One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This (w/ Omar El Akkad) | The Chris Hedges Report
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98,845 views Feb 20, 2025 The Chris Hedges Report
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The Western concept of rules, order or rules-based order is merely a list on paper and hardly an exercise in true values and principles. Omar El Akkad, Egyptian-Canadian novelist and journalist, has witnessed many instances, both in the West and in the Middle East, where banners of virtue are used to justify hypocritical behavior. El Akkad writes about such instances in his new book, “One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This,” and he joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to discuss them.
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Photo in thumbnail:
TOPSHOT-PALESTINIAN-ISRAEL-CONFLICT
TOPSHOT - A girl looks on as she stands by the rubble outside a building that was hit by Israeli bombardment in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on October 31, 2023 amid ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. (Photo by MOHAMMED ABED / AFP) (Photo by MOHAMMED ABED/AFP via Getty Images)
(0:00) Intro
(1:30) Language
(11:08) Cultural survival kit
(17:28) ‘Now that it’s over’
(23:53) Whose existence is denied?
(32:12) The lesser of two evils
(40:31) Non-violence
(43:52) Love vs. Empire
(47:31) ALways resist
(52:09) Outro
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Transcript
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0:10
Omar elad's new book one day everyone will have always been against this is a
0:15
powerful and penetrating examination of the bankrupt morality of industrialized
0:21
nations especially the United States which have sustained the genocide
0:26
against Palestinians and Justified it with racist tropes and lies he exposes
0:32
in his book our innate barbarity our Clin hypocrisy our latent racism our
0:38
narcissistic self-adulation our demented belief embraced by liberals and
0:43
conservatives that we have the right to impose our supposed virtues on the quote unquote lesser breeds of the earth we
0:50
subjugate and exploit with campaigns of industrial violence whether in Afghanistan Iraq Libya or Palestine Omar
0:59
who was born born in Egypt grew up in Qatar he moved to Canada as a teenager and currently lives in the United States
1:06
he is a two-time winner of both the Pacific Northwest book sellers award and
1:11
the Oregon book award his books have been translated into 13 languages his
1:16
debut novel American war was named by the BBC as one of the 100 novels that
1:22
shaped our world joining me to discuss one day everyone will have been against this is Omar l Cod uh I loved your book
Language
1:32
I read it all in one sitting I'm going to begin right at the beginning um and
1:39
uh you talk about language uh you do that a lot about your book I'm just going to read this passage and then have
1:44
you comment on it language too forces the air from the lungs beyond the high
1:50
walls and barbed wire and checkpoints that pen this place there is the Empire and the Empire as well is cocooned
1:57
inside its own Fortress of language a language through the prism of which buildings are never destroyed but rather
2:03
spontaneously combust in which blasts come and go like Shooks over the
2:09
mountain and people are killed as though to be killed is the only natural and rightful ordering of their
2:15
existence as though living was an aberration and this language might
2:20
protect the Empire's most bloodthirsty Fringe but The Fringe has no use for
2:26
linguistic malpractice it is instead the middle the liberal well-meaning easily upset middle that desperately needs the
2:34
protection this kind of language provides because it is the middle of the Empire that must look upon this and say
2:41
yes this is tragic but necessary because the alternative is barbarism the
2:47
alternative of the countless killed and maimed and orphaned and left without home without school without hospital and
2:53
the screaming from under the rubble and the corpses disposed of by vultures and
2:58
dogs and and days old babies left to scream and starve is barbarism and I
3:06
just as a caveat you and I ran straight into this buzs saw when we were supposed to do an event together and the
3:13
organizers refused uh to allow us to use the word genocide in the description of
3:18
the talk but L you make this point I think very preent about language uh and
3:26
the way it serves as a kind of buffer or a mask from reality especially Visa but
3:32
not explicitly not only but Visa this genocide can you talk about that um yeah
3:38
thank you very much for having me first of all I really really appreciate it I've been a longtime reader of your work
3:44
um a very long time ago I was um I was reporting in Guantanamo Bay um in the
3:51
prison camps there and um they were giving us a tour of the place and I
3:57
asked a question I asked something like you know so when do the prisoners when I got to
4:02
that word one of the soldiers stopped me and said we don't have prisoners here sir we have detainees and it was very very important
4:09
to to that person's worldview that there be no prisoners here because a prisoner
4:15
implies a prison sentence which somebody has to Define at some point uh a detainee you can hold
4:21
forever um there were no there were no interrogations at Guantanamo Bay of
4:27
course people were interrogated left right and Center they just didn't call it that they called them reservations as
4:32
in D 8692 has an 8:30 p.m. reservation it means they were going to be taken
4:38
into the interrogation Shacks I did far far less war reporting
4:43
than you did I did very very brief stints but one of the things they sort
