May 13, 2020 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
20:21
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| It just confirmed everything I had been thinking for a year. | ||
| And by the way, it's not just Yasmin and Dave who woke up that night. | ||
| I mean, we know, I personally know dozens of people that had it happen to them that night that have reached out to me, but thousands of people all over the world. | ||
| I got messages from people literally in Egypt who had said to me, | ||
| I think you know one of the guys that I'm talking about in Egypt actually, | ||
| who said that was my moment too when I saw, oh, the left, | ||
| these guys have completely abandoned reason and liberalism and the rest of it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
(dramatic music) | |
| Dave Rubin, author of "Don't Burn This Book" | ||
| best seller all over the place, fantastic reviews, amazing. | ||
| How are you feeling today? | ||
| Excited? | ||
|
unidentified
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Proud? | |
| I'm feeling pretty good. | ||
| I'm feeling pretty good, but before we talk about me, I want to talk about you, because you're leading this thing. | ||
| Who are you? | ||
| What are we doing here today? | ||
| People know about me. | ||
| Come on, Yasmin, give yourself some credit here. | ||
| People should know me from your show. | ||
| I've been on your show like three times, so I'm a veteran. | ||
| Yasmin Mohamed, and I'm the author of Unveiled, which is strategically placed behind me there. | ||
| How Western Liberals Empower Radical Islam. | ||
| And I run an organization called Free Hearts, Free Minds, which supports people who have left Islam but are stuck in Muslim-majority countries where they could be executed for doing so. | ||
| And the thing that we have in common actually is that we both, well, you dedicated your book to Ben Affleck. | ||
| He's not, I didn't dedicate it to him, but he is in the acknowledgements of my book because both of us share that same experience of us deciding that we wanted to change our lives upon watching the episode of Real Time with Bill Maher with him, with Ben Affleck and Sam Harris. | ||
| And the famous gross and racist episode. | ||
| And that was a huge pivotal moment for you and it was a huge pivotal moment for me as well. | ||
| And of course gross and racist over the years, you know, kept on escalating until it ended up becoming Nazi, which is the title of chapter four, which we're going to be talking about today, which is don't worry, you're not a Nazi. | ||
| Yes, you are probably not a Nazi if you purchased my book. | ||
| That was what I was trying to get across to people. | ||
| But I love the fact that, we've discussed this on my show several times, that your wake-up call, we come from such different backgrounds, geographic places, you live in Canada now, like all sorts of stuff. | ||
| You were married to a member of Al-Qaeda, like all of these things that are so different about us. | ||
| And yet we both, by watching a Hollywood actor overly emote and yell instead of reason, | ||
| and especially because he was doing it against Bill Maher, like our number one lefty in America | ||
| for the last three decades, and Sam Harris, who I've told you, | ||
| I didn't even know who he was until that night. | ||
| It was the first time I had ever seen the guy, but I saw this mild-mannered, nice sharp suit, calm atheist explaining things, and then that overly emotional sort of craziness and rush to call somebody racist. | ||
| Forget gross. | ||
| But racist. | ||
| It just confirmed everything I had been thinking for a year. | ||
| And by the way, it's not just Yasmin and Dave who woke up that night. | ||
| I mean, we know, I personally know dozens of people that had it happen to them that night that have reached out to me, but thousands of people all over the world. | ||
| I got messages from people literally in Egypt who had said to me, I think you know one of the guys that I'm talking about in Egypt actually, who said, that was my moment too when I saw, oh, the left, These guys have completely abandoned reason and liberalism and the rest of it. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| And I think that they're, you know, my family being from Egypt as well, the conversation that they were talking about was about people who have left Islam in Egypt. | ||
| Close to 90% of people there polled in a Pew poll said that they think that we should be executed. | ||
| So it was very personal to me as an ex-Muslim of Egyptian descent, same like the person who communicated with you as well. | ||
| And so to see these two men on, you know, national television going on, like mainstream media talking about us as if we matter, you know, which was so amazing because you never see that. | ||
| All you ever see is conversations about the fundamentalist Muslims or the mainstream Muslims, but nobody's ever talking about the victims within the victims. | ||
| Nobody's ever talking about LGBT Muslims. | ||
| Nobody's ever talking about, Women under Islam. | ||
| Nobody's ever talking about people that left Islam but are stuck in these countries or being ostracized by their communities or disowned by their families, threatened with death like I was, and some people actually being killed by their families for leaving Islam. | ||
