Latest / The Real News Podcast / Adam Johnson: The Media’s Complicity in the Destruction of Gaza

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Adam Johnson: The Media’s Complicity in the Destruction of Gaza · The Real News Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Real News Network. I'm Maximilian Alvarez
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: as a writer, podcaster, and a columnist for us here
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: at the Real News. Adam Johnson has been one of
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: the fiercest, sharpest, and most consistent critics of legacy in
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Western media's roles in laundering, obscuring, justifying, and manufacturing consent
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: for crimes against humanity committed in the Gaza genocide by
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Israel with the full support of the United States, crimes
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: committed in our name and with our tax dollars.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: And the media cannot be.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Let off the hook for its despicable role in all
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: of this. As Adam writes in his new book How
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: to Sell a Genocide, the media's complicity in the destruction
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: of Gaza quote it took deliberate choices by deliberate moral actors, editors, reporters, bookers, producers,
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: and TV personalities who decided early on in the so
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: called Israel Hamas War that defending the powerful and spinning
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: a fictional narrative to soothe Western liberal audiences was more
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: important than speaking plain truths, than defending a dispossessed people
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: from a holy asymmetric campaign carried out by Israel. With
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: the full backing of the US to destroy in whole
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: or in part, the Palestinians of Gaza. End quote, listen,
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: critique is not enough anymore. If we are going to
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: ensure that these horrific crimes don't continue, then we need
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: accountability for the political actors and the media organizations that
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: made it happen or helped. We need a reckoning, but
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: we're not going to get one if we don't fight
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: for it. And Adam's new book, in my opinion, gives
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: us the data and the receipts and the analysis that
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: we need to fight better and to actually win. I
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: cannot recommend it enough. And I am so proud to
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: call Adam a friend and a colleague. He is a
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: vital member of the Real News team, and he has
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: done a vital service to all of us in writing
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: this book. So go check it out yourself and let
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: us know what you think, and let me know what
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: you think about this conversation that I had with Adam
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: Johnson about his new book at a live event at
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Red Emma's Cooperative Bookstore and Coffeehouse here in Baltimore on
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: May twenty third. Well again, welcome, welcome everyone, Thank you,
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: so much to read. Emma's for hosting this important discussion
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: tonight about brother Adam Johnson's vital new book, How to
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: Sell a Genocide, The Media's Complicity and the Destruction of Gaza,
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: out now with Pluto Press. It is an invaluable read.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: And I cannot stress enough the duty that we have
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: to know what's.
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: In this book.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: And I don't say that lightly, right, And I don't
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: say it to just you know, like chuf my buddy up,
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: like it's you know, Adam, like you know, I've gotten
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: the pleasure in honor of growing up with you over
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: the past ten or so years in the media ecosystem,
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: the left media ecosystem, and then get to know you,
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: get to be you know, friends with you, get to
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: work together, and you know, I wanted to say first
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: that you know, I know we joke a lot that
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: you know, what what are we doing? You know, we're
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: just podcasters, you.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: Know we're not We're not that out there doing the
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: real work. But I wanted to thank.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: You for doing the work that you do at citations
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: needed and everywhere else.
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: Thank you for.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: Writing this book, right, because even if you on your
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: side through the microphone, don't see it, or you on
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: your you know phone, tweeting at people and dunking on
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: people don't see it. You know you so often you
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: and Nima, especially through citations needed.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: But now with this you know, all your writing, like
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: you give us so many of us the language that.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: We're looking for to articulate what we're feeling and sensing
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: but like don't have the time to process and don't
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: have the ability to like find those words. And in
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: this book you have given us a tremendous amount of
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: necessary ammunition to focus what we have known and sensed
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: but not been able to like fully articulate. And so
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: I wanted to first acknowledge that. Second, I wanted to
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: acknowledge here at the top that, of course you know
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: both of us as journalists here in the United States,
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: a media critic journalists. However Adam wants to identify himself.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: We of course must have a moment of silence to
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  Speaker 1: honor those of our journalists and media making colleagues who
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: have been slaughtered in this genocide and who continue to
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  Speaker 1: be slaughtered in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Iran. So can
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: you please join me in just a quick moment of
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: silence to honor our following comrades and to thank them
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: for their invaluable sacrifice.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, thank you all so much.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: All right, brother AV, Like I said, you know, your
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: podcast and my podcast started around the same time, Like
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: you know, we got into this game, you know, around
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: ten or so years ago, and like you we've gotten
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: to working with each other. We publish your invaluable column
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: at the Real News now and for a few years now,
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: and you guys should absolutely read it. So I wanted
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: to kind of like start there and ask if you
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: could like talk about how you've gotten into media criticism
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: and why. But then like let's talk about that growth process,
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: and let's talk about what it was like to be
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: a media critic as a genocide was unfolding in Gaza,
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: and what about all of that propelled you to move
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: beyond podcasting and article writing into writing this book.
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: Well, thank you for an introduction, and thank you for
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: having me here write em as is, of course write
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: a passage. You're not really a left one writer if
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: you don't come here. So I'm glad to be here.
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: It's huge, but it's a very well organized operations, So
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: thank you. Yeah, So I don't talk about myself a lot,
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: mostly because I don't know, I feel like it's generally
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: quite boring. But I've always been interested in language and
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: how language can shape our reality. And I sort of
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: my entry point into the left, such as it was
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: the immortal science, whatever you wish to.
• 6:19
  Speaker 4: Call it was.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: I was late.
• 6:23
  Speaker 4: I was late to the game.
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  Speaker 3: I mean I was basically twenty nine thirty years old
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: when I started exploring those ideas, and media was a way.
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: I was like the entry point into that. And I've
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: always thought media criticism is an entry point into asking
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: bigger questions.
• 6:34
  Speaker 4: It's a it's a gateway drug. The podcast is meant
• 6:38
  Speaker 4: to be a gateway drug.
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: I'm like on the in the school yard pedaling, you know,
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: left wing ideology like.
• 6:44
  Speaker 4: Skim your kid, like listen to citations needed.
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  Speaker 3: You know, it's sort of vaguely liberal coded, but it's
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: not so you know, my goal is to be on
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  Speaker 3: one of those Glenn Beck chalkboards like yeah, but so
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: like that's how I as an entry point into asking
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  Speaker 3: bigger questions because I think once one the artifice of media,
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: which we kind of imperfectly referred to as small l
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: liberal media or center left media or mainstream media. I
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: think it's a gateway to ask bigger questions because once
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: once the artifice begins to crumble, I think you sort
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: of ask yourself, well, okay, if this kind of officialdom,
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: if the thing that is, you know.
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  Speaker 4: These very important people behind desks and.
