More than 50 years ago, lawyer Lewis Powell penned a letter to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce arguing that the American business community must take political power and must use it “aggressively and with determination — without embarrassment and without the reluctance.” President Richard Nixon would go on to appoint Powell to the U.S. Supreme Court. This week on Deconstructed, Ryan Grim speaks to David Sirota about his new investigative podcast series, Master Plan, that examines how corporate corruption took root in American politics.

[Theme music.]

Ryan Grim: I’m Ryan Grim. Welcome to Deconstructed. And, today, I’m excited to be joined by my friend, investigative journalist David Sirota, founder of The Lever, who’s here to talk about his new podcast.

David, thanks so much for joining me.

David Sirota: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

RG: So, the podcast is called Master Plan. Let’s play a little clip from it, then we’re going to get into it.

David Sirota: When you wake up in the morning and see the recent headlines about the Supreme Court.

News Clip: A judicial decision sparking a political eruption.

David Sirota: I’m guessing you feel overwhelmed and bewildered.

News Clip: The Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. Well, it’s terrifying. I don’t know what’s next.

David Sirota: And you hear about the court helping corporations trample your long standing rights.

News Clip: This is a sweeping decision by the Supreme Court to overturn the Chevron precedent.

News Clip: What this does is it ends 40 years of regulating big business.

David Sirota: You hear about the justices making it literally legal to bribe politicians.

News Clip: In a 6-3 opinion, the court ruled that gifts to public officials can only be considered illegal bribes if they’re given before the official act.

Clip: Seems like every few months the Supreme Court makes it easier and easier to bribe government officials.

David Sirota: You even hear about the Supreme Court actually declaring Clearing that the President does not have to follow the law.

News Clip: It’s the first time the Supreme Court has ruled that former presidents can be shielded from criminal charges —

Amy Goodman: In every use of official power, the president is now a king above the law.

David Sirota: As you’re doom scrolling, do you ever stop and ask what the actual f—k is going on, and how in god’s name did we get here?

RG: Well, David, I, I feel like I’ve been hearing from you about this podcast for quite some time now. How long has it been that you’ve been [that] you and your team have been putting this together?

DS: Well, we thought it was going to be, like, a six-month project. And then it became a year, a year-and-a-half-long project. And then, it became a full two-year project. We went really deep down the rabbit hole. It felt like every door we opened led us to six other doors in trying to uncover this story of how corruption was legalized in America.

I think it’s a difficult story to tell, because I think it’s kind of like the David Foster Wallace speech, the famous one about the fish, you know? There are two fish, one fish swims by and says, hey, how’s the water today? And one of the other fish turns and says, what is water?

Right? I think we live in an era where corruption is so rampant, where money is so determinative of political outcomes and legislative outcomes, that we’ve become so accustomed to it and numb to it that it feels like, that’s not corruption anymore. That’s just how politics works. That just is politics.

The truth is, when you look at it, it didn’t have to be the way it is. It has become that way because of a series of decisions and a series of actions that were taken that were the result of a very specific plan, executed by specific people, over a long period of time. And so, what our podcast series does is, it starts when that plan was hatched, and it goes through, each step of the way, to legalize the kind of money politics that we now are immersed in.

RG: And what’s fascinating about the story that you really uncover and tell here is the way in which so much of this ended up being done under the guise of fighting corruption.

DS: Totally.

RG: So, talk about what it was like before these new laws legalizing corruption were in place. So, for the people who look around and see it as water, what was a world where corruption was illegal like?

DS: So, for most of the 20th century, there were very, very weak anticorruption laws, very, very weak campaign finance laws. To the point where — and this is kind of amazing — that the one law that existed on the books was interpreted when it applied to Congress, the anticorruption law, that it would not be enforced by the Department of Justice unless the leaders of the House and Senate first referred cases to the Department of Justice. That was a directive, by the way, under the Eisenhower administration, which was carried forward.  In other words, the House and Senate would have to tell on itself in order for the Justice Department to even investigate corruption.

So, obviously, in this period of time, corruption scandals simmer. Petty corruption, graft, there were periodic scandals. One scandal, for instance, involved the Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas, who had to effectively resign from the Supreme Court. To be clear, that scandal now seems minimal and quaint compared to the scandals of the current Supreme court.

RG: What was that one, just for fun?

DS: He had gotten a grant. He’d been paid to write a series of papers for somebody who had — I think it was a financier — who had ostensibly some business before the government. I think it was only about $20,000.

RG: And it was before he became a justice, right?

DS: Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. And so, it hadn’t come out, he did it. And so, he had to resign.

RG: It’s remarkable.

DS: It is remarkable, compared to what happens today, and is legal.

Now, I think that’s an important point that, while there were not strong laws being enforced in the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s, into the ’70s, there still was a cultural aversion to corruption, to the point where a guy on the Supreme Court who did something not particularly great, but not, like, horrible by modern day standards, was so shamed he had to resign.

So, there was a cultural aversion to corruption in a way that doesn’t exist today.

RG: Yeah. And I think people underestimate the power of that cultural aversion.

DS: A hundred percent. Yes, totally. Like, there was shame in it. Like, it existed, but you didn’t do what Donald Trump does, which is, you know, Donald Trump, a couple weeks ago, said to the oil industry, give me a billion dollars, and I’ll give you policy, right? I mean, like, that was just not the way it was done back then.

But, obviously, all of this exploded in the Watergate scandal, which was, obviously, a huge political event, but a huge cultural event. It was on television. The country was focused on it. And the Watergate scandal, I think we remember it now as, obviously, an abuse of power, the break-in and the like. But, also, what was exposed during Watergate was that there was corruption underneath it; by that, I mean money that was given by people who wanted favors from the Nixon White House.

RG: Corporations wanted mergers, and were moving cash in bags, and, yeah.

DS: American Airlines, as a good example. American Airlines gave lots of money to the Nixon campaign committee, and the campaign committee used that slush fund to fund the Watergate break-in. And I should mention, those corporations and executives were prosecuted.

I mean, it’s kind of hard to imagine major corporations being prosecuted, really, for anything, but certainly for corruption and campaign finance. And we talked to, in the series, in episode two, we talked to one of the Watergate prosecutors who talked about why they felt they needed to aggressively prosecute these corporations, to send a message that this is not acceptable.

And what came out of that was the post-Watergate campaign finance reforms, which mandated disclosure, which set campaign donation limits, which tried to set some spending limits. It was the first time, really, that — after that period we just talked about, this sort of lawless period — that it seemed like Congress was getting tough.

But it’s also worth mentioning, at the exact same time is when the business community — big business — was feeling like it was incredibly under attack. This is the era when Ralph Nader was a celebrity, winning all sorts of battles in Congress for consumer protection, regulation, and the like. And Nixon, though he had resigned in 1974, he left a ticking time bomb in Washington, in the form of a guy named Lewis Powell.

Lewis Powell In 1971 was the head of the American Bar Association. Top of the establishment, sort of a very well respected lawyer who was, frankly, traumatized by Ralph Nader, and he writes about this in what became known as the Powell Memo.

RG: Have you seen Mad Men?

DS: Mm-hmm.

RG: So, there’s this great scene where somebody has a problem with Ralph Nader. Like, is there anything we can do about Ralph Nader? And these are the most powerful people in Manhattan. And the answer is, immediately, no.

DS: Exactly.

RG: There’s nothing you can do about Ralph Nader.

Now, what I love about what you found about the Powell Memo, there’s multiple levels of people’s understanding as they go through life about the Powell Memo. You know, first, you know nothing about the Powell Memo. Then you learn about the Powell Memo, and you’re absolutely shocked, and it seems like, how could this possibly be true? That, basically, this conspiracy was orchestrated in order to kind of take over our democracy.

Then you go further on, you learn, well, actually people are saying that this was just a little letter that a guy wrote to his neighbor, and it’s been blown out of proportion, and you should actually go back to your original understanding of it, which was that it doesn’t — Don’t even think about it.

You’re taking on that third layer here, which I love.

DS: Alright. So, Lewis Powell is the head of the American Bar Association. He’s being radicalized by the politics of the moment. I don’t think, I’m not sure anybody’s ever reported on these. We found [that] he gave a series of speeches elucidating his process of radicalization, his speeches to business groups. He was clearly echoing a lot of the themes of people like Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater.

He sees Ralph Nader on the cover of Fortune magazine, or a huge article of Ralph Nader in Fortune magazine. And he gets real pissed off. And he calls up his friend — Eugene Syndor at the Chamber of Commerce — and  decides to write this memo for how the Chamber of Commerce and the larger business community can fight back. And it’s this incredible manifesto.

He casts the American business community as the, quote, “forgotten man.” It’s a direct quote. Corporate America has no power. I mean, it’s kind of shocking; I mean, yes, the reformers were winning, but the idea that Corporate America was as victimized as is portrayed in this memo is obviously absurd.

RG: They were only making a hundred times, or fifty times the average worker, rather than what they feel is their just due. Like, several thousand times.

DS: It’s incredible. But, look, I guess that,  if you’re a corporation, and you’re used to being able to just dump the chemical in the river, and then, suddenly, you have to only dump half of those chemicals in the river, you’re not allowed to dump all of the chemicals in the river, you probably felt traumatized by the environmental regulations that were passing, as one example.

So, he writes this memo, and it’s this whole strategy for what the business community has to do to fight back, and there’s a particular focus on taking over the courts. And, specifically, on doing what Nader had been doing, which is creating, manufacturing, or seizing upon lawsuits that would secure specific rulings.

And he basically was saying, Ralph Nader owns the space of the so-called public interest lawsuit and public interest law firm. We can create a different version of public interest law and public interest lawsuits, essentially, from a business perspective. I mean, it’s completely Orwellian, right? Because, obviously, their agenda is quite literally the private interest.

RG: [It’s] antisocial.

DS: Yeah. It’s the private interest. Exactly.

So, the focus on the judiciary, etc., etc. What we found is not just the memo, obviously. But there were a series of secret meetings, and the creation of a task force on the Powell Memo — that’s what it was called in the Chamber of Commerce — comprised of executives at some of the biggest and most powerful corporations in America. And we’re talking about General Electric, Ford, media companies, ABC, CBS, where they convene these meetings — and we have the documents from them — to review what they needed to do, and what they were doing.

Again, we’re telling the story of the legalization of corruption. Let me give you a really good story about this, as it relates to this. So, in 1973, they convene a meeting of the Chamber of Commerce to review the task force on the Powell Memo, its task force, and what it’s doing. It’s in Disney World.

The chief lobbyist for U.S. Steel is running the task force, William White, who’s very close to his friends, Jerry and Betty. And they bring Jerry and Betty down to Disney World; of course, I’m talking about Gerald Ford and Betty Ford. They bring them down to Disney World, and the meeting notes show that Gerald Ford keynotes the event, and the event has a focus on the Federal Election Campaign Act, which had passed in 1971 after an earlier pre-Watergate scandal, where Nixon was on tape talking about shaking down the dairy industry for cash. That’s, by the way, a direct quote, “shaking down” in exchange for milk price supports, to keep the price of milk high.

So, obviously, the Chamber of Commerce, this Powell Memo task force is concerned about such things. They fly Gerald Ford down to the meeting. They review how to navigate the early new campaign finance reforms. And we found a document from the Olin Corporation, a guy who was part of these task forces — Olin is a huge right-wing funder, I think it’s a chemical or weapons fortune — and he says in the document, what they’re trying to do Is get an amendment into the updates to the campaign finance reforms that would allow for the creation of corporate PACs, OK?

Now, fast forward just a few months from 1973, from that one meeting, as an example. Now, Gerald Ford is President of the United States, Watergate has unfolded. There’s even more of a push to make the campaign finance laws stronger. Gerald Ford, who clearly didn’t like the campaign finance reforms as a congressperson — there were a lot of Republicans who didn’t like it — he’s now president, and essentially forced to sign the bill, because Watergate has happened.

RG: Yeah, you can’t veto that.

DS: You can’t veto that. It passes, but guess what? Baked into the law were the loopholes that they had been plotting for. There was a small provision put into that final bill that allowed for the creation of corporate political action committees which, not surprisingly, exploded right after the post-Watergate campaign finance reforms.

And it’s worth adding one more thing, is that the legal groups that were formed through these Powell Memo task force meetings — groups like the Pacific Legal Foundation and the like, and including the Chamber of Commerce — they were also pursuing what was then a radical notion in the court system. Which was, they wanted to enshrine the idea that money isn’t corruption, money is speech.

And so, right after those campaign finance reforms were signed into law by Gerald Ford — with those loopholes, by the way — they filed a lawsuit in the federal courts to try to invalidate those laws, on the ground that you cannot limit money in politics, because money is speech. And we talk a lot about in this podcast about how the Master Plan really does have kind of a “Master Plan cinematic universe.” These people who keep popping up.

The notion that money is speech and not corruption was masterminded by — and the lawsuit was masterminded by — none other than John Bolton. Yes, the same John Bolton. And it was boosted by Robert Bork, who was still the Solicitor General of the United States. Who, in an incredible story — I mean, it’s just kind of mind blowing, right? — he has to defend the law, because he’s still the Solicitor General of the United States. Like, that’s his job, so he officially has to defend the law, defend the Federal Election Commission. But this guy files two briefs.

He files one brief sort of barely defending the law, and then he files another brief, essentially on behalf of the Ford administration, siding with the people, with the John Boltons, who were trying to destroy it. And guess what? What the court produces is the enshrining of the doctrine that money is speech.

And, soon after that, Lewis Powell, who’s now been installed on the Supreme Court — the guy who wrote the Powell Memo — he works behind the scenes at the Supreme Court to take a subsequent case a few years later to extend those free speech rights to spend in elections, to extend those rights to corporations.

RG: What’s so important about what you guys have uncovered here is that it really puts to rest this new-ish idea that has been circulating, that, oh, actually, the Powell Memo, like I said, it’s just a letter to a neighbor. Like, that’s what the kind of talking point has become about the Powell Memo. And that if you actually invest this incredibly prescient document with any real meaning, then you’re a conspiracy theorist.

DS: Yeah.

RG:What they’re trying to say is that, the world we have today is just a natural function of the way that the market and history unfolded. And that, you, if you’re looking for decisions made by particular people for particular reasons at a particular time, you’re not going to find them.

In other words, this is water, because we’re just living in a world that has water in it.

DS:It absolves the people and the movement that created this world of responsibility for creating this dystopia, by pretending that it was all just a force of nature.

I would agree that the Powell Memo is not the singular explanation.

RG: Yeah, absolutely. Right.

DS: But it was, certainly, A, if not the catalyzing document to prompt and unleash all of the organizing that happened subsequently. I mean, here’s a specific example, right? To tie it right to today. This is very specific.

The Powell Memo was cited by Joseph Coors as the document that stirred him into political action. Joseph Coors, after reading the Powell Memo, decided to provide the seed funding for the Heritage Foundation. The Heritage Foundation carved out its niche in all of this organizing in the early 1970s into the early ’80s. Carved out its niche as a focus on policy, specifically its mandate for leadership series, which is this giant document that they produce every election that is an agenda for conservative presidents to take and implement.

Now, if that sounds familiar to you, you may be thinking, oh, that sounds like Project 2025. Well, Project 2025 is the ninth iteration of the mandate for leadership series. Point being that you can draw a direct line from the Powell Memo to project 2025. That’s a piece of what the Powell Memo inspired. And, clearly there was a lot of pent up energy for this.

I agree that the Powell Memo doesn’t explain everything, but the idea that it was just some version, some 1970s version of a random Facebook post or a Reddit rant is absolutely ridiculous.

RG: What absolving people who created this of responsibility also does, is it kind of absolves the subjects of it — you and me and the rest of the public — from responsibility to overturn it. Because, if it’s just an act of nature, well,  I guess we’ve just got to weather the storm and wait till it’s over, and then maybe we’ll have a democracy again at some point.

But if it actually is the actions of a concerted group of people working toward their own interest, that means that a concerted group of people working in the opposite direction [to] the public interest can actually undo this stuff. That’s the other point about it being unnatural.

DS: A hundred percent. And, by the way, you don’t have to reach back all that far. I mean, you can reach back to Common Cause, John Gardner, the post-Watergate era of at least passing the Federal Election Campaign Act and the Amendments of 1974, that’s one example. But another example that’s worth mentioning is John McCain.

I think people have forgotten the John McCain of the ’90s and early 2000s. The John McCain that I remember, because it was the time when I was right out of college. John McCain, after Buckley v. Vallejo, which we just talked about, you know, money is speech, John McCain after the loopholes where Corporate PACs explode. John McCain gets himself embroiled in what was called the Keating Five scandal in the late ’80s.

And the Keating Five scandal sounds quaint by current standards, but the Keating Five scandal was, basically, five senators tried to pressure a federal banking regulator to rescind a proposed regulation that would have hit those five senators’ major donor Charles Keating. This became a huge scandal. It’s kind of funny.

RG: Hilariously quaint, right?

DS: Right. Because that’s literally how politics now works. That’s just how congressmen raise money now. It’s just, oh, give me money, and I’ll go pressure the regulator who’s bothering you. Like, that’s a standard— Anyway, McCain gets singed by this. Actually, both parties, their rising star heroes get singed. John McCain, war hero? John Glenn was also involved in this, right?

So, both parties’ golden boys get super-singed by this. And McCain does something that you rarely see in a politician. Instead of resigning, or pretending it didn’t happen, or just shutting up, McCain decides to apologize, and adopt the campaign finance reform cause with the zeal of a convert. And he goes on a crusade to try to pass campaign finance reform legislation that would require more disclosure, and would, specifically, most importantly, cut off the unregulated, unlimited amounts of corporate money that were flooding into both parties in the form of money called soft money, which was a sort of 1990s term for just money flowing into the parties, giant slush funds.

McCain pushes this with Russ Feingold, I think it’s in the mid 90s. He can’t get it passed through the Senate, decides to run for president in 1999, and he is in a primary against a human personification of money politics: George W. Bush, and George W. Bush’s Rangers and Pioneers, the name for his big bundlers, his big donors, and Bush had all the money.

McCain, we have in this episode about him, we talked to his former chief of staff, who says, you know, we told him not to talk about money and politics, nobody cared. And McCain said, you’re wrong, and went to New Hampshire and talked all about it. And it was a huge issue, people loved it. And McCain actually almost won that campaign. He didn’t win that campaign, but he came really close.

And here’s the thing: it was such an effective campaign, it was such an effective anticorruption crusade, that it compelled George W. Bush — like, Mr. Corruption — to endorse and say he would sign that McCain-Feingold law. And McCain ultimately use that presidential campaign to pass it through Congress, and get Bush to sign it, and Bush signed it. And then the Supreme court upheld it.

Now, I bring up all of this to say, it’s a good lesson to remember that what John McCain was trying to fix was the water back then, right? It was, nobody can fix this, don’t go talk about this, nobody will care, you can’t get anything done. And he actually proved you can get things done.

Now, I know the other side of the story would be, well, he got things done. The Supreme court upheld it, and then, later, the Supreme court overturned it. Well, sure. But I think that speaks to the idea that you’re never going to do one thing that fixes the corruption problem in America. There has to be kind of an ongoing vigilance to fighting this fight, and that hasn’t existed for, I think, arguably, since John McCain.

I mean, you could argue [that] Bernie Sanders would bring up Citizens United, sure, and I think that, certainly, anti-corruption was part of Bernie’s campaign. But he wasn’t able to elevate it in a way that John McCain was.

RG: Right. And Citizens United has become a thing that is kind of a toss-off that people say, because the Supreme Court has six Republicans on it who all support Citizens United. And so, I think, dwelling on it probably for too long, for Democrats, probably just makes them realize their powerlessness there.

So, they’ve kind of shifted their focus toward public financing of campaigns, you know? John Sarbanes had his — The voting rights legislation never ended up passing the house. His piece of it, that had a six-to-one match for anything under $250 came reasonably close. It was not as if this was something that 20 Squad and Squad-adjacent members were supporting, it’s something like 200-plus Democrats were cosponsoring this. So, they’ve kind of given up for the time being, it seems like, of crimping the corruption and, instead, saying well, let’s just allow the public to match it

DS: But I would say this: I do think that Citizens United, I mean, yes a movement to overturn Citizens United constitutionally is a worthwhile and valid endeavor. It will take a long time. But I also think that public financing does speak to [how] there are ways to make things better even within the Citizens United paradigm, right?

Like, public financing — not just a matching system, but a true public financing system — I think could change the game in a big way, which would say, listen, there’s a way for you to run for office where you don’t have to rely on money that comes with the expectation of government favors. The fact that we haven’t done this, you understand why. It’s because the people who are voting on whether to do it are the masters of the current privately financed system. They don’t want to change the system.

But the fact is, you mentioned the Sarbanes bill. I mean, public financing passed the U.S. Senate twice in the mid-70s. A version of some public financing passed Congress in the early 1990s by Democrats, and was vetoed by George H.W. Bush.

RG: And it was in law for the presidential races. I mean, it still is.

DS: And it was in law for the presidential races. It still is, technically, but they don’t fund it, yeah.

So, the point is, this is not some crazy pie-in-the-sky insane idea that’s never been reviewed before. And it’s the same thing, by the way, with the most minimal thing that could be done, which is Sheldon Whitehouse’s Disclose Act.

I mean, short of public financing elections where we say, hey, there’s an avenue for you to run for office where you don’t have to just rely on private donors. Short of that, there can at least be legislation — and some states are trying to pass this kind of legislation — which says, listen, people can spend money in elections, but they’ve got to disclose who they are. Like, this era of not just unlimited spending, but unlimited anonymous spending, is insane. That shouldn’t be a controversial idea, even in the slightest. That is literally written into the Citizens United ruling that says the government has the constitutional right to require disclosure.

I mean, Justice Antonin Scalia said in a case subsequently after Citizens United, said, essentially, democracy relies on disclosure, on the idea that people, they can participate in politics, but they have to identify themselves when they participate in politics. Or, at minimum, when they participate at a level of hundreds of millions of dollars, they have to identify themselves. The fact that this hasn’t passed is just completely insane.

My hope is that, when you look at the Congress right now, I mean, are there enough — are there any — Republicans who are willing to participate in reforming those laws? I mean, the Democrats on the Disclose Act, to their credit, I think all of them in the Senate, or at least most of them, have cosponsored Whitehouse’s bill. Kamala Harris, for instance, she could be president, she cosponsored it. Josh Hawley has put a bill out, it’s sort of a message bill, purporting to be opposed to Citizens United. He’s a Republican. Maybe it’s not a real bill but, like, I don’t know. At least one Republican sees some sort of political opportunity or political upside to positioning themselves against the corrupt paradigm that we live in.

So, the question that I come out of, having done this series and reported all this is, look, we know it can be done. We know it was a master plan, we know decisions were made that can be reversed. The question is, what is it going to take to actually reverse them? Where is the next John McCain? Is it even possible to have another John McCain?

Because, Ryan, I think the thing that I end up with — and I don’t want to be a doomer here, because I think a lot of states have done good things, and those are real, and there’s a ballot measure in Maine this year — but one of the things that really bothered me most recently about all this is, in the 2020 campaign that I worked on for Bernie Sanders, Bernie Sanders, one of his surrogates, Zephyr Teachout, the law professor, anticorruption reformer. She published an op-ed in the 2020 election in The Guardian, saying Joe Biden basically is too close with his corporate donors. She made a sort of list, credit card industry donors. I mean, donors that Joe Biden had done a lot of favors for over his legislative career, and said that Joe Biden has a corruption problem. Which was an obvious statement. And Bernie Sanders felt compelled to come out and apologize for his surrogate, essentially, invoking the C word: corruption.

And then you saw, in my view, a similar thing happen a few months ago, when Congresswoman Katie Porter loses her run for the Senate. And she makes a comment that billionaires rigged the election with millions of dollars. Which, they did, right? I mean, crypto billionaires spent a ton of money in that Democratic primary to get the result they wanted, which was the defeat of Katie Porter. And, when Katie Porter said this, it touched off a firestorm of criticism. How dare Katie Porter say this?

Now, part of that was, I guess, people think rigged election, they think Trump, they think election-denying.

RG: Can’t say “rigged.”

DS: Can’t say “rigged.” But my takeaway is, wait a minute, wait a minute. Between Bernie apologizing and Katie Porter being vilified for saying millions of dollars rigs elections, we’re moving into this discourse paradigm. We’re calling out systemic institutionalized corruption that we’ve all gotten used to. Calling it out is the crime, not the corruption itself. Those who say this is wrong, or bad, or even that it exists, these are the problems. That those people should apologize, not the people corrupting the system.

RG: My favorite part, by the way, of the Sarbanes legislation, is that it pays for the public funding out of a pool of collected corporate fines for corporate corruption.

DS: Oh, that’s amazing. That’s amazing. That’s perfect.

RG: Which only seems fair.

So, the podcast is called Master Plan. Where can they find it, besides just searching “Master Plan?”

DS: Yeah, you can go to masterplanpodcast.com, that’s masterplanpodcast.com. When you go there, you can just click any of the buttons to add it to the app you’re listening to. I really think people will like it.

I want to just underscore, there’s a lot in there that I had no idea about. We found all sorts of documents that have never been seen, including my favorite — just to give you a little teaser — the vinyl record that we found that’s never been found before, a vinyl record of Philip Morris and its executives throwing a sendoff party to the Supreme Court for Lewis Powell, a few months after Lewis Powell wrote the Powell Memo. A vinyl record of the party that was emceed by Walter Cronkite.

And here’s one other teaser — this part kind of blows my mind — Lewis Powell writes his memo in 1971, three months later, he gets nominated to the Supreme Court. There’s a Democratic senate, the Democratic senate had just rejected a couple of Nixon’s other Supreme Court nominations. That’s what had sort of opened this place for Powell’s nomination. Powell, unbeknownst to everybody at the time, unbeknownst to me until we found the documents, Powell was a correspondent and, essentially, source for J. Edgar Hoover.

And guess what J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI didn’t turn over to the U.S. Senate when it voted on Lewis Powell’s nomination? They somehow omitted any reference to the Powell Memo. Had there been a reference to that, had senators found that, a Democratic Senate in opposition to Richard Nixon, Lewis Powell might not have been on the Supreme Court. Lewis Powell might not have been on the Court to engineer, as he did, behind the scenes, that early ruling that created the legal foundation for Citizens United. I mean, it really is, like. a butterfly-flaps-its-wings kind of moment.

RG: Great work. Really excited to finish listening to this, enjoyed what I’ve listened to so far. And, also, everybody should be subscribing to The Lever if they’re not already, you guys are doing incredible daily anti-corruption reporting over there as well. Thank you so much for joining me here.

DS: Thanks so much, Ryan. I really appreciate it

RG: Alright, that was David Sirota and that’s our show. Deconstructed is a production of Drop Site. This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. The show is mixed by William Stanton. This episode was transcribed by Leonardo Faierman. Our theme music was composed by Bart Warshaw. And I’m Ryan Grim, cofounder of Drop Site News.

If you haven’t already, please subscribe to Deconstructed wherever you listen to podcasts. And please leave us a rating or a review, it helps people find the show. This program was brought to you in part by a grant from The Intercept.

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On June 28, 2009, democratically elected Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was ousted by a military coup. In response to Zelaya’s push for a poll to gauge public interest in constitutional changes, the Honduran Supreme Court ordered the military to arrest him. He was then sent to Costa Rica in his pajamas.

The coup led to nearly 13 years of right-wing rule, marked by collusion with drug trafficking organizations, widespread privatization, violence, repression, and a significant migrant exodus. During this period, the Honduran left organized a strong resistance movement. In 2022, Xiomara Castro, Zelaya’s wife and a leader of the anti-coup resistance, was elected president, signaling a major shift in the country’s history.

In this episode of Deconstructed, Zelaya sits down for an exclusive interview with journalist José Olivares to discuss the 15th anniversary of the coup, the ensuing resistance movement, the right-wing and drug trafficking organizations’ control, and the U.S. government’s role and influence. Host Ryan Grim and Olivares delve into Zelaya’s interview, recent developments in Honduran history, and present the full Spanish-language interview with Zelaya.

Deconstructed is a production of Drop Site News. This program was brought to you by a grant from The Intercept.

Transcript

Ryan Grim: Welcome back to Deconstructed.

I’m Ryan Grim and, as I mentioned in the last two podcast episodes, Jeremy Scahill and I have left The Intercept, and have launched a new independent news organization with some support from The Intercept called dropsitenews.com.

I’m joined today by former Deconstructed producer José Olivares, who is now working with us over at Drop Site News. He’s going to be talking to me today about a fascinating interview that he was able to land down in Honduras with the former Honduran president, Manuel Zelaya — Who, as some of you may recall, was ousted In a 2009 military coup, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the time immediately recognizing the new military government, or at least recognizing the pathway to keep that military government in power until there were new elections put into place. It is often referred to — and, I think, accurately — as a U.S.-backed coup, though it is still quite murky how much involvement the U.S. itself directly had, and whether it was purely driven by the right-wing in Honduras, which then took power for the next 12 years.

Since then, Zelaya’s wife Xiomara Castro has come back to power on a democratic socialist platform, bringing Zelaya kind of back into the presidential fold. The left in Honduras is still surging and is likely to maintain the presidency in the next election.

Recently in Honduras there was a celebration of the reconquest of power by the left in Honduras 15 years after the coup; it was a ceremony to mark the 15th anniversary of that coup. José Olivares was in Honduras for it, and there he was able to interview former president Zelaya.

So, José, thank you so much for joining us to talk about this interview, and we’re going to play a whole bunch of clips from it.

José Olivares: Awesome, thanks for having me.

RG: So, José, tell us a little bit about this celebration. Why was it held, and who was there?

JO: Right. So, the celebration was held in Tegucigalpa, which is the capital of Honduras, and it was commemorating the 15-year anniversary of the 2009 coup. There were government officials from Cuba, from Venezuela, from Mexico, as well as social activists, trade union activists, trade union leaders, activist leaders from around Latin America, as well from Argentina to Mexico, all over Honduras. And it was organized by the party, by Libre, it was a select social event, but the event really was commemorating the 15-year anniversary of the coup — and not just the anniversary of the coup, but also the years of struggle that the Honduran people were engaged in, in response to the right-wing kind of reaction that came out of the 2009 coup.

I think what’s important to recognize here is that during these 13 years that the right wing was in power, they were fully supported by the U.S. government. There was a lot of repression, a lot of reaction that came from the government. There were killings of activists and land defenders throughout the country. Also, a lot of right-wing neoliberal policies that were put in place. Essentially, the country was sold off; I think, about a year after the coup happened, they even had an event that essentially was saying, hey, all these international companies, come on in, Honduras is for sale. [It] really ended up putting a lot of secretive policies in place, a lot of right-wing privatization policies in place, in tandem with the reaction, with the repression against the activists and the resistance movement.

So, this event, this 15-year anniversary was a really, really fascinating event. I mean, you could really feel the energy when you were walking through the halls of the hotels where the events were held, and even at the event itself, which was commemorated in the space where the resistance movement was organized — you know, the same day that President Zelaya was taken to Costa Rica by the Honduran military. That space, that event, the energy was electric. There were people chanting and yelling, chanting and saying, “they’re never going to return, these coup-plotters, these right-wing coup-plotters, they’re never going to return,” and really just kind of recognizing the sacrifices that the Honduran left was engaged in during these 13 years of struggle before Xiomara Castro was elected in 2021.