| That conversation never happens. | ||
| So to see those guys having that conversation was really amazing and it was very, very sad to see Ben Affleck shutting it down. | ||
| So when I titled that chapter, it's obviously tongue in cheek, | ||
| don't worry, you're not a Nazi, but I did think, oh, my critics are gonna open this thing | ||
| up, they're gonna go, he had to title one of the chapters, | ||
| don't worry, you're not a Nazi, because so many of his fans or whatever, | ||
| or readers, are Nazis. | ||
| But I felt that I just sort of had to go at it like that. | ||
| But the reason that I wanted to do this chapter with you specifically is that it's one thing, | ||
| I mean, the absurd level that they call someone like me a Nazi, who everything I stand for | ||
| is against the type of collectivist ideology that the Nazis brought upon the world. | ||
| I grew up around Holocaust survivors and the rest of it. | ||
| But someone like you, you're the only person that I wrote the inscription to that you publicly posted it, and I shared it because you are, in essence, what a true liberal is supposed to be, because you lived through oppression, and now you fight for freedom. It's a beautiful thing. And you also are | ||
| called a Nazi and a bigot, and I'm sure all sorts of self-hating this, that, and the other | ||
| thing. | ||
| Yeah. And in your chapter, you refer to the journalist from Der Spiegel. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, you were there that day. | |
| I was there that day. | ||
| You know, he accused you of being a Nazi because you had an espresso machine and all of this ridiculous stuff, you know. | ||
| Well, no, he said in the article, let's not forget in the article, he didn't say I have an espresso machine. | ||
| He said he has an Italian coffee maker. | ||
| And he said Scandinavian furniture. | ||
| I have an espresso machine and an IKEA couch. | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| And, but it's laughable, but it's also incredibly hurtful and infuriating the way he was so condescending. | ||
| And not only was he telling you what you think and feel, he was telling me what I think and feel like he was talking. | ||
| He's like a Dave made Yasmin. | ||
| Talk about all of the bad things in Islam, as if Yasmin loves Islam. | ||
| Like, I'm just waiting for someone to give me a microphone so I can talk about all the bad things in that religion. | ||
| You didn't make me do anything. | ||
| And that really upsets me. | ||
| You know, as somebody who, as you mentioned, got away from being married to an Al-Qaeda agent, and I have fought tooth and nail as a single mother with a high school education to be the woman I am today, and then to have some POS, who didn't even talk to me, be so condescending and talk about as if I am a puppet and you've got your hand up me and telling me what to say and do. | ||
| Do you know what I mean? | ||
| I was so upset. | ||
| And her so-called marriage to an Al-Qaeda agent. | ||
| Well, this dude, if he's a journalist, he can very easily look up that information. | ||
| As I mentioned, Assam was very high ranking. | ||
| His, you know, the court case of him being imprisoned in Egypt is one of the second largest court cases in Egyptian history after the assassination of President Sadat. | ||
| So it wouldn't have been difficult for him to confirm my story, but instead he just wanted to be condescending and rude and patronizing. | ||
| And it's unfortunate that you have to put up with people like that. | ||
| So what do we do about that? | ||
| That thing where it's like the people that don't want other people to be heard, then call you a Nazi and a bigot and the rest of it and gross and racist. | ||
| And then we know that there's this journalist class. | ||
| And that's why I included this story because, you know, they literally put me on the print cover of Der Spiegel. | ||
| And I, you know, I have a giant American flag in our control room because I know it sounds crazy and nationalist or something or racist, but I'm proud to be an American. | ||
| And they took a picture of me, and I'm sitting like this with the American flag behind me, and I think the title of the article was The Grand Illusionist of the Alt-Right. | ||
| And one of the tricks that this, again, journalist did, was that there's actually a law in Germany that if you interview someone, if you're gonna print any of their quotes, you have to run the quotes by them. | ||
| So this guy who spent from 8 a.m. | ||
| to 9 p.m. | ||
| with me, because I did two interviews that day, and then I did an event at USC that night, He spends hours with me, and then didn't quote me once in the piece, because he knew he would have had to run those quotes by me. | ||
| But instead, he gets me with the American flag behind me, and you talked bad about Islam, and I've got an Italian coffee maker, and this is one... I don't even love the Nespresso machine, frankly. | ||
| I like a French press better, but that's a side issue. | ||
| But that they craft a narrative as journalists, But then that then feeds this Nazi thing so that they can turn to someone like you and just say the most awful things, even though you're the one that actually has survived the negative parts of, well, all the parts of authoritarianism are negative, but really the terrible truth that is the thing you escaped. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But I think it's interesting that they didn't take any quotes from you because that's exactly what it is. | ||
