Trump’s Nightmare Is Here

We are in for a treat today, my good friend and friend of the show, Professor Jason Stanley, a leading scholar on fascism is joining us, Jason. You probably do not live under a rock and followed the news ridiculously yesterday, as I think we all did. When we saw Hayley Stevens indoors, microaggers, who has on his campaign staffers that are Hitler sympathizers. And Mike said, oh, we have all differing points of views on our campaign. And as a Jewish person, Jason, talk about this weaponization of anti-Semitism. And also this contradiction of the people who claim they're so worried about anti-Semitism from a duel, but they will go seek refuge with real anti-Semites. And this is just what I fundamentally have observed. Democrats are very critical of Israel. Real anti-Semitism exists on the right, a hatred of Jewish people. What's your take on this? Well, we're American Jews first. So, Israel is a foreign country. The safety of American Jews is what every politician in America should be running on. And the safety of American Jews is tied to the safety of American Muslims, because we face a fascist movement backed by Christian nationalism. That's hellbent on transforming our country into a Christian, a white Christian, Christian nationalist state. That's why they love Israel so much, because they can say, look at that Jewish app, no state. So, that's why they live a certain vision of Israel. So, we face Christian nationalism, white Christian nationalism. This is an existential threat. This is the existential threat to the safety of American Jews. I don't want my children to be second-class citizens in the country of which in which they are, that is their home, that is their, you know, where there are citizens. And Christian nationalism will make every American Jew into a second-class citizen. And so, Muslims are our brothers and sisters, they are our allies. And what we are seeing is the worst burst of Islamophobia, the most normalization of Islamophobia. Abdul Al-Sahid is the most American candidate who has ever run in an American election. This guy is American stream. He was captain of his football team, his lacrosse team, and his wrestling team. He is a bro's bro. He was valedictorian of the University of Michigan. Go Blue. I taught at Michigan for four years, still a fan of the football team. So, you know, he is as Michigan as you can get. He was Rhodes scholar from the University of Michigan, medical doctor, doctorate in public health, to vote his life to public service. This guy is as American as you can get. And they are saying because he's Muslim, because he's Muslim, that he's not American. You know, it is, he is not bought by the international billionaire class. He is a working, he's a Michigan guy. And so, the normalization of Islamophobia is so intense that people can look at al-Sahid, doctor al-Sahid, and say, and say, and normalize the thought that he's not as American as apple pie. If that's not coming for Jews, that is precisely what they did to us in Europe. They said, they may look German, they may look Polish, they may look French, but they can't be French or German or Polish. And that is exactly what they're doing to Muslims, what they did to Jews. And of course, they will do a toss next, because the goal is a Christian nationalist state. And it's the Christian nationalist who are pushing for America to be, you know, some subsidiary of Israel to American foreign policy to be, you know, just a war machine for Israel. So, this is, this is, you know, we Jewish people are a minority in the United States, we American Jews. And what is happening to Muslims is the most frightening thing. I mean, obviously, America's racist, it's been anti-black. What is happening to, what's happened to black Americans, has always been, you know, shows that fascism is always possible in our country because you can't constrain fascism to what's directed against one group. But now we are seeing this outburst of Islamophobia, this structure that, oh, Muslims can't be really American. Even if they're, you know, they speak with a Michigan accent and we're a valedictory to the University of Michigan. And then all of this, they can't, then devoted their lives to public service to the people of Michigan. You know, they can't be really American. And that is exactly word for word, structure for structure, anti-Semitism. You've just swapped out Jews for Muslims. And since the goal is to turn America into a Christian nationalist country, that excludes us. They want us all to go to Israel. And then they're happy to cheer as we depart. I mean, your spot on how much damage has Israel done to our governing class in the United States? And is that why this answer I'm about to play for you of a dual on 16 minutes last night? Is that, is that why this is so threatening to them? Let's play the clip. Why do you think Israel stands out as a place of anger and critique in a way that other countries in the Middle East do not? The scale of spending. Just the scale of the US spending. The scale of US spending, the scale of those war crimes and the impact on our politics. There is not a, I don't know, you don't think Saudi Arabia has a big impact on our politics? As big as a, as big as APEC. Is there any, I'm just going to tell you in my own election, right? I overall spending 70 million in the primary alone, okay? 33 of which was spent by APEC. So can you point to any other I would think Saudi, Saudi, well, do you really think that there is any entity on behalf of the Saudi government that is as strong as APEC is on behalf of the Israeli government? Okay, Jason, he's really good at this. He is, we need him in the Senate. We need politicians like this. Watching him do that to Ross. Ross is a smart guy. He was my neighbor in New Haven. He's very good at that kind of, he's very sharp and watching him absolutely rake Ross to have that over the calls on that and is, you know, is something that not many people do. He's just, he's a remarkable, a remarkable man, a remarkable American. And it's