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Anti-Zionism: A Jewish History (Interview with Benjamin Moser) | DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas · DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas

0:14
morning. You are watching or listening to DeProgram
0:18
with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas. It's Tuesday,
0:20
September 22nd, 2026. This morning, we've got
0:24
an interview with Ben Moser. He is the author
0:28
of Anti-Zionism, a Jewish History, which is
0:32
a great title because it's self-explanatory.
0:34
We will be having him live in just a couple of
0:36
minutes. Also later in the show, if we have time,
0:40
we'll see how it goes. We'll talk about the Wall
0:44
Street Journal report that says that Trump wants
0:46
to send $5 billion to the Gulf states to repair
0:50
the infrastructure from the Iran war. And this
0:52
kind of wild story about Belarus, where Trump
0:55
basically was looking to solve the fertilizer
0:57
problem for American farmers by sourcing potash.
1:03
The story, something we don't talk about very
1:06
often in the news here. And sourcing potash from
1:10
Belarus, inexplicably, a very close ally of Russia.
1:14
So I don't know how that would have worked. And
1:15
Belarus is like, yeah, we kind of don't know
1:17
what you're talking about. So we're going to
1:20
get into all that. Good morning, Jamarl. How are
1:21
you doing? I'm doing okay. You doing all right?
1:24
I am doing very, very well. I'm very excited
1:27
about our guest this morning, Benjamin Moser.
1:30
I will just read his bio from the book. I've
1:33
been reading the book for the last week. He's
1:35
the author of Why This World, a biography of
1:37
Clarice Lispector, a finalist for the National
1:40
Book Critics Circle Award, and a New York Times
1:43
Notable Book of 2009. I will admit I'm jealous
1:45
of that last one. For his work bringing Clarice
1:48
Lispector to international prominence, he received
1:52
Brazil's first state prize for cultural diplomacy.
1:55
Sontag, her life and work, won the Pulitzer in
1:58
2020. Great book. I enjoyed that. And the Upside
2:01
Down World, Meetings with the Dutch Masters,
2:03
came out in 2023. He completed Anti-Zionism
2:07
and Jewish History at the Dorothy and Lewis B.
2:09
Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the
2:12
New York Public Library. I don't know if that's
2:14
the same place Robert Caro worked on his magisterial
2:17
Power Broker about the early development of New
2:23
York City and the highways and stuff around there.
2:25
But anyway, let's go ahead and bring in Ben.
2:29
Good morning, Ben. Hi, great to be here. It's
2:33
great to have you. So I've been reading your
2:36
book with great interest. I was looking forward
2:39
to it even before I read it, but it exceeded
2:42
expectations. So I think the first
2:46
thing we should just get to is obviously the
2:49
timing of it couldn't be more potent, but obviously,
2:53
I can imagine you're going to be dealing
2:57
with some considerable controversy. But I guess
2:59
the first thing is, if maybe you can just sort
3:02
of lay the groundwork by explaining
3:05
Theodor Herzl and the sort of the early days
3:09
of Zionism in the late 1800s, and how basically,
3:13
what were the roots of Zionism as we know it
3:17
today, and that culminated with the creation
3:20
of the State of Israel? Well, one thing that's
3:23
really important to understand is that in the
3:24
19th century, when Herzl starts out writing this
3:27
book called The Jewish State, he's writing it
3:30
in an explicitly colonial time where you can
3:33
pretty much, if you're a white person from Europe,
3:36
you look at the map and you think, where can
3:39
I put my new colony? And you pick out someplace,
3:42
somewhere, always not white parts of the world.
3:44
Like you would never say the Jews are being oppressed
3:46
in Russia, which they were. Therefore, we should
3:49
take a place in Russia. You would always look
3:51
to the non-white parts. And so he looks to a
3:56
part of the world that's Holstein, but at the
3:59
same time he's starting this project in the Jewish
4:02
state, he writes, well, we could also go to Argentina.
4:05
But the weird thing about this book, and there's
4:07
a lot that's really weird about it, and I had
4:08
never read it until a few years ago, I just knew
4:11
him as sort of this famous figure from history,
4:13
is that he doesn't... he devotes three paragraphs
4:17
to this question. It's called Palestine or Argentina,
4:19
and it's literally three paragraphs. He says,
4:21
well, Argentina would be great because they have
4:23
a lot of land and it's a very rich country agriculturally,
4:27
so maybe that. On the other hand, there's Palestine
4:29
where it's our historic home, and
4:32
maybe we should do Palestine. We'll tell the
4:34
sultan that we need this land for, I mean, it's
4:37
almost like Trump wanting Greenland,
4:39
it's just really weird. And he says, we will
4:44
form from the wall of civilization against barbarism.
4:48
So he's inserting it in this very explicitly
4:51
colonial and racist and imperialist kind of context,
4:55
which Zionists later go on to deny. I mean, they
4:59
devote a huge amount of effort to saying that
5:02
this is an indigenous liberation movement. The
5:04
problem is that at the time that Zionist settlement
5:07
starts, Palestine is between 95 and 97% non
5:11
-Jewish. What are you going to do with the 97
5:14
% of the population? And from the very beginning,
5:17
they all agreed. It's not a land without a people
5:19
for a people without a land. Not really. No,
5:22
I mean, this is what I kind of grew up thinking.
5:24
This was the story that Jewish kids used to get
5:27
told. I hope less now, although I'm not so optimistic
5:30
about it. But yeah, something that simplistic.
5:34
And Zionism always was really simplistic. Like
5:37
it gives you a very easy solution. You say,
5:40
well, the Jews are being oppressed here. So why
5:42
don't we just take off to Palestine, which is
5:46
our homeland, and we're going to just live there
5:49
and nobody's going to bother. I mean, it sounds
5:51
great, except for a few obvious questions like,
5:55
does anybody live there? And does anybody want
5:58
us there? And does anybody, do other peoples
6:00
just like, just pack their things and say, okay,
6:04
you can have my house and my country and we're
6:06
going to move somewhere else? I mean, but it
6:08
doesn't occur to Herzl. And so the thing that's
6:10
really fascinating about reading him is how absolutely
6:13
crazy he is in a lot of ways. Like he has this
6:18
fantasy about making his four-year-old son
6:21
the doge of the Jews. And he has, and before
6:24
that, he has this fantasy about converting all
6:26
the Jews to Catholicism. And he's going to bring
6:28
the Pope in and the Pope's going to say some
6:31
touching words and all the Jews are just going
6:33
to become Catholics. But he never says like,
6:36
Who are these people that are going to do this?
6:38
Like Jews aren't going to just like, not like
6:40
an every single Jew in the whole of Central Europe
6:44
is just going to say, great, never mind. So it's
6:47
really weird to read it because you kind of want
6:50
to make fun of him and you kind of want to be
6:51
like, dude, you're a fucking nut. But on the
6:55
other hand, you have to take him seriously because
6:57
these ideas did catch on. And they've had consequences
7:03
for millions and millions of people. I'm sorry,
7:08
was this a, I mean, I sort of read it as an analogy
7:12
to Marcus Garvey and the Back to Africa movement.
7:15
Basically, we're an oppressed people. We get
7:18
attacked and abused everywhere we are in the
7:21
world. We got to have our own place or we'll
7:23
never be safe. Is that basically right? That's
7:26
basically it. I mean, Marcus Garvey is very different.
