On the New Periphery, an Interview with Joey Ayoub

that ship. Um, if you're new to the show, maybe check out our first five episodes. They'll catch you up there Evergreen. But this week we have a special guest and a special conversation to have that I think is going to be edifying for a lot of people. I would like to introduce Mr Joey. Ayub Joey. You are a writer and a researcher in the host of the Fire These Times, which is a fantastico cast. Um, Joey, how are you doing today? I'm fine, I'm up. I'm

operating with the Norman parameters. As I said before. Yeah, I'm I'm impressed by that because I'm I'm constantly in the process of falling apart, which is why I was late to this call. Joey, you want to give our listeners a little background on yourself? Sure, Um, emotionally from Lebanon. It's why I go up. My family is kind of mixed, a bit of Pedestinians, but of your Talians, but of Argentinians,

kind of fall over the place. Uh. And I'm currently in Switzerland continuing my PhD, which one day will actually be done, I hope. I have been told that there is a life after the PhD. Yeah, So that's what I do. And I do podcasts and I write and I stuff that I probably forgot. And uh, you you wrote a column that I I quite admire for a website called Lausan, which was based on a term that I think it was the Mangol media folks came up with, right, um, and that term is the periphery. And and one of

the reasons I think this is useful. So when I grew up, and I suspect it was the same. I don't know if it was the same for Garrison because he grew up in a weird cult, but it was probably the same for Christopher. Um. The terms we heard a lot for different like it was either basically the United States or Europe, or it was the third world. Right, those were the terms that I grew up with, and I wasn't I was like probably seventeen or eighteen before

I actually learned that. The terms first and third world kind of came from the Cold War, where like the US is the first World, the Soviet Bloc is kind of the second world, and then everyone else it's the third world. Obviously, that's not a great collective nown for referring to any group of anything. We try not to

use third world. And the new term has kind of become more I don't know, vogue, maybe the wrong word, but people have started using the global South to refer to um everywhere that's not the US and Europe and you know, UM a handful of other countries and kind of, uh, that's not great either, um because for one thing, a lot of those countries aren't South, and also it isn't North either. Yeah. So I'm interested in this because there is a use in having kind of collective nouns to

refer to groups of people from multiple nations. UM and in the West isn't going to do for most places um, And I like this term the periphery because kind of the way that you in the Mangal folks kind of have described it makes a tremendous amount of sense to me.

And it makes a tremendous amount of sense because it's not trying to group people together based on their relationship to of a Western centered kind of like international power dynamics understanding that even a lot of people on the left here kind of fall into where you know, um, you're either imperialist or anti imperialist, but being anti imperialist means supporting a lot of imperialist powers because they're against

whatever imperialist power you were born into. Anyway, I wonder if you if we could start by kind of getting your your explanation of what is the periphery? Um? And and and how do you see that? Yeah? Yeah, I mean so I'll just say it like up front that I don't expect that term to work every time and

in all contexts. For example, I know someone who who like works in development studies and who we had a pretty informative chat about the terms global South and global Note and she was pretty convincing that they can be useful in in in a certain like in the materials

analysis of certain things. So I'm not I'm not kind of here to say it like it doesn't work ever basically, um, but I think what really clicked with me, or the number of things that really clicked with me in one is that conversation with fl Event on Margin Media on their on their own podcast as well I've written for them, and then we had a chat about it was like about the explosion in baby Wood last year, and at some point the topic of the periphery, which they coined,

I didn't coin it came about. And the best way he described it, which is a bit ignic given the podcast I'm on now, is that when anti authority in Turks he's from Turkey, see protests in for example Lebanon of Hong Kong, which was what happened. They were happening at the same time in two thousand nineteen and Iraq

and other places, child and so on. They sort of think that it could happen here, like you know, it could happen in Turkey essentially, which is not the case often with like French leftists or American leftists, so usually leftists that are broadly speaking in the West. Now the obviously exceptions to all of these rules. Not every Turkish leftist things like that, not every Western leftist things like that,

but it's kind of a general trend. And for me, for example, the way I can explain it is that a podcast like it could happen here, where you're sort of describing a situation that might happen here here in America, let's say, wouldn't necessarily be needed in for example, Lebanon, because it's already happening, it's been happening for some time now, and that that tension in some sense when I would because nowative in Switzerland, so I mean, I mean, you know,

