The West, With New War in Hand, Tells Ukraine It’s Time to Negotiate—Two Years Too Late. PLUS: Interview w/ Harvard Students Targeted for Pro-Palestine Views | SYSTEM UPDATE #177
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Welcome to a new episode of System Update, our live nightly show that airs every Monday through Friday at 7 p.m.
Eastern, exclusively here on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube.
Tonight, Even before war between Israel and Gaza broke out a month ago, it was clear that Western populations were becoming far less willing to fund Ukraine's hopeless war effort against Russia.
A CNN poll in August found that a majority of Americans now oppose any further U.S.
resources being used to fuel the war by sending it to Kiev, while a candidate won the prime ministership in Slovakia, a longtime ally of Ukraine, by running on a platform of cutting off all funds to the war.
For those who wanted to see it, the writing was on the wall for Zelensky and the Ukrainians that the West was ready to abandon Ukraine in this war.
But now the U.S.
and the EU have a new shiny war to fund, this one in the Middle East, not in Eastern Europe, with a far more valued and politically potent ally than Zelensky and Kiev could ever hope to be.
And everyone other than Zelensky has been strongly signaling, if not outright stating, that it's time to end this war and have Ukraine sue for peace.
Multiple American news outlets long supportive of the war are now instead routinely publishing articles designed to prepare Americans and Ukrainians that the gravy train is coming to an end.
Even President Zelensky in a speech today seemed to finally be accepting his fate as he pleaded with Americans to give him credit and loans if America still wasn't willing to hand over more free money.
All of this was as predictable as it is tragic.
It was obvious when Joe Biden and the establishment wings of both parties in Washington united to make Ukraine's war America's war.
It was obvious that this was how it would end.
It was always the case that Ukraine would have to negotiate a peace deal with Russia, given that Russia is a much larger and more powerful country.
The idea that Ukraine was going to win this war and expel Russia from its soil, let alone from Crimea as well, which they've held since 2014, Was always a pipe dream.
And Ukraine and Russia could have negotiated a peace deal 18 months ago.
And in fact, both of those countries tried.
But as many people have confirmed, including former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and a former German Prime Minister as well, the US intervened early on to block all negotiations.
Because the real goal of the United States was never to defend Ukrainians in Ukraine, but rather to sacrifice them at the altar of their real goal, which was to use Ukrainians as pawns to weaken Russia, in large part because so many Democrats remain filled with hatred and rage toward Moscow due to their belief that it was Putin who helped Trump win and Hillary lose in 2016.
So here we are almost two full years later after the Russian invasion.
Russia now occupies and controls roughly 20% of Ukraine.
Tens of thousands of young and not so young Ukrainian conscripts have been killed fighting in what was always a feudal war.
At least tens of thousands.
The U.S.
has spent more than $100 billion of American taxpayer money to fuel and prolong this war.
Those of us who stood up early and urged a diplomatic resolution were widely branded as Kremlin agents, sometimes put on official blacklists issued by Ukrainian government agencies, including Ukrainian intelligence.
And here we have, yet again, a U.S.-CIA war that was utterly pointless, that did nothing to benefit the American people, except those who work in the arms industry or the U.S.
security state, and that resulted in mass bloodshed and a waste of American resources.
I'd like to say that Washington should learn a lesson from this, but the reality is that this was what D.C.
and the EU foreign policy makers actually wanted.
Nothing more than prolonging this war for as long as possible, only to now have to force Zelensky to beg Russia to be satisfied with keeping 20% of Ukraine in exchange for ending the war.
And then, we have been documenting since the start of the new war, not the one in Eastern Europe, but the one in the Middle East, how many of the tactics which American conservatives have spent years denouncing, specifically censorship and cancel culture, have been increasingly wielded to silence pro-Palestinian voices and to censor criticisms of Israel here in the United States.
I just did an interview yesterday with Tucker Carlson and we will show you a part of it where we discuss the way in which conservatives on a dime seem to have abandoned their professed belief in free speech and opposition to censorship and cancel culture.
Not all of them, but many of them.
As soon as this new war involving Israel emerged, and tonight we'll talk to two Harvard students, Amari Butler and Kojo Achaemangpong, who have been the target of widespread vilification campaigns, widely branded as anti-Semites, had their names put on blacklists, their faces on trucks that drive around campus accusing them of being bigots, and yet who have nonetheless continued to speak out about the war despite those threats.
All in support of their views on the Israel-Gaza conflict.
We'll speak to them about what those views are and why they seem to be undeterred by these very serious threats led by billionaires to their reputations and to their careers.
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Welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.
One thing that you have to say about the United States is it is a country that fights a lot of wars and that funds and fuels a lot of wars in a proxy sense.
Nobody can deny the United States says that.
And often these wars repeat themselves.
They become very predictable, both in terms of the propaganda that justifies them and that induces Americans to accept them early on and in the ways in which the war progresses.
And as we pointed out many times in Documented with Polling Data, it's almost always the case that when new wars are presented, a majority of Americans from both political parties are induced to support the war using very intense emotional propaganda.
But by the end of the war, whether it's six months later or two years later or 10 years later, Americans come to view the war as a mistake.
That's exactly the pattern that this war in Ukraine followed.
And it was very predictable and very obvious that exactly that would happen.
I can show you many videos on this program back in February of 2022, when Russia invaded, where we went on the air and said exactly that was going to happen.
I could see at the time how powerful the emotional propaganda was showing Ukrainians weeping over lost loved ones or seeing their buildings that had been bombed.
Obviously that is going to move any decent person.
The media always picks and chooses which victims to show, which victims to hide.
That's a very powerful way to manipulate public opinion.
But I could tell in the first two weeks that the emotional outpouring on behalf of Ukrainians as a result of unified media support for Ukraine was so intense that it was going to be impossible to have any space to question that war and U.S.
support for it for months to come.
And I devoted many shows to just urging that people take a step back, that people understand that we're all emotional beings, but that our emotions, the decent emotions in us can be manipulated, as they so often are, to get us to support things that are not in our interest, or to believe things that are patently untrue.
And most of the people, I was far from alone, who opposed the U.S.
role in this war, were arguing that Ukraine had no chance to win, that Russia was a much, much bigger country.
Just on population size alone, there was no way Ukraine could keep up.
They just didn't have the men in their country to go and fight on the front lines the way the Russians did.
And Russia's just a much more powerful military anyway, even if NATO is behind Ukraine as it was.
And it was clear that what was going to happen was Ukraine was not going to be protected as war supporters were claiming they wanted to do, but instead that Ukraine was going to be destroyed.
Just like the United States helped destroy Syria in the name of protecting it, helped destroy Libya in the name of liberating it, helped destroy Iraq in the name of freeing it.
There's just a whole long list of wars that show you exactly what's going to happen.
