do that, I'm gonna pose to you actually a segue from what Ibrahim said.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_06: Uh for another provocative question, but I'm gonna ask it.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_06: Three of us on this stage are Muslim.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_06: Many people in the audience will be Muslim, not everybody, of course.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_06: Are when it comes to this issue of rights and equality, fighting for our freedoms of equality, are Muslims bad allies?
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_06: What I mean by that is every march against Islamophobia I've ever attended and organised, our friends from the LGBT community at the very front of solidarity.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_06: But of course, many uh and and I'm not getting into a theological discussion, but when it comes to the rights of the LGBT community, there are some Muslims who will say, Well, we are not going to join that fight, that struggle.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_06: And in fact, if anything, we will say that we'll go against that fight and that struggle.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_06: So the provocative question I've got for you are Muslims bad allies?
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_02: I love this question.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_02: I'm so here for it.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um but before I do, I just want to point out that the persona non grata issue that we associate with the Trump administration and your uh abysmal treatment by it also came here in the form of Labour government, uh, of course, banning um Jenk Uger from entering the country and his nephew Hassan Pika.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so I just want to point that out because as much as we may think of these things as, you know, oh, the awful sort of Trumpians, um, who was it who did that here?
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_02: Who recently also said that um the investigative journalist Jeremy uh Lafrado is not welcome also Persona Non Grata?
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_02: Watch carefully who it is that we the sort of to your point about with sort of being pitted, do you want blue or do you want red?
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_02: Do you want, you know, ready blue or do you want bluey red?
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, come on, at what point are we going to stop falling for the shadow games and wake up to the real power plays happening before us?
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_02: And they are not occurring in the choice between, you know, shit and a little bit less shit or you know, shitter.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_02: Those are generally the options before us.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_02: So your point about um, you know, the Muslim community, so look, I come at this from a very, you know, uh, you know, apparently quite controversial perspective, which is that for me, Islam is not a cult with a uniform, it's a set of universal values that is of benefit to mankind.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_02: And therefore, my only question whenever I see anyone campaigning on the basis of saying I'm a Muslim is to ask: is what you're campaigning for of benefit to the majority of people, to mankind?
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_02: Or are you sort of, you know, unfortunately, this happens a lot because of embattled communities, we develop this sort of like insularity around who we are and a sort of defensiveness around our identities.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_02: And so much of the discourse that we as Muslims end up um becoming emballed in is what I call don't think about pink elephants.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_02: So the right and the far right, and actually now the left too, are like Muslims are this, Muslims are that, and we say, no, we're not.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's basically the gist of the discussion that we're allowed to have.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, I welcome another discussion on the ways in which the media discourse around us as a community has become so narrowed that we're not even really invited to participate in those conversations.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_02: They happen about us, but without us even present.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so I think rather than being caught in this cycle of like, you know, don't think about pink elephants.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_02: What I would ask is, you know, if you stand as a Muslim in any capacity politically, the question is, what values are you serving?
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I think Mamdani is a really good example for me, Zahran Mamdani, of somebody who really, you know, doesn't have to say, I'm a Muslim and I'm campaigning as a Muslim.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_02: He just is.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_02: He embodies a set of values that is of benefit to everyone in the community around him.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_02: And he doesn't have to shout about it and he doesn't have to advertise around it, he just does.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_02: And in this sense, I don't really care which community you agree or don't agree with, they are your community, especially if you're a politician, you're in service to the benefit of all the people around you.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so to that extent, I really question uh how many of the people who are invested in, particularly local politics, that keep us embrawled in really uh, you know, basic bitch combos around, you know, oh, you know, are we allowed to vote?
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, she's you know, speaking about a democracy, you know, Sama Yakoub recently, there was a hate crime.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if you followed this around Sama Yaquoub.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_02: Sama was not allowed to talk about this publicly because she wasn't sure if it was like the far right or Muslims who had done this.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_02: Can we get real about what our community is actually like?
