Transcription
I keep bringing up, um, Jessica Resniak. I'm sorry, you guys keep telling me I'm pronouncing her name wrong, and I need to fix that. I apologize. But, you know, the the woman who got what, nine years for chaining herself to the oil pipeline, right? And and that's part of why I've been so frustrated about the sort of, you know, indifference to the ratcheting up of criminal penalties for protest, the Cop City expansion, because that all seems to be obviously an indication of what works.
Exactly like what you just said. Cop City is a good example of what works, which is why they came down like a ton of bricks on Cop City. Uh, and they were charged with terrorism charges, weren't they? I mean, uh, yeah, they they got a bunch of people under RICO charges, I think, for like distributing, uh, circulars, like flyers. Right. Right. And I think also for fundra, I think the terrorism charges were for doing like a GoFundMe to get people out to raise bail money.
Right. So it's very hard once you once you confront the power of the state, uh, without an organization, it's extremely difficult. I mean, I've seen this. I was 20 years overseas watching courageous labor leaders carry out these kinds of activities. Uh, student organization is also key, which is why they shut down the encampments and turn universities like Columbia into, you know, police camps. I mean, there you can't even get on the campus. The NYPD can go in anytime they want. They've shut down free speech. They've turned their Middle Eastern department over to receiver, which is completely capitulated to the state. So, uh, you can always tell what what works by how the state responds.
And, uh, can there be a national strike? In essence, you're asking, without, uh, union or strong organizations, I suppose. But the problem is, when they come after you, you're going to need that, uh, that, you know, you're going to need a body by which you can sustain resistance and and confront, um, the power, the militarized power of the state. Uh, so, uh, it's, I mean, national strikes, if you go back and look at revolutions, that's what brought down, uh, the Tsar, that's what brought down the Shah in Iran, that's what brought down Batista in Cuba. We, you know, you glorify the revolutionaries like Fidel or the Bolsheviks, but that's not what actually, when you look closely at the history, what broke the power of the regimes, it's when the vast majority of the population refused to cooperate. Um, so you can get to a point of, uh, you, the problem is that that national response has to be twinned with a national consciousness, and often the consciousness comes too late. That's the fear.
And so I think, I, I just want to say one thing. I think we do have to deeply study, um, Marx, and I'm not a Marxist, actually, but Marx and Engels' analysis of capitalism. It's extremely important that we invest the time in that. It's extremely important that we understand, uh, Gramsci's concept of cultural hegemony. Uh, you know, Rosa Luxembourg was an amazing figure. She turned on Lenin and the Bolsheviks very early. Um, how do you create a resistance movement that remains democratic? That's the fundamental question she asks. This is really important as we go forward because we are confronting the monolith of state power, uh, and trying to build, in essence, at this point, an alternative system. Uh, and I think it's, uh, been disastrous. I mean, Cornell West and Richard Wolf and I held a series of lectures on many of these great revolutionary theorists, uh, because we want people to read them. Uh, we want people, and and you're right, the, you know, history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. Uh, and, uh, there is these, you know, these people have carried that banner for us, and and and it's incumbent upon us to take that, lift that banner up from them. The socialists, the Wobblies, the, I mean, these are the real heroes, all the people Howard Zinn writes about in his book, and that you won't read about in a high school textbook on history, but these are the real heroes, the real, uh, figures, the, the, you know, King was the figurehead, but all the amazing civil rights activists, uh, you know, from Rosa Parks and everyone else. We need to know who these people are because, uh, they, they, they, they held up the light and and, uh, and they suffered for it, and they confronted the same configurations of power we have to confront, and they paid terrible prices for it.
Yeah. That that's what it what it feels like sometimes. And I don't mean to harp on. Okay. What I what I feel like sometimes is that the history gets told, even by people who ostensibly share my politics. The history gets told in a way that is ultimately putting the brakes on people's action, putting the brakes on on on action. So the history is told, labor unions did X. We don't have labor unions. So stop. What I what I got excited, or or general strikes are hard. They need organizations. So don't talk about a general strike. What I find exciting, frankly, is when you start talking about, well, there was, um, sort of a, a political consciousness. The people decided they were no longer going to be complicit. They were going to be ungovernable. And that's how they overthrew and then listed a a number of regimes, Iran, the Tsar, etc. And I want to stay there for a second because just before that, you said, well, it requires a certain amount of organization. There requires some support for the folks who get thrown into jail for these disproportionate prison sentences or worse, you know, who get killed. I, what does that look like? Is it because, is it true, frankly, I'm asking you, that there was some like legal aid organization that had to have a certain amount of money in a pot before, um, you know, the Tsar was overthrown? It, it doesn't feel. It feels more like I look, I don't want to sound naive or indifferent to the consequences and the price that people will pay and have paid. But waiting around for a time where there are zero consequences seems obviously feudal. And identifying the point at which we're saying, no, it, we're allowed to act now without waiting for some undetermined strike fund or undetermined legal support or undetermined whatever it is to manifest. You know, that that waiting feels fundamentally counterrevolutionary and at its worst, sort of like perfect op material for the left to prevent us from actually striving to achieve anything.
