Ghassan Kanafani, a Palestinian revolutionary author and PFLP representative, provided a Marxist-Leninist analysis of the 1936-39 Palestinian Revolt, examining how British imperialism, Zionist colonialism, and local feudal class collaboration suppressed the Palestinian national movement. Kanafani argued that the revolt failed due to five principal causes: absence of revolutionary leadership, individualism and opportunism among leaders, lack of central command, weakness of the Palestinian Communist Party, and the unfavorable international situation. He emphasized that the Palestinian national question must be addressed before class issues, and that the revolt's failure created conditions for the Nakba of 1948. Kanafani's analysis demonstrates how settler colonialism requires collaboration between imperial powers and local elites, and how revolutionary movements must address both national liberation and class struggle simultaneously.
🇵🇸 Revolt In Palestine! Honoring the Life, Work, and Analysis of Ghassan KanafaniAdded:
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Oh, I closed the application. Anyway, everybody, please welcome back uh to I mix what I like. Again, I'm Jared Ball. Happy to be your host.
Please like, share, subscribe, do all of the things, and uh support the platform. Support all of our satellite platforms as well. I did mean to have a a a little bit of a Speaking of vibes, I was trying to to set the vibe for uh um maybe where I'd like to be.
But we do have a we have a great show today. Hey, we're going to be uh talking about uh uh the work of Gassan Kafani again with Sudep Badachara and our donut project, Donut King project. Again, all the links are in the show description to Sudep's work, to our playlist, and uh and to more. So, please check all of those the rest of that content and all the other videos that are coming out on the platform and again in our satellite spaces. Please uh avail yourselves of the content and share it, hype it, do all of those things that that help it reverberate to the extent uh uh possible. All right, without without further ado, let me bring uh Sudep up and and and let's get our our our publicly held meeting started. Sudep, welcome back. It's good to see you again. How are you?
>> You're muted. I don't hear you. How come I don't hear you? There you go.
>> It's me. It's my mic. Thank you for having me back on. No, of course. Of course. Of course. Um, what's the latest before we get started?
What's what's the latest with with with Eddie? What's just what's the latest as you see?
>> Me?
>> Yeah. Just in in as you see the Yeah.
with you, with the world as you see it, etc., and so forth. Um, I mean, in honor of our troops who do no wrong, I think America uh shot some random missiles into South Iran last night just just cuz, you know, who cares about Iranian lives according to some.
>> Support the troops.
>> Support the troops at any I mean, put stickers up, you know, when there's a jet >> yellow ribbons. Yeah.
>> Yes. Yes. And when there's jets flying over ahead, throw a ribbon up at the sky as far as you can and hopefully a jet catches it. And that's how I that's when you know you're in love. That's when you know good luck is coming your way when a jet catches it. So that's what's up. But also with the book, I think I don't know, something about this week has also been a little bit more, you know, I don't want to say hopeful cuz it's so bizarre to feel that way, but reading this book helped just to give a materialist analysis as to like how we got to this point and also just the fact that Palestinians have been resisting for a while and they won't stop. So there there's that. That's that's what you know. No, I I actually uh uh agree and I've said for a long time that uh I felt that that selfishly something that has helped my mental health over the years was having some materialist explanation to what was happening to me be be made apparent. You know, you know, I think for a lot of us, we before before experiencing some form of political education, we go through uh I think stages or or variations of of feeling the the problem. like people know there's a problem and we just don't always know how to identify it, label it >> or to how to counteract is what we're trying to do with this project. The narratives we're getting cuz cuz from day one, you know, from from the first thoughts we're given, I mean, we're told, you know, everything is great.
You're in a free democracy, the American dream, >> right? you know, uh, if there's any problems, if you encounter any problems, you know, some of it may be a vest vestage of the old past, but for the most part, it's really your fault.
>> Yeah.
>> And then it's like, but wait a minute.
And then as you start to learn, at least for me, as I started to be able to fill in those gaps, be like, okay, I at some point it's like, I know that that that that's a lie. I can't explain it yet, >> right?
>> Uh uh and in fact, I actually whittle it down to one particular argument I had uh in the Navy, in fact, >> and it was with a white dude who um >> Wow, this is I now I'm going down a hole. Yeah. Anyway, the point was that that I remember I remember I and it was literally the last time I argued with a white person about race and then I argued from a position of ignorance.
Like I knew in that moment, >> I know I'm right. I just don't know. I just don't have any information. So, he was throwing these things, you know, those those racist stats out, you know, well, how come like I remember one of them was, you know, how come there's more black people in jail than in college?
Oh, okay.
>> And at the time, I'm like, I know that's [ __ ] but I don't have >> I I had no explanation for it.
>> So, I started to resort to violence. I was like, well, if you know, if I can't if I can't explain it, >> I mean, I feel the same way. Yeah, >> I mean that let's just that's that's do I mean I think one of those Well, I just wanted to quickly also I think uh one of the contradictions of living in an empire too is that I've been my Knicks are now in the finals. So last night Oh, >> congratulations.
>> Yeah. Yeah. So, last night I was watching that and then I was watching these YouTube fan shows that I watch and I was just thinking like, well, there's that, but then also the contradictions of it because uh the owner is a horrible person and the tickets are hundreds of thousands of dollars. So, I am seeing, you know, our favorite people up front like Spike Lee, Timothy, Marty Supreme, whatever, you know, and I was like, "Oh my god, I'm so glad those >> Oh, Shalamé, Timothy Shalamé."
>> Yeah. Yeah. He's a New Yorker apparently. And then he um has I forget which which Kardashian it is, but you know she's she I think she's the youngest and she had said at one point she is a self-made billionaire, so it is what it is. But >> they were down there. Mhm. Yeah. Cuz she only got like a slight leg up than us. I mean, she only had her sisters do a TV show and get some brand deals, but who doesn't get a little taste of that?
>> Yeah. Who doesn't start with just a few million? A few tens of millions. She would be a failure if she lost it all, but she's a success because she made more from it. So, >> a self-made success. Sudade success.
Don't under. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I I didn't mean to, but it was bizarre cuz I really loved the team and it's just one of those like little blips of like, you know, joy in the sense of just just, you know, watching something and being into the fan base. And the fan base is pretty chill. You know, they're really nice.
But then at the same time I'm like um but then there then I hear through them too like all the private jets coming to celebrate overnight once they knew cabs are losing and the Cavs gave up. It was hilarious but that just made me feel sour too. I was like, "Oh my god, this is just ridiculous." But trying to be, you know, a little level in that sense cuz also the classes I'm teaching, I use the poem that has to do with the contradiction of of capitalism and being a I tribe uh a tribe called Quest fan and the Nyx. It was all bottled up into this one poem. So, it's all in the last two weeks, Nyx has been on my brain for those reasons.
>> Who could be mad at that? How who who could be mad at that? Um, and yes, done and none. uh to what degree do these guys just engage in the BS statistical manipulation to complete or complete fabrication of numbers? Of course, but that's why I'm a qualitative guy. That's why I I don't do quantitative stuff. Uh uh but but also and and salute to her because I remember um shortly after that argument I I remember I that I got out of the Navy and I think right around that time or a little bit after that Far Shadea published a book I always remember it don't believe the hype >> and in that it was you know an early 90s you know uh uh slightly left a center liberal book about race and about just those kinds of phony numbers. And one of the stats she talked about was that exact claim that there are more black people in jail than in college. And she went through all of the reasons why that is a nonsensical claim. Uh many of which are apparent and easy to identify now. I mean, even just starting with the fact that college age is usually just 18 to 22.
>> So obviously imprisonment is going to encompass much more of a range of age than that. So already it's but but yeah, so she went so I just always remember that book and and and appreciated her for for for for that. But yeah, go ahead.
>> No, I didn't mean to um because I have my students in the race ethnicity class I teach, we read this one conservative author. I forgot his name. He actually was going to write for the Atlantic, but then maybe his name is Kevin Williamson, but then he got into even hotter water because he has insane view. He's a secular person and someone who's not really faith, but he is deeply anti-abortion, I think, to the to the extent of wanting women to be charged with murder.
>> So, when he signed up for the Atlantic, and you and I know the Atlantic is, of course, the bottleneck of like revolutionary theory, >> but when I'm always I'm just rifling through the Atlantic to know what I should think. But he lost a job. But I have my students read an article he wrote for the National Review about going to this really poor white place in Appalachia, I think. And um again, he like the reason why I had them learn about this class uh this read this uh paper wasn't really just about this the poor whites that are there. It was also still how he was still being racist against people of color with the assumptions that poor whites shouldn't even be there. They've failed as whites.
Now they're at the level of in his mind indigenous people and other people and black people. He mentions music all the time like how they're playing Kanye.
This is back in the day. And in one part that was really interesting. He mentioned he smuggled in a little bit of what that guy you fought with was trying to do. He smuggled in this idea that Yeah. But it's interesting to note that in these areas violent crime is down.
But he just smuggled it in really politely. And I had my students focus on that. I like what do you think? what?
Like what do you think he's trying to say? And they mo most of them got it.
And then I found stats that said, well, that's stupid. It's not true. And also, even in the article, it wasn't true. He admitted, I think, in some instances where people killed people. So, it's just it it is what it is. And the stats themselves are just sometimes, you know, you can do a lot like I I learned quantitative methods and I forgot all of it. But one thing I remember was regression. Like if people don't know you, you can do all these tables and data points and then you can put them into a machine. I'm sounding so old, but and then you just you can find you can you can do the independent variable, the dependent variable, you can flip them around which one causes which until sometimes you get a quote unquote uh what's the word like connection or causation?
>> I don't know. Um there you go. Yeah. I was just going to say I don't remember because all of my trauma is being reignited by your >> I'm so sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
To this day, I married the woman that helped me through my stats class. That's that's that's that's how it depended. I was like, you know what? I need to just go ahead and marry you cuz I can't do these numbers. I'm I'm basically hopeless.
>> Well, my partner helps me, so I understand. I'm just like staring at the tip. I'm like, do I give 200? And she's like, we paid for $15. What do you >> Well, tips no tips I learned at a young age cuz cuz it was a big deal. My mother made my mother because it was a big deal in our house. And in fact, there's been family fights over it when people don't tip. like tipping is ma was major cuz we're a labor focused household.
>> So it was just >> it was just find the 10% and then double it >> as a minimum because 20% would be the was always the bare minimum when I was growing up at least.
>> Right. Right.
>> And so so I could always find the 10% but but that's about all the math I could do. Like I I can you know I can >> you pay bills I can you know make change if I work the cash register but that's about it. But when you start talking about regression models and all that other stuff, I was like, you know, I I put my hand up for help and then I as I said, I married the woman that that that helped me get through my stats class. Uh >> I went through it with friends help and all I can say the last thing I don't know anything anymore. I remember that summer I was like, "Oh, I'm going to use this at least occasionally to make graphs for my articles." Didn't do it at all. But the one thing if people don't know, you can press that button that says like put it put put the numbers into a system and it'll come out with some whether or not it is sufficient or causality. You can put in whatever stat you want either way until you find the right thing. So the causation still is explained by us. We have to explain though it the numbers don't explain what's going on. And plus in terms of white people, >> I think more of them should be like a lot of them commit crime. So it's like it's not an indication of anything. The results is not the indication. There's so many white people who commit mad loads of crime.
>> Oh, and and the the and and the best crimes. I mean, the the the the settler colonial crimes, enslavement and genocide and nuclear bomb crimes like they do like elite level stuff, >> you know. We we you know, we haven't elevated to their scale of criminality yet. We're still, you know, >> but um so just real quick, I'm going to use this as a as a as a plug. I'm going to shamelessly plug uh Doc Ball, you got out the Navy or they got you out the Navy.
>> Uh uh it was it was a mutually agreeable situation and and I it was the one thing I needed no political education to know from day one. I did not want to stay in.
I got out as soon as I could. I couldn't wait to get out and that was the only thing I understood about it. And if you really want to know more about that, you can go watch the E3 and Below uh film video that I made about my Navy experience, the film that the Navy would never never allow me to make or never allowed to be made, E3 and Below, where I go into detail about that whole experience. And uh so there's the shameless plug. Um oh no, I'm running black male stereotype.
about math. My bad.
Is that I'm assuming that's a stereotype. I don't know. All right, Sudep.
Listen.
So, first of all, you know what? I meant to say this and I should have I meant to even prepare and I just ran out of time because I can't honestly I read too slowly.
If you I don't know if you've read this yet, >> but Lara does because cuz we're reading Gassan Kafani today. Yeah. Yeah.
>> For today, she she brings up >> Kafani >> and reproduces as by way of demonstration and I'm not going to get into it because I haven't prepared it and I don't want to do it and I just want to note I just want to at least raise this up that she she recounts an interview that I'm not going to be able to find now. Uh I believe it starts on page 132, a conversation between the sword and the neck. In a now celebrated 1970 interview with Richard Carlton in Beirut, Gassan Kafani, Palestinian revolutionary author and Beirut-based representative of the Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine, brilliantly embodies psychic militancy.
And then she goes on to explain how he carries himself throughout this interview. And in many ways it reminds me of of for instance when we've talked about you know for like for instance how how George Jackson handled himself in an interview or Malcolm X handled himself in an interview or or other revolutionaries the way they parry certain questions that are attempting to move them in in in a certain way and and make sure to say to give the answer they want as opposed to the to what the questioner is looking for. and and uh so I don't want to do it a disservice but I just want meant to put this on yours and anyone else's mind greats uh uh particularly those interested in these subjects and and uh Kafani in particular um but so you encourage that we read the relatively short book from Kafani the 193639 revolt in Palestine I'll remind people that Samantha Ysef and I talked about Palestine 36 or 36 >> the film about this history. So, please check the channel for that and I'll put that in the show description as well if you haven't seen it.
>> Let me let you lay out your overview or initial thoughts or or or maybe why >> you see this book fitting within our Donut King project.
>> No, I just want to say to um I forgot her last name, but Dr. Lara like I've seen some of her episodes too and she was on the Matum Gants uh within our gates and it was excellent. Like she's really good at also just breaking things down uh that initially I would I would be scared of dealing with just because it's psychoanalysis, but she's the she's amazing. So I'm definitely going to think of getting that book too. It's like one of the few books I feel like I can put my budget towards to get. Um >> it's worth it and uh a very accessible read. Uh, so but yeah, >> great. And um, yeah, Cinema Yousef is awesome. So I think I did watch that one and I'm trying to watch the movie soon.
