1968 Part Two

bombs and bare spray and build a fucking guillotine. Those motherfuckers were allowed to go home, go home and post on social media talking about their victory of stalling our

electoral process. They're being hailed as heroes, as patriots. But what we have seen not only in the last few weeks, but also in the last several decades of this country is that whenever black and brown people and young people utilize their voice, exercise their right to assemble to protests, to disrupt injustice, to disrupt genocide, police brutality, they're labeled as monsters and they're beaten and they're brutalized, and they're jailed.

But white supremacist boy with tiki torches, yelling all kinds of explicitives. Oh no, we don't want to escalate the problem, so we just let them be. Tell me again about how white supremacists and police are not one and the same. Tell me again about the fact that we disperse in this country, our excess militarized gear to the police to brutalize citizens. You know what we could do with the

excess that the fucking military is given. Oh, I don't know, maybe actually invested back into this country in terms of infrastructure, education, healthcare, safe drinking water. But no, we don't do that. I'm so fucking tired of America. I got to tell you that. You know, I know that we're not even through this week, but I am through with this current administration. I am through with this fucking country and its hypocrisy and it's bullshit.

And look, folks, I know that I vascilate because I'm a full and complete human being with a lot of complex, layered emotions like all of us are. But this week, Fuck Biden is how I feel. At the same time, you know, a Time magazine article comes out where Donald Trump lays out exactly what he plans to do with this country in a second term, and how the people that are around him. Oh, they're not like the fucking

dummies of the first administration. No, they're rocked and ready to go, ready to monitor women's pregnancies and mental cycles, ready to throw undocumented or anybody that has brown skin or black skin, and detention centers, ready to depoort eleven

million people. You know, somebody said to me that where we are right now is the Sophie's choice of fucking democracy, which is, you know, what are we choosing here, Choosing to continue to fund a fucking genocide with our tax dollars, choosing to overlook the mountain of war crimes that are being committed by Israel against the people of Gaza, looking away at the way in which this current administration wants to try and placate young people by also criminalizing them,

placate them with Oh, I'm going to change the identification of marijuana. You know, I'm going to downgrade it so that it can be used for research purposes. Oh, I'm gonna relieve some student loan debt. But at the same time, I don't want you to advocate for yourselves. I don't want you to have the right to protest at the same time, I'm going to completely ignore the mounting calls for a ceasefire, for some conditions to be placed on

the fucking aid and bombs that you're sending over. You know, I am out of place, folks, where I do believe that Biden is going to lose this election. And it isn't going to be because Donald Trump and the MAGA folks have stolen the election. It's gonna be because every single decision that this administration is making is throwing away this fucking election. It isn't gonna be enough to just point to Donald Trump and say like, oh, he's worse.

It isn't going to be enough to legalize marijuana when you have tens of thousands of black and brown people still serving out fucking jail time because of the maximum minimum sentences while white people put up fucking you know, weed stands on every other fucking street and it's turned into a billion dollar industry while black and brown people

are still in jail. Miss me with it. I'm tired, you know, And I've been talking to so many different groups of people that I know that are trying to figure out where they're going to go and what they are going to do if Donald Trump wins, because this country will not be safe. And the speed at which everything will shift and go dark, folks, you can't even fucking imagine, because they are ready to rock on day

one of a Trump administration. By the time that we would make it to the first one hundred days, I can't even explain to you what America would look like because the sci fi fucking thrillers that are out there will not do their dark vision of cruelty in America service. But what do we do? Because in good consciousness, my job is to wake people up? Right, So I am, I am. I'm consistently on high alert and on an alarm, and I cannot swallow the deaths of thirty seven thousand

plus people. I can't swallow the starvation. I can't swallow the hypocrisy that is happening. When Putin does something, it's a war crime because y'all don't like him. But when Netanyahu does it, oh, it's necessary. What the fuck? Why do we have rules of engagement to begin with? If you allow Israel to do whatever the fuck it wants. And I'm tired of being told that I'm not allowed to critique this country that is off the fucking deep end.