patriotism. What Dr. El Sayed is doing because no country has interfered in our politics like Israel. And as an American, I've just had enough of it. Like, I've just had enough. Like, you know, we talk about Russian interference, but Russian interference is nothing compared to the way Israel affects our politics. We are literally in a war for Israel with no other reason other than doing Israel's military bidding. We spend billions and billions of dollars. We just ship $2.8 billion in bombs to Israel. So, you know, if you're American, your tax dollars are going to this genocide, they're going to support the state that is not, you know, is not popular in the world linking ourselves to Israel is not popular. It's not safe for American Jews. We don't have anything to do with this. I mean, we don't have anything to do with Israel. Being linked with this is bad for us. It turns us into a political weapon. And the United States is obviously we should criticize Saudi Arabia's influence in our politics, but it is nothing compared to Israel's influence on our politics. And Saudi Arabia is committing human rights abuses. But what Israel is doing, what Israel is doing right now is really unconscionable, and is viewed as such in the world. And the fact that Dr. Lesey didn't mention one other thing, which is that Israel says it's a democracy. And so that opens it up to a kind of criticism that Saudi Arabia doesn't face. Because Saudi Arabia doesn't pretend to be a democracy. Everyone knows it's an autocratic human rights abusing regime that is close to Trump and his family and enriches them. But Israel claims to be a democracy. If you claim to be a democracy, even though you've been run by the same leader for half my adult life, if you claim to be a democracy, you open yourself up to critique that autocratic authoritarian regimes like Saudi Arabia don't face. Those are just the facts. If you claim to be there for liberalism, for human rights, for democratic values, you're going to get those critiques. And let's face it, if you're American, you are deeply complicit in Israel's crimes. Let me just tell you what really pissed me off watching all this. So Mike Rogers, a gal that works on his campaign staff that was that was in front and center at this press conference. She is a registered foreign agent for the country of Israel. And there's a heckler justifiably has every right, the most American thing on the planet to do, who's standing there going, "Haley Stevens is a traitor." And that isn't the American First Amendment that was a patriot in action. And this Israeli registered foreign agent runs over to him and tries to censor his speech in real time. And I share with you, I am sick to fucking death of Israel trying to censor our speech, whether it be college kids on campuses, me podcasting you here, the ADL, Jonathan Greenblatt, talking about we're monitoring everybody all the time. What the fuck? I mean, I am sick. This is American. We get to criticize Israel. And here's a big news flash. Criticize our government. I want you to criticize Donald Trump. I don't think it personally. It is unreal that our free speech rights have been curtailed. Remember Black Lives Matter? I was like, "Oh, college campuses, they're curtailing free speech on campus, because there are Black Lives Matter protests." And there was all this stuff about free speech on campus. Then the Trump regime comes in and demands billions of dollars for universities because they're allowing protests of Israel, because they're allowing people to criticize Israel. Israel's politics are destroying our democracy. It's not just the United States. It's also Canada. It's also Europe. All over this politics, Israel, you know, basically the politics of Israel are coming in and saying if you criticize our war crimes, you're anti-Semitic. And this is then being packaged as some kind of hate crime. Even though the Trump regime is saying you can talk about Muslims all you want, you can be as Islam a phobic as you want. You can be as Islam a phobic as well. You could say that Muslims are not Americans. But if you criticize Israel, you're anti-Semitic and you owe 400 million dollars. Think about that. You some say anything you want about Black people, about gay people, about Muslims. Nobody gives a shit. And it put the arrogance that Israel does to tell everybody where a democracy and then to try to censor speech is anti-thetical to that. But all of this centers around something that's fascinating for me. And it is that when it comes to Zionism, you have Jewish Zionists. You probably have a lot of atheist Zionists. And then you have Christian Zionists. And this Zionism is this ideology that Israel has this right to exist as an ethno state. And if it is a theocracy or only Jewish people there, then that would then deny others Palestinians the same right. So my question for you as a professor in this as a philosopher, is Zionism racism? Okay, there's just too many different meanings of Zionism. And you know, I wouldn't say that the people who fled the Holocaust to Palestine were racist. So they were just trying to save their lives. And they were lucky because, you know, as Molly Krabapple points out, you know, the Nazis were defeated. A ramal was defeated in Alameen by the British, by the British. And so they didn't all get slaughter. The Nazis didn't conquer Palestine. So just luck. But Zionism, you know, there's different, there's different, there's many different senses of Zionism. And so, you know, I would not criticize the people who are fleeing the Holocaust to find some place. Nor when people are kicked out of Middle Eastern countries, other Middle Eastern countries, the Mizraki Jews, and end up in Israel. However, I think that when you build a state based on a single identity, you're risking turning people who are not of that identity into second class citizens. And that structure of first and second class citizens, if we think of race, if we think of race as power, as power relations, especially after Israel's 2017 nation-state law, it really