An Existential Crisis of Humanity

And today's conversation is really hard, and is really heavy, and it's really necessary because the only way that we're going to get through this is by being in conversation and connecting outside of the manipulation and propaganda that is being souped up and fed to us on all channels and in all spaces. And that is why I am calling for our collective humanity, our collective knowing, our collective care in this moment, because this is not a game.

This is about us as people, as humans. What is happening right now that is being manipulated by governments that have agendas of hate fueled by greed. So we are in one of the most existential crises that we have experienced in modern time. So I encourage you to listen with an open mind and an open heart to the conversation that Jonathan and I have in this episode. I

also encourage all of you to share it. I never really ask any one to listen to the show and share with your friends and do all of those things, but I will say between yesterday's Woke Wednesday and today, I do actually urge you, if you have been moved, if you have been stirred, if you want to create room and space for conversation and connection, do share them on whatever platforms you have, text them to friends and colleagues. We need connection, we need conversation, and we need to

understand now more than ever, our shared humanity. Coming up next to my conversation with our friends and an in house doctor, doctor Jonathan Metzel. Folks, you know that whenever we have the opportunity to speak with our in house doctor, doctor Jonathan Metzell, I am always thrilled. This week, however, is probably one of the heaviest weeks. And I mean that's saying a lot for what we have been engaging and how we have been engaging in conversation with you,

Jonathan over the last few years. I sent you, I sent a text this morning, because there is a I guess a tweet that is going around heavily on Instagram that I wanted to discuss with you, Jonathan, as soon as I saw it. Actually, and folks, it's from Kate Kelly at Kate Underscore, Kelly Underscore, Esquire ESQ and this is what it reads, and it was reposted on heavy

discussion on Instagram. The modern phenomenon of watching war in real time on screens as if we're watching a soccer match and fighting with other people online about which side we support, like it's a fandom is devastatingly dehumanizing. And Jonathan, I wanted to get your reaction to that post in particular because it really struck me as probably for me, one of the most honest posts that I have seen about what we're experiencing right now. So I want to get your reaction.

I mean, for me, this is very personal, right My relatives escaped the gas chamber, and you know, the ones who did ended up in Israel at the time, and so I have a lot of relatives and who are very personally affected by this. It's a very personal issue for a lot of people. But it also is the risk of this right right now. I remember when I was doing my research on COVID and there was a phrase that was I can't remember who coined it, but

it was called a polarizing crisis. A modern polarizing crisis that happened with COVID was that everybody was fucking scared. Excuse me to death, right, here's this thing that's killing us. So everybody was feeling vulnerable in a different way, like how could how could this be happening in our quote unquote world, that there's a bug we can't control that's killing us. But instead of coming together and shared humanity at that time, there were a couple of things that happened.

Number one was that there were probably underlying divisions between people about how they thought about the government, how they thought about safety, how they thought about factors like that. But those divisions then were enhanced and manipulated by unseen actors in a way that made them identity issues to the point where seeming allies were all of a sudden on different sides. So all of a sudden, we were fighting with each other about mortality, about really real mortality.

And this was manipulated by social media. There were bot farms that were working on this, all this kind of thing, And so in a way, the argument was that COVID was the perfect polarizing crisis because everybody felt it really deeply. Everybody had some association, some kind of somatic association. But then their response told them that the problem was people who were their allies. And I think the important point about that was who is served by dividing up people

who are seemingly allies. Read Jason Stanley's book about about fascism. A divided opposition is what leads to the conditions that let fascism rise. Right that if you divide the opposition and just not just divide, but to convince them that they hate each other about life and death factors, you're going to have a fractured opposition, which paves the way

for fascism to take over. And I feel like in a way what's been happening over the past week, just looking on social media, which is obviously being manipulated in all these kind of ways, but all these posts about people saying I thought you were my ally and you're not, or we marched with you and Selma and this is what we get, or you know, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, and it just seems like, in a way,

what's happening now is a fracturing. It's also a real tragedy, right, I have people who are being held hostage right now, and many people do, and there many of us have been working before all of this to try to end the occupation and all these things, like it's it's very very personal for a lot of people. But the idea of either you're on one side or another and we're fractured, it's like, how do you fight back against that? Right? Because the issue is the issue is it's a real issue,

and maybe it's a real division. But what's going to happen is an outcome that is going to it's going to strengthen the forces that we've been fighting against forever.