RG: Before we get into some more of the interview, he talks to you about the way that narcotraffickers effectively took over significant parts of the state. And so, from an American perspective, I see at least two obvious ways that what the U.S. has been doing to support the kind of right-wing elements of Honduras have directly blown back to the United States. One of them is, of course, with the rise of narcotrafficking there, and then the other is the complete collapse of the Honduran economy, which resulted in surges of migrants streaming north, from Honduras through Mexico, then down to the southern border, and further then kind of polarizing and radicalizing our own politics around immigration.

What was the overall posture that the people there had towards either Democrats, or Republicans, or the U S. government? Do they feel like they have anybody that they can potentially work with? Or do they see themselves in a straight up adversarial situation with the U.S. administration, no matter who’s in power?

JO: I think, publicly, the Libre party very much express that they’re willing to work with the U.S. government. And still, to this day, there still are some links that were established from these 13 years of the right-wing governments with the U.S. government that still continue to this day.

You know, Xiomara Castro has only been in power for two years now, and a lot of what members of Libra say, they say, a lot of these right-wing policies, right-wing links, we’re not able to get rid of them as easily, especially [with] 13 years of right-wing policies and this relationship with the U.S. government. We’re not able to do away with them, just in two years.

And the relationship with the U.S. really does go back for decades, over a century. In the late 1800s, the U.S. government started getting involved in mining, and then, in the 20th century, the U.S. government was getting involved in banana farming and agriculture, and that’s where the term “Banana Republic” comes from, right? That’s what Honduras was called, because, essentially, Honduras was the staging ground, the U.S. government’s main location for their influence in Central America.

After World War II, when the U.S. government is really railing against the threat of communism spreading throughout Latin America, Honduras was the main place, the main location where right-wing paramilitaries were trained, where right wing armies were trained, in order to combat these revolutionary movements, or to fight alongside in these civil wars, to try to root out any sort of leftist opposition that was spreading in Central America.

Honduras was so much of a place where the U.S. government could really just go in and rely on it. Some government officials back in the day even called it “U.S.S. Honduras,” right? It was essentially what they called the country.

So, there’s a long history of the U.S. government being involved in Honduras’ internal affairs. Even though Honduras never really had a revolutionary movement or a civil war, in the 80s there was a dirty war. There was a lot of repression, a lot of funding from the U.S. government, and a lot of repression against left-wing activists, trade unionists, etc., that were either disappeared or killed by the armed forces that were trained by the U.S. government.

So, now we’re looking at the 21st century and, in an interview, you’ll hear Zelaya essentially say, the Democrats and the Republicans, they’re essentially both the same, right? They both serve the same imperialist interests for the transactional companies, just looking out for their own interests. And so, to us, it doesn’t really matter who is in office, whether it’s a Republican president or a Democratic president. Essentially, they both are looking out for U.S. corporate interests and transnational company interests, so they’re going to do whatever they want in order to maintain that power and maintain that hold.

He makes an appeal to the working class in the U.S., essentially, saying, it’s up to you. It’s up to the working class in the U.S. to really put up a struggle and put up a fight against these pro-capitalist, pro-corporates politicians.

RG: I noticed he did say that the one exception to that would be, he’d actually be happy if Bernie Sanders or Noam Chomsky were elected president of the United States. Not much risk of that happening anytime soon, so I think his answer probably stands.

But there’s also an interesting phenomenon that Central and South America have a significant Palestinian population. And so, you asked Manuel Zelaya what the progressive Honduran government’s posture toward the ongoing slaughter in Gaza was, and what did you make of his answer?

And what we’re going to do here, by the way, because the interview was conducted in Spanish, we will post a full English language translation of the interview over at The Intercept, and also over at Drop Site. We’ll go through the questions and answers here. You can highlight some of the most interesting parts of at the end. For listeners who do speak Spanish, we’ll play the entire thing so you can hear Zelaya. It’s a rare interview, and I think it’s a fascinating one, but if you want the English language version, you can pop over to either one of those websites to get it.

So, what did he have to say about the war in Gaza?

JO: I can read some excerpts from his answer. When I asked him about the his perspectives on Palestine, essentially, he condemned the genocide, and he said, “We consider, and Xiomara,” who is his wife, and the current president of Honduras herself, “And Xiomara herself has said that, in international forums, that this is a truly unprecedented fact that in the 21st century, it is incredible that, in the eyes of the world, without respecting international law, by violating all treaties and all concepts about peace and coexistence between nations, and about respecting the United Nations’ resolutions, Israel carries out a ground invasion with tanks, with bombs, with the effects of violence on the civilian population of Palestine. Because when an army fights an army, that is a war. But this is not a war, this is a genocide, because of the extreme brutal response from Israel that is exceeding all limits, even those of the laws of war.”

And then he goes on and continues, and says, “The first condemnation that the Xiomara Castro government made was against the bombing that affected Israel, which caused deaths within Israel. People were killed within Israel.” He’s talking, of course, about the October 7 attacks. That was condemned. That was the government’s first action. “But then the terrible response from Israel is one that totally exceeds any limits and has the world outraged. Do you know who has lost a lot of prestige? The United Nations Security Council. I mean, you see the Security Council of the United Nations, it’s remained simply a rhetorical representation of the interests of the powerful. They’ve not been able to stop this aggression, they’ve not been able to achieve a permanent ceasefire. They have not been able to recognize the two states — the Palestinian and Israeli states — which was one of our main positions.”

And then he goes on to say, “To solve this problem, because the problem must be solved, we cannot live under the crushing boot of fascism which, in this case, is being imposed on the Palestinian people.”

RG: And so, how big a topic was Palestine at the conference?

JO: It was quite big. Most government officials who got up and gave speeches were speaking about it, were denouncing the genocide. There were people walking around wearing keffiyehs. And then, if you exited, and went around to the downtown area and kind of walked around the town a little bit — which we were able to kind of see a little bit — you did see graffiti and spray-painting along the walls, essentially calling for a ceasefire, calling for Israel to stop the genocide.

During this whole process, because of the political context that a lot of Latin America finds itself in, some of the more left-wing officials that were there were also pointing the finger at the U.S. government, at the Biden administration, for arming Israel and for perpetuating the genocide.

So, even though it wasn’t the central question there, obviously it was very much present there during a lot of these conversations and a lot of speeches that were being given at this event.

RG: You mentioned at the top that he said that, in general, Honduran government doesn’t see much difference between Republicans, Democrats. But you asked him about the upcoming election and politics in the United States, and I thought his answer was interesting. It’s interesting to hear how a kind of leftist leader in Central America views our two-party system. Do you mind reading a little bit of that?

JO: Of course. So, he says, “We have no preference in these elections between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party. We believe that, in the end, they act the same. They act in the interest of Wall Street, the military industrial complex, the interest of a global elite that, through capitalism, has already taken over all the assets of wealth: the rivers, the seas, the forests, oil. The world elite manages it all through their speculative financial system. The planet’s main resources of raw economic goods are those that influence the U.S. government.

“So, in the end, you can vote for a democratic president. We would have preferred — we would have wanted Bernie Sanders to be president, for example, or Noam Chomsky to be president, for example — but the people in the U.S., they organize their own parties, and the parties choose their candidates. So, that’s important to point out.

“And we would like the North American people first to make clear that the U.S. government should not be an aggressor empire against other societies, regardless of who takes office. The North American people should make clear that the U.S. should not have intelligence agencies planning coups or interfere in other countries, and that should be clear. That we must at least respect — and listen carefully — the planet, so that we all have air, to ensure that climate change does not continue to be as aggressive as it is now.”

And then he goes on to say, “What people want is to eat, what people want is to be clothed, to quench their thirst, to have a roof over their heads, and shelter, and warmth. What kind of a crime is that for human beings? And to think that the great powers, once they solve their problems, they forget about the suffering in Africa, in Latin America, and in many countries in Asia, as well.”

Then he goes on to say, “So, we must demand humanity in the face of the world order. And the United States is co-responsible for the current world order. Therefore, we must call on them, the American people, to reflect on that.”

RG: Yeah. So, you can see in that answer, I think, both why the Honduran people elected him president and, also, why he was couped as president. And you asked him about that coup 15 years ago, and he gave a rather, I thought, striking answer that still resonates quite deeply with him.

Why did he get couped out of office? And what had he been able to accomplish before that happened?

JO: So, Zelaya is a really fascinating character in Honduran history, he’s a bit of a contradictory character as well. When he was elected in 2005 — he entered office in 2006 — but he kind of came in and he would campaign on this almost center-right campaign, a very liberal politician. But, once he was in office, he began shifting to the left.

Now, he wasn’t calling for the nationalization of industries or anything like that, but he did raise the minimum wage, he did implement some modest land reform. Extreme poverty, he did kind of reduce a little bit. But what really upset the right-wing in Honduras and the U.S. government was that he joined ALBA, which is the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America, which is a trade and intergovernmental organization that was organized and founded by Cuba and by Venezuela. So, the fact that he was growing closer to Cuba and Venezuela and that he was putting forward some modest reforms really started shaking up the political situation in Honduras.

In 2009, we had elections in Honduras — or elections were slated to take place — and in the Honduran constitution, which was written in 1982; again, going back to 1982, this constitution was written partly with the help of the U.S. government. It is a pretty right-wing, pro-military constitution that was written amid this context of military disappearances, killing left-wing activists, etc.

In the lead up to the 2009 elections —presidents were only, at the time, allowed to run, to be in office for one term — the 2009 elections, Zelaya started considering and started listening to calls for establishing a constituent assembly which would rewrite the 1982 constitution, but he began receiving some pushback from the right. So, what he did is, in early/mid-2009, he proposed, let’s have a poll. A poll that would say whether the Honduran people wanted to include a referendum or a new ballot measure in the 2009 fall elections. And then, that ballot measure would be to see if people wanted a constituent assembly to write a new constitution.

So, it was several steps away from actually writing a new constitution. He wouldn’t be the president of Honduras when that new constitution was written but, because he was pushing for this constituent assembly, the U.S. government and the right-wing in Honduras, they accused him of trying to write a new constitution so that he could consolidate his power and stay in office, and be able to be reelected in those 2009 elections, which logistically [just] wasn’t true, right?

RG: Right. It’s hard to see how you could do both of those at once.

JO: Exactly. Exactly. He forcibly tried to push forward the poll for Hondurans to vote to see whether they wanted this ballot measure in the elections later that year. And, on the morning of that poll when that poll was supposed to be introduced, military officers stormed into the presidential palace. They arrested him while he was still in his pajamas, they put him on a plane, and they sent him to Costa Rica while still in his pajamas.

Now, at this time, the U.S. government was slow to denounce the coup, but the Organization of American States, the United Nations, they very much denounced the coup, and said, this is not allowed, Zelaya needs to come back into office. And then, the Obama administration finally said, OK, well, this coup is not right.

But, behind the scenes, they were working with the coup-plotters and the right-wing opposition that organized the coup to make way for the 2009 fall elections, so that the question of Zelaya’s coup would just be moot, right? And this is something that is not just speculated, but this is something that Hillary Clinton — who was Secretary of State at the time — she writes about it in her autobiography, “Hard Choices.” She talks about how they were really trying to make way for those fall 2009 elections so that the coup would just be a moot point. And then they have this veneer of, oh, we’re going back to democracy, we had these elections, we’re good to go.

In 2009, the elections take place, the fall elections take place, and a right-wing president, Porfirio Lobo, was elected. He took office in January 2010, and then the right-wing reaction came.

So, when I asked Zelaya about the coup, he gave almost a bit of an emotional response, right? I mean, it’s been 15 years since the coup but, obviously, it’s very much present, it’s front of mind. He’s asked about it almost everywhere that he goes; not just by journalists, but also by his friends, by his family members.

And then, this is what he said to me, he said, “A coup is violent; well, the way that it was here in Honduras was violent. Because this was not a soft coup, it was a military coup d’état. The human heart hurts so much and bleeds so much that many decades will pass and people will continue to talk about it. For me, logically, my heart breaks talking about the topic, because there’s pain, there’s suffering, there’s tragedy, and I never thought that in the 21st century — and in Honduras, which is a neighboring country to the United States — they could plan an attack to break the country’s institutions.”

Then he goes on to say, “A coup is a war. It is a breaking of a social contract. It is the breaking of the established order for the coup-plotters to prevail. And you see in Honduras who prevailed: the elites that already existed. But they became organized, and it was organized into a mafia. They became gangsters, they destroyed the state’s finances.”

Then he goes on to say, “Those governments enriched themselves. They plundered, they stripped the country of its wealth. That was the result of the coup. Who benefited? The transnational companies, the elites. So now,” and then he goes on to talk about his wife Xiomara Castro’s presidency, “So, now a progressive government has arrived, a democratic socialist government. We have found that the elite is protected by constitutional laws, by free trade agreements, they’re protected by everything. So we have a bourgeois state facing demands from a democratic socialist state. That’s what we have here. That is the result, the disastrous result, of a blow to the heart of the Honduran people. Shameless murderers, reactionaries whose crimes have still gone unpunished.

“Here, the coup-plotters don’t even get a traffic ticket, not even a slap on the wrist. Instead, they’re offered political parties, as if they are a democratic option. It’s so absurd, the Honduran rights, which put the generals in office who carried out the coup, proclaimed themselves to be a democratic alternative. Those who murdered, those who looted, are democratic alternatives. It’s totally absurd.

“But that is what I can tell you in a few words about the tragedy that we experienced, something that Xiomara, with her popularity, with Libre, with the resistance reversed. But the body of the dictatorship continues to be here. It is alive. As they say, ‘The head of the dictatorship may be gone, but his body, with death rattles, is still kicking and shooting.’”

RG: So — and we’ve covered this here before — what policies the right-wing government was able to put into place, and the way that they were kind of able to link them to treaties, particularly with the United States, has left their dead hand still hanging over the new democratic socialist government in Honduras? That, even though it has a mandate from the people, it’s difficult for them to accomplish as much as they would be able to otherwise.

And what’s so remarkable — and people would think we were making this up if they haven’t been following this closely — is that the president that wound up eventually getting into office, he was president of the National Assembly when Lobo was first elected and then became president, Juan Orlando Hernández, is now sitting in federal prison in the United States for his role in narcotrafficking. A role that you asked Zelaya about, because we now know, because the U.S. prosecutors have said so and have admitted publicly, that the United States had knowledge of his role in drug trafficking, going back many, many years.

So, what was your conversation about Juan Orlando Hernández like with Zelaya?

JO: You know, the question of Juan Orlando Hernández is one that continues to kind of linger, and it was very much present there in this event in Honduras. The day before, the day that we were all flying into Honduras for this event, he was sentenced in a New York federal court to 45 years in prison for drug trafficking.

Going back to 2013 when Orlando was elected, he was elected under questionable circumstances. I mean, there were a lot of allegations that that the elections were fraudulent. And then, once he was in office, he continued the far-right policies, the privatization policies, but he continued to consolidate power to an even more extreme degree.

He had his own police force and he engaged in intense repression, but he was also able to consolidate power within the government. He was able to restructure the supreme court and put his own friendly Supreme Court justices in power. And then, what he did, which is a very hypocritical move, in 2016, he was able to change the constitution to allow him to run again.

RG: Isn’t that nice? Gee, I thought that was the whole thing that the U.S. and the Honduran right were so concerned about with Zelaya.

JO: Exactly.

RG: How nice.

JO: How nice, how nice. Yeah.

So, in 2017, he runs again for office, he moves the non-reelection clause from the constitution, and then he wins, right? But these 2017 elections—

RG: And “wins” is in quotes. Right.

JO: They were extremely, extremely difficult. What was interesting is, the day that the election was taking place, the computer systems were showing that the opposition candidates — who were linked to Xiomara Castro and Zelaya — they were in the lead, they were slated to win. But then, mysteriously, the computer system shut down. Then, when the computers come back up, Juan Orlando Hernández is in the lead.

RG: The words that news outlets use for the election is “marred by irregularities.”

JO: Marred by irregularities.

RG: Ah, well, nevertheless.

JO: Nevertheless, reelected.

But what is interesting is that, days after the election, the United States’ State Department, they came out and they said, you know, we respect the elections, we recognize Hernández’s election. He wins. Please stop the demonstrations.

RG: And this was the Trump administration, which was really feeling its oats when it came to boosting the right throughout Latin America.

So, for all the folks who say that, hey, “Trump may be awful but, at least he’s kind of non-interventionist and isolationist around the world,” certainly, that was not the case for the Trump administration in Central and South America, where they did a lot to intervene in the politics of most of those Latin American countries to elevate the right.

JO: Absolutely. And so, after the state department, they say, we respect the elections, we recognize Hernández’s election, years later, when Orlando Hernández is extradited to the U.S. for drug trafficking — this was a couple of years after his brother was convicted of drug trafficking — and then the United States justice department years later say that the 2017 elections were fraudulent.

And, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to read an excerpt from one of the filings from the Justice Department. This is what the U. S. prosecutors from the Justice Department write in one of their documents, they say: “In 2017 during Juan Orlando’s reelection campaign, Juan Orlando’s drug trafficking coconspirators again provided millions of dollars of drug money to Juan Orlando’s campaign, to ensure that Juan Orlando would remain in power, and their massive cocaine operation would remain protected, just like in 2013, Juan Orlando used that drug money to bribe election officials and manipulate the vote count to fraudulently win the election, including by shutting down the computer system of the agency responsible for counting votes.”

So, this is an election that the U.S. State Department said they respected, that they recognized. And then, years later, the Justice Department comes out and says, no, these elections were fraudulent, Hernández’s win was due to drug trafficking money and corruption.

RG: And not that many years later, we still talk a lot about the open questions about the U.S. government role in drug trafficking in the 1980s, and supporting governments that were linked with drug trafficking, or supporting rebel groups that were linked with drug trafficking. Here we are in 2017, with the U.S. administration basically solidifying an obviously stolen election that puts into power or reelects a narco-president.

So, just to underscore, we’re not talking about ancient times here.

JO: Yeah, this was very, very recent. I mean, 2017. And, obviously, the effects of it are still being felt today in Honduras.

And I asked Zelaya about the 45-year sentence that Orlando Hernández received — you know, he was convicted, and then he was sentenced to 45 years in prison — and I asked him, because I said, you know, in one of these Justice Department documents, prosecutors claim that Juan Orlando Hernández was receiving bribes from organized crime since back in 2005, but the U.S. still continues to support Hernández. And I asked him what the role of the U.S. in Latin America was, with this context. And this is what he answered.

He said, “History always repeats itself if conditions don’t change.” And then he goes on to say, “How did they get here? How did drug trafficking enter? Noriega, for example was a CIA collaborator.”

Noriega was the dictator of Panama, who was a CIA asset. Later, he was trafficking tons and tons and tons of cocaine through Central America. But he says, “Noriega, for example, was a CIA collaborator. And then the United States — after they were Noriega’s main ally — brought in 20,000, 30,000 Marines, helicopters, and they overthrew the government and tried him.”

“Then he goes on to say, “So, who understands them? That’s why I’m telling you, who understands these North American policies? Juan Orlando was their main ally, but not since 2005; according to these investigations by the DEA, the Hernández cartel begins in 2002.” Then he goes on to say, “And there are reports that the DEA itself has published where the drug traffickers say that, and they’ve said this in their statements. I don’t have to believe them. Why believe them? But they’ve clearly stated that they financed my overthrow, and that they gave money to my adversaries to contribute to my overthrow.

“Because they didn’t let me finish my presidency; I had seven months left. And when the national party takes power, they made a statement there in that trial in New York saying, ‘we will never again leave power,’ and they practically swear an oath. So, of course, perhaps what your underlying question is, a cartel was formed. Not just bribes, but they formed a cartel within the state itself. And they remained in power for 12 years and seven months until the people united. They consciously, responsibly, placed Xiomara — a leader who emerges from the resistance — and makes her president.”

Then he goes on to say, “I should say he was convicted, but the sentence downplays his conviction. Because he was convicted for three crimes, and the prosecution asked for the maximum sentence for those crimes, and he was given the minimum sentence for those crimes. For me, I mean, as politicians, we’re not worried about that. Absolutely not at all. Because we believe that justice should be applied in our countries.”

Then he goes on to say something interesting. He says, “As a politician, I’ve said it before, we’re not worried about Juan Orlando being punished. I want them to take more time away from his sentence, so that he can return to Honduras soon, and we can defeat him again in the polls. Because the people no longer want that type of sickly, harsh sectarianism, of dictatorship, of repression, that has subjected Honduras to 12 years and seven months of dictatorship. The people no longer want it, so we’re not worried.”

RG: So, there you have one more moment of the way that the Latin American right, the U.S. government, and drug trafficking, just have gone hand in hand, policy-wise. And then, we wonder later, why do we have this drug problem and why do we have this migration problem? Never once wondering, well, maybe it has something to do with the constant destabilization and allying with narcotraffickers that we’ve done.

Now, obviously, the critics of the left throughout Latin America will say, it’s not just the right that traffics and drugs. And that’s certainly true, and there have certainly been some left-wing organizations, particularly in Colombia, who evolved, basically, into narcotraffickers.

What’s your overall analysis of how the narcotraffickers fit politically into the political economy of Latin America?

JO: That’s an excellent question. And I think we have to recognize that, yes, of course. Especially in Colombia, we see the FARC, right? The Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, right? This left-wing guerrilla movement that kind of began in the ’60s.

When the DEA and when the U.S. government and the Colombian military took out the major cartels in the ’90s in Colombia, there was a vacuum, and the demand for cocaine still was high. And who filled that vacuum? Well, the FARC, and the right-wing paramilitaries, right? And so, it’s an extremely profitable venture, it’s an extremely profitable business, and that’s how the FARC was able to finance a lot of their operations, was through drug trafficking.

But I think what’s important here is that these organized crime groups and cartels, they behave like businesses, right? And so, they’ll work with whichever politician is going to help them, regardless of political party, right? If we see the history of drug trafficking throughout Southern America, Central America, and Mexico, we see how drug traffickers were collaborating with the military, regardless of political party, with federal police, regardless of political party. And, essentially, they act like businesses. They have their own lawyers, their own lobbyists, etc., that are able to kind of work with politicians in order to finance their own operations, and just make as much money as possible, right?

And I think that’s an important context, that’s an important way of thinking about narcotrafficking, is that this is a business, you know? And, like every business within the capitalist system, they’re going to be appealing to certain politicians, it doesn’t matter if they’re right-wing or left-wing, in order to just try to make as much money as possible, as any business would within a capitalist economy.

RG: And, finally, you asked him about what his sense was about the kind of political direction of Latin America. You’ve always got Javier Milei with his upset in Argentina, the eccentric libertarian. But then you have the left holding on to power and maintaining dominance, really, in Mexico, Gustavo Petro in Colombia.

And it led to some flowing, flowery rhetoric, that was actually, I thought, pretty impressive at times. We don’t need to go through the whole thing; he gets into Hegel and Jose Marti, and you can check that out over at either The Intercept or Drop Site, if you want to read that.

But there was a fun part that he ended with that involved Mike Tyson. Was curious if you’d be able to read that.

JO: Yes, of course. He says, “Look, I’ve always placed a lot of trust in people’s common sense. You may have an illiterate person who is unable to read or write, but he will have a greater sense of justice than the most intellectually developed person. He has more of a sense of power. Power is a human instinct. Power is like food. People can be peasants and know what power is for, and how power is used. That is something in a person’s mind. Power, will, justice, and the most sacred thing: freedom.

“But it’s not the freedom of Mike Tyson, and I admire Mike Tyson. It’s not the freedom of a boxer like Mike Tyson, who gets in the ring and challenges you, and you know he’s going to kill you with one punch. That’s not the type of freedom I’m talking about, that we are all equal. We are all equal according to our capabilities and according to our needs. To create fair governments in a better world, that is still possible. We have not lost our faith. And I think that’s what keeps us standing.”

RG: Any final thoughts on President Zelaya? What did you make of him as a person?

JO: Yeah, I thought it was a really interesting interview. I was kind of nervous. You know, he’s, I want to say, maybe six-two and six-six? He’s a very tall, towering figure, with this kind of booming voice, and this very thick mustache. And he walks very slowly, and he has just this presence around him. And maybe it was the context — you know, he was surrounded by his supporters, etc., that was really interesting — but he was kind of a bit of an intimidating figure. But he was very relaxed, very calm. He came in, and he was eating an empanada. I think we had kind of taken him from his lunch when he came in to do this interview — but he did express a lot of hope in the people. In the power of the people. And a lot of hope, obviously, in his wife’s government.

What’s important to mention is that Xiomara Castro’s government is not quite perfect, right? There are still a lot of links and a lot of training from the U.S. government that is flowing into the armed forces in Honduras. And, you know, you ask Hondurans and you ask people within the Libre party, you say, “hey, what about some of these policies? Or what about some of the criticisms?”

There’s a lot of criticism coming from land defenders and from indigenous groups throughout the country, saying that not enough has been done in order to protect them, in order to protect their lands. And you ask members of the Libre party, what do you make of these criticisms? And they say, well, it was 13 years of a narco-dictatorship, is what they say. We’re not going to solve the damage that was done within those 13 years in only two years of Xiomara Castro being in office, right?

There are elections coming up next year, so we’ll see how those go.

RG: And she’s back to not being able to run. How did that happen?

JO: That’s a good question, that’s a good question. We’ll have to ask the Juan Orlando Supreme Court about that.

RG: Term limits for the left, but not for the right, is the basic policy, it seems like.

JO: Exactly, that’s exactly it. What’s interesting is that her government, they have put forward also some modest reforms. You know, they’re not nationalizing industries or nationalizing land or anything like that, they’re putting forward some modest reforms.

But what’s interesting to see is that — and they highlight highlighted this during the 15-years commemorative event — a lot of members of her cabinet were activists, and they’re very young people who were active during the resistance movement after the 2009 coup. And they put up this video where it shows young student leaders and activists getting beaten by the police. And then, right next to it, they show an image of that same student leader, who is now the secretary of immigration, for example, or different cabinet positions.

So, it’s really interesting. It’s a very young government, who are literally young. I mean, they’re very young people who are in the cabinet. And I think they’re still trying to get their bearings and figure out what to do after 13 years of this right-wing reactionary period.

RG: All right. Well, thank you so much for that, Jose. I wish I could have been there, but glad that you could make it, and thanks for doing this for us.

JO: Yeah, thanks so much, Ryan. And next time we’ll be in Honduras together.

RG: All right. And then, here is Jose’s entire interview, unedited in Spanish, with former president Manuel Zelaya.

Translated Interview with Manuel Zelaya

José Olivares: Thank you very much. Well, to start — you have spoken publicly about the conflict in Palestine, with the war that continues today in Gaza.

There are almost 40,000 dead in Israel’s war. There are people who say it is a genocide against the Palestinians. Can you give us your opinion on how Hondurans see this conflict, and how the international community should respond to this conflict, and the massacre we are seeing in Palestine?

Manuel Zelaya: Look in Honduras, a large part of the ruling class was originally from Palestine. So you have to imagine that there is discomfort, even among the Honduran elite, about the crimes that Israel’s military invasion is causing within Palestine.

We consider, and Xiomara herself has said this in international forums, that it is truly an unprecedented fact in the 21st century, it is incredible that, in the eyes of the world, without respecting international law, by violating all treaties and all concepts about peace and coexistence between nations and about respecting the United Nations’ resolutions, Israel carries out a ground invasion, with tanks with bombs with the effects of violence on the civilian population of Palestine. Because, when an army fights against an army, that is a war. But this is not a war. That is a genocide, because the extreme brutal response from Israel exceeded all limits, even of those of the laws of war.

We have strongly condemned it. We believe that Palestinian children, young people, women, the elderly, should be treated responsibly, in the way— Look, the blockade against the Gaza Strip has already exceeded the limits of the global community’s humane consciousness. It stretches decades, it is a prolonged blockade, the one at the Gaza Strip. And now with this terrible aggression, solidarity with Palestine, from different sectors and different countries, is immense.

We have condemned terrorism. We condemn terrorism of any form, because terrorism violates all types of legal rules and social agreements. However, we are not limited to only condemning terrorism. The first condemnation that the Xiomara [Castro] government made, was against the bombing that affected Israel, which caused deaths within Israel, people were killed inside Israel. That was condemned — that was the government’s first action. But then the terrible response from Israel is one that totally exceeds any limit, and has the world outraged.

Do you know who has lost a lot of prestige? The United Nations Security Council. I mean, you see the Security Council of the United Nations; it has remained simply a rhetorical representation for the interests of the powerful. They have not been able to stop this aggression. They have not been able to achieve a permanent ceasefire. They have not been able to recognize the two states, the Palestinian and the Israeli states — that was one of our main positions.

So, not only are the people of Palestine directly affected, but also our entire global conscience. It is affected by this type of aggression, and the United Nations Security Council has been terribly discredited by its inability— Well, not even to respond to the resolutions of the assembly, because there have already been more than, I think, three resolutions of the assembly to demand a ceasefire. And that’s where the collateral effects come from, because the bombing leads to displaced people, it produces orphans, it produces widows, it produces abandoned people, children who are being raised in shelters, who are in camps, who do not have enough food. There is also a humanitarian tragedy there.

And where is the world’s conscience? Where is the conscience of Europe, the conscience of civilized countries? The conscience of the American people? I have seen that they have protested, but to solve the problem — because the problem must be solved — we cannot live under the crushing boot of fascism, which, in this case, is imposed on the Palestinian people.

JO: Thank you very much, President. The U.S. elections are coming this year. Polls indicate that Trump may return to the presidency. What do you think of the upcoming elections? What do you think of what we are seeing right now, in the country with the most powerful army in the world? What do you think about what’s coming this year?

MZ: Well, we believe in the democratic system, and we believe that elections are an instrument — they are not the end-all-be-all of democracy. Democracy is the power of the people. People have the power. And the people should have a holistic vision, beyond elections. I hope the people start practicing the concept of plural, solidarity-driven, humane democracy in the United States, with whichever government is in power.

We have no preference in these elections, between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party — we believe that, in the end, they act the same. They act in the interest of Wall Street, the military industrial complex, the interest of a global elite that, through capitalism, has already taken over all the assets of wealth: the rivers, the seas, the forests, oil — the world elite manages it all through the speculative financial system. The planet’s main resources, of raw economic goods, are those that influence the United States’ government.

So, in the end, you can vote for a Democratic president. We would have wanted Bernie Sanders to be president, for example, or Noam Chomsky to be president, for example. But the people, in the U.S., organize their parties, and the parties choose their candidates.

So that is important to point out, and we would like the North American people, first, to make clear that the United States should not be an aggressor empire against other societies, regardless of who takes office. [The North American people should make clear] that the United States should not have intelligence agencies planning coups, or interfere in our countries, and that that should be clear, that we must at least respect — listen carefully — the planet, so that we all have air; to ensure that climate change does not be as aggressive as it is now.

First of all, we should agree with the United States on that. The second thing is in the concept of humanism, because people don’t ask for much. What people want is to eat. What people want is to be clothed, to quench their thirst, to have a roof over their heads, and shelter and warmth. What kind of a crime is that, for human beings? And to think that the great powers, once they solve their problems, forget about the suffering in Africa, in Latin America, and in many countries in Asia as well.

So, we must demand humanity, in the face of the world order. And the United States is co-responsible for the current world order. Therefore, we must call on them (the American people) to reflect on that.

