By uncovering disturbing patterns that are as prevalent today as ever, philosopher Jacob Stanley reveals in How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them that the stuff of politics—charged by rhetoric and myth—can quickly become policy and reality. Only by recognizing fascist politics, he argues, may we resist its most harmful effects and return to democratic ideals.
For this conversation Stanley is joined by Harvard associate professor of History Elizabeth Hinton.
Racism makes societies vulnerable to fascism
37:36
look I’m white but it’s in my
self-interest to fight against racism
because it opens my society to fascismAre economics responsible for fascism?
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for family issues back in Ohio and I
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would go through rural Ohio but I see no
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feline annex and I’d see poverty and
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nobody Cambridge you about under and and
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it wasn’t covered you know and so I
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always say follow the money and there’s
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no money in the rural areas and
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globalism works in Boston and San
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Francisco but it doesn’t seem to work in
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rural America and so I always think that
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globalism is doomed and democracy is
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doomed if they can’t figure out a way to
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put rural Americans into this economy
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that doesn’t that that doesn’t seem to
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have happened I was I was in southern
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Ohio and a family gathering in Lebanon
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Ohio and the fireman was talking to me
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in there was part of the group and he
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said he’s retiring early because he
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can’t stand picking up opioid addicts in
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a little talons Ohio with 10,000 people
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he’s got a five six calls a day take
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care of over those people and people
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shooting out in cars
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so yeah and this is little little
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hometown you know Warren Ohio is dead so
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you’re raising a couple different relate
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related points but both very important
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first of all we haven’t talked much
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about political economy and I think it’s
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very important to talk about political
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economy as as a factor also in the
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factor in the far-right movement like
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what’s happening it’s all right now
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fascism is not fascist politics not
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being used to like buttress military
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empire as much as its used to other one
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other than Yemen and so it is but but it
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it’s being used to like funnel money
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into oligarchs hands and blah and sort
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of like throw sand in the face of people
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with genuine economic concerns but the
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OPA
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I mean it’s not just the rural Midwest
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like my partner is a doctor physician in
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New Haven New Haven Connecticut has a
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horrific OPA opioid problem I mean the
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pharmaceutical companies I mean they
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delivered a whole bunch of opioids to a
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lot of people and and it’s a problem
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that is the dhih industrialized areas
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I mean opiates horrific it’s like what
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60,000 deaths last year 70,000 deaths so
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so but and it’s it’s tricky figuring out
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you know Carl Hart’s work would say it’s
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it’s mainly an economic problem you
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solve people’s economic issues and
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they’re not gonna be opioid addicts but
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but but you’re you’re I mean one thing
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about the economic anxiety point is that
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if you look at who was affected by the
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Great Recession the group that was most
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affected by the Great Recession I think
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were people of color but they didn’t
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flee into the arms of fascism you know they
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didn’t start voting for or you know they
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didn’t vote for Trump so I I don’t think
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so it can’t I think that economic and
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and then you look worldwide my book is
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about the world and you look at Poland
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like the Civic Platform in Poland
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like the Civic Platform expanded the GDP
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radically Poland was doing really well
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economically and then law and justice
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came in and did all these tactics and
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one look at Bavaria one of the richest
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areas in the world Bavaria is filled
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with this you say oh say offer so the
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economic anxiety does not match all the
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areas it can explain it can explain why
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some groups in some areas fall prey to
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this politics but looking
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internationally the politics gets a grip
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and even looking nationally because it
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gets a grip on some groups and not the
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other others and if you look at if you
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look at and my book is about why it gets
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a grip when it’s so obviously a false
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promise and so in the United States when
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we talk about the poor working class we
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– we – the white working class we forget
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a chapter and Du Bois as black
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reconstruction is a poor white you know
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we have to talk about the psychological
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wages of whiteness we have to talk about
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and and the response is of course an
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economic response is a labor movement a
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labor movement you know when they smash
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the labor movements in the Upper Midwest
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suddenly people felt much more prey to
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this kind of politics and so you know so
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I think we do face this crisis we need a
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labor movement that’s why they went
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after the labor movement we’re in a