4:48
of informed in terms of my worldview is that the physical layer of violence in
4:55
Wartime or in might what might be described as peace time even though it isn't can't stand in a vacuum it can't
5:02
stand on its own it needs other layers holding it up and one of those layers is linguistic violence euphemistic violence
5:10
the violence of calling a thing something other than what it is collateral damage instead of oops we
5:16
bombed a wedding party um and that you see I mean in
5:22
varying degrees of intensity particularly over the last 25 years or so but in the last year and change it's
5:28
it's had almost numbing quality to it where it's
5:34
not just the general from the invading Army telling you this it's the anchor on
5:40
the Nightly News describing a little girl as a young lady uh who who collided
5:46
with a bullet what the hell does any of that mean right but it's necessary because fundamentally what you're trying
5:52
to do is not represent the situation as it is what you're trying to do is give someone on the other side of the planet
5:58
who has the privilege of looking away the language with which to look away without feeling a pay in their
6:05
conscience all of this essentially works the moment somebody in the privileged
6:10
side of the world is able to say yeah that's all so complicated and turn away from it that's all they're being asked
6:17
to do and this is the language that facilitates that well it
6:22
also even though the images are there when you adopt this uh kind of fault
6:30
metaphor to describe it it uh it drains it of its atrocity in in some sense
6:37
doesn't it oh absolutely and I mean that's otherwise it wouldn't have its
6:44
power um I mean the the distance that you can impose with this kind of
6:51
language is so modular um you end up in a situation where you can apply this
6:58
language to anybody whose presence whose existence is inconvenient to the project
7:04
um and I mean we're going to see this right we're going to see this with um the language being used by
7:10
the government of the United States uh with regards to migrants over the next four years is going to use the same kind
7:16
of anesthetic language um and it's it's almost the employment of language for
7:23
the exact opposite of what language is supposed to do there's supposed to be some concern with Precision here
7:30
with using the word that most closely describes the thing and this is the exact opposite of that and it cannot be
7:36
said to be done accidentally this is an incredibly deliberate kind of linguistic
7:42
malpractice and overwhelmingly it works overwhelmingly um you call someone an
7:50
enemy combatant and who the hell wants to stand up for an enemy combatant who
7:55
who wants to be that person you call someone a terrorist after the fact they're dead they can't defend
8:01
themselves maybe they were a terrorist maybe they were this incredibly evil person I don't want to my reputation to
8:07
be destroyed standing up for a kind of person like that so overwhelmingly all evidence is that this kind of things
8:14
thing works and so I I can fully understand why institutions of all kinds
8:19
not just the military not just the government would rely on this um it's the fastest way to avoid dealing with
8:27
something that would otherwise make very privileged people very
8:33
uncomfortable well it shuts shuts down any ability to give any situation any
8:38
context so I debated Christopher Hitchens on his ridiculous book God Is
8:44
Not Great at Berkeley and in the middle of it he starts shouting at me shame on
8:51
you for defending suicide bombers which of course I've never done and didn't even do in the debate but it becomes if
9:00
if there is no context then whatever happens like on October 7th becomes not
9:05
only incomprehensible but the people who carry out something like that after 16
9:11
years of being locked in a concentration camp they become incomprehensible I mean I I think a big
9:18
part of this a necessary component of the world as it exists today that would allow something like this to happen by
9:25
which I mean not only the genocide of the last year and change but 3/4 of a
9:30
century of occupation at the very least um is a kind of imaginative poverty
9:37
which is to say that kind of accusation and accusations like it um you want to
9:42
kill all Israelis you are a terrorism supporter you all of this sort of stuff I think makes perfect sense if you
9:52
believe in a world where there are only two options you are either wearing the boot or you're having your neck stepped
9:58
on and so to speak up on behalf of anybody who's having their neck stepped on is immediately assumed to mean oh you want
10:06
to step on my neck those are the only sort of World Views that are acceptable
10:12
under that ordering of the world and it's it's disastrous if you know because
10:19
the obligations put on somebody who's trying to imagine a better world are unlimited if you and I both want
10:24
something better than this I guarantee you within 5 minutes of talking about it we will have some kind of disagreement
10:30
as to what better looks like because the imaginative obligations placed on us are infinite somebody who is served by the
10:37
system doesn't have to imagine anything else and so can safely live within the
10:42
confines of this fantasy where yes either these people be killed or those
10:47
people will be killed either this genocide happens this way or an even worse genocide is going to happen and it
10:53
is such imaginative poverty um and it's
10:59
it's applicable to virtually every facet of Life under an Empire it has to be this way because somebody has to do the
11:06
killing and may as well be us I think one of the things that gives your book such You Beautiful writer