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_02: We are continuing to allow ourselves to be caught up in pathetic conversations that distract us from the real issues, and we are now the canaries in the coal mine.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_02: And I say we, but I'm the least target of all of us.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_02: I walk around, no one even knows.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_02: I'm covert.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_02: Most of you are the actual frontline.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_02: No, but let's be real about it.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_02: And we we're so far in the canaries in the coal mine that literally it's a left-to-right conversation around to what extent Muslims are the problem.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_02: It's not if Muslims are the problem, it's what type of problem.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_02: It's the virality of fake news around us that now spreads around the world faster than we can even have a conversation around what it is that our role is in with within these societies.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_02: And so to end, I just want to point out that I really think there is an urgent need to think carefully about what it actually means to be a Muslim.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_02: For me, I actually don't care what you look like, I don't care what your practice is like.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_02: The only thing that is important to me at this stage of where we're at is when you go out into the world, are the people around You benefiting from the actions that you're doing, or is it just your ego and your personal status in your little community, my man?
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_02: Because that is the majority of what I see of the campaigners on the ground.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_02: Self-serving, self-interested bros who are focused more on their egos and their status than actually serving the community around them.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_02: And there's no time to waste.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_02: These men need to move.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_06: Powerful, powerful.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_06: A very good uh segue or a moment, I should say, to invite the audience to ask questions.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_06: We're going to take two or three questions at a time.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_06: I'm going to ask you to put your hand up.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_06: You have roving mics coming across.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_06: Um, please do say your name if you wish.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_06: If you don't, no problem.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_06: And I'm going to ask the panel, who are uh very uh thoughtful to not have to answer every question, but the one that they think is maybe the best one for them.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_05: Please, is that I think a gentleman there.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_05: Yes, hi, Usman here.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_05: Um, thank you for the speech.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_05: It was absolutely amazing.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, particular question uh for Mariam.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_05: As a Muslim who is also a white woman, you have access to white privilege.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_05: How do you utilize that specifically to address anti-Muslim hatred?
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_05: And how can you sort of increase that to really target Islamophobia?
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_05: Because it is entrenched throughout not even just Western society, but it's now global.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_05: Thank you.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_05: Thank you.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_06: Uh hands up, please, for other questions.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_06: Uh I would like uh there's one here, I would like a woman afterwards because uh Miriam was right to say boys get out of the way.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_06: Please ask yours.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_06: If there is a woman afterwards, please put your hands up.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_06: Uh gentleman here with the sunglasses on his head.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, thank you.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um thanks for coming down.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, this is an open question for either one of you or anybody on the panel.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's often been suggested, and I have read, that civil wars begin when power elites feel their actual powers fading and going away.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_00: So you mentioned within uh the United States there's a a wounded white or insurgency, white insurgency, so to speak, the traditional Protestant Bible belt Prussian uh American who's now feeling squeezed out.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_00: To what extent is uh President Donald Trump a buffer to civil war in the US by uh distracting that uh that particular community or that particular vein of America's politics uh by uh beating down, say the uh uh Muslims or like uh the Mexicans and all of that, but at the same time uh still representing the traditional power power base of America, which I think is like the elite.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_06: Thank you.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_06: Thank you.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_06: Before this gentleman here at the front asks a question, I think there was a microphone going around.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_06: Is there any anybody else any women that wants to ask a question?
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_06: Do we put your hands up?
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_06: Nabila.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_06: And then I'm gonna come to you afterwards.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh a little bit of a segue from the question that's just been asked.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um can you speak a little to so freedom for whom is you know uh the the the first part of the title.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_01: I think that there is a march from the United States across towards the East in terms of you know, sort of how freedom is defined, how democracy is defined, how um, you know, the things that we will and will not put up with.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um is there a need to put up a wall in the middle of the Atlantic to stop that march going forward and allow Europe and the Father East to develop its own uh definitions, or are we doomed to follow the United States?
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_06: Wonderful.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_06: And the man you pass the microphone back, I'm gonna take this fourth question and then I'm gonna come back to the panels.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_06: Oh okay, we'll go to this fourth question very impatiently.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_06: Please.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_03: Um are the panel aware of uh uh some new legislation which is being rushed through Parliament at the moment where organisations are prescribed, for example, the Hamas and hopefully um soon maybe IRGC that journalists cannot report on them, they cannot talk to them, anyone who has any dealings with them will also get you know uh potentially going to jail.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_03: So, in terms of our freedoms, I think this is probably one of the last nails in the in the coffin of freedom that we're expecting.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_06: Oh, nah, Nas is here, no?
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_06: Um I'm gonna go to uh Ibrahim and then Mariam.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_06: And feel free to take the questions, although there's one obviously very specifically to Mariam, but the other questions.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_04: So so so so to go to to your question immediately, when Donald Trump first got elected in foreign affairs, Professor John Eikenberry wrote a picture that had these ringing words, that all civilizations and empires rise and fall.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_04: That they fall is not the question.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_04: The only question is was it murder or suicide?