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crisis after the Janice decision and and
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so we have to rebuild the labor we
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wouldn’t give people economic hope I’m
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not sure it’s as globalization as much
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as it’s the lack of a of a of a labor
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movement in the United States
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I mean German manufacturing is doing
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fine and German labor is doing fine
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history and making history no but I
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guess how do you make it known
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given that the I mean given what you’re
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talking about you know the attack on
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truth the discrediting of sources the
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control of educational boards or
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institutions by people who might not be
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in their interest a place you know I
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mean so what I don’t know if that’s I
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mean if doing it’s having conversations
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like this I mean I think it’s it’s it’s
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really up to us and this is like in
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terms of thinking about what is the role
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of academics right now I mean people who
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do research is – it’s one I think that
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qualitative research in general is just
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D legitimized and it’s it’s dismissed as
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not being true despite the fact that you
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know my I don’t use my data doesn’t come
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from surveys it’s not in document since
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the ways in which I’m interpreting those
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documents just like it’s the ways in
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which other people are interpreting
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their quantitative data and so I think
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that you know right now the other kind
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of struggle going on in universities is
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the growing attack in many ways on the
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liberal on liberal arts in general which
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is tied to the developments that Jason
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described so eloquently in the book so I
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think part of it is you know doing the
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work of having discussions like this
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it’s amazing that there’s so many people
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here and we’re having this really engage
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an important discussion that takes a lot
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out of us but that’s I think part of our
61:00
responsibility as as researchers as
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scholars as intellectuals to try to
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write in accessible ways Jason was just
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telling me that he’s been on the radio
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for like ten hours this week that’s
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doing the work that’s doing that
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important work and I think part of the
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difficulty is in many in in many
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instances we we end up kind of preaching
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to the choir you can only go on Berkeley
61:25
radio so many times I mean
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– is also kind of moving into different
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spaces where we might be less
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comfortable when I get invited to speak
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with libertarian or white ring groups
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are I’m happy to go because knowing that
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I might be walking into an abrasive
61:45
situation you know I tried to make my
61:49
book and my research as undeniable as
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possible and I think the argument that
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you’ve laid out in this book is also
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undeniable and that’s how I think we can
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begin to think about re-educating
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correcting the false narratives and
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erasing the untruths the mythic past
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that’s been created in history is I
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think really historical work is really
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key to that we don’t know how we got
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here unless we really really understand
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the past yeah I just want I just want to
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say you know that’s why do boys ends
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ends black reconstruction at the
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propaganda of history and that’s why
62:29
he’s so corny and capitalizes truth you
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know that’s that’s that’s what gets me
62:34
upset when people attack for instance
62:36
african-american studies as as has been
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happening a lot or Gender Studies
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because they’re trying to tell the
62:42
actual truth of a story that’s not told
62:45
and you know and that that’s that’s why
62:48
dude you know Dubois is always so corny
62:50
about truth see like he’s like you know
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when you know erasure and erasure is
62:55
never truth you know so and of course
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the backlash is always like a little bit
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of like at Yale what happened the I mean
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I could have told my colleagues the
63:05
English department they added googy Wafi
63:07
Unga this this goes back to you they had
63:08
a GUI hua Theon go to one course and and
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there were like 20 articles from
63:14
right-wing media about how they’re
63:15
eliminating Shakespeare at Yale and it
63:18
hit them so by surprise I was like my
63:21
colleagues in the English department
63:21
like what happened what happened we’re
63:23
gonna go as death threats I’m like yeah
63:25
you added an African writer to a
63:28
required course you know so that’s the
63:32
and we we have academic administrators
63:34
here they can tell you about this but
63:36
there’s there’s you know the very ID so
63:39
true like multiple perspective
63:41
which doesn’t mean multiple perspectives
63:43
doesn’t mean there’s many truths there’s
63:45
only one truth that’s why Dubois
63:47
capitalizes it but the truth involves
63:49
you know that the Nate what happened to
63:52
the indigenous populations as well as
63:55
what happened to Dale Carnegie
64:02
[Music]
64:07
[Applause]
Why Did 72% of Israelis Want Attack on Gaza to Continue?
Shir Hever, a political economist who grew up in Israel, talks about the extreme right-wing radicalization of most of the Israeli Jewish population.
Jake Tapper’s Israel Coverage Is A JOKE
The premise of Jake Tapper’s question to Rep. Pramila Jayapal is dead wrong according to just about every other news outlet. Ana Kasparian discusses on The Young Turks. Watch LIVE weekdays 6-8 pm ET. http://youtube.com/tyt/live
The Disintegration of Israeli Politics
SHOW LESS
Israeli Court Rebukes Prime Minister’s Son Over Harassing Protest Leaders
Yair Netanyahu tweeted the addresses and phone numbers of three men who led protests against his father’s administration. All three said they later received death threats.
An Israeli court on Sunday ordered Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s older son to stop harassing three people helping to lead protests against his father’s administration after he tweeted out their home addresses and cellphone numbers.
Judge Dorit Feinstein of the Jerusalem Magistrates Court also ordered Yair Netanyahu, to delete the tweet, which called on his more than 88,000 followers to demonstrate in front of the homes of the protest leaders.