And if you can just take a step back and breathe, And not let yourself be emotionally manipulated by war propaganda.
You'll be able to see exactly what you're being induced to do again.
And the few of us in media who are standing up and saying this war is wrong, the United States is going to make things worse by supporting it and fueling it, that instead there should be diplomatic attempts to resolve this war instead of what seemed to be deliberate attempts to fuel it and worsen it and prolonged it.
All of us were called Kremlin agents or Putin apologists or being pro-Moscow.
And it wasn't just we were branded that rhetorically, although we were widely.
We're often put on official lists by the Ukrainian government.
You can go to my Wikipedia page right now, and there's a whole section on there how I was formerly accused of being a Russian propagandist by the Ukrainian government, which of course, in Wikipedia world, which is a neoliberal propaganda arm, is meant to be incriminating.
It's meant to signal to people that I'm some kind of Russian stooge.
But I've never said a positive word about the Russian government in my life.
I just opposed US involvement in that war because it was predictable what was going to happen.
And now here we are, almost two years later, The United States has spent $120 billion on this war.
President Biden is now seeking another $60 billion.
Tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives have been lost.
President Zelensky is fighting with a conscript army.
There are reports of the Ukrainian police and military dragging 45-year-old men now off buses and trains to send them to the front.
People are fleeing that country knowing that they're being used as cannon fodder for a futile war.
And tens of thousands of people, 20-year-olds and 18-year-olds and 30-year-olds, have lost their lives when, in the last year, the front has barely moved, barely budged an inch, while Americans were forced to send tens of billions of dollars more and more to fuel this war.
And obviously, if I knew The Ukraine was never going to win.
The CIA knew that as well.
They didn't care about winning.
Nobody thought that Ukraine was going to expel Russian forces from eastern Ukraine, much less from Crimea.
We were told that was the only condition in which the war would end once all Russian troops were gone, not only from the Donbass, but from Crimea as well.
Russia considered that an existential threat.
They were never going to let that happen.
They would fight until the last person.
And use nuclear weapons before they let Ukraine, before they let NATO come right up to their border into Crimea and Eastern Ukraine.
President Obama always said when confronted by neocons about why he didn't do more to confront Russia over Ukraine or Syria, he said, Ukraine is not a vital interest to the United States, but it is and always will be to Russia.
That was before Russiagate and before anyone was allowed to speak rationally about the actual threat posed or not posed by Moscow.
So you have all this destruction, all this death, all this money wasted, and now you have articles like this one from Time Magazine at the very beginning of this month that is essentially Zelensky's own advisors pleading with him in the media to stop being so delusional and come into reality.
Reality being that Ukraine has no chance to win.
There's the headline, quote, nobody believes in our victory like I do.
Inside, Vladimir Zelensky struggled to keep Ukraine in the fight.
Quote, 20 months into the war, about a fifth of Ukraine's territory, a fifth, 20%, remains under Russian occupation.
Tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed, and Zelensky can feel during his travels that global interest in the war has slackened.
So has the level of international support.
Quote, the scariest thing is that part of the world got used to the war in Ukraine, he says.
Exhaustion with the war rolls along like a wave.
You see it in the United States and Europe.
And we see that as soon as they start to get a little tired, it becomes like a show to them.
Quote, I can't watch this rerun for the 10th time.
Public support for aid in Ukraine has been in decline for months in the U.S.
and Zelensky's visit did nothing to revive it.
Some 41% of Americans want Congress to provide more weapons to Kiev, down from 65% in June, when Ukraine began a major counteroffensive, according to a Reuters survey taken shortly after Zelensky's departure.
That offensive has proceeded at an excruciating pace with enormous losses, making it ever more difficult for Zelensky to convince partners that victory is around the corner.
And remember, we talked about this a lot on this show, this idea of the counteroffensive.
You had David Petraeus and Matt Boots column saying the counter-offensive was going to be successful, it was going to transform the war just like supporters of the Iraq War once Americans got disillusioned with that war invented the idea of a surge that was going to change everything and it did nothing.
And this counter-offensive has been a gigantic failure.
It ended the lives of a huge number of Ukrainian soldiers and Russian soldiers and it barely moved The front lines.
It didn't breach the Russian defensive positions as was obvious it wouldn't.
And now they're out of promises.
The West is to a weary Western population.
No more counter offensive to promise.
Winter is here.
Quote, with the outbreak of war in Israel, even keeping the world's attention on Ukraine has become a major challenge.
Despite the recent setbacks on the battlefield, Zelensky does not intend to give up fighting or to sue for any kind of peace.
On the contrary, his belief in Ukraine's ultimate victory over Russia has hardened into a form that worries some of his advisors.
It is immovable, verging on the messianic.
Quote, he deludes himself.
One of his closest aides tells me in frustration, quote, we're out of options.
We're not winning, but try telling him that.
Zelensky's stubbornness, some of his aides say, has hurt their team's effort to come up with a new strategy, a new message.
As they have debated the future of the war, one issue has remained taboo.
The possibility of negotiating a peace deal with the Russians.
Judging by recent surveys, most Ukrainians would reject such a move, especially if it entailed the loss of any occupied territory.
That's because Zelensky, deceived by the West, has converted himself into a true believer that they can beat Russia, and he convinced Ukrainians that that was the case, and they marched into a war they were always destined to lose.
Quote, in some branches of the military, the shortage of personnel has become even more dire than the deficit in arms and ammunition.
One of Zelensky's close aides tells me that even if the US and its allies come through with all of the weapons they have pledged, quote, we don't have the men to use them.
Now recruitment is way down.
As conscription efforts have intensified around the country, stories are spreading on social media of draft officers pulling men off trains and buses and sending them to the front.
Those with means sometimes bribe their way out of service, often by paying for a medical exemption.
Such episodes of corruption within the recruitment system became so widespread by the end of the summer that on August 11, Zelensky fired the heads of the draft offices in every region of the country.
This war is a debacle, and Zelensky's own closest advisors are running to the Western press, to Time Magazine, to try and denounce him for being delusional, to try and get through to him.
Because everyone sees this except him.
Here, the New York Times, November 2nd, Ukraine's top commander says the war has hit a stalemate.
Quote, in a candid assessment, General Valery Zelensky said no beautiful breakthrough was imminent and that breaking the deadlock could require advances in technological warfare.
This is, again, Zelensky's closest advisors announcing to the world, please help us.
Zelensky is like a madman at this point.
He refuses to accept reality.
He continues to insist that we have to keep fighting this war, even though it's now definite after two years, including a very bloody and costly year where nothing happened, that this war is over, that there's no possibility to continue, that the only thing that will happen is more lives lost.
And that the only rational solution is for Zelensky to enter peace talks with the Russians, even though Russia will now have the upper hand, whereas two years ago when the US blocked negotiations, Ukraine could have had a much better deal.