I don't think it's been released on streaming yet. Uh, but the the reason why I wanted us to read this is for two reasons. Well, one is because I definitely felt unzionist literature was just perfect in terms of giving a little bit of a that sense of like what to look for in culture, how to attribute it to material needs, in that case, imperialism, and also doing it from the side of the oppressed to the oppressed, from the oppressed to the oppressed in in in really understanding the oppressor side and how they really feel. I I really do feel like he was trying to let Palestinians know. I mean obviously a lot all of them knew by then post ' 67 but I think he was trying to tell the rest of the world who would who would be sympathetic already maybe saying hey these people you can't deal with them like like what you think you know like the peace plan throw it out the window because oh thank you shei because um she >> and I think it's sheha I think it's pron I I think that's because I I struggle I'm really I'm really >> I've really been been beaten down by this colonial education Uh so but yeah uh and so yeah >> no sorry go ahead.
>> No no no um but so in that sense it was more like that book was useful because again it is a Marxist Lannist approach but one that is deeply anti-colonial which is kind of reflected in how he has his criticisms of the pal Palestinian communist party which we'll talk about I'm sure. But this book I just wanted I just want to show the copy of it that I got from my local bookstore. They brought it in. It's like it's just really beautiful. 1804 books. It's really like when I showed >> my partner, she was like, "Wow." Like it looks really gorgeous. It's really nice.
And uh >> yeah, they're kill all of their books.
>> They're killing it. The the just as art their their their books. Yeah. It just shows you you can do a rel you can do a good job because there's a lot of academic publications that don't seem to care whatsoever about what's on a cover, you know, but then you have 1804 books which I'm pretty sure does not receive the same level of funding or support as academic publishers do who are out here doing like I don't know just it's beautiful. It's really nice. Oh, Sha.
Okay, thank you for that. that I don't want to bastardize that name because I've had situations with my name so I don't want to do that but um but yeah no the other reason I wanted to so the first reason for that is to complete that to complete that one two the the sense of culture how it's built um and then the other side of that is the the insistence of revolution and also how it can go astray which we'll talk because it it it ultimately didn't work out exactly the way that Palestinians wanted and of course the the repression of of this moment was the creation of Israel proper really this is when you see that connection being made that Gassan is making Kafani is making and finally for our project particularly just again just some analysis that I feel we could say is is the proper analysis to have when thinking about intellectual class people because that's rife through the book and also thinking about how to actually situate our own people in a real political economic analysis And I wrote this term because I'm constantly thinking of ways of framing our project. But I think like we are we we are living, you know, the military-industrial complex, but we're also living under the economic financialization complex. And so how to both understand it is through a bit of Kafani and how to maybe understand where we were headed, how it went astray is also to understand Kafani and what he was looking at. So that was kind of the couple of reasons I wanted us to like go through the book.
>> Yeah. Yeah, no doubt. Uh and and just for my quick thoughts on the the connection to our project and again this Donut King series for for anyone who's not aware of what we're doing, these are more or less Sudep and and and and I having our uh project meetings publicly uh to talk about the donut king and this these and our challenge to the prevailing narratives uh around black and Asian economics. And from my purposes, one of them at least, this this constant refrain that black people need to do what one or another group of Asians or Jews or some other group have done. And uh and as you've pointed out, uh the the the the people we we tend to refer to and I remember uh uh Yseph Ben Yokanin used to say, you know, why do we call it the Middle East? Middle from what? and he would always argue this isn't part of removing Africa from from from the world but also to say what what at one point was East Africa is really now Western Asia. So to your previous point we're talking in terms of Palestinians about Asians.
Uh so as we you know but then the other thing that I really really really really really in terms of the spec specificity around our project and my own narrow work is that obviously as a as a you know a Marxist analysis Kafani addresses himself to political economy and then even more specifically to public policy.
So there's so much in here outside of yes there's the violence and yes there are numbers that he recounts in terms of population and moving and and uh you know uh um Jewish migration and and you know Palestinian removal. So he's he does but but he's and so he's talking about the violence of the physical violence of of warfare, settler colonialism, removal, genocide, etc. But he keeps at least in my mind at least what I kept noticing he keeps coming back to some policy that which requires political power, state power. And that's what I keep so so when people keep coming back and saying black people need to just set up a business and get their money right, then they can address themselves to to to electing officials in in political power. I'm saying no. This is the psychological warfare that has been imposed on us to to to keep us away from what should be our only focus which is political power which then allows you to determine through policy everything. So so that's that was my initial and then we can um start to to to go into the uh uh weed so to speak now. And this is actually what I meant to have as my background. But I did want to I I played a clip, if you don't mind, I want to just play I played this yesterday as a sort of teaser in in my discussion with two black. And just as a as a as a a a precursor to our conversation, a little bit of a tone setter, I wanted to play this little segment of a documentary that if it's not already there, I'll put in the show description, although I think it is already there.
Um, just to give us a little bit of a tone set, I I just selected this part and then we can we can get to the conversation.
They brought the full force of the empire to bear.
Britain deployed two full divisions, nearly 25,000 regular troops alongside heavy artillery and the Royal Air Force.
By the end of 1938, there was one British soldier for every 37 Palestinian Arabs.
Villages were blown up. Whole sections of Arab Jaffa were leveled. Villagers were herded into barbed wire cages for days without food or water.
In the cages of Halhul, 13 people died of dehydration.
When the Royal Olter rifles lost four of their own to a Palestinian landmine, they descended on the village of Alb Basa along with the 11th Hous. They torched the village, rounded up 50 men, forced them onto a bus, then ordered the driver to run over a landmine.
Survivors were cut down by machine gun fire. The British sidelined Arab police and recruited some 3,000 Jews into a new supernumemerary police force, integrating them directly into the bloody counterinsurgency apparatus.
In addition, the British recruited Zionist Hagen fighters into the special night squads led by the British officer Orard Windgate, a fanatical Christian Zionist.
So, I just wanted to to to put that little bit of a um piece to it in part because windgate comes up in Kafani's work which I thought was an interesting important overlap and then so much of of what Kafani is talking about is the uh and Windgate is a monster by the way. This guy, this is another one that needs to have his name added to that that list of of that list that everyone knows that they have that should not by the way include Stalin and Mao just I know liberals like to always do that uh uh you know to you know it's like this. But anyway anyway but but uh uh Windgate is a monster and Kafani in quick short order exposes that. Maybe we can come back to that. But but he also does that is kind of funny. He talk about a lot of of of this British role that that I think naturally for particularly for the us relative lay people gets left out. Um so yeah. So so how again let me I'll follow your lead. How if if there's particular points that you want to raise or something you know a section you want us to look at or or whichever.
>> Um I'll go with you. I mean the only thing I wanted to add is also so this is a point in time when um the immigration of Europe European Jews was increasing um intensifying and also the 3639 revolution as he's covered is really you know this is still before Israel proper is founded but this is what he says is like laid the foundations for that as you can and it's that's a great clip I'm saying great because it's depressing but it is great in how succin is by one one thing I do want to say the British so 36 as he describes there was like it's one revolution but it got clipped slightly there was a little bit of a dip and then the second round was happening and the British were losing actually the British because by 38 39 now they're uh what's the word uh rounding out for World War II and for so so so they were losing so that's important to remember too for the reasons of the Palestinians were actually going to win because as a guerilla force they know the land. The British really just got to know it recently because it was mostly Ottoman.
It was all Ottoman territory. The only reason this is crucial and this again speaks to how European colonialist European colonial not just colonialist Zionism is this is when the British go all in on recruiting recently immigrated Jews from Europe into that superarity force. So that that's just to say they were going to lose and that's when they said you know what we're we're done trying to tinker with both sides cuz they kind of did. Come on in. We're going to give you all the help you need and most of all to your point we're going to sanction the violence you do versus the violence that other people should be doing really. Right. So that's the other key component. It's really about the fact that you guys get to have the weapons tear up villages and also um and we'll get into it. There's some really eerie um not eerie, they're very obvious, but there's parts in this book that are so stunning to think about because again, he was murdered so young, >> but he had referenced certain infrastructure that was being built at that time by the British with the Zionists. I think they built a road through Hifa and Tel Aviv like a port road that was he says extremely important to the so-cal Israeli success story which again goes back into what we're saying which is you know you have uh black folks sometimes brown folks who reference Asians mostly East Asian because brown folks also do it to ourselves but also black folks have also sometimes referenced Jews and then there is a weird sense that Israel is that >> culmination of of Jewish ingenuity but it's not it's just a reference point for things that were happening at this time.
>> That's what I and and so it's funny you said that because when I that my mind immediately went to southern Africa and and oh >> and how uh uh Indians and African laborers were used to build railro rail railroad tracks for instance to the coasts and stuff like that to help build the infrastructure for colonialism and all of that. and what Kafani shows and and then I also thought of the the southern United States and the the foundation of the police force because he says and I thought and honestly I read this and thought wow man Kafani is really being a principled scholar because he gives I thought almost it this is just my bias given what's going on in the world right now and my focus on it but or or a new attention to it. I thought he was even being too uh nice to the issue of class as opposed to the issue of nationalism when considering what was happening there because he talks about >> Jewish laborers who he's basically saying and I even made a note at one point honestly that this is again the the the mythology that was handed me through my my my mother's mother well through my mother about her mother >> that she was from an impoverished Eastern European community that felt again the word they use tricked by the Zionist movement to go and populate that region and then left in in the early 1900s when they realized this wasn't >> this wasn't and that's why my mother ended up being born in in in her siblings in New York because >> that's so interesting >> and and Kafani kind of talks about them a little bit in the sense that he's talking about >> Jews mo he's talking about their labor for the labor class of Jews who are invited in with this mythology, some of it about socialism and the grand project and then they realize, hold up, I like I really and he talks about like they had what I heard from my grand about my grandmother saying they had this peaceful coexistence >> with the Arabs like the the the the and Kafani talks a little bit about this documentary I'm I'm referring talks a little bit about that that that the Arab population also by the way included Jews.
right? they weren't all from Eastern Europe and and that there was this relatively I'm not trying to put a whatever on it, but this relatively peaceful coexistence and it was the Zionist movement that kind of find so he's distinguishing the Zionist movement that came and and messed this all up and started adding all this other stuff >> and and again that's why my grandmother left and her family left and then uh uh and then he's talking about my point to the connection to the southern United States that as you said when the British said okay we need help conscript the poor Jews and put them in the police force >> I was >> I was like what the [ __ ] man >> I was thinking that exactly for that I forgot you that's exactly what I thought I thought well when he mentioned the histra histra like he mentioned how there was also this Jewish labor zionism which I love that he said because people do have okay remember that little that little time when there was a anti-Netanyahu movement in Israel prior to them just going all crazy and killing all the you know uh Palestinians and stuff. So >> I remember that because there was this insistence by some liberals and left here who are like oh this is a moment this is a step forward. Of course you know people forgot that one guy waved the Palestinian flag in one of these resistance crowds and got you know taken up. But what I'm saying is this book goes against that mythology too clearly cuz he's saying well well to your grandmother's point there was this so there is this Palestinian communist party that was mainly Jews from Europe initially and but they weren't like Zionists they were hoping to navigate this terrain in the way that your grandmother was kind of saying or thinking like there's a coalition we can have you know we we want to have respit too and they weren't seeking to take over. But the brilliance of this writing shows how listen the labor zionism that you think of too that's too simplistic just to say there isn't anything there beyond because to your point I thought of that exactly because that's the racial bribe that's the bribe hey poor white person or working-class white of the prison system too. You can get a security job beat the [ __ ] off someone who's black or brown or maybe a white >> that's happening with ICE right now.
Exact. And that happens with Latinos also and other groups of people who just Yeah.
>> There was a headline in right here in Baltimore of of of black and brown ICE agents pictured arresting a brown person and I was like this is this is that and I should have kept it cuz or I should go find that cuz that's the that needs to be the colonial poster of the 21st cent like that's the that's the image that Yeah.
>> And it's still colonial. That's the other thing like it's still a colonial system like people like to not people but there is a confusion sometimes where like well how does that relate? It relates easily. I mean the thing that's so funny is I tell my students this like when India or uh the British Raj existed the in the South Asians outnumbered the British.
>> It wasn't like it wasn't a settler colonial project as they were attempting later in Kenya quite desperately cuz now they're like we got to do it really fast in the 50s and that's why the mama was like this is we're going to just kill you. This is crazy. So, but the point is they still got what they needed even though in the army you had Indians recruit there's like a shout out to my Punjabi friends because Punjab also became a a a staple of resistance but but and Bengal too but the irony within these two communities one of which I'm from there was also people who were part of that apparatus so to your point too it's not new either it's just maybe different language maybe it's not as explicit although I would argue now it kind of is sometimes s but to your point it's colonial and I just love this book because when he's saying these things he's not giving up on his principle and he's not giving up on his wide perm view but he's also not into hallucinations like complete hallucinations of you know because I've heard it sometimes when when this genocide was first started this new genocide or I would say the genocide got accelerated um there were some people right you know not rightfully but out of a sense of righteousness saying this is the moment where the Palestinians and the Israelis who were in that movement proper. And I was like, "What are you talking about?"
Like, this would be like asking Jews in Warsaw Ghetto to organize with people in Berlin. Like, it's so weird and offensive. And no one is arguing there won't be a moment. But right now the moment is nationalism for the Palestinians and ending the colonial question because as much as you know there might be a working class exploitation, one side is getting bombed the [ __ ] out and the other side is getting weapons.
>> Yeah. So, so, so exactly.
>> Sorry for cursing. Sorry. I didn't want to >> I don't I don't know. I don't mind. Um, and I think YouTube just doesn't want you to do it within the first minute or two. I think that's that's I think that's the late I have to update my study on how this works. But >> you know, but but no, that that to me I so I love that and that and it's in my notes also that that >> the the he's very exactly what you said. He's very clear that the colonial question, the national question has to be dealt with first and then there they will have to address themselves to the class issue because >> uh and that and that armed struggle >> is is necessary. Yeah.
>> So the the book uh explains in detail and this is what I thought was also important about the history that recounted here that that before we have the moment in 2026 that we have now, we have this long history even before the establishment of Israel proper of all this struggle, the suppression of the the the assassination of labor organizers.
>> Yes.
>> That he talks about. you have, you know, he talks about the the the feudal boogeoisi of the Palestinians and how how they were treacherous. I mean, so he's he's very clear like I want I'm I'm a nationalist. I want my people to be free, but this is why we have to have a CL cuz he's like and we can go and find it. But he he I think he says like 50% >> of the land that the that the Zionists got was sold to them by the feudal Palestinians.
>> Yeah. Yeah. and and it's like it's like son I mean you got and that's what I did like about Palestine 36 and you see it in the film >> and and and I admit I'm I'm part of the those conditioned to forget these things or to not think of but that there were these attempts at civil society and and um the the the Palestinian boogeoisi sitting down and trying to sit down with the Zionists to many times.
>> Yeah. And and it's like and and to see them have their own fantasies. No, we'll be able to do this and then we'll be able to retain our land and keep our money and we our position will be protected even as the Zionists come in and then you could see them start as Kofani's talking about in the book. Uh wait a minute, there's this the Jews keep coming.