7:29
But like, if you want to make a comparison similar
7:31
to that, you can compare Liberia to that, which
7:33
is basically like. Black Americans are never
7:36
going to be accepted in this country. It's irredeemably
7:38
racist. We need to get out of here and just go
7:40
back to Africa. But what happens in Liberia,
7:43
which is exactly what happens in Israel, is that
7:45
this basically Europeanized or Americanized population
7:48
sets themselves up in the same kind of master
7:53
-slave dynamic that they were escaping from.
7:58
And so, so with the anti-Zionist that
8:01
I write about in my book, what we, I can now
8:03
say we, because I've been part of
8:05
this movement for a long time, but we are part
8:06
of the movement that wants to say everybody should
8:09
be equal. It doesn't matter where you live. It
8:11
doesn't matter your religion or your race or
8:13
your sex or your sexuality or whatever it is.
8:17
People should be equal. And that's a very...
8:21
that's a very compelling concept but it's
8:23
a concept of course in the 20th century with
8:25
the Holocaust and everything comes under an incredible
8:28
amount of pressure and people just say
8:29
what like this is it's a great idea sure like
8:33
everybody should be equal but practical thing
8:35
is this is we're getting killed we need
8:38
to have our own place and that's very understandable
8:42
to people it's very understandable to me as well
8:44
it's just that When you read the history of this
8:47
movement and the history of the Jews who have
8:49
said this is going to end badly. And then you
8:52
look at the fact that the most dangerous place
8:54
in the world for Jews by a massive, massive margin
8:58
since 1945 is Israel. Explain something to the
9:05
audience and I guess maybe even to myself. How
9:07
did they originally get onto the land and how
9:10
did they originally start getting the land itself
9:12
as they started to expand in the Palestine? Meaning...
9:16
Well, so it's very... Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so
9:20
in the 19th century, what they do is they set
9:22
up little colonies, little settlements, little
9:25
towns, they buy some farmland or they
9:28
buy some, a little, they set up a little
9:30
village or something, which by the way, like
9:32
people did all over the world. I mean, a lot
9:35
of people, if you think about the settlement
9:36
of this country. In the 19th century,
9:39
like people like, I don't know, like a community
9:41
of Swedes would buy a little area in Minnesota
9:43
and they would all settle a bunch of Swedes there.
9:45
The difference with Israel is that very, or with
9:48
Zionism in Palestine, is that very quickly they
9:51
start trying to ethnically cleanse and shut out
9:53
the local population. So there's a whole dynamic
9:57
where they come in. They don't come as immigrants.
10:01
I think this is the big, big difference. They
10:03
don't come in as immigrants. They come in as
10:05
conquerors. And they explicitly say this. They
10:07
boycott the native Arab population. They won't
10:10
let them work on their farms, which creates real
10:13
dislocation for a lot of people. And as more
10:17
and more people come in, it creates more and
10:20
more problems. And it's not until 1917 to 1919,
10:23
really, when they get the Balfour Declaration.
10:26
They know, Herzl knows they have to have an imperialist
10:29
backer, just like they have today. They have
10:31
to have the U.S. paying their bills or otherwise
10:32
the whole thing falls apart in 30 minutes. So
10:37
they get the British army basically to support
10:40
them because they're still a tiny minority. I
10:42
mean, even it's like, even the Balfour
10:45
Declaration is 1917. They've been at it for more
10:48
than a generation and they're still less than
10:50
10% of the population. So with the, I mean,
10:54
the Balfour Declaration sort of seems to presage
10:58
in my reading of your book, sort of
11:02
this unholy agreement between Nazi Germany and
11:06
the Zionist movement, where basically you have
11:08
anti-Semites in the case of the imperial English
11:11
regime. And it's kind of like, oh, you Jews want
11:15
to not be in Europe anymore? Oh, yeah, we like
11:19
that. That's fantastic. We can work together.
11:22
This is really, I mean, just going back to like,
11:24
because Marcus Garvey is a separate topic, but
11:27
going back to Liberia, this is really what they
11:29
said too. I mean, this is what the early founders
11:31
of Liberia really appealed to American racists.
11:34
They said, like, you want to get rid of black
11:35
people? Great. Get rid of us. We're going to
11:37
go. The thing is about Zionism's bond with anti
11:42
-Semitism. They understood, Herzl says from the
11:45
very beginning, our closest allies will be the
11:46
anti-Semites. And they appealed very explicitly.
11:50
I mean, the thing that's so weird about Zionism
11:52
is that they're always really, they say all this
11:55
stuff. You don't have to dig deep into
11:58
the quotes to find this stuff. They know that
12:00
they have to appeal to anti-Semitism in order
12:05
to make this healing. And so the British cabinet
12:08
is pretty explicitly anti-Semitic. the time
12:13
the Balfour Declaration is adopted, and the only
12:15
Jewish member of the cabinet, Edwin Montagu,
12:17
who I write about in the book, says this is anti
12:20
-Semitic in intent, and it will have anti-Semitism
12:23
as a result. And boy, was he right. To this day,
12:29
you see how much Zionists, Israel, appeal to
12:33
anti-Semitism, the anti-Semitic leaders, but
12:36
also to the threat of anti-Semitism and the...
12:41
the whipping up of fear among Jews. They were
12:43
always very good at making Jews afraid. Ben,
12:48
can you tell us a little bit about the, I mean,
12:52
to me, it seems like, I mean, there's a lot to
12:54
unpack here, so I'm glad we have some time to
12:55
do it, but there probably won't be enough time.
12:57
But what, it seemed to me that the big...
13:02
philosophical shift that creates that allows
13:05
Zionism to take hold is the idea of Judaism not
13:10
as a religion anymore in other words like I grew
13:13
up Catholic Catholics live all over the world
13:16
except for Vatican City there isn't really a
13:18
Catholic state anymore but Catholics
13:22
abound right and Judaism but for but for Zionists
13:26
the religion the faith takes a back
13:30
seat And it becomes more of an ethnicity, more
13:34
of a more of a national status. And if you're
13:38
an ethnicity like the Kurds, then
13:41
you need a homeland. If you're a religion, you
13:43
can live anywhere. And I mean, it's kind of a
13:46
two part question. And you also point out something
13:49
that I think is really forgotten now is that
13:52
Jews were living peacefully throughout the Arab
13:55
world, throughout the Muslim world, before the
13:58
creation of the state of Israel. And you talk
14:00
about if you can, I mean, I was blown away, pun
14:03
intended, by your discussion about what happened
14:06
to the Baghdadi Jews, that community of over
14:10
100,000 people. The oldest in the world. Yeah.
14:13
Well, I mean, the thing about it is that the
14:16
Jews are both an ethnicity and a religious group.
14:19
So, in some parts of the world, like,
14:21
and I'm sitting here in Brooklyn, New York, and
14:23
believe me, I'm white. You know what I mean?
14:25
Like, nobody's like, if I was living in Poland
14:28
in the 19th century, well, then no, right? Like,
14:31
the Jews are seen as this separate thing. They
14:32
have a separate language. They have separate
14:34
ways of dressing. They have separate professions.
14:36
They have separate... neighborhoods,
14:39
that they live in, in some cases, like real ghettos.