These people are nuts, and several years from now, folks who will be turning around being like, oh, well, we didn't know. How the fuck could you say that you didn't know? It's on every screen? Whose life matters? As a black, queer woman in these United States? In this world, I know all too well whose lives matter. It ain't mine. It ain't the Palestinians, it ain't Muslims, it ain't women, it ain't queer people. So, folks, we are living on

top of their tinderbox. And if the treatment of these young anti war college protesters are in any inclination, I believe that we are headed into the summer of nineteen sixty eight, and I, for one, am absolutely terrified about what is to come. And I can't pretend that I think that we're going to be able to fight this off. I really can't, because I know how I am vacillating back and forth. I know ultimately I'm going to be

forced to make the Sophie's choice of Biden. But I don't know how many people living in Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, you know, the only states that matter, are going to join me in that decision. We will see coming up next my difficult conversation this week with our friend doctor Jonathan Metzel as we partn parcel out what is happening

in Israel and Gaza. Folks. You know that whenever we have the opportunity to chat with our in house doctor, doctor Jonathan Metzel, I am always thrilled and welcome back, Jonathan. You were out last week or the week before. I don't even know what day it is for a passover, so I'm glad that you had time with your family and welcome back to the madness. I hope that you were able to take a break.

is not even about Israel and Gaza. The overarching issue is about what is happening to our colleges and universities and the way in which our free speech right to assemble issues that are at the core of our democracy are being challenged, as well as watching the complete and total militarization of police and the handling that is happening

at the hands of police and administrators. I want to get your thoughts and then I want to get into the conversation with how this is being shown through mainstream media, how it is differing depending on what outlets you are using and going towards, and just your overall feelings. As a professor that is working all the time. I'm you know with this generation.

about the context before we get into the content. But the think how just think about this moment where education is such a battleground in so many ways, right, this protest is happening in the aftermath of attacks on DEI and attacks on libraries and attacks on school boards and all these kind of things. And so I guess question number one, avenue number one we can do go to all these is what's the bigger story about education that's

happening right now? Like why education right now? And what are we fighting about, Like why is education in the lead up to twenty twenty four, in the aftermath of the pandemic, in the seven days before we all get wiped out by the bird flu? What is it about education right now? That that is where we're having these fights. And so I don't think you can before you get into the actual contact, because I agree with you, many

bigger things are happening. Number one is just how interesting it is that this is all a part of a much bigger conversation we're having about freedom, about education, about things like that. So that will be number one. Number

two is about the content a little bit. But I would say that in part, and I'm just going to say this because I'm a professor and I'm an administrator, and I will say that administrators, like students, have been trained in a particular way over the past decade or fifteen years or whatever, that they're going to clamp down on what any group perceives as hate speech, right, And so I think that part of the issue with this issue was administrators when they feel like, I mean, if

you could just take any group, but the minute it started feeling like from the river to the sea, and then Jewish students started saying we're oppressed by this, Like administrators are almost like robotically programmed to clamp down on particular kinds of speech that some people find oppressive and other people don't. And so I'm not surprised that administrators. I mean, I don't think that they would be acting this way if it was about climate change. I really don't.

But I do think that the fact that this is a divisive issue, where some people coin this as liberation and some people coin this as anti semitism or oppression, they're acting the way that they would if this was any other kind of speech that any group interpreted as hate speech. And so I think if this was racist or transphobic or anything like that, they would be doing the same thing. I think they're acting in that brain which.

is that there is just a coding in universities about speech. Now, I'm not in any way justifying the cops or the arresting or anything like that, but i will say that I feel like that's kind of important to recognize when

we think about why this has escalated. Point number three is what we might call the medanim You know, the metonym is a literary term for the part stands in for the whole, And so I understand, Like I was speaking with Antonia Helton, the NBC reporter this weekend, and she was reporting from the Columbia encampment, and she's like,

it's totally crazy. Most of the protesters are peaceful, and it's a student group that's very multi everything, and then these small incidences of somebody smashing out the window with a hammer and stuff like that. That's what then goes viral, and I guess the question is what narrative are you going to believe, and where are you getting your source

material and where do you get research. But it is interesting, like I was at the Vanderbilt protest when the reporter got arrested, for example, I was literally fifteen feet away when all that happened. There were nine thousand things happening, and it was just this tiny little thing where somebody screamed in a policeman's ear with a megaphone and he turned around and just arrested the first person he saw,

which happened to be this reporter. And it's just if you were at the thing, you would think this thing wasn't a big deal at all. But then somebody filmed him getting arrested, and then it went viral, and then there were ten billion people, and then I got emails from everybody around the world. And so we live in a moment where what you capture on social media it

just kind of becomes the reality. And so I guess question number three is if ten thousand people are being peaceful and one person does something that goes viral, that becomes the reality. And so the question is, how do you understand what's happening and what's a trusted source when all of social media is meant to invoke a response.