>> Yeah. the the you know like there's another influx of Jews and it's like and then then you start to see them get a little more nervous and then then he breaks it down and then and shows step by step and this is why there had to be has to be arm struggle uh yeah because because they break it down you know the the Zionist movement just just it it just breaks down every layer of resistance the liberal form the can we just get along form we'll do we'll we'll we'll we'll do a sort of settler agreement with you. You let us keep a little bit of our feudal stuff and we'll we'll you know let you take all the pores stuff and that they just break that down. They keep going and going and going all the way till you're penned in in the open air prison of of of Gaza, >> right? and and and Kafani was saying that's why and and as I'm again as I'm reading it just like with on Zionist literature I'm reading this saying no [ __ ] wonder he was targeted because you cannot have 2026 happening without getting rid of this this kind of an analysis or at least you you cannot you can't have him sitting around saying hold up this isn't and then because it's also and I'll stop here because this what He what they also don't like about him is that he is giving this honest sober look at what uh settler colonialism and capitalism does to even Jews within the Zionist movement and how it works against their own class interests and how their own ruling elite takes advantage of them. So it's like, no, no, no. We need you back on that standard narrow nationalist Palestinians hate Jews just in general so that we can avoid our own contradictions and then you focus on our own contradictions and get our own community back on waving their own flag and and attacking you.
No, I to be honest like I love that because because the other thing about him that you you said it was about the feudal oligarch stuff, right? Which is important because I I make this uh these arrows but budding against each other every time it comes up because he mentions how when they were playing the game the game of working with the Zionists >> they were doing it because they were feeling certain pressure of well we can't go all the way with the nationalism that we need. So that's what I think of like what Gassan Kafani is saying there is a nationalism but that nationalism is this version that I'm suggesting in my text. He doesn't say outright but he's suggesting it right because it's still nationalism. Um they don't want that nationalism. So they're feeling pressure to get because some of them who assassinated the labor the Palestinian labor guys was the uh the Arab rulers some of the you know the kings of of Trans Jordan who was making an attempt to take over parts of it like making working with Israel to like hey we'll get we'll get some of our poor as you keep your poor and we'll we'll make a z. So they either handed them over when the when the revolution the armed revolution started they handed some over or they just killed them. So that was the other element that's so fascinating.
But then what's interesting to that point what kept what kept getting happening was that they couldn't but they still failed to understand they were out of step with history cuz constantly the the the violence was not abetting until of course the extreme violence of the Zionist paramilitary which was on a different scale but until then they were now like they were it just speaks to how elites themselves to everyone listening are sometimes the dumbest people you can find right because they were like probably sitting sitting in their chair having, you know, sipping some tea, looking at the hills and being like, I did it. I got a good deal. The Zionists are going to come back to me and we're all going to be happy. I'm pretty sure some of them were sincerely going back to their communities of peasants cuz he also says a lot of Palestinians are peasants still and saying, "Listen, everyone, we did it. Everyone's just sitting there did what?" It's like, "We gave up only 30% of the crops." And it's like, what? You gave up 20% the other year. So what's interesting is constantly there's this momentum towards the inevitable towards that clash and they had to sort of keep up and cuz at the end of the day to your point when they got penned in which was too late but they were moving that direction but with their dumbass they were like like this reminds me of what we're talking about with black, brown, Asian leaders who might be sincere. I think a lot of them are insincere at this point but they might be sincere. It doesn't matter. Their analysis is invalid. It's foolish. It's ghoulish. It is out of step with history. And that's the brilliance of this book. He's not being like you said, he is being sober.
He's not being like mean or catty. Like there's an interesting thing at the beginning of the intro. I forgot who wrote the intro. Um Leon Sema Fulehen.
I'm really bastardizing Arab names, but they she says interestingly that the Jewish working class at that point when he was writing this book hated him, even the left. So he could have gone on even more in and been like, "Forget all of them. I don't really see a point." Cuz they hated him. Cuz they hated him. Just like you said, or you were intimating the southern white working class would have hated anybody black in Jim Crow South who' who'd be standing on the stage, I'm sure, and be like, "Hey, we all are working." They like saying something awful and being like, "We're just going to kill you." That is exactly what's happening. But still he pursued analysis because at the end of the day he also didn't want those idiots to muck up what's history. He wanted to say hey you guys are also out of your tradition your claimed tradition. The Palestinian communist movement which he does criticize for being not too Arab enough, you know, being too quote unquote European and Jewish. At bare minimum they were trying something even though they were kind of falling over themselves a little too late. So I thought it was brilliant. I thought it was brilliant how and I one last thing sorry there is a the the the the chapter on intellectuals I didn't know this history about how to your point about civil society existing he keeps um he keeps insisting how how important uh Palestine is to Ottoman government before and how Palestine was to intellectuals from the region coming there a bunch of universities intellectual hubs and he says I I can't pronounce it correctly. So there's the Nakba obviously the cat the catastrophe but there's also the Arab cultural resurgence that was happening at this point cultural that was called nada n ahda I'm going to use that in a poem or something just because it's like he talks about that and that's also important too the Zionist did not have culture the Zionist just had pure violence so that's another thing I kept because to your point and we can get into it the intellectual class was interesting they did produce some very intense Hence poetry to your point does I'll read it later because I want to I don't want to talk too much but that section on the so he goes through the working class he goes through the peasant class he goes through the intellectual class and then finally for the last 40 to 50 pages he talks about the revolution so >> I I noted this is one of my favorite parts from that section that you were talking about on the the poem here. So >> his response >> so he he he re and I'm forgetting what was the uh a short time before this on March 28th 1920 Al Bustani had himself led a demonstration which chanted a song that he had composed himself. He was summoned to the inquiry and the following appears in the records of the inquiry conducted by the public prosecutor. public prosecutor.
Statements have been made that you were carried Statements have been made that you were carried shoulder high and that you said to the people who were following behind you, oh Christians, oh Muslims. The accused. Yes. Public prosecutor. And you you said also you also said to whom have you left the country? The accused. Yes.
Public prosecutor. Then you said kill the Jews and unbelievers.
The accused. No, that violates the meter and the rhyme. I could not have said that. What I said was both rhyming and metrical. It's called poetry.
And I just thought, of course, this is >> NOW LISTEN, THAT'S CALLED MOTHER.
YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT THAT.
NOW, you correct me if I'm wrong because I'm because as I'm reading it, he's the the the it's not that I deny the claim or the or the the the philosophy of the claim. I just wouldn't have said it that way because it doesn't it doesn't rhyme.
It doesn't kill the Jews and unbelievers is not poetic.
>> I just love No, I got that feeling too.
But he also I think what Kafani also says there's there's so this section is about all the poets who have come out.
So he he says how the the economy and the political situation creates a type of poetry that people long for and the poetry itself becomes a form of information.
>> So the poets themselves actually are informing the masses about Lord Peele and the Balffor decoration and all these meetings that are happening because they are technically the intellectuals who have some privilege. So they're doing that with their poetry. And this guy too, he actually has another statement where he talks about or someone someone of his peer class said that we they include the Jews to your point. They say the patriotic Jews who will fight with us. So I definitely think he he's also being a little tongue-in-cheek. But I also think he's basically saying you guys have no sense of rhyme. You guys have no sense of music, no sense of culture, no sense of like creativity.
And I can just picture him, maybe I'm being stereotypical, but growing up I've seen this like, you know, maybe a cigar, a smoke, who knows what he's allowed, but maybe afterwards getting a, you know, some tea. And again, like that's the real energy I feel like he just knows that history is on my side. The beauty of this land is on my side. I'm I know what art is and art is humanity. So this is like also speaking to and it's also very like real like honestly this is what a lot of Palestinians have to deal with even if their meter and rhyme is quite beautiful. In fact, their struggle is beautiful. And yet, it gets reduced to what? A CNN clip of like, "Oh, so you so you want to kill the Jews." And it's like, "Never said that.
Didn't say that. In fact, your side said that more often than we do. We just want our land." You know? So, I thought that was also so amazing to me that he's cuz the thing is he's doing all this archival work and he's finding he's he's spending time with it where he's noticing things that he just finds are like so so um relevant and it's relevant sadly for decades to come. His wife I think is Denmark is from Denmark. So, he also has in this other collection of writings a study a media study of Denmark cuz he visited Denmark.
>> Wow.
>> Yeah. Yeah. So, I haven't read that yet.
know that. Yeah.
>> Yeah. So, he has a media study of Denmark. If anyone corrects me, my bad, but I know his wife is European and his wife got to know him through a conference in Yugoslavia. H the good the good old days when conferences meant something. Uh but uh self-care. But the point is he got to know her. She fell in love with him. And it's really beautiful because he said she even says in one of the intros for Zionist literature that he would it was very clear that every line he wrote was for her. It was just very beautiful. And then he goes to Denmark to and she introduces to all these labor activists and people who just don't know what's going on and and he has a media study. But so anyway, media is a very big part I think of his analysis clearly with the Zionist literature. Like he's also saying, "Hey, this is what when it started when people like oh so you said rise with the Christians, rise with the Muslims." And then you said kill them. It's like no dog. I'm just I'm a poet. Like I would never even >> I wouldn't even say it like that.
>> Yeah. I wouldn't say it like that >> because the way I read it, it was like I might mean it but I say it like that, that's crass.
>> I think he means I think what he would say too is like cuz in that same chapter they say the patriarch Jews rise up against the colonizer. They're very specific about what they're saying and describe them as Europeans, you know.
Yeah, that's why I was saying that I felt like he was being nicer to his his to to to to the Zionists and and to Jews than I was in my reading because I was I'm reading it like why are you being >> No, he's just being analytical and honest and principled and I just want to say and Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Go I don't mean to cut you but I I get you because I as a Hindu I mean I practice with I think someone mentioned maybe it's Chitim Matcha they like Kali you know severed heads it's a different kind of Hinduism I like that but I feel the same way about Brahman I'm part of the Brahman cast unfortunately and I say I feel the same way when I read something I mean they deserve to go let's just put it lightly uh but uh but I I feel the same energy when I'm reading certain things and my girlfriend shows me I'm like oh that guy's a Brahman I don't I don't give a f about what they think so I understand that energy I get it >> and it's just you know, cuz sometimes I want, you know, and I admit it, sometimes I just want the smoke and I just want to read just just just hostility. But but but but that's why I think but that's the point of what our project is and our all of our broader work. That's the whole point. We can't we >> it's okay to start there or recognize we're in that moment, but we can't stay there as we're trying to perform an analysis. And that's what Kafani, I think, is demonstrating perfectly. Yes, >> it's clear I have a, you know, an unending hostility to this Zionism stuff, but I got to perform an analysis for my people so that we can move. And and in that regard, we need to recognize, as has been done historically, >> that there is a class and a and a and a and a a national and even an ethnic uh uh component to this thing that needs a little more nuance than than just abroad. They all got to go. and and uh um so yeah anyway but yeah uh um yeah I I I just was acknowledging that in that moment I was like man you know he's you know and then I also like that in that section also he's pointing out that that so the the the the note I made to myself was in that section was that the uh uh the point being that this is why and to And I'm I'm not surprised to hear that he ended up writing more about this. This is why I and some others have this particular uh approach to what media and pop culture what role they play in this process >> because from my vantage point the particularly in the 2026 uh United States context the the settler colonial media environment has adjusted itself to address itself to the problems from its perspective raised by Kafani in that section >> that as he points out the uh he points out as I'm reading it like like a lot of the art that's that was creating this new this new popular culture he's describing um was was uh as it says here the development of a certain popular culture was very significant. It represented a certain awareness that existed in rural areas despite the widespread literacy and >> despite widespread illiteracy, an awareness that was spurred by the rapidly developing economic and political reality. Popular poetry in particular reflected a growing concern on the part of the rural masses over the course of events. This spontaneous awareness led to the spirit of mobilization in the villages. Then as he says the majority of urban intellectuals for their part were a feudal were of a feudal or commercial petty boozewis class affiliation. So my point was that our media environment in 2026 that helps produce all this mythology around financial literacy, buying power, black Asian narratives, etc. and so forth was constructed in part as a response to that reality that if left unchecked, even the illiterate rural masses who were colonizing are going to produce an art that is reflective in a critical way of what they're experiencing. We can't have that. We can't have a popular culture among the oppressed that is encouraging them to rebel. So we have to involve ourselves in producing the popular culture that we will impose on them >> so that it will it will reduce the likelihood of poetry evolving like that certainly becoming effective in the community and so so uh um because what Kafani is showing is that >> the people of on their own recognizing their oppression started producing art that said now damn that and and meanwhile uh they're doing it in in in almost re response and reaction and resistance to the majority of urban intellectuals who were of a feudal and commercial petty bgeoa class affiliation. And I just love that he kept bringing that back back up in various ways that that yes, Zionism is a mess.
>> This this this this Brits, the Eastern European, all of it is a mess. But we really have this within our national issue. we got this class problem that again as I'm relating it to our work here is is is not being addressed properly. In fact, quite the opposite.
We're we're ending up at a point where the poor are being encouraged to look at the the bgeoisi among us as aspirational and that's >> right.
>> Yeah. So, >> and also there's a there's a like in that chapter he talks about like throughout this text he's talking about on the Palestinian side. So he referenced how the intellectual so the intellectual class are really themselves a lot of you know young men who got the chance to go to university many of them are relatively petite bajgeoa families so well-known scholars from families and then also uh uh small business owners and such or craftsmen. So the the contradiction is so the the interesting thing though in his sober analysis as you say is that he does say that the the so they're kind of old school though like you know how it Italy before Italy you know you had the what's that medi family and stuff like you had different families promote art so that was kind of existing still in Palestine and so with him he so he was saying briefly it actually offered some opportunity for certain artists to just be completely artists and not have to work or be compelled to work as the workers and most Palestinians who are peasants. So, in a weird way, it offered that old school kind of like I'll sponsor you, you do your thing. But the what's interesting about that is that during that time though, as the poets began to like reflect, really reflect and inform what's going on before their eyes cuz you know, like to speak I if you don't mind, I just want to say a couple of lines that they were writing. Like for example, to your point about selling the land, they at this point in time, the British are now really demanding the few newspapers they allow to publish poetry from Arabs like this Iraqi guy who are very like, you know, peace, which basically says keep selling land to the Zionists, to the feudal people. And one of the poets, um, just want to reference who they are, uh, Ibrahim Tukan, as early as 1929, so still a few years before the revolution pops off, he literally just says in a poetry. They sold a country greedy for gold, but it was their homeland that they sold.
They'd be forgiven had they been forced by hunger, but by God they had not thirsted a day, nor hungered. And then one of them referenced Gandhi at some point like making a little bit of a joke saying at least Gandhi I guess had food to give up but the food of their soul they give and then he said have you come to the visit Asuka mosque Alaska mosque or have you come to bid farewell before it is lost. So this was happening and then over time though the feudal lures began to shift because they're also being bought out. So they are facing the national question and that's when the poets are still doing the work they need to do but they get exhausted out. So it's it's it's sober analysis. It's not necessarily saying people chose the poets chose to, you know, they never not existed. They obviously continue to exist. Palestinian history is that.
