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Ep. 207 – Become the Anti-Fascist Boogeyman That Keeps Them Up at Night w/ Charles McBryde
304 Plays2 months ago
This week we’re pleased as heck to welcome back activist, documentarian, and internet provocateur Charles McBryde! Since we last spoke, Charles has been working diligently on a documentary about the plight of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (better known as UNRWA). Back in March of this year, the US and several other nations cut funding for the organization after Israel accused 12 UNWRA staffers of taking part in the October 7 Hamas attacks. The organization plays a critical role in caring for around 7 million Palestinians living throughout the region. They provide humanitarian aid, healthcare services, education, job opportunities, etc. to an extremely vulnerable group of people, but the loss of funding has crippled UNRWA. Although several nations have lifted the funding ban, the US will not have the opportunity to change its stance until March of 2025. Charles and his team are working hard to complete their documentary titled “Lifeline to Palestine” in part or in full before that time, and they could use our help! Go to https://ko-fi.com/charlesmcbryde/goal?g=5to donate to the effort, and visit https://linktr.ee/CharlesMcBrydefor links to all of Charles’ pages, including his Substack: Refuse Dystopia!
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Transcript
Provocative Solutions to Racism
00:00:00
Speaker
That was like Anthony Bourdain's thing, right? He basically just said like, we're gonna have to fuck our way out of racism because there's there's there' not another way. Like we we need to basically, yeah like i wish I wish the whole grace great replacement thing was true. And that like like what the right wing believes about, you know, secret cabal of globalists, i.e. you know, Jews are like forcing migrations from minorities into country. It's like that would actually Great solution. Like if if everyone was just a nice shade of caramel after about a hundred years, maybe we'd like stop having race wars. But it turns out it's just wage slavery. yeah
00:00:42
Speaker
<unk> um not that gotten dry
00:01:06
Speaker
Hello and welcome to another episode of Grown Up Christian.
Host Introductions
00:01:09
Speaker
I'm Casey. I'm Sam. I'm Charles. And we are joined. Yes, we are joined once again by our buddy Charles. Charles McBride. Charles from the internet. Internet Charles. That's me. You remember him, he bit that toddler's finger. I did, yeah. I met Donald Trump in a hotel in New York back in the 90s.
00:01:30
Speaker
Oh, yeah you're like the, uh, the Trump equivalent of that, uh, that guy that Tucker Carlson had on claims he slept with Obama. and i'm like god that's right like my My family, they left out of town. I was in New York. I got lost in these guys were coming after me donald problem walked up to me in a hotel. It doesn't mean I endorse him.
00:01:56
Speaker
Dude, he's i the mad he's having his comeback era. Jeez, man. will Yeah, he that's one way of putting it. Is it one way?
Trump's Public Engagement
00:02:06
Speaker
No, he did this whole tour of ah you go and you watch Home Alone with him.
00:02:13
Speaker
and like ah a seated room and then he really yeah i was like a package can you imagine like having to watch a movie with trump he's just pausing it every three seconds i built that i'm talking about you know i'm talking about mccullie kulkin right yeah yeah well i was too
00:02:31
Speaker
I was not on the same page. I was I was getting lost in the the conversational direction there. But yeah, and he's got some ah I feel like I saw him announce some other shit in the future. I i it's nice to see him ah no longer living. It's like his brother was living in his shadow. And then now he's living in his brother's shadow. And now they get to share the light together. And I think that's beautiful.
Humorous Comparisons and Costumes
00:02:56
Speaker
Yeah. you know that wouldn' That doppelganger always kind of pisses me off because when people say I look like Macaulay Culkin, I'm like, it either means I looked like a nine-year-old or like a coked out 36-year-old. It's not a compliment either way. They're like, no, but you look like you look like a version of him if he didn't drug. But yeah, your only reference point is the one that did do drug. When I was in college, people told me I looked like Sid the Sloth from Ice Age, so you could have that instead.
00:03:23
Speaker
Well, I have to say that God, I can't I'm blanking on his name now. But the minute I saw that the the second attempted shooter in Mar-a-Lago, I was like, that could be Charles's dad, dude. I dressed as that guy for Halloween.
00:03:43
Speaker
You did. yeah I was like, what's a low effort costume that I could do? And so I went as I went as second Trump shooter. I went as Ken because, you know, in L.A. Halloween is like nine nights and you have to have different costumes. I saw your Ken one. I saw that. Yeah, it was Ken. And I was also an Israeli soldier from the diaper division. So I was just like I had like I wore all my green kit with like my thing And I put where there's, you know, there's like goofy netting on the top of their helmets. I like put that on mine. And I just had like a huge adult diaper on. I had a pacifier hanging off of my, uh, my armor. ah That one would have been a great one to wear to like Barry Weiss's Hawaiian or a Halloween party.
00:04:26
Speaker
Yeah, that that one went over real well in Silver Lake and less well in Brentwood. I'll tell you that but the craziest one is I saw this going back to the dune conversation. I was in Silver Lake and I saw this girl and she had like perfectly she was Lady Jessica from dune and she perfectly had the tattoos across her
Dune Fandom and Reading Habits
00:04:45
Speaker
face.
00:04:45
Speaker
how on earth did you do that? And she said, I literally had a tattoo artist tattoo these on my face for like a temporary tattoo. I'm like, how long are they going to be there? So like a month. So that was some dedication. Yeah. I thought you were going to say she like full blown went into it and actually got the tattoos done. I've been wild man. That'd be a super fan moment.
00:05:07
Speaker
it's I have to admit, there are some people out there who are bigger Dune fans than I am. Hell, I don't even have like, I was goingnna i was thinking about doing Paul Atreides, but then I don't like and didn't want to spend a bunch of time and money making a real costume, and all the ones you can buy online are kind of cheap. so i have A legit still suit would be sweet. Yeah, it would be. Plus, I already literally am Paul Atreides, so I don't need to. I agree. yeah yeah He's actually me.
00:05:34
Speaker
i like god Happy birthday Ryan Gosling, November 12th. That's today. Oh, happy birthday, Ryan. I do love Ryan Gosling, actually. American sweetheart. I feel like ah on Dune, so I just finished ah April and I just finished Dune. they we there's a we we did the We do audiobooks because we're both morons that can't read. No, I'm the same way, man. The ADHD is too bad. I can't i can't read a physical book anymore.
00:06:03
Speaker
but Even the audio book is so good though. Like it was so well voice acted and stuff I mean, I was really impressed with it and they're the one that has the princess erelon readings where it's like in the year 1090s and then yeah a little twinkle sound every time she comes on My father by the princess erelon Do they have different actors like for different voices or is it just from the same reader? I but it's not like, a there's, I've listened to some like, do I, last summer I, so I didn't read any books in school. So I've never read like any classic literature whatsoever. So like occasionally I'm like, boy, that seems like a smart guy thing to do is try to read a book. So I read like Grapes of Wrath and or I listened to it and the the voice acting was like grading. It was so hard to get through.
00:06:56
Speaker
Yeah, that's tough. It's hit and miss. Some of them are great. Some of them aren't. I don't know um that the dark tower series, like the audio books, like there's two different guys who read it both fine. One of them is better than the other. But then like the wind through the keyhole, which is like the one book that he wrote after the fact that kind of takes place in the middle. Stephen King narrated himself. Oh, God. It's tough. That's never good.
00:07:23
Speaker
i I certainly couldn't do it now that like I've seen too much of his like Twitter persona like that really kind of ruined Dark Tower for me. It's so funny like how you can just how quickly you can fall out of love with an author when they decide to narrate their own work you're just like oh man.
00:07:39
Speaker
That's not i've even like when I when I read doing I'm like, this is freaking amazing You watch you watch like an interview of Frank Herbert and he's just this like bumpy little guy He's like shits on George Lucas and like yap. I mean, I guess it's kind of odd brand but I don't know Cormac McCarthy to Yeah, I haven't listened to an audiobook in a really long time. I just started listening to I've listened to one and then I started the sequel to ah it's like this book series. But the last time I listened to a book was in college ah because I was like I was making my trip a trip down to Virginia and it was um
00:08:21
Speaker
Of course, I'm not going to remember it now. ah Lovely Bones. ah yeah That was the first time. and said I mean, that's. You just admitted on a podcast and the last time you listened to a book as the Lovely Bones and you were in college. Before right now. No, the last time I did an audio book. The one he's doing now is one of those wine mom werewolf sex books.
00:08:40
Speaker
Yes. It's it's wewol ah werewolf fan fiction. It is horny. no But i the I could barely pay attention to it. like i i It was super hard for me to focus on while driving, try to focus on a book. like i would just My thoughts would drift and then I'd go back in and then I'd drift. And it might be because I wasn't overly entertained by it and I was just doing it for school. but um after all this time I ventured back into audiobooks for the first time like last month and my god I love it it's so much better I can actually focus like while reading I can legit get into I mean while driving I can like really really focus and of course once I'm in traffic and I have to look around I have to pause everything I can't I can't do a lot at the same time anymore yeah
00:09:31
Speaker
Uh, it's been a, I'm like, this is crazy. I forgot what it's like to like, uh, I haven't, cause I didn't even read novels. I haven't read a novel since Harry Potter, really. Uh, which whenever people can, uh, say what they want about supporting that at this point. But I really like, I would read just fiction, uh, nonfiction and I got bored with that. And it's nice to like, just kind of get into a story again. Yeah.
00:09:58
Speaker
Yeah, I definitely like, I didn't read for a while after college just because like as a double major history and religious studies major with a minor philosophy I was just reading hundreds of pages a day and I was exhausted so like for two years I probably out of college I like didn't read, I just I might occasionally listen to an audiobook or something, but for the most part, I just wasn't like i just wasn't reading for fun. um And then during COVID, I picked it back up in earnest and i you started using Goodreads to track everything I was reading.
00:10:29
Speaker
Cause I would take notes on books and never go back to them and everything. So now I take all of my notes, like my favorite quotes and everything. I logged them in my Goodreads it allows you to do that. And then I can go back and be like, Oh, I read this book four years ago. You can compete in challenges with your friends. So Goodreads is like, it's a terrible app, but like the concept is great. And it's really fun to have an app like that. It's kind of like letterbox, but you can compete with your friends and everything. And then my sister just started demolishing me on the reading challenges and I like lost the faith. And so.
00:10:55
Speaker
I thought it was really, I read 60 books in 2020 and I was like really impressed myself and she's like, I just yeah read 102 and I'm like, my God. And then like the next year she's like, how do that's like three a day. Like, what do you say? ah That's as soon as you're telling me the amount of books you read is over how many weeks there are in a year. I think that's not even possible. I don't even believe you. You're lying to me right now, Charles. You skimmed 60 books.