JO: Fifteen years ago, the Honduran military launched a coup here in Honduras. Soldiers entered your bedroom. They took you, while you were in your pajamas, to a military base, then to Costa Rica.

Tell us a little about what happened in that coup d’état, how the Honduran people responded to the coup, and what has happened in these last 15 years.

MZ: Look, it’s really been 15 years, as you say, and every day, that question arises. Not only from journalists, but in my house, during our after-dinner conversations, during meals, when we go out on the street with the people. That question is a constant.

A coup d’état is violent — well, the way it was here in Honduras — because this was not a soft coup. It was a military coup d’état. The human heart hurts so much and bleeds so much, that many decades will pass, and people will continue to talk about it. For me, logically, my heart breaks talking about that topic, because there is pain, there is suffering, there is tragedy. And I never thought that in the 21st century and in Honduras, which is a neighboring country to the United States — Did you know that in an hour and fifteen minutes, you can be in Miami? — they could plan an attack to break the country’s institutions.

When you break with institutions, what you do is throw out the social contract, and return to a rule by force. Because [in a social contract], by living under institutions, humans relinquish the use of force to defend ourselves. So, with these institutions, you forfeit your right [of using force] and say: well, now you defend me, and I subject to you. But when you destroy institutions that are supposed to be the “rule of law,” when you destroy the structure of the state — which they call a coup d’état — when one of those powers falls, then the people, citizens, everyone — including business owners — are left defenseless, they are subject to whoever has the most— There’s a Sandinista expression, because “pinol” is used a lot in Nicaragua: “He with the biggest throat, swallows more pinol.” That’s what awaits when the force arrives. And brute force, eh?

Well, the history of humanity — if you study the history of humanity — the history of humanity is the history of war. And the history of war is the history of religious conflicts and of conflict for the nationhood, for land, for goods.

Now they fight for other resources: for technology, for oil, but it is the same history. A coup is a war, it is the breaking of a social contract. It is the breaking of the established order, for them [coup plotters] to prevail. And you see in Honduras who prevailed: the elite, that already existed, became organized. And it was organized into a mafia. They became gangsters. They destroyed the state’s finances. They created 80 government entities in different bank trusts — 80 small governments. They destroyed the single treasury account, which is a reserve. In the constitution, there is a law that no state income can go to different sources, but rather to a single treasury account, and then the state distributes from there. They made 80 unique boxes, and, paradoxically enough, 80 governments.

And those governments enriched themselves. They plundered, they stripped the country of its wealth. That was the result of the coup. Who benefited? The transnational companies, the elite. Exonerations, concessions — the rivers, the sea, forests — they have it all. So now, a progressive government has arrived, a democratic socialist government, and we have found that the elite is protected by constitutional laws, by free trade agreements. They are protected by everything.

So, we have a bourgeois state facing demands from a democratic socialist state. That’s what we have here. That is the result —the disastrous result — of a blow to the heart of the Honduran people. Shameless murderers, reactionaries, whose crimes have still gone unpunished.

Here, the coup plotters don’t even get a traffic ticket — not even a slap on the wrist. Instead, they are offered political parties as if they are a democratic option. It is so absurd: the Honduran right, which put the generals in office who carried out the coup, proclaim themselves to be a democratic alternative. Those who murdered, those who looted, are democratic alternatives — totally absurd.

But that is what I can tell you, in a few words, about the tragedy that we experienced — something that Xiomara, with her popularity, with Libre, with the resistance, reversed. But the body of the dictatorship continues to be here. It is alive. As they say, the head of the dictatorship may be gone. But his body, with death rattles, is still kicking and shooting.

JO: Thank you so much. This week, a federal court in the United States sentenced Juan Orlando Hernández to 45 years in prison. In a document that I reviewed, U.S. prosecutors stated that Juan Orlando Hernández was receiving bribes from organized crime since back in 2005. Regardless, the United States supported the Juan Orlando Hernández government.

What does this tell us about the role of the United States in Latin America, in our countries, and during this period of — as Honduran companions here call it — the “narco-dictatorship?”

MZ:  History always repeats itself if conditions don’t change.

What happened, for example in ’54 with the invasion — listen to me, it was launched from here, in Honduras — to overthrow Jacobo Arbenz, because he had started an agrarian process in Guatemala? 1954. The CIA directs — those are public documents, you can see them in all the archives, on the entire internet or on Wikileaks, they are public documents.

The CIA planned a coup against Jacob Arbenz. A reformer, military man. Reformist because at that time, when that wave came — listen to me — ’54 was before the Cuban revolution. And before the Cuban revolution, before Jacobo Arbenz, a Nicaraguan military sergeant had already been protesting. Protesting against imperialism, protesting against the invasion of Nicaragua, protesting against the oppression by the system. That was Augusto Cesar Sandino. And listen closely — that was in the first half of the 20th century. There was already the example of the Bolshevik Revolution. The October revolution, of the Soviet Union, had already taken place. And there were demonstrations, rebellions, protests in all countries. It was a very dark, very terrible time that I remember that in Argentina they trained the military to apply the national security doctrine. They instigated the types of situations, that in all honesty, generated an entire process that we can’t ignore, just as we cannot ignore what has been happening in Honduras, with the repercussions that this process has had.

You told me that — in this question, there was a detail that caught my attention. What happened, what were you telling me in this question?

JO: That since 2005, U.S. prosecutors—

MZ: How did they get here? How did drug trafficking enter?

Noriega, for example, was a CIA collaborator. And then, the United States, after Noriega’s main ally, brought in 20,000, 30,000 marines, helicopters, and they overthrew the government, and tried him. He spent 20 years in a prison in Miami, then another year, a couple of years in France, and then they sent him to die in Panama. They sent him the last year of his life, just so he could die in Panama. And he was convicted of drug trafficking. Pay attention, I’m only giving you general information. But you asked me something specific.

Here in the, in the first years of this century, in the, more or less, in the second decade of the 21st century, a Honduran Air Force general shot down two unidentified planes that carried drugs. They sanctioned and fired him, precisely at the request of the United States, because they said that two infiltrated DEA agents were there. And the general was violently removed. No, not with weapons and not as an impeachment, but it was a violent action, performed through a resolution.

So, who understands them? That’s why I’m telling you — who understands these North American policies? Juan Orlando was their main ally. Not since 2005. According to these investigations by the DEA, the Hernández cartel begins in 2002, when— Look, I’m going to give you the facts.

Ricardo Maduro from the National Party won the election, following the government of Carlos Flores from the Liberal Party. And the president of Congress started a political campaign, and his congressional secretary, and his campaign coordinator, is Juan Orlando. Essentially, I am going to specify that— If Flores enters in ’97 in ’98, ’99— OK, Ricardo Maduro’s government is here. And according to the DEA, that’s where the cartel begins to form. Of course, when Juan Orlando is the congressional secretary.

That time is when I also began my political fight for the presidency, during the government of Ricardo Maduro. Then, I replaced Ricardo Maduro. I replaced him as President of the republic. And there are the reports that the DEA itself has published, where the drug traffickers say that — they have specifically said it in their statements – I don’t have to believe them, why believe them? But they have clearly stated that they financed my overthrow. And that they gave money to my adversaries to contribute to my overthrow. Because they didn’t let me finish my presidency, I had seven months left. And when the National Party takes power — they made a statement there, in that trial in New York, saying: “We will never again leave power.” And they practically swear an oath.

So, of course, perhaps what your underlying question is: A cartel was formed. Not just bribes. They formed a cartel within the state itself. But there is an interruption for the cartel: They are in government, they lose the elections, and from there they overthrow me, and then they take over again. And they remained in power for 12 years and seven months until the people, united they consciously, responsibly, placed Xiomara — a leader who emerges from the resistance — and made her president. So yes, it began a little further back than 2005. It was a process.

Today, the United States, which supported them the most — the ones who supported the execution of electoral fraud, the ones that remained silent — the State Department, never made a statement regarding human rights, against an allied government like [Juan Orlando’s]. Simply because the Honduran government supported Juan Guaidó. If this Honduran government supported Juan Guaidó — who is a spurious president; who is not a president, he emerged from the street and proclaimed himself the only president. So, the United States did not touch the government. Under this concept, Honduras did suffer a blow to its economy, to its public finances. Debt, misery, poverty, violence and, therefore, corruption, increased. How can you judge the behavior of the United States with this sentence?

I should say — he was convicted, but the sentence downplays his conviction. Because he was convicted for three crimes, and the prosecution asked for the maximum sentence for those crimes — and he was given the minimum sentence for the crimes. For me, I mean, as politicians, we are not worried about that, absolutely not at all. Because we believe that justice should be applied in our countries. We shouldn’t try to influence the American justice system, in any way. They have their own way of acting.

They recently freed General Cienfuegos, from Mexico. They arrested him, then the State Department released a statement and the prosecutor’s office withdrew the accusations and said our relationship with a brother country like Mexico is more important than capturing General Cienfuegos. So there is your general. And they returned him to them. So, what is our perspective, at these heights, as Honduras, a small country, which is not nearly the size of a small city in the United States? What is our perspective? We see that there are agreements that allow this, according to the laws of the United States, negotiations. And that is, as a politician, I said it before, we are not worried about Juan Orlando being punished. I want them to take more time away from his sentence, so that he can return to Honduras, soon, and defeat him again at the polls. Because the people no longer want that type of sickly, harsh sectarianism, of dictatorship, of repression, that has subjected Honduras to 12 years and seven months of dictatorship. The people no longer want it. So we are not worried.

And now they sentenced him to 45 years. I already said that the sooner they bring him back, the sooner the United States, itself, will realize that there is a people here, empowered by their independence and their sovereignty, who are willing to seek compromises, because we are peaceful. We do not carry out clandestine or subversive acts, nor do we use weapons, much less do we use terrorist activities. We are a peaceful people who want to defend ourselves at the polls, but we want the United States to respect us, just as we have to respect them.

JO: Thank you so much. Can we do one more? One last question?

MZ: Yes Yes.

JO: Well, this year, in 2024, Latin America is a state of many contradictions: We have several progressive presidents in Latin America — Gustavo Petro in Colombia, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the election of Claudia Scheinbaum in Mexico — several countries with progressive leaders. But we also have the threat from the right: Javier Millei in Argentina, perhaps Trump’s return to the presidency in the United States. And, at the same time, there is also the power of multinational companies, and the threat of American imperialism.

What is your perspective, personally, about the future of Honduras, the future of Latin America? How do you see the future of our countries?

MZ: One thing is to have hope. And another thing are the challenges you have to confront, in order to not lose hope. We have faith in ourselves, in humanity. One honest person can save many others who could be destroyed. That’s biblical. When the Lord in the Bible appears to the one who asks him to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah and says:‘Look, these cities are rotten, there is corruption here, there is selfishness, vanity; you must destroy Sodom and Gomorrah.

And is there anyone honest?’ The man asks him. ‘Is there anyone?

Yes, there is one.

Well, that’s why the others should be saved. That’s why I shouldn’t destroy it, then. 

There are honest people in the world —  there are honest people, who have hope to find solutions.

We are not concerned about the coming and going of history, which swings to the right then left. People react based to the type of government, or circumstances, that afflict them. When progressive parties govern and continue to maintain the neoliberal model, then people go against the progressive party and get rid of them at the polls and remove them.

Now, when you have parties, mind you, from the right, as in this case — you are mentioning to me the various right-wing phenomena that exist in Europe and here; the emergence of fascism is evident. But those parties come to power, and what do they do? Instead of giving the people what belongs to the people, instead of respecting Lincoln’s great slogan that democracy should prevail on this earth, what does the right do? They worsen their extreme measures of exploitation and cruelty of the people, of the working class.

Then the people take them down again. So it is a dialectical cycle, as Hegel said; there is the idea that contradicts the other idea [thesis and antithesis]. And, as José Martí said: “the trenches of ideas are stronger than the trenches of weapons.” So, we don’t have to be afraid of what is happening. Those of us who believe that we must defend justice, and the integrity of people — to not let them die, and to alleviate suffering, give them the greatest degree of happiness — we believe in that. Every day we are stronger, because our martyrs fuel our forces. If someone is able to sacrifice themselves and give their life, then why can’t I do it? We are only in the world temporarily.

Other generations will raise those flags, and they will do it with closed fists; a sign that their collective consciousness will strengthen. Life is an accident. You must give it meaning, and the meaning has to nourish you; you don’t have to serve it. Otherwise what use would it be, then? That is, you have to think that we are beings with emotions, we are not stones. Nature and the creator of the universe managed to form this entity of cells that suffers, that cries, that laughs, that enjoys, that can enjoy music, enjoy the chirping of a bird, the sound of the waves — this state of being, we must preserve it. And this being, of course, there are two perspectives: The first is that we must preserve the human being and humanity. And for that, we have to develop science and technology. We agree that’s the way to preserve it. But not by creating an apocalyptic system, like libertarian neoliberalism, that they are sustaining in this moment. This is an apocalyptic system. That is not going to solve humanity’s problems.

We need, above all, consciousness and to agree on the value of life, not the value of material items. We believe there is a significant development in the ideas that have been developed this past century. The 20th century was the century of enlightenment. But in the 21st century, in the century of communication through the internet, consciousness is spreading to the last corner of the earth, about what is happening. Today we are the global village, which was spoken of at the end of the century. Today, yes, we feel that unity is becoming stronger. So I have faith in that.

Look, I have always placed a lot of trust in people’s common sense. You may have an illiterate person – unable to read or write. But he will have a greater sense of justice, than the most intellectually developed person. He has more of a sense of power. Power is a human instinct. Power is like food. People can be peasants and know what power is for, and how power is used. That is something in a person’s mind: Power, will, justice and the most sacred thing, freedom.

But it is not the freedom of Mike Tyson, and I admire Mike Tyson — it is not the freedom of a boxer like Mike Tyson, who gets in the ring and challenges you, and you know he is going to kill you with one punch. That is not the type of freedom I am talking about, “that we are all equal,” no. We are all equal according to our capabilities and according to our needs. To create fair governments in a better world, that is still possible. We have not lost our faith. And I think that’s what keeps us standing.

JO: President Zelaya, thank you very much for your time.
MZ: Well, same, same. Thank you for coming here. Thank you so much.

Credits

RG: That was Manuel Zelaya, and that’s our show.

Deconstructed is a production of Drop Site. This program was supported by a grant from The Intercept. This episode was produced by Laura Flynn and José Olivares. The show is mixed by William Stanton. This episode was transcribed by Leonardo Faierman. Our theme music was composed by Bart Warshaw. And I’m Ryan Grim, cofounder of Drop Site.

If you haven’t already, please subscribe to Deconstructed wherever you listen to podcasts, and please leave us a rating and a review, it helps people find the show. Also, check out our other podcast, Intercepted.

Thanks for listening and I’ll see you soon.

The post Honduras, 15 Years After the Coup: An Interview With Ousted President Manuel Zelaya appeared first on The Intercept.

On Thursday evening, Donald Trump formally accepted the Republican Party’s nomination for president of the United States. As he accepted the nomination, the crowd erupted in chants of “Trump, Trump, Trump!” This week on Deconstructed, Ryan Grim speaks to Emily Jashinsky, his co-host on “Counter Points,” on Thursday afternoon, before Trump’s acceptance speech. Jashinsky joins from the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. They discuss Trump’s vice presidential pick, J.D. Vance; the “New Right” taking hold of the Republican Party; and what the New Right’s vision is for the country, from tariffs to immigration, and LGBTQ+ rights, foreign policy, and education policy.

Transcript

Ryan Grim: I’m Ryan Grim. Welcome back to Deconstructed.

First thing: a programming note. As you guys may have heard, I am no longer with The Intercept, but I’m still obviously hosting Deconstructed, which is made possible in part by a grant from The Intercept. So, thank you to them for that.

I am now over with Jeremy Scahill at the news organization that we founded called Drop Site News. Check it out: dropsitenews.com.

On today’s program, I’m joined by my Counterpoints cohost, Emily Jashinsky, who is now a correspondent over at UnHerd. Emily is joining us from Milwaukee, where she’s been covering the Republican National Convention.

Emily, thanks so much for joining me here on Deconstructed.

Emily Jashinsky: I’m excited to be here. I’m a fan and a listener of the podcast myself. So, thanks for having me, Ryan.

RG: Amazing, thank you for that.

So, for people who don’t watch the show and don’t know the shtick of it, it’s that one of the hosts is left wing, one of the hosts is right wing. And we debate and argue, every now and then but, in general, we kind of each give our perspectives on a particular Issue of the day, and then we move on to the next news item, without doing the “Crossfire” choke-each-other style.

And the reason I wanted to bring Emily on today was for her take on not just how the RNC is unfolding, but also to educate us about this new populist right. Which I think a lot of people in the progressive space have not invested much energy trying to understand because, for a very long time, there’s been a sense that it’s mostly fake, and why bother studying something if it’s just some propaganda aimed at gullible workers, and not actually a kind of structural change going on with it inside the Republican Party.

I don’t agree with that, I think it does represent something serious going on. I think it’s part of the political and economic realignment that we’ve talked about on this show over the last many years at this point. And so, I think it is actually worth understanding, and nobody better to talk about it than Emily, who’s been kind of a part of that whatever you want to call it — movement, tendency, element — of the party for this long. To have J.D. Vance now elevated to vice president, to me, really puts an exclamation mark on the growth of that faction within the Republican Party.

So, first of all, Emily, what would you call it? What is the name that people who are of the J.D. Vance variety prefer to call themselves? Or are there multiple names, and we could pick from a couple?

EJ: Well, as we’re recording this, there was a new name, a powerful suggestion for a new name actually floated this morning by Sohrab Ahmari, who has been at the center of the discourse over what the new right is, [and/or] if there needs to be a new right, ever since he wrote a viral article against David French, who was, at the time, a National Review columnist, and has since been elevated to New York Times columnist. And Sohrab said, “It’s not the new right; it’s the new center.”

And I find that very interesting, because the new right, I think, comes with a lot of cultural baggage; and I say that as somebody who’s probably part of the cultural baggage, who is staunchly antiabortion, and has deeply held conservative religious beliefs. And I think New Right has come with that. And J.D. Vance is a convert to Catholicism, like a lot of intellectuals in the right wing space are. He’s a student of René Girard, who is Peter Thiel’s favorite philosopher, and is big in those venture capitalist Silicon Valley circles.

So, what we saw from J.D. Vance at the convention, I think Sohrab accurately describes as a new center, as opposed to a new right, because when you attach Trump to the new right, I think you lose some of the cultural baggage. And the new right that just convened at the National Conservatism Conference a week before the Republican National Convention kicked off should consider that, I think. And I also think the left should consider that, because all of this undermining of Project 2025 and J.D. Vance — I shouldn’t say undermining, I should say fearmongering about it — is missing. That there are some genuinely interesting shifts on labor and on trade in these spaces. But perhaps it’s incumbent on Republicans and new right movement people to figure out how to deal with that cultural baggage.

RG: From a marketing perspective, trying to claim the center is actually quite smart. I mean, most people out there who are not politics junkies tend to think of themselves as in the center. Whether they are or not, they kind of think, well, my views are the sensible ones. That’s why they hold those views, because they believe they are sensible. And the directions of left and right almost by their nature are self-marginalizing. So, that that is kind of an interesting attempt to gather people around this new center idea.

But what is the new center? What would you say are the things that characterize it, and how does it rank its hierarchy of issues that it cares about?

EJ: That reminds me; one thing I like about what we get to do, Ryan, is that, right before I started taping with you, I was interviewing Kevin Roberts, who is the president of the Heritage Foundation, a friend of J.D. Vance’s, asking him about Project 2025. And I asked him about Sohrab Amari referring to the new center instead of the new right, and he said, basically, I don’t like labels. Kevin Roberts is somebody who has spoken at NatCon and said, I’m not inviting you into the conservative movement, I’m here as the conservative movement to tell you, you are the conservative movement.

I think he and J.D. Vance — now that J.D. Vance is kind of firmly ensconced in Trump world — would describe it mostly in terms of populist economics, but would also probably bring into it the parents’ right kind of movement that sprung up after COVID. You know, you should have the right to know what’s being taught in classrooms. They probably wouldn’t frame it in the terms of, like — You hear a lot about pornography, and you hear a lot about LGBT issues. They would probably say parental rights. Glenn Youngkin is being feted here at the RNC, everyone’s very excited about that.

So, I think that’s how they would attach cultural issues to the suite of economic issues. For example, the 10 percent tariff — Or, I’m sorry, the hundred percent tariff, right? What’s Trump on now? I was just reading his interview with Bloomberg. But they would talk about protectionism, vis-à-vis China, they would talk about industrial policy when it comes to chips manufacturing, when it comes to the defense industry. They would talk about ending forever wars; foreign policy is a huge component of the new right. There are basically no supporters of the Iraq war left anywhere. Even in the Republican Party, I went back and looked at the speeches from the 2004 Republican convention just last night. It was all about the Iraq war.

RG: Oh, that whole thing was organized around “stay the course.” That was Bush’s entire argument, stay the course.

So, where did the cultural issues that Republicans were rising on the last 10-20 years fit in? Whether it’s trans issues, briefly you had this little kind of reactionary move against marriage equality. Did those take something of a backseat there, despite the fact that Vance himself is a Catholic convert who has some pretty strong personal views on abortion? Where do they fit in? Is it more, is it more of an economic trade and foreign policy type of tendency, or is it married to the cultural stuff? How do we think about that?

Do they want to put it in the backseat? Is it leading? Like, what is the positioning there?

EJ: I think that is the question that bubbled to the surface in the proverbial smoke-filled backrooms this week, when Donald Trump just went for it, went full-send and picked J.D. Vance as his running mate. And Vance wasn’t someone who was at the top of the list; a lot of people expected Tim Scott or Doug Burgum, Marco Rubio was on the short list.

But when he went with J.D. Vance, I think right now, as Trump is trying to figure out post-assassination attempt how to be a unifier — we’ve heard the word “unity” all the time at the RNC— what does that look like? Is that new center or new right? And that’s why abortion has basically been absent from this RNC. The trans issue has been front and center at the RNC, because Republicans feel like that is a real winning issue now, but you haven’t heard a lot about pornography in schools, you haven’t heard a lot about marriage, you haven’t heard a lot about some of those red meat issues that, even as they fell out of fashion with the broader public, were still very much in vogue with the Republican party. The other huge component we’re leaving out is immigration. That’s big.

And so, right now, I think, as we are speaking, people in the Republican party and the Trump circles are trying to figure out how to sell J.D. Vance’s populism — and Trump’s populism, honestly — as a unifying centrist message. And, obviously, there are some pretty clear ways to do that, there’s a lot of consensus on immigration, but being directionally opposed to the Biden immigration policy does not make you in favor of J.D. Vance’s immigration policy as it has been articulated, or Trump’s in the past.

So that, I think, is literally in the process. The sausage is being made right now, as we’re speaking.

RG: And how do unions fit into this? Because my read of how this unfolded is, in the beginning, you had the new right. Pro-worker, but with a lot of almost anti-union elements. And they would be anti-union and say that it was because the right to work; pro worker, but anti-union? It feels like over time they are now becoming a little bit more explicitly pro-union.

And you had Sean O’Brien showing up at the RNC this week. How was he received? And what is the posture of this new right towards organized labor now?

EJ: He was received uncontroversially, which is fascinating. You’ve been covering this longer than I have, you remember the Tea Party years, the scourge of big labor union bosses telling you, the working man, what to do. That was utterly unsympathetic to anybody that might have needed the support of big labor or organized labor, period, and intentionally so. It was a public relations message that we are against the Democratic-aligned big labor bosses, union bosses. It’s just a complete 180.

And what’s been on my mind all week as I’m watching Sean O’Brien get applause here railing against corporations is: what does this look like in 2028? What does this look like at the RNC in 2032?

And J.D. Vance in his speech last night — I don’t know if you caught this line — he said something like, we stand with workers, pro-union or anti-union, whether they’re in a union or not. And that was interesting to me, because I don’t think you would have heard J.D. Vance say that a month or two ago. I think that was something that, when Trump basically gave Rupert Murdoch the finger by not going with Doug Burgum — and not just Rupert Murdoch, a lot of corporate people wanted him to pick Doug Burgum — maybe it was like a conciliatory gesture. Maybe when J.D. Vance said that this is a party of, quote, “big tent,” which is a word that new right people detest.

RG: Hmm. Why is that?

EJ: Because it signifies to them that 2012 Republican autopsy that Reince Priebus and others put together that said, we need to moderate on immigration, we need to moderate on LGBT issues. And that was four years before Trump came along [who] everyone said proved that totally wrong, at least in the short term. You know, he didn’t win the popular vote, he won the electoral college, and then he lost both in 2020, so I don’t know how legitimate that argument is, but the new right absolutely hates it.

And so, for J.D. Vance to drop that so casually in the speech, and make a gesture towards union workers and non-union workers, it just seems to me, like— And I’ve heard some concern among people in these circles, people who know J.D. Vance, that the Trump team will kind of coopt him directionally towards wherever Trump wants him to be, and will block out any new right people that want to be in those circles, making decisions and helping him.

RG: Now, before J.D. Vance was in the Senate — because he was elected in 2022, if I’m remembering correctly — the American Rescue Plan was passed in 2021, and that included, basically, a bailout for the Teamsters. It’s complicated, but basically 300,000 Teamsters retirees had their pensions saved by the American Rescue Plan. And every Republican voted against it and every Democrat voted for it, which has Democrats even angrier that Sean O’Brien would then, the next election, show up at the Republican convention.

But that’s why a lot of Democrats still hope that the Teamsters will actually in the end endorse, because 300,000 of their members are deeply grateful for that bailout, which Republicans at the time were calling, big labor bailout.

How angry would Trump be, how angry would the J.D. Vance wing be if Teamsters in the end do endorse Democrats? So, in other words, how comfy is this relationship at this point?

EJ: This is such a better question for you but, from my perspective at least, this week felt like a test run. Let’s see how Sean O’Brien is received at the RNC, let’s see how J.D. Vance is received overall as the nominee. And Trump is all about relationships. If you come to the RNC physically and speak, that means you probably also schmoozed a little bit with Trump, and the Trump insiders, and Trump world. So, if Sean O’Brien and the Teamsters were to then turn around and endorse the Democrats, because maybe Biden’s not on the ballot by the time that happens, I think Trump would be furious. I think it would inspire a flurry of True Social posts about “dopey Sean O’Brien,” or “bald Sean,” or whatever he ends up calling him.

And that’s where this whole relationship, this whole, quote, “realignment”, I really feel could blow up. And then you watch where J.D. Vance goes from there if his boss is super anti-union. I would think J.D. Vance would still be making overtures — whether it’s publicly or privately — to organized labor, because he’s smart enough to know politically that it’s been beneficial for him to make those overtures to regular workers. And so, he would want to continue doing that.

He’s a smart guy, he’s politically really smart. A lot of those new right candidates lost their races when they ran for House and Senate. He won. Blake Masters lost. Blake Masters will probably win a congressional seat, but he lost his Senate race, and J.D. Vance won.

So, I just think  there’s so many early conclusions. That the Republican Party is now the party of the working class, and the Republican Party is now the party of organized labor. It’s like, this could blow up. With a bad relationship with Trump, he could suddenly turn on big labor, and everyone else is just waiting to take their cues from him

RG: And Trump still has enormous number of oligarchs in his ear. Trump is susceptible to pressure, whoever talked to him last, what have you. So much depends on who Trump picks as chief of staff. In a Trump presidency — let’s assume, for the sake of this question, that he wins — so much depends on who he picks as chief of staff, and how he staffs up and approaches things in the beginning.

What’s your sense of what the Trump circle is now? And where on the base scale or on the J.D. Vance scale his inner circle is? How solidified is it, how fluid is it? Like, what’s your read of that world, that has now had eight or nine years to kind of develop an ecosystem that was nascent when it first shocked everybody, including himself, by winning?

EJ: I mean, there was nothing, and you remember this. There was a Heritage Foundation that was raking in money from big tech alongside the American Enterprise Institute, alongside this suite of Koch-Brothers-funded thinktanks that were staunchly anti-labor, and had been the backbone of the Tea Party movement. So, there really was absolutely nothing.

And now, what’s sprung up are groups like American Compass and a couple of others. But what’s interesting about those groups — and this is what’s fascinating about Trump in general — is that it’s a mix, ideologically, because the primary litmus test ideologically is whether you’re on board with Donald Trump. And that sounds like a line that is kind of tired, like “elite media spaces,” but there’s actually some truth to it.

Like, they’re doing this vetting process for personnel in a potential Trump administration, and their litmus test is loyalty to Donald Trump himself. Nobody’s looking for what maybe you said about policy five years ago. You could be Anthony Scaramucci, you could be — Let’s take our favorite example: Stephanie Ruhle. If you had been nice to Donald Trump and said good things about him, you could have those politics. You can be Art Laffer or Larry Kudlow and have Donald Trump’s ear in the same way that J.D. Vance does, in the same way that people in those circles — Marco Rubio. You know, it’s just really a mix, because the primary litmus test is loyalty to Donald Trump.

Now, people who have loyalty to Donald Trump tend to be those people that are also on board with the new right policy agenda. You know, Peter Navarro, Bob Lighthizer, people who are sort of, quote, “based on trade,” protectionist on trade. Obviously, you’re not going to see John Bolton in another Trump administration, but you might see Mike Pompeo, who is here at the RNC this week, talking about how Trump will ultimately control J.D. Vance; I think is a quote, I’m paraphrasing a quote he gave to RealClearPolitics. But it’s just about loyalty to Trump.

And Trump is floating, what, Jamie Dimon as his treasury secretary? It’s about him. And so, that tends to be more new right than not but, also, a lot of the really powerful people in his ear — to your point, Ryan — are oligarchs, or oligarch-adjacent.

RG: What do these new right people think about Democrats? I saw this kind of funny quote from J.D. Vance recently where he said, “The only part of the Democratic coalition I have any patience for is the Bernie bros,” [or] something along those lines.

Why is that? How do they view the Democrats or the progressive coalition broadly?

EJ: There’s been an interesting rehabilitation of Chomsky.

RG: Like, on the right in general?

EJ: Yeah, and writers in that space. And even — You know Glenn Greenwald well. Glenn is very popular, and I’m sure he lost some people and subscribers and stuff when the Israel issue came to a head, and I’m sure other people can speak to that as well. But he’s saying things that are going over very well with a lot of people on the right, because they found, in the Bernie bros, kindred spirits, when it comes to how elites are screwing everyday Americans.

And there’s also something, I think, psychological, and I don’t know if you’ve seen this around Washington, but the right has always felt ostracized from circles of culture; so, art circles, entertainment circles, that kind of world. And anytime they get attention from, say, a Russell Brand, psychologically, there’s something about being included, and suddenly feeling like you’re at the cool kids’ table when you hang out in those spaces. That’s also weirdly powerful. I don’t know if that makes sense, but it’s there.

Bernie had a lot of support from Hollywood, actually — so did Hillary, obviously — but Bernie’s kind of cool, and there’s something about being on the left that’s generally been seen by our culture as being cool. There’s no, like, left-wing Patrick Bateman character. It’s, like, cool, but not really.

RG: Yes. Whenever you see the acts at the RNC versus the acts at the DNC, the Spotify plays are going to be orders of magnitude different, for sure.

EJ: Yeah. Lee Greenwood is here. So.