There is a an economic and political analysis to how colonialism began to shrink shrink the pond of resource and really made it also uh collectively hard for more of these poets to exist cuz without the nationalism right of Palestine uh and the feudal lords being being reduced to like you said being penned in as well they don't have the same amount of resource to let a poet just be a poet anymore. So I found that extremely fascinating. He was able to like again connect all of this the intellectuals to the economic question.
It's not just a complete choice. It's really about to what we said last week about Zionist literature and with Boots Riley and others like this connection of like well how much can we say a poet a director can do and how much should they be able to do and all these different questions. I have my own thoughts about it. I don't think Boots Rally should be accepting money like that. I think he's fine. But there is a important economic question about what we're even allowed to do in a colonial context. Like what can we actually do? Like you said many times before in the YouTube streets, right? I I think I referenced to my my my partner uh in the last episode we did. I mean, usually our episodes get like 2,000 views, 2,500. I really did feel like the last one would go higher, but there was a weird moment where it wasn't going up.
>> I noticed it >> and I was thinking like that's it.
allegedly. Uh, but I was noticing certain things about the episode that in other episodes it would like go up by 100 or 200 maybe very easily and then it would start to climb over time.
>> Yeah, I'm never entirely sure. You know, I've actually tried to put in some research on how this all works and to to see what's most effective and it really is kind of arbitrary and and and it it in many ways depends on what advertisers want, >> right?
>> And how they feel. So, so, um, yeah. So, that's why everybody like, share, subscribe. Make sure that you are subscribed. Make sure that you have the bell rung. And that's why you have to do more to help get these videos out. You got to you got to do that extra mile.
Chitty Maka is like the number one promoter of these programs. You, you know, more people should be doing that.
>> Um, but anyway, but and and then by the way, I Love Boosters was so great. I just hear a boots wy call out. Right. So, uh, uninformed opinion, welcome to the platform. I think you I think I saw that you are a new member. Yes, indeed.
Welcome, welcome, welcome. And, uh, um, I hope it doesn't dissuade you from from joining the platform to hear me say that I do not agree with you. And in fact, what I was going to say is to Sudep's point, if you're going to take the money, man, you know, you know, you got to, you know, a budget is not an automatic solution for for for a story and for writing and for for choices made with, you know, plot points and etc and so forth. So, >> I don't want to I'm trying to wait till more people see it and for some of us to to get a round table together, maybe to talk about it. We definitely need to talk about it. Uh but but I I can't say that I agree with with uninformed opinion on this one. Um uh but I'll just leave it there. I'm going to leave it there for now and encourage people. I I think the film should be supported. I don't have a problem with that. Um I also think you mentioned him too a little while ago. We all need to be supporting his new film >> and and his work. So So we got to get more more on that. Um, >> and one thing people were I mentioned cast and just people were asking questions what that is sort of. So brahinss are at the top of the Indian cast system.
>> Um, so I'm allegedly I'm at the top. I do get a lot of benefits for that. Even the even in the US context there's a lot of temple stuff that goes on who can go in but >> um it's it is skin tone. It's not based on skin tone like you can find casts in South India and people there are much darker just giving a reference but also I think Modi is not Brahman so there's upper cast which doesn't have to be all brahinss but uh you also have the shopkeeper it's dumb as heck and it's the stupidest system you can devise and it is a uh that's for sure and then also it is a it is a system that needs to burn and I was just referencing because I feel the same way as you as do my parents whenever I uh see a certain group or because with Kashmir you know it's settler colonial situation and you know there's been instances where the Kashmiris have used violence.
I don't it's complicated but I'll just say this um my heart my heart doesn't my heart doesn't sing or bleed so much about the Indian occupation at all and the way that the Indian media describes the occupation is is uh disgusting and uh there's some Bengal not Bengali sorry we're not there uh there have been some like situations of brahinss here and there but just to say if you're a group of people who are taking over another person's land. The majority of whom right Kashmir Hindus are Hindus but Kashmir but I don't know you're going to get some smoke in terms of how you're being treated you know by the majority of people who don't want to deal with it and the majority of Muslims in Kashmir are are mainly part of a class of people and cast of people who are workers and laborers. So I want to shout out Kashmir as well because it's a onetoone and India right now and Israel have really best budge situations in terms of resource. Israel sends a lot of drones in Kashmir. Kashmir is very heavily policed.
>> Dr. Yeah.
>> Yeah. They're droned up. So, you know, Israel again and that's the other thing.
Uh the the intellectual thing, the intellectual is needed like you and I uh and the but it'll it'll hit like I was it'll hit a wall because every intellectual class needs still a political force to win. So what we're thinking about is we're fighting the financial literacy force with what we know fire with fire but ultimately the winning of everything is going to take place through some struggle like actual >> Oh abs yeah I don't I don't Yeah I don't I don't Yeah I just want to be clear I don't count what you and I are doing right now as struggle this is not Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. I know you weren't saying that. I was just like I don't because I I know others might feel like they're doing that when they engage in >> That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. I No. We just having a good time making an analysis having a conversation with with with our friends in the chat.
I this is not this is not political struggle right here at all.
>> Right. Right.
>> Uh >> and that was more for the other people because there's a there's a blooming uh a network of podcasts and YouTubers now Assan and everyone and they're I get the feeling sometimes that they think >> they think they're fighting every time they start streaming. They're like I'm I got to I got to go live for the fight.
>> You're right. And I'm just like I'm just eating cereal that's non-carb and I'm just trying to debate with my diabetes and I'm like oh I'm excited for talking with Jared Ball, you know, but that's about I'm just in the corner somewhere.
I have no idea what's going. So I just want to reference that because at the same time they do but they do obscure because they're sometimes annoying. They do obscure the need for intellectualism cuz but but people get annoyed about it because they see what they see as people who are highf flying on their kite of like what they think they're doing. But what he's proving because he made a whole chapter on intellectualism that is still important. That's all I'm saying.
So I get you. I we are not doing this.
This is we we are not this is we are not these this is not what we're doing.
>> No actual ICE agents into the harbor because we are a nonviolent movement.
But we are here symbolically throwing 342 pounds of ice into the harbor.
Is that real?
>> So, so Two Black shared it with me yesterday in our conversation and I put the link in the show description to that show. So, I I would always have keep it we got to keep that handy that that So, I don't I want to make sure I know that Zudep and I are not currently we are not throwing bags of ice into the river right now. We're not even at that level of struggle. We we you know at best that's all we're doing. We are not equating this to real st has a seed and he's struggling with it >> actually >> and I love how he did that. He's like liberals versus and the communists are like what what is that? So that's why that's why Kafani is so important.
>> Yeah.
>> Because he's because he's saying the analysis can't lead you to throwing bags of ice into the water. The analysis needs you to lead you to something else.
So that's that's Oh my god. That was just that was hilarious. That was hilarious. Uh yeah, that was a live run for Sadine. He wasn't ready for that. He I We had no pre-show prep on that one. I just said, "Let me let me >> I think it's the music, too.
>> The music is the flute."
>> Yeah. Yeah. And she just, you know, look look I'll do >> We can't because of our politics. We're nonviolent. We can't throw ice agents.
It's But we will throw 342 lbs of ice.
>> That [ __ ] is hilarious.
>> I have to be honest. Like, >> yeah.
>> Go ahead. I don't mean to cut. Go ahead.
No, >> I was just going to say that two black made a good point. Like, you know, you think about all the physical energy that goes into getting 300 lbs of ice.
>> That's true.
>> physically delivered to the edge of a bridge and then dumped over. It's like, and that's why I was like yesterday, I was like, you might as well swing on somebody for all that physical energy.
Like, you might as like like that's how you're going to expend. That's a lot of ice. Anyway, >> go ahead. That gave me No, that gave me a headache. Um, >> oh, right on time. You and Salala are >> wow from that.
>> It's just the anger that feel like, you know, you get a back headache on your neck. Just the anger and shoulders. I have to be less stressed. But I'm just stunned because >> Sorry about that. I didn't mean >> No, it's okay. No, no, no. I um I I also follow that guy's page. I think it's I think he's great. But he um >> Damn. What the hell? Well, can you imagine being someone in ice and you got a tiny window and you're peeking through and you say, "Oh, there's a lot of people coming. This is great. I've been like on a hunger strike and they're like, "Bags of ice, bags of ice." He's like, "Oh, he's going to throw it at the ice in the river."
Look, I admit where I am because years ago we were talking about this when when uh the now late Troy Davis was awaiting execution and um >> and everybody was, you know, doing the visual outside the prison and they played one of his last his last statements and he was saying, >> you know, so he had one of those standard really nice powerful, you know, don't worry about me type of, you know, you know, statements. And I and I just kept thinking absolutely not. That's that's why I can't be a martyr or a hero or or any of that cuz I my last statement would have been you [ __ ] better be breaking me out of here.
>> Like if like if I look outside my prison cell and you were standing out there with a goddamn candle singing songs, I'm going to be pissed and trying to spit on you >> from my jail cell. You That's it? A song and a poem and a candle? You [ __ ] better get There's no rope to my cell. There's nobody blowing a hole in this thing. I was like you you somebody better be getting me. So yeah, like like I can't I can't I grew up in a certain home where I would say my parents would be like what do you mean you want to I mean that's not I'm just referencing like I would want someone I would go to the mat for them. So I would hope that they would do it for me like >> if you're not gonna get me out then stay the hell home.
>> I would like >> don't don't be outside. Don't be out there singing and poetry and humming and and damn sure don't be praying. Don't like you better be you like if if I see you it better be PART OF A PLOT >> like where like like like seriously in agree in one of his last books Russell Maroon Schultz the late great political prisoner I mean he said that >> he said something like I'm from the era where we broke out of prison. He was like, he's he said he had a line in his book like where is the rope that you supposed to be throwing up here to get me out >> like like enough of the don't not one more kicks free goat fun me no more change.org don't you dare put no change.org petition for Jared on there you better be getting the hell out of here. You're sending out beautiful statements like the one the guy's like he's like did you say murder all those people and you're like no it doesn't fit the rhyme and then everyone's like I'd have been panicking. I'd have been like yeah >> get me the hell out of here.
>> No, I I you know what's funny? My partner I want to give her I I love her so much because she was very she's very real about these things and she says you have so many disabilities now. You're so sick. Don't don't do anything crazy.
Just and I'm like I'm not I don't leave that much. I only go to class to teach and I try to walk and it's tough. I'm I'm still getting better. Neuropathy is no joke. Your ner nerve damage is really painful. But uh but I remember one time she had a conversation with me and it was real. She looked at me. She said, "If they knock on her door like ice or something and they're looking for someone and I'm outside the door cuz I'm just coming back from something, you bet." She was very I'm using choice words here, but she was like, "You better not open that door. Let them just take me and then I will you can find me later." But do not dare open that door.
I was like, "But it's you." And she's Italian. She's white. And I was like, "But it's you." And she's like, "What are you talking about? It's you. Let them take me and then you will hand." So I was like, because the point is like there that's a reality check that you need. You need people in your life who are not going to sing you songs, but are just going to be like, "Listen, >> we know what's up.
>> But also there's a survivability side of it, too, of just like, listen, I'm out here." Because at the end of the day, I I know this for a fact. If I don't have my medicine, I'm gonna be so effed in so much pain. And so if I'm in that much pain, like you said, I'm going to be spitting on everybody because I'm in pain. I'm not going to be looking for a poster of myself. If I see a poster of myself outside with a smiling face, I'm like, burn that down. Like, I'm dying inside. And that's the thing with the ice thing. It's like, why even show up with the bags of ice? It's actually quite uh offensive. Like I think there was one clip someone played of some people, again this is just a few cuz so many protests happened. You're always going to find a few, but I think there was a couple who were like they wear costumes and they dance. And it's like why? That's so stupid. Like you think this is how it works. Like even if you don't agree with the more violent method or the nonviolent method, don't be don't forget there are human beings in there who are probably still panicking and are getting abused daily, getting denied medicine, getting denied, you know, actual food. The food they probably feed them is slop, maybe pissed in or spat in, as we know from reading so much stuff. I've never been in that situation. So it's like, yeah, I get it.
So, I'm just saying you need people like that in your life, not like someone who's like, "Well, Jared, if you're in there."
>> No. And I'm just being Let me just be clear. Like, I'm not begrudging what anybody who is locked up is actually saying. So, like if they whatever they want, do whatever they want. I just imagine that's not I'm saying for me, I'm like I'm like I'm not that princip I'm not that decent a person. I'm like, "You got to get me the [ __ ] out of here.
Otherwise, go away.
>> Otherwise, I don't want to hear from you. like you can't just I don't you I don't want to you know like like I can't I can't so so um so listen I don't before we before we you know go too far I at least want to uh I definitely at least want to come back to the part of the book where he's talking about >> the well actually let me I'm the revolt but I'm going to skip because I just found this other thing that I at at the end of the book. This was another part that I thought really related to what I would like to be doing for our project.
Uh at the end of the book, there's this section where they include this letter from Gaza by Gassan Kafani. And I I'll admit I was at least in in in this version that you that comes with the online I don't know if they actually put it in the book, but this I thought was this was really really powerful and was kind of messing me up. So that's why I want I'm glad I'm skipping to this part. I want to make sure we get this to this as well. The long story short is that he's writing to his friend what is at what is at at ultimately at the very end of his life and it's him saying I'm not going to join you at the university in California.
I know that was our plan. We had it all mapped out our lives, our career.
Uh I've we've been accepted.
We're we you know we got you know I'm I'm and and and he's saying I know you're going like but and at the last minute he's telling him I'm not going to go and and the point of the that he's saying is I I got to stay here and fight. I can't go on to the life that we the bgeoa life that we had planned to have. So he says, "I've also received news that I've been accepted in the department of civil engineering at the University of California."
Uh, and then he goes on to say, "I feel no hesitation at all. I'm pretty well positive that I've never been so seen things so clearly, but no, my friend, I have changed my mind. I will not f I won't follow you to quote the land where there is greenery, water, and lovely faces, as you wrote. I'll stay here and I won't ever leave." And then this was the line.
I am really upset that our lives won't continue to follow the same course, Mustafa, for I can almost hear you reminding me of our vow to go on together and of the way we used to shout, "We'll get rich." But there's nothing I can do, my friend. Yes, I still remember the day I stood in the hall of the Cairo airport, pressing your hand and staring at the frenzied motor at the moment everything was rotating in time and the ears spplitting motor and you stood in front of me, your your your your round face silent.
And then he goes on, but this was the point he's saying like he's he's he made the conscious choice to resist the the imposed narratives that you and I are responding to in 2026 that tell you you don't need political struggle. You certainly don't need a radical political struggle. You just need to go get a degree, invest in a business, rotate, circulate your dollar, pull your resources, get rich, and then you can buy the politics and the and the the politicians like the Jews and the Asians and the whites, and then enter the political arena. And and Kafani is saying in real time in his life, no.