Cultural survival kit
11:12
first of all but one of the things that gives your book poers that uh even though of course your English is uh you
11:20
know not only fluent but highly literate you nevertheless are seen by The Wider
11:26
society as an outsider uh and and you talk early on in the book about an experience of with
11:32
your father he gets I think he's working in Cairo and he gets stopped by the police and uh you know but for the
11:40
intervention of somebody uh who knows him he could have been haul off uh to an
11:47
Egyptian prison this was in Egypt uh and and uh and you write about that uh that
11:54
memory you said you know which you come back you said you come back to it often um and then you write rules conventions
12:02
morals reality exist all exists so long as their existence is convenient to the
12:07
preservation of power otherwise they like all else are expendable and that
12:14
that small incident with your father and that observation is just of course rid large with the breakdown of any kind of
12:21
even pretense about a rules based order and the genocide in Gaza yeah I mean that moment I think was
12:28
was one of those that that you know long before I showed up or or had any kind of
12:33
agency um altered the trajectory of my life because my father loved Egypt I mean he he grew up there he I don't
12:41
think ever imagined leaving that country it was home for him and still he had to get the hell out and
12:47
so the the sort of defining way in which that has altered my life is that I'm
12:54
relatively unrooted um there is no geography certainly no nation state that
12:59
can point to and say this is mine uh and that'll never be the case for me for the rest of my life one of the things I find
13:06
really interesting in people's sort of perception of me is that it varies wildly depending on which facet of my my
13:13
identity they decide to latch onto first um so if it's my name or My Religion
13:19
that's a very different person they believe they're talking to whereas if it's this accent where I could call you
13:26
up and tell you my name was John Smith and you'd probably believe me that's an entirely different person they
13:31
believe they're talking to or if it's the books and so on and so forth um and so it's not so
13:37
much existence as something lesser which which appears in sort of brief moments a
13:42
lot of go back where you came from or you know that sort of thing and I had my fair share of that I mean I was a journalist I was a full-time journalist
13:49
in the peak of the internet comments era when when newspaper websites used to leave those comments on so I've
13:55
certainly seen my fair share of that kind of thing and it doesn't trouble me at all it is relatively meaningless um
14:02
the more sort of pervasive mode of existing in this part of the world is preempt preemptively
14:10
preparing for which version of my Phantom self this person is going to latch on to um and trying to put them at
14:18
ease so this is a very silly example but you go through security at an airport
14:24
for example and for the longest time because I'm perpetually terrified of that interaction even though it's never
14:30
gone wrong for me um I would walk in and it would be yes sir no sir and very sort
14:35
of polite and then I realized over time empirically that I was having an easier time if I was much more casual because
14:42
that's what the people who are from here are that's the way they're behaving and so you sort of build up this kind
14:48
of cultural survival kit that you keep in your back pocket and most of the time
14:54
it's not a huge deal at all it's just how you get through the day but the cumulative effect of it is such that you
15:02
are made cognizant of of an entire spectrum of dealing with institutions of
15:07
power and with the loadbearing beams of a society that folks who do feel rooted to that society never really think about
15:15
it's a kind of Shadow world that some of us inhabit and some of us don't know exists um I've come to terms with that
15:22
but all of that traces back to that one day when a soldier working for the Egyptian regime decided to give my dad a
15:29
hard time and my dad realized that there was no rationality you could be in the right
15:36
you could have done nothing wrong and it wouldn't matter in the slightest because somebody with some modicum of power has
15:42
decided that today's your day well it it may not have happened to you but it happened to your father he was denied
15:48
entry to the United States uh he was uh because of a similar kind of name he was
15:55
even profiled so as a child you did watch this happen yeah and I mean I I've
16:01
seen I've seen relatives of mine who have similar names who look the same but who don't
16:09
have this accent um get treated entirely different um you know for a very long
16:18
time I think I thought of this in in I was very proud of myself that I had
16:23
become this person that I had become fluent in this language in this culture
16:29
that I could maintain a conversation with somebody and they wouldn't even know that I wasn't from here you know
16:34
that that sort of thing precisely because I'd seen what happened to people who didn't have that um who are much
16:41
better human beings than me but who are regularly dragged into secondary because
16:47
there's this distance there's this implied otherness and a lot of my life I'm not particularly proud to say this
16:53
but a lot of my life has been about causing myself as few headaches as possible
16:59
by adopting whatever it takes to close that distance to say to somebody hey
17:05
don't be scared I'm like you I get this I'm not far away um and the worst part
17:11