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  Speaker 3: These kind of prestigious institutions are basically full of shit,
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: then you have to ask yourself, what'll we build as
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: an alternative to that? And then in some senses it
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: kind of take the whole institute. Because this book is
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: fundamentally a book about the hypocrisy and the enforcement status
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: of credib like so called liberal institutions and liberalism, and
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: that's why chapter seven is basically about that and how
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: Gaza and the liberal response to Gaza and the liberal
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  Speaker 3: promotion of genocide. I should say elite liberal promotion of
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  Speaker 3: genocide was fundamentally a liberal project for that first year
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  Speaker 3: we were documenting. Obviously they were partnered and helped by
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: the right and Republicans and Fox News, but fundamentally would
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: not have been possible without liberal buying. And so obviously
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: it very much falls into the wheelhouse of the Citations
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: Needed podcast, which obviously critiques the ways in which liberals
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  Speaker 3: promote reactionary ideas, and indeed work to launder reactionary ideas
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: and make them seem palatable, and so it was a
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  Speaker 3: natural fit. And then, obviously I had been writing ferociously
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  Speaker 3: from the beginning of it, because as anyone who knows
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  Speaker 3: anything about Gauza knew precisely what was going to happen.
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  Speaker 3: It was very clear that on October eighth, when Tony
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  Speaker 3: Blinken tweeted out a call for a ceasefire and then
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  Speaker 3: subsequently deleted it a couple hours later, that this was
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  Speaker 3: going to be at best killing an arbitrarily high number
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  Speaker 3: of Palestinians and the five figures, and at worst a genocide.
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  Speaker 3: And of course it largely was a genocide. And of
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  Speaker 3: course they ended up killing almost certainly over six figures.
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  Speaker 4: And so from the beginning you and I were writing
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  Speaker 4: about it.
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  Speaker 3: You were letting me use obviously your platform to write
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: about it and write me to criticism about it. Much
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: much of the book is not much, but some percentage
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  Speaker 3: of the book is readapt to readapting writing I did
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  Speaker 3: for y'all, So thank you for that, because there's not
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  Speaker 3: there was not a ton of outlets who were willing
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  Speaker 3: to do that, especially in a kind of existential way,
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  Speaker 3: so you know, and then once you once we once
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  Speaker 3: we started going, it was like, well, what is we
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  Speaker 3: need to quantifiably show this? So it's a very data
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  Speaker 3: driven book, which is something I had and previously had
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: the time to do, and that was central to how
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: we how we did the book because I didn't want
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  Speaker 3: to just assert it or cherry pick headlines. I wanted
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  Speaker 3: to quantitatively show an establish bias, and then from there
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: in double standards, and from there we can ask bigger
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: questions once once, once one accepts the premise of that,
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: what is implications of that? Because it's a book, much
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: like Citations Needed, it's a book for liberals. It's not
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: a book for the left, who obviously by definition agrees
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  Speaker 3: with me, although I want them to be able to
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: use the data and research and arguments in.
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  Speaker 4: Their daily lives.
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: But it's a book that is supposed to take someone
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: who's vaguely liberal or vaguely liberal left or progressive and
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: senses something was wrong and then slow and meticulously walk
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: them to the water that there's a larger critique of
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: Zionism and US imperialism, and that the media operates as
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: an organ of those institutions, not as any kind of
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  Speaker 3: neutral or objective, certainly not a counter or an adversary
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: to those institutions. And so again it's a I'm peddling
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: the drugs, trying to get people addicted. First, one's always free,
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: And that's that's kind of the way I approached the book. Now,
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: obviously the titles provocative, but the word genocide, I believe,
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: is more or less mainstream now, and you can't get
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: around that word because that, to do so is genocide denial.
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: You know, it's something like I think sixty or seventy
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: percent of Democrats depending on the poll, believe it's a genocide.
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: So this is no longer that itself is no longer
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: even that provocative. What I believe is maybe more novel
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: and useful to liberals in liberal left adjacent types is
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: the concept that they were sold to genocide, that it
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: wasn't this bumbling accident that kind of happened, or this
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  Speaker 3: one off dictator who forced people to do it, but
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: actually had had ideological and meet narrative antecedents that were
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: being pushed by so called liberal media, so by the
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: New York Times, Washington post scene animous NBC or the
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: primary targets of my of my of my inquirer criticism.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: Well, and that he's up kind of like my next question, right,
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: because that was.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: Awesome, it was thoughtful. I really appreciated that answer. But
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  Speaker 2: I also know the entire.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: Time, like you were screaming and like ripping your hair
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: out and like these fucking people like look at the
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: lies that I know, because Adam will be pitching me,
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: He's like, hey, I got to write about this.
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: It's like all right, let go for it.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: And like you know, like I knew so much was
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: going through your mind and so much like the rest
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: of us, right, like we were seeing these sort of
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: double standards. We were sort of seeing the kind of
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: dual realities on the TV and on our phones. But
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: like again, like you, it needed to go beyond just
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: that sort of sense and needing to quantify and needing
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: to name, and so I wanted to sort of unleash
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: the you know, the the attack dog Adam Johnson will
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: know and love a second, like, let's name some names here,
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: like who are the worst offenders and why?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, And I want to preface this by saying that
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: that is the next stage of this project where I'm
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: doing a basically taking the ten worst and we're naming
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: names and going to try to reach out to them
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: and do more aggressive targeted criticism with like maybe in
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: parallel campaigns, because I do think when you criticize the
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: media or the New York Times, it can be a
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: little bit abstract, you know that which is, you know,
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: owned by everyone, as carried for by no one, to
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: paraphrase the Libertarians.
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  Speaker 4: But I think in some senses you can be too abstract.
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  Speaker 3: So the book does name names in retrospect as I'm rereading,
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: and I felt like I probably should have made that
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: more central, a.
• 12:45
  Speaker 4: Little bit more at hominin, a little more personal.
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: And that's kind of the next stage because we need
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: to have accountability. And in parallel, I know others how
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: I've spoken to are working on a project to hold
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: democrats accountable. And because now, as you know, I'm a
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: little bit off topic here, but it's all to me.
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: You have Tony Blincoln, who covered up war crimes at
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: the State Department. He's now at Center for American Progress
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: just down the road in DC. Obviously, John Finer is
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: this at Center for American Progress, which if anyone knows
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: what that is. It's an ostensibly progressive think tank that's
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: basically the government in waiting for the next democratic administration.
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: John Finer and Jake Sullivan, who also covered up war
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: crimes and sold weapons to a country that knew was
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: committing genocide, have a cheeky little foreign policy podcast on Vox.
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  Speaker 4: So what we're working on with that is what we're
• 13:29
  Speaker 4: trying to come up with a branding for it.