in Geneva, which is as international as at the center in some sense as it gets almost It's this tension between my daily life essentially here and what's happening back home on a daily basis is what sort of led me to think about this other terms the periphery, because I just felt that at least on an emotional level,

global stuth wasn't working as well. That makes sense, And one of the things I really find so useful and and admirable about this term is that it it is a it's a collective now and for referring to a group of people, but it separates those people from the

state from their government. So when you're when you're talking about the periphery and you include people from lebanon Um, people from from Palestine, people from Syria, you're not including the government's you know, it's not the states, it's the because the people are peripheral to the power of those states and to the blocks that those states find themselves, and which is why they, you know, any any efforts

at autonomy the communal level are crushed so violently. Um. Yeah, that's why for me, global South in the term includes the states from the SOCOL Global South that are crushing the activists from the SOCO Global South. And so I just felt that I just needed this other layer, this

other term that explains that dynamic as well. Yeah. Um, And you know, one of the things you you just were talking about was kind of the way in which a lot of leftists in the United States and chunks of the West, we'll kind of disregard liberatory struggles overseas that don't neatly fit into a very simple ideological category. I'm kind of wondering, is you know a kid who grew up in Lebanon and kind of I'm going to

assume mostly focused on the regional kind of politics. When did you start to realize that that was something that was going on internationally? Like when did you when did you realize kind of like, you know, I think a lot of folks were taken surprise by the reaction of a lot of the international left, like the Arab Spring, And I'm kind of wondering was that when it it kind of hit home for you? Where did you start

to see stirrings of those problems at an earlier day. Yeah, two thousand eleven is when it kind of became very concrete in some sense. But I grew up having to visit Switzerland actually because my dad is a Swiss national, and I would do so on the Lebanese passport obviously, so I would always need to apply for visas beforehand and so on, you know, like two or three times a year sometimes, and that sort of it. In the in the retrospect, it was those early experiences just meeting

the border, just experiencing a border all the time. That's sort of I think anyways, one of those things that I've been thinking I can get respect, like planted the seeds of what was to come, if that makes sense, because I was always peripheral. Whenever I would go to Switzerland, I was never allowed to stay there longer longer than let's say, three weeks if they gave me three weeks,

or three months if they gave me three months. And it sort of felt weird coming to Europe all the time, because I'm actually born in France, but I don't have the citizenship, and so it was there was the sense that I felt it weird having to ask permission from someone to go to the place where I literally started

my existence. And so from on a on a very basic, basic level that's never quite always like squared with me, and that like led to a number of things that from Lebanon I was seeing the rest of the world in that sense, and it took me sometime. I think, yeah, I think after their spring, especially when I started seeing that Lebanon is perificult or I didn't. I didn't really have a term for that before. And the quote unquote

real things were happening in in the West. Obviously that's all problematic, and I don't mean that literally because the real things are happening every all the time. But in the sense of what gets to matter, whose lives get to matter more, and so on and so forth. Now, one of the things I think about a lot when I read your work, UM, and when I consume what with Mangal Media puts out Mangal media is UM. I guess you called the journalistic collective UM made up of

of people A lot. I think a lot of them were or are have worked as like fixers in uh in in you know, the periphery in parts of the Middle East, UM. And they're What I find so vital about their voices is that it was as as an American journalist who has worked over there, it was always those folks who had the best stories. It's just that those stories got published with the New York Times or with the New Yorker, the Washington Post under somebody else's byline. Right, UM.