about it is that empirically it has worked it has proven wildly successful for me um and the proof is you know
17:19
among many other examples my relatives who don't have this um and I've seen a much darker side of daily interactions
17:25
than I regularly do I want to talk about this uh the
‘Now that it’s over’
17:32
Hallmarks of Western liberalism uh you writ it is an assumption and hindsight of virtuous resistance is the only
17:39
polite expectation of people on the receiving end of colonialism while the terrible thing is happening while the
17:45
land is being stolen and the natives still being killed any form of opposition is terroristic and must be
17:51
crushed for the sake of civilization but decades centuries later when enough of
17:57
the land has been stolen and enough of the natives killed it is safe enough to
18:03
venerate resistance in hindsight and of course which you're you you are talking
18:09
about uh you know now that it's over we can uh you know talk about seated land
18:16
and which we have no intention of giving back or uh the ethic of indigenous
18:21
peoples Etc now that they've been exterminated but of course this uh is
18:27
applies directly to what's happening to the Palestinians at this
18:32
moment yeah I mean I I a long time ago I was at a a literary Festival up in
18:38
Canada and um literary festivals in Canada started with land
18:43
acknowledgements well before us um festivals started doing the same and um we were sitting there we
18:51
were about to start our event and one of the organizers gets up and says um just
18:58
before we begin you know I just want to you know take take this time to acknowledge um the the really important
19:06
um uh acknowledgement that we are on unseated indigenous territory and to also thank the hedge fund that is
19:12
sponsoring this event that was like this is the most honest land acknowledgement I've ever heard you know um I I think I
19:21
think of it particularly this idea of of after
19:26
Thea acknowledgement as and maybe this is particularly cynical of me but I
19:32
think of it as a continuation of theft um you steal land you steal lives and
19:39
what's left to steal at the end but a narrative The Narrative that that
19:44
absolves all that came before um you know when I wrote the the title of this
19:50
book when I was first thinking about it I wasn't thinking in terms of weeks or even years uh I was thinking if I'm
19:57
fortunate enough to live the average lifespan in this part of the world maybe by the end of my life um I'll be
20:03
watching a a poetry reading in Tel Aviv that begins with a land acknowledgement um I think it's a
20:10
fundamental part of of any system of endless taking um which you know colonialism and
20:18
whatever stage of capitalism we're in are fundamentally part of
20:24
um it's there are very few systems as
20:30
well-versed in after Thea um shame and after the fact
20:38
guilt as the ones that are predicated on endless taking and and you see it all over the
20:44
place I mean there's an incredible poetry collection by L long soldier called whereas which is all about sort of
20:53
repurposing and undermining a US Government declaration that basically said sorry about all that genocide
20:59
indigenous people sorry about the theft and it was it was passed in the most sort of bland
21:06
manner hundreds of years after the fact and that
21:12
is such an important part of the entire project we can all be sorry afterwards
21:19
um the taking happens now and the apology comes later it's it's a Hallmark
21:24
of every colonial society the thing that makes it so Danger to acknowledge right
21:29
now is that we're not after the fact we're in the middle of the fact and so
21:35
the people who disagree with the content of this book or with with the with the um assertion of that title are going to
21:42
disagree vehemently until one day they don't have to um and then they're going to
21:48
acknowledge it and there will be no repercussions and we can sit around and listen to a very flowery land
21:55
acknowledgement uh when it's too late to do anything about it right at Jared kushner's Resort in uh
22:02
Northern Gaza um I want to talk about this point you make you you talk about
22:08
this moment in Qatar where you lived as a boy and of course I've been in Qatar
22:13
twice in the last few months and uh much of the labor is performed by South
22:20
Asians Southeast Asian uh who uh witnessed a small traffic accident and
22:29
and um the uh Southeast Asian man is uh
22:36
i' beaten with a sandal or something but anyway you you said you talk about non-existence non-existence is necessary
22:43
to the self-conception of this place not Qatar is hardly exclusive to this think
22:48
of undocumented workers here and how uncontrollable is the rage whenever the non-existence is
22:54
violated uh talk about that how we live in the midst of it undocumented workers
23:00
all around us essentially occupy that position yeah and I should say here that
23:08
um a lot of this book I mean I think it it comes out comes in through the door
23:13
swinging like it's a series of arguments like I'm trying to pick a fight with somebody and I I don't think I am and I
23:21
think a lot of this book is a self-interrogation because particularly that moment that you mention where it's
23:27
me and my buddy were teenagers he's just gotten his driver's license we're driving around and we see this like very
23:33
slight fender bender where this man who was probably Pakistani or Indian comes
23:39
out and the man who I I strongly suspect was a local was a country man comes out
23:45
and starts beating him like starts physically assaulting this man over a minor fender
23:50
bender I was on board with that right when I when I was talk about you you were laughing you and your friend were
Whose existence is denied?