RG: Yes, I’m sure Kid Rock is holding it down.

EJ: There’s a rumor that Jason Aldean is coming, and that’s someone who’s actually a pretty big superstar.

RG: Yeah, there you go.

EJ: But, other than that, yeah. No.

RG: Doing better.

So, you also did a couple of interviews — I mean, you’ve been doing endless interviews, but you sent us a couple. So, let’s roll a few of these. You sent us three folks at the RNC that you spoke to, representative of different views. Let’s play these, then I want to get your assessment of them.

Emily Jashinsky: All right. So, what’s it like here so far? 

RNC Attendee 1: The energy down here is just amazing. It’s so awesome to be a part of this event. 

Emily Jashinsky: Some reporting is that not everyone is excited about the J.D. Vance pick, but you feel good about it.

RNC Attendee 2: I do. I think J.D. represents the future of the party, and Trump has great policies that represent the working man, and J.D. Vance is going to continue those, and help to put those into place once Donald Trump wins the White House.

Emily Jashinsky: What are you hoping to hear from J.D. Vance?

RNC Attendee 3: I’m hoping that he talks a lot about families, and getting back to being able to support a family off of one income. Encouraging people to protect their kids. Talking about what this next administration and their legacy is going to be when it comes to fighting it back against this corrupted, progressive, woke culture that we find ourselves in. America is not a great place to raise children, and I would know; I have seven kids myself, right?

RG: So, Emily, a lot of upbeat-ness, it feels like? Like, people are feeling pretty good Wednesday night at the RNC, and maybe some of the other nights as well. I’m trying to think. The crowd seemed playful, in a way. I had never seen Republicans before — Like, Republicans are not known for their senses of humor, and they’re chanting kind of funny stuff, like “J.D.’s mom, J.D.’s mom.”

I think at one point J.D. Vance said that they were a great crowd, and they started chanting, “Yes, we are,” which is kind of cute and funny. I’m like, all right, that’s cringe, a little bit, but it’s authentic. It’s like there’s something real about it that is different than the kind of staged — It’s like a playfulness that you wouldn’t expect.

So, where is this happiness coming from? Is it the situation they find themselves in, where they’re like, man, if we can just get Joe Biden to hold on to this nomination and get our man through without getting shot it’s in the bag? What’s your sense of where the unusual lightness is coming from?

EJ: Well, I think it’s exactly what you just said. There’s so much confidence after Trump survived an assassination attempt, got up off the stage, raised his fist, implored them to fight, fight, fight, and was back at it the next day. That has been Galvanizing.

And so, I think he has raised his status to mythical. And it may have already been there, but it’s on another level. Like, there’s levels of mythical gods; he’s got to be at the highest. I don’t know how it can get much higher than that at this point.

And the split screen with Democrats panicking over Joe Biden is just so powerful, you know? And they’re making all of their arguments against Biden, by the way. Tim Carney described that as like a ghost, or they’re arguing against a ghost all week? Because pretty soon, maybe by the time this airs, Joe Biden will be off the ticket. But, yeah. I think it’s that.

RG: That has me worried in some ways, and I think there’s a chance by the time we post this episode — it’s now Thursday afternoon — that he might be off the ticket. You know, they’re floating that he might be off by this weekend. I don’t think that Trump is as much of a lock as he seems to think he is. The J.D. Vance pick suggested some extreme confidence, like you said, the body language and the joy in Milwaukee suggests they’re spiking the football.

But there’s this Eagles player DeSean Jackson. People can go Google “DeSean Jackson fumble.” He did this in college, and then he did it again as a pro. About to score a touchdown, clear in front of everybody, he spiked it at the two-yard line, but you have to go all the way into the end zone. Now, there was video, and it was fair. It’s like, DeSean, you didn’t cross the goal line, so you lose the ball, and the other team recovered it. It won’t be that clean if Democrats beat Republicans on election day.

And so, I’m curious, from your perspective, imagine a world in which Democrats do come back from this, and do legitimately beat Republicans on election day, how will the Republican base metabolize that? If 2020 broke their brains, and there wasn’t actually evidence of ballots in the rivers in Pennsylvania swinging the election or whatever. This time, I feel like they will just not be able to handle that. Or am I not giving them enough credit?

What happens if Democrats come back and win? Is the country just going to lose its mind?

EJ: While you’re on the topic, I heard a guy come up and introduce himself to Mike Lindell, of My Pillow fame, and Mike Lindell asked him where he’s from, and he said he was from Venezuela, but Mike Lindell heard “Pennsylvania.” And when it was clarified that he was from Venezuela, Mike Lindell immediately launched into, well, you guys had the experience with the voting machines first, so you must really know.

So, there’s still those hangers-on.

RG: For our lawyers: Mike Lindell’s claim is false, etc., etc., etc. Go ahead.

EJ: Yes. Yes. But, actually, the point that you just made with the disclaimer, I think if Democrats pull this off, which I still think is a really good chance — our cohost Krystal Ball made this point when we were talking recently — that the polls haven’t moved all that much since the assassination attempt. Like they’ve been bad for Biden after the debate, they’ve been catastrophic for Biden after the debate, but when you replace him with someone else, it’s not an abject disaster. It’s nothing that Democrats can’t bounce back from, if you suddenly see the media rehabilitating Kamala Harris reputation. Because there are now fully on the Dem Flight 93 existential election bandwagon with a lot of the donors, which is why they’re comfortable, I think, going after Biden post-debate.

So, I think the way Republicans would react to it is potentially with civil unrest. I keep feeling like we’re sleepwalking into an extended period of civil unrest. It might not look like one January 6, but it might look like a bunch of smaller January 6ths at state court houses. There’s just no faith in the integrity of elections anymore, and that’s really, really, really dangerous. It’s something we took for granted. It’s a seed that was planted with the left in 2000. So, it is bipartisan.

I’m sure Ryan, that you still talk to people on the left — like, on the left-left — people who listen to this podcast who, after 2000, just felt as though these elections were being decided by oligarchs, essentially. And when you start to have a chunk of people on a bipartisan basis thinking those things, if Donald Trump loses, I don’t see the right metabolizing it. Like, the people on January 6 were everyday Americans, normal Americans — I talked to a lot of them there. They were just there because they really didn’t have any faith, sincerely. So, I don’t see how you bounce back from that super-easily if Trump loses.

RG: The one saving grace for Democrats might be — I’m curious for your take on this — that my sense on the right is that there’s so much paranoia about the feds that they’re pretty much incapable of organizing mass rallies of any substantial number of people, because anybody who organizes it immediately gets accused of being a fed and setting a trap for people.

And I think the prison sentences — whatever you want to say about them — that were doled out had a significant deterrent effect, because now people understand, like, oh, I could actually do years in prison if things go south at this demonstration that I’m going to. This is not a value judgment at all, just a statement of fact.

Am I right that the ability of the right to organize in the streets in the way that they so effectively did on January 6 and previous to that, bringing numbers of people out in the streets that were making the left quite jealous, has that been kind of stripped naked by the paranoia that is shot through? And the paranoia doesn’t have to be necessarily unfounded. Like, there are a bunch of FBI people and others.

EJ: I was going to say, I agree and I disagree. I agree in the sense that it is genuinely different because there were— I mean, to your point, there turned out to be a whole lot of feds in groups like the Proud Boys, and the Oath Keepers, and the Gretchen Whitmer plot, which, I mean, that actually is a real thing that happened.

And so, on the one hand, I think those groups in particular, some of the actual organized fringe groups — and Proud Boys and Oath Keepers were absolutely still fringe on the right, even if Marjorie Taylor Greene is not, those groups really are still relegated to the fringe — I think those groups are absolutely hampered in their ability to organize. Having covered January 6, I think it still would have happened without any organization on the behalf of those people, because what I saw was just unadulterated rage from normal people. I saw school moms jumping over barricades without being goaded into it. In fact, I saw them goading other people into it. You know, PTA moms, basically. And so, on the one hand, yes. I think the organized coalitions actually have really been hampered in their ability to organize.

On the other hand, I think that there’s such personal affection and loyalty to Donald Trump with so many average Americans that there’s still significant risk of things like that happening. Because they would be spontaneous, honestly.

RG: So, last thing then. A lot of progressives are deeply concerned that — and you’ll hear [it] from Democrats — if Trump wins in 2024, that’s the last election. What is the most serious thing that, from your perspective, Republicans will try to do to lock in power, in ways that they failed to do in 2020? Like, what lessons did they learn, and what are they going to do differently this time? And what should progressives be scared about? And what do you think is overblown that they shouldn’t be scared about?

And, obviously, nobody’s going to believe you because, you know, you’re in there. But I’m curious for your sense of that, where the real threats are and what the completely overblown ones are.

EJ: Actually, I’ve never had that question posed that way. Like, I’ve never thought of it myself. What is something that would, A, just personally be most terrifying about a potential Trump return.

My answer to that would be, first of all, his personal beefs know no bounds, and I think that’s always frightening. Because it ends up going into foreign policy. We’ve had the madman theory tested successfully in the United States, at least arguably, with foreign policies of respective madmen who have had some successes. You know, we haven’t gotten into nuclear war yet, but we’re not even a century into that experiment. So, that’s one thing that personally has always bothered me a lot about Donald Trump, and I think I speak on behalf of millions of people when I say that.

But in terms of an actual threat to the progressive movement, the gutting of the administrative state will happen immediately. It may have court battles, but it will happen right away. Trump told, I think, Bret Baier that he wouldn’t be a dictator, except for on, quote, “Day one.”

RG: Yeah. And you hear that a lot. What do you think he meant by that?

EJ: He meant firing of a vast swath of the administrative state. Like, thousands of people, tens of thousands of people. And the mounting consensus in new right circles that actually are working to staff his administration at places like the Heritage Foundation, and American Moment, and those groups, is that the single impediment to any other policy goal is personnel. And so, you can’t do anything else without Schedule F, and however else it’s supplemented. I think Stephen Miller and Russ Vogt have ideas for that, the Center for Renewing America and America First Legal. But that is the thing.

If you go to Conservative Partnership Institute, you talk to those people, it is the administrative state. The sense is, you can’t do anything else until — you can’t do foreign policy, let alone immigration policy, let alone anything else — unless you take care of the vast administrative state. Otherwise, all of your policy preferences will be undermined by the bureaucrats who slow-walk them. And so, I think that is the top day-one priority, and they won’t even be able to work on other things, is how they see it, until that is accomplished.

So, yeah, I think that’s tens of thousands of jobs and decades of regulatory muscle memory on the line.

RG: Yeah. Makes me think of that Chinese proverb that doubles as a curse: “may you live in interesting times.” And we sure do. It’s going to get interesting, no doubt about it.

EJ: It really is.

RG: We’ll be here to cover it. Emily, thank you so much for joining us. Enjoy the rest of your time in Milwaukee. I’ll see you soon.

Oh, by the way, if you want to catch our show, breakingpoints.com is where you can go to subscribe to that, to get it in your inbox, or you can just find it on the Breaking Points YouTube channel.

But, Emily, thanks again so much, and see you soon.

EJ: Thanks, Ryan. See you soon.

RG: Deconstructed is a production of Drop Site. This program was supported by a grant from The Intercept. This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. This episode was transcribed by Leonardo Faierman. Our theme music was composed by Bart Warshaw. And I’m Ryan Grim, reporter at Drop Site.

If you haven’t already, please subscribe to Deconstructed wherever you listen to podcasts. And please leave us a rating or a review, it helps people find the show. Also, check out our other podcast, Intercepted.

Thanks for listening, and I’ll see you soon.

The post Trump, Vance, and the New Right at the RNC  appeared first on The Intercept.

Dmitri Mehlhorn is among the most powerful Democratic funders and operatives working inside what can roughly be called the party’s establishment. He’s also been one of the most ardent defenders of Joe Biden as the best Democratic nominee to beat Donald Trump in November. This week on Deconstructed, Ryan Grim speaks to Mehlhorn about why he’s committed to Biden at a moment when more are calling for him to abandon his candidacy.

Transcript

Ryan Grim: I’m Ryan Grim. Welcome back to Deconstructed.

First, some rather important programming announcements. I am no longer at The Intercept. Jeremy Scahill and I, along with our former editor Nausicaa Renner, have launched Drop Site, an independent, nonprofit news outlet. We’re publishing over at dropsitenews.com, and we’re also sending our stories out by email. You can sign up to get them at, again, dropsitenews.com. Our journalism will always remain free but, if you can help out, please do that at donate.dropsitenews.com.

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I’m also going to continue hosting this podcast, and Jeremy will continue hosting Intercepted. You’ll be able to listen to them the same way you have been. The transcripts will continue to be posted at The Intercept.

Now, last year, one of our most popular episodes was with Democratic megadonor Dmitri Mehlhorn, who often sees the world quite differently than I do, but he doesn’t mind mixing it up with people he disagrees with. Well, he now finds himself disagreeing with far more people than just me, and he’s become one of the few Democratic power brokers making an ardent case behind the scenes on behalf of Joe Biden’s viability in the presidential election. We spoke for an hour over the weekend, when the entire world was pretty convinced Biden was done for, but Dmitri was sticking by him. Biden no longer looks like he’s certain to drop out, though the situation remains quite fluid.

Agree with him or not, Dmitri is often as provocative as he is powerful. Here’s our conversation.

All right. I am pleased to be joined today by Dimitri Mehlhorn, who goes by the one name of “Dmitri” in Democratic circles. If you talk to the DC funder or operative class, there’s just one Dmitri. Dmitri says this, Dmitri thinks this.

Dmitri, you were in the news recently. I think it was Fox News or somebody was reporting that you were saying privately — correct me if I’m getting the paraphrase wrong here — Biden’s corpse would be more popular than Kamala, nationally. Fox News is not always the most reliable source of information, but just give me a general kind of overview of your take on where we are right now, post-George Stephanopoulos Biden interview.

Dmitri Mehlhorn: Alright. I’m happy to answer that question, but you asked a couple, so let me answer the little one and the big one.

The little one is about what I said about the president and vice president, and I just wanted to let you know that quote was taken out of context. I did say that, but it was in a donor call that had been scheduled to last an hour, where this conversation was happening. And I was trying to make the point that Biden has a particular brand superpower that happens to be kryptonite to Trump. And that may be more important than age concerns in an environment where the other party is trying to smear our people.

So, I was trying to make the point through example, and then one of the donors on this very large call shared it with someone at Semaphore. And so, of course, that’s the quote.

And so, the reason I was on Fox and Friends is because they saw that quote, and I think they sensed that they had another Mark Penn type on their hands, who would come on the show and sort of privately acknowledge how terrible both the president and vice president are. And when I wasn’t doing that, that interview got cut short pretty quick.

RG: You went on and called Trump out directly on Fox, and it seemed like they were not here for that.

DM: They were not. But the funny thing, Ryan, is right before I came on, they had been having a conversation about the way in which the mainstream left-of-center press had handled Biden’s age, and they were so angry. And the arguments they were making sounded very much like the arguments that journalists might make, about how important it is to tell the truth to your audience.

RG: Yeah.

DM: So I was like, hey, you know? And so, the Fox host was like, do you really think he can do it? And I’m like, yeah. And he’s like, I’m not talking about age, I’m talking about mental acuity. And my answer is, yeah. One of those candidates has lost the ability to distinguish between fact and fiction, and it’s not my guy. And so, that was the end of that interview.

RG: So, the bigger question: where are you now on Biden and his path forward?

DM: Broadly, that debate and everything since then has hurt. But it has hurt in a lot of emotional ways and a lot of other ways. The disagreement that Reid and I have with everyone else is how much it hurt, relative to all the other bad things that are happening.

So, as far as we can tell, our best guess is that that debate moved the polls away from Biden by about three points which, in an election this close, is devastating. And Trump’s odds of being reelected are now as high as they’ve been since mid-2020. You know, up in the mid-60s, in terms of likelihood of getting reelected; like two-to-one odds. And Ryan, you know me well enough to know what I would give to move those odds that much in the other direction. That’s a lot.

Also, two to three points and ten to fifteen points of likelihood are the range that this race has been in for the past two years. And, when you start to unpack it, you realize that that is the nature of these two men. Each of them is going to be revealing new things about themselves that the public wasn’t really clued in on, and each time that happens, it is likely to move things away from them.

And the difference that Reid and I have with everybody else is that we still think that the fundamental choice facing the American public — and this is both in terms of serving as president and in terms of running — the choice is between Yoda and Jabba the Hutt. And America will choose even any version of Yoda over the best version of Jabba the Hutt, because if there’s a 3 a.m. call and Joe Biden is disoriented, he will gather his team and they will make a good decision. Whereas, if there’s a 3 a.m. call that wakes up Trump in 2027, it’s possible he will invade a country, so.

RG: That assumes a race in November in which you’ve got Trump on the ticket for Republicans, Biden on the ticket for Democrats. And I think you’re right, most people listening to this show would say, yeah, in that scenario, yes. All right, Biden it is. A lot that we’re wondering about, but we don’t like Trump. We don’t think Biden’s even necessarily going to survive the next four terms, but it’s better that he beat Trump.

DM: Four years. It’s Trump [where] it’s the four terms.

RG: Right. But, at the same time, we’re not necessarily wedded to those two options. So, that’s why I wanted to hear your analysis of why you think Biden has this super ability to connect with voters, such that he serves as this kryptonite to Trump in such a way that it’s worth the points that are getting knocked off on him on a regular basis. It’s worth, even like you said, not necessarily having somebody who’s able to orient himself at 3 a.m. and make a call, because he has these particular virtues that are so impressive that there’s nobody that could come in and step in for him.

Because that seems to be your fear — correct me if I’m wrong — that you’re a pragmatic person who wants to beat Trump. Like, if you thought that there was somebody who could take Biden’s place and beat Trump, I would assume you’d be for that. This is not some, like, diehard sympathy for Biden himself.

So, what is it about Biden from your perspective that makes him such a unique figure worth rallying around, despite everything we’re seeing?

DM: Yeah. And all of your assumptions about my point of view are correct, except one; I’m not conceding he would be disoriented, I’m saying, even if you think that.

So, there’s a variety of reasons why I think, actually, he’ll continue to be a great president, as he currently is, as he’s been for the past four years. But that’s not your question right now.

For your question right now, let me ask you something. Have you sorted out in your head the efforts that have been made, the quantum of efforts that have been made to paint Joe Biden as corrupt and criminal?

RG: Yeah. I co-host this show Counterpoints with a conservative host. And so, I’m constantly seeing all of the different right-wing activity.

DM: So, you see all that.

RG: Yeah. I’ve been seeing it since the original campaign.

DM: A hundred percent.

RG: Hunter Biden, China Joe. Like —

DM: It’s been since before the original campaign.

RG: All of the buzzwords that would be odd to people in Democratic circles, I know. You say “China Joe,” I know what you’re talking about. I know Romania, I know —

DM: A hundred percent. And you said “since the first campaign,” so you already clearly have a list, right?

RG: Mm-hmm.

DM: But it started before the first campaign. I mean, Donald Trump’s first impeachment, Donald Trump used the power of the United States federal government and its foreign services to make sure, even before Biden declared, that Biden was seen as corrupt.

RG: Yeah.

DM: It’s a lot.

RG: Right. And, for people who don’t remember, it was a guy named Vladimir Zelensky — who nobody had heard of at that point — who Trump called and said, basically, I need you to go on CNN and say that Joe Biden is corrupt. And, if you do that, I’ll send these weapons.

DM: 100 percent.

RG: Biden was the guy that Trump was trying to do that to.

DM: Correct, before Biden had declared.

So, the other side, if you think about the amount of time and effort that Donald Trump personally — and the United States federal government — and Vladimir Putin, personally, and the Russian government, and all of Fox News, and all of the related — Steve Bannon. And that’s a lot, right? They have spent more money and effort trying to paint Joe Biden as corrupt than they’ve spent on anything else, by far. It’s not close. Right?

RG: Mm-hmm.

DM: So, one thing to ask yourself is, why is that? Is it that they are not seeing how weak Biden is, and they are just making a catastrophic error in investment? Because that’s possible, but it seems pretty unlikely. We are talking about the equivalent of literally billions of dollars designed to degrade Joe Biden’s brand as honest, decent, and patriotic.

Now, I believe I know why they think that’s so important. This is a hypothesis, but my belief is that Donald Trump is what Madeleine Albright would call a fascist, meaning it doesn’t really matter if you’re left, right, theocratic, whatever. You’re an authoritarian. Every fascist movement that I have studied — from the left, or the right, or otherwise, or religious — they start from a base of cleansing fire. All of the things that we are about to do are necessary to cleanse our society of its rot, right? It’s always that kind of a frame. And, every time a fascist succeeds, they’re running against someone that they can smear as equally corrupt. Or, at least, it’s close.

And so, Trump’s campaign from day one — In fact, from the 1980s onwards, when he first was effectively running against Reagan. He’s been running for president for decades. And it has always been that the system is rigged and corrupt, and he’s at least honest about it, and he will do it on your behalf, right? That is his essential pitch.

And that, by the way, that basic pitch dispatched a long list of people who were great. DeSantis, and Rubio, and Hillary Clinton. These are impressive people. It worked.

RG: The center-right and the center-left are very vulnerable — especially as we’ve seen in Europe — to that charge.

DM: A hundred percent.

So, then particularly against the Democrats, in general, globally, it is always a campaign against the cities; the diversity of the cities, the elites, the cosmopolitan values, it is always that kind of campaign. And so, in addition to painting his adversaries as corrupt, Trump, in the general election, taps into the deep white nationalist Christian rural theocracy that is, I don’t know, a fifth of the electorate?

And it matters, right? For example, white evangelical Christians: 85 percent for Trump in 2016, 80 percent for Trump in 2020. That’s a huge difference, right? And so, it matters if those groups are super-fired up, and Trump is super firing them up by warning them about the threat of the urbane, antireligious, etc.

So then, along comes this candidate — and, again, Trump saw this early, 2017 is when he started using his powers to make sure that he damaged Biden in this way — along comes a candidate who has this brand, and is also branded as a kind of centrist, kind of middle, Christian white man. Trump chokes on it.

And so, if you look at the perceptions of the genuine marginal voters, the people who are really at the fringe and they perceive Biden, you can ask them a lot of things about Joe, and they will say things that are not great. But that entire Trump brand campaign — and Putin and everybody, the billion-dollar smear campaign — failed, and everybody else it’s been run against, it succeeded.

So, the point that I make about Kamala and everything else and all the others is that — Now, could someone else do that? Could a Michelle Obama or a Dwayne Johnson maybe have that? Sure. But those are not the options that are available. The options that are available are other politicians who, in a three-, four-year period of time, I am so fired up about the bench. The 50-year-old Democrats who are leading around the country, very good. But, in 120 days, with the influence that the right-wing disinformation ecosystem has? If you did not like what happened to John Kerry in 2004, do not watch as your preferred candidate gets introduced to the American public. So, I’m just saying —

RG: Let’s actually even stipulate all that, and I think a lot of that is true. I’ve watched the right have this apoplectic frustration with their inability to code Biden as left wing, and a socialist as —

DM: Or corrupt.

RG: Or necessarily even corrupt.

DM: I actually think corrupt is first and left is second. But, yes. They’re frustrated that they can’t.

RG: Throughout, especially, Build Back Better, and all the deficit spending, and even the inflation, even with Biden saying a lot of the things that Bernie Sanders has said. Even with Biden being probably the most populist domestic policy president since FDR, it just has not stuck, because he just seems like Joe Biden, the centrist guy. And that has really frustrated Republicans, and I think that that’s all great.

But then Thursday happened, and it seems like Biden can’t complete a thought, that he loses his train of thought very quickly. He can’t separate out his words so that you can understand what he’s saying. He confuses things. We don’t even have to get into all of the different medical diagnoses, and the requests for neurological testing, to get to a place where we say, all right, the American public by 70-plus percent thinks he’s not fit for office anymore.

And every day that he fights against that, the media is going to zero in on whatever his latest gaff was, and that’s going to kick off another couple of days. And it’s also going to overshadow everything else.

Like, you may have seen the North Carolina gubernatorial candidate.

DM: Some folks need killing.

RG: He said some people need killing, yeah. And that just gets washed aside, because every Democratic member of Congress who now comes out and says Joe Biden needs to step aside is going to make news. Mark Warner gathering senators together, that’s going to make news. And Biden is going to try this loop where he says, OK, well, I’m going to do a press conference next Thursday, and that will buy another week. And then, that press conference, maybe it goes as poorly as the Stephanopoulos interview, but he doesn’t wander off stage. And so, he says, well, in three weeks, I’m going to do this thing. And then, eventually he says, well, it’s August, and now he’s pulling at the high 20s, low 30s.

And, while everything you said might have been true, age is a thing, and it landed on Biden, and this is the situation we’re in. And so, are you just so pessimistic about being able to bring in any alternatives, that you’re like, we’re just going to roll the dice here? Because it seems like the thing that Biden has is this brand of honesty, which is the thing that you’re saying you need to combat fascism, and fascism’s ability to kind of equate all corruption and say, well, I alone can fix it.

It’s hard for Biden to maintain that aura of honesty if people think he’s lying about his ability to function.

DM: Yeah. So, you have summarized, effectively, the case, and it’s a very real question. I’m trying to think of — There are so many embedded assumptions in there that we questioned, that I want to try to see what’s the most useful.

Let me say a few things. One question is, can Joe Biden be a good / great president as he is now, as he will be in four years. And we believe, contra-everyone, that, actually, he certainly can. And the reason we believe that is because of the nature of the job of president.

RG: Staff, etc.

DM: It’s not just staff. To be in that role, you have got to have great leverage. And great leverage means an amazing network of relationships, and people, and deputies, and foreign leaders, who you can work with, because they understand your values. And all of those things get better with age. I mean, in some cases. Not in every case; the Warren Buffett example, etc.

So, the question is, is Biden also suffering from age enough that that makes him worse? And that’s the presidential question, and we can have a whole separate podcast on that. But the more important question is how these five million marginal voters in the swing states that I’m talking about will perceive it.

Almost everything that you said is an argument that makes sense to people who are not in that category. Remember, the convention will be over in about 50 days. About 30 days after that, we’ll be in mid-September, and the actual five million will start paying attention. And then, 40 days after that, we will have a result. And Those five million voters are going to consume an enormous amount of information and disinformation about whomever.

Let’s assume that Biden were to choose to step down; it would be about Kamala. Like I said, I think she can prosecute that case, and we will support her hard. But it’s not guaranteed, because that campaign has worked against everybody else prior to Joe.

And so, they will consume bits and pieces about Joe’s age, they will also consume new information about Trump. And probably the biggest disagreement that Reid and I tend to have — and our team tends to have — with folks that are making your argument, is the extent to which Biden’s downsides are baked versus Trump’s. We think, actually, that Biden’s downsides, if you think about the five million marginal voters, Ryan, they overwhelmingly anchor their news in either TikTok — which is, like, four-to-one pro-Trump — or the Fox/Steve Bannon social media ecosystem, which is even worse.

So, my belief is, those five million people already think Biden is like you are suggesting he is now proven to be.

RG: Sure, I think you’re right about that.

DM: And then, on the Trump side, people tend to say everything is baked in. And I think that is an understandable instinct. But, really, what we’re saying is that we’ve seen this for so long, and all of our friends have seen it for so long, what more can be said? And, it turns out, more can be said.

The last time those five million voters seriously paid attention, yes, Joe Biden was younger. And, also, Donald Trump had not launched a violent assault on the Capitol that broke his brain and destroyed his ability to distinguish truth from fiction. Also, last time they were looking, Donald Trump had never been convicted of anything, and now there’s four unanimous juries and counting.

And so, my point is that we are going to get more and more information about how Donald Trump has lost it and how criminal he is, and that’s new news. At the same time, we’re contextualizing a bunch of other information about Biden and his team. At the same time, who knows what else is happening? That’s a long time.

RG: And so, I think the error that you guys might be making — and let me frame it this way — might be rooted in both the success that you guys have had, and also your roots in Silicon Valley.

And so, you and Reid both have been able to identify what you guys perceive as the real reality, which you believe a lot of people are missing. And you’ve also been able to, effectively, over the years, move hundreds of millions of dollars in different directions to kind of push people to see that reality with some success, some failures.

And so, I think that, at this moment, you guys might be overestimating your control over reality, your ability to get people to see what you see, and that, in fact, it’s over. That the world has decided and, whatever the world is, that this guy just isn’t up for the job, and it’s just going to get worse and worse and worse, day after day after day. And that looking back and seeing your guy’s ability to kind of shape reality in the past has convinced you that maybe you can shape it again this time in a smarter direction. When, in fact, the smarter thing might be to say, you know what? Actually, we might be right here, but nobody is ever going to agree with us. And we are going to lose credibility making this argument, and we need to do something different.

Now, I think that — and I’ve argued this — I think the different thing you should do is not anoint Kamala, because I think that’s a disaster. I think she has to fight for it, in what Jim Clyburn called a mini-primary. And there are donors lining up — you’ve probably heard from them — willing to back this idea of a mini-primary.

But, before we get to that, what do you think of my psychologizing of what I think is the error that you guys are making at this moment of overestimating your ability to influence this?

DM: I am so glad you asked that question. I’m surprised by it, but delighted to have the opportunity to talk about it, because that is actually the thing I think about all of you. I think we’re being modest.

That’s the thing; if Reid and I do not believe that we can move the odds as much as that debate did, we believe we have a little bit of influence. And, because the stakes are so high, we’re using all of it. And you are correct that it is very damaging to our credibility to take positions that all of our allies disagree with, right? And yet, you all think you can change people’s minds. You have so much confidence that you can get Kyrsten Sinema to change, you can get Joe Manchin to change. Just pressure them and they’ll change. And we can get Biden to change, we can get Kamala to not take it.

And I don’t know. I don’t know. I mean, I know who Biden is. I know he’s grateful for our support. But I don’t know that we’re in the top 100 most influential people. Probably in the top 1,000 but, like, even that’s questionable.

And so, we are just trying to play the cards we’re dealt. That’s what we’re trying to do. And we don’t think we can make a huge difference, but we are trying to, like — Guys, if this is the situation we’re in, this is kind of a conversation — A little bit, this is a conversation we had about S1. Like, I agreed with S1 in March of 2021, and the fight was always over. OK, are we accepting reality or overestimating our own influence? And I was on the other side. I was like, guys, it’s done, move on.

And I think that the cost of ignoring that reality — you know how I felt about those seven months of failure — and also, I know you’re not sad to see Kyrsten Sinema leaving the party, but she and Manchin are shitting on it on the way out, and that does not help right now. And that is all a consequence of overestimating your ability to have influence.

So, you kind of have this perception that we think we’re masters of the universe and can change everything and, on the contrary, we happen to be in a position where we are approaching this landscape of politics with a new set of lenses that gives us access to different insights that might be more relevant. And when we work through the game theory implied by that, we think the only thing we can do is increase the odds of Biden beating Trump. And one of the things that all of these conversations are doing is not talking about Donald Trump.

RG: Right.

DM: And you don’t want to talk about Donald Trump because you feel like you’ve already said it a million times, and I get that. The problem is, now is exactly the time I need you talking about Donald Trump, if I’m right.

So, I know that I’m expending my credibility, [and] Reid does, too. If we were solving for our credibility in politics, we would be doing the exact opposite of what we’re doing.

RG: I started by saying you were overestimating your capacity; now I think you’re underestimating it.