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  Speaker 3: But it's going to be the Genocide ten or the
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: Genocide twenty where he basically pressuring organizations to remove these
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  Speaker 3: people from polite society, which of course is a bar
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: that's below the mantle of the earth. I mean, it's
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: the lowest bar possible. But right now everyone's just vibing
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: through it. You know, progressives and liberals in Congress are
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: doing events now with Jake Sullivan and Tony Blincoln. So
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: really it's a project fundamentally about accountability and the reason
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: why that is. And again it's going to be an
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: upward battle, but I do think that you can build pressure,
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: especially as you know, every four years when Democrats have
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: to act like they care what progressives are left liberals
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: sing or leaving liberals to be honest that there needs
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: to be a sense that these people need to be
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: non brought at the very least, So obviously you would
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: refer them to the ic C for criminal arrest and
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: prosecution for their role and complicity and genocide along with
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: some of these media organs we can talk about, but
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: at the very least they need to be removed from
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: polite society.
• 14:22
  Speaker 4: And so fundamentally just becomes a book.
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: About accountability because there's not much else you can do.
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: And the conclusion, I say, I'm like the you know,
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: the the drummer Boy and the drummer Boy Christmas song,
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: Like what is he doing? Plays of drums? That's all
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: he can do? Like all I can do is media criticism.
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: And I think, like everyone else says, this was unfolding you.
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: You felt completely helpless. But what's I think the lesson
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: you could take away from this, and the lesson that
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: Palestinian organizers and BDS organizers always tell you, is that
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: you can always contest. And the way you can in
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: the spaces you can, whether you're a tech worker, you can,
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: you know you can. You can go on strike or
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: boycott or try to you know, whether you're whatever your
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: day there's always something you can do, and it's like,
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: this is the only thing I'm able to do, Like
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: I don't have any other skill set or talent. I
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: just know how to be media criticism. So that's what
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: I did, and I tried to do it's the best
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: of my ability. That's a very convoluted way of answering
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: your question. But I think what you're talking about is
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: what you allude to is the idea of accountability.
• 15:14
  Speaker 4: So who are the worst? The worst?
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: Where Jake Tapper and Joe Scarborough are featured heavily in
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: this book as just outright genocidal propagandists, outwardly lying.
• 15:25
  Speaker 4: Smearing anyone imposing the war.
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: Obviously New York Times, Patrick Kingsley, others editors at the
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: New York Times were probably certain writers who wandered Israeli
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: intelligence over and over again, which we can get into.
• 15:37
  Speaker 4: Those are the primary offenders.
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: And I actually one of the things I try to
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: do in the book and all the subsequent interviews I've
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: done is I try not to flatten the difference that
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: there are some that are worse than others, Like the
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: New York Times is meaningfully worse than the Washington Posts,
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: Washington Post is not good, but they didn't engage in
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: what I would consider outright genocide incitement. The New York
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: Times would constantly intervene right when there was some pressure
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: to Biden for a ceasefire, with the most obvious lies
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: and bullshit.
• 16:05
  Speaker 4: I'll give you an example, if you'll indulge me.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: Well, I was gonna say, keep rolling, and let's talk
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: about some of the worst offenses, like if we could
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: give in an ode to citations needed, like give me like.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: Your top three like worst tropes or.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: Your top three most eye popping stats from this book.
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: Maybe let's start at the beginning and if you'll indulge
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: me so very quickly. The idea of a ceasefire needed
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: to be removed from the realm of capital v Capital
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: as very seriousness.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: It had to be considered a far left fringe position,
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: despite the fact that every other mowing the lawn episode,
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: which is what Israel calls it when they when they
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: kill civilians in Gaza as a part of collective punishment.
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: Had Had Had Had a ceasefire twenty twelve, twenty fourteen,
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: twenty eighteen, twenty twenty one. Obviously two thousand and nine
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: cast lead but very early on, when again Lincoln sends
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: out the tweet and the subsequently deletes it, it's very
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: clear decision is made to that they're going for at all,
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: they're going for poblo and ethnic cleansing, genocidal acts, and
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: at worst, from their perspective, killing an ardentarily high number
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: of Palestinians as medieval recon pens and collective punishment to
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: humiliate and to humiliate them so they will self deport
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: or leave, because Palestinians are a fundamentallyding giving people to
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: the national mythos and mythology of Zionism, and anyone who
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: knew anything about Godza knew that was going to happen.
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: So within the first few days you get this what
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: I call isisification of Hamas in the first chapter, which
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: is Hamas cannot have any secular grievances or political causes.
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: They have to be mindless jihadiest cartoons who are just
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: mindless anti Semites, which you know, as far as Biden says,
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: they had the ancient hatred of Jews, which you know,
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: again bad luck that the people who drove them off
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: their land happened to have that as their national religion,
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: right out of all the gin joints in all the
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: towns in all the world. But the idea that you
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: would provide context was anathema, and so this was disciplined
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: and forced in a very documented way.
• 18:01
  Speaker 4: First up was MSNBC.
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: So on the morning of October seventh, Ali Valshi is
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: running the desk at MSNBC and he brings in, I'm
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: in moyhitdean who had lived in Gaza for two years.
• 18:11
  Speaker 4: He was by far the most qualified person to talk
• 18:14
  Speaker 4: about it, and so live on airs.
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: The attack is unfolding and we're kind of getting information
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: trickling in. They do what all journalists are supposed to do.
• 18:21
  Speaker 4: They begin to provide context. They don't cheer it on.
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: They're not for it. They're not like saying is a
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: Hamas grade. They're saying talking about the Knakabad, that this possession,
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: how seventy five percent of the people in Gaza or
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: refugees who were kicked out of their homes and what
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: is today Israel. They're talking about protective edge in twenty fourteen,
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: putting them on a diet, the siege, the lack of
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: being able to travel.
• 18:44
  Speaker 4: All that, all hell breaks loose.
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: This is later we reported this from two internal sources
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: at MSNBC, which I'm sure you would imagine was much
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: easier to get sources in and say the New York
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: Times because a lot of people were ashamed of their
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: role in this, and we're happy to talk. And this
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: was later vaguely confirmed by the New York Times as well.
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: But they bring in they being compassed. It's the first
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: and since last time they ever directly intervened in MSNBC's coverage.
• 19:10
  Speaker 4: They bring in Rashida Jones.
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: And Caesar Conde or the head of MSNBC and NBC News, respectively,
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: and they say, never do that again. That was terrorism apology,
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: and you're not allowed to provide context for what happened
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: on October seventh, And indeed history has to start on
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: October seventh.
• 19:27
  Speaker 4: Nothing that happened, nothing can precede it, right, It's like
• 19:29
  Speaker 4: the Big Bang, there's nothing that precedes it.
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 19:31
  Speaker 4: It's like asking what's north of the North Pole.
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: It's ontologically impossible, and that was reflected in the coverage.
• 19:37
  Speaker 4: Then on March ninth, there's a.
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: Company wide call at MSNBC, according to our two of
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: our sources, where they bring in Martin Fletcher, who is
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: the longtime NBC News corresponded to it since retired, and
• 19:49
  Speaker 3: he had family who were injured on October seventh to
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: himself had served in the idea of and he jumps
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: on a conference call with all of MSNBC and NBC
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: News and gives the playbook. He says, Palestinians aren't real.