14:42
But the thing is, as the Jews get emancipated
14:45
in the 19th century, a lot of, which happens
14:48
first in the United States, and then it happens
14:50
in France, and then France conquers most of Europe
14:53
and brings, Napoleon conquers most of Europe,
14:55
and then brings these progressive laws into Germany
14:58
and Italy and even into Poland and to a certain
15:01
extent into Russia. So it's a real revolution.
15:03
And throughout the 19th century, the Jews do
15:05
pretty well in Europe, actually. And they are
15:08
allowed to integrate and they're allowed to go
15:10
to universities. They're allowed to enter professions.
15:13
They're allowed to live in other neighborhoods.
15:15
That ends. But at the same time, there
15:18
is a distance. I mean, there's a difference between
15:21
views that some people like the rabbi at the
15:25
beginning of the book. He says, well,
15:27
we're not trying to be like other people. which
15:31
is what people say is assimilation.
15:33
We're not trying to be exactly like other people.
15:35
What we want is civil rights. We want equality.
15:38
It doesn't mean we want to disappear. Now, the
15:41
Zionists were extremely anti-Jewish religion.
15:44
And this is something that is really hard to
15:47
explain if you don't really, because there's
15:50
this conflation of Jews and Zionists, but actually
15:52
the Zionists really didn't like Judaism. They
15:55
thought it was medieval. They thought it was
15:57
holding the Jews back. They thought it was all
15:59
these stupid rules and you have to have a beard
16:02
and you have to do all this stuff and you have
16:03
to look weird and all this stuff. And they really,
16:06
which was understandable that people found that
16:08
appealing because these were a lot of the younger
16:10
Jews and these places where Jews were repressed.
16:15
They really were eager to be part of the modern
16:19
world. So that's very understandable. But the
16:22
problem with Zionism, I mean, there's a lot of
16:23
problems with Zionism. But the central prohibition
16:26
of Judaism is murder and violence. Judaism was
16:30
a pacifistic religion. And so they understood
16:33
that as soon as you get a state and as soon as
16:35
you get an army, the only way to do that is to
16:37
overturn the most basic law of Judaism. So you
16:43
actually kind of had to get rid of the religion
16:44
entirely. And so a lot of people said, yeah,
16:47
we are like Catholic. Or we're like,
16:49
Episcopalians or whatever. We're just,
16:52
we're Americans. We're of a Jewish religion.
16:55
Or just like you can say, like, I'm an American
16:57
Catholic or an American Muslim. But that was,
17:00
that was actually quite a conservative
17:07
response. And in the book, I do, one of the things
17:10
I liked about learning about it is that there
17:14
were also, I always knew the left. left-wing
17:17
responses to Zionism and to the pro
17:20
-Palestine left. Actually, there's a pro-Palestine
17:23
right, and there's a Jewish anti-Zionist right
17:26
wing as well. They come out of the same place,
17:30
which is that Zionism is bad, but they come at
17:33
it from very different reasons. Do you want to
17:36
elaborate on that a little bit? Well, so, I mean,
17:40
so if you're an American nationalist, Basically,
17:43
you don't have to be a crazy American nationalist,
17:45
but you basically you are American
17:47
and you want to stay American. You see that Zionism
17:51
is setting up a thing, which they're doing now,
17:53
by the way, very active, which is that basically
17:57
you are sort of temporarily in America, but you're
18:01
not really there. Your actual homeland is 10
18:04
,000 miles away or else. And this was something
18:08
that was very appealing to anti-Semites as well.
18:10
Because they always said, well, Jews are just
18:12
this fifth column. They're not really like us.
18:15
And the Zionists definitely played up on that
18:19
by saying, like, you're not safe here. This is
18:21
what they're doing now. I mean, I'm
18:24
in New York now, and people are whipping
18:25
up fears of anti-Semitism. And
18:29
I'm here. Like, it's the idea that Jews are unsafe
18:33
in Manhattan is so crazy. But like, people really
18:37
believe it because a lot of us, including me,
18:39
were brought up with a sense of, okay, it feels
18:43
okay now. You're good. But that's what they thought
18:46
in Germany, too. Like, my grandfather was a German
18:49
refugee from Nazi Germany. Like, so they thought,
18:52
well, you never know. And so you have to support
18:54
Israel because if stuff goes wrong here, then...
18:57
That's plan B. Plan B. And so that's also very
19:01
appealing to people. But the anti
19:03
-Zionists always said, listen, like, you're not
19:06
safe in Palestine either. Nobody's safe forever
19:09
everywhere. We don't live in utopia.
19:12
We live in history where things come and go.
19:14
And in fact, in Jewish history, quite a lot of
19:17
times it's gone very well as it is now.
19:21
I mean, the U.S. is not an anti-Semitic country.
19:25
Despite what we're being told in the news every
19:27
single day. I'm still walking down the street.
19:31
What's the psychology of that? I live
19:33
in New York. I have a Columbia alumni card. So
19:37
I got out to campus, even though it was locked
19:40
down during the right during the protests on
19:42
the lawn. I walk in there and I've told the story
19:45
here on the show before. But there was a Jewish
19:48
woman, a young woman with her rabbi, and she
19:51
was convulsed in tears is very upset and she
19:55
and I looked around to see if any what
19:58
had provoked this and there was just the encampment
20:01
which was very sleepy I mean literally the kids
20:04
were inside the tents the tents were closed they
20:06
were sleeping there were there was nothing
20:09
going on no chanting no walking around no marching
20:13
nothing it couldn't have been more boring I was
20:16
really disappointed trying to report on it
20:19
And I was looking around, and I was like, and
20:21
she's like, how could they think this? How could
20:24
they be like this? In other words, it was the
20:27
idea of an anti-Israel, pro-Palestine protest,
20:32
keffiyehs, Palestinian flags, that just had her
20:38
in hysterics. And I thought, it's all in her
20:43
mind. And I was just like, what is the psychology
20:45
there? Well, I mean, it's a really unmovable
20:50
psychology in a lot of ways for certain people.
20:52
I mean, I was brought up with a little bit of
20:54
it. Like, I didn't grow up in a really, I always
20:56
emphasize, like, I didn't grow up in a super
20:57
Zionist environment at all. I grew up in a pretty
21:01
normal American, middle class world
21:03
where we were taught about anti-Semitism. But
21:09
I also grew up in the U.S. South. Like,
21:10
my parents grew up under Jim Crow. Like,
21:12
we learned all about that stuff. too we learned
21:15
all about feminism the women's
21:19
suffrage movement we learned about all these
21:20
movements and I think that we were taught
21:23
I was taught I thought I was the moral of the
21:27
story is don't discriminate against people take
21:30
people as they are and don't this is
21:33
bad for Jews yeah sure it's bad for everybody
21:36
else too like let's not do this But I think a
21:39
lot of people that grew up in really strictly
21:41
Jewish environments where they really didn't
21:44
know other people. I didn't go to school. I went
21:46
to normal schools. I didn't go to school with
21:49
just Jews. But the overemphasis on the Holocaust,
21:54
and I think that we should learn about the Holocaust,
21:56
obviously. I think we should learn about slavery.