looks like Israel is based on an ideology that is making non-Jewish people into second class citizens. And if we think of race as a power relation, not skin color, because obviously there are plenty of black Jewish Israelis, and many of them vote right wing. But they face anti-black racism in Israel, but it's a different structure. You know, Zionism is power relations. So Zionism is saying, well, I would say because there's so many different versions of Zionism, I kind of, and you know, if you're a Zionist in the 1920s and you're saying we have to leave Europe, you know, that seems to me a different situation than right now. But so right now, I would say, you know, any structure that, if you're building a nation around one identity, and you're making, then you're making other identities into second class citizens. The more you lean into that, the worse the racism gets, the worse the power exploitation gets. But of course there are many, there's beta-Israel, there's many black Jews living in Israel, they face anti-black racism from white Jews in Israel. But I would say Israel as it stands now is a racist state. I avoid criticizing Zionism too core because I think there's too many meanings of the word, and it just, you know, the way you describe Zionism, yeah, that sounds like racism. But, you know, a movement of, you know, like a by-national, so if you're basing a state that had Jewish holidays, national holidays, rather than Christian holidays, but everybody gets to be a citizen with equal rights, that seems to me kind of as okay as a European state. But that's not what Israel is. Israel is a state where anyone who isn't Jewish is a second class citizen. That's what Israel is now, that's racist. I want you to, the last question that I want is this strange bedfellows between, it's not strange, it's probably really makes sense, bedfellows between the tech oligarchs that really aren't that religious, that want power. The Christian nationalists want power. Netanyahu wants power, Putin wants power, Trump wants power. All of these people that want power are coming together to both whitewash history and influence elections. And then the three boomers, I mentioned, Trump, Netanyahu and Putin are all trying to stay, you know, in power. And they're doing stuff like this, they're whitewashing history. And this was just crazy, pop this up. Just in Apple Maps has put all the buildings back in Gaza because the easiest solution to a genocide is to pretend it isn't happening. Image on the right is from Google showing what Gaza looks like, and on the left is, are the, are the old images of it. And so we saw that the people at Google helped Trump rename Lake Ontario and the Gulf of Mexico. I want him to say what we rename it to everybody knows. But speak to this, this really dangerous alliance of these tech, techno fascists with the governing fascists and how they have come together right now at this moment in history. Does this, well, you got basically an attempt, I mean, that's horrifying what you just showed. And I'm kind of gasping inside. I mean, this was the topic of my last book, Erasing History, how fascists rewrite the past, the control of the future. This, you know, this, this is horrifying, it's complicity. It's deep complicity. In fact, it's active involvement in Israel's genocide in Gaza. So, you know, and you can be a Zionist and you, you can be for the existence of the state of Israel and for and think what Israel's doing in Gaza is genocide, horrific. You know, we need reparations, we need to give Palestinians equal rights. You know, I mean, that's not exactly my view, but I just think we have to stop this immediately and get as many allies as possible, you know, across spectrums to make sure that this history is an race, that what has happened, which is one of the most horrific things in my lifetime without a doubt in Gaza, without any doubt at all, with this decades of background brutality against Palestinians to erase that history is itself a war crime. So, but so right now, what we've got, I mean, I think that we've got, Gaza is like a permission slip. It's a permission slip for mass atrocity. And the tech billionaires want to be unfettered. They want to be able to fire everyone. They want to do mass surveillance. They don't want any ethical boundaries. And what Israel's gotten away with is something that, you know, they seem to be getting away with something that, you know, you shouldn't get away with, you know, and if they can get away with it. But what they can get away with that and what the Trump regime is doing with immigrants. We have concentration camps everywhere. We have untold horrors every second happening to hardworking immigrant families. We can do if given what Gaza is a permission slip for genocide, mass atrocity, brutality, everywhere. And so what we need to do is we need to make sure we need accountability. That's why this election is so important. We need to say, no, you can't build concentration camps in America. You can't commit genocide. You can't give billions and billions to a country that is committing genocide. All of these things are wrong and we need accountability for them. And what the billionaires want to do is they want to destroy all sense of accountability. They want to destroy all ways in which we, the mass of humanity, can get accountability for their horrific exploitation of the rest of the world. And that's what's going on. And what we're going to do is we're going to win this election and we're going to start the accountability process. Jason Stanley, it's always a pleasure to see you. We all have so much anxiety on election eve and I knew that you would be such a voice of clarity. Thank you for your expanded definition of Zionism because I think we're all learning about this because this issue has just accelerated so much in the last couple of years since the livestream of the genocide and we're all learning. So thank you for that and it's good to see you. Thank you, Jennifer. Thank you for your incredible work on behalf of democracy.