00:11:19
Speaker
No, she was she admitted at one point, she was like, I am reading some like shorter ones. But generally, she just has like a voracious appetite for for reading. And I've noticed it because like, all the times we're like, other members of my family will like, we'll waste time these like five 10 minute periods where you're in between things. She's just there, boom, open book reading really quickly. I don't think she has any speed reading or anything. I think she just knows how to like redeem the time well, which is really big for reading, finding little moments.
00:11:46
Speaker
My wife is like that. She can just, I mean, she really could sit and read the majority of a book and in a day when she's super into it. And I can't. I'm a very slow reader. I'm a very distracted reader. She's, black I mean, a lot of it's practice too, right? Like if you, when you read as few books as I do, it's hard to stay focused. If you displace like the time that you're spending like scrolling on your phone, you know, with yeah looking at a book, I mean, you probably get a ton done.
00:12:14
Speaker
Well, that's why I like the audio books is because I feel like it engages my mind and I can do something with my hands, like load dishes or fold laundry or drive. And it's like, ah, I'm doing two things at once. And my ADHD brain is happy because it like thinks it's multitasking. Um, then it's actually the leaves on your ficus tree. Yeah, yeah I need to actually do that. but like gear is Is resilient, but definitely needs some, some love.
Themes and Politics of Dune
00:12:39
Speaker
I got a fiddle leaf in my office and he goes through periods of just like throwing all those leaves on the ground. Yeah. I mean, honestly, man, with my travel schedule, it's a miracle that any of these plants in here are alive, but somehow they are. So, so i'm okay ah not not to just make this a Dune podcast, but I feel like, and maybe I'm, I feel like I'm i'm not far enough into Dune to really like know for sure what i'm what what i how to interpret what's happening. But it feels to me like we some subtext to this is like Paul Atreides, his somewhat like involuntary and inevitable transformation from like, you know, apostolic
00:13:30
Speaker
leader of of humans towards freedom toward you know to, I don't know, some sort of warring conqueror. They keep talking about like the and like the the looming jihad that he's trying to subvert, but he can't really do that. you know like It seems like all all all avenues kind of lead him directly towards that big war. I mean, am I am i off base? or Here's the thing which you should know about Dune. The point of Dune is that Paul Atreides is good and the things that he does are good. That's all you need to know. You sound like my dad talking about Trump.
00:14:06
Speaker
that this This leads it. Yeah, go go ahead. Go ahead. what that that's that whole ah I don't know if you remember when I spent too many too much time like browsing Reddit in 2016, but whenever people talked about God Emperor,
00:14:20
Speaker
They were talking, well, they were talking, ah I guess probably about Warhammer 40K, but that's it's originally a reference to Dune, which is the fourth book. There's a character called the God Emperor of Dune. and um And so I thought that was kind of interesting. There was like, people have been making like Trump Dune comparisons for a while, and now they're making like Baron Dune references, which I find particularly funny. Just a big fat floating douche.
Leftist Perspectives on Gun Ownership
00:14:47
Speaker
no i mean barry trump as like i say bear oh oh yeah I know it's hard to remember that they actually name their child Baron, I know Okay,
00:15:02
Speaker
okay so Yeah, I think kind of connected in a way to ah to Paul being you know, just what he does is good ah I saw a well or Somebody posted a comment in in your on one of your posts on like threads or something, and he was like, an anti-fascist without a gun is just an internet troll.
00:15:29
Speaker
Yeah. I love that. Where you at on that? I agree, old-heartedly.
00:15:40
Speaker
See, we're going to get along because I am slowly, I'm like soft pedaling to this audience who leans left and is typically, yeah, oh, Twitter Libby, you know? Yeah. I'm trying to soft sell them the idea that like, hey, if all this is true, you guys probably ought to buy AR 15s.
00:15:57
Speaker
Yeah, I know. Suddenly, look at us. Suddenly, the good guy with a gun idea sounds more plausible. Yeah. Suddenly, toxic, cishet, leftist males are a much needed demographic to pull any men away from the Trump camp.
00:16:15
Speaker
thanks
00:16:18
Speaker
I'm ready for the impending war. I know that. Yeah. It is very disarming towards people on the right if they find out like if they like if there's any level of like immediate disrespect because you're on the left ah somewhere on that spectrum, if they find out that you don't have a problem with gun ownership, they're just like, oh well, it's not that bad. Like that's the way in the fastest way in a real communist. and I'm like showing them the George Orwell quote about like you know, Karl Marx quotes about why you got to arm the masses. No, I try, it whenever I have that conversation, I try and make it like really scary for them. Like, you know, oh, yeah, no, like huge gun over everything like that. And you we're talking like a little bit of like, yeah, I just don't trust the government and all that sort of stuff. And or the capitalist class and like, what? Like, yeah, I think like, you know, we should like give Trent trans women guns and make sure that they're armed and can fit and he's like, wait wait, hang on.
00:17:14
Speaker
i love that ah It is funny it is funny to like it would be hilarious to listen to like everything I mean We're on a lazy Susan right now. Everybody's topsy-turvy It would be hilarious to listen to like right-wing pundits like argue with left-leaning people about like you know
00:17:34
Speaker
What are you going to do? Oh, you've got an AR-15? Great. Well, you know, the US government has drones and bombs and stuff. What are you going to do? You know, that would be, that would be the the top. I'll know we're there when that happens. When the Republicans become pro-gun control to take away. But that's literally where gun control came from in this country. It was Reagan in the 1980s trying to distance.
00:17:59
Speaker
It's gonna be a bunch of trans anarchists with like 3d printed ar-15 We are not a nation where you can randomly print a firearm as the antarchist Throws a grenade at old ladybugs Oh my God.
Political Ideologies and Changes
00:18:15
Speaker
Chappelle had a bit about that as much as I know that he's a hard person to sell these days. But just about how that it's like, oh, you want gun control, then all we have to do just if every black person goes out and buys a gun, you'll get gun control. Like, yeah, real quick. If you want that quickly, just yeah arm, arm minorities. Yep. Yeah. Well, we'll see. I mean, listen, like his thing, this is a great opportunity for a person like me who very much
00:18:42
Speaker
I mean, it's not like I didn't anticipate it, but I have been on the outside of the acceptable range of political discourse for about three and a half to four years. And I really didn't think things were going to go my way. But like, Jesus Christ, between like war in Ukraine, genocide in Gaza, complete collapse of the Democratic Party, suddenly like a shit-furd anarchist who tweets about Dune and guns and overthrow the capitalist class and makes memes about anarchy and gardening is suddenly like, people are looking for alternatives right now. And there's a lot of people who
00:19:28
Speaker
You know, I think leftists like to like dunk on soy libs a lot and be like, yeah, well, they're just going to end up joining the fascists and persecuting minorities. I'm not so confident that they are. I think a lot of them were hanging on to the Democratic Party and they were constantly compromising their values in order to do so, but they didn't really want to compromise their values.
00:19:47
Speaker
They just saw the Democratic Party as the only effective vehicle for social change. And now I think they realize that's definitely not the case. So it no not for what, not in the next like 15 years, given what was lost. So I think you're going to see a liberal to leftist pipeline now for a lot of these people where they're going to actually you know There's gonna be some, there's so first of all, there's gonna start to be consequences again for like being a leftist, I think, um which I think is important because it cuts the wheat from the chaff and people are either gonna be like, it'll be like you know the white girls who's with the boyfriend Republicans who are like, well, actually, I don't think it's all that bad you know as people are getting marched into camps. I love that reference. the like
00:20:31
Speaker
yeah yeah like I know so many people like that. It's hilarious. Yeah, it's like the classic, like, well, you know, my boyfriend and I don't agree on politics. It's like, well, you clearly do because like you live in a subdivision together and, you know, you have the same, you're you're of the same economic class, right? And your refusal to talk about politics isn't of itself a political statement.
00:20:51
Speaker
um But they don't think like that. So anyway, a lot of those people are just going to become, you know, junior partners in fascism. But some of them are going to be like, no, actually, I kind of got radicalized by this whole thing. and I'm looking for alternatives. And suddenly I don't think Obama and Oprah and Kamala Harris represent the resistance. So yeah, needsa I feel like the yeah, I think we're all feeling that um I.
00:21:18
Speaker
but typically would align myself more with leftist thought ah but hoped and you know i was angry too like i it's like you everyone's voting through gritted teeth right we're all angry that like we've been forced into this situation we were all angry that we ran joe we were all angry that we didn't have a real primary we're all angry that they keep blaming us for everything.
Political Disillusionment and Environmental Activism
00:21:42
Speaker
like They blame their own fucking constituents constantly for everything. They're just like, yeah well, you know, you just need to do this because this is what you have to do in democracies at stake. And you go, no, in democracies at stake, you you don't you don't box out Bernie and make our vote worthless. like That's yeah what you don't do.
00:22:01
Speaker
um Well, it knocked out anyone. It didn't have to be Bernie. It didn't have to be Bernie, but we know they did knock him out. Yeah, there's nothing democratic about the Democratic National Committee or the Democratic National Convention. They coordinated Kamala Harris.
00:22:15
Speaker
Yeah, it was it's been brutal. And then, you know, watching her do 180s and say the things that she thinks she has to say and then go full conservative, ah go full right wing on border policies. Yeah. Two weeks before the election, try to talk about debt relief and legalizing marijuana. Like half of her career wasn't built on putting people in prison for life on marijuana charges. Like everyone knew she was like that. we Everyone knew this was all fucking bullshit.
00:22:44
Speaker
It was all pageantry and I would have thought like I would have preferred her of course I would have preferred to not have and Working in a two-party system to have not lost Literally every area of government including the Supreme Court to a significant degree coming up Yeah, where where it's like we're we're just in red territory for the next 20 years ah So to your point, like there has to something has to happen where people need to break like band together to figure out what does this path forward look like? And this is I mean, I think this is why I'm actually like weirdly positive about this outcome, because it basically what it proves is that um saving the climate, ah ensuring the safety of women and LGBTQ minorities,
00:23:35
Speaker
um Those are things that cannot be trusted with the the liberal elites. The Democratic Party is not a vehicle to ensure those things. So in so far, like if we save ourselves from climate change, it's very much going to depend on what people do outside the Democratic Party over the next 10 years. And I think a huge part of that is just like,
00:23:57
Speaker
making all these people really scared. like i mean I hate to say that, but and you know obviously, i people with guns is that what you mean I don't have the stomach for that. and I'm not no i'm not like um' not recommending stochastic terrorism. Please do not quote me on that.
00:24:12
Speaker
Um, but I do think that there's like a lack of on the left because we haven't, there's not really like a leftist environmentalism to replace the liberal environmentalism.
00:24:27
Speaker
that like A lot of times when you talk to leftists about, well, what do you think should should the environmental solutions be? And they'll talk about degrowth, which nobody, nobody and liberals aren't really talking about that. But they'll talk about you know kind of neoliberal climate goal aims, like the the Paris Climate Accords, like we got to rejoin this and everything.