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: They weren't a people till nineteen sixty seven. They're invented
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: by Arab nations. Jews are the real Palestinians. These are
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: direct quotes more or less. And you know Israel left
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: greenhouses in Gaza. You're kind of typical, like really racist,
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: anti Palestinian vomit, And that becomes the official line in
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: MSNBC And if they say, if you have any questions,
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: you go to Morten Fletcher because he's a long time
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: NBC correspondent. Seeing into something quite similar where Mark Thompson
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: issues a memo in October twenty six where he affirms
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: an existing policy which was probably more informal, saying you
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: cannot mention the suffering of Palestinians or these Palestinian death
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: counts without prefacing it with October seventh. So that way
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: it has to constantly has to be framed by definition
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: as defensive, and you can't talk about anything that basically
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: comes before it. And so you would have a story
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: you were allowed to say, isn't it sad this Palestinian
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: died or there was this explosion that killed fifteen people,
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: but you always have to say as a military.
• 20:56
  Speaker 4: Response to October seventh.
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: And so these policies very initially make it so you
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: cannot provide contexts. Context is anathema, it is, it is
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: not allowed because it's viewed as hamas propaganda or terrorism apologia,
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: and this therefore reduces And of course you have the
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: parallel atrocity of propaganda with the beheaded babies on October eleventh,
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: a story completely invented out of whole cloth that's spread
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: by everyone from Nick Robinson Nick Robertson at CNN to
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: Sarah Sidner who says it live on CNN where she
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: says the Prime Minister in Netniello's office has confirmed that
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: there were several beheaded babies at the Kaplutsam. Now the
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: Prime Minister can't confirm his own racist propaganda. That's absurd,
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: But that was the editorial standard. You could basically say
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: whatever you wanted about Palestinians. And then once the story
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: was and then of course Biden says he saw video
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: of it, which he of course did not because it
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: never happened.
• 21:47
  Speaker 4: Then slowly tweets are deleted.
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: People kind of issue very opick apologies, But very early
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: on it had to be that they had to be
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: this cartoon isis like entity because you have to make
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: a ceasefire impossible. And this was affirmed by progressives in
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: Congress who refused to call for a ceasefire for months.
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: Obviously Rocanna, Elizabeth Warren, I think most cynically and most
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: I think high leverage was Bernie Sanders, who went on
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: CNN and CBS News in November and December of twenty
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: twenty three, respectively, and said, quote, I don't know how
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: you have a ceasefire with a group like Amas, who
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: seeks Israel's destruction unquote. Now, never mind, of course it
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: Israel seeks pulse Sinians destructions. Never mind that a call
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: for a ceasefire is not a moral endorsement of an organization.
• 22:27
  Speaker 4: It's just a call for a ceasfire.
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: So you had And this was affirmed by CIP Matt Dusk,
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: who was like supposedly the far left progressive poll of
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: so called progressive form policy egoes on Democracy Now and
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: says Bernie Sanders has a good point. I paraphrasing, but
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: something to that effect. He basically affirms the logic of that.
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: So it's a far left position, a radical pie inoss guy.
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: You get a dozen articles in the Atlantic saying the
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: ceasefire is impossible. Meanwhile, we're getting three hundred day dead,
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: five hundred dead to day. They killed six thousand, almost
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: six thousand people in the first eleven days, their average
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: about five hundred and fifty dead people a day, thirty
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: percent of whom are children. And you could not talk
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: about a ceasefire mainstream media. There was no mention of
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: it in the New York Times, the New York Times,
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: that editorial board and Washington Washington Post of a toury
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: board support it.
• 23:13
  Speaker 4: Everyone is in this.
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 23:14
  Speaker 4: Ever, again the stories about.
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: How it's eight billion, nine elevens or some kind of
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: fatuous nonsense like that, and there's it's immediately indexed in
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: this kind of war on terror civilization versus this vague
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: asiatic cord, who again are presented as this cartoon villain
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: with no political grievances, and that right there cements creates
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: the inevitability of genocide because if you have to defeat
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: Hamas quote unquote, you by definition cannot do that. They
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: are a guerrilla force, an indigenous gorilla force, right Unlike Isis.
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: They're not who are foreign mercenaries. They are of Gaza.
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: They live in Gaza. They are Palestinians in Gaza, and
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: they are support you know, hovers between forty and fifty
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: five percent in Gaza.
• 23:55
  Speaker 4: It's a little higher in the West Bank.
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: But like they're Palestinians, they're like all real military movements
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: that are national liberation movements. Again, whether you like them
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: or not, it doesn't matter. They're not going to just surrender.
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: So and this is something Tony Blinken himself affirms behind
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: closed doors in January of twenty twenty four, when andre
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: and Mitchell reports that Blinken tells net Yahoo that Hamask
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: cannot be defeated militarily. Now, a reporter worth their salt
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: would say, well, wait a second, then, why are we
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: arming and funding this extensibly military operation. But this is
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: the kind of Orwellian inverse reality we operated in for
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: several months where everything is a contradiction, and then, of course,
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: which we can get into and I'll maybe let.
• 24:31
  Speaker 4: You interject here to so I'm not droning on.
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: But then you get into the ceasefire redefinition in late
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: February early March of twenty twenty four, where ceasefire is
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: pulling at about seventy five percent. Democrats don't even bother at
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: that point defending the genocide on first principles or as such.
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: Then they move into the helpless Biden fuming Biden, We're
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: actually working on a ceasefire. Okay, what's your definition of ceasefire?
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: And then you hear their definition and it's simply capitulated.
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: It's simply reasserting terms of capitchua and reasserting demands of
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: surrender by a muss, which of course has not been
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: the definition of seasfire for five thousand years of human warfare. Ceasefires,
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: both sides, cease firing, and you come to a political solution.
• 25:10
  Speaker 4: Not I win and you surrender, that's just you winning.
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: But then that becomes the Rollyan definition that's broadly adopted
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: by the media. And this goes on for months and
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: months and months and months and months, and it is
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: based on a fundamental It was based on a fundamental contradiction,
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: and the only people who ever pointed it out were
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: people like left wing critics song like this doesn't make
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: any sense. And so that's all documented in the book.
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: Basically what the argument is that within the first few weeks,
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: really the White House doesn't even defend it as such.
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: They simply try to move in into the non sequitor
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: by playing at this, playing up this idea that Biden
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: is either helpless, which again the media assisted these these
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: laundering operations, or that.
• 25:51
  Speaker 4: He's very mad. He was always sort of vaguely upset
• 25:53
  Speaker 4: all the time, and they were that's what.
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: I call the the the asymptotic break within that in
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: Yahoo and I can read you some examples and if
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: you indulge me, I know I've been rambling here for
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: a bit, but I do think these are very illustrative.