| They crafted a narrative about who Dave Rubin is. | ||
| And they crafted a narrative to a much smaller extent in that article of who Yasmin Mohammed is, without any input from who we actually are. | ||
| It's just completely fabricated. | ||
| But actually, to try and bring this to something productive, a question that I get a lot that I'm going to pose to you now is, You know what, Yasmin? | ||
| I totally agree with what you're saying. | ||
| I really want to speak out more, but I'm afraid. | ||
| I'm concerned about my workplace. | ||
| Sometimes I'm concerned about my family. | ||
| I'm concerned about my spouse. | ||
| I'm concerned about friends. | ||
| How can I speak out without having people maliciously call me these things, fabricate a narrative about who I am, and start to, you know, Have people react to the narrative versus to me. | ||
| So what can I do? | ||
| Because right now I'm just biting my tongue because I see no way out of this conundrum. | ||
| What can you say to those people? | ||
| Well, in many ways, that's the message of the book more than anything else. | ||
| When I say think for yourself, well, thinking for yourself, if you're gonna actually speak it to, which is the next step once you're thinking it, is you're gonna get this stuff. | ||
| And what I tried to lay out in the book is a roadmap for what will happen. | ||
| You will be called a Nazi. | ||
| You will be called a bigot and a racist and a homophobe. | ||
| I get called a homophobe. | ||
| I mean, I'm married to a dude, you know, but put that aside. | ||
| Well, if you get called a Nazi, your family are Holocaust survivors, | ||
| then why not be a homophobe too? | ||
| Right. - Again, it has nothing to do with you. | ||
| These are just fabricated things, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, I have an irrational... | ||
| Phobia, of course, is an irrational fear. | ||
| So I have an irrational fear of gay people, yet I'm sleeping in bed with one every night. | ||
| It's weird. | ||
| But that's not really it. | ||
| What really I tried to do was give people the tools to know what will happen. | ||
| So not only will you be called these things and the Twitter mob will come for you, and whether you're a public person or not, they may come for your job. | ||
| You know, your job will suddenly start getting calls and emails. | ||
| And the rest of it, friends will turn on you. | ||
| I described someone who was invited to my wedding, who suddenly was calling me a racist and a bigot and a Nazi, who although every time I kept saying, can you point to anything I've said like that, then they moved the goalposts, they changed the meaning of the words, it's not what I'm saying, it's what I'm doing, it's what I'm thinking, it's who I'm talking to. | ||
| And the only cure for this I truly believe is that we just need more people to be brave. | ||
| We have given this paper tiger so much power over us. | ||
| We've discussed this privately, but I don't think there is something magically brave about me or anything like that. | ||
| I don't think you think so about yourself. | ||
| It's just there is something in me that forces me to say what I think. | ||
| And I think more people need that. | ||
| Just think about what any of our ancestors lived through, and now we're gonna live in Canada, or we're gonna live in the United States, and because a pink anime fox on Twitter calls you a Nazi, you're not gonna live the life you're supposed to lead. | ||
| So I know it's cliche, right? | ||
| It's cliche. | ||
| Just be yourself. | ||
| Say what you think. | ||
| But it actually is true, because the other part is that they prey on the fact that they can get you to be quiet so that the people who do step up that eventually they just get tired. | ||
| So we've even seen this with some of our friends. | ||
| At some point, certain public people that stake out that position, that honorable position, at some point they just get tired. | ||
| They're like, you know what, I don't want to be in the fight anymore because I don't get enough allies and getting all the hate and whatever death threats or whatever else any of us might get, it ain't that fun and we only beat them by numbers. | ||
| Do you think there's another magic solution to it besides that? | ||
| No, I don't think there's a magic solution. | ||
| I don't think that either of us is special in any way, except that we both have experience living in the closet. | ||
| We both have experience having this thoughts in our mind and who we are on the inside different than who we are on the outside. | ||
| And we both have the experience of having basically at some point deciding that we've had enough of this. | ||
| And we need to align our inside life and our outside life and become truly and honestly who we are. | ||
| And as difficult as it is to go through that process, it's so incredibly rewarding. | ||
| And, you know, living a double life is so much more insidious and traumatic than anything that they can throw at you once you're out and free. | ||