00:24:46
Speaker
without admitting that like those those are all really partial solutions. um It's just that we thought that they were achievable through kind of the vehicle of the Democratic Party and these institutions that we trust. Now people understand, nope, if you want to save the world, you're going to have to start start like taking some radical actions. You're going to have to start shutting down highways, making it more inconvenient. These just stop oil people that everyone craps on. It's interesting that they ah you know They got in all the news for you know throwing paint at the Mona Lisa or Van Gogh or whatever these things, but they didn't get in trouble until they ah they went to a private airport and they started painting a bunch of private planes. That got them put in prison.
00:25:29
Speaker
And so, because that's a threat, right? If you come, if you like, if you if you let rich people know that they can't get away with this stuff, it's a threat. Like, you remember when that kid started tracking Elon Musk's jet? And he got the guy banned off of Twitter?
00:25:46
Speaker
um Oh, that was cool. Let's forget about that. That was really cool. Yeah, I mean like we just need to and and the thing is that liberals don't have a language for this. Leftists do. You know, leftists understand that the ballot box is is is one means of getting what you want, but it's not even the preferable one. And it's one that's specifically designed to limit your ability to change the system. So people are gonna have to start to think bigger, they're gonna have to start thinking about outside the law as well. That's the thing. We we talk about like this whole thing, like Trump's a felon, you know, everything like, well, there's, there's a lot of felons in the United States, and some of them probably don't deserve to be felons. And the law is not going to provide you kind of the the system for for making change in the world, because the law
00:26:29
Speaker
It's not a moral
Moral Compass and Social Justice
00:26:30
Speaker
compass. Yeah, it's not a moral compass. And it's predominantly set up to privilege things like corporations, white families, um you know, wealthy individuals, and people who adhere to the status quo. And yeah, so you can't help you can't hope to save You can't help to like enact real change through that system by saying, like well, they're breaking the law. Although, on the other hand, like I think a bunch of people are about to become originalist constitutionalists to fend off right wing power grabs, which is really interesting. It is a weird full circle movement.
00:27:06
Speaker
yeah No, okay, so I'm talking about people operating outside the law to accomplish things that might that it could require the to accomplish their goals. Hear me out because I haven't won a lot of people over with this yet. But I think you might be here for this um in Minecraft start its luck.
00:27:25
Speaker
but We're going to start with the billionaires. i I think it should just be open season on billionaires lives, like purge style, right? If a second you become a billionaire, and open season on your life. um We just all come to this unanimous agreement that you can be killed.
00:27:43
Speaker
And we will do nothing about it. We'll do nothing about it. It's ah so look, yeah, you got the money. You can hire your protection or you can figure out a way to just manage it so you don't. And maybe we lower the bar as time goes on. But I think billionaire is a good place to start. um it's just So it's like Purge night, but for billionaires, like, yeah, it's like, congratulations, which sucks out a royal. Sorry, Taylor. like i you know I was fine with Taylor, but she has a billionaire now, so my principles have to... like that's what would probably get my like that's That's where my wife and I have a problem. like We would get divorced over this. um Over Taylor's life? Yeah, over her. my I believe that based on that principle, like it's morally good to assassinate her at this point. and my
00:28:27
Speaker
She gives away enough money where like, look, just so give away enough money and figure that out. Do something with it. And now and like, just keep yourself below so ah your safety. I love that. That's I think that's a great place to start to rebuild America. And I'm wondering how you feel about that.
00:28:43
Speaker
Well, you might be upset to find out that I disagree and not just for legal reasons, um but but it's actually the part that, I mean, like, what happens if you if you knock off the CEO of a company? Well, there's a hierarchy. Another person takes their place. This thing is built all the way down. Our problem is not with people, it's with systems. Systems turn people, good people, into evil people.
00:29:05
Speaker
that or they turn neutral people into evil people. We need to be thinking about how do we dismantle things like the multinational corporation that's unaccountable to any legal or national entity. And like those are the things, you know, because I think and like there's this tendency and leftist is like, Oh, like guillotine jokes, it's time to bring out the guillotine. This is fun. And it's occasionally fun to engage in that kind of humor. But two important things. First of all,
00:29:29
Speaker
that completely negates the potential contribution of some people who are incredibly wealthy and influential and also see the flaws in this system that they have helped create. And I know that sounds like a very soy lib take, but I work in disaster relief you know for like my job. And the only reason that we were able to do what we do is essentially philanthropists who identify these problems and are willing to support them. Now, I don't think that anything should run off of that model. for free Yeah, yeah i'm I'm completely bankrolled by Sam Bankman Freed. from um But no, I think it's the thing is just that like, it's it's fun to indulge in infanities of violent revolution and overthrow, but that's not actually how we
Climate Crisis and Philanthropy
00:30:17
Speaker
get ourselves out of this. And the other thing about it is we literally have like five years to turn the climate around.
00:30:22
Speaker
And there's no way paying that for 15 years though. Yeah, we thought I feel like we're fucked We are like to a degree we are also like two prominent client scientists basically went on twitter this week and we're like we're fucked Yeah, ah but also like there the question there's always been a degree of fucking this to this whole thing and The degree to which massive amounts of people in the global south suffer For this ah or don't suffer for this it will highly be dependent on how swiftly we act in the coming years. Yeah, it's and the coast Yeah, the the brutal reality of that is that we cannot stop climate change without the input both financially and directionally of like the world's billionaire class. Take an example like Patagonia.
00:31:08
Speaker
um Or like like like for like think about like a rainforest preservation. you know like Jeff Bezos and a bunch of wealthy philanthropists like the guy who started Patagonia are responsible for buying up massive amounts of like untouched rainforest in South America and turning them into um national parks.
00:31:30
Speaker
and wildlife preserves and often handing them over to indigenous ownership and these are in places where the state is oppressing indigenous people and opening up those places for logging industries because of demand for for instance meat or soy and so like if you want to save the world in 10 years if you're okay with the world dying then yeah whatever knock off the billionaires and do our thing if you want to save the world then you're going to have to make a new and compelling case for them to be comrades in arms, even temporarily, to do these sorts of things. Because I just don't see a way to get out of that. And this is funny. like i yeah Everyone loves to purity test. This is why like we got to get over the purity test. We got to be willing to bring like liberals into the- Are you accusing me of purity
Coalitions and Political Alliances
00:32:12
Speaker
testing? Because I had a purity ring and I know I already passed.
00:32:16
Speaker
yeah i suppose Yeah, people always slap me on the back for my humanitarian work or whatever. I don't think a lot of people understand that for any humanitarian group to operate in Gaza, you have to do so with the explicit permission of the Israeli government.
00:32:31
Speaker
you have to be close enough to them in order to get into the country, to operate, have all their permissions, and their paperwork, so they theoretically don't drone strike the fuck out of you. And in order to get any relief into Gaza, you have to be willing to do that. And the result of that is self-centering and being neutral. And you can look at that and say, oh, what pitiful stuff, you should just like go all in on the revolution. But the the the truth is that those people aren't going to get that aid. Otherwise, it's not going to go in there. So I think a lot of people who don't have a lot of real world experience and think that leftism is something that happens on Twitter or on podcasts don't understand what it takes to like make change in the world.
00:33:12
Speaker
Like Fred Hampton was literally willing to create a rainbow coalition with actual white supremacists just to like, just to, just to resist the powers that be in Chicago and the FBI. And I think they left us, they just don't have any stomach for that. Like you have this a slight disagreement with someone. It's like, Oh, this person, yeah nothing canceled, canceled on Twitter. Why are you collabing with this person? It's super problematic that you had this person on your podcast, you know, whatever.
00:33:37
Speaker
is it's so Yeah, I think this this is like that my biggest frustration with like so much of the like, you know, just like mourning that's going on over over Trump and stuff. It's so self-centered. And I think at the at the core, like these purity tests,
00:33:58
Speaker
there it's really it's not about you it's about me like it's about me being better than you me recognizing your fault and me being credited for pointing out that fault and rooting you out you know yeah and i think it's getting better to people that's right yeah And and yeah like they've chased away so many like so many people who could have been like great allies yeah over the years. you you know and i I think I know everybody like has different opinions on Joe Rogan, but like dude, Joe Rogan was up for play. like He was a Bernie guy. No, he said in 2020, he says, I think I'm going to vote for Bernie, right? Yeah. they went yeah and And they castigated him for it. and then you know
00:34:41
Speaker
I mean, they've gone after him like so many times and like, you could think like some of those were legitimate and stuff, but like, what do you expect this guy to do at this point? Like, yeah he's he's been torn to shreds in the media like so many times and now you like, you're mad because he's not gonna get behind ka Kamala Harris of all people, like. yeah but And Joe Rogan is such a different case than Elon Musk. Elon Musk had like the most like, like the most,
00:35:09
Speaker
like Everyone anticipated the the way that Elon Musk went, right? He had the most predictable journey towards, like, assisting Trumpets fascism, where he's like, I'm gonna buy Twitter because of Wokeness. And it's like, we all know where this is going, dude. We all saw four years out that you're gonna be wearing a MAGA cap jumping on stage.
00:35:28
Speaker
while your yeah while your trans daughter just shreds you on Twitter. um and But Joe Rogan, less so. like Joe Rogan is just like a guy who like is curious and like likes m MMA and like believes weird things about science and vaccines. But those people, and honestly a lot of the like ah RFK enjoyers, were up for grabs for the last eight years. and they weren't um I'm not saying you have to affirm what they believe. I mean, I'm horrified about the idea of like RFK getting the DHS and we're go to we're all going to get fucking told. But legitimately, like these people were
00:36:06
Speaker
There was they make a moment where the Democratic Party could have won them back. And no, I don't think the solution is like leftist Trump, because first of all, I'm not 35 yet.
Populism and Electoral Dynamics
00:36:14
Speaker
um So I think we need to have a little bit more grit as a movement. like I think the aesthetic that John Federman brought with his campaign was a good aesthetic. He turned out to be like a cringe neoliberal Zionist. Yeah, it was like if an anvil fell out of the sky on his head. Yeah.
00:36:35
Speaker
Yeah, right. So he's not left Trump, right? But the aesthetic that he brought where he's just like, I'm a massive, brash, like union loving, you know, kind of Midwesterner dude, and I'm gonna... where Where's he from? that's what Pennsylvania, I guess. Pennsylvania, yeah. And it was like, okay, yeah, like that's that's a challenge, you know? And it was more of a meme with him because it turns out he's also like bought out by APAC and everything.
00:37:00
Speaker
Big time. But there's a lot of people, people who have lost trust in the Democratic Party. That is for certain, sure. yeah And a lot of people who thought that they were the vehicle are now going to see them as not a vehicle. And they're going to be looking around, not, I don't think that you're like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's who are already kind of tainted by like being woke, like being associated with woke.