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_04: And you see, I think that someone like Donald Trump, rather than being the buffer, is the enabler of an enormous suicide.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_04: Because we've we've always had under Barack Obama a very strong fist in a velvet glove.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_04: He understood the importance of hard power to be accompanied by soft power, so he walked on both legs.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_04: Donald Trump effectively amputated the leg of soft power and let America stand only on a leg of hard power, whether it was with Europe, with Africa, or with anyone else, for that matter.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_04: And this naked articulation of what Project Israel was about has now even, I think, begun to turn a majority of Americans into questioning whether this is our war.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_04: It's allowing a generation of young Jews who don't any longer have an elder who was in Auschwitz to say, not in my name.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_04: It allows a new generation of Europeans to say, I'm not carrying that guilt with me for what happened in the Holocaust.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_04: So I think in that lies the hope that I speak about and that we need to speak into.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_04: And so often Muslims, to touch on your last question, can often put the tactical ahead of the strategic.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_04: So in how and we like often to make God unemployed because we want to do God's job in judging the LGBT and everyone else for that matter.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_04: But if we let it simmer, I think we have the possibility for the greatest coalition against this insurgency and incumbency if we don't want to settle every little issue now and then and immediately.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_04: So I think we've got to take the strategic view that when we get onto a train in Bradford and we're going to London, someone will get off in Sheffield because they can't go the rest of the journey.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_04: Someone will get off at the next station.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_04: Hopefully by that time we've convinced enough to go all the way to London with us in this in this journey.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_04: So so so I want to to really say that um if anyone is the enabler of this suicide, um, of this empire, it's that.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_04: And as Gramsky teaches us, that in this coexistence between the old and the new, it's a time of monsters.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_04: So monsters shouldn't frighten us.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_04: We should be expecting them.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_04: They are the clearest sign that there's a transition in the world, and they are the clearest sign that we can enable this transition in one way or the other.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_04: And so I I I want to to leave that there.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_04: I think Nabila, the issue of a wall in the Atlantic is not the kind of Trumpian wall on his southern border.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_04: I think it has to be a wall populated with the healthiest values that we can all that we can all share.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_04: And then and I'm not speaking about the I'm speaking about values.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_04: In South Africa, Nelson Mandel led the he was the successor to Mahatma Gandhi's Satyagraha.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_04: But what he did differently to Gandhi was that he turned it into a militant nonviolence.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_04: You see, the middle ground is often so boring that we are not listened to.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_04: That's why the surge on social media is to the right.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_04: Because we're boring, we're theoretical, and we have to be that.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_04: But we need to be able to salvage from our opponents in that virulent insurgency the kind of militancy at the service of non-violence.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_04: We've got to be able to find the kind of moving rhetoric that they employ, otherwise, we give long lectures.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_04: We need to put down our written speeches and speak from the heart by the values we we project.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_04: And as we have shown that we may not be having the surge that the right wing has on social media, but we are gaining traction in very important ways because we are now beginning to get into the game of showing the genocide in small but but but valuable bits of ways.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_04: And I think, and I end on this, and I think that South Africa's major contribution to this has been to animate in its case against Israel in the ICJ, to put on display its bravery to stand up to Israel, to show the capacity for sacrifice, because that's why we're being punished by Donald Trump, and to show that here's the evidence.
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_04: Here is an absolutely brilliant legal team.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_04: We're not coming here with a heart full of solidarity and emotion, we're coming here with a head full of legal strategy that is winning.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_04: So I think we must really understand what it is that all of these bits are doing, build on it, because in that is the the the the the the the the surge against this insurgency.
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_06: Thank you so much.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_06: I I think in the annals of history there'll be no doubt at all about South Africa being the right side of that history.
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_06: Miriam, a couple of questions, uh specific questions to you, and then please pick up on anything else.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_02: I'm kind of gonna mould a few of them into one by um first kind of speaking about so race obviously is a construct.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_02: Racism is the manifestation of that construct in reality, right?
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_02: So it's a power play.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_02: Racism is the use of that construct to uh exercise power in the world.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_02: And what I think is really important right now is to focus on the power, because in many ways the race game is part of the distraction away from the power.
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_02: There is a reason that Elon Musk does a live stream next to uh Tommy Robinson in central London encouraging violence.