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: Bro. People literally came out in the rain to well
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: do you talk?
• 26:11
  Speaker 4: There's talking, and then there's talking.
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: But sorry, I'm gonna make sure I get so this
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: is this is I think critical and this is when
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: you get these I think fairly sophisticated liberal interventions of
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: inventing reality, which I think was one of the reasons.
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: People felt like they were going insane at the time
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: because it was all premised on a contradiction. So you
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: had this idea of the helpless Biden, which I'll skip
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: and get to the to the fuming Biden.
• 26:36
  Speaker 4: So this was a media trope.
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: There's literally dozens of these articles, but I documented the
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: top ten and then we did a source analysis of
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: ninety four percent of the sourcing for these stories are
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: White House aids. And very quickly one can realize why
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: they would be painting this narrative because they themselves know
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: it's indefensible. They themselves want to go in and out
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: of liberal and progressive circles. So the decision is made
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: to distance the White House and some kind of narrative
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: wrappstry accents while painting them is working towards a ceasefire,
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: some peaceful resolution, sufficiently removing them from the genocide that
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: they themselves are are being supporting and diplomatically providing cover for.
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: So you have November of twenty twenty three. It begins
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: in earnest with NBC News. The gap between the Biden
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: administration and the net and Yahoo government over Gaza future
• 27:19
  Speaker 3: is widening. Ooh, It's widening CNN December of twenty twenty three.
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: Unprecedented tentions, unprecedented watch out between White House and net
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: and Yaho as Biden feels political price for standing with Israel.
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: Axios Our friend Barrock reviewed who we can get into.
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: January of twenty twenty four. Biden running out of patients
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: with Boebe as Gaza Warrior's one hundred days Washington posts
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: the next month, Biden moving closer than ever to a
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: breach with net Yahoo over a war in Gaza CNN
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: March of twenty twenty four. How a brief exchange in
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: a call explains the strained Biden Net Yahoo relationship associated
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: press Biden cajole's net Yahoo with top talk Ooh, Politico
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: March twenty twenty four, from I Love You to Asshole,
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: How Joe gave up on Beebe after decades of building
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: a close personal friendship with Netanyahoo. Joe Biden has had
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: it with the Israeli Prime Minister, and he's hitting him
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: hard in a maybe working spoilerer.
• 28:14
  Speaker 4: He did not hit him hard, even did not work.
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: So there's this.
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: Alternate reality where Biden, who's the most powerful person on earth,
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: is somehow unable to get the country the size of
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: New Jersey, who's seventy five percent of their weapons company
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: the United States, one hundred percent of their weapons arms
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: reshipments come from the United States, cannot operate militarily for
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: more than a week or two without support from the
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: United States because obviously you had you had, you know,
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: because of attacks and Yemen and levin On and elsewhere.
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: Is bumbling simply just a doddering old man who's working
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: really hard for a cease fire for fucking ostensibly for
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: nine months, and he just, darn it shucks, can't get one.
• 28:50
  Speaker 4: And what we later learned, which I think.
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: Is important, is that Israeli Prime Minister at the time,
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: Michael Hertzog tells Israeli media in April of twenty twenty
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: five that Biden quote never asked for a ceasefire, not once, unquote.
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: He never asked for a ceasefire. And we know that
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: because there wasn't a ceasefire. And he's the most powerful
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: person in the world. So there was this alternate reality
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: that had to be painted where he was working for
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: a seasprep but really what he was working for was, hey,
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: Nan Yaho, I'm not going to use any leverage, but
• 29:16
  Speaker 3: would you mind? And so the analogy I use is
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: is it's like LA Dodgers. I know you're an LA
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: Dodgers fan, Dave Roberts, you know, right before the World
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: Series saying I'm gonna bench Shoeo, Tani, Mookie Bets, Freddie
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: Freeman and all my all stars that we're going to
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: put in the TRIPAA baseball team. But I'm tirelessly working
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: to win the World Series. I don't think anyone would
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: find that to be credible. He would be committed, and
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: people would think he had lost his mind. But Biden
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: repeatedly said, I'm not going to condition military support, but
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: I'm working for That's.
• 29:45
  Speaker 4: Like literally the only leverage that would do that.
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: And everybody knew this at the time, and there was
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: precedent for it. In twenty twenty one, Biden pressured Net
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: and Yahoo to stop, and so it all got sort
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: of mystified.
• 29:56
  Speaker 4: All you know, Aaron David Miller shows up, He's one
• 29:59
  Speaker 4: of these.
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: Biden has one of these, like like throw Israel hacks
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: who shows up and says, well, Biden couldn't do it
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: even if he wanted to. And then every time he
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: shows up in the New York Times or Foreign Foreign
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: Policy magazine or a Washington Post to kind of give
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: this pat line about how Biden because you had, in
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: parallel with with fuming, you had helpless, so he was
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: also helpless. You would have he would always end it
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: by saying but even if he could, he wouldn't. And
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: you're like, wait, what so he doesn't want to because
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: they'd say like, oh, but he really he's a hardcore
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: supporter of Israel, and it's like, yeah, that's the point.
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: And so this was obviously crazy making for a lot
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: of people who were reading this thing pointing out that
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: it didn't make any sense and had all these contradictions
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: and was based on the analogy I give is it's
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: like theater one oh one, the division of a sketch, and.
• 30:40
  Speaker 4: A plot is a sketch.
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: A plot moves.
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: Forward, it has beats, things change. A sketch is the
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: same gag three or four times and you get out
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: in under four minutes. This was a sketch. This this
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: went on for ten months. You had these articles, literally
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: over one hundred of these articles. You can find them,
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: and you would think an editor were they're salt after
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: like the seventieth fuming Biden's story would waise their hands
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: and say, wait, is Biden changing any policy? No, but
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: he's generally mad. Okay, well, how is that a story?
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: Because these were these were curated.
• 31:11
  Speaker 4: By the White House.
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: All the sources are Biden aids or phone calls they
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: know are recorded like it's.
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: Obviously spinach and like shapes, and that's why they.
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: Have to use these like these meaningless puffy were language
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: about unprecedented, about to so you have this asymptotic break
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: that always approaches zero but mysteriously never gets to zero.
• 31:30
  Speaker 4: And then they do what they were trying to do,
• 31:32
  Speaker 4: which is waited out.
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: And this is a book about buying time and about
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: liberal handwaving and time wasting and pseudo savvy you know, negotiations.
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: It was about maintaining the status quo and buying time.
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: And the reason why you buy time is any good
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: public relations person will tell you it is because.
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: You cannot defend the actual thing that's happening.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: Uh.
• 31:50
  Speaker 4: And that was the theme that we saw over.
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: And over and over again, and mainstream media just laundered
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: that obvious, self serving bullshit over and over and over again.
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: Well put and obviously like the whole while you know,
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: you've got this you know.
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: Historical rupture that is like occurring.