Instead, we're now at the point where Zelensky has to hope, and the West has to hope, That the Russians will be satisfied with 20% or 18% giving up a couple percent as a gesture, if they want, to end the war.
Putin doesn't seem at all eager to end the war.
The Russian military has gotten much stronger, much more fortified, much better financed.
It's the West that needs this war to end, especially now that they have a new war.
Finally, Zelensky seems to be accepting the reality because he gave a speech today in which he essentially was begging for more money and accepting the reality that the West seems unlikely to give him more.
And so listen to what he said.
If you can't give us some financial support, OK, OK, please give us a credit and we will give you back money.
Oh, it's OK.
You can't give us any more money.
Give us a loan.
We'll pay you back.
This is the most corrupt country in Europe.
There has been immense graft and theft of this money in Ukraine.
The US Congress repeatedly rejected efforts by people like Ron Paul just to have an Inspector General track and manage the money.
Why do you think that is?
Think how angry the American people would know if this money wasn't really going to... the war effort was going to Swiss bank accounts and other coffers of corrupt Ukrainian officials.
And now here you have a Zelensky like a used car salesman in his sweater saying, give us a loan, we'll pay you back, just give us some more.
Here from NBC News is the article that I think is probably the most devastating for the Ukrainian war effort.
It's on November 3rd.
You see how they came one after the next?
The Time article was November 1st.
The New York Times article, November 2nd.
Here's NBC News, November 3rd.
US European officials broach the topic of peace negotiations with Ukraine, sources say.
The conversations have included very broad outlines of what Ukraine might need to give The conversations have included very broad outlines of what Ukraine might need to give up to reach a deal with Russia.
Now remember, if you suggested a year and a half ago, a year ago, six months ago, that Ukraine should give up part of its territory to end this bloody war because they would end up having to do it anyway, you were called every name in the book.
An appeaser, Neville Chamberlain, a Kremlin agent, all of that.
And now, here's Western intelligence agencies and Western governments telling Zelensky he needs to do exactly that.
Why wouldn't they have done this back in February 2022 before all these people died and all this money was spent?
The reason is they wanted this war to be prolonged.
They wanted Ukraine to be destroyed.
Think how much money JPMorgan and BlackRock, these vultures, are going to make in the rebuilding of Ukraine.
Obviously the West is going to pay for that.
And think how much the Americans believe they weaken Russia.
That's what they kept saying.
Bill Kristol had that ad saying, oh, this is a great war.
No Americans are dying.
Only Ukrainians are dying.
We're just paying the money and we're weakening our enemy, Russia.
Never any explanation about why Russia is our enemy, other than the fact that they helped in their minds, in the minds of Bill Kristol and his fellow Democrats.
Hillary losing, Trump win.
But other than that, why do we need to weaken the Russian military?
And why do we need to send tens of thousands of Ukrainians to their deaths to do it?
But now you have these exact peace talks that those of us who have been saying this for 18 months knew were going to come anyway.
And we wanted it to happen before all these people lost their lives and all this money was spent and Ukraine was destroyed, not after.
The discussions are an acknowledgment of the dynamics militarily on the ground in Ukraine and politically in the U.S.
and Europe, officials said.
They began amid concerns among U.S.
and European officials that the war had reached a stalemate and about the ability to continue providing aid to Ukraine, officials said.
Biden administration officials also are worried That Ukraine is running out of forces while Russia has a seemingly endless supply, officials said.
Ukraine is also struggling with recruiting and has recently seen public protest about some of Zelensky's open-ended conscription requirements.
People in Ukraine are starting to get angry.
that they're forced into these front lines with no one in sight.
And there is unease in the U.S. government with how much less public attention the war in Ukraine has garnered since the Israel-Hamas war began nearly a month ago, the official said.
Officials fear that ship could make securing additional aid for Kiev more difficult.
Some U.S.
military officials have privately begun using the term stalemate to describe the current battle in Ukraine, with some saying it may come down to which side can maintain a military force the longest.
Now, note that one of the very first things that Mike Johnson did when he became Speaker of the House was he separated the bill to fund the war in Israel from the bill to fund the war in Ukraine.
The White House wants these to be joined.
Because any bill that involves funding for Israel is a bill that most Democrats and Republicans are going to vote for no matter what.
And they know that's the only way they can get funding for Ukraine to pass the House.
But if you separate them, as Mike Johnson did, then you have one vote on sending billions of dollars to Israel, which of course will pass.
Israel always gets what it wants in Washington.
And then you have a separate bill for the $60 billion for Ukraine, and that's much more difficult.
And that's why Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell, along with Lindsey Graham and many, many others in the Senate, are working to rejoin these bills, knowing that that's the only chance they have to get this funding for Ukraine, this additional $60 billion, by forcing people to vote for it because it's attached to the spending bill for Israel.
Here the NBC article goes on, quote, neither side is making large strides on the battlefield, which some U.S.
officials now describe as a war of inches.
Officials also have privately said Ukraine likely only has until the end of the year or shortly thereafter before more urgent discussions about peace negotiations should begin.
U.S.
officials have shared their views on such a timeline with European allies, officials said.
Public sentiment toward assisting Ukraine is also starting to soften in Europe.
I mean, this is the West doing what it always does.
Vowing, we will be with you until the very end, you have everything you need from us, don't worry, keep fighting, get into this war head first, you're gonna win, we're gonna give you everything you need, and then when the U.S.
gets tired of the war, when the U.S.
doesn't feel like spending money anymore, when public opinion turns against it, when the U.S.
has a new shiny war to go fight, as they do now in the Middle East, then, sorry, time's up.
Time to go negotiate with the Russians about how much of your country you're going to give them.
The White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has been saying over and over and over and over for 18 months now, the Ukrainians have whatever they need for as long as they need it.
Listen to what she's saying now.
Do you notice that rhetorical shift?
the remaining USAI funds currently available to support Ukraine, and why we do have remaining PDA authorities to continue to fulfill Ukraine's immediate battlefield needs, we are beginning to provide Ukraine with smaller PDA packages in order to stretch out our ability to support Ukraine we are beginning to provide Ukraine with smaller PDA packages in order to stretch out Do you notice that rhetorical shift?
We're now squeezing these authorizations to give to them in order to stretch them out as long as possible, and we will continue to provide them for support, not for as long as they need.
We Now it's switched to for as long as possible.
Because they all know the gravy train is coming to an end.
The people of Ukraine are on the front lines in the fight for freedom and democracy as we head into what will likely be another brutal winter full of Russian attacks.
It is critical that Congress send the world an important message about America's resolve and take action to pass the President's National Security Supplemental Request and show Vladimir Putin and the rest of the world that the United States continues to stand strongly with Ukraine.
So that's the White House signaling to Americans, to liberals, who they've been telling, we're going to remember how for so long the mere suggestion that Ukraine wasn't going to win was treason.