I think if you and Reid Hoffman came out — and you have a network of people as well that you can be influential around — if you came out and said, look, Jim Clyburn’s right, we need a mini-primary. We have six weeks between now and August 19th. We can have two debates, we can captivate national attention. We have 3,900 delegates who are there because they love Joe Biden. These are rank-and-file, everyday party figures. These are not the kind of elites — there are superdelegates and there are some elites mixed in there — but, overall, I think people would be shocked to find who these delegates actually are. These are just regular people who are really active in Democratic Party politics.

And it’s obviously too late to do voting, but there would be relentless polling, and Democrats just want to beat Trump. And if by August 19 you head into the convention and say, J.B. Pritzker is three points ahead of Trump, and Whitmer is two points behind Trump, I think the delegates are probably going to say, you know what? Big JB is our guy, and maybe he’s got some of that kryptonite, too, that works against Trump, and there just isn’t time over the next 50, 60 days to nuke him with the amount of oppo that Republicans are going to come after [him with]. They’re going to try, but you can only do so much; there’s only so much TikTok you can consume in a 24-hour period, people have tested it.

DM: Have you tested it? Have you tried it?

RG: I have deliberately stayed away from it because I can tell how addictive it is. Right now, I’ve heard a lot of Democrats say, look, the chance of Biden actually winning the election at this point is close to zero. And so, we have nothing to lose. Anything above zero is worth trying. So, let’s try. And we get closer to zero every day that this goes on, whether we like it or not.

So, what’s wrong with that analysis of it? And don’t you think if you guys came out and endorsed that, it would substantially move the needle internally? And I say this after I just said you overrate your ability to have influence, so I understand that’s incoherent.

DM: No, no, no, no, no. No, it’s not incoherent. It just sounds like we just learned, we moved forward together.

So, you’ve blended a couple of different strands in your question, as you know, because you get into the substance of why it would be good as part of gaming out what would actually happen. But I want to just go a little bit deeper into the decision-making process of Joe Biden, right?

Joe Biden is haunted by the fact that, in 2016, he listened to these arguments, and he’s right. We were all wrong. If he’d run in 2016, we would not be here. A lot of people — not us as much this time, but a lot of people — made those same arguments to him in 2020. He stubbornly, stubbornly resisted all of them, and he saved us.

I mean, it is very plausible, given how close that was, that anybody else, if our theory of Biden’s brand is correct, that was it. So, all of these arguments came at him in ’16. He listened. The world suffered grievously. All of these arguments came at him in 2020, he refused to listen. The world benefited tremendously. America now has the strongest economy in the world. We are powering the world economy, we are leading the free world against Russian aggression, because he refused to listen to these arguments.

So, right now, who is he going to listen to? I believe that, fundamentally, he is going to listen to voters, and he’s going to listen to the Democratic voters in particular. And the Democratic Party’s voters, since mid-2020, there has never been any single person who has been anywhere close to as popular as Biden with Democrats. It’s been the inverse on the other side.

And the choices in this country, in this political system, the way democracy works in this country is that the two parties put forward their candidates, those are the only chances to win, and they are put forward by the parties, and the parties are not most people. Certainly not the swing, and the swing is left with the choices, and there’s always a complaint.

And so, the question is, is there an argument for Joe Biden to step down? And the answer is, well, if he were to plummet in the polls — which would be the result if all these arguments are correct about how he’s being perceived — that might change his mind. And, at that point, we will be there to help with the transition.

He hasn’t plummeted. He’s dropped in the averages by less than three points, which is the amount by which they moved in the other direction — or slightly less than, actually — when Donald Trump was convicted of felonies. So, we are going to get more and more evidence of Trump’s criminality. At the same time, we’re getting more and more evidence of Biden’s physical aging. And you all assume that that is going to net out in a way that is going to be so obvious that you will persuade Joe Biden that, this time, you’re all right, and he’s wrong, when the last couple of times it was catastrophically the reverse.

RG: One thing that worries me is he told George Stephanopoulos that all the polls have him tied. And it made me wonder who’s feeding him, who’s briefing him on the polling? Will he actually see the numbers if they do collapse?

But, that aside —

DM: No, that’s actually important. Can we talk about that, or do you want to go to another one?

RG: Yeah.

DM: Because that one’s important. Because, look, there were many, many, many times when I watch politicians that I’m backing say things that I hate. From the time I watched Mike Dukakis answer that question about Kitty Dukakis, right? It happens. And so, there was a lot that Biden said that I did not like.

But his answer about polling, I’m like, yeah, actually. Everybody’s wrong and Joe is right. The polls are tied. They are still within the margin of error. That’s what matters at this stage.

RG: Not all of them, for sure.

DM: The aggregate, for sure.

RG: I see.

DM: Like, New York Times over? But the weighted average — And, look, you can disagree with a bunch of stuff about 538, and think that Nate Silver’s new thing is better, or whatever. But the one thing that I believe that 538 has cornered is the ability to evaluate pollsters. They go so hard at that, no one else is close. And they use that to weight the polls, and the average, it was Trump up about two, then there was a felony conviction — 34 actually — and, as the public digested that, it went to Biden, up about a little less than half a point. And now, it’s Trump by two-and-a-half. And all of that remains within the margin of error of these polls.

These two men have been tied in the 270 electoral vote battlegrounds. They have been within the margin of error since inception. And so, when people are saying Joe’s losing, and they’ve been saying that forever, I’ve been saying, it’s tied. And the reason it’s tied is because Joe Biden has this brand advantage. That is why, if you compare him to incumbents all over the world, he’s actually less unpopular.

So, I’ve always said it was tied, and it’s still roughly a jump ball. So, that is one of the cases where, look, there were a lot of things Biden said that I did not like, but that was one of the ones where I actually think he’s right, and you’re all wrong.

RG: So what would a plummet be? A drop versus a plummet?

DM: It would be outside the range. It would be outside the margin of error. It’d be, like, five points, and it would last a week or two. Five or more.

But, by the way, Ryan, the other side of it, just to set the presumption properly, if you guys are right, how much should the polls drop? I mean, shouldn’t they drop a lot? Shouldn’t they drop more than two-and-a-half points? Shouldn’t Trump’s odds of winning be higher than two-to-one, if you’re so right?

RG: I think you would need a more plugged in population to have swings bigger than we see, maybe.

DM: More plugged in? I don’t know, man. It wasn’t that long ago when George H.W. Bush had 90 percent approval ratings, and even George W. Bush was pretty high after September 11, right? So, it is not ancient history when Americans swung a lot. The reason they don’t now — in my view — is negative partisanship, and that goes both ways.

Remember this: even as the donor class — not me and Reid, obviously, but a lot of donors are freaking out — more small-dollar fundraising to Joe Biden came in since that debate than ever before. Those two hours were their best two hours. Those 24 hours were their best 24 hours. These are indications that the other side is also true.

And so, my whole point is, on all of this, it seems to me, especially given the psychological history of Biden being right and us being wrong — twice previously, catastrophically — and the way the polls are moving, the odds of him stepping down are very low. If things move a lot, I think he’ll reconsider. That will be his decision.

So, if it’s 90 percent likely that it’s Biden, and 10 percent likely that it’s someone else — or even 80/20, even if it’s just more likely than not — all of us need to be focused on attacking Trump, because Biden is going to make that decision in that way based on those factors that we don’t control. And he may be right. So, what are we doing?

RG: At what point does the reality start to intervene and we say, you know what? Horse race aside, numbers aside, all of the game theory aside, a president who said he needs to work less and shouldn’t do stuff after 8 p.m., and that we’re not confident is up to it, it’s just not something that, as a country, we want.

Like, people who would say, “OK, we want him to beat Trump, but do we want him to be president? Like, do we actually have confidence in his ability to be president?”

DM: See, this is great, I’m glad you’re raising this, because we talked at the outset that this was going to come up. And once you work through all the gaming and so forth that you and I have just discussed, you get to the fundamental of, like, “Wait, can he be a good president, right?”

And so, Ryan, my question to you: what do you think the job of the president is? Because clearly you seem to think it includes working super long hours. And I don’t think the president is necessarily an investment banking associate.

RG: I divide it into two things: one is making hard decisions, because the reason a decision gets to a president is because it’s a difficult one, and his massive apparatus that’s underneath him could not answer that question. That, maybe you can do between 10 and 4.

DM: No, no, no. Biden is not saying he won’t take calls.

RG: But, there’s that. And then there’s also, this is the second part of being president: communicating to the American people and persuading them of your vision.

DM: I agree with both of those. So, let’s go into those. OK. So—

RG: And, actually, the international public, I should put the international public in there, too.

DM: Yeah, a hundred percent. Absolutely. OK.

The president has to be able to make tough decisions, and communicate them in a way that is consistent so that everybody understands, right?

RG: Yeah.

DM: My contention is that Joe Biden is as good or better on those two things than anybody else, and it’s not getting worse as he’s getting older.

The way in which he makes decisions is with his close team. He is the leader of a council. He is the leader of the council of elders at the center of a network of decision-making, and he has been working too hard. He’s been working too hard if he was 50. And, when you’re older, you need to ease up a little bit, and he’s got the leverage to do it. He’s just working too hard. That doesn’t mean he’s not available, at all. If you need him, you can call him, but he’s working too hard. But his process of making decisions is one that seems pretty good.

And the second thing about communicating, if you are clear in your values, and you’ve recruited a network of people who embody those values, when you do make those decisions, they pulse out effectively.

Now, I’ve just made two contentions that you don’t agree with, and I understand that. My two contentions are that Joe Biden’s decision-making process is really good, and that his ability to implement and communicate and effectuate those decisions is really good. And you disagree.

So, the next question, Ryan, is, how do we look at the world and determine from the evidence without our bubbles, outside of our bubbles, how do we look at the evidence and determine outside of our bubbles what’s really true? And I think the best possible evidence is, how good of a job is Biden doing at president-ing today?

So, let’s look at the international leaders. International leaders call Biden personally when they need help. That is why he travels to war zones; they want him, personally. Look at domestic negotiations in the Senate. When they have a logjam, they call him, personally. And if you think that the left has been hiding Biden’s inability to do that well, Kevin McCarthy was caught saying, against interest, that actually that’s not the case. That when Joe Biden is embedded within his team and intervenes in those places, he is the closer, and everybody knows it. The international community calls him, the leaders call him.

And America is doing really well. We have the strongest economy in the world by far. And America is once again the leader of the free world. We almost lost [that] in just four years under Trump. We are back, and all of that is true right now.

So, that seems to me a pretty good evidence base that maybe my point of view might be right, and yours might be wrong.

RG: It seems that the candidates who are running for office around the country — a lot of them, at least — seem to think you’re wrong, and seem to think that, at least, from their perspective, as kind of cynical electoral operators, that Biden is now a drag on their electability. Angie Craig, in a swing district, a representative from Houston, became one of the most recent to come out and say he should step aside.

Can you really go forward with so many elected Democrats telling the public that their candidates should drop out?

DM: I am not saying that electeds are always cynical, or that people running for office are all always cynical, right? There’s a continuum between just being brutally cynical and just maybe having some motivated reasoning, you know, etc., etc. And then there’s also specific brass tacks, right?

If frontline swing district candidates are talking about issues, I think it is very important that we take them seriously with how they want to frame things, for sure. Because they’re the ones who know what the swing voters are thinking. However, a presidential nominee runs nationally, and it is almost always the case that there is some upside to locals distancing themselves from the nominee. That would certainly be true for any alternative to Biden as well. And it always happens.

So, I don’t mind that, it doesn’t bother me. But it’s also not evidence that is relevant to any of the questions we’ve discussed, which are, can he be a great president? Is he already a great president? Can he be a winning nominee? Is he our best bet? None of that is influenced even by what electeds say about distancing themselves from Biden. That is just a different thing.

RG: Let’s talk about Cori Bush for a second. Last time we spoke, you were pretty excited about the possibility of being able to take her out, that she was kind of one of the proxies you saw for Democrats who make it harder for swing district Democrats to win, because of her support for defunding the police, and —

DM: It was defund the police in particular. Bob Menendez and Cori Bush were my two biggest targets. So, one down, one to go.

RG: How is the Cori Bush race looking?

DM: I think it’s even.

RG: How invested are you? What are you going to spend?

DM: We’re not going to spend anything new. So, look, you know we support the mainstream Democrats, and we’ve supported some of the sort of centrist Black organizations that are dissatisfied with Cori Bush. We put resources into those. Wesley Bell, I really like him, I think he’s very good. And I think that, from the polls I’ve seen, it’s about even now.

She has a lot of loyalty and a lot of name recognition, but so does he. He actually has a pretty good brand. And I think the race is pulling into a tie, and I think there’s a very good shot that Wesley Bell wins, which would be great.

And he’s like— You wouldn’t hate him.

RG: We covered his initial race when he won as a progressive prosecutor.

DM: Yeah, you would not hate him. He’s just different from Bush on that thing that I think is important.

RG: Yeah. And he also was running for Senate.

DM: Against Josh Hawley.

RG: Yeah, and saw an opportunity to take her out after October 7.

DM: Thank god.

Yeah, look, Cori Bush took out Lacy Clay Jr. So, Cori Bush decided out of the woodworks to take him out, because she believed that he was not the right fit. And Wesley Bell made the same decision rather than taking on Josh Hawley. And thank god it works both ways.

RG: And did you say you’re not putting more?

DM: We’ve already put in a lot. I’ve maxed out personally, and Reid has, and we’ve supported some of the groups that are active. But that is not our priority right now.

RG: Do you have any guess what AIPAC’s super PAC is going to spend there? Did you coordinate with them at all?

DM: No, I don’t. The mainstream Democrats that we work with have ties with AIPAC. We do not. We have real issues with AIPAC: The stance they took vis-à-vis Netanyahu and Obama. Horrible. Horrible. So, we don’t work with them.

However, clearly, every now and then, someone you don’t like is fighting the same enemy you are. What are you going to do?

RG: So, the headline here, right now, you still think Biden is the best possible candidate to take on Trump, and that will remain the case in your view until or unless the polls plummet, and he moves outside the margin of error. Is that about right?

DM: Well, so, it’s a good headline, but just to be a little bit more precise: number one, yes, I believe Biden is still the best bet. Number two, I believe that Biden will choose to step down only if the polls move significantly for a couple of weeks; significantly meaning, like, five more points, stays there, etc. And, even then, the only way he will make that decision is with his close advisors, and that we will not have influence because of the history we’ve discussed.

The third thing that we believe is — and, again, this is just a positive statement, not a normative statement — we believe that, if it is not Biden, the confidence level that we have it’s going to be Biden, whatever it is, call it 90 percent, 80 percent, whatever. That is the level of confidence we have. And if it’s not Biden, it’s Harris. And I do believe that Harris can prosecute the case.

Remember, in 2020, even as I was pushing Biden over Bernie, I was making a bunch of arguments about how, if it is Bernie, here’s the play, and he could win. If it’s Kamala, she could win. She’s a prosecutor and he’s a criminal. And if she picks the right running mate, like, that’s cool, too. We’ll go for that. But those are the choices.

RG: You don’t think a mini-primary is a realistic possibility.

DM: Yeah. So, just to be clear, you said, “as Jim Clyburn advocated.” Remember, Clyburn advocated “it’s Biden’s decision.” But, no, I don’t actually think that’s realistic.

Actually, sorry, it’s not that it’s not realistic, I think it might actually happen. I just think that the odds that someone other than Kamala is winning that are close to zero.

RG: A lot of them are so cowardly they won’t even run against Kamala, even in an open mini-primary.

DM: Maybe it’s cowardly, maybe it’s not. But the cowardly thing is, Ryan, this is a little bit about picking your battles, and this is the same thing as the S1 debacle or disagreement. If you’ve lost, move on to the next fight, right?

So, there’s 2,000 delegates who’ve been pledged to Joe Biden. And even Black women who dislike the vice president go nuclear when people talk of passing them over do not see how our coalition passes up a number two, with her resume, background, and emerges better for it, at the same time that the disinformation ecosystem is attacking us. I just don’t see it. So, if that’s all true, then it’s going to be Kamala. And if you game it out, then don’t fight that fight.

So, I think that Kamala will win for all of those reasons if it’s not Joe. And so, it’s Kamala or Joe. And, either way, our job is to pay attention to the other guy who is worse.

RG: One side point on that that, to me, undermines the credibility of a lot of the people who are warning that Trump is going to usher in fascism and it’ll be the last election, is that you have so many of these top-tier Democratic candidates who presumably are very good political prognosticators — like a Newsom, and a Whitmer, and a Pritzker, and all these others — who are clearly taking a dive for 2028, they’re like, you know what? This is not my year. If they truly believe there would be no 2028 election, and that 2024 is the last shot at an election, I suppose you could say that it’s purely selfless, and they understand that their running would make it less likely that Democrats win in the end in 2024.

But all of the jockeying that I hear in the background from all of these camps who are very openly positioning themselves for 2028 undermines the idea that there won’t be a 2028 election. You know what I mean?

DM: I do. And I think that that is not a contradiction, I think it is a nuance that makes sense. So, maybe there’s a specific comment that I’m not thinking of, but people have varying degrees of confidence as to whether Trump will be able to end America’s constitutional democracy. Will be able to/will, right? So, I have very high confidence. I think if you had that much power, that kind of a criminal, in that kind of a setting, you don’t get it back, and there’s a ton of history on that.

But a lot of people say otherwise, and America is super complicated. So, some people say, well, the odds of America’s constitutional order collapsing rise from 1 percent to 3 percent. I’ve heard these Democratic politicians articulating a risk associated with Trump. But, if it’s just a risk, if the odds of America’s constitutional order ending rise from 2 percent to 4 percent, or from 5 percent to 10 percent, you still play the 90. If you believe, as Liz Cheney does, and as I do, that the odds are way worse, then you don’t.

So, I understand that it creates some brand conflict but, fundamentally, Ryan, I think that most people have less conviction than I do about how serious the risks are by a great deal. I am no longer seen as quite as insane as when I first started warning about this in 2016. I have more company, but people still think I’m exaggerating the threat.

So, mostly, people are going to act as though it’s not as big of a threat as I think it is, even if they’re going to say, any threat at all of that nature is unacceptable.

RG: As always, Dmitri Mehlhorn, thanks again. I really appreciate it.

DM: Thanks, Ryan.

RG: That was Dimitri Mehlhorn, and that’s our show.

Deconstructed is a production of Drop Site. This episode was brought to you in part by a grant from The Intercept. The episode was produced by Laura Flynn. The show is mixed by William Stanton. The episode was transcribed by Leonardo Faierman. Our theme music was composed by Bart Warshaw. And I’m Ryan Grim, cofounder of Drop Site. Check us out at dropsitenews.com.

If you haven’t already, please subscribe to Deconstructed wherever you listen to podcasts. And please leave us a rating and a review, it helps people find the show. Also, check out our other podcast Intercepted.

Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you soon.

The post Why Biden’s Still In: Insights From Democratic Insider Dmitri Mehlhorn appeared first on The Intercept.

At the end of July, Venezuelans head to the polls to elect a new president, with Nicolás Maduro seeking another six-year term. This week on Deconstructed, Ryan Grim speaks with Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil Pinto, who was in New York for a U.N. debate on unilateral sanctions. Fresh from visits to China and Russia, where he engaged with BRICS alliance leaders, Pinto discusses Venezuela’s bid to join this coalition aimed at countering Western economic dominance. They delve into the impacts of sanctions from the Trump and Biden administrations on Venezuela’s economy and migration crisis, and the battle over Citgo, a U.S.-based oil company acquired by the country in 1990. Grim also questions Venezuela’s human rights record.

Transcript

Ryan Grim: Welcome to Deconstructed, I’m Ryan Grim.

At the end of July, Venezuelans will go to the polls to elect a new president, with Nicolás Maduro hoping for another six-year term. Venezuelan migration to the United States, meanwhile, has become a major issue in our own presidential campaign, as the Biden administration continues to slap sanctions on Venezuela and wreak havoc on its economy.

Today, we’re joined by Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil Pinto, who was in New York for a debate at the United Nations on unilateral sanctions. He had just returned from a visit to China and Russia, where he met with leaders of what is known as the BRICS Alliance.

BRICS, which is an intergovernmental coalition of more than 20 countries, stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa. It’s an effort by Global South countries to build an economic power base strong enough to balance the West.

With the U.S. showing little interest in cooperating with Venezuela, we talked at length about Venezuela’s bid to join BRICS, and his recent trip to China. All of this is happening while the U.S. is using its court system to seize the U.S. subsidiary of Venezuela’s energy company, Citgo. It’s quite an incredible story.

The U.S. recognizes a Venezuelan government in exile, and is allowing that government — which isn’t really a government in any serious way — to basically give away a huge piece of Citgo. The irony is that the brazen move is shocking to the Venezuelan public, and even hawkish figures like Elliott Abrams — a Reagan and Trump official who previously tried to overthrow the Venezuelan government — said the timing of the attempted seizure is terrible, as it’s only helping Maduro in the polls.

For the upcoming election, Venezuela is so far not allowing Western monitors to come in, and has kicked employees of the U.N. Human Rights Office out of the country, accusing them of facilitating coups. At the same time, it has invited BRICS countries to observe the elections. The result of all this aggressive U.S. policy is more migration at the southern border, higher gas prices for Americans, and economic misery for the Venezuelans who stay behind.

We also discussed the nominal pretext for American sanctions, Venezuela’s human rights record which, you’ll notice, the minister was reluctant to discuss much in detail.

Here’s our conversation, which was recorded inside the Venezuelan mission in New York. 

First of all, thank you so much for doing this interview. I very much appreciate it. Welcome to New York. 

Yván Gil Pinto: Thank you. 

RG: So, I want to start with your recent trip, both to China and the meeting regarding BRICS. First of all, at BRICS, how was Venezuela received there? What was the goal of that trip?

YGP [via Interpreter]: So, prior to arriving to the U.N., we had visits, also, in Russia, China and Vietnam. In Russia, we were able to participate in the ministerial meeting of the BRICS.

BRICS, for Venezuela, is very important, because it’s an emerging bloc that is about building a new world. In a world where we see that imperialism, neocolonialism, fascism’s attempts to destabilize the world, we see BRICS as an alternative against that aggression.

That relationship, the new world is based on relationships of complementarity, of solidarity. Not in relationships of domination. So, we understand that BRICS is not a regional organization, or a bloc, as such, because of distance between the countries. But we see it as a unifying system that is based on common principles relating to commerce or to finance, and how relationships among countries should take.

RG: Did you apply for membership?

YGP [via Interpreter]: Yes, we applied for full membership to the BRICS. We have spoken to the 10 member countries. Because Venezuela has a role and a lot to contribute to that formation that is coming out of the BRICS. Not only because we have an important contribution in terms of resources — we have oil, minerals, gas — because that’s important, we are the first oil reserve in the world. I think it would be a very important contribution to the BRICS.

About 40 percent of the world’s GDP is in BRICS, so having the largest oil reserve in the world is important for BRICS. But this alone wouldn’t make any sense if there was not a commitment of Venezuela to the principles of the BRICS. Venezuela’s contribution, then it would be more [in] the political area, that’s already an important contribution.

Venezuela has been known for its contribution to international organizations such as Unazul, ALBA, CELAC. Venezuela is highly responsible, and a partner that is very reliable for BRICS. So, we will bring the resources that are very valuable, we have the commitment to the principles held by BRICS. We have experience in international organizations, and I think we could bring the in integration of different regional blocs, too, as a contribution to BRICS.

Right now, only Brazil represents Latin America in BRICS. We hope that, soon, Venezuela can integrate. During this meeting in Russia, we met with the 10 member countries of BRICS, and we’ve talked about all these aspects in detail with them. And, at the level of ministers, I could say, we all share this vision in a very harmonic and coordinated way.

So, Venezuela feels as [if it’s] part of the BRICS, now.

RG: Does Brazil support Venezuela’s entry into BRICS? And do you expect that BRICS will allow Venezuela to join? When will you know?

YGP [via Interpreter]: President Lula has said it publicly. The Brazilian support is unanimous [for] Venezuela [to] enter BRICS. We understand that in the recent visit that President Lula [made] to Colombia, there was also an invitation extended to Colombia to become part of BRICS. Venezuela has expressed its desire to participate in BRICS since 2000. We are working on this alternative with strength.

It’s part of our government platform, our plan for the homeland. So, we have a lot of expectations on that.

RG: And you visited China. Did you get any indication from China, whether China would support your bid to join BRICS?

YGP [via Interpreter]: So, during our visit to China, not only were we able to discuss bilateral cooperation, which is very important, but we also received China’s support for Venezuela’s entry into BRICS. In September of 2023, president Maduro visited China and we signed an alliance, in what’s called an all-weather alliance with China; that is a comprehensive alliance in all aspects. And, in that alliance, Venezuela’s contribution to BRICS is also contemplated.

So, China’s support is very strong for Venezuela.

RG: Boris Johnson visited Venezuela in February, he brought a message from the United Kingdom. What was his message to Venezuela? What was the Venezuelan response? And how does that play into this conversation?

YGP [via Interpreter]: I don’t really know about the contents of conversations that he held in Venezuela; at least not us, as the foreign ministry. We can say that, as foreign ministry, we had no contact with any former government official of the U.K.

It was a non-official visit, so we have no information of the aspects that took place there.

RG: When it comes to China and your visit there, was there anything you took away from the Chinese model that you think could be applied to Venezuela? China’s growth, obviously, has been explosive over the last couple of decades, whereas Venezuela’s has been the opposite.

What elements of the Chinese model do you think are useful to Venezuela?

YGP [via Interpreter]: With China, we have a relationship, it’s been important. This year will be the 50th anniversary of the China-Venezuela relations. So, we can say the first 25 years of our relationship with China, they were candid relations, but with not [many] advances.

But then, the second 25 years after President Chávez came in into office have been a very intense cooperation of financing projects in Venezuela, and a lot of strong relations. The Chinese model is an admirable model. It’s a model that we can say has lifted about 800 million people out of poverty, and it’s a model that we respect. [It] has adapted to its own ideas, its own particularities, and it’s directed by the Chinese Communist Party, which has a lot of strength, and it has a robust leadership.

The Venezuelan model is a model that we’ve also called “Venezuela’s socialism for the 21st century.” We’re building our own model, and we learned from different models. And, of course, from the Chinese model, we’ve also taken some ideas that are central. We are studying the model and the philosophy and the doctrine of the Chinese model but, in order to build our own model, with our own characteristics.

It’s a model that has precedent which has defined it. It’s a model that also is also based on different doctrines around the world: the Chinese doctrine, the socialist doctrine, the Bolivarian Doctrine, all adapted to our conditions as a Latin American country, under our constitution that was approved by the majority of the people. So, that is to say, Venezuela has a very well-defined model.

We have taken some items from the Chinese economic development model. For example, we’ve launched special economic interest zones, which China has a very deep experience in, and which are an example to the world. Those are ideas that we’re coordinating and learning from them.

And other aspects, such as development of science, technology, agriculture. Those are aspects that we are starting, and trying to see how we can reach a level like theirs.

RG: In the upcoming election, the Venezuelan economy has, the last three or four years, been growing at a pretty steady pace. But if you compare the standard of living to ten or fifteen years ago, Venezuelans are worse off today than they were then.

Why is the government confident at all that Maduro will be returned to another term, given the collapse we’ve seen over the last decade?

YGP [via Interpreter]: So, we’re going to an electoral process on July 28 where we are sure that the popular mandate of President Maduro will be legitimized. Today, all major polls clearly show the advantage that President Maduro has, and show the tendency to his victory.

RG: Well, not all polls.

YGP [via Interpreter]: The serious ones, yes.

There’s an intent to build a public narrative that is different from reality. There’s no really serious poll that says something different. Reality is just one. There’s a wide condemnation in Venezuela to those people that asked for and requested sanctions against their own country. That doesn’t mean there’s not an opposition, there is an opposition to the government. That’s one thing. But that opposition is a majority, that’s completely false.

The majority continues to be on the side of the Bolivarian revolution. There’s no doubt about that. That we can consult at any level. And we’re sure that that majority is what’s going to be reflected on that election on July 28. And that is mainly due to the rejection to those people in the opposition that have asked for sanctions and measures against Venezuela. But it’s also a sign of support for the successful policies of President Maduro during the last years.

Since the year 2014, we have been victims of unilateral coerce of measures, or illegal sanctions. And this implied serious economic affectation to the country. We lost 99 percent of our income. From one year to the other, we passed from having $56 billion as income to $700 million. What country can withstand this aggression?

We were able to withstand it because of the high revolutionary consciousness of the people. In the year 2013, Venezuela had the highest minimum wage in Latin America: around $400 per month, with an extraordinary level of standard of living created by the revolution. The sanctions made it possible that the salary, the minimum wage, would fall from $400 to a dollar a month.

This implied that we had to do huge transformations of and in the economy and the economic model, and how we had to shape the economy for the rest of the country. And, after a few very difficult years, we started on a process of recovery.

Today, the minimum income of a worker is about $130 a month. So, we went from $400 to $1, and now we’re back up to $130. And this, we’re doing it with all sanctions still in place. Which means this is a success, even within sanctions. This resistance shows that we’re going through the right path, and people are starting to feel that.

Beyond that, I think the Venezuelan population understands very well who their enemy is. This ultra-right opposition in Venezuela is the same ultra-right opposition that caused all these damages to the country. Not only when they were in power before the 1998 revolution, but then, during the revolutionary times, they are the ones who have been asking for sanctions and aggressions against their country, and the population knows this very well. We’re taking part in the struggle because there’s always this intent of manipulating the political atmosphere.

Today, the use of social media is very important as part of the electoral campaign. They create doubts, fake news, manipulated news. And they make believe that there are polls that favor them electorally, because the opposition is playing a game where they’re trying to make people believe that they are the majority; this particular opposition, the ultra-right opposition I’m talking about, because there are different types of opposition in Venezuela. I’m talking about the opposition that is backed by Washington.

And their intent is to denounce a fraud, whether it happens or not. Venezuela’s electoral system is very strong, very robust. It’s impossible to have fraud. But the opposition has never recognized any electoral results, and they’re probably not going to do so, either, in this election, and they’re preparing the road for this. And we’re also prepared to defend the victory of President Maduro, with invitations to international alternatives, different political parties, different personalities, so they can come to Venezuela and observe what’s going on.

But we are very confident of our victory, because of our successful policies implemented, a successful economic program, and the strength of our people.

RG: So, Venezuela has joined South Africa’s case at the ICJ [International Court of Justice] against Israel for its attack on Gaza. But, at the same time, Venezuela’s recently kicked out the United Nations Human Rights Office. If you ask the United States, they say, we relieved some sanctions in 2023. And then, in April, we brought them back, because there were human rights abuses, and so on and so forth.

So, why kick out the United Nations Human Rights [Office]? There were some other crackdowns on dissidents, both within Venezuela and outside of Venezuela; [like] Rocío San Miguel, a very high-profile human rights attorney.

Does the United States have a case that there was backsliding on human rights? And why kick out the U.N. Human Rights agency?

YGP [via Interpreter]: Unfortunately, Human Rights has been instrumentalized against the Bolivarian government, the Venezuelan government, in order to attack and revert the Bolivarian government. Venezuela has unbreakable commitment to human rights.