And then I guess the fourth point really is the point I've been on the phone all morning with my friends in Israel about, which is this is really distracting a lot of this stuff, Like the bigger issue actually is the peace in the Middle East and stopping the war in Gaza and stuff like that. So in a way, like it, I guess I feel a little frustrated that this has become like this question of campus and anti Semitism.

I don't know, it just it's frustrating because it feels like it's given people an off ramp toward talking about the real issue, which is like what are we going to do in real terms, about what are the real outcomes that are possible in the Middle East? And we're you know it just it's just been it's been frustrating because it's different. People are on my side playing the victim card when really this isn't just about anti Semitism.

This is about the N'tonnaho government and all these other factors. So in a way, it's it's a real issue about campuses. Absolutely real issue, but the issue itself is also about the Middle East, which we kind of don't talk about sometimes when this becomes the focus. So those are my four.

and post October seventh, everything is couched in anti semitism. Every fucking critique, And I'm like, how do we get anywhere if I'm not allowed to critique a government because of the religion of the majority of the people inside

of that government. And what I find incredibly fucking frustrating is that When you start doing that, then real anti Semitism that is on the rise and happening becomes ignored and watered down because everything can't be anti Semitism, Everything can not be fucking anti semitism and couch that way, because then nothing is, and we lose the seriousness of the violence and hate that is rising against a community of people if I can't actually critique things that are

going wrong. So I'm trying to figure out how it is that I'm looking at people. I'm watching so many videos, and you're right, everything that does happen on social media is being magnified times a million, right, times a million views.

anti Semitism everywhere. He looked like if there wasn't a parking space when we'd go to the baseball game, he'd be like, Jews can't park anywhere, you know, something like like. That was his way of understanding the world was anti Semitism because my dad grew up Ninety of our family were murdered in Holocaust, and my dad and my grandparents escaped, and it just became his lens right that. And in a way, when you start to see a lens of a structure that is meant for you to be oppressed,

that's kind of how you see the world now. I I for me, obviously, I've brought in fact I hardly ever think about anti semitism, and I haven't really thought about it that much before six months ago. But I can see how when that becomes your response to a threat, it just becomes very pervasive. We're under attack, it must

be our group, bust may under attack. And so it's a very automatic reflex for people with histories of trauma like the Holocaust or slavery or other kinds of things to go to that narrative and not and foreclose other narratives. And so part of the story is, I mean, I obviously disagree with the idea that everything's being anti Semitism. And my fourth point was like calling an anti Semitism makes it harder to see how you're the aggressor as

well as the victim. But I guess part of that is just to say that that when that becomes the worldview, that becomes people's kind of go to response in ways that any challenges like this, and I think you know you and I've talked about this a lot, there are some basic foundational things about these tests that are like existentially terrifying for people who are Jewish, right, And so the idea that you know, even from the river to the sea, Like everybody's like, well, what's the big deal

from the river to the sea, but that is basically something that's very very it's just seen as kind of an existential terror. The idea that basically people would overturn the state of Israel, and things like that, and so in a way that's kind of become the go to, which becomes generalizable. And again, part of the issue, this is kind of the research I do, is that when you're always saying you're the victim, you're not seeing how

you're the aggressor. And so in a way, there also is a psychology of getting yourself off the hook of being part of the problem as well as being part of the solution. So I think that's part of it. Is just this is how people with historical trauma act,

And I think that's an important point. But I guess the other, probably more important point for me is that there have been Israelis who don't see the world that way in the streets protesting against the Natanyahu government for a year before October seventh, and we're saying exactly the same things that you just said to me in your question.

Israelis don't feel that way. I mean, I've been on the phone with people all morning and they're like supporting the protesters here and want their government to be overturned and all these kind of things. And so in a way, I think what you're talking about is American Judaism in a way more than Israeli Judaism. That's my personal sense.