21:58
I think we should learn about the genocide of
21:59
the Native Americans. I don't think that anybody
22:01
has this exclusive thing on oppression. But a
22:08
lot of people who grow up in those Jewish environments,
22:10
they are so brutalized, really, into believing
22:15
themselves to be victims. And you say, like,
22:18
wait a minute, like, you grew up in suburban
22:19
New Jersey. Like, you're okay. Like, the Holocaust
22:22
did not happen in Santa Monica, California,
22:24
or wherever you're from. But like, they can't
22:27
get out of that. And it's really a prison. I
22:29
think Zionism is a kind of prison for Jewish
22:31
people. Like, they can't step aside and say,
22:35
wait, wait. I am walking down 116th street or
22:38
wherever you are, and that's exactly
22:40
it. Yeah. And like somehow I'm Jewish and still
22:44
like going to go to CVS and buy some toothpaste
22:47
or whatever I was doing that day. They can't,
22:49
but like, I do understand it because I have this
22:52
Holocaust background myself and there is a sense
22:56
of. Okay. Let's see. We'll hopefully. can you
23:21
hear me yes yes you're good sorry I got a phone
23:25
call on my other phone no worries it happens
23:28
sorry about that no but so I do understand
23:32
that psychology but I think the question is always
23:35
like, what is what you're being told true? So
23:39
I had to do a lot of my book, at least the beginning
23:42
is like, what did, what was I told in my background
23:46
that turned out to be not true? And it's actually
23:50
quite a lot. And I, it's really quite upsetting
23:53
to think that, that like the people, like my
23:55
parents, who again, my parents are not. fanatic
23:58
at all they never even set foot in Israel
24:01
there weren't like those people that
24:03
were I mean there are people like that like if
24:05
you're Jewish like you know those like Israel
24:07
fanatic people but they weren't like that
24:10
and they're actually quite liberal people
24:12
but they did sort of they kind of in
24:16
the back of their head they always had this idea
24:18
of like what if it happens again so yeah it's
24:23
well I don't like as somebody who's Native American
24:27
and African American have both, we don't, we
24:31
never really got that capability of using either
24:35
genocide or slavery as a justification for anything.
24:40
And the idea of using it now, people will look
24:42
at you like you're insane. And yet somehow -
24:45
Yes, because we're white. Is that what it is?
24:48
Yes, of course it is. I mean, I think it is in
24:51
this country. I think that like Zionism, if you
24:53
look back, A lot of what becomes real toxic identity
24:56
politics in this country, it actually originates
24:59
with Zionism in certain ways. Because if you
25:02
look at the history of Black or Native American
25:04
struggle, just to take two, Black people
25:08
weren't given the option to kind of melt into
25:10
the melting pot, right? No. And we were. But,
25:15
like, I think that a lot of what I thought of
25:18
as Holocaust education, right? Like, I thought
25:20
about, like, this is good. It's good to learn
25:22
about this. was actually a kind of way of allowing
25:26
Jews to be victims in a way that we really weren't.
25:29
Because actually, if you look at income and education
25:34
and all that stuff, Jews are at the very, very
25:35
top of the whole American scale and have been
25:41
for at least two or three generations. So,
25:43
where is this oppression? we all have this
25:47
memory of oppression that is actually very recent
25:49
my grandfather was as I said was a refugee
25:53
from Nazi Germany so it's not that far away
25:56
so it's not crazy to me but I think what the
25:58
anti-Zionists were always saying they were saying
26:01
it in all these different voices was this is
26:04
just going this can't work it's going to be a
26:07
total disaster and here are the reasons so I
26:10
try in my book to give as many of those reasons
26:12
as I can well it has been a disaster I mean,
26:15
and just to be clear, this idea of this victimhood
26:19
thing, what is taking place in Israel currently
26:22
has, I would argue, destroyed that narrative.
26:27
But not for some people. Not for some people.
26:30
That's the thing. So, like, I grew up, the way
26:34
I grew up, and I think, I mean, I don't know,
26:36
I'm sure other people have this too,
26:39
from different backgrounds. I don't know if you
26:40
had this as a Black or Native American person
26:42
growing up, but like, I was really taught to
26:45
think of myself as lucky, to think of myself
26:47
as, despite all this stuff, you have to do certain
26:51
things. You can't, you have to represent certain
26:54
things. Like you can't bring Jews into disrepute
26:57
by certain behaviors, such as things that anti
27:02
-Semites associate with Jews, like
27:04
especially money stuff. Like you have
27:06
to be as honest as you can. You have to be, and
27:08
you can't. And the other one was racism. You
27:12
can't. You can't complain. Like you're
27:15
lucky in America and you should be on the side
27:18
of trying to help other people who are. But like
27:22
if I had started whining about like I'm being
27:24
repressed because I'm walking across the campus
27:26
of Columbia, like I can just see my grandmother
27:28
whooping my ass. She would have been so embarrassed.
27:31
She was like, you think you're in Nazi Germany?
27:33
What the hell are you talking about? Like this
27:35
would have been so undignified. And I think that
27:37
like. That sense of dignity has gone missing
27:40
from a lot of the ways that a lot of Jewish people
27:43
now are interacting with society. And you see
27:49
it in ways, I think because of social media,
27:50
you just see that like Zionism is sort of a,
27:53
it's almost a mental illness. Like people who
27:56
are inside of Zionism, like they really, they're
27:59
either inside of Zionism because they're actually
28:01
bad people and they're really legitimately racist.
28:03
Or a lot of them are just, they're really. they're
28:08
traumatized, but it's not their trauma.
28:10
It's someone else's trauma. And that's the part
28:14
that's really hard for me to accept. Let me skip
28:17
ahead a little bit. I mean, now we have three,
28:19
and I want to go back to Israel itself as an
28:22
apartheid state or the brief against it as an
28:24
apartheid state. We now have really existing
28:27
Zionism, right? Three quarters of a century.
28:30
We have a nation state. We have the experiment.
28:33
We see how it's gone. I mean, Obviously, it's
28:36
hard to predict the future. But at this point,
28:39
it looks like Israel has, at least in the foreseeable
28:42
future, is going to be really isolated, right?
28:45
I mean, support in this country is just running
28:48
out like the tide. Young people have
28:52
turned against it. Voters of both parties have
28:55
turned against it. I mean, it's not hard to imagine
28:57
in 10, 15 years that the U.S. relationship with
29:01
Israel is not going to be anything close to what
29:03
it is now politically. I think it'll be unsustainable
29:06
for either party. I mean, what happens then if
29:11
I'm right and Israel becomes basically like,
29:15
it's a city state in the middle of
29:17
the Middle East. It's just it's
29:20
all by its lonesome I mean does it con is it
29:23
able to continue somehow or I mean what's there
29:26
any or is there any also is there any reckoning
29:29
about the what happened in Gaza and
29:32
and what is going on now well also in Gaza still
29:35
but also in the West Bank and now Lebanon and
29:37
Syria and all that everywhere I mean because
29:40
it's not just a city-state that's just sitting
29:42
there minding its own business right it's a city
29:45
-state that has been bombing and murdering people
29:50
enormous, almost unthinkable scale. Because,
29:53
we see a little corner of what's happened
29:54
in Gaza. We see a little corner of what's happened
29:56
in Lebanon, like Syria. No, I don't think, I
29:59
think it's very much, it's a completely unsustainable
30:02
project. I think that 10 or 15 years is probably
30:05
generous. I think that they know that, and that's
30:08
why they're just trying to create as much mayhem
30:10
as they can. But I think that... Forgive the
30:13
analogy, but it reminds me of like,
30:15
1944 when the Nazis knew they were going to lose
30:18
and they were like, we've got to kill as many
30:19
Jews as we can before we go out of business.