And and I I mean I admit that like I was like as I sit here my big old 54 year old looking at retirement from the life that he rejected to stay and fight and I was like you know I know we're all made by our times and all of that and I don't you know with all blah blah blah blah blah but I couldn't help with the comparison.
I was like but that's why I'm sitting here full professor eyeing down retirement. that sun on the horizon back there setting.
That's my career happily. I'm like, let it go. I'm like, I can't wait.
And he was like, no, no, no. I I didn't get rich, admittedly. You know, I don't know what he would have gotten as an engineer coming out of Cal whatever, but but uh as a as a as a little old H.B.CU, CU black studies media professor. I didn't get rich, but I also didn't get blown up in a car.
Knock on wood.
And and I'm I'm sitting here, as I said, you know, staring down the end of of a career that he said, "Nah, man.
Nah, homeboy." And uh uh so yeah, I just thought that was really powerful and and and salute to Kafani and uh um just just just outright saying no, I'm not I'm not doing it. Um so yeah, but uh uh if you wanted to say anything about that or pick something else out, then yeah, go ahead.
>> No, it's it's um I do want to go through some of the parts of the book just to lay out one of the things he says about the economic situation and what led to the revolution finally. And of course, I really do want to highlight the complete throughine between British colonialism and Zionism. The complete through line.
There's no gap. It's just one and the other. But just want to say to Kafan Gassan's um writing too, like that's a very beautiful I don't know. No, I'm not trying to get it's like a very beautiful like I have some friends I grew up with like I you know as most of us when we grow up especially through co I think there's like a not an epide well the male epidemic or whatever [ __ ] but there's an epidemic of people growing up and not having enough friends because of how our lives are of the times and how neoliberalized they are. But I have some really close friends I grew up with um and uh you know thinking about a gap like them leaving forever almost and going to a place that you know I never want to go to. It's very it's also very striking how he pays attention to the small things like he says you're around face. It's like kind of, you know, interesting. And I don't know, something about it just shows you also how beautiful his writing was. Like he's he was so talented. Even a scene like that.
I think a lot of writers would fail to make a scene like that, let alone in a letter or in a book, you know? They try and try, but I think because I've been reading more of his um of his, like I said, of his novels. I have another one here. I just got All That's Left to You That I Want to Read Next. And I just been fascinated by him because uh his u is long and he clearly just had a sense of humanity as his wife said he he stayed and and at the end of the day his career though was still quite good like he did become an editor of all these great Arab panarabist and finally PFLP uh located newspapers. Um and so he was relevant still in his own way. He he chose in some sense the career that was meant for him, right? For him to actually sustain his it's about sustaining your soul, right? If you can live with a few decisions maybe, but he clearly couldn't live with that. Leaving into the belly of the beast. And so he chose he still chose a really, in my opinion, a more valuable life. No offense to his friend where he's writing newspapers, making uh freaking programs uh statements for the PFLP to the point like you you raised that they targeted him. I know it's a very bizarre kind of not reward bizarre kind of way of saying praise but he still lived a very relevant powerful life and he was just a powerful writer to your other point too it's not just about him having the analysis the way he puts it together I think the way the reason why they targeted him is also because it was him because he was a Palestinian who believed in nationalism and who believed in a certain kind of Marxist Leninism that was anti-colonial because you know I think I I said this last time with Norm Philstein, who I do like. I have his work. I know deculturization does a really good job of of of breaking him down and I listen to most of those streams and I find it quite useful and angering what he says eventually. But but to be honest, it is important about the messenger. And I think in our current context, there's still a way where you can get a kind of funny analysis, not the kind, to a certain kind of person that won't come off as threatening because of said person. And then you have Kafani who is the person a Palestinian who believes in all these really quoteunquote radical things. And I think that is what also got him kind of in in heavy water.
>> But even before my my turn away from Finkelestein a couple years ago at his best Finkelestein has never been close to Kafani in his writing politically or otherwise. So like >> I agree, >> you know, at his best the Holocaust industry to me was Finkelestein's best work. But it's not a Marxist analysis.
It's not a radical analysis. It's just an honest look at >> it's not at at at I mean it's talking about the the the elite survivors of the of the Holocaust, but uh but it's not really it's not a class analysis and any meaningful it's not a RA. So I I I just want to be, you know, like >> and and so I because I because Finkele and I had that little bit of a of a dis of an I it didn't rise to an actual argument, but a disagreement for sure where >> Yeah.
>> he said and doubled down on this this idea saying that Edward say again was wrong uh and then changed his mind at the end of his life. uh um off the record apparently that that that is say changed his mind in in his initial disagreement with Finkelestein that that >> Jews should not be the leading voices condemning Israel.
>> It's important for Palestinians to to be having their own voice and and Finkelstein even in our interview was like no and and and and that's wrong.
it's tactically wrong and uh say ended up agreeing with me at the end of at the end of his life etc and so forth. But um a I don't agree with that and then that that that you need tactically Jewish voices to be leading in any way the argument against Zionism although they should be involved. Um, and but I also want to and then again I want to clearly distinguish between the the politics in the writing between Finkelstein and and Kafani. So in other words, and I'm just not aware if there are if there are Jewish writers today condemning Zionism from the at the same level of political analysis of Kafani.
I'm sure they have to be. I just don't know who they are. Definitely not Franklestein.
>> No, no, no. I What I'm saying is kind of that point though to be honest. Like I totally agree with you. It's more like it's the messenger because he is also representative of these very deep complex and blunt analyses that is not seen in even how because there's a level of Konafani's critiques that is so relevant today that I hear from other people now because and he was ahead of the time by a billion years in my head because he understood analysis. But what I was saying is exactly that. I totally agree. I'm not arguing, but I do think that there's a certain kind of attack on him, on Konafani that happened because he was this Palestinian voice who a was not beholden to the feudal oligarchs of Jordan and then later on the military generals who were not Nasser uh after him who were saying, you know what, we'll make peace. He was not into that.
I mean, I think this book when he started writing it, it was around the time of the Cairo agreement, they said, which was the time when Nasser Nas, this is after 67. So in ' 68 or 69 this is in the book he asks for Yasa Arafat Arafat and one other person from Lebanon Lebanese he's Lebanese who they made the Cairo agreement to now officially sanction the right for violence armed revolution by the Palestinians which goes to your earlier point too by the way which is how many years they tried to do quote unquote the right thing the p the peaceful thing like people certain People have this belief, even those who may agree or don't know anything, they have this belief fed to them by the media, hence Kafani's rightful obsession over it, that somehow the Palestinians and and European Jews were constantly just killing each other when in fact the Palestinians rose up, got suppressed and killed viciously. And then for several decades after, we're kind of just hoping the Arab armies could do their work. And then finally in ' 6869 is when they officially declare arms struggle. So even that required a level of revolutionary patience but the inversion of that right they unfortunately maybe waited too long and that's one of the things even in some liberal liberal historians like Khaled Rashidi says in his own book he kind of mentions how they waited too long in actually formulating a real revolutionary structure because Nasser then dies I think a few years after that from medical complications. So, and then comes in An Unworth Sadat and other people who are just like we're ready to just get the Sunai back, Sinai back. We were just ready to keep our own. But Ghanai was against all that mess. He was against all that mess and that's what makes him even a difficult person to raise today is what I want to say. Like I don't think he gets even enough shine in the current climate among leftists too. Like some people declare it on your show because your show is amazing. But I still have not had met enough people black, brown, and other white, black, brown, white, who uh who talk who are even on our wavelength in some degree, but who who don't mention him enough.
And when they do, it's about these quotes from TV shows, but not necessarily the depth of analysis that we've kind of had in only these works, which are very thin, like not to it's it's showing his consis.
>> Yes. And I and I appreciate it too because because I can't, you know, at the pace where and and and others are moving, I can't read these these >> Oh, yeah. Same >> long.
>> Uh so, okay, listen. I I want to I need to I need a bathroom break and to to get another coffee. So, I'm going to I'm going to set up a question for you um that I'll be able to hear as you so that if you don't mind.
One question I have for you in the audience, uh, I did want to raise and then if you want to start bringing up some of the things you wanted to talk about, I'll catch back up here in a second. But, but on on on this page here, >> cuz you kind of just mentioned, so this is what page is this? Uh, 59.
You were talking about some of the the the es and flows of the history of the struggle. And um >> he's talking about this this point here just before the second world war where he says in the midst of all this the Palestinian national movement which had been paralyzed by the subjective factors we have mentioned in the violent attacks launched by both the British and the Zionist was in a difficult situation on the eve of the second world war. The claims of some historians that Arabs quote stopped their revolt to allow the British to wage its war against Nazism are naive and refuted not only by the facts >> but also by the fact that Haj Amin al- Husani Saini took refuge in Nazi Germany throughout the war.
>> And then he just moves on. This was one if if there's a critique I have this is like one critique that I have of this book. What is he talking about here?
Like what is this history? Is is he is is he saying then this is what I was confused. Is is he saying that that Palestinians kept struggling at home? But also like I don't know enough about the figure he's talking about. Why was he taking refuge in Nazi Germany? How was he taking refuge? So, was is the argument that that that I don't I Let me just stop there and I'm gonna go to the bathroom. But I don't I I Yeah, help me out with that and then please bring up anything else you want to get to and I'll be back in a second.
Thanks.
>> You're muted. You're muted. I don't hear you. Yeah. I was like, "What happened?"
Yeah, I was like, "All right, >> it's my mic. Sorry about that." But yeah, I think the main thing he's trying to reference there cuz I think he mentioned that he mentioned other instances. I think the MUI of Palestine also went to seek refuge in Nazi Germany. But he was I think in my mind saying how there is a certain kind of positioning still that these people were do basically I think he was trying to say that they were not passive and they were seeking support for their own mission in Palestine and they were not just supportive of the British and lay down their weapons. I think that's what he was trying to say and I do want to bring in the um a little bit of like some Indian history. So in India too uh when Gandhi was doing his thing I guess I could describe it there was a lot of uprisings in India throughout that period like very brutal uprisings and quite bloody one of which one of which was the Indian independent army that was formed and this was formed by Subashandra Bush who is Bengali who was a leftist like a socialist and in fact after um India achieved independence the forward block which is his political party joined with the communist block to form this electoral block that later on would you know win elections in West Bengal for almost 40 years plus. Um but he did went to he did go to Nazi Germany to seek help against the British because he viewed the British accurately as as our own Nazis as our own fascists. He of course got completely uh what's the word? Demoralized I think from his experience in Germany realizing something was up and then he decided to escape because I think Nazi Germany wanted to keep him there for their own attempts to recolonize India but under Germany and he escaped in the submarine.
This is like what my parents told me so this could be all wrong but I trust my parents. And then he went through Afghanistan where he sought the help of local leaders who have a very very strong history of protecting friends especially friends who are central South Asian. And then finally he returned to India and then he went to Japan to imperial Japan to get help for arms and weaponry. He eventually died in this mysterious plane crash. But anyway, I think that's what he's kind of there's a history of that where you had certain colonialists who were who are seeking enemy of my enemies my friend. But what I also read into that throughout the book was the limited narrow view of the feudal movement. The feudal u Kafani was criticizing how the Palestinian nationalist strug uh struggle had been repressed by the Zionists and also reconfigured by the feudalists who are not really radical. you you know so basically he was constantly saying how they themselves are a force of people who were rather narrow in their worldview because of course in his mind there were a lot of other Palestinians and Arabs who didn't go to Nazi Germany they went to other places in the region and continued their fight so that's the way I read it was the limited worldview of the Palestinian leadership but also showing that the Palestinian leadership were not just like agreeing with the British war in World War II either that's the way I figured into it. Um, and then also a couple of things I do want to raise about the book for everyone here is the book is again really short and it has a lot of things that are quite important about also the the ways in which the ways in which the revolution began to perculate due to these economic constraints as well coming out. So that's the way I was thinking of it.
So first of all thank you for that and it reminds me of um whatwamame ter used to talk about that he he and when he would make the point that that Gandhi it was something more he he was critical of saying you know uh what aided Gandhi's movement more than anything was the defeat of England in the second world war.
>> Yeah. Yeah.
and uh uh and he would even say to be provocative, Hitler was a great man, not that he was good, but great in terms of his impact on world history. And he would point out and then he would use that as a segue to say uh without the the struggle against Hitler, the British Empire would have continued to be as strong and this the struggle for liberation in India and other parts of of the the empire that you know whose sun never set on it whatever would not have been as successful because >> the British were weakened by their loss ultimately against the Germans and Um, so that Yeah. So I could see from the Palestinian perspective, >> Yeah. Yeah.
>> we got to get rid of these damn British, if the Germans are kicking their ass, >> right?
>> So be it.
>> Well, the other Yeah.
>> The other element too about that is that there was it's a European civil war how people should view it at times, you know. Mhm.
>> Uh it's not necessarily and there was a lot like even fiction novels I think I forgot who I'm reading now but he is um forget what part of Africa his writing is from Malibar but it's Zanzibar and in his books he references how a lot of people were just confused over what's going on in Europe again and you get conscripted and whatever but the other interesting thing to note is that I think also to add to a little bit of that what Tore was saying was the rise of the Soviet Union was quite powerful too >> the rise of the Soviet Union was literally one of the major reasons why you had not not to give too much credit like we're not trying to pull a Grace Lee Bogs on a James Bog saying Marx is a is the only revolutionary that's ever existed in time and London was the only man who ever existed. We're not saying that. I'm not saying that. We are not saying that. But what I'm saying to VJ Prashad's book Red Star over the third world.
>> Immaterially it was important like materially it was very key. So yes, the second civil war in Europe in the modern era was key. But I also think it was also important how the Soviet Union uh you know became what it was and was now becoming an actual material force to give weapons and and and intellectualism to people who needed it. So I think that was really key too. But yeah, that was a funny like those kind of lines are also very like it just takes you out for a minute but you're just like okay because I also was thinking like what the like what's and like what's going on and then also he'd reference I don't know there's some interesting lines in here that that that are like that but also other lines are just as powerful if do you mind if I bring up another one as >> No go ahead I would please >> but speak on the Nazi >> take your time. Yeah >> this this is what it reminds me of. So let's see on page 70, but at the bottom um so he so this is the this is 39. This is right around the time now where the Jewish paramilitary forces from Europe are totally now leading the way in exterminating and really becoming the main police force.
>> Wait, you have a page 70? But I don't have a page 70. What what is what's the >> Oh, I'll just read it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Well, it's um Oh, it's uh it's called the Palestinian Police Headdress or Australian. Look up Australian.
>> I don't remember that. Uh >> maybe I have a different books, but >> there we go.
>> Ah, there we go. Yeah. Yeah. So, >> yeah.