I don't advocate waiting. [laughter] I think we should be out there now. Uh, so I don't advocate waiting at all. Um.
So what do you think we should be out there doing now? I think we should. Because I'm telling you, when I raised this idea of doing Cop, um, uh, Stop Oil style, let's just move this protest into the street, you know, let's just move it around the whole, uh, floor. We have, I mean, the most, the most important imperative right now is breaking ice. We don't break ice, we're shackled. And so what is happening, what is happening in Minneapolis has to happen in every city in America.
That's the point. Which, which is specifically because Minneapolis is obviously being, um, made an example of, right? It's being targeted by the Trump administration as a sanctuary city, as, uh, they've been focusing on the Somali immigrants. You know, it's, they're making an example in Minneapolis.
ICE is operating everywhere. I mean, I live in Princeton. They just grabbed some poor father who dropped his kid off, kid off at school.
And so what do you, what do you see in Minneapolis that you would like to see? They're they're in the street. They're documenting it. They're attempting to keep outside the hotels where these ICE goons spend the night. They're playing loud music to keep them up all night.
Yeah. I mean, every way through nonviolence, every way that we can make their life difficult is what we have to do. Uh, that's it. And and and I think the com, the, it's kind of the perfect storm with the creation of ICE, which is now getting more money than any other law enforcement agency in the country. And you're right about the warehouses. Anybody who thinks these are for undocumented workers are really in La La Land. I mean, they are just so naive. Uh, it's almost beyond belief. Uh, we, I know what I mean, this is the classic pattern of how authoritarian states consolidate power, and that is what is happening in front of us very quickly. And I don't believe in waiting. I'm just arguing that that we're weak, uh, unfortunately, and even the labor organizations we have are weak and compromised. So many of the strikes that have succeeded for, go back to the West Virginia teachers. So those were wildcat strikes. The labor union leaders didn't support them. It was also true on the West Coast. So, I'm just pointing out that the the stark reality that, uh, we don't have the kind of, uh, organizational structure, political consciousness, or, uh, institutional structures that assisted people in the past. We don't have them. Uh, and and it's certainly not the Democratic Party. I mean, you know, the Democratic, I just, I just, one point on the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party was calling out the rise of authoritarianism, and that, of course, they're not wrong. The problem is they won't call for the one mechanism that can bring down Trump and the administration, uh, which is mass mobilization, because nobody wants the leaders of the Democratic Party. And if you created, if you empowered mass mobilizations, in essence, popular movements, the Democratic Party leadership, Schumer, Pelosi, all these, Jeffries, they'd all be pushed aside because nobody wants them. Uh, and and so they won't do it. Uh, although I just saw, uh, somebody, some Democratic figure raising, I don't know who it was, saying, uh, if they shut down the elections, we have to have a national strike. Um, which was interesting because at least they recognized the one mechanism that might save us. But the Democratic Party, which gave us Trump, let's be clear. I mean, the Democratic Party, uh, provided the, you know, the political dysfunction that that that vomited up Trump. Um, so, yeah, no, no, we can't wait. I don't think. I think waiting is a terrible idea. Uh, on the other hand, we have to face the facts that they have, the oligarchs and the billionaire class have really effectively shorn us of power. And that goes back to the 1971 Powell memo. They've done a really good job of capturing our institutions, universities, the press, uh, of marginalizing radical voices like Chomsky, who unfortunately is in the Epstein files. Um, uh, but Noam was virtually blacklisted. I mean, you never heard him at all. In fact, in fact, there was a rule, unwritten, but it was understood that you didn't even put his name in the New York Times. His name was not allowed to be in the New York Times. So these kinds of critics of, uh, neoliberalism, of corporate capitalism, uh, Michael Parenti just died, but Howard Zinn, uh, you know, they got blanked out. They got shut out. So, uh, no, no, we can't. Waiting is a bad idea. Waiting for something is a bad idea. Um, but, you know, when I was in Genoa, uh, you had organized dock workers, and it was really interesting because these dock workers are huge, big, burly guys, and they didn't play around. I mean, they were, uh, it was, uh, and they're most of them are Marxists. Uh, uh, yeah, you don't mess around with these guys. I mean, it's, it's not, you know, me and my neighbors in Princeton putting on a a fluffy hat and going down to the mall. It's a whole different animal.