and human stake in what is happening and unfolding. And I think that there are some that feel guilt because they are not directly impacted and connected, And then there are others that are trying to understand, well, why am I breaking down? Why am I crying? Why do I

feel so weighted in this moment watching this unfold? And it's because we are human, and because when you are witnessing such dehumanization, such grief, and it being accelerated and exacerbated by political forces and greed and racism and bigotry and all of these things, and everything feels accelerated at this moment. I think that we are in a real

global struggle for our collective humanity. And I think that we have been right for you know, for the last several years that we've watched, whether it's in the United States, whether it's in Russia, whether it's in Italy, whether it's in Turkey, we've watched forces rise that want to do absolutely no good in this world. And so I guess, you know, how do people, you know, how do you

work through these emotions? When I will tell you for me, and this is going to be quite controversial for me, I struggled when I saw cities light up with the Israeli flag because it felt like there was a collective side that nation states were taking. When I said to myself and I said this in a post, what is the human flag? What is the color of humanity right now that we should be broadcasting and lifting up? And that's the struggle of where I am.

many ways. You know, the problem is that the choices were given right now in other words, like the choice the possibility that Hesbala is going to invade from the from the north, and there's going to be action over go on and there's going to be like a real fight for the future of a country, and then all these people saying, well the great this is the individual will where are that ten million people are going to go? Who or five million people are going to go? What's

your plan for that? And so it feels like an existential fight for like, you know, a week ago, it was kind of like, how can we create alliances with people to ensure weal stability? And now it's like, is this country and the people who live there going to survive? And so I think that the question is how do

you express that? No, that's a really real fear for a lot of people who are Jewish who have been fighting against I mean, for me, I'll just say like Nittagna, who is like the polepot of our era, like he's a war criminal and he's you know, insane. But for me fighting against Natania, who wasn't also saying all my relatives and the people I care about should be pushed

into the sea or something like that. So it feels very existential, and I guess at this one moment it becomes like we want this nation to survive, We want at least the people who live there to survive. And that's how it's just kind of expressed. It's almost epigenetic for a lot of us that this is the fight that we've been brought up with, because it's kind of like for all these people who are saying on social media, well,

this is it. I never I thought i'd see my dream of the end of Israel, like where's your plan

for where the people are going to go? Right? Which is ties back to the period after the Holocaust when people didn't have any place to go, or during the Holocaust and stuff like that, which just feels very deep for a lot of us, honestly, and I would love And the problem is the problem is that all of our interactions are being mediated by a platform that's owned by Elon Musk and manipulated by the Russians and stuff like that. So the possibility of having a real conversation

about humanity is being manipulated. Like we're being actually pitted against each other right now in a certain kind of way and in a way to get heard, you've got to do this. It's one thing or another or something like that. Like I don't know, think of all the stuff we didn't see on social media which talked about shared humanity, but that's going to get one retweet in

the algorithm that is being funded by Elon Musk. And so the problem is that then you see this thing side for example, is the horrifically ill advised Black Lives Matter of Chicago depiction of a paraglider with a Palestinian flag, you know, the paragliders who went in and killed the people at the rape. And so all of a sudden people were like, well, that's all Black Lives Matter protests

or something like that. Like the way social media works is through metonomy, right, the idea that, oh, this represents everybody. And so it's kind of like, oh, and so in a way, how do you fight back when the thing you're being fed is like, oh, here's the thing that reinforces your idea about the people who are against you,

and this represents everybody. And so there is no space for middle ground in the platforms at least right now that we're engaging with, and I don't know where do we go to have a real conversation, like in a certain kind of way. And also, again, the stakes are so incredibly incredibly high right now that yes, I don't know, I just I feel like when I was trying to do I just wanted to like call all my allies on social media. I've got like, no, like I'm down

to like twenty thousand Twitter followers or something. But I just wanted to like call everybody and say, can we just talk off of Twitter and figure something out. You know, I've been reaching out to friends of mine who are completely on the other side of me politically. I'm having conversations stuff, and I don't know, it's just this conversation is not going to happen on social media. Where we find that space you're talking about is kind of what I'm saying.

the killing of innocent Palestinians is horrific. And when you find yourself vying with those emotions, you have to ask yourself, what is the propaganda that you're ingesting that tells you that one side's murder, you know, beheading like brutality is

you know, is worse than the other. And I think that what that does is exactly what you're saying, which is moves us further in these corners away from what we share as human beings, right, Because the way for a Netanyahu to be able to execute his genocidal plan, his homicidal plan, is to embed in people around the world that Palestinians shouldn't exist, that they are a given threat by birth and should be wiped from the planet.