00:37:23
Speaker
But people who just like, just like take no prisoners and pull no punches and come in and bring in a massive groundswell of popular support and say like, I'm against, I'm a populist, APAC's going to target me, the DNC is going to target me, the elites are after me.
00:37:39
Speaker
Uh, but here's what I believe i'm pro union i'm pro worker i'm standing up for the people and just like taking no prisoners on that sort of stuff instead of trying to play the party line And the question is can that strategy overwhelm funding because I i'm I mean looking at trump trump Kamala outspent trump almost three to one, right? ah Trump got all of his attention but based on earned media like And you can do that on the left too. Like money doesn't win elections. That's clear This was the biggest electoral defeat for democrats in 40 years It's incredible how badly they lost. Billion dollars, billion dollars. Sam, I don't know if you saw the the articles today about it, but I was thinking the whole time like, oh my God, Sam's going to be furious over this. but Did you see this stuff about like the the stuff come out about how the Harris campaign like spent money? like They spent six figures like on the ah call her daddy set.
00:38:33
Speaker
yeah I didn't see anything about how much they spent on that. And they paid like a bunch of celebrities for like endorsements and things like that. Or like, way you know, it's probably not that explicit on paper, but like, it paid Oprah like over a million dollars.
00:38:51
Speaker
That's so wild. Dude, one of the things that I feel like is so infuriating, and a good friend of mine and I have been talking about this for probably the past 12 years, is that, and you were alluding to this Charles, which is why um I'm thinking about it, is just how, like in in the left's inability to align themselves with people, like yeah, you had the RFK people.
00:39:13
Speaker
OK, yeah, here's our difference on vaccines. But let's talk about um housing rights or corporation, like how much control corporations have over X, Y and Z. They they the left, they can't they haven't been able to not eat their own for the past 12 years. I mean, or longer. I just it's that's how long I've been noticing it where you just like If you fall out of line with the left and then they just go, you're dead to us canceled. And I don't, I look, we know the whole cancel culture thing is ah a problematic phrase because the right is always like, they want to cancel us. You can't cancel us.
Cancel Culture and Discourse
00:39:55
Speaker
And the rights problem is they don't like people having negative opinions about the dumb shit they say, and they don't like accountability. They don't know the difference between accountability and canceling.
00:40:04
Speaker
but the left does cancel their own when they don't say the right things. So there is, like, that is ah that that is a problem that we are dealing with. And Casey and I have joked about it plenty of times, even since starring in this podcast, where it's just like, how, like when you, if you, is how how, like if you just,
00:40:23
Speaker
the idea of like having that fear in the back of your mind that if you if you joke about something that might be off topic there's no forgiveness there's no it's it's just have on a guest that's a that's a trump supporter and people lose their minds Yeah. Yeah. Which that one was wild. We barely entertained that. But we found this couple that we thought was comical ah in their love and support for Trump. And they did the weird shit ass music videos at their churches. It was hilarious to us. And we were just thought it was the funniest, goofiest fucking thing. So we invited them on. They're like, yeah. And you're platforming racist. Yeah. That's what we were told. Dude, that's what it was. You're platforming Nazis. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. We were told we were platforming Nazis.
00:41:10
Speaker
yeah And there's almost nobody that that said that but like yeah it happened and you know a couple of like a few people like publicly uh scourged us for it and it was silly but like ironically you're just like I don't get this man we're not totally completely argumentative people when we have guests on we let you know that's that's the podcast problem right that's why people get mad at Rogan they go you're gonna have these like And I get it like if you're having certain people on and you just talk fine. Yeah, like if you're gonna have the Someone running for president of the United States. You might want to ask a tough question or two and not just like Just glaze him and talk about m MMA for two hours, right? right like limit him The whole time right like there are a limit like nobody should have Nick Fuentes on a podcast
00:42:01
Speaker
and and And the reason is because Nick Fuentes espouses ideas that we have decided are like decidedly out of the appropriate range of political discourse, right? Anti-black racism, you know, great replacement there, like these sorts of things. He is a Nazi and he if if you platform him, you were platforming Nazi ideology.
00:42:24
Speaker
But for a lot of other people, like Joe Rogan's not a Nazi. Joe Rogan is um maybe accidentally a fascist. A lot of people are accidentally fascists. But I mean, I feel like you guys have had me on before to talk about the concept of fascism. Yeah. And I was calling these people fascists way before any Democrats were like willing to. Like Kamala Harris was sitting on the stage being like, yeah, Trump's a fascist. I got like i got really like People got really upset at me for saying that four years ago, because you like you're alienating voters over that. I'm actually trying to tell you guys what's going on and why you can't defeat this. It's because this is something that's happening not on an intellectual level. It's happening on a deeply like so like psychological level, and it's i mean like a deep like ah ah physical level. It's almost a physical gut response. right Mussolini said fascism is an affair of the gut, not the mind.
00:43:18
Speaker
These people don't care that Trump did felonies. They don't care that he went to prison. They really don't care that he committed sexual assault. What they care about is the feeling that he gets gives them when he says these people are you you are not doing well. And the reason is because of these people and I am going to handle it. He is like a he's like a vessel. Right. Carl Jung talked about the Rorschach test. That's what we were talking about last week. exactly Like Carl Jung, Carl Jung talked about Hitler is basically the yeah the manifestation of the German subconscious.
Fascism and Minority Voting Patterns
00:43:51
Speaker
And and that's exactly what what what what Trump is for America. He represents like all of our dark fantasies, right unlimited power and control, you know seemingly impossible success and luxury, you know ah the the ability to do whatever we want, whenever we want with women. If you're a man, deeply appeals to patriarchal sensibilities in the country, ah to be rich enough to tell people to fuck off,
00:44:14
Speaker
Like that's exactly what Trump is. And even if people don't agree with one or other policy, and even if that's not actually what Trump has done in his life, just the fact that he projects the idea of that. yeah yeah It affirms that subconscious drive that makes so many people into the idea of the American dream. And that's also why we're starting to see, and this has happened a few other times in history, but we're starting to see the formation of a post-racial fascism.
00:44:41
Speaker
And I've talked to some Trump supporters and they're like, well, how are we fascists? if like you were like We have more minority votes than everything. it's like hey First of all, if if you haven't noticed, Latinos can be pretty racist. um A lot of different people can be pretty racist, especially towards yeah other parts of like similar... like Just go to you know go to a Latin American country and ask them how they feel about other Latin American countries.
00:45:03
Speaker
And you will quickly realize that racism is not a white phenomenon. which That is a hard thing for, I think, the left to have a conversation about, too. I think that's where they've failed in some areas as well. Yeah. I think it's also like like it's a human impulse to draw boxes around groups of people. and like you know Whereas right now, like in our era, it's race is the is the number one box that we draw. like i mean other points in history, it's been religion, it's been a bunch of different things. And it's it just a human problem that we all kind of have issues with, you know? Yeah, when it's like, I mean, yeah, that's like, ah I think you like you go to South Sudan, right? And you talk to like, the Dinka and the Noor, who are two basically
00:45:52
Speaker
warring warring historically pastoralist people who have hated each other's guts for a really long time. If you ask a white Western European person, they'd be like, I can't tell the difference between, you're both like pastoralist, you're both black pastoralist African tribes who are in the same portion of geographical region of Africa. But you ask those people how they feel about each other and they're like, no, no, no, no, you don't understand. It's like the episode of the wild thorn berries. Do you guys see that one?
00:46:21
Speaker
Have it now. There's Eliza Thornberry. You can talk to animals. I don't know who members is 90s cartoon ah Nickelodeon. She goes her family. They do have and they have a like a Steve Irwin type show and Eliza Thornberry runs into a witch doctor. She can talk to animals and every episode is her engaging with different problems that the animals are having in the areas she's in. She comes across these two types of like some sort of like chimp where one has long tails on one side of the river on the other side of the river they have short tails and they hate each other they hate each other so much they won't stop fighting and she is like how are you gonna fight without armor and she breaks these coconuts or some shit and she makes armor and it hides their tails, and they realize at the end that they're all fighting each other because the only difference is the tail length. Eliza Thornberry knew how to solve the mock. And then her dad, the mom who has a nose and a pith helmet, shows up and kills them all. Yep, yep. It takes their natural resources. Brutal ending, yeah. I think that was how. So you have the CIA versus both monkeys, and then it's called the pathetic dictatorship. No, anyway, ah that episode comes out.
00:47:33
Speaker
That was like Anthony Bourdain's thing, right? He basically just said like we're gonna have to fuck our way out of racism because there's there is not another way like we we need to basically yeah like i wish I wish the whole grace great replacement thing was true and that like like what the right wing believes about you know secret kabbals of globalists, i.e. you know Jews, are like forcing migrations from minorities into country. like That would actually be a great solution. like if If everyone was just a nice shade of caramel after about 100 years, maybe we'd like stop having race wars.
00:48:09
Speaker
But it turns out it's just wage slavery. It was not that cut and dry.
00:48:23
Speaker
Anyway, we should talk more about race.
DNA Testing and Privacy Concerns
00:48:27
Speaker
yeah three white dudes on getting Anybody else been getting into phrenology lately? i Someone I know just did a 23andMe test and posted their results online.
00:48:39
Speaker
there you go. I did that. I didn't post it. um I don't do that because I'm afraid that ah the government's going to genetically sequence my DNA and create genetically specific bioweapons to take me out. So yeah, you just had Truman show yourself like Yeah.
00:48:55
Speaker
And I already told my family, I was like, whatever you guys do. Because when I was in DC, i I had a friend who was on the National Security Council. And he came back one day and was like, just whatever you do, don't ever take one of those DNA tests. And then I told my family, I was like, guys, whatever you do, don't take one of those DNA tests. And then like two weeks later, my dad's like, we're 3% Prussian. I'm like, God damn it.
00:49:16
Speaker
The only thing I remember about mine, I'm like almost completely Norwegian, but like I was in like the 99th percentile for like Neanderthal DNA. Really? Yeah. That checks out. I just got these big old knuckles, you know? Damn. You got that linebacker physionomy?
00:49:35
Speaker
but yeah Maybe as I get older, my forehead will just continue to protrude until hats are not an option anymore. Have you ever seen that meme where it's like the it's like the white like Bali influencer girl and she's like doing something shamanic and she's like, ancestors, please speak to me. And it's just a Neanderthal, and she's just like, ooga booga.
00:49:59
Speaker
And it changed her life.
00:50:05
Speaker
we've talked about this my world but Is there a worse is there a worse class of people than white people who like go to India and Just like appropriate like Eastern religion and culture.
Cultural Appropriation and Middle East Tensions
00:50:21
Speaker
No, there's no question They're the worst group good god thank page ah I Do have a okay, so Obviously since it's the last time we talked, I oh was maybe like spring or something when we talked last, I think, or I'm not even sure. Lots happened in the Middle East. um Where do you think this the offensive in Lebanon is going? And is Iran like a total paper tiger?