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: In large part because of media and our relationship to media, right,
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: Like the disconnect between this reality obscuring power, serving, genocide enabling,
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: you know, like all of that is being undercut by
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: the innocence destroying images that we've all been bombarded with.
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: On our phones.
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: Not just the younger generation, but yeah, of course a
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: lot more in the younger generation.
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: Which is why you.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: Know, like right now, TikTok fucking sucks. You know why
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: because in twenty four Biden and the Democrats answer to like,
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: what are we gonna do about the public turning on
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: us about it because we're hiding a selling a genocide
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: that they're not buying. We're gonna take over the fucking
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: platform that they're seeing it on.
• 32:58
  Speaker 3: Well, they forced to sell to it to the Ellison
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: family here, the single biggest donors of the idea.
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, which is there you go. So that's what we got.
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: Thank Biden for that too.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: And it's but like I wanted to kind of ask
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: a question here, Adam about the why, Like not like
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: there are a lot of potential whyse here, right, but
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: like it's obviously something we all need to be empowered
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: with to talk like in with clarity but nuance about
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: because you know, as all this is unfolding, like regular
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: people who are trying to make sense of the horrific
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: reality that they're seeing, and like the lies that they're
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: being told are the obscuring that's being done in front
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: of them, you know, like a lot if they're not
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: getting the answers that they're looking for, a lot of
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: horrible ideas and conspiracies fester, a lot of like hatreds
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: and prejudices emerge. It's no it is no coincidence that
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: there has been rises in anti semitism while like this
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: is all happening because people are being told if you
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: are opposed to this, you're against you know, like all Jews,
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: and so you know, like a lot of people are saying, well,
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: I'm opposed to that.
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: So like I don't know what to tell.
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: You, but I don't want to see a child be
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: cut in half, blown to bits, crying over it.
• 34:15
  Speaker 4: That's obviously because you're you're a racist.
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So the point being is that amidst all of
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: that crap, right, you know, there are very real truths
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: here about you know, like uh, you know, CNN's like
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: Jerusalem Bureau like being based everything basically being reviewed and
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: rubber stamped by the IDF right. So I wanted to
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: but that itself is not the whole of the explanation, right,
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: It's not just you know, as sort of like Israel
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: is telling all these newsrooms what to do. But I
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: wanted to ask if you could sort of help us
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: navigate the why this is being done and where.
• 34:45
  Speaker 4: It's computed in these terms.
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: And this is where I think a dialectical criticism is useful.
• 34:50
  Speaker 3: Because the book is not called how to Sell.
• 34:52
  Speaker 4: Genocide because I'm trying to be provocative.
• 34:53
  Speaker 3: It is a genocide was decided in Washington and in
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: Tel Aviv and in the halls of power, and then
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: liberals are fundamentally a broker between the rule, the ruling class,
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: and the and the plebs. Right, they come in and say,
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: don't worry, I'm going to take care of it. I'm
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: going to sell what you've got, and I'll and meanwhile,
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: I'm going to tell them, I'm going to sell them
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: what you got. So this is this is fundamentally about
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: a decision was made, then it had to be sold,
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: and it's an unseemly business.
• 35:18
  Speaker 4: But once that decisions made, what other option is there?
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: You think they're going to criticize I mean, you think
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: they're going to criticize the genocide. You think they're going
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: to suddenly start putting their support behind Palestine. No, so everyone,
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: you know, again, eventually around the margins you have some
• 35:30
  Speaker 3: push back. But fundamentally, on a structural level, the US media,
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: whether it's Vietnam or Iraq is it is liberal imperialists
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: at its core.
• 35:39
  Speaker 4: That's that's its primary function.
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: If the New York Times didn't help sell the genocide,
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: then there would be no New York Times. That is
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: their social function, like by definition, that's what they're that's
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: what they exist to do. And so the decision was made,
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: and it was bipartisan, and the worst place to be
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: in the world was on the business end of a
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: bipartisan consensus in Washington.
• 35:56
  Speaker 4: Because what is the mechanism of pushback? There isn't one.
• 35:59
  Speaker 4: What a bunch of krusty leftists in a bookstore somewhere
• 36:01
  Speaker 4: they don't get you have no power to fucking matter.
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: And though, by the way, you have to vote for
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: us anyway, because something, something, Trump, right, and they knew that.
• 36:09
  Speaker 4: And this is under which I'm saying, is that the
• 36:12
  Speaker 4: engine that drives this is elite immunity.
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: Right when Barack Obama says, we're not going to prosecute
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: torture in the bush, we have to move forward, look forward,
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: not backwards when we again prosecute nobody for Vietnam except
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: for some half assed reforms, like that's a cycle of
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: elite immunity. And every decision that was made by Tony
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: Blincoln and John Feiner in the fateful days in October
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: and November of twenty twenty three, they knew they could
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: just vibe past it.
• 36:39
  Speaker 4: No future administration is going to hold them accountable.
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: Certainly Republicans aren't going to hold they agree, And so
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: they were banking on that. They were banking on Israel
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: committing a very you know, two to three month mass
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: expulsion genocide, getting their you know, reconpense, and then vibing
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: past it to the presidential election and extorting people with
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: the specter of Trump, albeit a real spect but nevertheless
• 37:01
  Speaker 3: that was part of the plan. So there's a cycle
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: of alite immunity that makes it so who's going to
• 37:05
  Speaker 3: hold these people accountable. Again, Tony Blincoln has a has
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: the most cushy job right now in liberal politics, and
• 37:12
  Speaker 3: that's and he knew that was going to happen. So
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: what's the pressure, what's the mechanism to actually push back
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: on this?
• 37:18
  Speaker 4: From their perspective, Well.
• 37:20
  Speaker 3: The primary fulcrum of rebellion was college campuses, which is
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: why you had to have this campus anti Semitism narrative,
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: which was a complete fiction, a complete concoction of these
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: Zionis crival league groups like the ADL, because that was
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: the one space where there was genuine momentum to create
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: both the spectacle and energy and moral narratives to push
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: back against the genocide. Which is why you saw again
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: I dedicated an entire chapter to it. I think it's
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: chapter eight. Why you saw these high profile kangaroo trials
• 37:47
  Speaker 3: in Congress where they would bring the president of Harvard
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: and print it up and they had the really fun
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: there's there's a really clever thing the ADL does where
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: they create what they call meta scandals where it's all
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: smoke and no fire.
• 37:56
  Speaker 4: It's kind of like a version with it did a
• 37:57
  Speaker 4: Jerremy Cordon.
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: They they would ask the president of Harvard and Princeton
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: and Yale. They would say, do you condemn the term
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: globalized the intofada, And they would say, well, no, because
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: that just means, you know, struggle, and it's a little
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: more complex than that.
• 38:10
  Speaker 4: Obviously, we would not allow speech that.
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: Intimidated any group of people, but we don't condemn that praise.