| You know, like there's no comparison. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| And so I think that once we've been through that and you realized, OK, this is it. | ||
| I'm going to be honest and I'm going to be real. | ||
| And this is who I'm going to be for the rest of my life. | ||
| And when somebody tries to get you to go back in the closet, this time a political closet, you're not willing to go there. | ||
| You're like, no, I've been there before. | ||
| I've overcome and I'm not willing to go down that same road again. | ||
| And so I think that people have to. | ||
| No, no, go ahead. | ||
| I was just going to say, I think that people have to experience it. | ||
| Like they have to go through it themselves and realize that this turmoil that they're in right now, this fear that they're living in right now, like, oh, I might lose my friends. | ||
| I might lose my coworkers, my family, my, you know, whatever. | ||
| That this turmoil that they're in right now is way worse. | ||
| Than anything that the world can throw at them when they come out. | ||
| It's hard for them to understand that or believe that because they're like, what are you talking about? | ||
| I lose my job. | ||
| I lose my friends. | ||
| You know, of course this is not worse. | ||
| But it is, it really is. | ||
| It's so interesting you say that because when you talk about the closets that we lived in before, it was you not being able to express yourself in any way and being put in clothes that you didn't want to be in and you were in an abusive relationship and the series of those things. | ||
| And for me, it was about sexuality. | ||
| But the metaphor there or the parable, I guess, is that I know that when I was closeted and then I would be with my friends who didn't know who I was, I started feeling like half a person. | ||
| I felt a little bit like Marty McFly when the picture is disappearing at the end of Back to the Future. | ||
| I felt like I was sort of not there. | ||
| And you're right. | ||
| People think, oh, I could just wait it out. | ||
| I'll just wait it out. | ||
| And then it's like, well, one day you're going to be 60 and you're going to be like, man, I don't like my wife, I don't like my kids, I don't like any of these people. | ||
| And then, but the worst part, I don't like myself. | ||
| And I think that that's the part that I think young people have trouble understanding, because it just takes a little time to, you know, sort of see what the breadth of life is, or what the arc of life is. | ||
| And it's like, yeah, we just gotta keep pushing. | ||
| But I wanted to ask you this, because this was part of where I wanted to go with this chapter, was one of the things that I'm actually worried about Mm-hmm. | ||
| is that they have overused these words to the point where now if I see someone be called a Nazi or a bigot on Twitter, | ||
| I'm actually usually interested in that person. Like they've actually caused a trigger in my mind where it's like if | ||
| someone's being assaulted, first off, I know that 99% of the time they're not a Nazi. | ||
| I mean, it's so ridiculous. | ||
| But I know that they probably didn't say anything bigoted. | ||
| I know they probably didn't say anything transphobic or any of these silly things. | ||
| But what I'm worried about for the future is that they have done The Boy Who Cried Wolf to the point where when the real bad guys come, when the real bad guys come, the good people are just gonna, they're just gonna be like, can't even see it. | ||
| They won't even want to put the effort in to see it. | ||
| We're already there. | ||
| We're already there. | ||
| For me, you know, like just seeing the word turf now these days, uh, thrown on everybody or, you know, you know, Nazi isn't quite as calm in these days, but there's different slurs that, you know, that people are throwing around. | ||
| And again, like you, I'm like, okay, sure. | ||
| Let's look into this person. | ||
| Let's see what they're saying. | ||
| And, you know, sometimes. | ||
| That person might actually be transphobic, but because of the fact that we have been so desensitized to these slurs being thrown around, we don't believe it anymore. | ||
| They've completely lost their power, they've lost their value, they've lost any meaning. | ||
| And yes, it is scary because Now the real TERFs and the real homophobes or the real bigots or the real neo-Nazis are all getting hidden in the noise. | ||
| Well, Yasmin, I know we got to end this thing, so I just want to say one last thing to you. | ||
| Well, first of all, I'll just say two last things. | ||
| What I wrote in the inscription is true. | ||
| Every idea that I presented in this book, you are the living, breathing example of it. | ||
| And I couldn't be prouder to call you a friend. | ||
| That's number one. | ||
| And number two, I want to just say one other thing. | ||
| It's the nicest thing I can say to anybody. | ||
| Yasmin, you're not a Nazi. | ||
| Thank you, Dave. | ||
| You're not a Nazi either. | ||
| If you're looking for more honest and thoughtful conversations about politics instead of nonstop yelling, check out our politics playlist. | ||
| And if you want to watch full interviews on a variety of topics, watch our full episode playlist all right over here. |
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