>> This was so fascinating to me cuz again, there's like moments like the other part where it says, "In the early months of 1939, the British army formed well-armed Jewish settlement police units. Each of the units was given a Hebrew name and their members were allowed to abandon the official Palestine police headdress." The call BA cap in favor of the Australian bush hat.
I don't know. Just some nuggets in here.
You're just like, damn. Like >> to make them even more distinctive as it says here. Uh >> right. And more settler colonial and just like this is your civilization.
>> Wow. Right.
>> I thought lines like that just like I don't know. I put so many dots on. I was like this is exceptional work. Like even with a line like that like they literally are saying we are cuz it goes to all these Israeli Tik Tockers who are like well we are the native people.
Dude, you just literally replaced the hat with something from another place, but what's your connective tissue? We know what the connective tissue is.
You're trying to emulate what they did.
So, I thought that was quite powerful.
>> Exactly. No, and it makes sense because that's, you know, and as has been pointed out, you know, the I remember when Assada Shakur talked about how the the the New Jersey state police adopted the uniform style of the the the stormtroopers, the Nazi storm troop SS or whatever.
>> Yeah.
>> And uh uh yeah, they it's and and that's why Cecil Roads that's why Herzel wrote to Cecil Roads, right, to say we're trying to we're trying to be you, dude.
We're trying to >> we're trying to imperialism like you, my guy, >> right?
>> You know, >> um >> uh but yeah. Yeah. Uh what else? What else did you want to to >> So I just wanted to say uh the book goes through all those different like layers of society and by the time 36 is around the working class of Palestine like literally people working in businesses in the city are now finally slowly being created. But what's happening is a lot of peasants who are the majority of Palestine, they're losing their land completely.
>> And then for the workers, they're now contending with Jewish only stores. So the labor movement begins to work with.
So the antagonism for the peasants is the loss of land. So they are the they are the bulk of the actual armed resistance as he keeps saying because you know like you said uh they just knew one thing which is the the very material thing of losing your land. and the person who's supposed to be your tribal chief is telling you nah it's all good and you know it's fine so you're going to be like I don't have land so for the workers though even though they were small because that's the other difficulty that he explains as a weakness because the Palestinian Communist Party did not have enough workers they should have been in the countryside more they should have been doing more Arabization as he was saying which they wanted to do which is very similar to communist party and socialist party members who are white by the turn of this Jim Crow era not really getting their [ __ ] together to actually organize with black folks enough to get them into the ranks, right? To build that force they allegedly want. This was like a onetoone kind of description. So even though the lot of Jews who are European are quite anti-ionist because they're communists, they were still not able to understand the peasant class is where they should have gone to. But the workers themselves were losing out because now you have also I didn't know this. You had Jim Crow like it was happening. Now you have uh the Histradat movement which is happening where they are assassinating Jews who are anti-ionist. They're assassinating them to replace them and then finally choosing to explain to the Jewish workers who are European of descent uh Western Europe mostly at that point saying to them hey what we need is a better economy and that economy needs to be controlled by us. We've heard that lesson before and uh we don't need Arabs working with us. they need to just be stay away and need to be a subclass of people we can bring in when we want to.
So, so that's the pressure for them. And then finally, uh the feudal lords, like like I said before, their dumbass was thinking, well, we can, you know, play with the cars as they are, get a little something here and there. They were caught out of step, but again, the issue is the peasant class led the revolution.
I just want to read the beginning part of the re like one of the instanc because it was such a fun line where it just I just would love to write a story with that line in it where he says like he's also saying how the starting of the revolution is quite complex there's no like one spark it starts to accumulate but there is a scene at the start in in one in the very beginning of the revolution section at the bottom he says the initial spark was an ambush carried out by a group of Arab militants yin states that this was a kasamist group and al kasam was a was a famous leader at that time who got assassinated and then his death was attended by all the poor of Palestine. So even against the funeral leadership who said don't make this into a political thing his funeral they chose to right but to your thing I really I think I we messaged each other about writing an article on revolutionary patients because he mentions this al kasam did not also this this is another beautiful thing he says these people who led the revolution did not just do it willy-nilly like not to use a very white phrase he alasam went into the mountains and they I think crossed paths with some British officers and he told his men to stand down because they're like we're not ready yet we're not ready.
>> So that's the brilliance of that too.
Like they weren't just out there being like quote unquote Arab savages and all this [ __ ] They were they were thoughtful men. So he got killed. But this is amazing. So according to another uh historian, one of the militants, they take over a bus of 15 uh they take they held up and robbed the Jewish and Arab passengers of 15 vehicles traveling between two towns. And according to one of the historians, one of the militants gave a short speech to the passengers um the majority of whom were Arabs still in which he said that the revolution has begun and quote um we are taking your money so we can fight the enemy and defend you end quote. I just loved it.
It was so >> No. And that scene is depicted in Palestine 36. You see Oh, absolutely.
You see them ride up on horses. They go on to the to the to the train or the bus. I can't remember the train or whatever. They rob it and they make they say almost that exact line and and and he gives a kind of like yeah it is it's performed like that. He gives a kind of like and you get it like if I'm doing this you might as well have a little fun in the moment. He stands and he's like >> fear not everyone we are >> taking your money so we can fight your enemy.
>> Right. Right. Right. And it's like, hell, >> you know, cuz cuz when I saw the movie, I always have that that that thought of I always do. I always wonder if I were one of the people on trial with Michelle McGee when Jonathan Jackson kicks in the Marine Marin courthouse and throws a gun on the table and says, >> "Let's get, you know, we're in control now. You know, I'm in sh." You know, what would I do, >> right? Would I be the one to pick up the gun like Relle or am I gonna stay like I forgot the other dude's name who because I think somebody stayed. Somebody was like, "No, I'm good.
>> I'mma ride this thing out." And it's like and and I, you know, so when you're sitting on the bus, you see the dude come in there and he's giving the speech. You know, part of me is like, you know, I'mma get up and try to join you. Like, come on. Like somebody else, you know, like I I'll ride off into the hills with you, >> right?
>> Uh but yeah, that scene is enacted in the in the movie. So >> that's beautiful. I loved it. I love the energy of that line. You can tell from the line itself. And I think Gassan is a novelist and a poet, too. You can tell he picked this really great. I mean, it happened. He's not lying, but he picked a line where you can see like it is. And when we're saying performance, it's not like to bely the seriousness, but it is like to be a revolutionary, you have to also perform a certain kind of level of seriousness and and and a level of trust and authenticity and all these different value systems. You can't just be walking around being like not muttering to yourself, not doing anything. That's epic. Revolution is epic and bombastic and freeing and and so you have to calculate that too. And so I love that for I don't know why it was just so beautiful. He's like I'm here to rob you so I can protect you. And then you know at the end of the day the Black Panther Party I remember they used to shake down small businesses too black owned and they would say similar things of like listen and they would be a little harsher which I don't mind but they would be like your money needs to go to our fund so we can pay for these kids to get food. It's simple as that. And they would just be like they would send people out there who could do a little of like a rough thing of that like you know like you got to do what we need to do because and at the end of the day revolution is about discipline. It's about the art of revolutionary authenticity and also it's about like yeah you know some shit's going to go down and you need to be available. You need to know what steps you need to take. But the other interesting thing about this and this is going back to a class I'm teaching these independent classes I'm teaching. I'm teaching the next one on the concept of the anti-colonial gerilla. And so we're going to go through uh we're going to go through the dialectical relationship of Vietnam, Algeria, and Guinea Basau, and how these movements succeeded, which is this relationship between uh not just violence for violence sake, but also governing. So there's also the other element that's there. It's like, you know, they're not just popping off because the other thing that he's saying is that repeatedly the peasants were popping off. And then the then the sad part is we go into what's missing.
Right. And which which is what happens to them, you know, to be corraled. One is the Jewish population, the European Jewish population is all in now and saying this is our moment to shine. We can prove ourselves finally to the British. We're not completely their enemies. We can crack a few Palestinian heads, Jewish, Christian, Muslim mostly, or secular, however. We'll do it for you. We'll be the Jim Crow force. And then finally the other uh functioning element that that that or malfunctioning element is that they did get exhausted uh with with the killing of the major leaders like Alasam with the with the literal handoff capturing of other leaders and giving them to the Zionists and the British by so-called Jordanian forces which is go to hell for that.
You're going to go to hell for that. I don't know how you can sleep at night doing that. And then also legitimately the complete uh uh lack of weapons. They just they just didn't have and then the final thing that I was writing my notes the other thing which is what Echobbal Ahmad says unfortunately they didn't have enough of a space to start out administrating the other side because he found out that in the Vietnamese struggle the Algerian struggle and the uh Amil cabal led Guinea Basau yes it was violence to take out the French and the Portuguese but every time they did that they didn't just leave they would position themselves in in that area and then they would start to govern it be like hey this is a taste of what could happened for the rest of the country.
We're getting sources the Palestinian fighters, many of them peasants, didn't have it because they lost the land. And then the feudal lords weren't going all in until the last moment when they're like, "Oh [ __ ] I guess I should run to Nazi Germany." What? Like that just shows you also the last gasp of this of this sense of uh of leadership. There was no leadership. So the peasants themselves, he said it, they got exhausted. They were, he used that term, they became exhausted doing these hidden runs, these guerilla activities, and then you're being surrounded by so-called Arab countries that are supposed to help you. Unfortunately, you know, they they couldn't they couldn't do the last thing, which is out maneuvering and out administrating the other side.
>> Absolutely. Uh, another Yeah. Another thing that he does in here that I that that that I relate to the work that we're doing is offer up again this this this this clarity and sober analysis about both why the revolt happened >> and then why it failed.
>> Yeah. Um, so in part I just wanted to to note this this section here >> where he's talking about the intensity of the Palestinian national experience which emerged since 1918 was accompanied in one way or another with armed struggle uh which emerged in 1918 and was accompanied in one way or another with arms struggle. So that was also a point I wanted to just say, you know, as much as we may be uncomfortable with it, when people start going into these financial literacy claims and all this other kind of stuff about that's the the solution to our problems, it's leaving out a lot.
So if you want to make these comparisons to other communities, we have to also acknowledge some of what Kafani is saying here.
>> 100%. Yeah. Um and then he says that that uh um that the nationalist experience could not reflect itself on the upper structure of the Palestinian national movement which remained virtually under control of semifudal and semi-religious leadership. And again, I can't help but look at the parallels to black America in 2026 that that the the black bgeoisi which does accompany this religious component. And then I would also equate it to this this these claims around having the appropriate mindset to access the sp forces in the universe that will allow us to to achieve our higher stages of consciousness and and and uh achieve our financial liberation. Um, and then he says that that there that that there are two related other two primary related factors that that help suppress this radical nationalism in in in the Palestinian struggle. Uh, the existence of an effective Zionist movement which gave the national challenge relative predominance over social contradictions.
The impact of this challenge was being systematically felt by the masses of Palestinian Arabs who were the primary victims of Zionist invasion supported by British imperialism. And then secondly, the existence of a significant conflict of interest between the local feudal religious leadership and British imperialism.
Again, this is I think another important component that needs to be compared to what's happening here that that there's a settler colonial experience, a an internal colonial experience happening here. that this this black feudal religious leadership is is is attempting is is is fuamented and and encouraged to be part of that that imperialist process. Uh that is that and that this was consistently in the interest of the ruling class to promote and support a certain degree of revolutionary struggle instead of being more or less completely allied with the imperialist power as would otherwise be the case. the British imperialists had found in the Zionists a more suitable ally. So one in terms of what Kafani is doing in the history of that region. I think this is important also as as I look at this this ongoing problem of we don't have an analysis of Jews in the in in in this country or or anywhere that that he's including here >> that >> I think speaks to this ongoing debate around that I think is also encouraged are are are is is US or Western imperialism being run by Jews in service of Israel or is Israel being run by Western imperial ism in service of itself despite its claims of having a concern for Jews and Israel etc and so forth and to me if I'm reading this correctly Kafani is agreeing with the former >> if I remember my order that is that British imperialism is is is what was the the material backing of this Zionist movement that give it gives the Zionist movements it its effectiveness >> right >> in in controlling that region of the world for western empire >> once the British got weakened by the Nazis >> and the rest of their expansive empire they said we need to build up this internal Zionist movement to take over for us and then Kofani actually has a line in here I think you mentioned it already where the where the British are literally handing over >> yes >> Zionism to Israeli Zionists to Jews and then they're inviting more European Jews to come in to play that role, become the police force, the military force and on and on and on it goes to the point where we're where we are today. So yeah, go ahead. Yeah.
>> No, this is when the hagana and all the iron and all the [ __ ] organ this is where so he is saying and I would love to go into also the revolutionary stuff that worked but he is saying the foundation of the nakba in 48 is formed through here. He literally says that like the Nakba would not have been possible without the suppression of the 36 to 39 especially the 39 38 revolution and I wanted to read one other thing because the weapons too but it's like again what we're when I heard about this book and I got really into his work more and more. I just related to exactly what you're saying which is um the the mythology of success as well because like you know Israel likes to promote it like they always say like look at our lives look at our beaches look at our you know wonderful society and some people do take it even if they're anti-semitic like there are a lot of Asians who are not Jewish there are a lot of Jews like West Asians who are Jewish there are a lot of Asians who are Jewish who weirdly will still do will say anti-Jewish things about Jews being like oh they're controlling they're this I've heard it everywhere with family members and such But then they'll still land on this weird thing of saying but they got look at what they did with Israel, they got, you know, solar panels. They got this, you know, that kind of thing. And it's like bewildering because they they also some of the Israeli Zionists, a lot of them now play it up because it goes into the idea that it goes into their first book we read, which is this land was bereft of knowledge. It was bereft of of literal buildings. It's just sand and then we came and we let it blossom. We're the true people of that. But you know what?
You know what happened? I know you know this, but you know what really blossomed was British [ __ ] it up and giving them literal roads. I just want to read this like they helped them build road that they still need now. Like like there's one line uh I'll just say like uh finding itself suddenly free of the competition from cheap a Arab agricultural. So again like I said there's three things going on. the workers in in uh in Palestine in the major cities are now being let go because they're this Jim Crow is happening. Apartheid is taking place so they're not allowed to get hired in these higher paying jobs and they're just like floating. They're like what the f the peasants got their land lost and then you have also all these really educated people like Amila Cabraw types who are returning home from the universities maybe in Egypt or maybe Palestine and are like what do we do?
How do we get a job? So this is what's happening. And then finally, the British are giving weapons to them. The Zionists, they're they're letting the Hagana and the Ugun and the Beerun, this is how I talk with my dad. He just rhymes random gibberish. It just I'm getting angry. And it's literally this is what they also do. Finding itself free from competition from cheap agriculture from Arabs. This boogeoisi sent out to entrench and develop its economic presence. The Zionists naturally uh this would have been impossible without the blessings of the British. Over the course of the revolution, the Palestinian revolution, the Zionists and the mandate authorities succeeded in building a network of roads connecting the Jewish settlement colonies to one another and to the major cities. Um, this road structure would later form a keystone of Zionist economic infrastructure. Ports played a central role in their infrastructure.