00:50:54
Speaker
um ah Those are two different questions, I think. I think i think Iran's most effective menace is its ability to fund groups like the Houthis and Hamas and Hezbollah. I don't think, and I feel like this has been relatively well demonstrated, it does not, I don't think it has either desire or the capability to go toe to toe with Israel.
00:51:18
Speaker
And that's why all of the accelerationism is on the Israeli side. I mean, every time Iran like shoots something, it's like they're like calling the State Department ahead of time and be like, hey, we're going to like throw a couple of missiles at like a random field in the Meghav desert. ah And then clearly, everyone's scrambled. I mean, also, but i mean like their entire their entire chain of command is shot through with like informants.
00:51:43
Speaker
Same with Hezbollah. There's no way you could have carried out something like that pager attack without knowing everything about those people. yeah there's i mean I was talking to a guy who would who would know about this, who was talking about how basically the IDF has created a grid system for everyone in Beirut where like they just assigned like a 25 by 25, I don't know how big it was, maybe a 100 meter grid to each of the persons and their their responsibility was to memorize every everyone and get to know everyone that came into that grid, whether it's like a house, their coffee shop, the people they were getting to know, oh all of their contacts, right? Because they have a total surveillance capability over Lebanon. Lebanon doesn't control its own skies. It's practically Israeli airspace. So they can just pop drones up all the time, study everything. So when they decided to take out Hezbollah, they basically just knocked the top off like
00:52:32
Speaker
practically the entire thing and then did the ground invasion. So they clearly could have done that for a while. They were just kind of holding back because Hezbollah needs to be a threat that justifies their military industrial complex. But no, I don't think Israel has any, every conflict Israel has ever been involved in, it has had overwhelming armaments advantage including the 1948 war and people don't realize that. the only The only army that could have potentially had a chance against Israel in 1948 was Jordan and they had already bowed out because of what is assumed to be a backroom deal between the king of Jordan and then David Ben-Gurion to essentially give him control of the West Bank if they would not engage with the other Arab forces and item.
00:53:15
Speaker
But no, Israel's always had the capability to body all of its neighbors. And the only people who've like handed their asses to them have been these militant groups like Hezbollah. um And the Israelis will and kind of are getting their asses handed to them in the south. like Israel knows it's not gonna be out of control Lebanon, man. I mean, those people hate them ah so much. Literally, the the Israeli, the Lebanese army like issued a statement saying that if Israel invades Lebanon or continues invading, they were just gonna join Hezbollah.
00:53:45
Speaker
This is an army that takes the United States funding and weapons. like We are responsible for funding Lebanon's army. But it doesn't matter. like Christian, Shia, Sunni, you know North, South, like Lebanon, they just really dislike the Israelis.
00:53:59
Speaker
um for good reason. So that there's no way they hold, I think what they're trying to do is knock the top off Hezbollah. what what i What I think Israel is trying to do is go as far as they can before the slow wheels of international law actually do ring them in.
00:54:17
Speaker
And forget that's gonna happen. It's gotta happen eventually. and like I feel like we're all just like, what the fuck? yeah There is no precedent for international law anymore, right? That's how I feel. No. And I mean, especially with like targeting the UN, which is just the documentary I've been working on for like six months now.
UN and Global Perceptions
00:54:36
Speaker
Yeah, that is I mean, specifically going after the UN n and labeling it a terrorist organization, dude, we not know what that is going to mean in places like Sub-Saharan Africa, which places like Russia and Ukraine, like if it's open season on the United Nations, we've got really big problems in terms of international diplomacy.
00:54:57
Speaker
This is a really interesting thing to me because growing up in a conservative family, I remember things being said, not not to any like degree that I can truly remember anything more than the the main talking points, but but there's there's... There's this idea that the UN is a problem. It's globalist in this agenda. It's not, ah ah because the yeah I mean, conservatives, it's like, oh, we want, especially conservative evangelicalism. It's like very pro-America. They read themselves into the Bible. And then you have the UN trying to like, make it almost like falls into the new world order idea yeah ever fully function that way in now we can obviously see the powerlessness of the UN n as a whole yeah. um But that's what you're saying is like early interesting to me because that it just made me ah brought back all those thoughts and times that I would hear and my dad my religious school. of books
00:55:57
Speaker
like talked about the UN being like a bad organization and like suspect and stuff. Reading like World Magazine as a kid. Yeah, dude. Yeah. Listening like Rush Limbaugh. My dad would put Rush Limbaugh on in the car and he was just real like pre Alex Jones. well I guess actually just contemporary except Alex Jones is more internet and and Rush Limbaugh was more radio.
00:56:19
Speaker
el rushbo yeah myra They were just railing against the UN all the time, but I grew up thinking the UN n was just this like, you know, demonic globalist entity that was trying to strip us of our freedom. And obviously that's still a popular idea. Yeah, clearly. So that's doc what the documentary you're working on.
00:56:37
Speaker
ah is Is touching on that to a degree? Yes. My documentary is about how the United Nations is a demonic entity possessed by the globalists and it's going to take over. i i knew you were going to take the right I knew you're going to do the right thing in the end. and That's why we have you back because unlike other people ah who can't align themselves with people who aren't quite on the same page, dude I knew you'd be there in the end and that's what matters. I guess what I'm waiting for is how does this all get back to child trafficking?
00:57:05
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. In IKEA cabinet specifically, because I'm not over that yet. In pizza parlors.
UNRWA's Challenges and Palestinian Representation
00:57:11
Speaker
Yeah, but no, my so my documentary is about the United Nations Relief Works Association for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, which is a name i'm so wrong that nobody has ever called it that and they just call it by its acronym UNRWA.
00:57:28
Speaker
ah So UNRWA is basically the UN organization for people who don't know. i don You guys are probably familiar but for your audience. It's responsible for managing the lives essentially of 5.9 million Palestinians. And that can mean everything from health care and education to sanitation, sometimes housing. They operate refugee camps in Syria, in Lebanon, in Jordan, in the West Bank and in Gaza.
00:57:56
Speaker
And they are the primary organization responsible for the fact that Palestinians have a literacy rate, which is one of the best in the world, and that there is any possibility for them outside of living up in a fucking refugee camp. They are also the organization which is it's Its literal mandate is to continue to take care of Palestinian refugees until there is a political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. So their charter commands that they continue to exist until the conflict is resolved. And as a result of that, they are a huge thorn in the side of of the Israeli government and the Israeli narrative that this is our land and it's always been our land because there is this
00:58:36
Speaker
multilateral, multi-government institution that only exists because this conflict is not resolved. And the more you know about it, the more you sympathize with the plight of the Palestinians who are growing up in refugee camps, because if they leave them and become citizens of other things or decline their refugee status, then they lose their ability to claim their land when they go back to their homes, when they were kicked out of places that in in what is now considered to be Israel. So um and and because of that, it's a frequent whipping boy of of Israel. I mean, Israel has been trying to get UNRWA defunded and banned and crippled for years. And they came really, really close this past year by basically coming out with claims saying UNRWA is Hamas.
00:59:20
Speaker
and UNRWA employees participated in the October 7th massacre, independent investigations followed basically saying you presented no evidence as far as we know that's not true. um Even if it was true, it would be such a small amount of people associated that that practically any organization that is existing in the political conditions, like what you have in Gaza, would have a similar, if not much more, much greater extent. So UNRWA, its charter demands that it be politically neutral. And they work they try and work really hard to do that. um But they constantly become, obviously, their very existence is a threat to Israel. And because Israel has the United States in its back pocket, um after they made those allegations, about nine of the biggest funders for UNRWA just pulled their funding automatically.
01:00:07
Speaker
until the investigation. Well, the investigation cleared UNRWA, but the United States, because we're special, um decided to put in a provision to our our cessation of funds that we not even consider bringing it back until March of 2025. Thanks, Joe. Yeah, UNRWA will have gone. It wasn't Joe, actually, it was the congressional, it was the the head of Congress, um Speaker of the House, I forget. I don't even- Oh, Mike Johnson. Yeah, Mike Johnson.
01:00:36
Speaker
um So, Mike Johnson basically said, no UNRWA until next year, at least. like We won't even consider refunding it. We're stripping off funding, at which point it would have been almost a year that UNRWA would be operating without American funding, which is a big deal because America contributes about $400 million, which is about a third of UNRWA's overall budget.
01:00:56
Speaker
so My documentary is about what happens when you strip an organization responsible for handling 6 million people's day-to-day well-being of a third of its funding, um while also having bills going through the Israeli parliament, and soon I'm sure the American parliament to label the organization as a terrorist organization, strip its employees of diplomatic immunity, and ru in forbid them from operating in places like Jerusalem, which is under international law considered to be Palestine, but under Israeli law considered to be Israel.
01:01:30
Speaker
So it is a mess. And the crazy thing is this storages getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And so like this documentary went from like a thing we thought we were going to put on YouTube to now we're like, we're trying to get like major funding to get a major network so we can go back to Lebanon, go back to Palestine.
01:01:45
Speaker
Because we've interviewed all of the heads of these organizations, right? Head of the West Bank. Except we haven't gone to Gaza, obviously. But, um you know, head of Lebanon, like head of head of Jordan area. We've talked to all of these people, right? How are we able to set these connections up? ah Because I feel like there's what I mean, I know what documentaries you can do a lot, because as long as you portray a level of maybe neutrality. But what I mean, how do you how did you manage to set these conversations up, these interviews up?
01:02:14
Speaker
Well, honestly, we went through UNRWA contacts. So okay what I basically did was I announced that I was going to do this ah documentary and I created an email account for every Lebanese and Palestinian or Jordanian or Syrian person, you know, ah that could possibly with be within my network to send me resources, contact information, and connect me. And very quickly, they started connecting me with people who were pretty high up in UNRO. And also talk it and like put me on the radar with their public affairs officials. The interesting thing with the Palestine question is the Palestinians know that pretty much no matter what type of media they get, it's going to end up being beneficial for them in the long run.
01:02:59
Speaker
Because it's so under-reported, like they're suffering and the things they go through are so under-reported that they know that literally just the act of having cameras on them and having journalists reporting about them will humanize them in the eyes of people who basically just see them as, you know, terrorists to be exterminated.
01:03:16
Speaker
And that it extends to UNRWA because UNRWA is an organization that is like has a very difficult charter and it's also fighting for its life. It also predominantly consists of Palestinian employees. There's like 30,000 Palestinians that work for the organization. So it's also a way for them to like get out of the refugee camps and have a career outside of you know living in a camp ah in very austere conditions, um which is also why it's a target. That's a huge reason it's a target. like Israel would like to strip UNRWA and then give its functions to organizations like the World Food Program and the UNHCR, which all exist under the umbrella, but aren't specifically related to Palestine. they really They're really uncomfortable with the idea that this organization was specifically helped set up to help a state that they say doesn't exist, and a people who they say are squatters on their land. It's like the same impulse that makes somebody, I don't know, destroy all schools in a place.