Yeah. I mean, look, I, I guess maybe this is just a framing, uh, issue for me, but I can't control a lot of things, but I can influence the sense of public political consciousness, right? I'm in the media. That's the, the sphere in which I feel like I have the most influence. And I feel disinclined to, I, I obviously understand what is meant when you say we are weak. I, I find myself resisting that we are diminished in terms of our labor capacity, but I am inspired by the argument that it only takes 3% of the population. I am inspired by the fact that so many people are galvanized enough to join these protests, whether for Palestine or no kings or whatever, even if I wish they were being mobilized and utilized differently. I see, I mean, Epstein keeps coming up as a recurring theme. We were talking about Israel. Epstein comes up. We're talking about Noam Chomsky. Epstein comes up, and there's a way that that has been galvanizing for folks across the political spectrum. I don't know if you saw, I think it was, um, was it Lori Ingram or it was one of the Republican blondes who was taking the temperature at TPUSA asking the crowd whether or not they feel like the Trump administration has said enough on Epstein, and they overwhelmingly were frustrated and booed at the idea that he has done, has what he's done and what the release has been sufficient. How many of you are satisfied? You can you can clap. Satisfied with the results of the Epstein investigation. Clap. Okay, I told you to clap. You guys aren't listening. I'm not going to grade you on a curve. Not satisfied. So, I was gonna get to that. How many of you are not satisfied with the results of the investigation? [cheering] Um, that all of that energy is ripe for being ignited into a greater public consciousness if people are told what their power remaining power is. And I want to be someone who informs people of how much power they have, not to even unwittingly sort of discourage folks from feeling like they have some, that they are limited in these ways just because of their historical counterparts might have had a different sort of organizing conditions.
I mean, I, I totally sympathize with that, except you, if we're going to, if we're going to confront power, we have to also do so with a clear understanding of the political reality around us. If we have a kind of Pollyanna-ish view of our own capacity or to bring down power or anything else, uh, then you're going to get trapped in the kind of emotional highs and lows that characterize American society. This is going to be so well, because.
What would be a Pollyanna-ish? Because.
What is Pollyanna-ish about? Yeah, go ahead.
Because at a certain, because at your first defeat or your second defeat, you don't recognize that this is for the long haul, you know, the long distance revolutionary. Uh, and, uh, it's going to be nasty. These people are not playing around. I'm not. Forget ICE. Forget that.
Who's to say? Who's to say? I, I feel like I caved a bunch about not being dismissive or indifferent to the incredible cost that will have to be paid. But, but this is what I mean. This is what I mean, Chris. Like every time it's like a conversation about, okay, now what are we going to do? It becomes, well, you know, it's going to be really hard and people are going to be hurt and don't be Pollyanna about it. Okay, what, where do I sign an acknowledgement? But Brianna, that's what the civil rights, I mean, that's why they all were trained. I mean, they knew what Bull Connor was going to do. And and and I'm saying we better. I'm just saying we should be hard-headed and prepared. I'm not saying that we shouldn't, we should wait. I don't think waiting is a good idea. And I think to the extent that we can build alternative organizations, we better do it as fast as we can. Unfortunately, most of them are not in place at the moment.
Well, the the left has been saying saying this, that we're not prepared or we can't do X, Y, and Z for 8 to 10 years.
I didn't say we can't. I said it's harder.
Okay. Well, it's harder. The planning hasn't happened. And now it feels like we're maybe already past a point of no return, but certainly edging toward it. And I don't know, it feels like we're rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. I find myself exasperated even about what I'm supposed to be doing doing here on this show.
But it's a different, it's a different, there's two ways of looking at it, and and you can look at it in terms of practical results. Uh, that's probably not a good idea. Uh, given what's up, we're up against. I look at it as a moral imperative that it doesn't really matter whether you win or lose, but you must stand with the Palestinians. You must stand with our neighbors who are being ripped off the streets of our cities. You have a moral obligation to stand with them and accept the cost. Now, that is a different way of looking at resistance. Uh, because it's not defined by whether you succeed or you don't succeed.