30:22
Or in my book, I think the better analogy in
30:25
this case is apartheid South Africa. So,
30:28
Ronnie Kasrils, who's this great struggle
30:30
hero who spent 27 years in exile fighting for
30:33
free South Africa. He says, don't forget apartheid
30:37
was never as violent. Because this is a thing,
30:42
like once you get, so apartheid actually
30:44
starts, I mean, officially, there's all sorts
30:46
of racial operation, if you want to
30:49
call it that, before 1948 in South Africa, which
30:53
is the year of the State of Israel. It's also
30:54
the year of the official beginning of apartheid
30:56
as an official policy. And for a long
31:00
time, even in the 80s, they thought
31:02
that they could sustain apartheid because South
31:05
Africa was actually very rich economically and
31:07
it was very strong militarily. in large part
31:10
because of its collaboration with Israel. You
31:13
know, they got the nuclear bomb from Israel.
31:15
They supported each other. They had the same
31:18
basic view of the neighbors, put it that way.
31:23
And then something goes wrong economically.
31:27
That's basically what happened, and militarily.
31:29
And I mean, Israel is in a very bad position
31:32
right now. I very much hope that Zionism can
31:36
be destroyed. and that a state equality and
31:43
and a non-racial state can be established there
31:46
but we're not I mean I don't make predictions
31:49
about it I just think from history these
31:51
regimes don't survive historically Rhodesia didn't
31:54
survive Algeria didn't survive South Africa didn't
31:56
survive Nazi Germany didn't survive
31:58
Kirby of Milosevic didn't survive there's Rwanda
32:03
the Hutus in Rwanda didn't survive
32:06
so I mean there's just a very low chance historically
32:10
that you can get away with something like this.
32:16
Would there be consequences? Because I have a
32:21
hard time. I have to be honest with you. I don't
32:24
know how the state collapses without. Let me
32:28
ask you this. Do you think that the state collapses
32:30
without American support? Meaning, I think America
32:33
is going to go through hard times. At some point,
32:36
meaning whether it's economic, whether it's military,
32:37
I don't think we can maintain the way that we've
32:39
been engaging. But that also means that Israel
32:42
and the billions that we get, the weapons that
32:45
they get in order to continue this kind of military
32:47
expedition. I'm curious from your take, just
32:50
as an aside, a conversation that's often had,
32:53
whether it's whether Israel is the dog on a leash
32:58
or whether Israel is controlling America in this
33:03
case. Where do you fall on this? Just as an aside,
33:07
you've done research into Israel and everything
33:09
else. I think it's, I really, I mean, I'm shocked
33:14
by what Israel could say. There's no other country
33:17
in the world that would get away with this and
33:18
get away with interfering in American elections,
33:22
with punishing American politicians, with interfering
33:26
in our media. buying up TikTok, buying
33:29
up now CBS and Paramount and all this explicitly
33:31
for the purpose of protecting Israel.
33:35
If China did that, or even if France did that,
33:38
if an allied country that nobody's
33:40
really afraid of or England did that, people
33:42
would freak out. But no, I think Israel controls
33:45
a lot. I mean, there is no question about it.
33:47
And this is one of the things when we're talking
33:49
about anti-Semitism is, like, how do you react
33:51
when there's an anti-Semitic theory,
33:54
like the Jews control the media? And then you
33:57
have Larry Ellison saying, I'm buying TikTok
33:59
to protect Israel. Like, you don't even, it's,
34:02
what do you even, how do you even talk about
34:07
that without falling into anti-Semitism?
34:12
Or the Macklemore thing. That's a great example.
34:16
Well, that's actually really, I mean, I'm obsessed
34:18
with that actually, because I think it's a big
34:20
shift because that was like three weeks ago,
34:23
two weeks ago. you see the reverse Streisand
34:28
effect, which even a month ago, people were getting
34:31
canceled. People like me. It's changed. And now
34:35
the shoe is on the other foot. And they're not
34:37
going to, they've been used to bullying us and
34:39
pushing us around and smearing us as racists
34:42
and smearing us as whatever. But I think that
34:44
there's not really a lot of muscle memory among
34:47
Zionists for bullying. having consequences, because
34:53
you say consequences, but they haven't had any.
34:56
So as you know, if you've ever raised a child
34:58
or a dog, if you let them do stuff, they'll do
35:02
it. And so I think there's going to be a real
35:07
price tag. And I think the anti-Zionists have
35:12
been warning of this for more than a century,
35:16
and nobody listened. I think, yeah, I mean, you
35:19
say this in the book explicitly. I couldn't agree
35:21
more. It's like it was people, clear-headed
35:24
people, Jewish people, saw this 150 years ago.
35:27
This was the logical outcome of this philosophy.
35:32
We have a question from a viewer from under.
35:36
Archbishop Tutu, who grew up in South Africa
35:38
under apartheid, visited the occupied West Bank
35:42
and saw Israeli apartheid was far worse. Have
35:45
you been to Israel? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I
35:50
will. What do you think? Yeah. Well, I'll tell
35:52
you something that I think is the origin of this
35:54
book. I was in Hebron, which is in the West Bank,
35:56
which is an ancient city. And I was allowed to
36:00
walk down the street, literally walk down the
36:03
street because of my quote unquote race and because
36:07
of my foreign, good passport. Right.
36:10
Like I have an American passport, so I can kind
36:12
of come where I want to go. And there was. And
36:16
I was guarded by people, these soldiers, Israeli,
36:19
quote unquote, Israeli soldiers. And I talked
36:22
to them. And even though I've lived
36:23
abroad for a long time, I still speak English.
36:25
And I can tell when people are from like,
36:26
Brooklyn or California. And I was like,
36:31
and these are the quote unquote indigenous people
36:33
who have come there. I'm allowed to walk down
36:36
the street now. I grew up as I said I grew up
36:38
in Texas I know I wasn't there
36:41
for Jim Crow but it wasn't that far away
36:44
like when I when I learned about Martin
36:46
Luther King and stuff it felt like the middle
36:48
ages that like black people couldn't go to the
36:50
movie theater or something and it's just like
36:51
that was really weird but like I remember
36:54
I still talk to my parents about it like
36:56
it was really like that was just the reality
36:59
of their society and it It felt so disgusting
37:04
to have that. And then I went to South Africa
37:06
for this book. I mean, it just feels physically
37:08
like, I don't want to be in a place where like
37:11
the actual inhabitants of the city are not allowed
37:14
to walk down the street because they're of the
37:15
wrong race. That just doesn't, that just burns
37:18
my stomach. But then I went to South Africa to
37:21
interview Ronnie Kasrils for this book. And he
37:24
said, oh, he said, South Africa was never as
37:27
bad as. And that's what you quote.
37:30
Archbishop Tutu, but Nelson Mandela said the
37:32
same thing. Oliver Tambo said the same thing.