That's the way journalism actually works. And you have you do have some some reporters like um, I'm spacing on his name. But the fellow who wrote no good Men among the Living, who uh yes, yes, who has done it? I mean I think just I'm sure has local sources in Afghanistan, but also speaks the language, and it is just an accept but for the most part, especially when you see somebody with my complexion reporting from over there, if they're getting good ship, it's because of it's because

of a local UM. And what I like about Mangal is that it it breaks down kind of that barrier between that kind of that kind of white person filter, but when the actual people living on the ground and understanding the situation the person who's trying to package it UM. Which is not to say that I think there's no value in having a local package. And I think anytime you're trying to translate a story across there is some

reason for that. But I also think it leads to I mean, I know it leads to problematic kind of Americans said. There's a lot of problems that it leads to. It that we don't have enough time to discuss all of it. But what I'd like to talk about with you is is kind of how is consumers of of media in the United States and in in in the West. Um, which most people listening to this are everyone on this call, but you was born in the US or a place that is the same as the US but with a

better hat. Um, I'm talking about Canada. UM. So how do how do how do you recommend we if we if we're if we aspire to be internationalists and to to avoid falling into that trap of of flattening the struggles of other people to fit inside of a simple ideological rubric, how do you recommend people try and cut out or or minimize the extent possible, um, the bias of of whatever region they live in when reading news for another part of the world, Like, how do you

do that? Well? Imperfectly right, Like it's never gonna be, never gonna be you know, there's always gonna be flaws, there's always gonna be some learning curve to all of that as well. One thing that's worked for me, um, because you know, I did grow up in Lebanon, and so there is that dimension. But I was I had a pretty sheltered child childhood. You know, media was mostly on the Internet, and so I could kind of go wherever I want, and I was pretty is up until

the certain point. I was pretty um, let's say, sheltered from what was happening even around in Lebanon, around Lebanon up until let's say that before just before the air sprain. So I do know what it's like to kind of have biases against you know, other places and have certain Yeah, just it's just human flaws at the end of the day. The main difference I think is just what gets centered and what gets peripheral. I mean, just to use that

same term again. One thing that I've been doing to kind of help myself, and so I'll just speak from personal experience, is go to some websites like Loves and I've been I've been I read what Loves and regularly mangel media as well. And there are a number of other websites that are trying as much as they can to actually write for one another. Like they're actually trying to write with the assumption that most people who are going to read are not from the West. And that's

not easy to do for language barriers. For example, if they're if they're mostly writing in English because the dias progress of the world, if there is some sense and kind of connecting to one another, we're probably going to do it in English. I'm just realistically speaking, and so maybe Spanish, but like you know, probably English. And that's that's that's something that we have to sort of contend with.

It's not easy because it could be that I can spend all of my time having conversations with let's say, other people in the diasporas of other groups, let's say, and because I'm doing it entirely in English, then I'm actually not conversing with people back home, and so that hates another problem, and it's there's no easy solution. Basically, there's no I don't really have a A A how do you say this? Like A yeah, like a solution that can fit he can fit any scenarios. So I

don't really have a good answer to that. Actually, I just think that heating diverse sources is the best way to do things, but with a critical eye as well, although I feel like that's kind of a boring answer. And for me, the thing that has been quite refreshing is seeing projects like Love Side, which is why I've

published like a an interview with like they. We did an interview conversation thing where we were exploring parallels and contrast between Hong Kong and Lebanon, for example, and that for me was a piece where I was entirely thinking about the people I was talking to, like people from Hong Kong, and that's it. We had a diaspora experience in common, but I wasn't thinking and we were speaking in English, but I wasn't thinking about how is this going to be received in New York or Paris or

London or whatever. And I feel like these more of these probably will help because it centers different voices rather than the ones that were used to But even though its center, I'm sort of saying it with like an asterisk, because my entire point is that I'm actually uncomfortable with certain situations where I risk being the center of his story when there are so many things happening to my periphery as well, and so it can happen, it can

happen on different layers. If it's what I'm trying to say. Yeah, I mean that's sort of the problem of being as you are, kind of a child of two worlds, where you you have the benefit of it makes it easier to explain both places to the other. Um, but you also, uh, you have a wall kind of or at least a couple of them up up inside you, um, which yeah, um yeah, And it is like there's no there's no kind of gaining perfect perspective on any place, including the

place where you live. But I do think it's important to talk about kind of at least de centering to the extent that's possible, like Western voices when we're trying to understand places that are not Western. M So I think think with fair amount, just be a chat over the year, particularly during some of the nonsense last year. Is um internationalism, which is is a real concern I think of everybody on this show, and something that used to be in a lot stronger state than it is