We were told the Ukrainians are these feisty fighters who are fighting on their home territory.
There's no chance the Russians are going to win.
Ukraine's victory is inevitable.
All of that was a lie.
Again, if I knew, and if others knew, The immense military advantages the Russians had that were insurmountable.
Then obviously the CIA and Western intelligence agencies knew that too.
They didn't care if Ukraine won.
It's sociopathic what happened here.
Sociopathic.
They placed no value on the lives of Ukrainians while they were telling the populations that all they cared about were Ukrainians.
They saw them as pawns.
Just to be sacrificed like in a chess game.
To advance your other interests.
That's what Ukrainian lives were to them.
And the people who kept saying over and over, we care so much about the Ukrainian people, and who told those of us who opposed Joe Biden's policy, you don't care about the Ukrainian people.
It was exactly the opposite.
I really didn't want this war to be prolonged by the CIA and Joe Biden and the EU, because I knew that there was going to be bloodshed all throughout Ukraine.
And the people who were in support of this war wanted that.
Wanted that bloodshed.
They didn't care at all.
They just wanted to get back at Russia.
For a stupid political grudge.
Because they think it was Russia that caused Hillary Clinton to lose in 2016.
That really is what liberals think.
Republicans supported the war because Republicans support wars.
The establishment wing of the Republican Party, Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton, all those people, they just, you tell them there's a war with Russia and they're on board.
But Democrats were feeding on endless hate mongering toward Russia for years.
That was the biggest story in American political life was Russiagate and what the Putin did and Trump in bed with Moscow and the Kremlin.
And so when there was a war for them to get back at Russia, they were eager, they were bloodthirsty.
They didn't care about Ukraine.
Ukraine was the instrument to get back at Russia.
In case you don't believe that still, here from Ukrainian Pravda in October of 2023, former German Chancellor claims he, quote, mediated a situation between Ukraine and Russia in 2022.
Gerhard Schroeder, former German Social Democrat Chancellor, known for his friendship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, has claimed that the US supposedly disrupted peace talks between Ukraine and Russia at the beginning of the full-scale invasion And that Kiev invited him to mediate.
The former chancellor also mentioned the five points of what was supposedly a peace plan being discussed at the time.
Ukraine's rejection of NATO membership.
Two official languages in Ukraine, Donbass autonomy, security guarantees for Ukraine, and negotiation on the status of Crimea.
Quote, the only people who could resolve the war over Ukraine are the Americans.
During the peace talks in March 2022 in Istanbul with the incumbent Russian defense minister, Ukrainians did not agree to peace because they were not allowed to.
They had to coordinate everything talked about first with the Americans first, Schroeder said.
And it wasn't just that former German Chancellor, but also the former Israeli Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett, who said that he too was trying to negotiate a peace deal between Moscow and Kiev because the Israelis did not want this war.
They didn't want to side with Russia.
They didn't want to side with Ukraine.
They need good relations with Russia because they operate a lot in Syria.
There are a lot of Russian Jews who support Israel.
They didn't want to be involved in this war.
They wanted it to be resolved diplomatically.
And Naftali Bennett said exactly the same thing as the former German Chancellor said here from Jacobin in February of 2023.
And this was widely reported.
The grinding war in Ukraine could have ended a long time ago.
Let's put that up on the screen.
There it is.
You see the grinding war in Ukraine could have ended a long time ago.
Quote, an early peace deal could have ended the bloody war in Ukraine, but NATO opposition And revelations about the Russian massacre of civilians at Buka along with U.S.
media that all but ignored potential routes to peace dashed those hopes.
This past weekend saw the publication of a bombshell interview with former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who over the course of a nearly five-hour interview dropped an unusual amount of detail about his efforts to mediate peace talks between Russia and Ukraine early in the war last year.
The headline-grabbing news is Bennett's claim that negotiations that were yielding fruit and that could have ended the now nearly year-long war after a little more than a month were ultimately blocked by the NATO government's underwriting Ukraine's war effort.
According to Bennett, as early as the second Saturday of the war, on little less than a week and a half into the war, both Ukrainian President Zelensky and Russian President Putin made major concessions.
Putin by giving up on the goal of demilitarization of Ukraine and its denazification, meaning, as Bennett interpreted, regime change, and Zelensky by giving up pursuing NATO membership, calling both leaders, quote, pragmatic.
Bennett said that over the course of negotiations, he, quote, was under the impression that both sides very much wanted a ceasefire and gave the odds of any deal holding it 50-50.
Only over a, quote, marathon of drafts, he claims, 17 drafts were prepared.
But, quote, they blocked it.
And I thought they were wrong, Bennett said, referring to Western powers backing Ukraine.
Quote, I have one claim, Bennett told the interviewer.
I claim there was a good chance of reaching a ceasefire.
When the interviewer asked if he means had they not curbed it, He replies with a nod.
Bennett's claims here would be less compelling if they didn't corroborate what has already emerged publicly in dribs and drabs.
Back in May last year, Ukrainian Pravda, a broadly Western-aligned Ukrainian paper, reported based on several sources close to Zelensky that in April, then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson appeared in Kiev almost without warning and told Zelensky the West would not recognize any peace deal he signed with Putin.
Do you see what happened here?
There was this horrific war that killed a huge number of people on both sides.
And they had thought Zelensky should, quote, press him instead, meaning fight on and end the war through military victory.
Do you see what happened here?
There was this horrific war that killed a huge number of people on both sides.
That could have been averted, that was on the path to being averted.
Except the U.S. and the U.K. intervened and told Zelensky, you're not signing any peace deal.
all.
We're the ones who you're dependent upon and we're telling you you're not signing a peace deal.
We will instead give you everything you need to get to victory and expel the Russians from your soil.
Because Boris Johnson and Joe Biden thought that that would weaken Russia.
They didn't care about Ukraine at all.
And there's multiple sources that say this, including the former German Chancellor and former Israeli Prime Minister.
Now again, those of us who stood up and said that, did so to our reputational detriment.
Here from the British magazine UnHerd in July of 2022, there the headline is, Ukrainian government issues a blacklist of quote, Russian propagandists.
The list includes a number of prominent Western intellectuals.
Quote, the Center for Countering Disinformation established in 2021 under President Zelensky, Sits within the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine.
Its stated aim is to detect and counter quote propaganda and destructive disinformation and to prevent quote the manipulation of public opinion.
On July 14th it published on its website a list of politicians academic activists that are quote promoting Russian propaganda including several high-profile Western intellectuals and politicians.
Republican Senator Rand Paul, former Democratic Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, military and geopolitical analyst Edward Luttick, realist political scientist John Mearsheimer, and heterodox journalist Glenn Greenwald were all included on the list.
The list does not explain what the consequences are for anyone mentioned.