23:56
laughing I mean the people driving past were lowering their windows and honking their horns and smiling and hooting and
24:03
we were fully on board with this idea that yes we live in a society where there's an underclass and that is
24:09
perfectly fine and I don't have to think about it and I come to this part of the world and I'm effectively asked to
24:16
partake in a similar deal um where the hell are these fruits and vegetables in my grocery store coming from and whose
24:24
life is being made miserable to provide this well just don't think about it the
24:30
there is people whose non-existence is Central to your
24:36
privilege of of daily existence um all you have to do is not think about them
24:42
all you have to do is look away and when I was living in Qatar I mean granted I was a teenager um
24:51
but I fully bought in yeah that's just the way these things work um and I think
24:58
think about that now because it shaped me to a large extent I work that muscle
25:03
to the point that it was very powerful that I could look away from almost anything um that I could normalize
25:10
almost anything and in trying to correct that and to be honest mostly failing because
25:16
it was so ingrained for so long that has come to be how I think about any society
25:22
now um I don't care about your GDP I don't care about the standard markers of
25:27
quality of Life those are all fantastic more power to you whose non-existence is Central to
25:34
this project and I've asked that about every society I've been a part of every
25:40
society I've ever looked at since that point because not only does it happen
25:45
everywhere to certain degrees it is so easy to normalize I mean you know this
25:51
you've been there life in a place like Qatar if you sign that deal to look away
25:57
is one of the easiest lives you will ever have um incredible Comfort
26:02
incredible wealth all the rest of it and I don't know that that's super far removed from the deal I sign over here
26:10
where my grocery stores uh shelves are fully stocked and there's a certain ease of life that is part and parcel of me
26:18
not thinking about the people who make this happen um that's just come it's a very minor incident in the grand scheme
26:24
of things this minor fender bender in the streets of Doha one day um but it has heavily influenced how we think
26:30
about the world ever since well it's of course how the Israelis looked at the Palestinian day workers when they were
26:36
allowed to go into Israel and build their houses and do other menial work um
26:43
I don't you write about the press and you write quite pressingly about the Press uh there's one little passage I
26:48
want to read and then have you comment on uh and we of course we were both journalists uh more than a few of my
26:55
former colleagues in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Hamas tax on Israel proudly boasted of
27:01
their support for both Ukraine and Israel when Russian authorities detained an eventually convicted Wall Street
27:07
Journal reporter Evan gerscovich who has since been released in an obvious sham of a judicial process almost every
27:14
Western media Outlet called it what it was but as the Israeli military wiped out both Palestinian journalists and
27:20
their entire families in a deliberate campaign to silence the flow of information out of Gaza virtually all
27:27
the same colleagues all the same Outlets took a very different approach the profession of Journalism necessitates a
27:34
capacity to understand things and all who watched the killings understood what
27:40
was happening the Press has played such a shameful role in all of this um but
27:47
and just comment a little bit on that incredible
27:54
duplicity yeah I um so I was a journalist for 10 years um I covered all kinds of different
28:01
beats and I was all over the place and I think one of the facets of
28:07
Journalism that um is is somewhat difficult to get
28:13
across is is that journalism
28:19
demands or at least journalism in the sort of corporate environment or an Institutional environment demands two
28:26
almost directly contr contradictory things I mean I was a journalist in Canada where we have something called
28:32
the miter award and the miter award is widely regarded as sort of the highest award for journalism in the country and
28:39
it's very much predicated on the idea of Public Service which is to say um journalism that causes institutional
28:45
change you know um there was some amazing pieces of Journalism that um
28:51
caused for example um a lot of our police forces to completely reexamine
28:57
how they deal with sexual assault cases and that was the result of work done by a reporter named Robin dittle it was an
29:04
incredible piece of Journalism but I don't know how somebody looks at that and doesn't see a measure
29:11
of activism you have to believe in something you have to believe that you
29:16
are in this to cause positive change and yet there is a part of the
29:21
spectrum where the switch can be flipped and suddenly you have to be sort of
29:27
capital o objective and neutral whatever those terms mean and you have to shut
29:32
off the part of you that would result in the best most important kind of Journalism and I think one of the things
29:39
about the situation in in Gazza where you're watching this ongoing genocide is
29:44
that rarely in my life have I seen the switch flipped so quickly and so
29:50
flagrantly um you had the immediate juxtaposition of what journalists are
29:55
allowed to say about Ukraine you had the immediate the immediacy of these being
30:03
journalists that are being killed right these aren't these aren't members of another profession even these are your
30:10
colleagues and suddenly you see the switch flipped and I mean the result is is not
30:18
only sort of detrimental to The Souls of the people who are involved in this or I guess
30:24
non-involved it also creates some real garbage journalism I mean you can see
30:29
the tortured constructions in some of these headlines you know bullet collides
30:34
with uh lives lost um the the the the flower Massacre headlines as though the
30:41
bags of flower had committed the massacre I mean it the whole thing just results in almost cartoonishly bad
30:49
journalism and people are okay with it because the alternative is is personal consequences
30:56
the alternative is is in tional consequences somebody might pull an ad somebody might pull access um