• 38:15
  Speaker 3: And then literally the headline in the Washington Post is
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: university presidents refused to condemn.
• 38:20
  Speaker 4: Calls for genocide of Jewish students.
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: And the average person reads that and says, there were
• 38:25
  Speaker 3: calls on campus to genocid Jewish students.
• 38:27
  Speaker 4: There of course was no calls. We had our fact
• 38:29
  Speaker 4: checker look for weeks. There was no such call. It
• 38:31
  Speaker 4: did not exist. It never happened.
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: But the way you do is you gin up these
• 38:34
  Speaker 3: false scandals and everyone runs for the fucking hills. And
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: this is if you can check out Steve Thrasher's book,
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: This is all explained in his book The Overseer Class,
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: which came out last week.
• 38:43
  Speaker 4: I just didn't have been with him in Chicago.
• 38:45
  Speaker 3: And he was he was kicked out of his teaching job,
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: is ten year trek job at Northwestern, and he now
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: is looking for work and has to freelance because he
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: tried to protect his students on the campus of Northwestern
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: and was beaten by a cop and made a villain
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: and on with by Republicans in Congress, and later sold
• 39:03
  Speaker 3: out by all of his all of his supposed friends,
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: several of whom are.
• 39:06
  Speaker 4: Anti apartheid scholars and James Baldwin scholars. Excellent book.
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: Please read it, and we can talk about the crisis
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: of liberalism because Gaza exposed the vacuousness and uselessness of
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: liberal and liberal institutions. But I'm sorry, I digress. I
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: was I was talking about the weaponization of the anti
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: semitism charge and howfficctive it was.
• 39:25
  Speaker 4: But that's discussed in detail.
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: And you can look at the data of I'm gonna
• 39:31
  Speaker 3: remind if I read some data here to sort of
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: cement this a little bit and read some mus making
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: these claims. So the yeah here it is so the
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: mentions of anti semitism versus islamophobium. So after the anti
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: semitism scandals, which there were dozens on all these campuses,
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: there was these universities and state legislators would force studies
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: to document this. So even taking the ADL's juice up
• 39:57
  Speaker 3: status which like literally say, free Kalestein is basically a
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: hate crime. Even if you accept that they were always
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: roughly comparable to episodes of Islamophobia.
• 40:07
  Speaker 4: Yeah, this was not reflected in the media.
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: So the New York Times made reference to anti Semitism
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: on college campuses in our one hundred day survey period
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: four hundred and twelve times, and made mention of Islamophobia
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: in and of itself five times and thirty one they
• 40:22
  Speaker 3: would mention both. They were sometimes it was like liberal
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: box checking. These are all liberal box checking. Washington Post
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: mentioned anti Semitism one hundred and ninety seven times and
• 40:31
  Speaker 3: islam islamaphobia or anti Ara Patriot one time, AP News
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: one hundred and fifty four versus four, Politico three hundred
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: and seventy verses three, for a grand total of eight
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: hundred and sixty five mentions to about thirty.
• 40:44
  Speaker 4: Two mentions of the Gulamophobia. So the narrative was in
• 40:48
  Speaker 4: entirely one way.
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: And I'll give you another example of this, of this asymmetry,
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: in this double standard, so anytime, I'll give you one example.
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: In Chicago, so to Paul University, there was two students
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: who were active members of the idea.
• 41:00
  Speaker 4: Who were on the corner every day doing.
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: This like debate me thing, I'm going to def I'm
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: going to defend Israel, defend the idea of they have
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: big Israeli flagged and they.
• 41:06
  Speaker 4: Were there every day.
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: Again after the after Human Rights Watch, in the International
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: Court of Justice and AMIS International all.
• 41:15
  Speaker 4: Confirmed and found that Israel was committing genocide. So they
• 41:18
  Speaker 4: were supporting a genocide.
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: Right, some guy takes it into his own hands and
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: punches him in the face, and what's the headline the
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: next day in local media Jewish student attacked an anti
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: Semitic hate crime. Now it's possible as an anti Semitic
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: k crime. That would be the worst coincidence ever because
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: the guy was actively engaging in active visible.
• 41:35
  Speaker 4: Pro is reel activity. But then what the story becomes
• 41:38
  Speaker 4: is about ethnic hatred.
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: Meanwhile, you had two major incidences, one at UCLA where
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: these pros real visual antes came in with clubs and
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: beat people pro Palestine and Palestinian protesters on campus again
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: attacked them with wrenches causing severe injury. And you had
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: the chemical attacks in Columbia in late twenty twenty three. Now,
• 41:58
  Speaker 3: no one ever referred to that as anti high Muslim
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: or anti Arab racism. So any attacks or counter protests
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: of pro Israel students was always framed in the mobius
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: sectarian terms, whereas any attack on Palestinians was purely put
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: in secular ideological terms. And that double standard is quantifiable.
• 42:19
  Speaker 3: You can show it, and there's no reason why that
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: should be the case. There's no legitimate editorial reason why
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: there should be that asymmetry. And this book is about
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: pointing out and quantifying and showing those asymmetries and then
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: going up to editors and.
• 42:30
  Speaker 4: Saying why did you do this?
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: Because we went to the New York Times and said,
• 42:34
  Speaker 3: you know, why do you use the word slaughter for
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: the killing of Israelis one hundred and forty times but
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: you never use it for the killing of Palestinians.
• 42:41
  Speaker 4: How is it that Israel killed twenty thousand children?
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: Again, the numbers probably double that, but they killed twenty
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: thousand children and somehow managed to never commit a slaughter
• 42:48
  Speaker 3: or a massacre not once. Doesn't that feel statistically unlikely?
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: And they say, oh, it's different, Well why is it different?
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: It just is?
• 42:56
  Speaker 4: But why because it has to be? Because my entire
• 42:59
  Speaker 4: ideology a part if it's not.
• 43:01
  Speaker 3: So that's why they create these ontological, nonsensical concepts like terrorism,
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: and those are buzzwords because they're meant to shut your
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: brain off into not your critical thinking.
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: And so that.
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: Asymmetry is again extremely quantifiable beyond a reasonable doubt. And
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: our numbers are conservative, like we did. We didn't even
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: include opinion columns.
• 43:20
  Speaker 4: That's how conservative we were.
• 43:22
  Speaker 3: So if you include opinion columns, it's probably much it's
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: probably one hundred you know, one hundred percent worse. And
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: so you know, that was what people were up against,
• 43:29
  Speaker 3: and there was very sophisticated turnkey mechanisms to use basically
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: liberalism against itself.
• 43:33
  Speaker 4: So anti hate, you know, anti hate rules on.
• 43:36
  Speaker 3: Campus or Title nine or other federal legislation against discrimination
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: was turnkey used against Palestinians pro Palestine protesters, because to
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: stand up for Palestine was per se somehow a form
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: of racism. This is why groups like the Adel had
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: been ratiated themselves into like anti racist spaces for so long,
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: because they need to use that to defend the left
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: flank of Zionism in Israel, which they've done to tremendous,
• 43:58
  Speaker 3: tremendous effect.