The exact criteria for inclusion are also unclear, although next to each name the report lists the, quote, pro-Russian opinions the individuals promote.
For example, Edward Ludic's breach was to suggest that, quote, referendum should be held in the Donetsk and Lusheng regions.
Mearsheimer's breach has recorded him as saying that NATO has been in Ukraine since 2014 and that NATO provoked Putin.
And there were other lists as well from Ukrainian intelligence.
There were reports of Ukrainian intelligence sending lists of people and posts to the FBI that they wanted censored from the internet.
There was a massive campaign to destroy the reputations of anyone who stood up and opposed that war and who urged diplomatic resolution instead.
And that's why so few people did it.
And yet this is pure vindication.
I don't feel good about it.
I feel sickened by it.
How many times is the United States going to continue to fuel and fund wars that kill huge numbers of people and that benefit nobody in the United States other than arms dealers and people who work in the U.S.
security state?
And I know people in Washington won't learn the lesson, but I hope all of us do.
Because in this lies a very important lesson about how war propaganda functions and how easily we're induced to support it.
Earlier today, I was interviewed by Tucker Carlson Actually, yesterday, I taped the interview.
He published it today on his Twitter show.
And I want to know if we have that clip, which I'd like to show before we speak to our guest tonight.
We do.
I want to show you just a short clip of my discussion with Tucker Carlson because it pertains to the interview that I'm about to conduct with two, I think, very courageous Harvard students who have been put under severe attacks for exercising their free speech rights and speaking out on the israeli-palestinian conflict and the horrific war taking place in gaza
because the context for it is that there's a huge number of people on the american right who have spent years denouncing censorship and cancel culture campaigns aimed at silencing people who expressed dissent and yet many of them not all but many have turned around and started invoking the exact tactics they have spent years denouncing and Getting student groups banned from colleges because of their pro-Palestinian views.
Cheering France and Germany that have banned pro-Palestinian protests.
Having the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, ban a pro-Palestinian group from campus because of their views that he misconstrues as material support for terrorism.
There has been this incredibly repressive climate that has emerged since this war broke out a month ago.
That has eroded the free speech rights and dissent rights of American citizens even though this war is thousands of miles away involving a foreign country on the other side of the world.
Obviously Tucker Carlson is an influential conservative who has often led these denunciation campaigns against censorship and cancel culture and he and I spoke yesterday and he broadcast or posted the interview he and I had about That issue, and here's what he said and then what I said as the perfect framework for the interview we're about to show you.
What's so terrifying to me, though, is that the right, the American political right, which really was through this kind of weird transformation that's happened over the past dozen years, has become the lone defenders of the First Amendment.
They've abandoned that in the last month, like instantly.
So I think you could say, you know, I strongly support Israel, I strongly dislike Hamas, I'm rooting for, maybe I think we should commit troops to the region.
I mean, whatever, you can have any view you want.
However, American citizens have a right to express their opinion.
Period.
And that supersedes any other event in any other country.
It's like, that's a core right.
And I don't hear many conservatives saying that.
And so you sort of wonder, like, if they're not defending it, who will?
I mean, there are people who have built their careers, Tucker, over the last five, six years, standing up and saying, we can't have cancel culture, we can't have censorship, college students aren't entitled to feelings of safety, we don't censor in order to protect people from views they find threatening, mocking the notion that minority groups are vulnerable and we have to censor in order to protect them.
Turn on a dime and now become the leading voice of saying, because American Jews feel unsafe, That's valid in a way that, say, claims from black people or LGBTs or Latinos aren't valid.
And because of that, we need to censor.
Fortunately, there have been some conservatives, influential ones, who have been quite consistent.
Candace Owens, for example, had a very public argument with Megyn Kelly in which she was saying, we're not the left.
public argument with Megyn Kelly in which he was saying, we're not the left.
We don't get people fired for their political views.
We don't get people fired for their political views.
We don't believe in using the law to silence people.
We don't believe in using the law to silence people.
There have been Vivek Ramaswamy on your show.
There have been Vivek Ramaswamy on your show.
He just wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal saying we're not going to defeat Hamas through censorship or cancel culture in the United States.
And I think the biggest example and the most important one, which is fire.org, that became very popular among conservatives in the United States because they were defending the rights of free speech on campuses for conservative students at a time when the ACLU wouldn't, stood up and vehemently denounced Ron DeSantis for a grave direct attack on the First stood up and vehemently denounced Ron DeSantis for a grave direct when he tried to ban a pro-Palestinian group on campus on the grounds that they're providing material support for Hamas, even though he doesn't claim they did anything other than express their views.
And I think this is the point.
You are allowed to stand up in the United States and say, I think the United States should bomb Iran into oblivion.
I think we should turn Gaza into a parking lot.
Lindsey Graham stands up every day and calls for violence of that kind, and he's protected by the First Amendment from doing so.
You also, though, as an American, are allowed to stand up and say, I think Israel is at fault in this conflict because of the occupation and the blockade.
I think that people in Palestine have a right to fight back.
I think that violence is justified because Israel has become oppressive.
You can think all those views are repulsive, but leave the question of what you think of those views to the side.
No question Americans have a right to express them, and there has been a concerted effort on the part of many conservatives, including many who have led the way in mocking claims of victimhood and victimhood narratives by minority groups and the idea that people need to feel safe.
They are now the ones turning around and saying, no, because of how dangerous this speech is, we need to ban it.
We need to ban these protests.
We need to ban student groups.
We need to put people on no-hire lists.
The exact kind of tactics they spent five or six years, up until a month ago, aggressively denouncing and it's very dispiriting even though it's not surprising to the minute that they have views that they find offensive to turn up for them to watch them and turn around and use all the same theories to say those views cannot be expressed that is incredibly dangerous because in the future when conservatives want to complain about the censorship regime that has been implemented who will possibly
take them seriously after we just watch them the minute there was an issue of great importance to them which is Israel turn around and call for censorship obviously it's not a principle and the only time you defend free speech is when it comes to views you agree with any Anybody can do that.
That's easy to do.
That's worthless.
The only real test of whether you believe in free speech is whether you defend the right to express the views you find most offensive.
And a lot of conservatives, not all, are woefully failing that test.
All right, so that you can watch the full interview on Tucker Carlson's Twitter page where he publishes the full discussion.
There was a lot of talk about Ukraine, but a lot of talk about the war in Israel and Gaza as well, and this kind of climate of oppression that has emerged in its wake tonight.
Amari Butler and Kojo Achiampong are both students at Harvard who have been very outspoken about the conflict between Israel and Palestine in general and the war in particular.
As a result of a letter they signed shortly after the Hamas attack on October 7th, they were widely branded as anti-Semites.
accused of supporting terrorism.
They had their faces put on trucks that drive around Harvard voicing these accusations against them.