in the left. Um. And I what do you see as the primary barriers to functional internationalism at the moment um? Well, West centrism is I think a primary one. Racism Islamophobia are pretty common as well. Um, Islamophobia is a pretty massive one, uh, to the point that even non Muslims like me can be swiped kind of kind of just

taken with it as well. And I just I just think that when I say West centerism, I don't even only mean people who are fromwhat from the West and are thinking about the West as the center of the world, but I also mean, like left is from other parts of the world. I think that the only enemy is is the West, or the only enemy is America for example. And uh, you know, Christopher and I had chats about this as well on my own podcast actually about the

channel men, the the legacy of channel men as well. Right, Like, it's not just misunderstood or um yeah, misunderstood among let's say, White Americans, but it could also be misunderstood among Chinese American for example. There are these multiple like these multiple layers in which something can be misunderstood on different layers as well, if that makes sense. And I for me, the problem with the West centrism is that it takes up so much oxygen in the room. It's just take stup.

So we people like me and others, And like I've I've met folks from like the Balkans and in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, and like almost any group I can think of, I've met them, they have complained about pretty much the same thing that they ended up spending so much time on the Internet debunking disinformation or debunking tankies or de punking campus and or debunking what have you, or just misinformation sometimes and this this ends

up being pretty exhausting, Like this ends up being like ship is happening on the ground, like things are actually happening on the ground, and activists from let's say by route. Oh, they didn't happen as much in Bayhood, but you know from Iraq or Syria, Syria especially obviously, but Hong Kong

as well. You know, they have to deal with concrete problems on the ground, but at the same time they have to worry about how this is being perceived on the internet, because usually it's assumed that how it's perceived on the internet, So, especially in the Anglophone online media, escape can have real life consequences on the ground. And this is something that is very difficult to tackle because it's not enough to just fight them by having more

allow sense and more mongel media. For one, we just don't have the resources to challenge a Fox News or CNN or what have you. Um And for two, it's just exhausting the main the main I think the main thing that has stopped most activists I can think of, or at least they've taken a break or what have what have you. It's just burned out more than anything.

It's not even well in many cases. Obviously it's also therex threats from the state and stuff like that, but more often than not, it's just being exhausted from having to spend so much time dealing with what's happening on the ground at the same time making sure that what's happening on the ground isn't being misinterpreted or you know, having to deal with this information or what have you. And so basically the responsibility ends up being on people

consuming these kinds of media. And I don't want to make it to individualistic either. That are structural problems to these things. As I said, CNN, the resources all of that. But given the I can't Lena is not gonna listen to me. The other the next best thing is trying to just speak to just people who are willing to listen. Essentially, and you talked a bit about I mean the situation

in Lebanon right now. If people aren't aware, Um, there was a massive explosion UM a year or so ago, and everything's kind of been in free fall sense, and and what's happening, what's happening in Beiruts and across like that. There have been massive wildfires that have destroyed a huge chunk of the of the country's forests. UM and a lart like just kind of society, uh, seems to be breaking down in a lot of areas. The stores don't have food, people don't like the inflation has has reached

kind of a nightmarish level. What do you like we're we're talking about? You know, these are all kind of the same problems that we're talking about everywhere. It's just it it's much more severe at the moment there, and it's it's in a much more advanced state for variety of reasons. Do you do you have any hope for mitigation?

How could the situation improve? I guess, like I I'm looking at at Lebanon and I'm thinking about like what, not even like what I could do, because I don't think there's anything I can do, but like how how things could possibly get better? And yeah, I'm wondering if you if that's any clearer to you, Um, maybe only slightly more, but yeah, it's it's. Yeah, it's really bad, I mean crumbling, you know, welcome to the combos that

actually fits there? There there, What's what's been happening for something at least a couple of years, if not a bit more than that. Pretty well, Um, there is a mass exodus happening on a slow depending on the seasons. Basically, sometimes it's faster and summer and then whatever. But basically most of my friends, for example, like them, are now abroad um and there is definitely a sense of um collapse. That's you know, in here is the term that we

would use. It just feels like a state of collapse essentially. And what's kind of interesting, I think is that this