37:35
I mean, there was never like a black city in
37:37
South Africa that looked like Gaza. They just
37:40
basically wanted to keep black people down to
37:41
clean their toilets, to mine their
37:45
diamonds, but they weren't actually murdering
37:47
them. I mean, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
37:50
that was post-apartheid that Archbishop Tutu
37:53
also led, they determined that about 8,000 people
37:57
had been killed under the 50 years of apartheid.
37:59
almost 50 years of apartheid now like Israel
38:02
reached 8,000 deaths in Gaza within a couple
38:05
of weeks so Israel's the the mass killing machine
38:09
of Israel is it's on a much more terrifying scale
38:15
than even that I mean there's it's just
38:18
there's really nothing that that compares to
38:21
it how do you even get them out of that mindset
38:24
I mean like to put it in perspective Israeli
38:28
soldiers raped a man on TV. The audience, 60
38:33
% said that should be okay. And even when there
38:37
were protests in Israel where it was like 9 million
38:39
people, you got like a million people on the
38:40
street. They were there because they wanted their
38:43
hostages back, not because they cared about what
38:46
Netanyahu was doing from the standpoint of the
38:48
murder and mass killings of all of the people
38:51
that were effectively there and putting them
38:52
in camps. Well, they protested for the written
38:55
business too. Yeah, which is kind of my point.
38:58
A population like that, how do you retrain? How
39:03
do you? And can I just add to that? I mean, it's
39:06
also I mean, to what extent how isolated is the
39:11
information space within Israel? I mean, given
39:13
the fact that, first of all. They're the only
39:16
people in the world who speak this resurrected,
39:18
formerly dead language, and the media is carefully
39:22
controlled. Many Israelis are not really getting
39:26
a sense of how they're perceived by the rest
39:29
of the world. No, no, no. They know exactly.
39:31
Oh, really? Okay. First of all, they have the
39:33
same phone you and I have. They do speak English.
39:38
Most of them do. Even in Hebrew. Well, a lot
39:42
of them are from New York. obviously but like
39:44
not but they're not they're not
39:46
in North Korea I mean that's one of the weird
39:49
things about Israel and if you look at the polling
39:51
you have like something like 82 percent
39:53
of the population supports the genocide so like
39:55
what do you do with those people I I honestly
39:57
at this point I don't really care what I care
39:59
is what do you do with the Palestinians and how
40:02
do you stop the killing of the Palestinians and
40:04
how do you save them because I think they're
40:06
doing it I mean we've been paying them to do
40:09
it but they're doing it they're doing it and
40:12
we are paying and it's so like they
40:15
have to live with themselves ultimately and
40:18
I but I think that Palestinians also have to
40:21
live with them and when you say like how many
40:23
people it's only seven million Jews and something
40:25
like 500,000 Israeli Jews have been directly
40:28
involved in the time either as soldiers or a
40:31
support staff or something where they've actually
40:34
they're not just looking at their phone
40:37
they're actually doing it I don't know. My concern
40:41
now is really with the Palestinians. And how
40:44
do we stop the bombs falling as Jews and also
40:48
as Americans and as citizens of these lots of
40:51
countries, not just Americans, who have helped
40:53
this? And I don't have the answer. Well, stopping
40:58
the bombs falling is easy. Stop giving them money.
41:01
Stop giving them weapons. Stop supporting them
41:03
in the United Nations. Stop, et cetera, et cetera.
41:06
Oh, yeah. And if that happens. economic isolation
41:09
yeah well that's happening I mean that's going
41:12
to happen they can buy their way out of everything
41:15
they want you see what they've done I mean here
41:17
we are in Rumble but like there's all these platforms
41:18
now that are not controlled by Zionist
41:22
people and they're growing and growing and the
41:26
people don't trust the mainstream media and it's
41:29
not just I mean there's lots of reasons people
41:31
don't trust the New York Times and all these
41:33
other places How are you being treated, by the
41:36
way, as an author? I mean, you're with a major
41:38
publisher. Is it hard to get publicity, get interviews
41:42
from mainstream media outlets? It's hard to get
41:46
fair interviews. It's hard to get fair attention.
41:49
It's hard to get out of what I write about in
41:51
the book, which is the speech rules. But you
41:53
have to say, do you support Hamas? No, I don't
41:55
support Hamas. Do you do this? Do you do that?
41:58
to actually get to the moral and ethical and
42:00
intellectual core of my book, which is the question
42:03
of like, why are Jews against this? Should more
42:06
Jews be against this? They'll go quite far out
42:09
of their way to question your intellectual credentials,
42:14
to smear you. I mean, I've gotten a lot of smears.
42:18
I'm anti-Semite. I'm a self-hating
42:23
Jew. I mean, it's, you see in the book, like
42:25
this vocabulary is so consistent that it's like,
42:27
they've been saying all the way back. Yeah. Oh,
42:30
like they have, they haven't had a new thought
42:32
in years. All they do every once in a while,
42:34
they get a new, they hire a new
42:36
PR agency, but basically they've gone on and
42:39
on mirroring people, Nan Goldin, who,
42:42
the book ends with the famous photographer,
42:46
I mean, she is like, This quite
42:51
small, now older woman who is a photographer.
42:57
And the things they say about her. I mean, it's
42:59
just, you can't imagine the hatred that they
43:02
have for Jews who protest this. I mean, not to
43:06
mention Palestinians who are hardly even human
43:08
for them. Hardly even matter at all. So, yeah.
43:13
So, I mean, it's, we're in the same media environment,
43:16
but I think they don't understand. how much it's
43:19
shifted and how much of an audience there are
43:21
for I mean I don't know how many people are watching
43:23
here today or after it's online but
43:26
but there's a massive if you look at the just
43:29
any YouTube thing about Palestine you have hundreds
43:31
of thousands of people watching I suspect this
43:34
will do well yeah for sure Ed Sheeran thing
43:38
is a really good indication of that like I don't
43:40
know if you saw recently he came out gave this
43:42
scripted apology oh my God crying at the end
43:45
of the show It was so pathetic. It was that
43:51
German word, Fremdscham, where you...
43:54
Schadenfreude. No, Fremdscham, where you're
43:57
afraid. You feel afraid for someone who's making
43:59
a fool of themselves. I was going to do another
44:04
foreign expression, which is in Spanish, they
44:08
say, you don't have any blood in your face. which
44:11
means like you're so shameless that you don't
44:12
blush like you have no shame and that's I felt
44:23
like that guy I was like you have no blood in
44:25
your face you are coming out here and you're
44:27
still giving this thing I think that like if
44:29
he had sincerely apologized and he had said listen
44:31
like I am a performing artist and I rely on people
44:35
like Robert Kraft I'm really embarrassed that
44:37
I caved into this pressure and I apologize free
44:41
Palestine would have been a hero but like but
44:46
I mean so I what I always want to say
44:48
is that like I I have an evolution that I
44:53
tell about in this book I'm not giving anyone
44:57
a purity test like a lot of people have made
44:59
mistakes including me and I've written things
45:03
and said things I'm totally mortified by I meant
45:06
it well But I still thought that there was something
45:09
about Zionism or Israel that could be saved.
45:12
And I don't think that anymore. But if other
45:14
people haven't gotten there yet, I don't want
45:17
to bully them and say they're stupid or they're
45:19
racist or all this other stuff that people say.