They had billionaire hedge fund managers organizing public lists with their name on it to prevent them and others from being hired.
And yet remarkably, and I think quite commendably, they have been quite defiant in the face of these threats to their futures and their careers and their reputations.
And they continue to unapologetically speak out on campus And now tonight on this show, obviously there are going to be some of you who disagree with their views, probably strongly, but their story is one that I think merits a lot of attention.
So I'm thrilled to welcome both of them to the show tonight.
Thank you guys for taking the time to talk to me.
I'm really happy to have you.
Thanks so much for having us.
We're excited to be here.
Absolutely.
And I apologize, Kojo, if I butchered your last name.
I practiced it.
I thought I had it.
But hopefully I got it at least well enough.
Let me start by asking, before we get into your specific views, Talk a little bit about what has happened to you as a result of expressing those views since October 7th, the kind of attacks on you, the sort of threats to your career, to your future.
Mari, why don't we start with you and go ahead and just talk about some of the things that have been done.
Yeah, so as you know and as you said, We signed on to, Kojo and I, well it was actually organizations that signed on to a letter written by Harvard PSC, the Palestine Solidarity Committee, and shortly after, I think about two days later, the first thing that I saw was that our names were in like a random tweet and then it was linked to a random article on some website calling us like supporters of terrorism on Harvard's campus or something.
But initially it was just like one or two tweets that I saw of us tweeting one article link.
And then very quickly after it kind of just started spiraling where we saw many more tweets, just people retweeting the same thing.
And then soon after, Bill Ackman, hedge fund CEO, tweeted that he wanted us and all the other people involved in signing the letter blacklisted from his company and other companies.
And he said he was like kind of talking with other CEOs that also wanted us blacklisted.
And then very quickly escalated When a truck that had like LED screens and our names and faces on it kind of started parading around campus calling us Harvard's leading anti-Semites, my face was on it and my full name, Kojo's face was on it and then like just a bunch of other people that largely I mean like Organizations signed on to it, not even individuals themselves.
So people that in any way used to be affiliated with the org.
I mean, there were people that were docs that graduated years ago that weren't even on campus when this happened.
But anyone that was affiliated with any of these orgs in any capacity at any point in time, many were docs.
Their names, family information, even in some cases were put publicly.
And I mean, It was just really shameful.
I mean, these attacks largely, to me and to all of us who recognize to be racist, because when you look at the vast majority of the people that are being doxxed and harassed, I mean, almost all the people on the truck were either black, Muslim, Arab students, Palestinian.
I mean, it's just disproportionately that we are targeted for this, and it's really shameful.
We recognize these to be kind of attacks out of desperation, that they just have gotten so desperate that they know that our views at this point are so popular.
I mean, we've seen millions of people worldwide, 300,000 in DC just this weekend alone, in support and defending our views and defending our right to free speech.
And out of desperation, they've had to kind of resort to these gross scare and intimidation tactics.
And that's kind of what we see that as.
Let me put the tweet by Bill Ackman on the screen that we've been discussing.
He posted several of them actually.
This one was from October 10th where he said, I've been asked by a number of CEOs, and Bill Ackman by the way is a billionaire Hedge fund manager, he obviously has a lot of very rich and influential friends.
He said, I've been asked by a number of CEOs of Harvard would release a list of the names or members of each of the Harvard organizations that have issued the letter assigning sole responsibility for Hamas's heinous attacks to Israel so as to ensure that none of us inadvertently hire any of their members.
If in fact their members support the letter they have released, the names of the signatories should be made public so their views are publicly known.
And then later on, he actually did get a list and published the list of all the names of people who either had some affiliation with these organizations, whether or not they even signed the list, whether or not they supported it, to basically dirty their reputation and prevent them from being hired.
Let me ask you, obviously, you know, if you are students at Harvard, there's a presumption that you care about your futures, you care about your careers.
Did you find this sort of thing threatening, and why is it that since these attacks were launched, you've continued to speak out in defense of your views about this conflict?
Yeah, I mean, like, it's a situation where Yes, the attacks were, you know, for us, um, and saying that, you know, he's going to get his CEO friends and influential people to attack us and, like, you know, put us on these, um, blacklists.
Like, that's how you're trying to keep up.
It's a scary thing to face.
But we're not, we're not going to be quiet and stand the attacks like this happened because we understand that we're in a liberation effort.
And that's what's at stake.
And so all these may have very real consequences, but we're not worried.
I mean, I'm not worried, but neither are the organizers that we've been doing all this with, because we understand that This is a just struggle.
People get demeaned when you fight for people's rights.
We see this all across history.
And this is just another sort of instance of that.
What they want us to do is capitulate.
They want us to be scared.
They want us to be quiet.
They want us to stop holding protests, organizing protests, going to protests, speaking at protests.
And we're not going to give it to them.
Even when it means that, you know, If they're going to attack our careers.
But at the same time, the people are behind us.
Like Omari said, 300,000 people in Washington, D.C.
A crazy number of people.
We see internationally people coming out from the U.K.
to South Africa to Brazil.
All these places, a lot of people are coming out.
So the people of the world are behind us.
And in terms of careers, yeah, I guess we're at Harvard.
There's a lot of people who have, you know, careerism instincts, I would call it.
But I'm not, it's not personally something that worries me.
Because again, this is what I pour all my energy into.
This is what we pour all our energy and effort into.
And so something like that is never gonna be a reason for me to stop speaking out against injustice.
Let me just ask you about something you said just now.
You said the reason you're continuing is because you believe your cause is just.
A lot of people have tried to describe your cause, to characterize your cause, based on this letter that you signed, based on statements you've made subsequent to that letter, as your cause being pro-Hamas or pro-terrorism or supporting the idea that Jews in Israel and elsewhere deserve to be killed.
Is that a fair characterization of how you see the cause you're supporting?
And if not, what is the cause that you're supporting?
How would you describe it?
Well, we have to understand that this history goes back to 75 years ago.
This is an occupation of a people, and this is the oppression of a people.
This is a situation where you have two codes in a land, where we have apartheid, we have genocide, where 10,000 people have died I mean, this is a situation where, I mean, this is a situation where, you know, you have things like the Nakba.
I mean, this is genocide, right?
So what we're fighting against is genocide.
It's an occupation of a people.
Industry is similar to this.
I mean, in our own history as black people in America, with stuff like Jim Crow, when you think about apartheid South Africa, they're always gonna, yeah, I mean, they're always gonna try to vote.
We understand that this is a just struggle.
Amari, I know from experience that if you speak out on this issue in any way that is off-key from the bipartisan consensus in Washington, from the overwhelming majority viewpoint of people in power, which is very, very pro-Israel, that has been US policy under both parties for decades, you're automatically going to get accused of anti-Semitism.