was being predicted for some time now. It's been a couple of years I would say, I mean towards the end of two thousand nineteen with the revolution, not that long after you already had a lot of people within Lebanon like kind of you might call it the initial phases of counter revolution in some sense, or that's probably a bit simplistic, but basically saying that if we continue taking to these heats, the country is going to collapse. And that's obviously not the reason the country is going

to collapse. There is that is collapsing. The reason is a combination of COVID, last year's pot explosion, corruption at the states, septainosum war loads, basically control controlling most of the country and so on and so forth. As to what can happen next, I mean, it does seem that at least for the foreseable future, it's going to continue more or less their way. It's been continuing. It feels

like basically a decline that's sometimes steeper and sometimes less steep. Uh. The stories on a daily basis are like, you know, if friend took her like five hours to to fill up gas and it's not even she can't, you know, fill the entire tank, and electricity went out for like three days, and so people you know, their fridge was useless, you know, stuff like that. Um, And it is definitely it's it's I don't have the percentage with me, and those are just data and data without stories or can

be misleading as well. But something like I'm going to say of the population is below the poverty line now compared to before, stuff like that, it's it's pretty dire, and it's it's it's pretty It happened at such a speed that I'm gonna say that I haven't been back since January for various reasons COVID and security threats and other stuff. And um, I can't quite picture it in

my mind. It's not that easy. But friends obviously speaking to them, and photos and videos that I see, it's just fair to say that everything that I can think of on most things that I can think of from before two nineteen. Basically most of my life is essentially gone, and there is there is no way of getting over that quickly, if that makes and you probably never get over it anyway, but you might get to at some point where you you kind of regain enough energy to

actually maybe act on it, if that makes sense. But there is a period in which now people are basically still grieving, and they're still heaving from last year's explosion as well because the Silion investigation and the usual stuff, and so yeah, no, it's it's it's a game, and it's gonna be game for some time. I think, uh that that being said, I don't think that people back home,

you know, aren't doing anything. They are if a number of initiatives, you're a number of basically mutuate societies or no one really calls them that, but they just pop up on their own, and these things function to certain extent. Often it's they don't last too long, you usually due to resources or burnout or what have you. And so it's it's um, Lebanon is one of those things. I this um. I think it was after the explosion last

year as well. I was on another podcast, the Auds of Travel is called I think it was on that one where he basically said that he thinks that for him, the apocalypse looks like what happened in Lebanon, and I think I know what he meant. But the problem with that analysis is that often we think that the apocalyps just happens and then that's it. But there's most of the story is actually the day after that makes sense.

And in in Lebanon, as it happens, the apocalypse looked apocalyptic, you know, that one day, that explosion that took just a few seconds and I destroyed so much of the capital and beyond. But the real story is what's been happening since then, And there, I think is where Lebanon does have lessons, well for Lebanon first and foremost, but

also for the rest of the world. You know, I think we're all kind of in this position of watching the place, seeing the place, most of us at least seeing the places where we live in stages, you know, and and mostly at the moment in earlier stages of what what Lebanon is going through not as severe, but but also kind of inevitably, inevitably approaching that right UM, Like I think most you know, I I have a couple of friends who are school teachers who are like

just kind of going to work with the absolute certainty that a bunch of people are going to get infected in the very near future. I have people who work at hospitals that are no longer able to handle uh, basic medical procedures for a lot of people that are triaging care. You know that that just came out that Idaho was going to have to start triagng like medical care based on who they think might be able to

survive UM years. Yeah. Yeah, We're all living through stages of that, and the the the overwhelming question is like, how do we pull out of the tail spin? Um? And this is you know, not a question I expect us to have. I've put up forward, and I think sometimes online people are like, oh, you know, you it's naive to think that, like, you know, a general strike or mutual aid could avert the tailsman. I I don't think those are complete solutions to to pulling out of

the tailsman. I know they're aspects of what the solution will be. Nobody knows what the solution is because we're still in a tailspin. UM. In your mind, what do you what do you think might be part of that answer? With the knowledge that and and please people on Reddit, nobody's nobody's saying this is the complete solution to the problem. But like I'm hoping by gathering people together who think about stuff, we can arrive at aspects of it. Yeah,