Our generation was a victim of human rights violations. The Bolivarian revolution was actually born precisely after huge human rights violations. In the 1989 Caracazo Revolts, over 5,000 Venezuelans were assassinated or disappeared. All of our generation has either friends or relatives that were murdered or disappeared during those events. There’s no other case in Latin America of a relationship with human rights as Venezuela has. That means we have a very strong and high commitment to human rights.

Despite them having been used against Venezuela, we have high cooperation with the U.N. High Commissioner’s office, because there has been an intent to create human rights violation cases where they don’t correspond. So, in order to counter that initiative, we talked to the High Commissioner’s office, and we set up an office of personnel of the High Commissioner’s office, in order to have activity in Caracas, so they could observe the process. They could go to the trials, to the courts, to visit the jails. And they had free access to all judicial and police institutions in Venezuela. They were there for five years.

RG: With San Miguel, for instance, when she was arrested, her entire family was arrested as well. I think, when people in the United States hear that, they say, you arrest her, also her brothers, her relatives, her location is not disclosed for some time. It doesn’t feel like human rights are being respected, and it doesn’t feel like they’re being instrumentalized in that moment.

TGP [via Interpreter]: I’ll say it again. The narrative that has been attempted to implement about Venezuela has been a false narrative. Our cooperation is absolute. We have [far fewer] problems in human rights than any country in the region. We know that, to advance human rights, we have to better train our judges, better train our police, to have a better system, so these things don’t occur.

All cases of abuse or that denounce these abuses are attended to in Venezuela. As in any other place around the world, except for the United States. Here, human rights cases are not attended to. We tend to them, and when we’ve condemned cases as well. And, precisely, the collaboration with the office was destined to help in these cases.

The problem is that the office was closed in Venezuela, due to the fact that they were doing political campaigning. We didn’t close cooperation with the office. We continue to work, continue to subscribe to the human rights agreements, and we have a constant daily interaction with the human rights offices. There are no countries that have offices of the high commissioner in their own territories. This was done in Venezuela precisely to show that human rights issues were being instrumentalized against Venezuela.

But if you have human rights workers participating or taking part in other interests, that’s something that we cannot allow, because that’s precisely going against the protection of human rights. And any case of abuse in Venezuela is attended to under the law, and is sanctioned. In all exams, Venezuela has proven that there is no policy of human rights violation. Any other version is politicized.

We have asked all observers of human rights to come to Venezuela at different times, but we are a country with dignity, we’re a sovereign country. The justice of Venezuela cannot be under tutelage. Venezuela is a signer of human rights treaties, it’s very well explained in our constitution. Venezuela respects human rights. And, like I said, any case of human rights abuses in Venezuela, they’re treated according to the law, as this should be.

RG: Just one follow-up, real quickly. The case of San Miguel, does she have access to attorneys? What can we expect to hear from that?

YGP [via Interpreter]: In the case of Rocío San Miguel, she has access to her lawyers. She has access to her family. They’ve tried to build a false narrative around this case. Rocío San Miguel is accused of terrorism actions, and she’ll have the opportunity to present her defense. That’s an issue for the justice [department].

But the public prosecutor’s office has strong evidence. The prosecutor’s office is accusing her of having been involved in an attempt against the life of the president. But some of the participants have themselves admitted this publicly and, in the investigations by the prosecution, they found materials at her home that she was informed about the assassination attempt. So, from there, there’s a legal process to judge the case and have her sentenced, as anywhere else around the world.

I mean, I would like to know what would happen anywhere else around the world — or here in the United States — if there was a journalist that was somehow informed about an attempted assassination attempt against the president? I’m sure their human rights here, they wouldn’t exist, like the human rights of the people that are detained at Guantanamo. And, in the case of this lady, she has a right to her trial, and to her defense. I’m not a judge or a prosecutor, but I can see that the evidence that exists is very strong.

RG: Let me ask you about the case regarding Citgo. From your perspective, what is the latest on Citgo? What is Venezuela going to try to do to hold on to its assets?

YGP [via Interpreter]: The Citgo case is a robbery. The government of the United States aligned with a group of Venezuelans who claimed to be the government of Venezuela. They basically began a process to steal the company. And, since then, there’s been a whole series of legal actions, that it’s amazing that these actions have been validated.

Because they stem from a very illegal issue, that the government of Venezuela is not really the government of Venezuela. This doesn’t make any sense. So, anything that takes place after that is illegal. That government — the so-called government of Guaidó — they took advantage of actions and directives within Citgo, and now all of these actions are illegal. But also, they created the basis so that a trial against Citgo will take place.

They basically did everything so that they would justify the courts taking illegal actions against the company. We should see how irrational this is.

RG: The decision to steal, to take, to seize Citgo’s United States subsidiary is coming very soon. I’m sure you’ve seen Elliott Abrams — who himself has been involved in many coups throughout his career in South and Central America — recently said that it was stupid of the Biden administration to go forward at this moment, because it would inflame the Venezuelan public, and could help you in the elections.

A backlash against the opposition — Which I found interesting, because it implied that there would be some actual voting and some real democracy, that public opinion could shift and be expressed at the ballot box, which is not typically what the United States says about Venezuelan elections. But I also found it rather interesting that he said, don’t do this now, do this immediately after the election.

And so, does Venezuela have anything that it can do in this situation? Or are you just watching from the sidelines?

YGP [via Interpreter]: Well, first of all, those statements made by those main actors that stole Citgo is a confession on their part. What else does public opinion need to know for it to see that it’s a robbery, and that it’s a robbery destined to hurt the Venezuelan people?

The truth is, that opposition is extremely corrupt. And the truth is that that corrupt opposition was supported by Washington. They have been supported and they continue to be supported by Washington. That’s true, and we’ve seen it with this statement. Unfortunately, we have no access to the U.S. justice system, because we’re not allowed to.

I mean, we’re not going to stop fighting for reestablishing the legality of what’s in Citgo, because there’s an administrative continuity in Venezuela.

RG: And you have no access to the system, because you’re not recognized as the actual government of Venezuela.

YGP [via Interpreter]: Exactly. For that same reason. We are being denied our right to defense. Because, again, everything around Citgo is built upon a false case, and that will be proven, sooner or later, in front of justice. Anything that happens to Citgo is illegal, and it’s important for all of those who today aspire to take the company away from us, that they must know that all this is illegal.

Everything that is going on is illegal, and everything will have its consequences. It won’t die there.

RG: What would you lose? A refinery in Texas? What else, what assets would be stolen if this goes through? And what would Venezuela retain?

YGP [via Interpreter]: Well, right now, our struggle continues to be denouncing it in the first place. We have no other option. Beyond whatever our lawyers can do, the limited actions they can take within the U.S. system, we rely on international solidarity. And the first thing we have to do is to convince and prove around the world that the legitimate government of Venezuela is the government of President Maduro. And we also need to make the creditors understand that the best solution is to have a direct negotiation with the government of Venezuela.

The path of selling off Citgo’s assets is jumping into the unknown, for the creditors. And what we are trying to do now is to denounce, and to tell the truth, and to alert, that any other creditors that think that selling off Citgo assets will be a solution, that that is the worst path.

RG: If United States sanctions were lifted and if relations were normalized, what effect would that have on the outward migration from Venezuela?

A huge number of people who are being encountered by U.S. Border Patrol at the southern border are Venezuelan. You recently stopped taking flights, in response to the reimplementation of sanctions. How much of that outflow do you think would stop, in the event of normal relations?

YGP [via Interpreter]: So, the origin of the migration outflow in Venezuela, which is something that we didn’t really know until the sanctions policies were implemented, is precisely that. It began with the sanctions.

From 1999 to 2017, we didn’t know the phenomenon of migration; if anything, we knew about a phenomenon of migration towards Venezuela. But it was when sanctions were taken against our economy that there began an outward flow of migrants, because it was a comprehensive attack against our economy and against our nation. Not only did it hurt our economy, but there were special conditions created to attract that migration.

Migration was promoted from Washington during the years of 2017, ’18 and ’19.

RG: Under the Trump administration? How so?

YGP [via Interpreter]: Yes, under the Trump administration.

RG: How did they attract? How did they incentivize?

YGP [via Interpreter]: They created a special condition for those people to come into the United States, special protections for those migrants, different from conditions that existed for other migrants, like Colombians. Venezuelan migrants were treated in a special way. That was created from here, and that created a pole of attraction while, at the same time hurting our economy that stimulates people to come here.

Those who created those conditions, they must assume their responsibility. A responsibility of hurting our economy, and of creating a migrant attraction towards the United States. That continues under the Biden era as well. And, today, that mistaken policy by the United States is what has generated the migrant problem here. And, in the way that the economic situation of Venezuela is improving, then that migration attraction is also decreasing.

Today, the migration flux is actually negative. Right now we have more migrants coming back to Venezuela than leaving Venezuela. So, for every two migrants leaving Venezuela, three are coming back. So, the influx is now towards Venezuela. If all sanctions were lifted today, we would have an influx of migrants moving back to Venezuela.

Because the majority of the Venezuelan population wants to live in Venezuela. They have conditions, they have a system that tends to them, they have social safety in Venezuela. They don’t have that here.

Surely, there will be a part of immigration that will stay in the United States, because they already built their life in the United States. That generates another type of internal action, because the bipartisanship in the United States wants to benefit from the creation of an opinion group of Venezuelans inside the country, as happened with the Cubans. And there’s an interest in both parties to favor that type of migration, and to obtain a political profit from that migration.

But the treatment of the migration issue by both Democrats and Republicans is highly hypocritical. They stimulated it, they live off it, and they use it to attack each other. So, that’s why we have created a social program that is called Return to the Homeland that President Maduro has created, so that people would come back to Venezuela. And I think we’re the only country in the world that has created a program to go and get the migrants, and voluntarily bring them back to the country.

All those Venezuelans that want to voluntarily return to the country, we’re going to facilitate them to return.

RG: What conversations are ongoing, if any, between Venezuelan officials and U.S. officials toward normalizing relations? Has there been any reaction to you traveling to the BRICS conference, to applying for membership? Does that bother the United States, have they been silent about that? And what’s the path forward here?

YGP [via Interpreter]: So, negotiations with the United States are handled by the president of our National Assembly, Jorge Rodriguez. Conversations have always taken place, even during the worst moments. They’ve always been taking place. These are conversations, like you said, to normalize relations. Unfortunately, the United States has never complied with any of the agreements it has signed.

But, despite that, we continue to talk. The foreign ministry is not part of the conversations. We haven’t received any contributions with regards to policies, because there’s no need to.

RG: Well, thank you for your time. I appreciate you joining me.

YGP [via Interpreter]: Thank you.

RG: Deconstructed is a production of The Intercept. This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. It was recorded and mixed by William Stanton. Legal review by David Bralow, Shawn Musgrave, and Elizabeth Sanchez. Our theme music was composed by Bart Warshaw. And I’m Ryan Grim, D.C. Bureau Chief of The Intercept.

If you’d like to support our work, go to theintercept.com/give. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to the show so you can hear it every week, and please go and leave us a rating or a review. It helps people find the show. Also, check out our other podcast, Intercepted.

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In a conversation he didn’t know was being recorded, embattled Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito shared his private belief that his movement’s battle with secular forces in the country was a zero-sum contest of irreconcilable values. 

“One side or the other is going to win,” Alito says in secretly recorded audio. Alito was speaking at a reception for the Supreme Court Historical Society last Monday evening. “I mean, there can be a way of working — a way of living together peacefully, but it’s difficult, you know, because there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised. It’s not like you can split the difference.”

Alito was responding to a question from Lauren Windsor, a progressive advocacy journalist and activist who regularly records conversations with Republicans and conservative movement leaders. 

Windsor is my guest on Deconstructed this week. We’re publishing the secret audio in partnership with Rolling Stone.

Windsor, who is making a documentary called “Gonzo for Democracy,” which will be out in the fall, reminded Alito that she had spoken with him a year earlier at the same event and wanted to ask him the same question. “What I asked you about was about the polarization in this country, about, like, how do we repair that rift?” she asked.

“Asking questions of judges, these are the most discreet people in public life. There’s a huge amount of secrecy around the Supreme Court decisions around justices,” Windsor tells Grim. “I’m asking the questions to try to expose true intent. And given that none of the justices will go to Congress, will make their views more publicly known, I feel that it’s of intense public interest to find out whether their decisions are guided by personal religious convictions that really have no place in our public life.”

[Deconstructed theme music.]

Ryan Grim: I’m Ryan Grim, and this is Deconstructed. 

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has come under intense scrutiny lately after the discovery that he had flown two flags associated with insurrectionary elements of the far right. On Monday, he had what he thought was a private conversation with what he thought was a right-wing ally at an event at the Supreme Court.

That person was actually Lauren Windsor, a progressive activist who has been a guest on this show before and who has spent years embedding within right-wing movements and recording her interactions. Lauren also spoke that evening with Chief Justice John Roberts, and the contrast between how Alito answered her questions and how Roberts answered her questions is truly startling.

Now before we play the clips, let’s welcome Lauren Windsor back to the show.

Lauren, thank you for being here.

Lauren Windsor: Thanks, Ryan.

RG: And so as we’ll hear in this recording, this wasn’t the first time you spoke with Alito. Can you set up the context of this conversation and your previous one?

LW: The initial conversation that I had with Justice Alito was in 2023, and I had asked him about the rising polarization in the country: “How do we heal this rift — this divide?”

And he answered pretty standardly of, “I don’t know. I don’t know. That’s not our role.” But my hunch was that his feelings might have changed in the course of the year when I had that initial conversation with him. It was several weeks, maybe a couple months after the ProPublica reporting on Clarence Thomas, but before the reporting that came out on Justice Alito. And the reporting only intensified from that point on.

The court’s really been under a very intense magnifying glass in the past year, and I figured that he might have a different response to that question this year. So, I went back this past Monday.

RG: Yeah, so he certainly did. I want to play a little bit of this conversation and get you to unpack what’s going on. And first of all, oftentimes, when you are recording somebody and having a conversation with somebody on the right, there’s some identity disguise going on or you’re pretending to be somebody you’re not.

In this case, you just told him your name and then had a conversation with him. At times, you were kind of indicating a conservative affinity that doesn’t exist. But in general, there wasn’t actually much other misdirection going on here, am I right?

LW: Right. I mean, I look like myself. I gave my name. I just misrepresented my true political ideology or ideological leanings.

RG: And what struck me is that this is not really behind closed doors. Like, it’s a private event, but not really private. Lots of people there.

LW: Yes, a lot of people. But I’ve only met him in these two separate times. So it’s not —

RG: So you’re mostly a stranger to him. 

LW: Yes. 

RG: This is him talking to a stranger, which I think is important context — that he’s going to be this revealing to a stranger. So let me play a little bit of this interaction.

LW: Hi, I wanted to say hello to you again. My name is Lauren. I met you last year. I think you already met my friend over here. So anyway, I wanted to just tell you— my husband wanted to be here, but he had a last-minute thing. And he was just like, “Make sure that you tell Justice Alito that he is a fighter and we appreciate him and he has all the grit.” And I know it’s gotta be terrible what your family, what you and your family are going through right now. So, I’m just so sorry. 

Samuel Alito: Thank you. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. 

LW: But — and I’m sure you don’t remember this at all — but what I asked you about, was about the polarization in this country. About, like, how do we repair that rift? And, considering everything that’s been going on in the past year, you know, as a Catholic, and as someone who really cherishes my faith, I just don’t know that we can negotiate with the left in the way that needs to happen for the polarization to end. I think it is a matter of like, winning.

SA: I think you’re probably right. One side or the other — one side or the other is going to win. I don’t know, I mean, there can be a way of living together peacefully, but it’s difficult because there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised. They really can’t be compromised. So, it’s not like you’re going to split the difference.

RG: So, he tells you “One side or the other is going to win.” What was your reaction to his comment there?

LW: Well, so just for greater context into the framing of this: Asking questions of judges, these are the most discreet people in public life. There’s a huge amount of secrecy around the Supreme Court decisions around justices. I’ve talked to lower-level judges before and bring up an issue — abortion — and get shut down immediately. So the deliberative process in figuring out “How do I approach this?” was long.

I had to think about what are the things that I can say, and what are the things that I can’t say that are going to trigger him. But it’s obvious that he’s been aggrieved for some time. It’s obvious that he believes very strongly in his Catholic faith. And I think that framing the conversation in terms of morality and religion was an easier pathway than framing it in partisan terms. Because if I brought up Trump, for instance, I feel like he would have shut down pretty quickly. If I had said “Democrat” or “Republican,” I think it would have shut down pretty quickly. You notice that in the conversation, I said “the left.” That was deliberate. And when he said that one side was gonna win, I was like, gotcha.

This is exactly where I wanted him to go. And you never know where someone’s going to go beforehand, right? Like I can only go and have a conversation with someone. I can’t stuff words in their mouth.

I’m asking the questions to try to expose true intent. And given that none of the justices will go to Congress, will make their views more publicly known, I feel that it’s of intense public interest to find out whether their decisions are guided by personal religious convictions that really have no place in our public life.

RG: Yeah, and the fact that you went to Roberts at the same event with the same questions and got a completely different — and from my perspective — normal response from him shows that, OK, if you want to say he’s being entrapped or he’s being set up — A, like you said, discretion is the number one role, in public, of these Supreme Court justices. These are not amateurs when it comes to this question. But B, John Roberts showed how you can answer the question in a quite normal way if you don’t actually have the beliefs that Alito has. 

I think you’re right to say that what it actually did was expose how he was feeling. So for people who couldn’t really follow along with that audio, you had said, basically, hey, I talked to you last year. I asked you about the polarization in this country and how we repair that rift. And then you said, considering everything that’s been going on in the past year as a Catholic and as someone who really cherishes my faith, I just don’t know that we can negotiate with the left in this way. But like, what needs to happen for the polarization to end? I think it is a matter of winning. 

And he says, “I think you’re probably right. One side or the other is going to win.”

LW: I think it’s also really striking that he’s framing it in terms of one side or the other. Are there only two sides in this country? So, if he’s seeing this as two sides, of the left and the right, or Republicans and Democrats — 

RG: Secular —

LW: Or Christians and non-Christians. He didn’t bring up all those multiple sides, right? There could be a lot of different sides, but he’s framing it as “One side is gonna win.” And to me, that reflects a partisan intent.

RG: You then, in your response, which we’ll play now, you kind of ramp up the religiosity in a way that, as I’m listening to it, I would have thought, alarm bells are going off in Alito’s mind at this point. Like, whoa, this is a conversation that is so far removed from how a Supreme Court justice ought to be talking about public policy and public life. But instead he dives right into it. So let me play from there.

LW: And that’s what I’m saying, I think that the solution really is, like, winning the moral argument. People in this country who believe in God have got to keep fighting for that to return our country to a place of godliness. 

SA: Oh, I agree with you. I agree with you. 

LW: Because if we look at the decline of our society, the decline of the nuclear family. Liberals, I just feel like, want to see that happen and proliferate. And I think we’ve been too permissive to say, “Oh, you know, OK.” I understand the Constitution. I understand —

RG: And so there, somebody comes and interrupts. And in general, I don’t like to hit public figures too much for just agreeing with people who they meet, like, in line. Like, a lot of people just want to be agreeable. But — we’ll play the John Roberts clip later — John Roberts had the same opportunity. He’s like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Christian nation? My Muslim friends wouldn’t agree with that. My Jewish friends wouldn’t agree with that. 

But take us into this room here. Where does it go from there?

LW: Just to go back, to hit back on the point of the religiosity really being ramped up: There’s a very delicate approach, like, “How far can I actually go here?” And I’m not trying to come out the gate really hard. I’m trying to see if I can get him on this — it was a pretty aggressive question, the polarization thing, but I tied it into a previous question I’d already asked him. I tied it into his personal sense of aggrievement already over everything that he’s been going through for the past year.

So I felt like it was fertile territory. But if he had smacked me down there, I certainly wouldn’t have been able to ramp up the religiosity in that way. I would have needed to tiptoe a bit to see if I could get him to agree to something else.

RG: Yeah, and also asking him about polarization can also be the easiest softball ever. Like, we all just need to come together. We’re one country. Because this is pretty easy stuff to answer if that’s what you believe.

LW: But to me, it was also, polarization — it’s inherently political without having to say the words that are kind of triggering in these conversations with justices. In the guidelines for the event itself, they say, you can’t talk about any matters before the court, and doing so will have you thrown out.

So are they going to have you thrown out for attempting to talk to a justice about abortion? Maybe not, if you’re like, “Oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize.” But certainly, my main goal was to get some sense of Trump immunity. Can we get [Alito] on the record voicing some kind of support, like, being in the can for Trump?

RG: Right. And that’s the context of this. For people who are not following the cases closely, the context for all of this: There was pressure on Alito to recuse himself from the upcoming Supreme Court review of whether the president has this — what kind of immunity the president has. And so how do you see this fitting into that question?

LW: Some of the things I’ve asked other people are, “How are we going to keep the Democrats from stealing the election again?” “What are you doing to make sure that the Democrats aren’t stealing it?” “We don’t have the same positions of power we did before, but we have the court. Like, what can we do? What are we doing to make sure that we don’t lose this by fraud again?” 

For listeners who aren’t aware of my background, I’ve been reporting extensively on election deniers and the ongoing threats to democracy. And I’m producing a documentary called “Gonzo for Democracy.”

This is, to me, the pinnacle of the threat at hand in 2024: Do we want to be a Christian theocracy, or do we want to maintain this American tradition of secular society? And getting an indication that he’s in the can for Trump, giving him immunity, stalling things, voting in his favor. I think people suspect it, but it’s a much different thing when you have audio proof of it or visual proof of it.

RG: Right. You would think it would put pressure on him as he’s thinking about that case or as he’s weighing whether or not to recuse. But the way that he frames it as the zero-sum competition is intense.

And just for people who couldn’t quite hear that recording, you said, I think the solution really is winning the moral argument. People in this country who believe in God have got to keep fighting for that to return our country to a place of godliness. And he said, “I agree with you. I agree with you.”

So before we go to the 2023 conversation, which I think is really interesting too, let’s juxtapose John Roberts here. Had you spoken with Roberts before or after Alito that evening, by the way?

LW: It was after Alito.

RG: Let’s just play a little Roberts, and then we’ll talk about his conversation, which I think puts in really stark relief how radical what you heard from Alito is.

LW: I just want to ask you, like, specifically with everything that’s going on right now — it’s a very tumultuous time in the country. I’m just curious, from your perspective on the court: How do we start to repair that polarization?

John Roberts: The first thing, I think, is to tell me when the non-tumultuous time has been here. I mean, you look at the court, what the court was doing in the ’60s, what the court was doing during the New Deal, what the court was doing after Dred Scott, and all this — it’s kind of a regular thing. People think it’s been so different and special. It’s been pretty tumultuous for a long time. 

LW: So you think this is a normal period? 

JR: You know, I don’t know if it’s normal. I mean, since I’ve been here, oh, 20 years, there have been quieter times. But the idea that the court is in the middle of a lot of tumultuous stuff going on, that’s nothing new.

RG: I mean, that’s like a pretty fair analysis of the Supreme Court’s role in history, right? Or do you disagree? What do you think?

LW: I think he —

RG: And also safe. It’s also very safe. 

LW: It is very safe. 

RG: Like, if you’re talking to a stranger, these are platitudes.

LW: They are platitudes. But I think that he caught himself sort of downplaying the, I think, seriousness of the situation in the country right now and course corrected. Because you hear him saying, it’s not that bad, it’s not that bad, look at all these previous times in history. And then he catches himself and says, it’s not great.

I forget the exact phraseology of it. He’s, like, don’t get me wrong. It’s not great right now, but we could be at war. It could be Vietnam. And it’s like, yeah, I mean, we’re not shooting each other yet, but there was a violent insurrection on January 6, which, obviously, I wouldn’t have brought up in that context.

RG: And the times that he compares it to are quite remarkable moments in American history. So in a sense, he’s saying, OK, yes, it is an abnormal time period, but we’ve had lots of abnormal time periods before.

And the ones he mentions are huge moments in American history. The Dred Scott and then the Civil War, the New Deal, and then the civil rights era. These are probably the pinnacles over the last couple hundred years of intensity of the American republic conflict. 

Let’s go from there.

LW: I guess I wouldn’t say that it’s not like it’s an innovative thing. It’s not new. I guess, I really feel like we’re at a point in our country where the polarization is so extreme that it might be irreparable. 

JR: Oh, I don’t think that.

LW: And I think —

JR: Polarization that extreme is like the Civil War. We did that. During Vietnam, people were getting killed. And, I mean, I was there in Vietnam. This is all right. I mean, it’s not all right, but it’s not like it’s as dramatically different — it’s a common thing people with their own perspective think, this is so extraordinary. Eh, I don’t know. 

LW: But you don’t think there’s a role for the court in guiding us toward a more moral path?

JR: No, I think the role for the court is deciding the cases. If I start — Would you want me to be in charge of guiding us toward a more moral path? That’s for the people we elect. That’s not for lawyers.

RG: So, again, that’s the kind of answer that if you’re at a confirmation hearing or talking to a stranger at a reception that you would give. So, at this point, what are you thinking in this conversation?

LW: I was trying to get as much detail out of him as possible. It was clear to me that he was not going to answer in the way that Alito did. But I felt that if I were more aggressive about Christian nation and the Supreme Court having the role in guiding us there — notice the difference in the language between that and Alito?

I did push it harder with Roberts in that moment because I felt, like, we’re after the dinner. I don’t really don’t have anything to lose. They’re not gonna kick me out. Let’s see how strongly he will react to that. And I thought that the answer was great as a counterpoint to Alito, because I was very explicit and the Supreme Court should have a role in guiding our morality, you know, we are a Christian nation. And he, to my surprise, pushed back on both counts. I was happy that he did so, but it sort of belies the fact that he is enabling the justices on the court who are actually much more forthright in their religious convictions.

RG: I think that’s a good point: that John Roberts knows Sam Alito.

He knows what Sam Alito believes. We may all be learning the truth about what he really believes now. But John Roberts has known for a very long time, but also Alito’s defenders and your critics after this comes out are going to say, well, she baited him. This isn’t really what he thinks. But I would underscore your point there.

This is how you can answer these questions. Like if you believe in the traditional role of a Supreme Court justice and how they ought to be presenting themselves in public and comporting themselves in private. If you’re Alito and you’re more of a revolutionary, you’re just telling strangers that it’s a zero-sum game.

And so the next one I thought was even more powerful in its rebuttal of your questions. So let’s roll that. 

LW: I guess, I just believe that the founders were godly, like, were Christians. And I think that we live in a Christian nation and that our Supreme Court should be guiding us in that path.

John Roberts: I don’t know if that’s true. Yeah, I don’t know if we live in a Christian nation. I know a lot of Jewish and Muslim friends who would say, maybe not. And it’s not our job to do that. It’s our job to decide the cases as best we can.

RG: So he says, when you say we live in a Christian nation, he says, “I don’t know that we live in a Christian nation. I know a lot of Jewish and Muslim friends who would say, maybe not. And it’s not our job to do that. It’s our job to decide the cases as best we can.” That’s how a normal Supreme Court justice would answer that question, right? 

LW: I would think so, yes. I think about normal and it’s so relative, with the current set of crazy that we have.

RG: He’s abnormal in that in his crew, maybe.

LW: Well, I mean, as the chief justice, he has this, has got to portray himself as being a very fair minded, neutral arbiter. Whereas, I really believe that Alito is so aggrieved and feeling so empowered by the majority that he can get away with anything and no one’s going to do anything to hold him accountable.

And you see that with Congress. The Senate Democrats should be hauling them in for questioning. They may not have the political will to remove a justice from the court, but there should definitely be public hearings on what’s going on.

RG: So then from here, the conversation ends with this: 

JR: It’s a much more modest job than I think people realize. 

LW: I don’t want to monopolize your time. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us. 

JR: Not at all. 

LW: Thank you so much. 

RG: Yes, he just says, “It’s a much more modest job” than we think. But that’s not exactly true. Like, the Supreme Court is currently upending American culture. And so it does feel like he feels like his job is to help shepherd Alito’s vision, but make it seem like they’re just deciding the cases.

LW: Palatable. I mean, he’s the enabler on the court. I just doubt his sincerity. I think that there’s religious conviction there that for him to display would not be appropriate and it would hinder his ability to get it shepherded through.

RG: So let’s go back to some of the 2023 conversation you had with Alito just to see. Because I think you’re right to highlight that change in his demeanor or his willingness to speak out over the last year. 

LW: I just want to ask something. I want to be totally appropriate with the jurisprudence of it all. 

SA: Yeah. 

LW: Just to be totally candid: How do we get America back to a place of less polarization? Because I feel like the court is undergoing this period of turmoil. People don’t trust in, I think — this is like the last bastion of public trust. And how do we get back to that?

SA: I wish I knew. I don’t know. It’s easy to blame the media, but I do blame them. Because they do nothing but criticize us. And so they have really eroded trust in the court. I don’t know. I really don’t know. Ordinary people — ordinary isn’t the right word — American citizens, in general, need to work on this, to try to heal this polarization because it’s very dangerous. I do believe it’s very dangerous.

RG: Which parts do you think we should hit here? Like any jump out at you?

LW: He just says, I don’t know. I don’t know. That’s not our role, I think, is the response, and to me that stands in stark contrast to how he responded this year. He could have responded in the same way that he did last year, so. 

RG: And so he comes out of this really swinging at the media. What had him so worked up at the media at the time? 

LW: Well, contextually, this was just after the ProPublica reporting on Clarence Thomas. So I think the media continues to be a source of grievance for him, particularly since the spotlight is now on him.

RG: And then he finishes it at the end talking about how everybody needs to overcome the polarization. That felt more boilerplate to me. The kind of thing you would expect maybe from a justice. What were your two different impressions from those two different conversations?

LW: You know, I didn’t — I thought it was going to be really hard to crack that nut, so to speak — of getting something substantive from Alito. And so in 2023, when coming out of it with that interaction, it was interesting, but it wasn’t — there was not a there there. It wouldn’t have been news, aside from, I would have been the news, because it would have been, “Oh, we have this secret recording of Sam Alito.” And there wouldn’t have been anything — there just wasn’t anything newsworthy to me in that. It’s color to what was going on at the time with the Dobbs leaker stuff, but there wasn’t anything really sticky in my mind there. And so for me, I was just wanting to figure out, “OK, how can I build on that so that I can have another go at him in the following year?”

And so when I came away from this conversation, obviously, very happy with how that turned out vis a vis the prior one, but looking at them side by side, it’s hard to say whether or not he always felt that way in 2023 and just had a better job of hiding it, or if it’s more of an evolution over the past year, given the increased media scrutiny on him and Clarence Thomas.

RG: So when this comes out, there’s going to be a lot of scrutiny on you too. People are going to be going through everything you’ve done and going after your past work. How are you preparing for that? Are you ready for that?

LW: I mean, I’m a lowly advocacy reporter. If people want to dig through my past reporting, they’re welcome to do that. I feel like I’m pretty straightforward about who I am, so.

RG: Yeah, it’s interesting. You are undercover, sort of. But also like you said, pretty transparent. Like, when you started doing this many years ago, I thought you maybe had a six-month shelf life before the word went out: “You see this person, BOLO — be on the lookout — for this person, and stop saying insane things to this person because she’s probably recording you.” Yet here we are many years later, and people are still — because it’s not like you’re putting on wigs. I mean, maybe once in a while, but —

LW: I have a couple of wigs, actually, that Kathy Griffin gave me.