That's true of me, even though I'm Jewish, even though I grew up in a Jewish tradition, in a Jewish family.
steep in all of the kind of aspects of Judaism.
And yet when people accuse me of that anti-Semitism, one of the things they argue is, well, you seem very focused on this conflict when there are a lot of other conflicts around the world.
And my argument for why that is, is because it's my government that funds Israel, that enables Israel to maintain the occupation, to maintain the blockade of Gaza with huge amounts of money.
But also it's done in many ways in my name as someone who is Jewish.
And that's the reason for my focus on this conflict.
Given how many conflicts and how much injustice there is all over the globe, how many wars there are even now in places like Asia and Africa, how much injustice there is still in the United States, what is your answer for why this cause has become so important to you?
Yeah.
Right.
It's a great question.
And I think for me, it's not that any one struggle or any one liberation effort in the world is more important than any other.
There's more attention than any other.
But we understand that the Palestinian struggle is intimately and inextricably linked to every other struggle for justice all over the world.
For me personally, there's been a long, robust history of solidarity between Palestinian liberation movements and Black liberation struggles.
Both in the United States and locally.
You know, during South African apartheid, there was a huge solidarity between Palestine and South Africa because, I mean, they're facing occupation and apartheid in the same way.
Even in the United States, we saw Black freedom fighters like Malcolm X and Huey P. Newton that were always vocal in their unequivocal support for the Palestinian people and the intimate connection between those histories and between those struggles.
And I mean, In the United States, for me, to your point, I think it's a great one that it is largely our government.
I mean, the United States is a sponsor of Israel.
Israel would not be able to commit all the atrocities it does without the support, material support, from the United States.
I mean, it's $4 billion every single year that the United States provides to Israel, and then even more in moments like these.
And like you said, I mean, these are our tax dollars, the American tax dollars, you know, I work, I work hard, I make money and then that money is sent to fund genocide in Israel because I live in America and America funds genocide overseas and sponsors Israeli government.
So I think everyone in America should care about this issue, especially considering the fact that Americans I mean, for many Americans, the quality of life in this country is going down.
I mean, housing, the housing crisis is only getting worse.
Food insecurity, education, student loans, homelessness, all of these issues.
are skyrocketing in America.
And meanwhile, and we're told by our government that there's just not enough money to tend to these issues.
However, as soon as it's time for Israel, and Israel needs more money to commit genocide and apartheid overseas, there's plenty of money in the budget.
And both parties agree to, like, it's a nonpartisan-- it's both parties that are agreeing to fund genocide overseas, So for me, it's that.
It's the fact that my government, the country in which I live, is using our tax dollars to fund this, and thus it's our responsibility to apply that pressure to get them to stop doing that.
But also, it's just an understanding that the Palestinian struggle is every single other liberation struggle in the world, and that none of us can truly be free until Palestine is free.
I think, let me just follow up a little bit in a question similar to the one that I asked Kojo, is I think one of the reasons why there was such a strong reaction to that original statement that was issued was because people were watching these videos, many of which Hamas produced and published, of, you know, obvious atrocities, horrific scenes of Israeli civilians being murdered, of having their children abducted in front of them, of things that were done at the music festival that at least resulted in the deaths of lots of innocent people.
And people were horrified at what Hamas did.
Even people who believe Israel is largely at fault in the conflict felt like what Hamas did in targeting innocent civilians in Israel was unjustifiable regardless of the context.
And the letter that was issued that you each participated in, said the following.
We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.
The apartheid regime is the only one to blame.
Israeli violence has structured every aspect of Palestinian existence for 75 years.
Does that, I think a lot of people read that and said they seem to have either no empathy for the lives of innocent Israelis that were extinguished on that day, or even seem to be kind of justifying what Hamas did in Israel.
Are either of those things a fair reaction to the letter that you issued?
Yeah, so I will say that obviously no one likes the taste of blood, you know, and I think the loss of life, especially innocent life, is always lamentable.
It's always sad, you know, no one wants war, no one wants violence, nobody wants these things.
We want to live In a country with peace where, you know, bloodshed is not, we don't see bloodshed to the scale.
But it's important to understand in this context that the root cause of the violence does come back and go back to 75 years ago, beginning with the Nakba in 1948, where 700,000 Palestinians were brutally and forcibly removed from the land that has historically always been there, that they've lived in for generations, right?
That they've tended to and lived in this land for generations and they were forcibly removed from it violently.
And ever since then, you know, I mean obviously many Palestinians still remain in this land and now today they're treated like worse than second-class citizens and then they're bombed periodically and now we're seeing a literal genocide in Gaza and then we're even more so there's still, you know, continually brutal repression of Palestinians all throughout All throughout occupied Palestine, not just in Gaza that we're seeing the news right now.
And it's important to understand that, I mean, when someone is facing such brutal repression, we see always throughout history that there's always a response to that.
Eventually people are going to be like, we're not going to take this anymore.
And, you know, like I said, bloodshed and violence is always, I mean, no one likes it.
I don't think that, I don't, you know, it's always, No one likes a taste of blood, I'll say.
But that being said, to truly stop the violence, to truly end all the violence in the region, which is truly what I want more than anything, we have to understand the root cause of that violence and we have to go back to before October 7th and realize that all this, there's a deep history that goes back 75 years and none of the violence will stop until we address that adequately.
So let me ask both of you, and I want to start with you Kojo, I don't know if you heard the clip that I played with a part of my conversation that I had with Tucker Carlson yesterday that he just published today, but it touched in part on what have been controversies on campus throughout the United States for quite some time, which is the idea that conservatives have been expressing a grievance that a lot of minority groups on college campuses have been claiming, look, we feel unsafe
Because of the expression of certain views that we feel are threatening to us as vulnerable minority groups and we need our administrators and our campuses to protect us by suppressing hate speech, by keeping us safe, by ensuring that views that seem violent or hateful can't be heard.
And now what you hear from a lot of conservatives on campuses, from a lot of Jewish student groups, is the same exact thing.
We feel like we're unsafe now.
We feel like there's a lot of rhetoric about Israel that seems anti-semitic, that puts us in danger, and we therefore need our administrators to protect us by suppressing what we think is hate speech, namely very aggressively critical views of Israel and of the people in Israel who are pursuing these policies that you're so critical of.
What did you think previously about the debate on college campuses about whether there needs to be restrictions on speech to help minority groups feel safe?
And what do you think now about the claim by Jewish students on campus that they don't feel safe and therefore anti-Israel views need to be censored or restricted?
Well, I think first of all, I think we have to understand a lot of Jewish people would take offense People conflating Judaism with what's going on in Israel.
I think there are a lot of Jewish people, a lot of Jewish students who speak out against the genocide that's currently happening in Palestine.