01:04:14
Speaker
Right. You know, it's funny, like, yeah, whenever you hear about a hospital getting destroyed or a school getting destroyed, it's mostly, and it's a UN school, it's an unrest school. But like, they've been so desensitized to this because they say, oh, well, unrest, Hamas, and Hamas are terrorists, all Palestinians are Hamas.
01:04:29
Speaker
So that like literally just knocking the top of an under school and then all you have to do is I mean I'm i'm sure I'm sure at some point that Hamas has used under facilities and we have some data on that going at least back to 2014 about Hamas using under facilities um for storing munitions or whatever like I'm sure that has happened at some point.
Conflict Strategies and Civilian Impact
01:04:49
Speaker
But again, I mean, when you think about the conditions of Gaza and like what god God is living in, can you can you really blame like their government who's trying to essentially fight a militant war against Israel for using whatever means necessary to them? And also, I love how that's always like, whenever people talk about that, people nobody talks about how like one of the largest arms manufacturing plants in Tel Aviv is like right next to a huge municipal center.
01:05:14
Speaker
And like the biggest IDF training base is right like right in the middle of a massive civilian complex in Tel Aviv. like The IDF, like this is a tiny country. right Everything's on top of everything else. um But do you only ever hear about what the Palestinians. Human shields gotta be Palestinians. you know People throwing people off rooftops, surely the Israelis can never do that, except we have video evidence of them using human shields and throwing people off rooftops.
01:05:39
Speaker
Dude, I also think it's interesting that um one, yeah, like the idea of like the amount of people who are stockpiling ammunition and weapons to a degree in this country out of fear that they might need it for any particular reason right without without the outside ah pressures that are very, very, very real.
01:06:04
Speaker
they can understand that for themselves. But then they go, well, if they obviously look at all the weapon, they they must be with Hamas or if, if anyone in this country was like, you're, you're pretty much going to side with the people who you think will, who could have a chance of liberating you regardless of their, your, your real alignment with their stance. But I think yeah the most interesting is that, that there's, we live in a world where people can make excuses for bombing schools.
01:06:32
Speaker
where they go, well, Hamas had guns down in the basement. And you go, oh, oh, well, now I get it under no circumstances in and any other world. Would these people be OK? Like if yes, if it what ah if a terrorist organization hurt hid weapons or did something in the basement of a school in the United States, you wouldn't be like,
01:06:57
Speaker
Well, look, they bombed it for good reason. You would never feel that way. You would always be like, that was the worst decision possible. There's a better way to deal with that. Right. like So the school shooter is actually like stockpiling stuff in the basement and he's doing it with the knowledge of the january of of the janitor. That's a terrible situation. And our response to it is to drone strike the entire school. like Right. like They would never fly in America, right? It's like so wake up. Like you can, you can honestly, you can make a really good case for the FBI and the ATF going after the people at rub Ruby Ridge and Waco. You can make a really good case. They were part of a very well defined, incredibly well surveilled white supremacist network, which was off the radar of the press, but very much on the radar of the feds.
01:07:44
Speaker
They had every, I mean, they had every reason to go after what was happening at like Waco and Ruby Ridge for these guys, um because they're basically multiple time offending felons on like firearms and explosive charges who are operating ah white ah nationwide white supremacist network and actively agitating anti-government stuff. So like, if you're a Fed, like that's every legitimacy possible. It was the way that they handled those two events that made them infamous.
01:08:12
Speaker
kind They kind of shot the kid in the head in the yard. That was just a terrible way of dealing with that, right? No matter how well justified. And the IDF, yeah you know, like nothing Israel says is true. Like everything is predicated on this idea that Israel is this like legitimate entity that deserves to exist as an apartheid state and anything that threatens it. It deserves to be destroyed mercilessly and with massive, you know, massive hemorrhaging of civilian lives. And I think that's just you have to you have to reorient the debate with people like that. Well, but though though they threatened Israel, you know, they threatened it's like, well what is what does that mean? What is Israel? What does it mean to threaten an apartheid state that was built on your land on your grandparents land to kick your grandparents out of there? What does it mean to threaten that entity? When like you grew up and have the kids you grew up with got killed by drones, you know, and yeah, I mean, that's, I think it's I think it's interesting to
01:09:06
Speaker
You know, the the the way that people rationalize violence against a group like, like ah you know, Palestinians. It's like, well, look, you you know, things may be bad, but it's never right to pick up a gun and, yeah you know, fire at somebody and it's like, dude, I have no time for that bro.
Uprisings and Media Bias
01:09:27
Speaker
Nobody, nobody believes that's true. Nobody believes that. I mean, look up at, you know, any historical example of like an uprising and stuff, and almost nobody is going to believe like, wow, they never should have, yeah you know, whatever the American revolution is the most like ridiculous, you know, the easiest example or whatever. But so.
01:09:47
Speaker
I feel like ah part of what's so frustrating about it and then like I think some of it is just staying out of the comments on, yeah you know, videos and stuff about the the war in Gaza is like,
01:10:02
Speaker
the the The Israelis, the IDF, their bots and clones and acolytes have really like set the parameters for what's reasonable and rational in this conflict. And it's so hard to to get you know good people that I know that like do not follow this issue. clearly Because this is an uncomfortable issue, and if you don't really care that much, it's really easy to just pack it away and not look at it. you know And it's it's amazing how difficult it is to get like good people that are moral that you know are like decent on so many levels. But like they're still just buying this like twisted with logic behind you know like why it's important that they root out you know like that they bomb the the
01:10:51
Speaker
you know the hospital because there was ah there was you know an RPG in the basement and stuff. and i yeah I don't know how you effectively counter that. Right. It's not even that serious. We saw a Hamas agent jerking off in public. We need to exterminate the entire area. like The Al-Shifa hospital, their big like reveal after after after like a three-week PR campaign of why we need to kill everyone in this hospital, their big reveal was like,
01:11:18
Speaker
Well, we found this headscarf and, uh, you know, an AK 47. Yeah. really Obviously planted too. it
01:11:29
Speaker
Yeah, man. I mean, also, like, you know, I always wish also really got to be slightly careful with what we talk about, you know, on podcasts, given given the administration and given the fact that free speech was always contingent in this country. But like, I have a lot of qualms with Hamas. I i dislike Hamas's goals as an organization sure in terms of religiously, um because I am not an Islamist, you know,
01:11:55
Speaker
If I was to support a Palestinian organization, the liberation, which I do, I would say something closer to the PFLP, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, you know a secular and not explicitly nationalist project um with leftist values. That'd be like, okay, yeah, that's more me than Hamas, which is a ah militant Islamist organization.
01:12:17
Speaker
But the truth of it is Hamas is also just, they and Fatah, Hamas and Fatah both are kind of non-ideological at this point, because both of them have like 40 years of like governance and politics and diplomacy under their belt. And so they're kind of just, they're sort of cynical, like pragmatists about everything, um which I think is something that's often missed. Like these guys aren't like sitting there, I think even less so than the the the Hezbollah guys. They're like not, you know, dreaming of a a caliphate in,
01:12:45
Speaker
in Palestine. therere they're the They're willing to work with whoever they need to work with, which is also why Hamas has just been leading a coalition of all the other resistance groups, some of which they previously fought. Because everyone agrees on the fact that like you got to kick the Zionist out. But anyway.
01:13:01
Speaker
The fact that Yaha Sinwar was killed accidentally while fighting in the front line after fasting for 70 or had not eaten in 72 hours and his final act was to throw a stick at an IDF drone is is so deeply fascinating on a human level. When you think about like, what was the last Western leader of that, cat like, Yahasenur was the, he he was the head of Gaza, he was the head of Hamas, and he was killed wearing a kafia in combat accidentally at the front line with his guys. Like that is, that is inspiring. That is like inspirational stuff.
01:13:46
Speaker
And the Israelis are so out of touch with what it means to be a resistance and to resist colonialism that they broadcast that image of his death thinking that it was like a ah victory lap for them. um from Oh my God, you just gave a million Arabs their George Washington. Like who who was the last Western leader who died in combat?
01:14:11
Speaker
You know, yeah or you think of the ah the the ones, you know, the leaders that the US fought against that they didn't ever air anything related to debt like ah Osama bin Laden. Yeah, which is why there's conspiracy theories around it. Right. Like.
01:14:25
Speaker
Were they just trying to quell any sort of ah any sort of sympathy for for showing a man who's been killed? I don't know. I think it's also possible there's some conspiracy shit around it if I'm having fun. But i but you having this conversation makes me think about the ways that we've that the US has suppressed the broadcasting of the death of our enemies.
01:14:50
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. It makes you wonder, like, what does it look, what are those, you know, and, you know, it's like a lot of the people that the US has gone after are bad dudes. I think in particular, like, sure. I'm not. Okay. Let's be clear. I am not being like, I'm not an Osama sympathizer. Let's be clear. The Palestine has always been the exception to the like a broad stroke is Islamic terrorist group. but they they they They were always the ones with the most legitimate claim and so and the Israelis still so got them smeared.
9/11, Israel, and ISIS Speculation
01:15:21
Speaker
That's why the best thing that ever happened.
01:15:23
Speaker
to for the Israelis was 9-11. The fact that in the minds of millions of Americans and Westerners, anyone Arab, anyone Muslim became associated with terrorism, what a boon for them. i mean that was like They could not have asked for anything better than that. and the The idea of comparing like Palestinian resistance to ISIS, for instance,
01:15:45
Speaker
It's just crazy. And that was the whole campaign. It was Hamas's ISIS. Hamas, secret and like all these, like the jubilant billboards and everything, and be like Hamas is ISIS. Like you hated these guys, right? They're the same thing, which I think is really ironic because like tinfoil hat here, I have it on pretty good authority that like Israel funds ISIS so that they go after Iran backed Islamist groups. i wouldn I mean, nothing would surprise me at this point.
01:16:15
Speaker
There's like some weird stuff, like likes yeah ISIS has never deliberately attacked Israeli installations or anything. They did it like once accidentally and they like issued an apology. And it's like, this is like like every- It's like the South Park episode. I'm sorry.