I, I agree. I completely agree. So. [laughter] So now what?
So now what? So, so what we people like us have to do is stoke, to the extent that we can, movement. So, when I went to Italy, I took a, I took a film crew with me, and the reason I took a film crew with me is I want, and I'm, it's about to come out. We're almost finished with it, is it's, I wanted people to physically see what you have to do in the streets. And then I interviewed, uh, the, the, [clears throat] people who organized the flotillas, Francesca, Giannis, Greta. So you have these incredibly brilliant resistance figures telling us, explaining why it's important. Um, I mean, that's my role as a journalist. So, uh, but, you know, I've been, uh, outspoken, uh, against Israeli apartheid and, uh, against for decades, and it was very lonely. I mean, and I was just blanked out of one, you know, I get an invitation to speak at the University of Pennsylvania, and then the Hell House and APAC organized, and it's rescinded, and it's been constant. Um, and only with the genocide, I think that mask, Israeli mask has dropped, and people have seen the Zionist state for what it is. Um, 14 years I fought on behalf of my friend Julian Assange, who honestly, I didn't think was going to get out until Australia put enough pressure on the Australian government to get him released. So, uh, you know, 14 years was a long time. Uh, but and I paid my own way to London because I hated the court coverage because people didn't understand the case, including, and I would sit next to the Guardian correspondent who was clueless, and which is what they wanted, by the way. Um, so, uh, there's, you know, the American society now is on the cusp of becoming, uh, a police state. It's on the cusp. I mean, we're talking maybe months at most. And so, [cough and clears throat] we have to do everything possible to resist. I work here in Princeton. I'm a fluent Spanish speaker, so I work with this group called Resistencia. We have monitors out, uh, in the community, uh, that, uh, you know, warning our neighbors when there's ICE. I actually went and met all of the ministers in Princeton to try and get them to ring their church bells when ICE is in the, they didn't, they haven't done it. They're probably still discussing it, but to ring the bells. I mean, you know, that's my community, but everybody has to do that in their own community. Um, we, we have to begin to to build, and and and through the monitoring of Resistencia, you are building an alternative organization. You are building, uh, something that can function, hopefully, to help protect our neighbors. Um, and that's what, that's really where all of our energy has to go at this point.
Why do I feel like, why do I feel like I'm being told no? Why do I feel like there's a disagreement between us? What do I feel like every time I say [laughter]
No, because you said the left, um, you know, the left is always saying we can't do it now. We have to wait. And.
Yes.
And, uh, I don't know that that sounds more like liberals than than the left.
No, no, I'm, I'm, I'm mean what I say.
Okay. Um, I, I, uh, you know, with all due respect and rest in peace, when, you know, Jay McEvoy was on the show many, many, many years ago, you know, the book is is No Shortcuts. And obviously, I'm not trying to sit here and say, oh, no, life is easy, uh, don't work hard. [laughter] There's shortcuts everywhere, but we, we, we are confronting a reality like you brought up the Powell memo. We are looking at, you know, 50 years of organizing with the greatest vested interest behind it toward completely taking over our media infrastructure, our political infrastructure, our court system, etc. We are getting hit with new story after new story every day to your point about not just the Ellisons and the Likes and the and the Bezoses and the billionaires controlling the media, but the fact that every bit of back-end software on our phones and our computer and all of our devices, it's all Palantir and Oracle, and they're listening to us. We are, I, I said this to my mom a couple of weekends ago. I had a bit of a bit of a crash out. I think it was when they had arrested Don Lemon. I was like, I was like, I'm not trying to be funny, but they could literally kill Don Lemon in prison, and there's not a thing anybody can do about it or would do about it. I know that sounds hyperbolic, but I was sitting in my apartment and I was, I was sitting by the window talking to my mom, and I said, "I'm not trying to be alarmist or self-important, but if America wants, if our government wanted to fly a drone and kill me through this window, the way they did so many Palestinian journalists, there's nothing any of us can do about it. The Democratic Party is not going to do anything about it. You know, too too hot, too real, and all the Khive would probably rejoice. And there's nothing, there's nothing to be done. Do you know what I mean? And and that is an overwhelm, that's when I had this feeling like, okay, we're already beyond like, we've crossed the Rubicon. We're already in no man's land, and now we're just sitting around hoping like norms and values are going to be enough to keep the the train on the rails.
So I don't, I don't, I don't think we've crossed the Rubicon yet because.