I mean for me, it's it's it's a combo. So in my own person experience is basically what I could well against speak of to the most, it's a combo of reaching out to people in similar situations. So in my case dis pogres especially, but like more broadly, Yeah, for me, I think it has to be a combination of pragmaticism. So I do believe in lesser evilism, for example,

when that's the only option. Sometimes I feel like I need to choose and that's the only option I have, And so I do that at the same time doing so without the you know, so Biden versus time to use that simple example, but at the same time knowing that that's not gonna change much, if anything, It just it might slow slow the collapse down. And that's actually the metaphor that I prefer to think about, like slowing things down gives me time to do other things, if

that makes sense. It gives me time to do more things rather than always having to defend myself constantly the other like. More broadly, I think it is it's a combination of trying to build dual power, trying to build mutual aid as much as possible. This is not going to solve things. But I just don't think there is anything that's going to solve everything. I just I don't see how that's going to be possible. And the lack of that is what I think many people it's scared.

I mean, it's scary, right, It's just scares the number of people scares most people. I mean it scares me as well. And I do understand that the instinct to sort of go towards well, you know, we have the EU, we have the US, we have those grant structures, and we're going to just try and reform them and change them and so on and so forth. I understand that, And I don't judge people who who believe that and who genuinely think that they can change things. You know,

I wish them good luck, basically, I don't. If they succeed, good for everyone, Right, it's just that I think due to structural factors, primarily due to related to power and help power, power corrupts in almost every single case I can think of, and pretty much all of them. I

just don't think these are solutions either. And I view my role as as trying and and be critical as much as I can, trying to be honest as much as I can, saying when I just don't know something, that I just don't know something, and having a healthier a balance on how to deal with this. But that being said, I I don't have that the answer. I

don't have them, you know. I think it is like ninety episodes on my podcast now and there are a number of episodes in which this also, this topic comes up and some people have some answers, some people don't

have an answer and just becomes an open question. But I would hope that at least the fact that there are no clear answers doesn't discourage people from at least trying to find these answers, because I do think most of the time the solution is going to be found while trying, while attempting to solve something else that makes sense. It's it's the act in itself for the acts in themselves are going to produce some of these solutions. Because most of these solutions don't exist yet, we have to

literally create them, come scratch often. Yeah, yeah, I really I think that's an important thing to accept that in a lot of cases, you know, we don't know how to fix the problem. I think the people who claim that it's whatever whatever book they read, uh, you know, written a hundred years ago, as the perfect solution, I

tend to think that's pretty arrogant. But I do think that what's not arrogant is like getting your hands dirty and trying to fix problems and hoping and understanding that kind of the solutions to broader problems will come UM in part through dealing with and trying to improve the

situation on a day to day basis. You know, we just did an episode about UM self managed abortion, where the source was definitely more on the liberal end of things than the left end of things, and and somebody who UM politically I would probably have a lot of disagreements with, but she spent the last twenty five years trying to train communities of people to provide to take control of of of reproductive health and like enable other members of their communities to take direct control of that.

And that is something I very much, um believe in, and I think that's like, that's that's part of the solution, right. Part of the solution to why the fucking coronavirus has gotten so god damn out of hand is everything to do with our broken health care system. And it's it's it's not just the fact that healthcare is expensive, it's the fact that people are kind of alienated, um from

an understanding of their bodies. They're not properly educated about the way things work, and they don't feel like they have that kind of the consistent lack of a feeling of like medical autonomy leads people eventually to embrace nonsense and and so there you have and kind of this very focused solution to to one really specific problem, a part of I think a larger solution to the problems that that um that confront us. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, no,

that makes sense. And you know, I mean, speaking of COVID, I think that, I mean, we know that part of the reasons why it's lasting so long as well, other than local dynamics for demination, is that get your nations are basically holding the vaccines at this point, were you talking about like the third booster shot in in Switzerland for example, and most of the words it doesn't have the first one. Uh, you know, those are political decisions.