01:16:33
Speaker
Yeah, like every militant Islamist group in the in this entire region is saying, like, yeah, yeah Israel is the number one one enemy. Like, in ISIS would sometimes include that in the rhetoric, like, yeah, we have to you uproot the Zionist entity. I think they've included that. But I mean, but there's I think there's there's there's a there's a this this's enough evidence ah that we should we should wonder about whether or not the Israelis back ISIS. And I don't think that's super tinfoil hat. um that's fascinating yeah
01:17:05
Speaker
Okay, so on the subject of like them airing that footage and stuff, because that that that was bizarre, like the way that they did it, like like found him LOL, you know, yeah at the time. And it's like Aragorn at Helm's Deep, and you're just like, why would you post this? And it was so funny watching like the meltdown of some of the Israeli like commentators on TV afterwards, and they're like,
01:17:33
Speaker
I feel like it might not have been the best idea it for the idea to publish the final moments of this like heroic last stand of this guy who just inspired millions of people to hate us. so so That's like a whole interesting subject though, because, and I haven't, I've been putting it off and maybe tonight's the night, but I haven't watched the Al Jazeera documentary be the noise showing the, uh, like the Israeli war crimes, you know, that, that, that their soldiers have documented and posted on TikTok throughout the conflict. I haven't watched that either. I'm I've been meaning to, and I just haven't, but like.
01:18:19
Speaker
What is that? Is that? Because I mean, you you know, when you see a ah ah government, a group like that that, that has such tight control over messaging, and it's so deliberate about what they put out, like, is this accidental? Is it purposeful? Is it is it just like the inevitable like result of the just like slow moral decay that it takes to wage a war like this? It's like you just can't, you can't discern what people would see as acceptable or reasonable or or or not be like a gas stat anymore? Or is there some purpose behind it? I mean, this is this is where the history really has to come in.
Education and Perceptions in Conflict
01:19:01
Speaker
You have to look at Israeli education. You have to to learn what these people are taught about about their neighbors, about the people whose land they live on. um And I'm trying to think of like a good, I mean, did you guys watch the new Fallout series? Yeah.
01:19:15
Speaker
you know how it starts with like the the fallout chamber opens and these like ragged mutants come in and they kill these innocent people and everything and then they leave and then by the end of the series no spoilers i mean they can find this out relatively early on turns out the mutant people were the good guys and the people in the vaults had been like nuking their cities and stuff like That's kind of a great metaphor for what this is. like If you were a Zionist kid, you have that you have the POV of that rosy-cheeked, all-American girl in the vault at the very beginning.
01:19:53
Speaker
You're like, oh my God, our our wonderful homeland, which we try and keep secure, was just ravaged by these savages and you know nothing that we do in response to that um would be going too far. That is exactly how the Israeli education system works, right? They've been taught to dehumanize a little of these people from birth.
01:20:13
Speaker
to see them as savages, to to write them off completely. they're not even taught the own the history The history of 1948 is a celebration of you know is israel Israel winning against six Arab neighbors, and being or four Arab neighbors, and ah and and like coming out on top. yeah No one ever asked the question of like well why was it that up to 375,000 people had already been expelled from their homes before any of the Arab states declared war on Israel.
01:20:41
Speaker
like Why is that? they don't They don't get taught that. They don't know. like Israel breaks with most modern developed countries in that its young people are farther right than its old people. Because its old people actually remember like meeting Palestinians and seeing these events unfold in real life rather than being taught to them in textbooks. And you just get to the point where you You just have, like i had I had some like IDF girl like follow me and get into my DMs recently, and she was just talking, and she was making a very impassioned plea, being like, you don't understand, you don't see it from our perspective, yada, yada, yada, Sinwar is a terror, he was in an Israeli prison, we fed him, we clothed him, right we paid to get his his his brain surgery. These people, they hate us because we're who we are, they're they're sending their buses in and everything like that.
01:21:30
Speaker
And I could tell that it was an authentic appeal. like She wasn't trying to be cynical. She was trying to like show me her perspective. But what that perspective lacked was any sort of context for why these people are doing this, and which is the fact that like a foreign entity was inserted into their homeland with violence. That history was completely erased. They were armed with every imaginable weapon and given free range to just rain hell on their neighbors.
01:21:57
Speaker
who had been so dehumanized to the point where they were not even recognized as human. And, and yeah, and I was it was just kind of crazy. I was like, I can't like, I can't work my way around this girl's, like perspective without her. I want it. I've always wanted to be able to do that, like Spock mind meld thing, where you just, you know, you you you put the the hand in like all your thoughts transferred or thoughts. It's like, please, like, can you please just becomes a Reverend Mother?
01:22:24
Speaker
Right. Yeah. And one of the things you said was like, can you imagine how Israelis must feel right now? Like how many of us are in therapy for October 7th? And I was like yeah like, yeah, but like, are you able to think about what Palestinian families are feeling or what they have been feeling for 75 years? Right, right. If that's your argument, then let's talk about these people who are your genetic cousins, right, um who are suffering immensely. And yet, even if you recognize that you feel like Jewish suffering and Jewish life is more important than what's happening to anyone else. And that's that's it that's the that's the problem with zionness is it Zionism is it is it becomes Jewish supremacy. and The irony in general, right, is that
01:23:07
Speaker
For her to say you have no idea, like for her to make these pleas to you from her experience, it's like you don't know what it's like for this experience or you don't understand X, Y, and Z. It's like, exactly. And I think that might be why, to some degree, I can look at it from a more of a 30-foot view. Like that's that's exactly why.
Empathy and Weaponized Trauma
01:23:30
Speaker
I can't co-sign what you're saying. And it's like, yeah the amount of people who have been victimized by a type of person or the, or it's like, uh, okay.
01:23:45
Speaker
strange, strange example. I'm on I like read it. Not for any good quality reasons. I read the shitty things like off my chest where someone tells you something horrendous that happened to them or something horrendous they did to somebody else and they want to get it off their chest in an area in a place where no one will know who said it. And this person had this whole thing. It's like I was sexually, it's it was a a woman who said that she's like, basically, she's struggling at this point in her life, because she, ah she happened to have been sexually assaulted by a black man. And her whole thing was, I'm struggling now to not perceive, to not feel racist to not be racist, like, and that that I thought was a very enlightened thing to discuss in a way where you go, that is that is normal. That is what the human
01:24:38
Speaker
experience does. They go, this type of person might have wronged me. Therefore, I'm going to feel a certain way to protect myself. And I'm in the redditor's doctor. Yeah, which probably could have. ah But I go, like I just thought of that. We're like, I'm not I'm not denying that you've had this experience or that you've had the you've been taught or like I'm not denying that things have happened in a way that would give you reason to feel a certain way, right but it lacks, it does lack context and it doesn't it doesn't like ah ascend basic human psychology. You're not yeah're not looking at it at a bigger from a bigger picture.
01:25:22
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, dude, like I was, I felt sick watching videos of Jews being dragged away from a festival and out of their homes on October 7th. Of course. Horrifying. That was awful. And there wasn't a person in the world who wasn't fully disgusted in a hundred percent Israel side.
01:25:40
Speaker
uh after that i wasn't i mean i wasn't on israel's side but i was still like very disgusted but i also knew what where this was coming from i knew this was the pent-up range of a population um and and i knew that that was going to have i knew i knew one of the things that made me feel so sick because i also knew what was about to happen as a result but no i mean no i i could not watch that and not feel sympathy for these of course these are 19 year old soldiers And a lot of people don't realize about half the people killed on October 7th were soldiers or kidnapped. they were They were soldiers. Some of them were in uniform. Right. The Israelis never talk about that. They're always they paint the hostages as these like kids who like play tennis or in soccer leagues or like music. And it's like, well, yeah, but some of them are uniform 19. You're probably also a soldier.
01:26:26
Speaker
Exactly, yeah. But they are kids. I mean, like, in and yeah, like I have sympathy for these people. I don't. And the same with the Russians, man. Like, I don't i don't want to see any videos of a 19 year old Russian kid getting obliterated by a drone in a trench line. Nobody wants, like some people do. People, you have to desensitize yourself in order to prosecute a war. And that's the point the Ukrainians are at. That's the point the Palestinians are at. But even now I'm amazed by the Palestinian capacity for empathy. I mean, after being there and hearing them talk about stuff, like,
01:26:55
Speaker
Compared to conversations I had with the Ukrainians, which, like, frankly, you know, and I completely understand where they're coming from. But during an air raid or something like that, they would literally they would say statements that felt genocidal towards all Russians. Right. And it was like, OK, well, yeah, my my home is not getting bombed by Russian bombs. So I don't know what it's like to be in a place where I say that. But like, even in Palestine, like in the heart, I didn't hear that stuff.
01:27:23
Speaker
I didn't hear people saying, we gotta, I mean, there would be stuff about, you know, like obviously free Palestine or like we're in front of the room, but that nobody. It wasn't death to all Israelis. china yeah Yeah, it wasn't like, you would see like in the refugee camps, sometimes you have kids being like, you know what, fuck Israel, fuck America. And I'm like, yeah, same. You know, you wouldn't see it's not like we need to, you know, we need to go after every Jew and we need to, you know, there was no lionization of Hitler or anything like that. Right.
01:27:53
Speaker
which is not to say that there's not anti-Semitism, there's not Arab anti-Semitism, those are very real things, but these people are deeply traumatized on both sides. like there's I don't want to sound like fucking Marianne Williamson, but there's a spiritual rot here. there's a there's a These people are cousins, for God's sakes. Their genome is practically identical, like their genetic history. um The Palestinians are the Jews that stayed. like that's That's what they are. They eventually converted to Islam and Christianity, but they had the same genetic profile as these people who got scattered all over the world and came back. ah For God's sakes, you're killing your cousins.
01:28:30
Speaker
And I only think the way that we get out of this is through is through love. And I know that sounds so s soppy after I've just, you know, considered the fact that we've defended everything from like wide scale firearms ownership to knocking off billionaires in this. like No, you have to like love is the only thing that's going to overwhelm this because I was I was watching this terrible Game of Thrones reboot recently.
01:28:52
Speaker
and one of the characters, who I thought was actually one of the better characters, she tells, she's one of the dragon riders, and she tells one of the other one, she says, pretty soon it's not gonna matter who dealt the first blow. The only thing people are gonna remember is the last one.
01:29:07
Speaker
who And that's how you get this situation. You have trauma and grievance coming together. And I am someone, I mean, you guys know my activism. I think this is totally on the Israeli side. I mean, not totally, but like for the but for large part, the Israelis are the fault, are the are the problem. But you have trauma and grievance being weaponized against each other by two populations that are deeply traumatized and have a lot to grieve. And it's an opportunity to either show the worst of humanity or the best. you know I mean, if and we come out of this and the Holy Land becomes a symbol to the world of peace and tolerance ah in some miraculous process, I think that would be a beautiful thing that would make me get back in touch with my faith, frankly.
01:29:53
Speaker
um But it's also i mean Jerusalem has all also always been a place of war and bloodshed and religious hatred. So it has every opportunity to go both ways, I think. The Israeli economy is crippled, right? People are leaving Israel in droves. um They are becoming, they're already geographically isolated. They're becoming economically isolated. They're becoming, ah eventually they might become military isolated if people stop sending them weapons. And ah the conditions are right for something like South Africa too you know to happen.