31:04
whereas if you if you do subscribe to this and you do use this tortured passive construction yeah maybe somebody
31:11
will yell at you on Twitter um you know journalists are very well-versed I think
31:17
in in weighing consequences we sort of have to be uh and in this case the
31:22
relative consequences are clear um you could lose your job you could lose your livelihood
31:28
on one hand on the other hand uh you could get yelled at by somebody on on a social media platform or something like
31:34
that it's not I can see how the case is made internally but that doesn't mean I have to agree with
31:40
it you talk a about the uh that's what by the way Chomsky used to call worthy
31:45
and unworthy victims I used to see that overseas all the time uh so when church
31:50
people are murdered and raped in El Salvador where I was uh they uh you know
31:57
working with the terrorist Rebels or they aren't really church people or they're whatever and then when a Polish
32:04
priest is murdered under the Communist Regime in Poland he becomes a saint at the same time at exactly the same moment
32:10
you're that's what you're describing just talk as you do in the book about this you know least worst kind of
The lesser of two evils
32:18
scenario in the midst of a genocide um which you kind of eviscerate uh talk about that that
32:25
argument that oh we can't of course it's too late now but we can't uh uh not vote
32:30
for Harris because we'll get Trump yeah I mean this I think for me
32:35
dates back to my earliest memories of growing up in the Arab world um I almost
32:42
universally am not a huge fan of any of the governments of the Arab world or any of the governing organizations in the
32:47
Arab world and a big part of from a young age looking towards the West for
32:54
something that something was was almost always a negative space um it wasn't what it offered it was what
33:01
I didn't have to deal with and so you know you could talk about politics without worrying about the secret police
33:07
coming to get you or that there were underlying principles of free speech and equal justice and so on and so forth but
33:13
they were all relative to the place I grew up in and so you come to this part of the
33:20
world and I think that there's a kind of stickiness to that initial
33:25
impulse that causes you to to constantly think of things in terms of what is the
33:31
least worst option here which to be perfectly honest with with you this is
33:37
how I behave for most of my life you know there have been several elections where I looked at the at the ballot and
33:44
saw an R next to somebody's name and voted for whoever the hell had the best chance against that
33:49
R I think one of the things that has become that became really clear over the
33:55
last year and change is that for some people there is a hard line after which
34:00
I can no longer do that after which this idea of relative evil is consumed by
34:07
absolute evil and for me and for I think a lot of people a genocide is that point
34:14
you know over the last year I have become conditioned that whenever I see a
34:19
picture of a smiling child on my social media feed that is probably there because that child has just been
34:25
murdered dismembered or starving to death I cannot go from that mode just as
34:33
a human being just as somebody with a soul and I'm sure your listeners will disagree with me on a million political points but setting all of that aside
34:40
just as a human being I cannot go from that to voting for an Administration
34:47
that would allow or bankroll or cheerlead for this and say to myself that well at least I'm voting for the
34:54
lesser of two evils I know the Trump Administration is evil I know Republican
34:59
politics has become a kind of deranged F fascist cult I get all of
35:05
this but at some point you have to decide what the hell it means to you to be
35:11
human and for me I I cannot continue to think of myself as human and then
35:18
casually vote for somebody who would allow something like this to happen and I've I mean I've lost friends over this
35:24
and I can see where they're coming from right I had a friend who who talked about this idea of you know we need to
35:30
vote for Harris and then push her on Gaza and then push her on climate change and then do all of this stuff and I
35:37
thought you know if that works for you fantastic do your thing I guess but also I'm not 100% sure that
35:45
you're going to be pushing for any of this stuff I I think that you you're either horrified by what
35:53
was happen what has happened or you're not and if you're not that's okay that's that's your life but we are on opposite
35:59
ends of a Chasm and it precludes me from voting for this person you describe it I
36:05
think the words you use are theft of your soul that's right that's how I see
36:11
it yeah I I mean it's the theft of your soul we we can we can have a political
36:16
argument about almost anything and I and I will compromise and I will find common ground and all the rest of it but
36:21
there's certain points where no I'm not going to do that I I I I understand that
36:27
Trump might be a million times worse on every facet of of foreign and domestic
36:33
governance I'm not going to put my name in alignment with somebody who allowed
36:39
the last year to happen I'm just not I I just have to read this even though it doesn't because I thought it was great
36:45
uh you're quoting the uh Palestinian America poet nor Hindi she says I want
36:51
to be like those poets who care about the moon moon and the name of the poem
36:56
is titled F your lecture on Craft my people are
37:02
dying um yep it's become one of my go-to poems over the years isn't that
37:08
great you write uh the problem with fixating on the abyss into which one's
37:16
opponent is descended while simultaneously digging one's own is that eventually it gets too dark to tell the
37:24
difference explain what you mean by that I think one of the the sort of Hallmarks
37:32
of of Republican politics over the last 20 years is that you could safely go
37:37
back a decade or so and take any piece of ideology or policy proposal that was
37:44
previously on The Fringe and now it will be in the center now it will be in the
37:49
mainstream um and that kind of derangement has been ongoing for a very long time um
37:58
and I think instead of sort of standing in opposition to that there has been a