45:22
I just want, like, if someone can read my book
45:24
and they're like 40% skeptical about Israel
45:27
and Zionism and I'm getting like 46%, then I
45:30
feel like, okay, I feel like I've at
45:33
least not betrayed what I think of as my... moral
45:38
obligation. And that seems like a great place
45:41
to leave it. Thank you so much for coming on
45:44
and for writing this amazing book. It was a real
45:47
pleasure to read it. And it was a pleasure speaking
45:48
to you. Thanks so much for having me on. Anytime.
45:52
Absolutely, man. Thank you for this. All right.
45:54
Take care. All right, so that was Ben Moser.
46:00
For people who joined us in the middle of it,
46:03
I would encourage you to go back and watch the
46:05
interview from the beginning. He's the author
46:07
of Why This World, a biography of Clarice Lispector,
46:10
but more importantly right now, the author of
46:13
the book we were just talking about, Anti-Zionism,
46:15
A Jewish History. He's a smarty pants.
46:20
He won the Pulitzer Prize. I'm jealous. I was
46:23
only a finalist. So anyway, yeah, I thought I
46:27
thought I mean, I knew this was going to be good.
46:29
And it was. Yeah, that's fascinating. We had
46:34
to get Robert Shapiro on. Rabbi Shapiro is in
46:37
a similar vein where he makes the argument. I
46:40
don't know if Shapiro wrote the book on it. But
46:43
he goes into this notion of anti-Zionism, Zionism,
46:46
and how Zionism hates Judaism. Which is so perverse.
46:50
I mean, Zionism is an apostasy of Judaism. It's
46:55
anti-Jewish. It's heretical. I mean, it really
46:58
is. It's a political movement. And the argument
47:01
that is usually made is... It's rejecting the
47:04
study of Torah in favor of let's set up our own
47:09
ethnostate where we can be the batterers. Yes.
47:13
It became that. I think it was awesome. I think
47:17
it was an awesome guess. JT, he answered questions.
47:22
There was no Sonali-isms. It's amazing. So you
47:30
come on, you ask a question and he gives you
47:33
an answer. You can agree with it. You can disagree
47:35
with it. It is. Like, hey, is the sun hot? Yes.
47:42
Be like, whoa. It's fucking hot. Right. No, he's
47:48
great. he's great yeah I would have him back
47:50
anytime for sure one thing I would love to ask
47:54
either him or or some other anti-Zionist
47:58
rabbi and this is from a a feminist Christian
48:01
aspect to the to a Jew how do we break the power
48:08
of Zionism and dispensationalism in the Christian
48:13
church because that's the that's the shield That
48:17
Israel has. In the U.S. Yeah, for now. But you
48:19
heard what he said. I mean, he kind of agreed
48:20
with me that things aren't looking
48:25
good for Team Israel these days. And it's not,
48:27
this relationship's not going to last.
48:30
They don't know that. The dispensationalists.
48:34
I mean, pardon me. What is dispensationalists?
48:36
Just so I'm clear. I want to make sure we're
48:38
on the same page. So what dispensationalism is,
48:41
so there's two different pillars of it. One is
48:43
that they believe that God works in different
48:46
dispensations of time. So think about chapters
48:49
in the book. In one chapter, God works one way.
48:52
In another chapter, he works another way. Then
48:54
another chapter, he works another way. So basically,
48:56
it's like he's playing 5D chess. He's not consistent
48:58
with what he has to do. The one thing that the
49:03
dispensationalists teach, though, is that Jews,
49:07
not the children of Abraham, but Jews specifically,
49:09
are always the chosen people of God. So if God
49:12
changes his mind based on what chapter of the
49:14
book that you're in, why does this one footnote
49:16
with this asterisk always go right on through?
49:19
That doesn't make any sense, especially since
49:22
the Bible over and over and over again says,
49:25
I, the Lord, thy God, I change not. He never
49:28
changes. And so me, I'm a Baptist. I believe
49:31
that you're saved by faith. Faith in what? Faith
49:36
that I will be redeemed. I'm a sinner. I'm fallen.
49:39
How do I get my sins forgiven? By asking for
49:41
forgiveness. Ethnicity doesn't play into it.
49:43
My race doesn't matter. If you go through, if
49:47
you read the Pauline Gospels, he was a Pharisee.
49:50
He studied under the chief rabbi at the time
49:52
of the temple named Gamaliel. I count it all
49:55
as dumb. My religion profits me nothing. My race
49:59
profits me nothing. We're all one in Christ.
50:02
So the thing is, I hate to interrupt this, but
50:06
we have 10 minutes left in the show. We have
50:07
a hard out at 10 o'clock, and we do have to
50:09
hit two topics. Okay, bye-bye. Okay, sorry about
50:13
that. Thanks, Robby. That was very rude of me.
50:15
We'll break down that one. Couldn't be helped.
50:17
Okay, so let's get to it. U.S. taxpayers have
50:21
already blown $44 billion or more, really, to
50:25
go after Iran with Israel. We're sending $3 billion
50:30
more. of your money to Israel for bombs now the
50:34
Wall Street Journal says that Trump wants to
50:37
send five billion dollars more to the Gulf states
50:40
who last time I checked were not poor people
50:43
in order to repair the infrastructure that got
50:46
destroyed by the Iranians because we attacked
50:49
Iran I mean I can see the case I can see the
50:54
argument here I mean after all it's like hey
50:56
the reason that their got blown up is our
50:59
fault I mean that's kind of true on the other
51:03
hand okay go they made they made their agreements
51:08
they made their bet with the US they chose Fat
51:12
Tony to defend meaning they made all these choices
51:17
The idea that Donald Trump is talking about sending
51:18
billions when he claimed that Saudi Arabia was
51:21
spending a trillion dollars in the United States.
51:23
OK, if they're spending that much money in the
51:25
U.S., just tell them to keep five billion of
51:28
it. Repair their infrastructure. Why do we need
51:30
to send the money? No, they made their bet in
51:33
this. They chose to work with the U.S. They
51:35
chose to ask America to go after Yemen. They
51:38
chose the stuff. Obama didn't go to Saudi Arabia
51:41
and said, hey, would you like to bomb Yemen?
51:43
Saudi Arabia came to Obama and said, we would
51:46
like to bomb Yemen. Obama might have given them
51:49
the green light, but Saudi Arabia is the one
51:50
that chose to do it. Saudi Arabia has been running,
51:53
I'm not going to call it a genocide, even though
51:55
I call it a genocide-like operation in Yemen
51:59
for the last, what, 10 years. They made their
52:02
bets. Why are we paying for the bet that they
52:05
made? Tomorrow, effect on the midterms, right?
52:07
I mean, this just seems like just another brick
52:09
in the wall for the Republicans, where it's like
52:10
another story about how everything,
52:14
prices are going up, incomes are going down,
52:16
and we're sending taxpayer money not to help
52:19
Americans, but to help people who could well
52:22
afford to take care of themselves. A head-chopping
52:24
dictator. Right. I mean, it seems like a whole
52:28
lot of bullshit. Okay. P.W. Walker, 1360. Thanks
52:31
for the five Canadian dollars. Ellison used the
52:34
U.S. government to force the sale of TikTok
52:37
to him. So it's worse than just the purchase
52:40
itself. And $10 very much. Thank you very much
52:44
from Tulio Pantacoloni. Biden has literally stated
52:49
that he's a Zionist on video multiple times.