Why not?
Because we're still, you and I are still able to have this conversation. I mean, if you go to Turkey, uh, it, it's, it's dead. The, you know, you can't do it.
It could change tomorrow.
You know, it could change quickly. That is true.
That is true.
Accommodated right now.
Yeah, that is true. It could change really quickly. But right now, there's still some space. I mean, I am still able to, I mean, I went to the to Trenton because they wanted to pass the IH. They're going to pass it. I went with Roz Seagull, who's Israeli. He's the great scholar on genocide, and he and I were supposed to speak before the committee. Well, it was filled with Zionists who were shouting us down, and the, we were arguing, you can't pass this because it shuts down free speech, and they muted his mic, and then when I spoke, they muted mine. So there we were arguing that the passage of IHA, which is the definition of, uh, anti-semitism is criticism of Israel, would shut down free speech while they actually were shutting down our speech. Um, so yeah, we're really close, but we're not.
Did you, did you see the, the official, I forget who he was, who was, uh, some politician who was criticizing the Olympians for saying, uh, "I don't agree with everything that my government says." And he's basically like, "America, America is the freest country in the world. They better shut up."
Right. Right. [laughter]
You know.
Any person who goes to the Olympics to represent the United States and then says they don't want to represent the United States should be immediately stripped of the Olympic uniform. [laughter]
Yeah. So, um, so we're not there yet. We're getting closer and closer. Uh, and you're not wrong to be as pessimistic as you are about the lethal power of the state and the willingness of the state to use that lethal power. Uh, they were thrown, you know, by the killing of this nurse in because it was filmed, and it was just an execution, a cold-blooded execution, and the tragedy of it is that the guy was trying to help a woman. I mean, this is just appalling. And I mean, but what they'll do is just, it'll become a criminal activity to film ICE. I mean.
Yeah, they're they're already going for that. Yes.
So then, so then what? But what you're describing, Chris, is a kind of a, a, a ball rolling down the hill and picking up steam.
Yeah.
And the idea, the expectation that the ball is going to have less velocity at some point in the future as opposed to right now. I don't have that expectation, but I want to make life as difficult for them as I possibly can. I mean, I don't want to make it easy for them. I mean, I sued Obama when he passed section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act, which overturned the P.Y. Kaimites Act, a gift to Trump, to which, uh, prohibits the deployment of military forces in the streets of American cities. I didn't think I was going to win, but I wasn't going to let it go. I, in fact, I won. That's the amazing thing. I won in the district court. Then they bumped it up to the appellate, a long story. And Obama, they, they managed to deny my standing because it was so blatantly unconstitutional. So, they just denied my ability to bring the case. But in that's always been, you know, I was a war correspondent. I didn't, I couldn't stop the war. I couldn't stop Israel from bombing Jabalia. I couldn't stop the Serbs from shelling Sarajevo. Uh, I couldn't stop the Serbian paramilitaries from carrying out massacres in Kosovo, but I documented it, and I made it harder for them to do it. And I think that, um, you know, that's all any, we, we can ask of anyone that they have the moral and physical courage to get out and attempt to obstruct the machine. But I do think that it's important that we realize that it's not going to be easy, and that if we become effective, the way Roger and Just Stop Oil did in Britain, they're not going to play around. It's going to be really.
I agree, and that's why it feels to me necessary to have as many people doing it as possible.
Of course, the larger the, and you're right about the 3%, but that you're talking, uh, you know, what's 3% of that's 9 million people right in the US, roughly. I'm not a math.
Uh, sure. There's about 300, 300.
300 million. Right.
So, uh, you're right about that. Um, but that actually takes, uh, you know, even though it's only 3%, that that's quite an achievement.
Right. But here, here's what I would like to hear. I would like to hear political commentators, people like myself, and people who have much bigger platforms than myself, say, there have been X million people involved in pro-Palestine protests, no kings protests, Black Lives Matter. What was it? Black Lives Matter was 20 million people, if I recall correctly, that were mobilized five years ago, six years ago. That's twice as many as the 3%. Hey YouTube, thanks [music] for watching. Just a reminder that this is a podcast. You can catch an extra premium episode every Monday [music] for $5 a month at patreon.com/badfaithpodcast. That's patreon.com/badfaithpodcast for $5 a month. An extra episode [music] every week. Additionally, please do consider liking this video, subscribing [music] to this channel. It helps us out. It helps independent media beat the algorithm. We appreciate you. And as always, keep the faith. [music]