38:05
an Impulse within mainstream Progressive liberal Democratic circles to sort of present ones as as a
38:14
kind of endless Centrist um I'm high-minded I'm above it all I find the center position and
38:21
that's that's the correct one to take and I think at some point everybody in the right wing realized that you could
38:26
take advantage of this and just push things further to the right further towards Fascism and these
38:33
very same people will gladly move further to the right alongside you because they want to remain in the
38:40
center it's just that the center keeps changing um I've I've heard variations of this
38:48
argument in every part of the world you know we need to keep this autocracy or
38:55
this dictator in place because the the alternative is Islamic fundamentalists
39:00
and and this sure okay I don't want that fine but at some point if you're
39:06
constantly tethering yourself to this idea of being slightly better than what's assumed to be the
39:13
worst thing you must be cognizant of what direction you're headed um which is
39:19
I mean I think something that the Democratic party despite their their every effort is going to have to contend
39:26
with at some point I I don't need you to be half as tough
39:31
on migrants as the Republicans are because the Republicans are just going to get tougher on migrants and you will
39:37
have to move your position and it is indistinguishable from having no position at all I don't need you to be
39:43
that I need you to stand for something uh and I think this idea of tethering yourself to being slightly less evil uh
39:50
than than the most evil thing essentially becomes indistinguishable from that over time yeah that's
39:57
precisely what happened the Democratic party transformed itself into the Republican Party certainly begun by
40:04
Clinton and the Republican party uh became uh a a
40:10
cultish uh you know insane uh movement to embracing magical thinking but you're
40:17
exactly right it also happened in Israel by the way where I was lived in Israel when they outlawed the [ __ ] party in
40:24
Marana and now people running Israel all the Heirs of Kahana this is this radical
40:30
racist Rabbi I want to talk about non-violence um one of the most damaging
Non-violence
40:36
longest lasting consequences of the war on terror years is an utter obliteration of the obvious moral case for
40:43
non-violence talk about that yeah I think one of one of the more difficult parts of this book and I I
40:49
talked about a little bit as a sort of self-interrogation I don't think you can write this kind of book and not contend
40:55
with the many things you are uh including some things that I'm not particularly proud of and one of those
41:01
interrogations has to do with this notion of how I describe myself I mean I describe myself as a pacifist as a
41:08
fairly committed um proponent of nonviolence but I have the privilege of
41:14
saying those words in a relative vacuum a vacuum created by the fact that I live
41:20
on the launching end of the bombs yeah um I live within the heart of the Empire
41:26
and so two things come into come into Clarity that I wish hadn't um but being
41:32
as though they have I need to address them the first is my right to tell anybody under a state of occupation how
41:38
to resist that occupation which is no right at all I have zero right to tell anybody anywhere who lives under
41:46
occupation and injustice how to resist that occupation and that Injustice um particularly when there is
41:54
no acceptable form of resistance in in the view of the institutions doing the
42:01
oppressing uh you engage in boycotts that's economic terrorism uh you try to
42:06
March peacefully you are shot with the intent to kill and or MIM um you boycott
42:13
cultural institutions you are being illiberal you take up arms you are a terrorist and you will be wiped out the
42:18
all you can do is die that is your only acceptable form of resistance so first of all I have absolutely no right to
42:25
tell anybody how to resist their occupation or or a state of Injustice but second I can sit here and I can tell you
42:32
how committed I am to nonviolence and I can believe that fully but by virtue of
42:37
the society I live in and by virtue of what my tax dollars are being used to do
42:43
I am one of the most violent human beings on Earth and I can't simply brush that away and say hey I I haven't thrown
42:49
a punch since I was 15 years old I fully committed to nonviolence I am part of a society that
42:56
exercises great industrial violence and at the very least I should acknowledge
43:01
that and that makes it much much more difficult to then go around parading My
43:06
Views about how violence debates this us all um sure it does but I am actively
43:14
engaged in it right now um that has been a very difficult thing to contend with
43:19
and I wish I I wish I had a sort of easy wraparound answer for it but I don't well this is you know first of all
43:26
it's always the oppressor uh who determined the configuration of resistance and the Zionist oppressor has
43:33
made it clear that whether it's nonviolent resistance or it doesn't make any difference you'll still be
43:38
obliterated but it's also as the Theologian James con writing about the difference between Martin Luther King
43:45
and Malcolm X he said Malcolm X grew up in an environment where he didn't have the luxury to be non-violent um and uh I want to talk
Love vs. Empire
43:53
about love at the end here I this was really important it's something I certainly saw
43:59
in places like Gaza but it's a love that you say cannot be acknowledged by Empire
44:05
because it is a people's love for one another anyone who has dragged a relative out from under the wreckage of
44:10
a bomb building who has held a friend bleeding to death in the street while the officer who pulled the trigger looks
44:16
on who has watched their water poisoned their land burned their Community start
44:22
is intimately well-versed in love but in the eyes of the Empire such a thing can
44:28
never be called love because the directive was never in the first place
44:34
love but rather Love Me In Spite of it all love
44:40
me yeah I think I think this has to do with with the idea of nonviolence as
44:46
well which is not only a matter of of strategy or or conscience but also uh of
44:53
narrative um I think this is part of The Narrative of Empire um you know I I I
44:59