“I instruct him to refrain for the next six months from harassing the petitioners in every shape, way and form,” Judge Feinstein wrote in her decision.
The ruling came a day after large crowds of protesters across the country demanded Mr. Netanyahu’s ouster, criticizing his handling of the economic and health problems stemming from the coronavirus and arguing that he should not be permitted to serve as prime minister while under indictment on corruption charges.
The judge said in her decision that she was concerned the prime minister’s son would continue to harass the petitioners and infringe on their privacy, adding that he did not rebuke calls for violence that were posted in response to his tweet.
One of the protest leaders, Yitzhak Ben Gonen, who represented himself and the two other petitioners, said that Yair Netanyahu’s tweet prompted incessant phone calls, and that each of the three received death threats from callers.
“We are very happy about this legal victory, but the threats keep coming,” said Mr. Ben Gonen, who is a member of A New Contract, an anti-Netanyahu group popularly known as “Crime Minister.” The group says Mr. Netanyahu should not be able to serve as prime minister while on trial for bribery, fraud and breach of trust. The trial got underway in May, and is still in its initial stages.
Later Sunday, the younger Mr. Netanyahu deleted the tweet, but in a series of other social media posts, he strongly criticized the court’s ruling, calling it Kafkaesque.
He also contended that courts in Israel would one day ban Israelis from voting for his father’s Likud party and order all those on the political right placed in “re-education camps.”
“For a long time, Israel hasn’t been a democratic state,” he wrote in another post, remarking that a petitioner, Haim Shadmi, had been recorded speaking about hurling a firebomb at the prime minister’s official residence but that Mr. Shadmi was still permitted to protest near it. “There’s a law for right-wingers and another law for left-wingers,” the Facebook post said.
Yair Netanyahu, 29, is a fierce defender of his father and has a history of stoking controversy through his social media posts, some of which even the prime minister has condemned.
In December 2018, the son wrote on Facebook that he wished the deaths of two Israeli soldiers killed by a Palestinian gunman in the West Bank would be “avenged,” adding, “There will never be peace with the monsters in human form known since 1964 as ‘Palestinians.’” In a separate post at the time, he wrote that he would prefer an Israel without Muslim residents.
Facebook removed those posts following a flurry of complaints. It said they included hate speech and violated its community standards.
In February, Yair Netanyahu posted on Twitter a picture of a young Israeli, Dana Cassidy, who had been photographed earlier with Benny Gantz, the leader of the Blue and White party. He also posted unsubstantiated accusations that Mr. Gantz engaged in extramarital affairs.
The posts prompted some of the son’s followers to spread unfounded rumors that Ms. Cassidy and Mr. Gantz were having an affair.
Mr. Gantz has repeatedly clashed with the prime minister even though they are now coalition partners.
And in a tweet in May, the prime minister’s son questioned how Dana Weiss, a well-known Israeli journalist, got her job at Channel 12, a major Israeli television outlet. That tweet led some of Yair Netanyahu’s followers to make unsubstantiated allegations that Ms. Weiss had sexual relations with her bosses to get her position.
The son apologized for that tweet — after Ms. Weiss and Channel 12 threatened to file a lawsuit against him.
Mr. Ben Gonen, the lawyer representing his fellow protest leaders, said he sensed that the protests were gaining momentum. “We see young people, who are very angry about the situation in Israel and determined to change it,” he said. “It’s too early to determine if we will change everything, but I feel that something important and new is happening.”
Benjamin Netanyahu Is Indicted on Criminal Charges, and His Defiance Puts Israel’s Democracy at Risk
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s defiant response to the three indictments finally brought against him, on Thursday, would, under any circumstances, constitute a crisis for the rule of law in Israel. But Netanyahu’s defiance comes as the climax of a larger crisis for Israel’s democracy, which has been building at least since Netanyahu’s reëlection, in 2015. It places the country’s divided people on unknown and dangerous terrain. The indictments—for bribery, fraud, and breach of trust—are, Netanyahu insists, an attempted “coup” against him, conducted by the police, the state prosecutor’s office, and other judicial authorities—his version of the Trumpian claim that a “deep state” is attempting to overturn the will of the electorate. He seems intent on conducting a preëmptive countercoup using the office of Prime Minister, which he currently occupies only as the head of a transitional government, to appoint potential allies to key government positions, conduct escalatory military operations, collude with an increasingly desperate Donald Trump, and rally his followers against Israeli Arabs, whose parties he tars with the vague charge of “supporting terrorism.” Two close elections this year have not returned Netanyahu to the office, but they have not dislodged him either.