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_02: Is it because he's ideologically committed to white people's supremacy?
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_02: But is that really why he's doing what he's doing?
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_02: It's a power play.
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_02: If we can sit around arguing amongst ourselves about a construct, then really they can get away with the real business of handling power.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_02: And my main concern, genuinely, is that we are so caught in the headlights of the focus on what is in the immediate that we are failing to see the power plays that are being engendered here.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_02: Just as, by the way, the far right uh white nationalists are also failing to see the power play, they also think that they're out here saving the nation, not realizing that they are tools for big capital, actually.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_02: So everyone loses in that process.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_02: In a much more personalized response to your query, you know, for me, I think that although obviously most people who don't know me uh will not know that I'm Muslim, and that affords me about three more seconds in the conversation before I get shut down.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_02: If you've watched me being interviewed, then you'll notice it happens real quick past those three seconds, though.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_02: Um, in real life, I receive much of a lot of abuse for being a Muslim.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I'm I'm regularly called jihadi Babi.
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_02: I'm very offended by the term Barbie, the rest I'll take.
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um but I think it's important to recognize that as soon as you're publicly identified as a Muslim, and I've been doing this long enough that I am by all the people that care to know who I am, um, that we will experience a similar blockages because it's to do with power.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_02: What they're most interested in is blocking our ability to speak truth to power.
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_02: And that's where I noticed that there are, you know, it doesn't kind of matter what shade you are, if you speak truth to power, you're blocked out.
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_02: And it also doesn't much matter what shade you are, and the conservatives have weaponized this beautifully, if you are happy to not speak truth to power, you're also very welcome at the table.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_02: So let's not get distracted by the visuals when at the same time there are serious power plays happening.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_02: The reality, I had Clara Matte on my show recently.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if you know her, she's an Italian economist, she's written a fabulous book called Escaping Capitalism.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_02: She talks about the fact that big capital today is basically run around like three companies, one of them being, you know, Blackwater.
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_02: If you don't realize that we are all essentially being kept distracted from a form of uh heist on our wealth, on our assets, and that's everything from, of course, our pensions today, but it's our social services, it's the very democratic nature of our society which would allow us to account big power and money from the heist and the massive theft that is underway before our eyes.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_02: So all I can really make a plea for here is let's see the wood from the trees, let's focus on what it is that they are trying to keep us distracted by intercommunal staff and focus on actually who is robbing us, where is the money going, who is surveilling us, how is the technology that's being wielded out allegedly to entertain us?
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you know, I was on the train, you know, don't worry about the CCTV, it's here for your protection.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_02: Is it?
• 59:24
  SPEAKER_02: Is it?
• 59:24
  SPEAKER_02: Because last time I, you know, was mugged, knows no CCTV came to rescue me.
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I don't know.
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_02: The CCTV is more likely to be there to uh find our friends on their way to a Palestine Action March.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_02: So, all this to say, if I may, whilst we're here all together, we're not going to get through this unless we start focusing on the bigger picture you were referring to, Ibrahim.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_02: We can't get caught up in the small things that are dividing us at this point.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_02: We really have to focus on the literal, uh, I call it a heist, the gangsters in power who are robbing us before our very eyes, robbing us of our money and of our freedoms.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_02: And really, there is no time to waste because the surveillance state Panapticon is strangulating our ability to resist it by the day.
• 1:00:13
  unknown: Okay.
• 1:00:13
  SPEAKER_06: Thank you.
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_06: Uh that definitely deserves a round of applause.
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_06: Uh for sure.
• 1:00:17
  SPEAKER_06: Thank you so much.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_06: If you liked, um, I'm sure you did, if you liked us and enjoyed uh Dr.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_06: Minimum Francois's uh contributions and insights.
• 1:00:28
  SPEAKER_06: Uh the podcast, the T, right?
• 1:00:31
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• 1:00:34
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• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_02: Podcast platforms, but the best one is to come to the tnetwork.co because we want to work around the big tech platforms and come directly to the source.
• 1:00:45
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• 1:00:46
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• 1:00:49
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• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_06: No more questions.
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_06: Thank you so much.
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_06: Uh ladies and gentlemen, join me in giving thanks to Ambassador Ibn Hidden Rasoul, Mr.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_06: Dr.
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_06: Miriam Fashion.
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_06: Thank you, Martin.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_06: Thank you for the message to you.
• 1:01:01
  SPEAKER_06: Yes,