Those are political decisions being made on behalf of the rest of the world. As we see what climate change

is one, it's the same story. Yeah, I don't know what to do about that at this stage, Like it seems like kind of at every level we've given up on handling this the right way, you know, the the the clear best solution would have been to treat the rollout of the vaccine, you know, the same way we treated World War Two as like a logistical hurdle on on on par with getting a couple of million of men to Western European we do that to get the

vaccine to everybody. So we could have hopefully fucking stopped the variants from hitting, but we didn't do that, and um, we're not going to do that, And so I guess we're all left with mitigation once again, which is too often the story with with climate change too. And I don't know we've we've already kind of trod on that territory garrison Christophers or anything you wanted to get into

before we close out. Well, I think I think one thing specifically with COVID that I think is really interesting is if you look at the places where COVID like you know, it was ad but like it didn't you know, kill six people. Um, you know, particularly looking at China and Hong Kong with this, so you know, China both both the government, China government, Hong Kong's initial state response

is really bad. And what happened was, you know, in China, it's sort of you know, you have a bunch of people who don't trust the government, and so what they do is you can you get hundreds of thousands of people sort of just mobilizing and forming these sort of volunteer things to to you know, to enforce lockdowns, to enforce restrictions, to give people food, and you know, it's part of some of its state back, so it's not and some of it's you know, you get this sort

of hazy lying between the sort of mass mobilization between just people doing stuff on sort of state a line directors and then in Hong Kong, you know, and people like people like torch border crossings, people like you know, there's this huge thing to get everyone masks is this huge Like then this stuff is like entire against again

sort of against against the sort of government. But what I think is interesting about both of them is that it's like, you know, it turned out to be possible to make dependent to make the pandemic less bad if you mobilized. And it wasn't really the state that did this. It was you know, people who didn't really trust the state, and we're like, okay, so we're just we're gonna take

this into our own hands. And I think, you know, and somebody's like that that seems like the thing that can be done is you have to get people moving first, like before everything completely collapses. I guess I guess something

I was. I also think it was interesting about that was that the way that and I think this is going going back to the internationalism part we're talking about, is that there's this way in which that is particularly in China, to the story of of this this hundreds of thousands of people doing these mass mobilizations just never reached the West at all, Like you know, everyone everyone looked at China and went, oh, this is how the state is reacting, And it's like, yeah, the state did

a lot of extremely weird things. Some of them were good, some of them were bad, but the sort of mass popular mobilization beneath it gets erased. And I think I'm wondering, if you think about this, Joey, looking at even even how the left worked in the nineties, we're looking looking at the Zapatistas and looking at the people's coobal Assembly stuff that they set up on how about how that

stuff was about social movements. It wasn't about sort of it wasn't about states, it wasn't about necessarily political parties. It was you know, you'd bring about social movements together. And I'm I'm wondering what you think about the extent to which part of what went really wrong in the left in the last ten years is that they kind of they abandoned that and it became sort of everything

became like internationalism became almost completely state and party based. Um, yeah, yeah, I mean for me, the Arab swing is is where I mean, this is I mean, my sound a bit of an exaggeration. That's why the left sort of buried it sound like for me, it's it's it's like I still hardly called myself on the left just because it's simpler. But I have a lot of problems with a lot of people who are on the left when it comes to so many different things. Um, I don't. I don't

quite know where it started. Um some people trace it back to like the you know, I don't know, like the Hungarian Revolution in fifty six, you know, stuff like that. So I don't, I don't quite know where you start

or where you ended. But it does seem that at some point the I don't know, it's a combination of the huntings from the Balkan Wars and then the genocides there and and the Denis m that was allowed to essentially be just grow and be normalized to the point that some guy like at the last few or two years ago he got the Nobel Prize for literature even though he's a boss in genocide denier and just these these things are becoming have become in the past um

decade or two, I suppose, more normalized, and now we're sort of back to the mitigation section of things. For me, they're springing it to use. The method of the candy in the coal mine was sort of that. But I'm sure you can go further back, and some people will say it's actually started with Bosnia Rwanda or something, but I wouldn't say that. I'm I can say like full certain words started, if that makes sense. But yeah, for me,

it's obviously it's there Spring. That's that's been the center of my world for a long time now, and it's it's where I felt that the lack of support that was needed. And it's ongoing. I'm talking about it in the past stance, but it's ongoing. Like the guy is being bombed right now. Yeah, they just bombed it live too, right, Yeah,