By law, an Israeli minister indicted for a criminal offense is required to resign. By precedent, a Prime Minister must: two already have, and not for crimes committed while in office. Yet Netanyahu seems determined not to relinquish power. “My sense of justice burns within me,” he said on Thursday evening, in a speech that was unprecedented in its pathos and its attacks on state prosecutors, including the Attorney General, Avichai Mandelblit, who had announced the indictments. “I cannot believe that the country I fought for and was wounded for, that I’ve brought to such achievements,” he said, will allow “this kind of tainted justice.” For the rule of law to prevail, he added, “we have to do one thing: to finally investigate the investigators,” which would entail the appointment of an “outside” commission of inquiry into the prosecution’s methods, as if the Attorney General, whom Netanyahu himself appointed, were somehow part of a secret conspiracy against him.
Yohanan Plesner, the director of the Israel Democracy Institute, has called for Netanyahu to resign, saying, “The head of government serving in office under the shadow of indictment harms the public’s trust in the country’s institutions and Israel’s character as a Jewish and democratic state.” The danger, though, is that the defenses of a “Jewish” state, for which Netanyahu claims to be indispensable, and those of a “democratic” state, which presume laws promoting individual sovereignty and equality, are not comfortably conjoined in a country where theocratic power and occupation have been increasingly normalized, at least since 1967. And it is especially difficult to see how surviving leaders of Netanyahu’s Likud Party will see democratic norms as paramount when their political positions depend on not seeing them. Netanyahu’s Justice Minister, Amir Ohana, said that he is “completely confident that the test of history” will vindicate Netanyahu’s remaining in office. The Tourism Minister, Yariv Levin—an attorney and a former deputy head of the Israel Bar Association—defended Netanyahu’s claim that the investigations were “tainted.”
Just twenty-four hours before Mandelblit announced the indictments, Benny Gantz, whose Blue and White Party won a plurality in Israel’s September election, informed President Reuven Rivlin that he had failed to form a governing coalition, which would have made him the next Prime Minister. Gantz blamed his failure primarily on Netanyahu’s determination to escape prosecution. Urged on by Avigdor Lieberman—the leader of the secular, right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu (“Israel, Our Home”) party, who holds the balance of power in the Knesset—Gantz had tried to form a “liberal, national-unity coalition” with Likud. This, Lieberman said, would be a center-right government without either religious “messianic” parties or Arab ones (a slight to Arab leaders, who mainly argue for democratic norms, not Arab-nationalist excesses). Gantz seemed ready to accede to Rivlin’s formula that Netanyahu should be Prime Minister first in such a unity government—with the proviso, to be legally guaranteed, that Gantz would become the acting Prime Minister should Netanyahu be indicted and forced to take a “leave of absence” to defend himself in court.
Netanyahu rejected even this formula, insisting that the Haredi and national-Orthodox parties should join him in a coalition—presumably in exchange for securing Netanyahu’s immunity from prosecution—and that Netanyahu should go first as Prime Minister. Neither condition was acceptable to Blue and White. Frustrated, Gantz quietly floated the idea of founding a minority government resting on the support—actually, the agreed parliamentary abstentions—of the Joint List, composed of parties representing Israel’s Arab citizens. Netanyahu declared, “If a minority government like this is formed, they will celebrate in Tehran, Ramallah, and Gaza the way they celebrate after every terror attack. This would be a historic national terror attack on the State of Israel.”
Lieberman, a nationalist bigot, didn’t need Netanyahu’s demagogy to scotch any such government; key members of Gantz’s own party who were once associated with Netanyahu threatened to sink the idea of a government requiring Arab support. These are not simply tactical moves by sly politicians; they testify to an atmosphere in which an embattled Netanyahu seems certain that he would have the backing of the majority to subordinate liberal democratic institutions. He thus seems, in his own way, to join the ranks of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in Turkey, and Viktor Orbán, in Hungary. The attacks on Israeli Arabs are telltale.
Gantz’s response to Netanyahu’s “investigate the investigators” speech was immediate. The country is not “undergoing a government coup,” he said, but rather “an entrenchment.” Yet, as a former Army chief of staff who conducted the 2014 war in Gaza under Netanyahu, Gantz could not fully lay out how brazen Netanyahu’s acts of entrenchment have been. On November 8th, while Gantz was trying to reach a political agreement with the Joint List, Netanyahu appointed the ultra-rightist Naftali Bennett as Defense Minister, reportedly admitting to Likud ministers that inviting his younger rival into the transitional cabinet was a political maneuver, meant to keep his bloc of rightist and Orthodox allies from bolting. Then, on November 12th, Israeli air strikes in Gaza killed Baha Abu al-Ata, a commander of Islamic Jihad, which is backed by Iran.