don't know how many how many books I've read at this point from former US
45:04
soldiers who came back from Iraq and then wrote about how sad it made them to have to kill all those brown people
45:10
there's narrative exercises are sort of fundamental to all of this but I
45:16
think as as dejected and as cynical as the last year has made me especially with regards to
45:24
our institutions obviously our political institutions but also our academic and cultural
45:30
institutions it has it has caused the exact opposite
45:35
impulse with respect to individuals I mean yes I've lost friends and yes there's people that I now realize I
45:42
served only as the token Brown friend friend too and and I get all of that but I'm watching daily incredible
45:50
acts of solidarity um I'm I'm watching Jewish folks shut down one of the biggest
45:57
stations in the world calling for solidarity in in in opposition to the
46:03
oppression of people of another religion on the other side of the planet I'm watching people
46:09
exercise acts of Love at Great personal risk you don't you don't chain yourself
46:14
to to the gate of a weapons manufacturer and expect to get away scot-free
46:22
um I've watched people go into a killing field and and practice
46:29
surgery to to ease the suffering of children I mean there are immense acts
46:34
of Love happening right now I wish that they weren't necessitated um I wish that they weren't
46:41
necessary um but what I am no longer interested in is is love as a form of institutional
46:50
camouflage I'm no longer interested in that I'm no longer interested in stories that talk about
46:57
um how everything was was great at the end after all the bad stuff happened I
47:02
am interested in that active form of love that is trying to stop the bad thing from happening right now um and
47:09
I'm seeing so many examples of it and it is the one thing keeping me going I a deeply um I'm not a particularly strong
47:17
person I'm a deeply weak person and I need that kind of inspiration and I am getting it daily
47:23
from people who are much stronger than me and who are engaged in the kind of love that matters more than
47:29
any other I think well you point out you quote the Palestinian poet
ALways resist
47:34
Rashia uh Abdul Hadi
47:40
uh wherever you are whatever sand you can throw in the gears of
47:47
genocide do it now if it's a handful throw it if it's a fingernail full
47:54
scrape it out and throw it get in the way however you
48:00
can uh and I think that you know that speaks to an issue you rais in the book
48:06
that sense of frustration we all feel that no matter what we do it will go on
48:12
I don't expect the ceasefire to last I think the Netanyahu government is quite clear that it won't they're hardly done
48:19
with their killing project uh and they've accelerated their uh Killing
48:24
Spree in the in the West Bank um but it is absolutely imperative and I think it
48:31
gets back to that point of on the theft of the Soul um that uh we can't
48:39
measure uh what we do empirically um but it keeps us whole
48:45
that resistance and and I think that's a point you make and you also at the end of the book tie it into the breakdown in
48:52
the climate crisis and everything else this is what we're watching in Gaza a harbinger of what's coming as the world
48:59
breaks down and it's an imperative that those of us who have some kind of a conscience however feudal it may seem
49:06
must uh as uh as Russia writes get in the way
49:14
however we can yeah I often go back to um I was on
49:19
this panel once it was for a climate uh essay Anthology and the final question
49:24
of the panel was something like you know where do you derive hope where do you get your Hope from and that sort of
49:29
thing and and people gave the sort of answers you'd expect except the last guy the last guy his house had just burned
49:35
down in the California wildfires and he said something like there is no hope
49:41
we've gone too far we've done too much damage but we must act as though there
49:46
is and I think about that a lot I mean you know I come from a long line of malfunctioning Hearts the men in my
49:52
family don't don't live very long I I have young children who will have to deal with whatever this world is that
49:59
we've created much much longer than I and this of course ties into the idea of
50:05
climate breakdown of of this um overarching existential mess that we
50:13
have made that of course is going to uh impact the most vulnerable first but will impact everybody
50:20
eventually and I think that even on my worst days and look I haven't done anything I've written a book who cares
50:26
there are people who are every day doing acts of resistance and acts of standing
50:32
up to this machine that are far more courageous than anything I've ever been able to
50:37
muster but whatever the hell it is that I'm going to do on any given
50:43
day it means something because I remember being that kid in the
50:51
school when the speaker came in and said sorry we've screwed everything up but your generation is going to be the one
50:56
to fix it and now I'm that idiot going into high schools and saying I'm so sorry we've screwed this up but your
51:03
generation is going to be the one to fix so that that's not enough we are
51:10
obligated to give a damn about one another we are obligated to want
51:16
something better than this I think we're obligated to love one another even in this incredibly cruel moment and this
51:23
culmination of so many cruel moments that keeps me going every day even when
51:30
I do the bare minimum or do nothing at all and I truly believe that right now
51:37
there is a huge huge Chasm between what people want and what our institutions of
51:42
governance are doing but we have one another and that I think is is a form of
51:49
strength that no institution can ever mimic um there are days I wake up and
51:55
realize that I don't have an ounce of the resources of the Machinery aligned
52:00
against me but we have one another and I hold on to that and if that's my only
52:05
source of Hope then so be it that's enough well get enough of us we can
Outro
52:12
bring it down um uh we're talking with Omar El aad on his book one day
52:20
everyone will have always been against this I want to thank uh Diego Sophia Max
52:28
and Thomas who produced the show you can find me at Chris edges. substack
52:35
[Music]
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