so you know it's ongoing. The humiliation is ongoing. The regime is putting out the green buses, which every Serian knows what they're about, the humiliation ones where you escorte people out of their homes basically, and they they they know, like the regimes I think at this point know what they can do and what they can't do. They're they're pretty confident in what they can and can't do. So yeah, sorry, I'm ending another pretty positive note on that. Unfortunately, I

don't know, man. I guess As a last question, I'm kind of curious we we've you've analyzed the problem of the left kind of aligning themselves with parties and with nations, um, and how that leads to a tremendous amount of blind spot spots, a flattening of of conflicts, and a flattening of the humanity of people who don't live close to you, um, which is you know, all part of the problems that

we that we are in right now. What do you think we ought to be aligning ourselves around, like if you're getting you know, if we're if we can if we can come to see ourselves as all in the periphery and and in the periphery at least and sort of as relates to these states, because in a way we all are, right, Um, people in the United States certainly like benefit more from imperialism and from the might of the United States, but we're also peripheral to the

power of that state, which I think a lot of people may have ex experienced for the first time when they got tear gas last year, or or as kind of the different state effects or attempts to deal with the coronavirus have failed disastrously. This really really but what do you what should we be aligning ourselves around? Like

what do you what do you sort of give. I mean, even the example that you gave is for me, it's a pretty good one because that's also sort of the point that like centers and peripheries are everywhere, and they're

they're also within nation states. So like Lebanon is peripheral to America, but many Americans are peripheral to other Americans, if that makes sense, and to other Americans in power, especially Like for me, one of the primary thinkers behind my own thinking is James Baldwin, you know, African Americans or like, he is technically a Westerner, but I would consider a lot of his writing to be peripherally essentially, and that's because he has this amazing coats that I'm

gonna probably butcher. But it's something along the lines of, like, the oppressed don't only know the oppressors better than oppressor. Is no, they oppressed, but they also know them better than they know themselves. That they like the oppressed know the oppressor is better than the oppress is no, the oppressors essentially, which is I think Phinon said something similar

as well. And for me, this this is the sort of inside this is kind of the thing that blew up, that blew my mind and this is this thing that I would say, in the past few years have really shaped everything as to what to sort of like ally ourselves with. I mean, the problem is that it's it sounds very cheesy to say to have actual principles and maintain them, but the problem is that we don't do it often. We don't actually maintain this principle often enough.

I don't know if I'm not going to speak for everyone, obviously, but in my experience it's it's it is difficult to maintain them. And often what I see is very seasoned activists basically dealing with burnout and kind of retiring from public life and from activism and just kind of doing their own thing and whatnot. And for me, the question is how do I continue doing what I'm doing but in the long term, And there is a time component

to this, there is a resource component to this. And the more we are able to add these different um frameworks to understand things we like, for me, that perfectly is just one framework. You know. Feminism is another one, Anarchism is another one. Uh, none of these things explain everything all the time, right, But it's it's just different

lenses from which I can understand the world. And my advice, which is not an easy one I still struggled with it, is to just try and have as many different lenses as possible. And that's sort of my advice that it's not a you know, it's not a it's not a very quotable one. You're not gonna find this on a T shirt. I think, Well, Um, Joey, I that's that's

I think all I had to ask and get into today. Um, did you have anything else you wanted to talk about before we before we roll out and leave our audience to I don't know, go uh, grow some cabbage or whatever. We'll going cabbage and community is always the best thing to do to be honest. Yeah, make food, make food, make food to community gardens. That's the best thing anyone

can do to be honest. Um yeah, I don't know. No, I I can talk about solo punk, I can talk about a bunch of stuff, but um, yeah, I guess my advice to everyone would be going a bunch of veggies. Okay, all the time. We'll we'll have a more We've been meaning to. I had been meaning to include a lot more solar punk stuff in the first five episodes of this we got a bit at the end, but it's um yeah, um, I wanna I want to do a more detailed, uh meaningful exploration, so we'll have you back

for that. But Joey, I thank you so much for coming on um your podcast the Fire this Time, um times Fire these times. Sorry, And also check out mangal Media uh in Lausanne, You've written for both places, um and also both great sources for people to check out if you want to de westify your reading about other parts of the world. UM all right, that's gonna do it us here as it could happen here. Um until it does uh yeah. Like Joey said, start a fucking garden.