In terms of the campaign, with this issue, the way that the way that forces have tried to have tried to silence us
For instance, we were just talking about the Bill Atkins of the world, the way that they paraded a truck around campus, and the way that the university largely, I guess, allowed this to happen, right?
In terms of the broader conversation, I mean, surrounding free speech on campus in relation to safety of students, it's not necessarily something that I've really put
A ton of thought into because I go back to the fact that if you truly believe what you are saying and what you are doing is just, then I will find, at least me personally, I will find my safety in me and in the people I organize with and the organizations I'm part of.
I'll find my security with that.
Um, and not necessarily go to the university, uh, for, for, for, for me personally.
Um, because again, if I, I believe, I believe in what I'm saying.
And so, you know, and I know that the people have my back, both here and internationally.
I'm not necessarily afraid.
Um, But no, yeah, I think that the confliction between Judaism and pro-Israel stance is one that is dangerous.
Because it's not that way.
It shouldn't be that way.
Again, there are so many Jewish people who speak against genocide.
It's a conflict.
So I want to ask the same question to Mari, but before I do, let me just ask you, Kojo, in terms of the reaction on campus and from the administration, you said that there's been no attempt on the part of the administration to really protect you from these attacks.
Has there been any pressure from administrators or deans or whomever for you to apologize or retract your statement or walk it back?
And then how have other students, including Jewish students who are very critical of Israel, who are also pro-Palestinian, who are protesting Israel as well, how have other students reacted to the position that you've taken?
Have you gotten a lot of support?
Have you gotten any hostility from other students as well?
So to answer the question, the university hasn't necessarily, you know, forced or asked us to work on our statements.
Yeah, it was Brandeis yesterday, exactly.
They just de-organized, they banned it, they de-organized it, they forced them to cancel a vigil for Palestinian victims.
Yeah.
So, I mean, yes, you are seeing it on other campuses.
I can't necessarily speak to that.
I haven't necessarily gotten that out.
But what was the second question?
Yeah, I just wanted to get, like, how have other students responded to these attacks on you?
Have people been supportive, including Jewish students who are critical of Israel?
Have you had any hostility from other students at Harvard because of the views you've taken?
What has been the reaction on campus to all of this?
Yeah, I think like the main thing that I noticed personally was that in the beginning there were people who were pro-Palestinian who were kind of afraid to speak out, afraid to use their voice and call out genocide.
But as we organized, as we held protests, we stood up for what we were right.
We've seen those students come out to protest and come out proud to support Palestine.
I was walking down Mass Ave.
I got people giving me fist bumps.
I got a pat on the back.
I said, oh, you're the kid from the news.
People got a large amount of support from people just on the streets.
I got a large amount of support from students.
So I would say that was the biggest difference.
People who might have been afraid to support Palestine publicly are now coming out and being like, yeah, we support Palestine.
Amari, let me ask you that question and just kind of ask it from a different direction, which is I know as somebody who has been denouncing these kind of cancellation efforts, these efforts to create blacklist, to make pro-Palestinian students unhirable, to ban pro-Palestinian groups, one of the things I've heard Well look, this is something that a lot of people on the left on campuses have been doing to conservative students.
They've been banning student groups who have conservative views or right-wing views on the grounds that it's hate speech, on the grounds that it endangers people, and so they're just now getting a taste of their own medicine.
How have you seen the broader debate about these kinds of cancellation or free speech issues on campus and how that relates to what is being done to you?
Yeah, that's actually an interesting point.
And I would say to anyone making that point that I have not personally experienced that.
I mean, being a student at Harvard University, I have seen very little to no suppression or condemnation of right-wing conservative groups in their efforts.
I mean, I think Harvard tries to very often claim that they're pro-free speech in any capacity, in any way or form, and they Very rarely try to intervene, but what we have seen, interestingly enough, is administration coming out in support of, the administration has not explicitly come out in support of, or in defense, rather, of the students expressing pro-Palestinian views.
I mean, they say, the most that they're willing to say is that we defend free speech, but then they very explicitly make an effort to be like, however, these students do not speak for us, we don't agree with them, they don't represent Harvard University, et cetera, et cetera.
Whereas they've in the past and now provide many other groups support personally by going to their private spaces and like University administration will like speak to them and express remorse and offer protection and all these things.
So I mean, I personally would say that it's not necessarily getting a taste of our own medicine, because I haven't seen this being applied equally in both senses.
I think that what we're seeing now is very deliberate against us for having pro-Palestine views, because it really is a threat to a lot of these institutions for us to be so proudly and loudly in support of Palestine, in support of Palestine and Palestinian liberation.
And because of that, it's necessary for them to, like...
double down on their condemnation and double down on these intimidation and scare tactics because it is such a threat.
And I really have not ever before seen anything to this extent.
I've never in, this is my third year at this school, I've never ever seen a truck parade around campus with people's students' faces on this.
I mean, this is really a new extreme and a new level harassment that I've personally never seen before.
So yeah, I think it goes a lot further than getting a taste of our own medicine.
I've never seen Anything to this extent before, so I really do think it's a unique case and I really think that administration and these groups know that there's something about Palestine, there's something about our support for Palestine that's such a threat to them that it requires them to really up the ante so much in this way.
Yeah, it's interesting.
Someone commented to me this week, and I hadn't really thought about it before, that one of the reasons why so many journalists, so many pundits, so many activists have been focused so much on campuses is because there is this kind of emerging pro-Palestinian viewpoint, this kind of critique of what Israel is doing to the Palestinians, that in a country that has long been very pro-Israel, is extremely threatening.
And a lot of the kind of attacks on campus culture is about trying to wage war on that, and I think that's true.
So let me just say to both of you, obviously the views you're expressing are subject to debate.
A lot of people, as you probably know, don't agree with them.
But personally, I just want to say that I genuinely find what you're doing incredibly commendable.
I've often said, like, one of the things for which I'm most grateful is that there was no internet when I was 20 years old and 25 years old to record every one of my thoughts and every one of my actions because we do live in a world where everything that you're now doing is going to be attached to your name forever.
And it takes a lot of courage when you have billionaires uniting to put you on blacklist and people riding around with trucks with your faces on it, accusing you of horrible things to, in the face of that, say, I believe so much in the cause and what I'm doing that I'm going to continue to speak out and exercise my rights and not be intimidated by these bullying tactics.
I think it takes a lot of courage, a lot of moral courage, and it sets a really great example, including for people who talk a lot about What's happening on college campuses to say, well, if you're being attacked these ways, then you have the option just to continue to speak out anyway.
And I think that's what you're doing.
And I find it really inspiring.
And that's a big part of why I wanted to have you on my show.
So I really appreciate your coming on and talking about this.
And I hope you'll continue to follow your conscience.
And I have faith that you will.
Thank you so much.
It's an honor to be on the show.
Yeah.
All right.
Have a great evening.
Bye bye.
So that concludes our show for this evening.
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