The road connect connecting Hifa and Tel Aviv was paved. The Hifa port was expanded and defended and a new port was built in Tel Aviv that will eventually extinguish the vitality of the main airport in Yafa.
Like all this BS that they like to say that they're a land of blooming flowers.
It's a blooming follows and they're colored bright red cuz it's blood and it's a set of land. And it just blew my mind that this is when it happened. I actually thought it would happen maybe like the 50s, but the fact this is predating the Nagba and they're out here saying, "Yeah, you need a road." And this fact that there's Jewish settlement that where they have their roads connecting to each other, which is clearly what's going on now. If you're Palestinian, you can't ride certain roads. I mean, it blew that part blew my mind. I was like, "Wait a minute, they were getting this prior to the Nagba."
Like, it's it's incredible how little I knew about this, even as someone who's invested in what's happening. So, I just wanted to raise that. That was crazy.
>> No, that's a good point and I think it makes sense also because uh before atrocities there's always some leadup >> that that uh usually gets, you know, ignored or or >> uh downplayed over over time. But um um the uh what was the the last the only other thing I wanted to come back to this um to this part here his assessment of why >> the revolt failed or no I'm sorry wait yeah I'm sorry at the time the Palestinian Communist Party attributed the failure of the revolt to five principal causes One, the absence of revolutionary leadership. Two, the individualism and opportunism of leaders of the revolt.
Three, the lack of a central command for the forces of the revolt. Four, the weakness of the Palestinian Communist Party. And five, the inospicious world situation.
Um, so yeah, I, you know, I just liked that he was wanting to include some, again, I can't help but thinking about it in terms of the narrowness of my own project work in our project work, but but it's it's there's so much more going on, in other words, than than uh, in this case, Palestinians, pull your resources and fight the Jews, >> right? you know, or you know, like it's it's in other words, if we're trying to find a reason why black America is where it is, it needs to go beyond you just don't have, as John Hope Bryan keeps saying, you just you just didn't get the memo.
>> You know, uh um uh you just didn't get the memo on on uh on uh uh you know, what what these other communities have gotten on on financial literacy. Um and then here I you know again sort of in this assessment that Kafani is doing uh these facts as a whole show that the Palestinian revolt was attacked and received blows in at least three most vital points. Subjectively uh meaning the incapacity, vacasillation, weakness, subjectivity and and the anarch anarchy of its various leaders. the Arab point, meaning the collusion of the Arab regimes to frustrate it at a time when the weak popular Arab national movement was only interacting with the Palestinian revolt in a selective, subjective and marginal way. And I thought again, this is exactly the how black entrepreneurialism and black business is recounted falsely, fraudulently in its relationship to the history of the civil rights movement, the black power movement where where people like Maggie Anderson and other black entrepreneurial financial literacists want to argue that you you need black businesses because they played this vital role in supporting the struggle. And no, no, no, no. they played a more a vital role in in frustrating >> the radical elements of those struggles and putting a limitation on them because at a certain point they recognize we benefit from this colonial structure.
>> Right? Uh and then lastly the international point meaning that the immense disequilibrium in the objective balance of power which resulted from the alliance of all the members of the colonialist camp with each other and also the Zionist movement which was henceforward to have its at its disposable disposal a considerable striking force on the eve of the second world war. Um, and I so again I just I he I anyway I just thought it was it's it's what he was doing is was very important then and for for an assessment now of of this particular history and I think in methodologically just like I said about his Zionist literature book methodologically giving us a pathway forward for assessing uh u the the conditions we're looking at today. Yeah.
>> No, no, I love it. Like that's the other thing about it. It's like the methods is what's important because he has the numbers. He has the right kind of numbers. He's not just saying this is, you know, causing this and that. He explains it. Then he has the history. He has the the words of the people actually. Again, that that passage of the poet talking, I just >> it's thrilling actually. And also writing wise, it's it's it's a fun book to read in the sense of like you're getting to like know his own character through his through his work because it's it's still social science, but you it's writing. There's like a bit of writing here. narrative structure that I love like the fact that he broke down the classes and then led with the revolution is brilliant to me and quite patient and to use your phrase I really like I think I said we need to work on it because I love it so revolutionary patience the last part where he mentions the in inospicious world his uh situation of the world history because he's referencing how >> at this point in time I think right around the time when World War II is about to really officially go off the French and British are no longer fighting each other so they're now like letting each other know where they're sort of calculating their strikes against the Arab nationalism that was starting to bloom. So that shuts down. I think that's what he was referencing too because he mentioned how some Arabs were busy fighting both.
>> And then of course the French and British were like not working together because they're French and British. But then with World War II happening, they were like, "Fuck it. We'll crack down at the same time." You know, the French didn't use as much Zionism because the French also weirdly uh not to say, you know, I don't want to say like they're anti-Semitic, but at the same time, it's like, you know, whatever, but they were not exactly friends of Jews either.
British had a different relationship because of Lord Balffor who's a uh you know, >> but they still hate Arabs and they still and they still have their and they have their colonial memories in in Northern Africa. So they're like we they were probably looking at Palestine like just and and and and and kirking out trick like oh Algerians Iraq Tunisians you know >> to to that point they did so in the in the but it was like funny in Lebanon it's clear that they were then trying to cut it because a lot what I didn't know is a lot of Arab nationalists were saying that Syria and Lebanon should be one and they were also cutting that off.
So the inospicious world history was the French and British being like you know what we'll you have your little guys come in and fighting you and you have ours we'll crack down on them regardless now because I'm sure earlier French were like as long as you're fighting the British like you said we'll weaken them and then we can focus on Algeria but now it's the turning point. What I really was what what put me in the bind is like how to think about that situation because I know Gassan Kafani is not suggesting and this is where your the phrase of revolutionary patience comes in. I know he's not suggesting then don't do what you need to do because the timing is not right, but he's probably arguing about a form of revolutionary patience of like you need to do other things to build up a cuz cuz what's missing is revolution in the surrounding areas too >> because if that happens then you can have real chaos in Trans Jordan and Egypt and >> Nasser. But it's also making that point that you that nobody gets free by themselves. And and again, if I'm thinking about the situation here, this that that that he's saying you can't >> you can't perform an you can't assess why you're not having more success without understanding what forces are working against you. So that's why as he says here that like you know sort of concluding the the the moment that he's focused on in this book he's saying thus the Zionist movement entered the 1940s to find the field practically clear for it with the international climate extremely favorable following the psychological and political atmosphere caused by Hitler's massacres of the Jews while the Arab regimes in the neighboring Arab countries were bgeoa regimes in the historical predicament without any real power.
>> Yes. And that's the that's the exact predicament of the black bgeoisi that emerged after the the suppression of the the the the the heightened levels of anti-colonial struggle in the 60s and 70s. the black bgeoisi is is is emerged and and black capitalism finds >> the path clear for for um anyway I'm just trying to draw that parallel you know inexpertly and quickly but that's that's how I was reading this in terms of of of of >> both understanding what Kafani is saying about that history but also what we're we're looking at here. Yeah. And also the other key thing is like but they also think they have power but they don't. That's the other thing he keeps I I just love that because they kept because that's what the and the same thing black jersey even the Asian-American I was about to say the Asian-American this might sound very controversial but our relationship in this text I was thinking both end. I was thinking about of course how Asians also don't get >> don't get heard in the ways by other Asian leaders but also um we're quote unquote the Jews in this case like again with how we're being positioned like we're you know our because like you mentioned with our project it's the Asians being held up and Asians being such a broad thing but we're thinking East Asian held up as the pinnacle even if if black folks might feel a certain kind of anger against Asians rightly so because of what they do allegedly in terms of stores but they still have a flavor of like well they still got their door. So, we got to, you know, figure and learn. So, I felt like that was going on in text for me, the the mythology of Asians and the the legend of the Asian, right? And Clin Kim, you know, the book we read, I was reviewing it for my own dissertation. Uh, and I remember this quote I took and she did make that parallel about Korean merchants and Jewish merchants and black neighborhoods. She said in both cases there was anger towards them justifiably so, but she made that connection. She said like, you know, some Asians are replacing that earlier quote unquote ethnic Jewish stop owner who didn't live in the neighborhood but lived elsewhere.
It's still perpetually political and economic. But that's what I was reading into. I'm not arguing that Asians of a certain kind are Zionist. There's a similar level, >> but it's also similar in the sense that even going back to the foundation of our project here, like what's I'm forgetting his name now, but but the doughnut king himself >> is is this this bgeoa, >> you know? uh uh emergent comprador who who is also used to as as uh um >> uh to to to carry that that um of he was also in that same what kind of says here predicament >> of not having any real power. So, it's like he's held up as the example for all Asians and black people to follow, but he only has power to the extent he's helping the, as we were pointing out, the right-wing Republican party and and their business interests and the >> and Cambodia >> and Cambodia and their ruling elite.
Like, he's not it's not like he had a power to actually uh, you know, change the material conditions of all of his people. Uh, and most of the people he ended up helping out through licenses of of doughnut shops are just individual proprietor, you know, small business owners with their own families working in there 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, right?
>> So, I mean, it's like you just all you've done is like lock someone else in to the bottom of the pyramid that you climbed yourself out, you know? So it's it's uh >> no it's the without the power that stood out to me because again he just it's very Fenonian like he literally is saying what Fanan said a decade earlier which is like these bgeoa people like he also says there's a missing link in the chain of events like typically like he's arguing there should be a bgeoa revolution first and then Palestine will become this classless society that we want like a socialist >> but he's saying through Zionism they're forced to skip that step because now it's becoming so you know like accelerated the Zionist control of the area so that's why the feudal lords who want to create. So he said the poets would have been in a typical situation like in Europe when they didn't have to deal with Zionism in that way or any kind of internal colonialism in that certain way. They would have a stage like the French Revolution, a stage of bgeoa and they were missing that. And then ultimately since they missed that stage, they got clipped. Their wings got clipped completely. They didn't even get the chance to be the the next level of uh of boss to fight in a video game.
They just got clipped. There's no level for them. So that's why it was so fascinating where he's like these guys >> didn't even have power. They they keep tinkering. They're like we we'll sell little of land and we're they thought they were going to a table that was even for them with their dumbass. And then of course you know they wasn't they were like oh yeah you know they the British respected like there are tons of places where the the leaders of certain even the Palestinian feudal lords were like not well the mouthy was a little bit more dittering. He was afraid ditterate cuz he began to be like a little uncomfortable because he was like, "Wait, wait, wait. What's hold on? Am I losing land too? Cuz I'm the mouthy of Palestine." But the other Arab leaders, they were saying like beautiful letters to the British mandate officer saying, "We know you're so kind and you know, we're we're here for you. You know, uh, rest your head on my shoulder. Let a tear flow down. You know, you know, let my shoulder get wet." And of course, they would also say things to their people saying, "Please don't fight."
They said that when 36 popped off, they're the they're the ones who said, "Stop it." And they even said something that was so fascinating which is directly related to our thing. They said it's not Arab culture to do this. Think of your values. And I was like I forgot what line. I was like that's hilarious.
>> Oh my god. I got to write this down.
Somebody if you go back Killer Mike speech >> Oh, I love that guy.
If you go back and watch the Killer Mike speech after George Floyd was killed, that's what he was saying.
>> Oh, right. What' he say? He's crying, right? He's weeping.
>> He's crying and he's saying don't revolt.
>> Wakanda something.
>> You're you're and he he says something to the effect um or alluding to that this isn't our culture. This isn't what we do. And he's saying the same thing kind of funny. He he he he plays the role of the black bourgeoisi saying of that feudal elite >> who's recognizing if you burn down all the shops you're burning down my business. If you if you if you upset if you're out there rioting you can't come and and spend money in my store or in my barber shop.
So it's it's it's it's that same that's the parallel that I keep coming. It's like and they're the financial literacists saying >> don't rebel.
>> Just give your money to me. we will black business our way to freedom and and buy ourselves some politicians and you don't have to and and Kafani is saying so so again that's why I want to keep saying if we're going to say be like the Asians be like the be like the Asians >> yes be like Asian exact or be like the Asians for real because when they also reference the Afroasian conferences where they're going to China and stuff he it says Gustan Kafani went to China and India he went there he straight went there. So, it's like the the world inospicious world history. That's the other thing that I you're right. Like the ways that people think about Asian black folks here, there's a tendency to obviously understand um level of hardship and there's frustration growing, but still it's like it's still so myopic regardless of educational background. Has nothing to do with Yale or Ruckers or anything. I've seen it everywhere. People are like, I just don't want war. Fair. But they but the lesson should be the Iranians and the Palestinians are fighting for us. That is the through line. If Palestine falls, we fall. And it's falling now. The the the freedom of speech stuff that's going down, the way that DEI is being attacked, even though of course that formula was quite >> bizarre sometimes and how it was attended to, but nonetheless there's something going on. And it bled through the bloody portal of Gaza under Biden.
Once Gaza happened where where it's happened and Biden talked about the dead babies, that portal was opened. That portal was opened to all the mess that we're also dealing with domestically.
So, but again, they our people, the ones who alleged to be our representatives don't have power. That that's the thing that I also love about his analysis soberly, like you said, like they just don't have power. They think they do.
And to the point of like, don't burn my business. One ad I would add to that little ripple. You're right. Don't burn businesses, buy from me. But you know what else they were probably thinking? I think he mentioned, "Oh, the Zionists are coming. They have more money. I would love for them to spend at my doughnut shop."
>> So that's what they were.
>> Oh, look at look at look at the language. Even I should have Oh, man.
Now I'm coming up with a yet another thing I should do that I don't have time or won't get to or whatever or the discipline. It's not even time. I just don't have the discipline. But there are I should look for and a few people have sent me a couple of things. I should just organize I should look at but but the point I'm getting at is that that the the black business community in the cities where the FIFA World Cup is is planning to be have been making that kind of argument even going back decades to the to the Atlanta Olympics where again the the the or even before that >> where Oh All right. Listen. All right. Do you have a few minutes? Are you >> Yeah. No, no. I have I have I >> technically I don't I should be wrapping up, but now But now, >> so I'm gonna do this here. I was going to save this, but look, a few people have sent me. All right. So let me just finish that thought then I'm I'll do So the point being that there is this long history of the black bgeoisi siding with the broader business community around th those kinds of ideas of right let's let's >> uh uh uh um let's attract that revenue.
That's why, you know, the black mayors of Atlanta for for years have been saying, "Let's bring the Olympics and CocaCola and this event and that event cuz we get we get it, too."
>> I want to >> I haven't watched college American college football in a long time.
>> Oh, yeah. Yeah.