The Ata assassination was predictably followed by escalating exchanges of fire between Islamic Jihad and Israeli forces, along with new exchanges between Israel and Iranian-backed Syrian forces, culminating in Israeli air strikes on dozens of Iranian and Syrian military targets in Syria, which killed as many as twenty Iranians. Michael Oren, the former Israeli Ambassador to Washington, wrote in The Atlantic that, should war break out in Israel’s north, the country could be hit by as many as four thousand missiles a day. No one should doubt the mounting Iranian threat in Syria. But no one should doubt, either, how convenient the timing of the assassination was for Netanyahu. His and Bennett’s decision to kill Ata came just as Gantz was trying to form a government, arguably, a coincidence: Ata was, Netanyahu said, “a ticking bomb.” Inarguably, however, the ticking must have seemed louder to Netanyahu just as Gantz entertained the idea of coöperating with Israeli-Arab political leaders, many of whom have routinely condemned Israeli military actions in Gaza.
Netanyahu’s remaining in office would mean continued concessions from the Trump Administration, which is apparently eager to show itself a faithful ally to pro-Israel forces in America, and is willing to accommodate Netanyahu with escalating shows of devotion to his rightist base. On November 18th, before Gantz gave up trying to form a government, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the State Department will no longer abide by its 1978 legal opinion that Jewish settlements in the West Bank are illegal. “The establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not, per se, inconsistent with international law,” he said. The United States has always accepted the argument that the settlements violate the Geneva Conventions and are, in any case, an obstacle to peace. Pompeo, increasingly embroiled in Trump’s impeachment hearings, seemed more concerned with handing Netanyahu a vote of confidence, in spite of the Prime Minister’s own legal woes.
There are ways out of this crisis, though it’s hard to see how any of them will be taken unless Israeli democrats can mobilize public opinion, which remains sharply divided. A recent poll revealed that slightly fewer than half of respondents think Netanyahu should resign because of the charges pending against him. That’s more than the proportion opposed to or ambivalent about a resignation. The country’s political divide is, in part, geographic. Anti-Netanyahu forces are concentrated in affluent Tel Aviv and along the Mediterranean coast, and pro-Netanyahu forces are focussed in poorer areas—Jerusalem, the settlements, and peripheral towns—and resent the coastal élites about as much as they revere Netanyahu.
The immediate question is how senior Likud leaders will respond. The former Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar has called for a leadership primary and announced that he would run. But others, still cowed by Netanyahu, or just afraid of alienating the increasingly populist rank and file when a primary eventually does come, have argued against any leadership contest now. There seems little doubt that Netanyahu could win a preëmption of a primary from the party’s thirty-seven-hundred-person Central Committee. Earlier this week, he and Haim Katz, the Central Committee’s chair, said that they will advance a joint proposal to cancel a primary in the event of a third general election.
Reports have circulated that Netanyahu would resign in exchange for a Presidential pardon. But this seems an underestimation of the crisis he has precipitated. No one knows what might happen if Netanyahu remains the head of Likud and wins a new election, and the President, reinforced by the courts, refuses to grant an indicted member of Knesset the mandate to form a government. Nor is it known what might happen if another election produces a deadlock or a Blue and White coalition with the Joint List, and Netanyahu supporters take to the streets. The good news, perhaps, is that Tel Aviv’s business leaders and Israel’s police and security establishment—now identified with Blue and White—will also have their say.
Given the superficial similarities—the nationalist demagogy, the legal investigations, the defiance, the incumbent party’s flocking behavior—the temptation to draw parallels between the democratic tests in Netanyahu’s Israel and Trump’s America may prove irresistible. But America’s democratic institutions are far more numerous, established, and dispersed than Israel’s; America’s constitution is more comprehensive than Israel’s Basic Laws, its secular standards more stipulated, its media more independent, and its enemies much farther away. What can’t happen here, as Sinclair Lewis ironically put it, can, of course, happen anywhere, but it’s more likely to happen where institutional resistance is demonstrably more fragile. As ideals, “Jewish” and “democratic” were always vaguely in tension. Netanyahu’s gambit to stay out of court risks turning these into rallying points for confrontation.
How White Evangelicals Sold Their Soul to Donald Trump To Bring About Armageddon
Frank Schaeffer, former Evangelical explains how white evangelicals in the United States put faith before country, before human rights, in making a “Devil’s Bargain” to support Donald Trump despite his less than Christian actions, for a handful of policy and power goals, namely moving the United States embassy into deputed Jerusalem, all of this to bring about the end of days foretold in the book of Revelations, Armageddon!