And it's just like when you ingest that, right, and you have to look at all the ways that different communities, at least that is what I see around the world, have experienced similar dehumanization, so that they're they're the violence that is placed against them is justifiable. And I'm like,

and so we are. I feel like collectively, it's like I want to send out a fucking text message that says get off of social media, right, Like, you know, be really really intentional about where you are going and what you are being fed, and continue to ask yourself, like, where is this coming from? What am I absorbing? What am I pushing out because you are, to your point, Jonathan, being manipulated.

still engage? And I don't know, it's just it's the true power of social media is something that I've been thinking about since Saturday. I mean, I don't know, I guess. I guess if I had to think of my honest responses right now, they would be two fold. I mean, one is like I understand the historical connectedness of the Palestinian struggle and the Black American struggle. Like I think people are missing a lot of Like it's not like this thing was invented on Saturday or something like that.

But it's just complicated because I do feel, at least on social media again, that people are oversimplifying, like so many people, because of social media, think like Israelis are all a bunch of white people because that's all the Jews they know in the United States. You know, more than half of Israelis are non white. You've got more than half a million Yemeny Jews, You've got Ethiopian Jews,

Eeritrean Jews. So Israel is not just a bunch of white people suppressing a bunch of non white people, which is kind of the binary that's being propagated here and a lot of you know, that's the struggle in Israel. I mean, I was there last summer in a conference for Yemeny Israeli doctors who were pushing back on the crimes that had been committed in the War of Independence

by white Israelis against brown Israeli. So Israel is a complicated situation, but it's also really personal, right, It's a lot it's personal for I don't know, I guess I'm just more Jewish than I realized. But it's just really personal because the idea of like us having a place as a homeland that's going to protect us if the Holocaust ever happens again is just really deep for a lot of people, and so it's just a really embedded

response to try to say that. And at the same time, I'm also realizing, like I don't take back one word I've ever said in my career, like I believe in anti racism, I believe in all the work I've ever done. I'm really proud of the work I've done and the

alliances I've built. And I don't ever think that because I have this feeling of like wanting there to be a safe space for like my family that in a way, like my history, I always felt makes me better able to understand the work I do about studying oppression and injustice. And I would say that's true for a lot of people.

And so I just have to kind of come to terms like where we're at and how do we get back to those alliances because I just can't let this be the kind of polarizing crisis that is being constructed right now or we have really big problems, which is that we're all you know, it's just very dark possibility for me.

visit multiple times. I was given the opportunity to visit in twenty fifteen, and I had to move out of the context of the binary black and white in terms of understanding injustice because I had never seen I couldn't. It was hard to process how there was so much hatred when I'm like, you won't look like you come from the same family, it is so it is, it was such as a black queer American, it was so difficult.

It was like a mind trip because I'm like, how do you even know, you know, like, aside from the scripture and prayer, how do you even know to hate said person because you look exactly like right in terms of skin tone, in terms of like it's like you

know that you're all collectively from the same space. And so for me understanding racism through a very black and white lens and then having to extrapolate that in discrimination and prejudice like beyond melanin right from the from the vantage point that I have understood it my entire life. What do you offer to people who do want to

tap out of social media? Is there any place to tap into that you are using, even if it's a book, if it's somebody's other podcast, if it is something that people can use as a resource.

in that region in my life. And I will tell you that race functions in a very different way that In a way, the irony of all of this is that Israelis have much more in common culturally with Palestinians than they do with American Jews. And that's again because half the population of Israel are people who escaped from Egypt or Yemen or Syria or other places like that.

And so in a way, it's just if you're going to take us race categories, which are white oppressor and black resistance, it just race functions very differently in other parts of the world. And that's true in Brazil, for example, it's true in Africa, and it's also true in the Middle East. And so in a way, how do you

think about that? And I guess it just leaves us with an ethnical question, which is if people are going to say, well, people, I mean, I'm going to say, people of color who are Israeli, are they white by the nature of being Israeli or are they Yemeny or

Syrian or whatever their ancestry is. In a way, and if that's the case, I just I personally can't go there because that means that then we're all Trump supporters or you know, we're all right by the nature of being American, and I just don't think we would ever make that argument, you know, we're all oathkeepers or something

like that. And that's also true for the Palestinians, right that there are politans who are oppressed by Hamas and and and so in a way, it's just it's just like, I don't know, Maybe now the stakes are so high, maybe now is not the time to be having that conversation in a way, but there just have been so many natural alliances that are risked when we when we I don't know, I'm just I've been having this conversation with some colleagues of mine here because they're arguing that

anti blackness is universal and I and maybe I would have supported that more last week, and I do think anti blackness is probably universal, but I would also say, I don't know, it just feels like a very decontextual argument for me in a certain kind of way. So these conversations are hard. I mean, in a way, these

conversations are hard. I've been having conversations with people who completely don't agree with me, But I do think that I don't know, we just got to work together to figure out some kind of shared conversation or or or again, it's going to lead us to a place where all of our historic alliances that we've worked so hard to build are going to be co opted by agendas that are exactly the thing we've been fighting against.