RG: What kind of wigs?

LW: One of them is — 

RG: In all the videos I see of you, it’s pretty much you.

LW: Yes, I mean, I’m trying generally not to have pictures out there of me wearing one of the wigs because that would defeat the purpose. But she gave me one that was human hair that’s got a very sort of ’70s style to it. And then the other one has a more like kind of rock and roll, like libertarian vibe.

RG: And some of your reporting has been obtaining leaked audio. I remember you had a really big scoop at that Koch conference back in, what was that, 2012 or something? 

LW: So that was the summer of 2014, and I had a source give me several hours of audio from the conference. I was on site in the days preceding the conference, but they shut down the complex during the conference itself. 

RG: To save some of the Republican operatives some Google searches, what are some of your favorite hits you’ve had over the years?

LW: Well, the Koch brothers was definitely, definitely a big one because—

RG: And we published that over at the Huffington Post, as I recall. 

LW: Yes, we did partner with you, and the lead anchor was The Nation. It was, Huffington Post was helping, and then Salon with Joan Walsh. Being an activist for campaign finance reform, being able to write a story about Mitch McConnell — who was giving a speech about campaign finance reform at that conference — was really personally fulfilling for me, because in the speech, he says the worst day of his political life was when McCain–Feingold was passed.

And this is a man who has spent decades in the Senate and, you know, you could pick a lot of different things to be the worst day of your political life: the Iraq War, or 9/11, or the 2008 financial meltdown. 

RG: Modest rules on campaign financing — that was his Armageddon.

LW: Actually, some version of how I phrased that was included in a speech that Bill Clinton gave to the Harkin Steak Fry that year. And I was just over the moon, like, oh my God, I said this and basically my words are coming out of Bill Clinton’s mouth. This is insane. 

But then also I’d gotten a tip from someone on the hill that Harry Reid was going to be going on the floor of the Senate to call on Mitch McConnell to repudiate remarks that were made at the Koch retreat.

And so I made it to the stakeout and set up my camera next to all the broadcast cameras. And I asked Mitch McConnell, “Are you going to repudiate those remarks?” And so we had a face-off in the Senate hall, where they do the stakeout. It was the second question that he took, and I was so nervous, like, “Oh my God, I’m facing off my campaign finance dark-money nemesis right now.”

And he just, he acted like he didn’t hear. And so I repeated myself, and then he was like [exhale], and turned and didn’t even bother to utter a single word. It was so anticlimactic because I was — but, you know, I felt like I had really achieved something for myself. I don’t know. It was important to me.

RG: That is a really interesting Mitch McConnell innovation. I’ve seen him do it dozens of times. All politicians think you have to say something. You have to say, I’m not going to comment on that, at a minimum. He has discovered that you can just not open your mouth. And eventually the world will move on. It’s the creepiest thing. 

LW: It was. I felt so dejected. I’m not even worthy of a one-word response. Like, no.

RG: Every Capitol Hill reporter has stories of putting a recorder in front of him and asking him questions as you’re walking down the hall toward his office or from his office to the Senate floor or something and you’re like, “Am I speaking? Did I just think my question? Did I not say it out loud? Because he’s acting like he didn’t even hear me.” It’s the most — unnerving is exactly right. It’s very unnerving. 

And so the last time we had you on CounterPoints, the show I do on Wednesdays and Fridays, that one was one that panned out. You were talking to a member of Congress who was friends with Amy Coney Barrett before she was nominated, before she was confirmed is my memory, correct me if I’m wrong. And he said, she has told me that she wants to be the deciding vote on overturning Roe v. Wade. Do you remember that one?

LW: It was Mike Johnson, actually. 

RG: Oh, that’s right, Mike Johnson! Because at the time, I’m like Mike Johnson, some backbench nobody. Now he’s speaker of the House.

LW: Yeah, well, so he was at a conference, it was Rick Santorum, his Patriot [Voices] lobby day on the hill, but he was one of the speakers and we were asking about abortion-related stuff. And he [said], “Yeah, we’re making progress.” And I remember this was back in 2021, mind you, and I haven’t reviewed that in a while, but it was essentially, “We’re making progress. And when we have the court, I think that Amy Coney Barrett will be the one to author the opinion to overturn Roe v. Wade.” 

RG: Oh, that was off slightly. 

LW: Slightly.

RG: It was Alito that ended up authoring it. But maybe Mike Johnson didn’t understand how seniority works there. He was right that she was willing, immediately, to vote to overturn it. That she didn’t have any sense that decorum or respect for the past and the precedent requires us to wait a couple of years. She’s like, no, we have the shot to do it now. Let’s do it.

LW: I don’t remember him recounting the conversation in quite that way with her.

RG: No, that’s my analysis of it. 

LW: He was very excited about the imminent overturning of Roe v. Wade and that Amy Coney Barrett would be the one to author the opinion.

RG: What are some other big hits?

LW: Well, the ones that, to me, are the most personally important [is] the Tommy Tuberville one, where he’s saying that he’s gonna be the Senate challenger to the 2020 election results. Like the pair to Mo Brooks, which would make the challenge to the Electoral College possible. 

I had suspected that this was afoot. And it was such a crazy thing in D.C. because there was this conventional wisdom of “Mitch McConnell is going to be the majority leader.” You know, people just didn’t think that Democrats could win those two Senate seats, one, and two, Mo Brooks and the Freedom Caucus are making all this noise over in the House about challenging the Electoral College. And everyone dismissed it as, “Well, that’s not serious. They’re not actually going to get that going. They have to have somebody in the Senate that’s going to do it too.” 

And the Senate is, I guess some magical place of decorum. You think that there’s not somebody that’s going to pair with Mo Brooks on this? And, you know, sure enough, Georgia was the perfect place to find out because we had a historic double runoff. So everyone in the GOP was campaigning throughout the state. So I got Tuberville at a campaign event with Madison Cawthorn and Byron Donalds. And Madison kept talking about, you know, we still have tricks up our sleeve. We still have our cards on the table.

One of those, and Tuberville spoke, and he was saying like, keep fighting for Trump. And this is mid-December. It’s like, why would you tell people to keep fighting for Trump? The election’s over. And so when he walked out the door, “Madison said y’all still have tricks up your sleeve. What are you going to do to fight for President Trump?”

“Well, you’ve seen what they’re doing over in the House. We’re going to have to do it in the Senate too.” And so it just exploded. It ricocheted all over the place. And then the following day I asked David Perdue the same thing. And even though he couldn’t technically do that because of the way his term ended, when I asked him, “What are you going to do to fight for President Trump? Are you going to challenge [the] Electoral College?” And he was like, Yes, ma’am, I am. 

You remember I called you that day and I was, like, “Ah, you know, my recorder malfunctioned. So all I have is a picture with him but he told me this, I swear to God.” So I just ran the picture and what he told me. And Donald Trump quote-tweeted it and said, that’s because David’s a great patriot. Thank you for your hard work, Lauren. 

Calling me out. And at that moment, just everything blew up — everything. It was insane.

RG: You and I have talked about this before. I’m curious for your take looking back now. Do you think that they were going to do it anyway? Like was Tuberville going to do it, definitely? And he was just waiting to announce it? Or do you think he got caught up in the moment, and your question helped to spring it out of him?

LW: I think that it was all afoot. They were being very coy. The different people that I talked to on the campaign trail — like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Kelly Loeffler — at their campaign events, we talked about, we still have things we’re working on. And I talked to Madison Cawthorn too. And Madison was more explicit. Like, yeah, we have a Hail Mary. Yeah, I was like, you think you’re going to be able to do it? Think you’re gonna be able to challenge the Electoral College? Well, yeah, I mean, it’s a Hail Mary, but we think we can do it.

RG: That’s my sense too, that they were working it up. And what you did was you kind of pried it out and made it public. which should have then given Democrats three weeks to prepare for it since now Trump, himself, is like talking about it from his Twitter account and then later is like, be there. It’s going to be wild.

LW: Well, he amped up the whole thing. I mean, that reporting really changed the narrative in Georgia because they didn’t want to talk about overturning the election. They didn’t want to talk about challenging the Electoral College for sure. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue wanted to talk about the economy and the Covid pandemic.

So, the fact that Trump was able to hijack all the conversation there and make it solely about pressuring political officials in Georgia to overturn the election, I think was key, to Democrats winning the Senate, because I don’t think that Georgia voters wanted to go down that road.

RG: That’s probably fair. The $2,000 check promises played obviously a big role too in getting out Democratic base turnout. And just all people who like $2,000. But yes, no question, Perdue and Loeffler desperately wanted to talk about anything but the last election, especially because the more you talked about how the last election was “rigged,” then the less chance that Republicans were going to turn out just because of the logic of A and B: Did you fix the process? Did you un-rig it since November? Why am I gonna waste my time, if the whole thing’s rigged? 

LW: Exactly. And I certainly don’t mean to imply that my reporting was the sole factor in those two Democratic wins. I think that, for me, my role to play in reporting during that historic runoff was to say: This is what’s at stake right now, like exposing what they were willing to do — the lengths they were willing to go to overturn the election. And I absolutely think that it made an impact in those races.

Was it decisive? Who knows. You can never say in an election because there’s so many different factors, right? And a lot of that’s due to the hard organizing work that Fair Fight Action and others put in to organize Democratic voters.

RG: And tell me more about your documentary. What’s it about? What’s the status of it when? When do you expect it to be out?

LW: So we’re trying to get it out in September. We produced a short that we submitted to Tribeca. And this was a very last-minute thing. We submitted it at the very last possible minute that we could submit it. And so it wasn’t perfect, but I felt like it was good enough to submit. I wanted to try to get it over that finish line because it would be important for fundraising to complete the film. But there’s a fair amount of polishing that needs to happen before doing some screenings, which I’m in the process of doing — setting up screenings, rather, in order to find the remaining funding to complete the feature.

There’s additional reporting that I’m doing and that has to take shape. And a big piece of that is work we’ve done at American Family Voices on factory towns. Factory Towns is a research project spearheaded by my partner, Mike Lux. And it really delves into working-class voters in industrial areas throughout the Midwest and Pennsylvania. What used to be this blue wall that flips. A lot of these voters, they voted for Obama and then became Trump voters. Why did that happen? How do you message to these voters to get them to embrace progressive populism, progressive economics? And I think that the story with that, it’s really a story of the rise of Trumpism, and a lot of it closely hues to the arc of my political career.

My activism came out of Occupy Wall Street. So, so much of the factory towns’ phenomenon was, I think, a backlash to the financial meltdown. A lot of these folks just haven’t recovered financially. And for me, I was living in LA, the epicenter of the mortgage meltdown, and felt it really intensely. And it’s one of the major — the major catalyst for me [in] finally leaving, like, pursuing a career in fashion design, and embracing, finally, just diving into reporting. 

I became a protest junkie. I traveled around the country. And so “Gonzo” tells the story of, how did we get to January 6 in the first place as a country? The rise of Trumpism. And how do we never go there again? But vis a vis my journey, this quest to expose election deniers and hold them accountable. So it ties the dots — not ties the dots, connects the dots between my past reporting with like Tommy Tuberville and Ron Johnson and John Eastman; and then, it will have a lot of unpublished material. So we’re hoping to break some news within the documentary.

RG: What do you hope comes from this Alito reporting that’s coming out now?

LW: I mean, I would love to see a recusal in the Trump immunity decision. I don’t know that they’re ultimately going to grant him immunity. And I don’t know enough about how they could potentially rule from a court watch or perch. I suspect that they wouldn’t be willing to give him immunity. 

RG: Him being Trump.

LW: Yes, him being Trump, just because it would be pretty outrageous, I think, departure from norms within our society, like within Supreme Court jurisprudence. But I think ultimately, I would like to see some accountability. What does that look like? 

I’m not sure that Democrats — they haven’t had the political will to do it. And I’m hoping that this gives them some public outrage to fuel some political will to hold some hearings. 

For me, personally, it outrages me when I see that just because something isn’t politically possible, like, OK, you don’t have the votes to force an ethics law. OK, you don’t have the votes to force removal of a justice. You have to change the window of what the public discourse is. If you don’t have the public will, the political will, you’ve got to create it, right? You have to make the public aware and be angry and force your hand.

Like Obama famously would be, like, you know, I may not do X, Y, Z, but make me do it. OK. Organize. But I just feel like there’s a lot of laziness. People just want the path of least resistance, and it’s really disheartening and it’s a lot of what becomes demoralizing to voters.

RG: And people can’t really pretend anymore they don’t know who Alito is at this point. You know, there’s that old phrase: When people tell you who they are, believe them. He’s being pretty clear here.

LW: I think so. And do with that information what you will. But for me, all I can do as a reporter is to present the information, expose the truth or the most evidence of what that truth is and to capture it on audio to have that conversation with him. And it’s not like me recounting it to you because we had the conversation and then I wrote it down. You can hear him say it with his own voice. I don’t know how more clear it can be to you. I mean, he’s not gonna hold a press conference to talk about it. 

RG: Lauren Windsor, where can people find your stuff?

LW: You can go to laurenwindsor.com and that will give you links to my various projects. But I think the easiest way to get to me would be on Twitter, @LaWindsor.

RG: That was Lauren Windsor, and that’s our show. 

Deconstructed is a production of The Intercept. This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. The show is mixed by William Stanton. Legal review by David Bralow, Shawn Musgrave, and Elizabeth Sanchez. Our theme music was composed by Bart Warshaw.

And I’m Ryan Grim, D.C. Bureau Chief for The Intercept. 

If you’d like to support our work, go to theintercept.com/give. And if you haven’t already, please subscribe to the show, so you can hear it every week. And please go and leave us a rating or a review, it helps people find the show. Also check out our other podcast, Intercepted. 

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The post Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito Caught on Secret Audio appeared first on The Intercept.

Canada has a vaccine injury support program that has paid out more than CA$11 million to claimants; Ross Wightman was among its first recipients. This week on Deconstructed, Wightman shares his story with Ryan Grim. Days after receiving an AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine in 2021, Wightman began to experience pains unlike he had ever experienced before. He was eventually diagnosed with Guillain-Barré Syndrome, a rare autoimmune disorder that affects the body’s nerves. Grim and Wightman talk about his journey and support network, and whether new reporting from the New York Times about people who have experienced side effects from Covid vaccines signals a shift in serious media attention to concerns. 

Transcript

This transcript is generated from audio recordings and may not be in its final form.

Ryan Grim: Welcome to Deconstructed. I’m Ryan Grim.

Now, The New York Times recently wrote a piece about that silence, and about the struggle that people who are in this vaccine-injured community are having, because so many of them were eager advocates of the vaccine. Urged people to get it, eagerly got it themselves, got it multiple times themselves, and are finding that when they talk to their friends and family about the injuries they received from it are getting zero sympathy. And forget about compensation; just no sympathy.

And so, today we wanted to talk to a member of that community who’s been one of the more outspoken folks in Canada. Very few people really want to talk publicly about this, but Ross Wightman, joining us from British Columbia, does so, and has agreed to do so.

And so, Ross, thank you so much for joining me today on Deconstructed.

Ross Wightman: Thanks for having me on, on this important topic that, as you mentioned, it’s out there, but it’s still not getting the due attention that I believe, and many others deserve.

RG: How did you come to be part of this conversation?

RW: It’s a conversation I obviously wish I was never a part of. I was just getting my information from the news and the health officials, like many, many people were at the time. And believed that this was going to be the best path moving forward, the safe and effective narrative. There were reports of some side effects — AstraZeneca was the poison I took — but it was being downplayed, how rare it is, and you’re still better to get it than to get COVID-19.

So, when it became available in and around my community, I went for it.

RG: You know, I have a pretty liberal to progressive to left-leaning audience, and I bet a lot of them are going to be like, “oh my goodness. What kind of crazy anti-science, anti-vax stuff is this that we’re hearing today?”

But, at the same time, AstraZeneca is no longer distributed in the North American continent.

RW: It would have been April 30th of 2021 when I had mine. And I believe it was July of that year — I could be wrong — that summer that it was withdrawn from Canada. In the United States, it never made it to market, because [Emergent BioSolutions], the plant in Baltimore where it was being manufactured, was actually shut down by the FDA for safety protocols, and cleanliness, and lack of efficacy, more or less.

It was distributed into the U.K. as well, and there’s a wake of destruction that it left behind there. I believe just very recently, too, it’s come out that AZ admitted that they knew it caused a certain kind of blood clot. “VIT” is the acronym. And I think it’s no longer on market at all, anywhere.

RG: Now, correct me if I’m wrong: this Baltimore plant was also the one that was producing Johnson & Johnson?

RW: Yeah.

RG: And so, people may remember that scandal, that there were tens of millions, as I recall, doses coming out of that plant. And it was then shut down for health and safety concerns by inspectors. So, again, we’re nowhere near on the controversial spectrum yet of anything that we’re saying here on this podcast.

But what, to me, is so wild is that, after they came in and decided that this was not a safe environment to produce vaccine doses, they still distributed those doses largely in Canada.

What was your experience like? How soon after which dose did you start feeling symptoms from the vaccine?

RW: Mine was about 10 days later, the day after Mother’s Day. I woke up in the wee hours of the morning with back spasms, back pain, low back, kind of the end of the hamstring area. And pain like I’d never experienced before.

That wouldn’t go away for about three days, approximately. Ended up going to an emergency room twice in Kelowna. They would discharge me with some anti-inflammatories or pain medication. I really had no other presentation at the time, other than the severe back pain.

I would, maybe a day later, go to the emergency room, and we’re kind of in between two hospitals where we are about half an hour. So, I went to another one. Same thing. This all started on a Monday. And then, I believe, it was Saturday morning, trip number four, was brought on by facial tingling, and I was starting to get general weakness.

So, they admitted me quickly at that point. Did some blood tests, CT scan, a lumbar puncture. I had told them, you know, look, I’m 10 days out from my AstraZeneca vaccine, that’s the only thing in my life that has changed in the last 10 days, and I really don’t know what else it could be.

There was no neurologist at that hospital. They consulted with the one in Kelowna just down the road. And he would later tell me — because I would see him later — and he said, yeah, I remember getting the phone call about you, I remember hearing about back pain, facial paralysis. My face was totally paralyzed within a few hours, which is Bell’s palsy, and the AstraZeneca vaccine, there were some Bell’s palsy reports coming about that at the time. And those three things quickly led him down the road of, let’s do a lumbar puncture. I think he has Guillain Barré syndrome, or GBS, just to shorten it up.

A lot of people with my condition really struggle getting a quick diagnosis, just because people present differently. I had atypical presentation; normally it’s ascending, kind of numbness and tingling from your hands and feet, and it works your way up, to complete paralysis for some people. It just all depends.

So, that stuff would come later for me, the numbness and tingling, but that’s kind of how I got a diagnosis.

RG: Is there any way to connect it to the vaccine? I can’t imagine there’s a test where you just run it and say, “oh, yep, this is linked up.” How could the medical profession handle that, and how did they handle that in your case?

RW: There’s three typical onsets for GBS, and one is some sort of viral infection, like an influenza or COVID, a type of food poisoning, and the other one is vaccination. Those are kind of the big three. There are some other outliers out there, but I only had one of those things happen to me.

So, I was tested for everything. You know, I had CTs, MRIs, I was blood tested; every morning I woke up with a needle sticking out of my arm, basically, for a blood test. The CDC was in my room multiple times a day asking me questions. And there was no other link to any other cause, other than the vaccine.

That’s where things would get interesting. People started to get uncomfortable; my wife and I were together for a few of my nerve conduction studies with my neurologist, and asking, hey, here’s where we are. I’ve been tested for everything under the sun. There are some reports coming out now in the media of AstraZeneca and Guillain Barré syndrome and/or Bell’s palsy, at least the facial paralysis. What do you think?

And, to a man, the same person told [us] twice, like, yeah, there’s no other cause, but would not put it in his report. Because, in his words — I’m paraphrasing here — but he basically told us that he had to check with his colleagues how to write it, because he had to be careful [with[ what he put out there. Which was when we really started to kind of question everything.

RG: You can imagine a sympathetic explanation for — not sympathetic from your perspective, or to you individually, but sympathetic generally — why the medical professional might engage in what is basically propaganda at that point. At the time, there was a huge public relations campaign urging the widespread uptake of the COVID vaccine. And there were a lot of people that really didn’t have any knowledge or information or reason to think that the vaccine was no good, going around making kind of making stuff up about it.

There was an entire campaign of hysteria that was burgeoning online against it. And my sense is that you had a lot of doctors who were very worried that real cases of injury, real cases of side effects would be used, then, by this kind of campaign to then discredit it more broadly.

What was your reaction to hearing from them that, well, we don’t really want to put this down in the file?

RW: I mean, the reaction was, pardon me? How can you not put it down if there’s no other conclusive evidence that anything else caused it? That kind of goes back to that whole anti-vax term which — I’ve thrown that around at earlier portions of my life. And I think that there was definitely some hesitancy to bring that up.

I also think that they had political pressure from their college of physicians, probably. I mean, I don’t know this, I’ve heard anecdotal stories, but I don’t know anything factual. I know there were some physicians that were being slandered in the media and the newspapers for speaking up from the beginning, just about— And not even radical views. Just like, hey, over here, I’m seeing some stuff happen and I’m not quite sure what I should do with it. And those people were being reprimanded by the college of physicians, and I know there’s a few in our province. I’m sure they’re globally everywhere.

But you could see how a person, a professional might be hesitant to speak up if they knew their career and income could be jeopardized, right?

RG: So, what was the reaction of your friends and family as this happened? I mean, on the one hand, you’ve got this major life-changing health situation but, at the same time, it’s flowing out of something they probably don’t want to think about. What was it like for you?

RW: I guess I’m lucky, in the sense that my family and friends and support network were amazing, and still are. Within my community, I haven’t had to deal with any of the latter. I don’t really have any people like that in my life anyways or, if I did, they’d be gone. So, I’m very grateful for that.

Very early on, when I was in the hospital paralyzed, I couldn’t move my legs, and [wasn’t] sure where things were going. My wife couldn’t come for the first week, and I’m just bedridden, and my phone was blowing up with phone calls and emails and texts and DMs, and all that. And all of it positive.

RG: How has it progressed?

RW: My injury? It’s not good. I have permanent damage. My hands are pretty dis-formed, I guess, and I have virtually no dexterity at all, and tremors in my arms. I have permanent nerve damage all over my body. Most of it is, if I’m wearing pants and standing still, it’s kind of a bit of an invisible injury, I suppose. But I have special carbon fiber orthotics I have to wear on my feet, because my feet — I virtually have no muscle activity from my knees down. Even kind of mid-thigh-down, I have severe nerve damage. Same into my forearms and whatnot.

I was treated early on with IVIG, which is intravenous immunoglobulin therapy. That kind of stops the body from attacking the nerves. That worked for a couple of weeks, then it came back. I was treated with the same IVIG again. I would progress and then regress again, to the point where, kind of around then, the paralysis subsided, but that’s when my feet and hands started to be profoundly affected. So, I had to go to the ICU for eight days and get a plasma exchange that would finally reverse the— Not reverse, but stop my body from attacking itself.

I would leave the hospital in a wheelchair, barely able to use a walker. Very, very limited. We’re actually almost exactly three years out to the day of the beginning of my symptoms. And I’m somewhat independent; you know, I can drive now, again, and get around [in a] limited [way]. But there’s lots of stuff I can’t do anymore. And just dealing with the pain and discomfort and fatigue picture. You know, I don’t know what the percentage is, but maybe 10 percent of your muscles working in your body, but trying to do the same activities? That’s kind of what I have going on.

RG: When you think back to three years ago, and you think about that moment where your life took its turn, who do you blame, as you kind of sit with what happened?

RW: Yeah. It’s changed a little bit over the years. The main players are still there. I’m a little— I don’t know if “ashamed” is the right word. I’m disappointed in myself for succumbing to the pressure and the coercion that was being put out there. You know, do it for your grandparents, do it for this person. You’re selfish if you don’t.

But then, obviously, the people that were stuffing that down our throats, I feel like they’ve done everyone a disservice. Health Canada, for bringing in a tainted product, if that was the case, and that’s probably where it starts. And local government. And a little bit of disappointment in myself, for following along.

RG: In the community that you interact in, how prominent are Pfizer and Moderna folks?

RW: Probably half. The people that I talk to on a quasiregular basis probably have the others. Those are usually documented, or they’re part of the vaccine injury support program in Canada, like I am. But, man, there are so many other people out there with their own stories that went nowhere, or that weren’t reported. I think it’s, at most, 10 percent of any sort of adverse reaction are actually properly documented or reported in the system.

RG: It is interesting. I would encourage people who are listening to this to have conversations about this with people because, over the last several months, as I’ve talked to people about it generally, and oftentimes I’ll just meet friends and they’ll say, what are you working on lately? And I’ll mention this. And most of the time somebody will say, oh, that’s interesting, I have so-and-so. And a lot of times they’re almost embarrassed to even mention it. Whether it’s a high-school-going-into-college child who has tinnitus.

RW: I’ve got that one, too.

RG: Can you describe that? That sounds like just hell on earth.

RW: I guess it obviously depends on how severe it is. Mine has evolved drastically over the last few years. There’s a perpetual ringing in my ears, like after maybe you’ve been to a rock concert, or a concert, or something like that. When you walk out of there, there’s a ringing. But there’s also, I think it’s described as a “whooshing.”

RG: The whooshing was in The New York Times article.

RW: Yeah. It’s just kind of like a pulsating whooshing sound that is just always there. It’s worse when it’s quiet or you’re laying in bed, there’s no white noise or background noise. And if you let it get to you, it can be very, very bothersome and anxiety-inducing.

RG: What has the last three years been like trying to parent with GBS?

RW: It’s been hell. It’s hard to describe the last three years, you know? From them seeing me to going from a super-healthy fit 39-year-old dad. I was in the gym five days a week. I was walking, and just very active, to being bedridden, lost like 25 percent of my body weight, all muscle, with a Grizzly Adams beard laying in the hospital bed. To getting to where we are now. I mean, yeah. I’ve lost so much.

I can’t run around the yard with them or play with them, play catch. They’re both active kids. My oldest is into hockey and baseball. I haven’t really been able to partake in any of that stuff that we used to do together all the time. Can’t play Lego, because of my hands. Drawing, coloring. A lot of the time it just seems like I’m there. Like, oh, I’ll come watch you play Lego, buddy. And that’s hard. Who doesn’t like playing Lego with their kids, right? It’s fun. Not only is it a nice way to connect, but it’s a nice escape to just get into something and get your mind off of life, right, is being present with your kids or someone else. And that’s been hard. That’s the physical stuff.

I’m definitely not as happy as I used to be before, or patient, you know? Frustrated quite often. And I’d be lying if I said— I don’t take it out on my kids, but I don’t have as much patience as I used to, or might be a little quicker to snap or need a little bit of space. So, yeah. It’s been hard, and been hard on the family, for sure.

RG: One of the things that got me interested in pursuing research on this topic when people started reaching out to me was that I had a really mild experience of my own, and so I could understand where people were coming from, and mine was nowhere near what you’ve gone through. Was it around the same time? No, it would have been later, because it was a booster, a Moderna booster.

The morning and a half after that — not the next day but the morning after, I remember I was doing this like little 3K walk fundraiser for our local public school and, all of a sudden, my feet just started intensely tingling. And I was like, that’s weird. And it and it stayed that way, and I didn’t really even want to finish the walk, but I finished it. It persisted for several days, and then eventually started getting into my fingers a little bit.

And so, I started Googling. And people said, turmeric is good for this.

RW: Turmeric, yeah. For inflammation, yeah.

RG: And so, every night for many weeks before I’d go to bed, I would have this tea of turmeric and milk. And then I learned, oh, you have to have black pepper, in order to help get the properties of the turmeric out. And the only thing more disgusting than turmeric tea is with black pepper in it.

RW: That sounds gross.

RG: It was awful. That’s an indication of how much discomfort I was in, that every night I was willing to choke this thing down. And I don’t know if it helped or not. I still feel it a little bit, but it’s totally bearable. I can easily live my life. I can go about it, but it’s just constantly there and it’s a little bit annoying. I can’t imagine any other thing that would have caused it than the vaccine. And I’m somebody who publicly and privately promoted it, and still believe that it helped a lot of elderly people, certainly when it came to alpha, COVID-alpha.

But I’m curious how familiar my own story sounds, as you’ve gone through and thought back about the vaccine. Where do you come down on it, more generally?

RW: First thing, yeah, I’ve heard your story, I’ve heard that a few handful of times. That’s a common-ish one, next to heart palpitations. Those are two that I hear of quite frequently, I guess, maybe more than others. Those are the more common ones.

RG: And those were mentioned in The New York Times article, too. For listeners who think we’re crazy, The New York Times is —

RW: Well, we are crazy. But I think we were sold something that wasn’t necessary. I agree with you that it might have been beneficial for the elderly. But for the younger generations, healthier people with no underlying health conditions like myself, or maybe you. Maybe it’s just the circle that I roll in, but the only people I’ve heard of in my world that were hospitalized because of COVID either got it in the hospital, or they were going through chemotherapy, and they were uber-immunocompromised and they picked it up.

I could be totally offside here. I feel like healthy people, there are significantly more younger healthy individuals that have reactions to the vaccines than being hospitalized. I have no data. This is purely just what I have noticed over the last three years and having these conversations. I really don’t know anyone that’s been hospitalized. I’m sure there are, there most certainly are, but maybe that’s just because of the circle and the beliefs [in] my world.

RG: Have you had any success towards compensation?

RW: Yeah, we have a vaccine-injury support program in Canada. I’m the first person to have an approved claim. That’s not really how I wanted my 15 seconds of fame to come to fruition.

Yeah. So, it’s something. I know it’s better than what you guys have, and a lot of other countries in the world. It’s limited with its framework, and it’s a very slow, cumbersome, poorly run organization. It’s at arm’s length of how Canada— So, a company got the contract and they’re operating it, running it on behalf of the government.

So, it took me 12 months to get my claim approved. Most people, it’s 12 to 18 months to hear anything back. The communication within the program and caseworkers is, most of the time, atrocious. I think I’ve had six caseworkers so far. It’s common for them to quit. No one will tell you they’re gone; I’ve had this happen twice now. You know, you go two, three months without hearing a peep, and you later would figure out that, oh, John’s not here anymore. He left in November. I’m like, “oh, great. What’s going on with my file?” And you’re starting over again.

So, that’s really frustrating. I got a little clarity on my file yesterday, and a teeny bit of optimism, but that is usually an underlying source of frustration and angst. And, in my life, the feeling of having absolutely no control or faith in the system, that I know that my file is being processed appropriately, and my medical bill— Like, I’ve got over $50,000 in expenses so far, and a thousand to $2,000 a month in physio and other therapies. So, as you can imagine, that’s pretty stressful.

I didn’t get a paycheck for a year and a half. They do have an income replacement program, which I’m in, which is nice. There’s a limit to that.

RG: A limit to that over time? Or a limit to an amount per the year?

RW: Just the figure. Yeah. So, they’re all Canadian dollars, obviously. I think it’s CA$285,000, or 284 grand, is the injury indemnity lump sum payout. And then, income replacement is up to 90,000 a year. You could have been making double that but, too bad, especially if you’re self-employed. I was self employed. I wasn’t making 200,000 a year, but I didn’t have any sort of disability with what I was doing before my injury. If it wasn’t for family covering our ass, man. I’m sure people have lost their houses and homes, and have had to declare bankruptcy, and make drastic financial decisions, and life-altering decisions just because they have no money. And they probably have medical expenses, too.