01:30:28
Speaker
um And out of that could come sectarian violence and civil war, or ah the most sophisticated peacemaking process the world has ever seen, which could give us hope for resolving human conflicts in the future. And I hope it's the latter. I don't have a lot of hope. A lot of confidence, but yeah. yeah i don't like i don't Nobody who's for the Palestinian cause, if you're not a Palestinian who hasn't been deeply traumatized, should want anybody to die, you know, like with a Gandalf this and Lord of the Rings, like, don't be so eager to deal out death and judgment to people. Some people who die deserve life, some who live deserve death, but you can't give it to them, right? All you have to do is to decide what to do with the time that's given you. And I think for us, that means like, telling stories that effectively change minds and generate people's empathy. And what you're trying to do with your documentary, right? One, I think
01:31:25
Speaker
I know we are one of the is as cynical as I feel about like the political system and stuff I like everybody, everybody that I know, outside of like this circle of people that I know through the podcast is like pretty much all of them are right wing. Most of them Trump supporters, everybody's it's a it's a jubilant atmosphere. in sanns yeah And I feel like part of the reason that like I, I get frustrated with the ah the the constant like fear mongering over it and and like the the just the the
01:32:03
Speaker
cynical ugly look at like people who vote a certain way or whatever is because like Talking to these people who are almost like from diff from a default position. They're they're pro-israel Yeah, and and they somehow like a they in some way or another like they might not know a whole lot about the conflict but they know that like Israel is the is the they're the most like us and they're therefore the good guys white western ones But I think like from from the conversations that I've had with people here that are definitely coming from that camp, I'm i'm really like surprised that some of the things that I've heard these people say over the past like six months here.
Documentary and Activism
01:32:47
Speaker
and i i think that you know as as Maybe everyone's outlook on like where the left goes in the future and and you know when it comes to you know shutting down conversations with people on the other side and stuff like I think I think there is like an actual hope for like building support behind.
01:33:09
Speaker
You know, at least like putting us like doing America's part to put a stop to some of this, you know, that I can see like political pressure building to shut down funding of the war and stuff. And I i think that the only way you do that is you.
01:33:24
Speaker
It's easy to hide from the from the the war like they have to see it. They have to see how horrific it is Yeah, they have to hear stories from real people that like, you know, maybe they're on the surface They're different than you but like if you can hear them talk and tell their story I think like it it humanizes an entire you know nation of people for for them and I think there's a lot of hope in that but like Do you need things like this documentary that you're making or like the one that you know Al Jazeera put out like some of the You know the better reporting that we've seen, you know documenting like genocide and things. Yeah That is what is going to change like the tenor of the conversation here Yeah, and I think you're right like the zoomer right doesn't give a crap about Israel That's mostly like boomers and Gen Xers and stuff now the zoomer right doesn't give a crap about Israel because I think a lot of them are falling into anti-semitic tropes again
01:34:21
Speaker
There's some of that. There is some of that. I think they'd be picky about who we ally with, or right? Well, they've they've spent you know they spent like six years on the Trump train being like, why are we supporting Ukraine? Why are we supporting NATO? And it's like, oh, give another $10 trillion to Israel. And they're they're seeing the contradiction. They're like, wait, why are we are we like helping fund this weird race colony like in the Middle East? That's basically the 51st state. So they're asking a lot of questions. like I think Candace Owens turning on Israel.
01:34:49
Speaker
while being an employee of the fucking daily wire was kind of a big moment for talking about how like the zoomer left is going in term. I mean, the zoomer right is going in that sort of direction.
01:35:01
Speaker
It could be very easy. That was an amazing fallout. yeah all right well i know you get to that help if they want to Is there a way for people to help like help you guys make this documentary? i mean Do you need funding? do you need What do you need? Do you need funding? we are actually like the best like you can give us You can donate. like we have a little We have a little thing which I can link in the show notes.
01:35:23
Speaker
but the the best way that you could help us is if you are connected with people in the documentary film fundraising or production side or anything and you can connect us or even people like you know, like Lebanese philanthropists or Palestinians who have a large social media following. If these are people in your life that you could connect us to, that's gonna go way farther than your like $20 donation that have this this film done. So I would just encourage people to like find those people in their life, you know, and and and and send those and those to us um because then we can form those relationships of support that are gonna be more meaningful than like a crowdfunding campaign.
01:36:05
Speaker
Do you have a timeline for when you're trying to accomplish this thing, or is it just you're going to go until you feel like you have what you need? Well, we kind of have to get it out before March, because in March, the UNRWA bill comes before the House Subcommittee related to funding. And so we want something, whether it's whether it's the full documentary or not, remains to be seen. But something needs to be published by then, because we're planning to do a hearts and minds campaign. This is half journalistic endeavor, half activist film.
01:36:35
Speaker
Because we do go in and we interview all these people and we ask them, like hey, are you a terrorist organization? Do you work with them? We ask them questions that you know are tough to answer. um But again, with the same principle I was talking about with the Palestinians earlier, they welcome the media because pretty much there's no way of actually familiarizing yourself with the Israel-Palestine conflict and coming out on the other side as pro-Israeli. That's why there's only like one Zionist historian worth his salt.
01:37:03
Speaker
Yeah. And that's what I always tell people, like, who's your favorite Israeli historian? and Because I have several, right? Ilhan Pape, Avish Laim. These guys have more access to information than than anybody has ever had about the founding of Israel. And they are vehement anti-Zionists as a result of it. and Mine's Darrell Cooper.
01:37:23
Speaker
Yeah. then you have like The only other person I follow on Substack other than you says a lot about who you are. Yeah, I appreciate that. um ah Trying to get more people on the Substack train. yeah If you want to follow my Substack, ah you can search refuse dystopia or just my handle Charles McBride with a Y on all platforms. And I guess last question to close this out, is there a certain brand of gun that you're partial to for the leftists that are looking to arm themselves you don't need to be buying anything that doesn't shoot nine millimeter seven six or five five six right every cop every sorry i shouldn't get some kind great advice and casey's hard right now easy if you're in a you're in a shit to hit the fan situation then you do not once you're you're fucking grandmas or grandpa's like long gun, you know, or, you know, some like the Rick Grimes cult or the Rick Grimes 45 or who was it a 50? I forget what he even has. They're like the Smith like a 40 bar mag. Nobody's going to be using a revolver in a, in know you know, shit hit the fan situation. No, I do gravitate towards revolvers in video games, but I yeah hear what you're saying. The sim shot guns at my house and that was his favorite.
01:38:39
Speaker
was Yeah. I almost killed Casey. I was like, I want to see what this does to someone's face and Casey's the only person near me right now. Yeah. If you want to sidearm, you know, get a Glock 19 slap a Trigicon site on it and like have, have go to the range and spend twice as much money on training as you do on the gun and then buy an AR 15. Right. If you're in California, buy one of the things that like you stick in there that makes it not scary.
01:39:09
Speaker
And then just like our our friendship just leveled up. i like I get to select a new thing in the skill tree now yeah does you made Casey really happy Yeah, know yeah Literally, there' and there's literally no point. I mean like don't get an AK 47 all these leftists are like, oh I want a Soviet aesthetics like not so stupid Like, do you know why leftist movements like use AK-47s around the world? Because that's what was available. Well, guess what is available in the United States? A fuck ton of 5.56 ammunition and a bunch of AR-15s. So learn how to use those things. Yeah. And the one is that shoots, somebody makes one that shoots 5.56. I can't remember what it is. Is that an AK-70? I don't know.
01:39:52
Speaker
Boring, nevermind. You have to be the guy who explains why he has an AK-47 when everyone else is an AR-15. You don't understand. I'm trying to have aesthetic congruity with leftist movements in Europe. People are going to be like, dig the trench. We don't care. It's like natural wood hardware. It's practical and aesthetically pleasing. Well, Charles, thanks a lot, man. It's always so fun having you on. I always appreciate your input, your thoughts,
01:40:20
Speaker
you your appreciation for dark sense of humor. Yeah, well, you got to do that. That's how we get out of these days. That was actually something, you know, I ran a fundraiser for a Lebanese friend of mine who's helping displaced people. um And we were talking today about like the Trump thing. And I was like, I was like, yeah, I'm getting into trouble because like, I've been kind of laughing about it.
01:40:41
Speaker
because because it's like, that's that's become my trauma response to to all these things after like three years of working in war zones and disaster zones, is the only way you get through this, everyone knows, is you laugh about it. And she's like, yeah, we laugh about everything here. It's the only way, we would go insane otherwise. And I haven't had those experiences, but it's funny, because I was like, ah two yesterday, two days ago, I was texting Casey and her buddy, ah Jeremiah, who does the podcast with us here and there. and I got real serious. It was just like, I'm fucking back, back, back, back. And then like I was like, but then as soon as we got on here, I'm like, it's all joke. Like I, I have my moments of just being like a ah fucking angry bitch about everything. And then, and then I go.
01:41:24
Speaker
But the way I really deal with it, is I love. I think this is the only way I can get through it is yeah like history repeats repeats itself versus tragedy in its forest. This was this was like this. Like, if you ever see that tweet at a January 6th with someone, it's like, well, that happened slowly over an obvious several years. yeah Oh no, the fascist strong man has created a broad coalition of support by demonizing leftists and minorities. We've seen this a thousand times. yeah we're back My favorite thing that I just keep thinking about and like giggling to myself is like how many MAGA people are now finding themselves living in a reality where like, on the one hand, you can gas up hurricanes with space lasers. On the second hand,
01:42:13
Speaker
voting matters. right so and Also, it's them that are doing that with the face lasers, but now we control the entire government somehow. like and like i a response ought to be now right so who Sorry, who's oppressing you again? Because you have the Supreme Court, both thousands of Congress and the presidency, and you just gutted the administrative state. so like who's the best du It's almost it's almost freeing knowing that we have that the left has no culpability in what happens the next four years, right? We can't exactly take responsibility, but but that's that's the wrong way of thinking about it, right? because people
01:42:53
Speaker
people like for people whose politics begins and ends in the voting booth, that's their perspective. They're like, right, right. And and they're on Twitter right now being like, well, when Gaza is obliterated, you know, these people are gonna regret their vote. It's like, you should be really in people threatening to be like, I'm going to call. I'm going to call ice on families of Trump voting voting Latinos to like show them a lesson. It's like, really?
01:43:16
Speaker
Your a liberal identitarianism goes so far that like you as like a housewife in Brentwood is going to call down ice on a migrant family because they've been looking for that excuse for a long time. yeah you know you think insane Right. That's so psychotic. But that's how people think about things like you have to like the left should have learned the lesson by now, but hopefully now they have. Politics is something that happens outside the voting booth. So go do politics and don't tell me about it, at least not over an unencrypted channel.
01:43:47
Speaker
Oh, yeah. All right, man. Well, thanks a lot. Take care, guys. Thanks, everybody, for listening, and we will see you next time.