52:53
Vanderland says that. They follow the principles
52:55
of the Talmud. How do we remove these psychopaths?
52:59
Well, Biden is no more, but Trump is just as
53:02
bad. Yeah, all of them are horrible. I mean,
53:05
like, I don't know if you saw. By the way, do
53:08
you agree with what I just said? Because you
53:10
can say. JT, I think you're out of your mind.
53:12
I think the U.S. is pushing you. No, I think
53:13
you're right. It's like they climbed into bed.
53:18
I mean, look, they did the stupidest thing that
53:20
you can possibly do. Instead of making nice with
53:23
their next-door neighbors, they went and ended
53:26
up sucking foreign cock from the other side of
53:29
the planet, from another hemisphere. And then
53:32
they're surprised that they're getting their
53:34
ass kicked in return. It's like the Ukrainians,
53:37
right? The Ukrainians... Job one, if you're the
53:40
president of Ukraine, is to make nice with Russia
53:43
because it's a big, powerful, culturally similar
53:46
next door neighbor with hundreds of miles of
53:49
common border. I mean, similarly, if
53:51
you're Qatar, job one is to make friends with
53:54
all of your neighbors, including Iran. And if
53:57
you choose not to do that, and Iran controls
53:59
the critical Gulf of Hormuz that you need in
54:03
order to get your shit in and out of, unless
54:06
you're flying. then like, that's on
54:09
you. You basically went to war as a vassal state
54:14
of Israel and the U.S. And yeah, you lost for
54:17
it. And I mean, I'm thinking from the point of
54:20
view of the U.S., Fat Tony sometimes
54:23
needs to say, okay, okay, I'll take care of you
54:26
because you did this for me. But
54:30
yeah, it's all about Fat Tony these days. And
54:35
let's see. We see. Oh, Richie says, I've had
54:41
Robby's playlist on autoplay for at least 24
54:43
hours. I'm going to put that back up here. That's
54:46
on YouTube. Go to West Glacier Gaming. Do the
54:49
same thing. Go to a playlist and play Robby's
54:51
longest playlist. It's over and over. He needs
54:55
that. It's important to us. And thanks for joining
54:59
us and all that. If you missed the Ben Moser
55:01
interview, I recommend that you go back and check
55:03
it out. TMI coming up in five minutes. But we
55:06
do have time to talk about Belarus. fertilizer
55:10
is it's partly an oil byproduct and
55:13
the there's been if the price of it's been
55:17
going way up farmers are getting their asses
55:20
kicked financially here in the US due to the
55:23
war due to inflation due to oil prices
55:27
blah blah blah so Trump said oh don't worry
55:31
I have a solution even though I've declared a
55:34
trade war with the Canadians and the Canadians
55:36
I've pushed them off to become associate members
55:38
of the EU and I have giant tariffs against them
55:42
and so your fertilizer costs are
55:45
going through the roof where you normally source
55:47
it from Canada Don't worry. I've got your back.
55:50
I've talked to Alexander Lukashenko, the president
55:54
of Belarus, and he's got your back. He's shipping
55:58
that sweet, sweet Belarusian potash all the way
56:02
across Europe and across the Atlantic Ocean to
56:05
the great United States of America, and you will
56:07
now have cheap fertilizer. The problem is someone
56:12
talked to Lukashenko, and he's like, I don't
56:14
know what the fuck you're talking about. We barely
56:16
have enough for ourselves. we ain't exporting
56:19
nothing to no one so I don't know I thought this
56:22
was very droll it's like it's
56:27
just it's just another it's just another ridiculous
56:29
story right I mean it's just I mean Trump
56:34
just makes up and then people discover that they're
56:37
being lied to I don't think it's a
56:40
I mean they they know they know instantaneously
56:42
farmers are very smart people they have to be
56:45
in order to stay in business I mean, is Trump
56:50
losing his mind? I mean, what is this about?
56:53
And not to mention, Belarus is literally in a
56:56
national union with the Russian Federation. It's
56:59
literally like this, right? I mean, there's no
57:03
way they're sending anything to the United States
57:05
without checking with Vlad. And Vlad would, they
57:08
don't need to check with Vlad because Vlad's
57:10
saying no. I mean - It's Joseph Goebbels. Goebbels,
57:13
no. In the last days of 1944, Goebbels - I'm
57:18
sure you've seen it. It's famous. It's kind of
57:19
like the Baghdad Bob of his day. So don't worry.
57:21
We have Panzer divisions waiting to intercept
57:25
the Russian hordes on the eastern border. We're
57:28
going to be fine. It's coming in. Trump was looking
57:31
at the economic numbers. Trump doesn't know how
57:33
to read polls and spreadsheets. I don't know
57:37
how to read at all. He doesn't know numbers.
57:40
You can't go into debt the way that he did without
57:42
understanding. The red number was good. Black
57:45
number bad, right? So he understands that we
57:49
are heading for a really rude awakening. And
57:53
he's like, don't worry. Everything's fine. Your
57:56
housing prices should be going up. That's okay.
57:59
We love the inflation. Best quote ever. If I
58:03
were the Democrats, I'd have that on loop. Look
58:05
at Wall Street. It's doing so well. Which is
58:09
true. But that's what Trump is looking at. The
58:11
guy, he is the Joseph Goebbels of our day. Well,
58:15
I think they may be looking at a war to get us
58:17
out of it. We're in two of them. I mean, what
58:20
do you need? Like, I give an example. Right now,
58:22
EU or the NATO countries have put out a propaganda
58:25
film trying to get white Europeans ready to die
58:29
at the hands of Russians. It's not like Europe
58:32
is geared up for it. Russia has geared up for
58:34
it. from the standpoint of legislative, I mean,
58:36
Russia put through a policy through the Duma,
58:38
many people may not have paid attention to it,
58:40
that effectively points out that if there are
58:42
Russian citizens anywhere that are being maligned
58:44
in any particular way, Putin has the legal authority
58:46
to go in and get those citizens. Looking at you,
58:49
Estonia. Like meaning they are gearing up for
58:52
this. Russia's not playing with this. They have
58:54
hundreds of thousands of men in wait with new
58:57
military kit and hardware and everything else
58:59
in preparation for a larger war with Europe that
59:01
Europe seems to be doing everything in their
59:03
power to provoke. Will the U.S. get involved
59:05
or will the U.S. just look at it as here's a
59:07
business opportunity? Good question. This will
59:10
bring us out of Al-Morais. That does it for
59:12
today. By the way, just some clarification about
59:15
something that came up yesterday. The YouTubes
59:17
really are $5, $10, and $20. The higher sums
59:21
that were cited were if you pick the tax-free
59:24
options. So it sort of automatically adjusts.
59:27
But if you do this through your phone, I think
59:32
it ends up costing more than if you do it through
59:35
a desktop, iOS, or whatever. So do it through,
59:41
if you don't want to pay that higher,
59:43
I don't know. I'll have Robby come on to explain
59:47
this, but we've got to go. Okay. We'll see you
59:50
guys tomorrow. Two-hour show, 9 to 11 a.m.
59:54
tomorrow morning Eastern time. Looking forward
59:56
to it. See you then. Bye, everyone. Bye, Jesse.
1:00:00
Ciao. Bye-bye.