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: Well and like, you know, we could be talking about
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: this for you know, two more hours, and I would
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: love to, but I wanted to just sort of like
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: talk about accountability, right and what that what that looks like,
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: and what this book, you know, empowers us to do
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: to get it right, because I think, you know, we
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: we we must acknowledge that for three plus years we tried.
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: Not everyone can say that. I imagine if you're all here,
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: you did, I know, and can quantify how much we
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: tried at the real news, hundreds of interviews or documentary
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: reports or you know, like like original work on the
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: genocide in Gaza, you know, Adam column after column, interviewed,
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: like podcasts like we you know, post like do what
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: we do what people in Gaza have.
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: Been asking us to do.
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: Just like pee, please get our stories out, Please don't
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: let people forget about us.
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: Please do something to stop this.
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: And I for the rest of our lives, we're all
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: going to have to be haunted with the reality that
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: we didn't.
• 45:10
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: Well, one thing is for Israel in the US we're
• 45:12
  Speaker 3: banking on is that people would growing numb to it.
• 45:15
  Speaker 3: And I think that to some extent that that was
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: a correct assumption.
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it wasn't that in itself could lead
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: to a very you know, big discussion about why because
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: I actually think it goes beyond Gaza. And like it
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: wasn't lost on me as I was reporting from East Palestine,
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: Ohio around the same time the train in that Ohio
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: town derailed in twenty twenty three.
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: And when I was there trying to get their stories.
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: Up, I noticed that the algorithms they saw the name,
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: a lot of the stories aren't getting out there. So
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to explain to these Trump voting you know,
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: white working class people who have been poisoned, you know
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: why the Internet is suppressing their stories, right, and so
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: you know, there's a large a lot here. And again,
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: like our goal is not to you know, explain everything
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: in Adam's book. You got to go read the book,
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: and I promise you won't be disappointed. You'll be infuriated,
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: but you'll be empowered by it. But you know, like again,
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: the fact is is that from algorithmic suppression and like
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: platforms specific suppression and all these goddamn Trump loving oligarchs
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: owning the media platforms as well as gobbling up the
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: media companies. And you know whether from CBS to you know,
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: HBO to TikTok. Right, so we got a lot on
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: our plate here and you know, a lot to deal with.
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: But I wanted to ask them, like, you know, like
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: what accountability looks like here? Right? Because we we name names,
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: we have thanks to you in this book and everyone
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: who contributed to it, you know, the ammunition that we
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: need to hold people accountable. But I guess I want
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: to ask, like how we do that?
• 47:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, because I think that's obviously an ex step. Again,
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: I'm working on projects with that. I know other people
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: are as well. I will say that the Writers against
• 47:08
  Speaker 3: the warre in Gaza as An organized a boycott against
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: the New York Times that I think we should wholly support.
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: It's been signed by three hundred pro Palestine and Pealeston
• 47:17
  Speaker 3: and you know writers and academics.
• 47:19
  Speaker 4: It's a subscription and a writing boycott.
• 47:21
  Speaker 3: I know it may seem a little like boycotts can
• 47:23
  Speaker 3: feel a little maybe not that impactful, but I think
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: that the very least, that's a good place to start
• 47:28
  Speaker 3: delegitimizing the New York Times as an institution, because I
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: think there's this idea that you can reform and I
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: think an institution like the NewYork Times is fundamentally unreformable,
• 47:36
  Speaker 3: so seeking to delegitimize it, not like again indulging it,
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: not when someone gets a job or places an op
• 47:42
  Speaker 3: ed you go.
• 47:42
  Speaker 4: Ooh you in New York Times like that.
• 47:44
  Speaker 3: I think that mentality that we're going to like change
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: it from the inside with something if an institution like
• 47:48
  Speaker 3: that has to be gone.
• 47:50
  Speaker 4: So I would check out.
• 47:51
  Speaker 3: The writers against the War in Gaza on their boycott
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: on the New York Times, actually gonna an interview with
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: them on Tuesday talking about it, because it is like
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: a very very very first step. It's obviously not like
• 47:59
  Speaker 3: in and of itself that, but I think delegitimizing the
• 48:02
  Speaker 3: institutions like the New York Times, who again we can
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: talk about their interventions where they I believe crossed the
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: line to outright genocide, whether it was accusing Ana, which
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: does the aid and provides food and shelter, of being
• 48:15
  Speaker 3: Hamas by laundering bogus Israel intelligence that fell apart in
• 48:19
  Speaker 3: two weeks, whether it was again promoting atrocity propaganda, whether
• 48:24
  Speaker 3: it was doing the Alshiva Hospital command and control center
• 48:28
  Speaker 3: that looked like a boton villain layer, and then they
• 48:30
  Speaker 3: got there, nothing was there.
• 48:31
  Speaker 4: The Washington Post debunked it.
• 48:33
  Speaker 3: The New York Times kept trying to publistic on the
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: Pig for months, but then this outright genocide denial on
• 48:37
  Speaker 3: healthcare workers. They repeatedly militarized schools, places where people were
• 48:42
  Speaker 3: sheltering children. Everything was a hamas like bunker or you know,
• 48:48
  Speaker 3: So that would be the first step in my opinion.
• 48:50
  Speaker 3: Secondly would be maybe if this has worked towards accountability,
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: but again, like reach out to your local BDS coordinator,
• 48:57
  Speaker 3: reach out to people who are attempting to delegitimize these
• 48:59
  Speaker 3: institutions that seek their destruction and genocide, and it starts there,
• 49:03
  Speaker 3: I mean, but unfortunately, like we just need to be
• 49:06
  Speaker 3: armed with the data, to be armed with the critical
• 49:08
  Speaker 3: analysis and seek to.
• 49:12
  Speaker 4: Know within our own spaces and push back on.
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: Those narratives, and to delegitimize platforms like the New York Times,
• 49:18
  Speaker 3: who I thought were you, who are uniquely high leverage.
• 49:20
  Speaker 4: And uniquely cranishes and selling a genocide.
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: Let's give it up for Adam Johnson.
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: Everyone, thank you for listening to this episode of the
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: Real News Network podcast, and thank you to the great
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: Adam Johnson for this incredible discussion.
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: Again.
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: Adam's new book is called How to Sell a Genocide.
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: The Media is Complicity in the Destruction of Gaza and
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: it's out now with Pluto Press.
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: So go get yourself a copy.
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: And thank you to Red Emma's Cooperative Bookstore and coffeehouse
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: for organizing this really great event. If you want to
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: get more coverage and hear more important conversations just like this,
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  Speaker 1: Real News Network. This is Maximilian Alvarez signing off from Baltimore.
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: Take care of yourselves and take care of each other.