>> But I was sent >> one Indiana.
>> I have no idea. But I was sent what what I was sent was um this right here. Let's see. It's going to go. It starts at Where was I told to start it?
Uh I think I was told to start it right here. I'm going to beg your and everyone else's indulgence.
All right. So, first I'm going to again encourage everyone to check out Palestine and film uh and and one of the many great discussions I've had with Samantha Ysef about Palestine 36. And I'll put the link in the show description here, but I just want to make sure people uh so I encourage you Sudep to watch our discussion even before you see the film. It doesn't ruin the film, but but one or the other.
Watch the film and our discussion. I think that'll be helpful.
And then I'm going to let's see let's I was sent this discussion here. Bmani Jones is one of my favorite uh mainstream sports journalist types and he had this discussion about college football and I just want to play this short bit of it because >> they're going to do.
>> Yes, they are.
>> You'll see my point.
>> Let's back up for a second. Let's talk about LSU and Miss for a second. Why is LS why why do we have all of those numbers in column A that says LSU is a better job? It's because of state population. It's because of the state economy. It's because the amount of disposable income available for a particular NIL donor. Like all of these numbers add up for a reason. So now let's talk about the state of Alabama and the state of Georgia and the state of Mississippi. They all sit next to each other, right? Okay. One of those states had a capital city that that aggressively, and I'm not saying perfectly, but I'm saying aggressively endeavored to better their racial dynamic to welcome not only and this wasn't all, by the way, none of this is altruism. I want to be really clear here. I'm not sitting here talking as like a as a cookie cutter white liberal.
This was about making money, >> but this is ultimately what we're talking about as well. When it comes to football, it's about money. So the state of Georgia and the city of Atlanta 30, 40, 50 years ago said, you know what?
You know what's more profitable than than uh holding on to the old ways and fighting the good fight against the minorities? Making some money, right? So the city and state government for a time with Atlanta and Georgia locked arms and said, "Hey, every European business, you know what we are? Air travel's the future. We're going to be the way station for the world. We're going to bring in all these German and Dutch and English businesses. We already have every interstate in America and every train yard that comes through here.
Guess what that trickles down to, Bo? In 2026, the University of Georgia is damn near a professional football team for that reason. Because they have the city of Atlanta, that population, and specifically that urban population, as we say in white circles, in case we're worried about someone maybe overhearing it, it's an urban population that creates football players. Okay. So why does Mississippi not have any of that?
Because they didn't do any of that 40, 50, 60 years ago. So if you just look at Old Miss and LSU is Louisiana is not a uh uh >> So first of all is is if I'm following it and just in case others are following it, what he's saying is in the context of talking about college football and this white guy that Bmani is talking to has said if you let me give me enough time, I can use college football to explain any social condition. And this point that I've been making about buying power, mix tapes, the the the banana method that Laura Shiah was talking about with with Franuis Vz the other day. Like all of these things, this is the point. And he's saying what Kafani is saying that the black bgeoisi benefited and benefits from the settler colonial relationship.
And and Sud, I'm gonna mute you for a second because I'm hearing feedback in your I keep hearing my there's some feedback and and I'm I'm I'm struggling to keep keep follow. Sorry about that.
But but he's he's he's saying that that much like Kafani is saying about the Palestinian boogeoisi, the feudal the feudal that that first of all the feudal structure is dependent upon the broader imperial structure, the broader colonial structure. So, so Georgia has, as he says, a damn near a professional football team because they bring in all this money because Atlanta made a very conscious decision to bring in all that international money that you were just talking about to bring in all of this to to wet itself to the broader imperialist structure with the idea from the perspective of the black bgeoisi that there will be a trickle down effect that will benefit them. All right. And as he said at the beginning, if we could get over the old ways of racial hostility and allow just for the symbolic presence and inclusion of some black people, we will make way more money than if we hold on to these old forms of segregation. It is nothing to do with with which is also why you can you can quote unquote desegregate and still have situations like where I live in Howard County, Maryland, which is often reported as one of the best places to live in the country where there is no official segregation. And yet the public schools are some of the most segregated spaces in the state because once everybody goes in the same door, they they're put into different parts of the building and into different classrooms. So there's an appearance, but and what it does is it reduces the likelihood of rebellion, increases the likelihood of of more of a capital extraction and labor and wealth extraction and and etc and so forth and and and and on we go. So let me just play a couple more minutes of this and then we can wrap up.
>> Racially harmonious uh inst institution by any stretch, right? New Orleans has its problems.
Baton Rouge has its problems.
But Mississippi stands alone as the forefront example of staring at progress. Staring at progress with all its potential financially. I'm not talking about anything other than financial for a second. Okay? I'm not doing that polyiana [ __ ] And saying guess what? And then they pull out a gun and shoot themselves in the foot. Twice over. Twice over.
>> So to go all the way back around, Kein ultimately made a financial decision.
LSU is paying him more. They're promising more in NIL.
>> There's a little bit more here.
>> The reason they're doing that is because there are fewer people and fewer millionaires in Mississippi. And then when we ask ourselves why, we got to start talking about things that we don't like to talk about.
>> Yeah. And Mississippi used to have the most millionaires per capita in America.
But that was back when the industry was, you know, was configured a little differently. You make a great point about Atlanta because it's something that I hadn't really thought about until this moment as you said it, but just about every city in that main drag of the South has tried to every state in that main drag of the South has tried to choke out its major city. Louisiana has historically tried to choke out New Orleans. Tennessee has done it with Memphis. Alabama has done that with Birmingham. It is criminal what Mississippi does with Jackson. Atlanta is the only one where the state did not decide to kill it. There are some very interesting trades in order to make it work that way. Yes. But they did not decide to kill it. And look at what the results were.
>> Yeah. And when you have some billionaire business come from out of town, they have to have a city for the infrastructure. This is like I feel like we're now in a sociology class. But all of this factor, the reason I work in football, the reason why I work in college football specifically is I can tell you any story in the world with college football. You may not want to hear it and I may have to dress it up a lot more football for you to get the medicine down, but we can sit here and talk about the economic um destruction of the South, the advancement of a place like Atlanta. It all factors into football. That's why the SEC championships in one city and it's not in another.
So, I just wanted to I I just come on people who have sent me that and I know it's not a direct parallel, but I think that that that there are a couple of them including this that the point I was just making that that the the apparent quote unquote success of any particular pocket in a society is wedded is very much dependent upon their relationship to whatever broader structures are at play. So whether we're talking about Black Wall Street, whether we're talking about 2026 Atlanta, or whether we're talking about 1936 or 2026 Palestine, it's it's that is all at play. That's all at play.
And and Kafani is saying we need to step back. Let's let's be clear. What were the forces that created the Zionist hell hole? and and and some of it has to include acknowledging the feudal structure that was imposed and complicit. And that's why we see so many that's why Killer Mike comes out there and says stop rioting. That's why uh uh pick pick the black capitalist and then you know and then to even today's uh um Palestinian comprodors who who either like DJ Khaled say nothing or would even dare say you know it's the Palestinians fault because because our own people rebel violently and haven't you know figured out our financial literacy and and and etc and so forth. So anyway, that's it. That's it for me. Let me Let me My bad. Let me unmute you. Yeah.
Sorry. Go ahead. And uh Yeah.
>> Do you still Do you still hear the background noise or anything?
>> It's only when I'm talking that I heard.
Okay. Maybe something happened. But um >> No, I love that clip. I do listen to Bmani sometimes, too, just because it's a little bit more different than obviously the I I listen to a lot of [ __ ] sports stuff except for the except for the more right-wing stuff. I obviously leave it leave it there. But what that reminded me is also the discussion about again the advancement that's happening which is good in comparison to miss which I hate you know because it's a confederate little I was going to say something really mean but it's a confederate little hell so but the funny thing is also advancement is contained right which is you know the advancement is about building your infrastructure to attract European businesses right so again it's still back to his point like with the feudal lords they were hoping to get advancement but it was within the Zionist infrastructure which they again failed to realize had encapsulated them that's the other thing they were also thinking I got mine I'll be good forever but again to the black bgeoisi and the Asian b Asian-American buzzoi it's a different containment zone because we're not having necessarily our land completely taken because it's for the indigenous people that's true but nonetheless there is this delusion political delusion that is made to be material because how they talk to us is always about oh you know Dr. ball if they say even doctor but they're like oh Jared you're silly you don't understand math you don't understand economics but the funny thing is they don't get it they're dependent on the white people in power still uh with John O'Brien with his new book I think you mentioned like all the people you know who who collaborated to say good job a lot of them are white again it's not just about that it wouldn't >> they're not just white they're the most ruling elite and including Reed Hoffman of Epstein island fame >> oh right So he's got I mean John Ho Bryant is is again it's it's >> it's >> accidentally the perfect explanation. I mean, that's who his team that's team black bgeoisi, >> right?
>> The the the white ruling elite that wouldn't have even allowed him to go to Epstein Island with them >> or Elon Musk, too. And he was like desperately emailing them like whatever.
Like they're still losers within the losers. But to your point, they're still dependent. That's the thing is like they're they're claiming to be material.
They're claiming to be smart. They're claiming to be the ones to offer hope to people, but they are the delusional ones and they're the ones who are also dependent. They they have nothing really to to to pro to to offer the people. We do. And that's the thing about Gassan Kaf Kafani's analysis because like he's also trying to understand not just the Zionist question but the Palestinian question in the face of like okay so we had this nationalist mini movement started. What happened? And what happened was a lot of these Arab compradors also took a little slice but they also got outpaced. The Palestinians got outpaced by the other Arab compradors like say of Jordan and of uh Iraq prior to their own you know revolution to become a republic. People forget a lot of these states were carved out by the British and given over to collaborators straight up. The Ottomans ruled that area for thousands and thousands of years. They had their little fftoms but it was not what the British mandate offered. The British men did made up kingdoms. They made them up.
Like sad, the house of Sod is nothing.
The House of Assad, you know, chef's kiss to the House of Sod. Hope they don't get too angry on me. The House of Sod is a fake ass house. It's Game of Thrones. They're only there because they said to the British, "We'll work with you." And that's how it happened. And but what's the irony now is what we're seeing in the news today. Saudi Arabia, I think, recently said they will not like work with Israel until they stop bombing. But again, once again, what Kanai said about them, they will ultimately be outpaced because if greater Israel needs to happen, it will happen. It doesn't give America and the English don't give a [ __ ] if that also involves taking land from some of the other Arab nations which are too weak like Syria where they got an al-Qaeda guy in there and he's like busy killing minorities. But what I'm saying is like he told all this in this one little book and I'm saying little not to belittle it, just saying like he got loads and loads of analysis, cultural, material, historical, economic. Um he his analysis of the Jewish labor problem with Palestinians was so in-depth. you know, his his condemnation of the Palestinian Communist Party was not to say they're stupid, but I think in one part he said when the revolution was starting, they rightfully they rightfully joined, but the way they still spun it was still like he said wrong because they kept saying rise up against your Arab masters, your Jewish masters who are bgeoisi, but he said they did not mention Zionism.
They mentioned Zionism late and then they had splits over the Arab question and they got more and more racist. So he also had to explain that. So I just I don't want to I just want to say like Gassan Kafani has written two books on their own. If I was able to write them, I would be like like what you were doing with the background. I would have that background perpetually if anyone wants to talk to me. Like I'm like I'm good.
These are two classic texts that everybody needs to read. Like this and this should be required reading for anybody. That's all I got to say about those two. These are required. You got your cultural analysis of the enemy and you also got your analysis of what to do and what not to do. It's just brilliant.
And I'm sorry. I just like I just I gush over this cuz it's like this man gave so much of his heart to the people to his friends to his to the person he loved his children. Like his wife mentioned how he played with them and he gave so much of his time to analysis and to I don't know. It just it's really moving and honestly they'll never kill kill him. They killed him but they'll never take him away. He's too brilliant. He's the poet. He's the one living in heaven saying to all the other people like, "What happened to you?" He's like, "Well, I was making I'm too creative for that. I didn't really die. I I I moved on from this life." But we have all this stuff with him. It's just brilliant.
It's brilliant. So, sorry. It's just like I just >> No, that's perfect. I think is is uh um uh it's perfect. Um and and I think it's a great way to to wrap up uh uh this this discussion unfortunately for for today. Um um and yeah, sorry I just got distracted there for a second. Um but uh um so listen everybody please do all the things to support the the the the show the platform. The link to Sudep's work is in the show description to to the work we've been talking about is in the show description. Our broader playlist around the Donut King >> uh project is in the show description.
Um stay tuned. We'll let you know when we'll be back again and what next steps we're taking on our project. And uh Sudep, I I man, I just greatly appreciate this project, the work, your suggestions and contribution. And uh um I think you're going to go off and do some work. I should go off and do some work. We'll see if that actually happens. And uh um but anytime you're ready and and whenever we're, you know, we'll we'll we'll keep it going. And um yeah, so thank you very much. This has been great. This has been great.
>> Thank And again all I know you have to run but I really appreciate the space you offer here for saw people and also just the Gassan Kafani like you know he was amazing. He's a legend and just very inspiring in these times like I feel so revved up to write everything that I do with you and other people and just speak up. So he he did the work.
>> Absolutely. And no I'm I'm again yeah I'm with you on that. I I I I I I'm um yeah, team team Kafani all day. Uh so so um yeah, man. So salute to you to the undefeated chat. Thank you all very much for coming through. Please again like, share, subscribe, support the platform, all of our satellite atmospheric platforms as well. uh all you know make sure you have the bell rung, double check your subscription, make sure you like and do all those things, you know, all of that and and so you're not missing stuff. Go check all the other stuff. More stuff is coming. And uh um again, salute everybody. Uh this has been great. More on its way. peace only if you're willing to fight for it. As Fred Hampton used to say and as Connafani damn sure demonstrated and said and and chose I make the joke all the time, the last time I had a choice, I chose my H.B.CU.
When he had a choice, he chose the struggle. Said I'm not going nowhere, not leaving nowhere's so salute. Anyway, peace everybody.
Thanks again. Catch you next time with you sacrifice, calm, kindness, kinship, love.
I've given up all chance of inner peace.
I made my mind a sunless face.
I share my dreams with ghosts.
I wake up every day to an equation I wrote 15 years ago for which there's only one conclusion.
I'm damned for what I do.
My anger, my ego, my unwillingness to yield. My my eagerness to fight has set me on a path from which there's no escape. I yearn to be a savior against injustice without contemplating the cost. And by the time I look down, there's no longer any ground beneath my feet. What is my What is my sacrifice?
I'm condemned to use the tools of my enemy to defeat them. I burn my decency for someone else's future. I burn my life to make a sunrise that I know I'll never see.
The ego that started this fight will never have a a mirror or an audience or the light of gratitude.
But what do I sacrifice?
Everything. Everything. Everything.
I mix what I like. What? I like what I like. What I like. What I like.
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