anti Semitism. Now, what I will say is that the other piece that I find incredibly troubling is that this is all cyclical to me. Yeah, right. There has never been a student movement in our history, in our modern history, that has been looked at favorably as it is happening. Never,

not one fucking time. I don't care if it was peaceful to sit in at the lunch counters when folks were doing that and being beaten and lynched and murdered and all of these things, and when people were barricading themselves in during the Vietnam War on the very same campus, right, And so these student protests are never looked upon favorably in protests, is never looked upon favorably, particularly in countries that quote unquote care about democracy, because there will always

be a group that says that it's not the right way to protest. Then tell me fucking how, Because if it's not a sit in, if it's not being peaceful, if it is now having to take responsibility for every single other individual outside of Columbia University and inside of the campus, you tell me the right way to push back against oppression. Right, So this becomes again this US against them. You know this isn't right. They don't know

what they're talking about. And I'm just like, so, who does the people that are sending twenty four billion dollars to continue the murder of women and children? Like this is just I don't I guess I get to a point where I'm just like, we're never going to get to a place of what is quote unquote right when people outrage is never received in a sincere way and when movements are particularly picked apart by the fringe elements. Right, So you see this one hammer that was breaking glass.

I've seen it six times. I only had the television on for twenty minutes before I jumped on.

side and we're just all talking past each other. That's my greatest hope, you know, because I don't like, I mean, you and I have talked about this idea of a polarizing crisis on this show a bunch, this idea that basically there is a strong coalition and then something happens and all of a sudden we're existentially divided. I mean, I'll just say, honestly, it's pretty weird having fought against injustice for my entire career to you know, now feel

an activist and a target. And I mean I don't personally feel a target, but I'm just saying that, like if I just keep imagining, like like, it's just weird. To be Jewish right now. Honestly, he really is, And so what does it mean to like, I just feel like if this was some other group other than my own, maybe I would feel different, or maybe things would be

easier or more clear cut. Like it's just I'm trying to kind of I'm trying to kind of walk a fine line in a certain way, which is I support protest, I support free expression, I'm against aggression. I've been against the natanya Who government for many, many, many years. And I also don't want to see the destruction of Israel, which I feel like Nitaya Who is kind of messianically bringing into being. And so it's just a very fine line.

And so people like me are talking like I'm talking right now, which is a little bit vague and a little bit over intellectualized because it's it's just a strange moment to be. You know, you want to be part of the group fighting against injustice, and you're also that feel like you're I mean, when you see those hammer pictures in the window, it feels very personal, Like it feels very very personal.

Of course, I understand what it is like to live in a body that you actually can at at any time or what have you change other people's outside perspectives of whether or not you are a danger, a threat of this or that. And so that being said and understood, when I see peaceful protests that started as you know BLM marching down the street, and then at other times it burst into a CVS or a Wendy's going up

in flames, I understand both. I understand both the act of destruction right of just so much how much more do you want people to take? How much more killing do you want people to be able to ingest before they explode? And then I also understand the people that are able to march peacefully, able to sit at the policy tables and try and figure out ways to change things.

Humans are complex, like, we have a lot of emotions and a lot of feelings and a lot of angst, particularly those that are from historically marginalized and oppressed and abused groups. There is never going to be a neat solution for murderous problems. And if we can't come I guess my feeling is, if we can't come to the table and agree on what is morally right and morally wrong, then we will never get anywhere and the killing will just persist.

saying very similar things. I mean, I've got friends in Israel whose kids are going to be jailed for refusing to be in the army if they invade rafa and things like that, Like there are a lot of people relatively wanting the same thing who are sitting at that

lunch counter. I completely agree with that, But there are a lot of people who also benefit from playing that hammer video ninety million times, so that you kind of conflate that with everything, and so in a way, it just takes it just takes a lot to kind of

maintain that. And in a way, you know, it's it's just such a moment because you know, on one hand, we're shaking up the entire world, and some people would say the ends justify the means, but it also is terrifying because you don't know like where this is all going. And so I agree with you that, I think that's very well said, and I hope I hope that they I hope at the end of the day we end up getting back to that lunch counter and making some some real change.

honest ones. Because I think that if we try to find ways to intellectualize things that just honestly don't warrant that level, you know, Like, I don't want people to turn away from this issue because they say that it's too complex, because they're not historians, because they're not the political elite, and so oh, I have no space to have, you know, this conversation because I'm not Jewish, or because

you know I'm you know, because I'm not Muslim. Because I want people to understand that, like, we need to get back to a place to where we can agree on what is right and what is wrong. We have rules of war for a reason, right, and when those rules of war are broken, right, like, then if that is just going to be the way, then the whole world will fall into chaos, which is where I honestly think that we are now and why things are so radically out of whack.

movement do? So I do think that there are questions about all of this, but I also think that there is a not zero chance that the protests are going to get one of their main stipulations, and then the question is kind of what's the next phase? Right?