RG: Did the recent New York Times article mark any shift in how the media is willing to look at this? Oftentimes, if The New York Times goes somewhere, it’s indicative of shifts in the ground that have been underway for a very long time, and The New York Times doing something on it just kind of puts a punctuation mark. That, OK, well, actually, we’re willing to talk about this at this point. At times, it’s just out there breaking news and doing good work without that kind of cultural shift going on first.

What’s your sense, as somebody who’s been consuming media about this issue for the last three years, of how it’s changed or hasn’t changed in the public perception?

RW: Yeah. I like that you mentioned that because, in the last few months in chatting with people, I’ve said, I’ve been saying [that] I think things are starting to move more. I’ve been getting a sense of it.

Part of that is just a feeling. I’ll get an uptick in DMs, or people reaching out to me, asking me questions. Either they’re vaccine-injured themselves, or they’re doing it on behalf of a family member or a loved one, or people just sharing articles with me. So, I think, like you alluded to there, I do think it’s getting out there more. And having a major outlet like that put it in writing certainly helps.

You know, you’ve got AstraZeneca stuff happening in the U.K. over the last couple of weeks, where they’ve admitted to it causing clotting. There have been a few other articles that have come up in even the month of May, here, that have kind of given me a feeling — and it sounds like maybe you’re the same — that there’s a little more awareness or, I don’t know if truth is the right word, but it’s getting the attention that it deserves.

RG: How do you think about that coverage? I can imagine that the hope is just kind of “to be seen,” to use the cliche of today’s era. “I see you, I feel you, you are valid.” It’s kind of a meme, almost, at this point, but being seen matters.

Do you hope that anything additional comes from that? That there’s some investment in research that can try to turn this around? Or is it more just about wanting this pain acknowledged?

RW: I don’t need acknowledgement, personally, myself. For me, my vindication was when I got that letter from the government saying you’ve been— Because all of the things I had been told behind closed doors — Like, yeah, this is what did it to you, but I’m not putting it on paper. Or, in our province, the medical health officer for our region basically was like, it could be, but might not be. That’s done, so I’ve got my validation.

For me, now, it’s accountability [that] is the big one for me. I want it out there, and I want people to know that it happened. I feel like a lot of these companies, they rush the product to market and didn’t do thorough testing. I mean, how could you in such a short timeframe, you know? The dollar pushed them to make the decisions that they did, and just to get it out to market, for the stock price and the shareholders.

I just want it out there so people know and the public know that maybe the advice, the narrative we were told was not the path forward. Nothing can be made right, but I just feel it’s important for — and I don’t know if we’ll ever get there — but just, yeah. We made a mistake, you know? I’d like to hear some of our elected officials say that. The AstraZeneca in Canada. “We made a mistake. Maybe we shouldn’t have brought it up here.” Just instead of deny, deny, deny, or not even talk about it.

RG: One of the parts that really bother me — I’m curious for your take on this — is that the result of refusing to look at the cases of side effects and injuries in order to build people’s confidence in the vaccine has had the paradoxical effect of actually collapsing confidence in the public health system.

RW: Yeah, that’s me. I couldn’t agree with you more. I see that all the time with friends, people I talk to. They just say that, and they’re like, no one is ever telling me to put something in my body again. And these are people that have had no issues, they’re relatively happy to get — or willing to get — the vaccines.

But yeah, you’re right. It’s done the opposite. And now, it’s maybe leading down to this vaccine hesitancy road, right? Where people are, like, I don’t know who I can trust. Like, I don’t know if I want to get my kids this vaccine or that vaccine. Obviously, I probably have even more reason to [act likewise] than the average person, but I hear it from friends that have been symptomatic post-vaccine, that they’re like, I don’t know. I don’t know who I can trust anymore.

RG: Yeah. By not treating people like adults, you trigger that in people. And one part that I get worried about is, now we’re staring down the possibility of a bird flu pandemic, and they’re already working on a vaccine for that.

A lot of vaccines work. Even the best vaccines, there’s going to be a rare case of a side effect. You could have a manufacturing problem. Nothing is necessarily 100 percent. But we do know that lots of vaccines have been given out for decades, and have been studied on people. And are, to use their phrase, “safe and effective,” but people then lump them all together.

Especially with a bird flu vaccine which, by definition, will have to be moved pretty quickly — Although they’re good at doing flu vaccines quickly, because they do one every season. But I do think if we do see a bird flu outbreak that you’re going to see much more hesitancy than you saw last time. And bird flu, the current case fatality rate is something like 50 percent.

RW: I haven’t followed that at all. So, that’s news to me.

RG: COVID was less than a half percent.

RW: Yeah. Yeah.

RG: And, still, tens of millions of people worldwide died. 50 percent is— You shudder to think of what that could do.

Now, it’s less contagious, and that level of fatality rate could easily, I think, push past most people’s hesitancy. Like, OK. 50 percent fatality rate? Yeah, just jab me with whatever you’ve got. Because it is unbalanced.

And that’s one of the things that’s so frustrating, looking back about the COVID vaccine. You know, I had one friend who said, if I got the polio vaccine, and then I got polio five times over the next year, I wouldn’t be very happy about the polio vaccine, even if it didn’t cause me any side effects. You can always say, well, maybe it would have been worse if I didn’t have it, it’s impossible for you to know. But, like you said, people who didn’t have underlying conditions—

And, today, now we’re down to, if you get COVID, I think, in the U.S., they’ve even done away with the five-day quarantine.

RW: I don’t think there’s anything in Canada. I think it’s all been gone for a year. It seems like it’s a non-issue, other than the texts that I still get telling me I’m due for my vaccination.

RG: Right. Which I imagine you’re not rushing to sign up for.

RW: No.

RG: Any final thoughts about how this has reshaped the way that you think about the world that you move through?

RW: Yeah. It’s been a liberating three years. In the sense of, I had a blind faith or trust in government and big corporations. And I was a steady, daily, multiple-times-a-day consumer of local — I use the term mainstream media, but that’s where I got all my news — and what I read and what I watched is what I believed. And some of that stuff is still good, but I’ve certainly learned that there’s more outside the box, and you’ve got to do your own research and digging, and talk to people. And if there’s anything good that’s come out of it, it’s been that. Just more critical thinking on my behalf, and gratefulness for the network of friends and family and community I have.

RG: For people who are like, well, why not have the pro-vaccine side on this show today, or why not have whatever else people might want on this, I would say: look, that’s everywhere. That’s what you’re looking for, you’re not going to have a hard time finding it. So, I wanted to give you a chance to talk about your story here.

RW: Obviously, I’m against COVID vaccines. But to say pro-vaccine or con-vaccine, it’s not even about that. It’s just about telling my story or hearing other people’s stories. And if you want to find out what’s going on at a job site, don’t go talk to the president of the company. You’ve got to go down and talk to the workers, the people that have boots on the ground in the trenches. Like, hey, what’s actually happening? And this is the stuff that’s happening and that’s out there, right?

So, people can do what they want with the information. That’s been a thing I’ve wanted, is just [that] everything should be reported and validated, and you go ahead and make that decision based on what’s out there. But don’t try and suppress, either way, the stats, right?

RG: Right. I think that’s exactly right. Because people can’t really make an informed choice for themselves if they don’t know that it’s even an issue that’s in contention, that it’s a question that people are asking. And if you ask the question, and you say, you know what? Good enough. Yeah. Hey, look, I’m 30, I’m healthy, but I want to get the booster anyway? Go ahead. Get the booster.

RW: Go right ahead. I get asked from time to time, and I say, you’ve just got to — Risk/reward, right? What’s the likely outcome if you get COVID versus the likely outcome of having an adverse reaction, and worse, a life-altering one, right? You do the math. You decide on what your health is worth, right?

RG: Well, Ross, I really appreciate you joining me. Thanks so much.

RW: Yeah, absolutely. Good chatting with you.

RG: That was Ross Wightman, and that’s our show.

Deconstructed is a production of The Intercept. This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. The show is mixed by William Stanton. Legal review by Shawn Musgrave and Elizabeth Sanchez. Leonardo Faierman transcribed this episode. Our theme music was composed by Bart Warshaw.

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The post The Silence Around Covid Vaccine Injuries  appeared first on The Intercept.

In the weeks after October 7, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee took aim at members of Congress who expressed vocal opposition to Israel’s attacks on Gaza. Focusing on the so-called Squad, the Israel lobby is spending millions to push out members of Congress they view as a threat to the U.S.–Israel relationship. But Rep. Summer Lee, D-Pa., among the Squad members who called for an early ceasefire and whom AIPAC had been hoping to take out, cruised to victory in April. Now the lobby group’s sights are set on Rep. Jamaal Bowman in New York’s 16th Congressional District and Rep. Cori Bush in Missouri’s 1st Congressional District. 

This week on Deconstructed, Justice Democrats Usamah Andrabi and Alexandra Rojas join Ryan Grim to discuss their organizing efforts to counter campaigns taking aim at progressive members of Congress. 

[Deconstructed theme music.]

Ryan Grim: Welcome to Deconstructed. I’m Ryan Grim.

In the weeks after October 7, AIPAC declared that it was going to launch an assault on the so-called Squad, planning to wipe out what they said was a growing threat to the U.S.-Israel relationship inside Congress. After spending millions in a failed effort to stop Summer Lee from winning her seat in 2022, they set their sights on her for removal in 2024. Yet, last week, she won in a landslide.

The group’s next targets are Jamal Bowman in New York and Cori Bush in St. Louis, both of whom they’ve managed to recruit challengers against. To talk about those races, and also how they managed to fend off the threat against Summer Lee, we’re joined by Alexandra Rojas — a founder of Justice Democrats and now it’s executive director — and Usamah Andrabi, who was working very closely with the Summer Lee campaign throughout the race.

Usamah and Alexandra, welcome to Deconstructed.

Alexandra Rojas: Thanks so much for having us.

RG: Alexandra, let’s start with you. I want to start with the specific race that got us talking about Justice Democrats pushback against AIPAC, and that’s Summer Lee’s recent victory. Tell us who Summer Lee is, and how you guys first met Summer.

AR: Yeah. Summer Lee has been a transformational leader in Western Pennsylvania over the past five years. We ended up recruiting her to run for Congress but, for years before that, she — alongside so many organizations and fellow leaders in western Pennsylvania — have been building a movement that has been preparing to overcome not just AIPAC, but Republican billionaires. Like Jeffrey Yass, who spent in this race — but has historically spent lots of money — fighting against public education and a number of other causes in western Pennsylvania.

So, when we met Summer, it was after she had helped elect — alongside a huge local movement — the city of Pittsburgh’s first Black mayor. Before that, she had started a pretty transformational movement to the school board and Woodland Hills school. And then, after all of that, she ended up defeating a 20-year incumbent to become western Pennsylvania’s first Black state senator. So, she is a history making powerhouse organizer.

And once we started talking back in 2021, it became clear that, regardless if incumbent Mike Doyle — who was the incumbent at the time — were to retire or not, she was going to be someone that this district could not only believe in, but ultimately elect as one of the people that has been just doing the work in the community, showing up year after year for all parts of the community.

So, that’s how we came into connection with her back in 2021, before she even decided to run for Congress. And we helped push her over the edge, talking about the level of resources that we were prepared to get behind her.

RG: In 2020, you helped add two Squad members — Jamal Bowman and Cori Bush — and I’m curious what the conversation was like with Summer Lee in 2021. You know, A, there’s an incumbent Democrat who’d been there for many years. That didn’t stop her from running in 2018, nor did it stop her from winning the legislative seat in 2018, but it’s a tall order. Like you said, she was doing so well at the local level, her movement really kind of taking over the power structure in Pittsburgh.

What was the argument that you made that she ought to now jump to the federal level? And what was the reticence, and what do you think pushed her over the top?

AR: Well, just to take a step back, our mission at Justice Democrats, just to reiterate, is to recruit and run progressive Candidates from working class backgrounds to grow the block of Squad members in Congress, this cycle and beyond. And so, like in some of the previous races you mentioned, whether it was Summer’s, Jamal’s, or Cori’s, Justice Democrats plays a really unique role in the way that we closely and directly interact with the candidates, from candidate recruitment all the way to when AIPAC decides to throw a punch at the very, very end.

And so, I think, for us, really looking at places like St. Louis, or places like Allegheny County in western Pennsylvania where, despite huge local establishment infrastructure and people that have been in office for decades, they had been able to overcome that. And it was also a situation where the communities that Summer had been representing have been largely left behind.

The other reason for us, too, is that there’s often a big national narrative about Pennsylvania. It’s a swing state, it’s very important to Democrats across the board, obviously in a moment like we’re heading in now in a presidential year, but also just in general for the progressive movement that we’re fighting for. This is a heavy union town, this is a big place of environmental racism, and the fight for a Green New Deal or what it looks like, to make sure that we protect everybody.

And so, in this particular race, it was, I think, a match of the infrastructure that the local movement had been building, that had been ready to overcome establishment structures, with also a big national need to get more champions in Congress that are going to fight for all of our communities, not just if it’s a blue district or not. We know that, unfortunately, incumbents get — especially in the Democratic Party — very relaxed after being in Congress for Decades, and not really feeling a real sense of urgency. And that’s what Summer and the whole movement in Pittsburgh was doing. They were bringing urgency.

They had elected the first state senator Black woman in Western Pennsylvania in the statehouse. They then elected the first Black mayor to represent the city of Pittsburgh through Ed Gainey. It was a natural succession, I think, to then make history by electing the first Black congresswoman to western Pennsylvania.

RG: And Usamah, in order to understand the ferocity of this 2024 race, I think we’ve got to go back to the 2022 race.

So, Doyle does end up stepping down, Lee runs. And, of course, whenever there’s an open seat in a blue district, it’s going to be a crowded field. But she was winning — running away. With a month-plus left in the campaign polls had her up, what? 25, 30 points? And then, kind of out of nowhere, AIPAC jumps into the race with millions of dollars in spending.

What was that like? How did that shape the race, and how did you guys respond?

Usamah Andrabi: Yeah, it was overwhelming, to say the least. And it was kind of a — really, not only in Summer’s Race, but for Democratic primaries writ large — moment-changing time where you all of a sudden won AIPAC — which had, prior to that cycle, never been involved directly in electoral politics, not have its own PAC and super PAC — came out, had a PAC, came out with a super PAC, and decided that they were going to spend $5 million in a race. And Democratic primaries are usually not that expensive, especially not open-seat, blue Democratic primaries.

And so, we saw just airwaves and mailboxes flooded with disinformation attack ads, from the vaguely named “United Democracy Project” that no one had any idea what this was about. And it kind of took us all— Not by surprise, because we had a feeling that AIPAC warned us, they started this super PAC, they were going to come in. But I don’t think any of us understood the sheer quantity of attacks that were going to come in.

And what we saw was kind of the GOP billionaire-funded super PAC playbook, which is: don’t talk about the issue you care about, just talk about how these people are not good enough Democrats. And so, you had a primary with five people in it and one Democratic state representative and, somehow, she’s the one who wasn’t a good enough Democrat, and would not be a good enough ally to President Biden. And that was what the attacks were.

There was no mention of Israel, there was no mention of Palestine. None of that. Just recycling old attacks against Summer that were, obviously, often dog whistles that we kind of see throughout AIPAC’s attacks against Black and brown politicians across the district.

And so, we were not the same well-funded campaign that we were this cycle. We were desperate to raise a lot more money to get on TV, to get more on mail, and to also talk to the press to expose to them in the nascent stages of who is actually funding these attacks. Because western Pennsylvania, if you had asked them two years ago who AIPAC is, they would have been like, I don’t know what you’re talking about.

And so, we had a concerted effort to talk to local press and say, hey, look, the people who are funding this super PAC is AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Their ads don’t mention Israel, and their donors are often Republican billionaires, and that’s what we saw. If you looked at the FEC filings last cycle, you could see Bernie Marcus, a Trump mega donor, giving $1 million to UDP, and then, two days later, UDP [spends] $1 million in PA 12. And so, it was a pretty clear through line.

That’s kind of what we started doing there, just trying to expose where these attacks were coming from to the best of our ability, while staying true to the values, and not letting millions of dollars in attacks allow us to — and allow Summer — to compromise on the value she was running on. There was no hiding from supporting Palestinian rights, or Medicare for all, or a Green New Deal.

RG: And it set up this interesting dynamic — and, maybe, Alexandra, you can take this — because, as you said, your organization is all about pushing the Democratic Party and the Democratic establishment in a more populist, progressive direction, to truly represent the working-class values that it claims that it ought to be representing.

But the interesting dynamic came — and Summer Lee talked about this with me in an interview she did, I think, maybe in 2022 — where, because she was getting hit with not being a good enough Democrat, the response that turned out to be effective was to put up an ad with her on stage with Joe Biden. And, with enough money behind that — and there was an independent expenditure coalition that came in toward the very end, and was able to kind of boost the message as well — that seemed to do the trick for enough voters who had gone wobbly under this barrage of AIPAC spending saying that Summer is radical, who can’t be trusted, and is going to, I don’t know. What is she going to do? Impeach Joe Biden or something? Or not support his agenda in Washington? Or something along those lines.

So, how long did it take for you guys to pick up on what is sort of an ironic dynamic for an insurgent organization that is often challenging the power structure of the Democratic Party?

AR: Yeah, I think that’s a great question. And Usamah, who worked closely with the campaign on responding to a lot of these — I mean, we all did — can speak more to this, but I think we were pushing back against flat-out lies, right? Summer was the only democratically elected official in the race in 2022, and they were darkening her skin, and telling her she wasn’t a sufficient enough Democrat.

And, as you’ve talked to Summer, we, as elected officials, as progressives, we have to be holding our leaders accountable, even when they are within our own party, while also working with them to deliver real results right now for poor and working people that need their lives changed. And so, during that race, that’s what we did. And I think we learned a lot coming out of that race in particular about the types of attacks that we can expect from AIPAC super PAC United Democracy Project, which, Usamah will know, did not mention Israel once, even though that is where all of their funding, the motivation of their supporters goes to.

And so, we ended up right after this primary really taking a concerted effort to study how these ads performed, like the ones that Summer did, the ones that United Democracy Project did, to answer some of the questions that you’re bringing up. Which is, how Democratic voters feel, not just about AIPAC, but also these types of messages that are coming from them. That way, we can understand, one, we can meet Democratic voters where they’re at around answering lies, basically, that are being put out with how Summer, despite also being critical of President Biden, has worked very, very closely with him — that’s progress, that’s a good thing when our elected officials do that — while also studying what were the messages that that turned people off.

But yeah, Usamah, I don’t know if you want to share a little bit more on that.

RG: What did you find when you studied what worked in 2022, and what didn’t work? And how did that inform your approach in ’24?

UA: Yeah. I think what we found more than anything was that AIPAC pedals in disinformation, and the greatest resolve and response to that is to just speak the truth and expose the truth of what’s going on. Not only by saying, all right, you guys want to spend millions of dollars talking about who’s a good Democrat? Let’s talk about that nine of the top ten mega donors to your super PAC are Republican billionaires and Donald Trump mega donors. Let’s talk about that you guys endorse 109 insurrectionists and 200-plus antiabortion extremists. And, also, let’s name that Summer Lee is running in a Democratic primary. She’s a Democrat, she’s a democratically elected representative, and she’s running to be the Democratic representative in Congress.

And it might sound like to outside viewers who know Summer and see it, it’s like, obviously she’s a Democrat. But when you are a voter in PA 12, average voters do not care about everything that’s going on in Washington, D.C., and they see three-and-a-half million dollars of ads that say, this woman’s face next to Donald Trump and Marco Rubio, you are going to start believing what you see from a super PAC called United Democracy Project.

And so, really, that was the approach there, to just clarify the truth here. It’s just saying, look, this is a Democrat. She obviously supports this president who’s our current president. And, also, that doesn’t mean that she’s going to compromise on any values. She’s going to push this party further to where they need to be, and she’s going to push for things that maybe the president disagrees with, but that’s the point of a Summer Lee in Congress, and that’s the point of the power that they built in western Pennsylvania. The work that they’ve done over the last few years has not been, let’s figure out how we can just build the most lukewarm blue wall. It’s, how can we transform western Pennsylvania to be the model for progressives across the country?

And now you have a congresswoman Summer Lee, a mayor Ed Gainey, a county executive Sara Innamorato, who have all replaced what used to be a far more establishment, right wing sort of government. And that doesn’t happen overnight; it takes years and years of building, that I think Summer’s led on.

RG: Yeah, I thought the ads that you guys ran — or that Summer Lee’s campaign ran — were kind of instructive on that point. They do hit some populist themes like not [being] beholden to lobbyists and corporate PACs. But, in general, they feel like fairly standard populist Democratic ads, [saying] you’re going to get the job done.

Summer Lee Supporter, Campaign Ad: I’ve known Summer Lee since 2017. I know that Republican-funded super PACs are lying about her again.

Summer Lee: Because, in Washington, I’ve been on the front lines standing up to GOP extremism, fighting to restore our abortion rights, taking on MAGA extremists like Marjorie Taylor Greene, and saving Social Security and Medicare from GOP budget cuts.

Summer Lee Supporter, Campaign Ad: In just one year, Summer’s brought over a billion dollars back to western Pennsylvania.

Summer Lee Supporter, Campaign Ad: Money for housing, money for schools, money for clean air and water.

RG: But nowhere in those ads do you hear Green New Deal, Medicare for All. It’s not a kind of Bernie Sanders 2016 or 2020 campaign ad. So, what is the thinking behind that messaging?

UA: Yeah. I think it is that kind of combination of messaging, and it’s talking about— What we saw so often in the last cycle was that the big establishments say, you won’t be able to get anything done, you won’t have seniority on these committees, you won’t be able to actually deliver for this district. And that was the biggest criticism going into Summer going into Congress.

And so, to combat that, one, not only did, from the beginning on the official side, that office churned out work, had amazing constituent services and casework, opened a ton of satellite offices in parts of the district that no one used to give a shit about. But, also, they delivered legitimately a billion dollars in just one year to that district, and she had one of the most productive freshman years out of any freshman member of Congress this Congress.

And It was not just, here’s a check to some organization you don’t know about. It was delivering money on the priorities she ran on. So, it was delivering money for clean air and water. It was creating thousands of green jobs and investing in green manufacturing. It was expanding affordable housing.

And so, I think the vision that Summer proved to everyone was that progressives do fight for a Green New Deal, they do fight for a Medicare For All, and those are things we must deliver on. And, in the path to delivering on that, we have to deliver results every day right now. We have to create green jobs today, we have to clean air and water in the Mon Valley, where it has the worst pollution in the country right now. And so, it’s looking like results every day, but still staying true to those values by saying, we’re still fighting for a Green New Deal, we’re still fighting for a future where no one has health care debt. And we’re going to do that on a day-by-day basis by delivering this money right now. And we’re still not beholden to corporations or CEOs.

And so, I think Summer has shown you a model for how progressives can build that vision across the country. If it can happen in western PA, it can happen anywhere.

AR: I’ll also just come in to say, last year, as we’ve talked about, was AIPAC’s first way into elections ever, right? And it was something like 26 million across nine different races. Summer’s was the only working class candidate that was able to put the coalition together to overcome a lot of that.

But a big part of the election — separate from the ads, but something that was really big — at the end of last year, AIPAC threatened that they were going to spend about a hundred million to unseat the entire Squad and named Summer as one of their top targets. Republican billionaires ended up jumping in and spending at the end of the race, and it was very, very important — I think for Summer, but also for progressives in general — to talk about how much they’ve delivered right now, while we also have the foresight and vision to fight for the future that we want.

But that was a big part of how we had to prepare this year. We know that we’re not going to be able to match them, necessarily, and the campaigns, dollar for dollar, but what we can do, and what we did a lot in this race in addition to paid media was a lot of earned media. And it was a lot of earned media that was informed by a lot of research that we at Justice Democrats led well over a year ago, after basically studying the ads that we just talked about that happened in the 2022 race, to be able to inform and understand how Democratic voters think about AIPAC, think about some of these attacks.

And what we learned through that process is that there is very little anybody that is outside of the beltway in Washington — particularly Democratic voters in all of these primaries — knows about AIPAC. And once they know about AIPAC, they see where the funding is coming from, particularly how much alignment there is with Donald Trump’s mega donors, when pretty much every terrible GOP that you can think of, those types of donors.

And so, in addition to the paid media effort, there was a ton of Summer’s own time, her campaign, Justice Democrats, and a whole coalition that ultimately ended up launching a reject-AIPAC campaign earlier this year, but it was informed by over a year’s worth of research. Really trying to obviously balance what we all know to be true about the popularity of our ideas and, also, gathering as much intel and data as we can — because we know we’re going to get outspent — about what messages are going to actually be the most effective when pushing it back against this massive right-wing network.

And I think that piece is really important, because we’ve seen stories coming out of this race that all the politics are changing, right? All of that. Which I think is very true, and is a huge credit to all of the students on the front lines right now, the activists and organizers that are out in the streets. But it also takes a lot of work in advance to prepare for the onslaught that comes.

In 2022, it was recruiting a candidate like Summer. And I think this year it was really making intentional investments into gathering data, messaging, everything that we needed to supply our candidates, our allies in the movement, and media and everybody behind the scenes, to make sure they knew who AIPAC was, and what is resonating amongst Democratic voters.

RG: In what was a huge win for you guys, an AIPAC super PAC ended up not deciding to spend in the race. Now, Jeff Yass, a Republican billionaire with close ties to Benjamin Netanyahu — we’ll talk about him in a minute, my colleague Akela Lacy did some great reporting on him, this cycle and previously — but on the AIPAC point, I’m curious if there was a moment that you realized, OK, we have done enough work, and we have built up a strong enough foundation, that AIPAC isn’t going to want to come in here.

Because it’s not as if, with a hundred million dollar potential spend, AIPAC necessarily lack the resources to wage a losing campaign. There’s a weird dynamic where they don’t want to lose — and maybe you can talk about this dynamic that is not necessarily intuitive — but my understanding of it is that, OK, yes, they could raise $5 million and have a 5 percent chance of beating Summer Lee late in the game. And, why not? Because they have $100 million, why not spend the 5 million?

My understanding of it is, eventually, it does then get more difficult down the line to go to those same donors and say, OK, now, 2026, 2028, we want to spend another 100 million, another 100 million. And they say, well, wait a minute. You’ve spent $5 million against her three times in a row. At some point, $15 million starts to add up.

So, why do you think they didn’t spend?

UA: Yeah. I think what happened here is, AIPAC got a little ahead of themselves. I think, at the start of this cycle, they were like, we’re going to spend a hundred million dollars, and we’re going to take out every member of the Squad.

And you saw them naming everyone, that they were going to target everyone. It wasn’t just Cori and Jamal. It was Ayana, it was Summer, it was Rashida, it was Ilhan. And that was their goal. And I think, as time progressed and as they saw, one, these people are raising amazing amounts of money, they are organizing the coalition. They’re not going to be taken by surprise like they were the last cycle. They started walking that back, and they started saying, OK, no, we’re actually going to focus on these six, and now we’re just going to focus on these four.

And they actively tried to recruit in Summer’s race, they looked for a challenger. Akela actually reported on that, they tried to find local electeds to primary Summer and they couldn’t. They polled in that district, we saw it. We saw a very classic Mellman poll in that district. And I think what they found was, it’s not viable for them.

And so, now, obviously, they have sort of rebranded, and said, what we’re going to do, we’re just focusing on Jamal and Cori. Because, like you said, you’re absolutely right. I think halfway through this cycle, they realized they’re not going to get a bunch of W’s trying to challenge every member of the Squad. And, despite the fact that they do have just the money to kind of waste on those races, they saw that, one, that they were losing their grip over the Democratic Party, writ large — as they were going through this, as I think a Clinton administration official said, a political identity crisis — but, also, like you said, their donors are not going to accept just five losses and two wins. So, you even saw them spend a few thousand dollars in Danny Davis’s race, so that they could say they won that race, as if they were a part of that W.

And so, now it’s clear, one, for us, that after Summer’s victory, AIPAC has already failed at their one goal at the start of this cycle, which was to defeat the Squad. And their goal now is to double down and spend millions of dollars against the former middle school principal and nurse to show their GOP billionaire donors that they can win in a cycle. And I think, now, that’s why those two races especially feel like the fight for the soul of our Democratic Party.

RG: And Jeff Yass is a different question, because he doesn’t have to raise the money. He himself is a billionaire. So, if he wants to repeatedly lose, that’s his billionaire prerogative. And, in fact, that does seem to be almost the only thing that he does in Pennsylvania. It’s extraordinary how much money he puts into races across the state — not just in Summer’s race — that he then loses.

What was the effect of the amount of money he spent? And will it be over a million by the end, do you think? What was your read on how much he put in? I know by primary time It looked like only about eight or nine hundred thousand had been publicly reported.

UA: Yeah, I believe it was about 800k that’s been publicly reported, we’ll see if it’s more. And I think, like we’ve kind of said, call it Moderate PAC, call it AIPAC, call it DMFI, call it United Democracy Project, I think the pattern we’re seeing across the country is, GOP billionaires finding their pet project super PAC to target Black and brown Democrats and progressives in these primaries to elect right-wing Democrats that are aligned with corporate power and these super PACs and billionaires.

And so, I think Jeffrey Yass, as you noted, to anyone in Pennsylvania who’s involved in politics is enemy number one to anything you care about, be it abortion rights, or public education, or democracy. And so, it totally makes sense that someone like Summer Lee poses a personal threat to a Republican billionaire like that.

I think it was, good luck to him on his money, and continue to spending in failures. But I think it was a massive mistake for these people to go out and try and find a Republican billionaire to spend in this race, because that is a very clear story that Summer had been telling before that.

You know, when we were talking about waiting for AIPAC to come in, we were waiting for the Bernie Marcuses and Jan Koums and Paul Singers of the world to come and spend millions of dollars in this race. And, sure, they didn’t come in, but we just had a different billionaire with a different name that albeit was known to more Pennsylvanians.

And so, I think, really, what you did is localize a Republican billionaire in that fight to make this fight even more clear about who Summer is, and who her opponents are. And I think it’s the same struggle you were seeing with Jamal Bowman and George Latimer and Cori Bush and Wesley Bell. You know, you have the Bernie Marcuses and Paul Singers on Wesley Bell and George Latimer’s side, and you have everyday people and the grassroots movement behind Cori Bush and Jamal Bowman.

RG: In the time that I’ve got left with you, let’s talk about those two races.

So, the nurse that you mentioned, Cori Bush, and the principal you mentioned, Jamal Bowman, do have candidates, they were able to recruit challengers that they’re comfortable with. Let’s talk about Bush; she’s running against Wesley Bell and another candidate who’s in the race, which maybe could help Cori Bush? I’m curious for your take because, in my experience, it’s easier to take somebody out if you just have a one-on-one shot.

But how’s Bush looking against Wesley Bell? He’s a quote-unquote “progressive prosecutor,” we covered his race, I think, in 2018 when he first ran. That kind of Soros-backed progressive prosecutor organization rallied behind him. And so, he had been not necessarily that far from Bush, but it seems like when he saw that AIPAC was going in full speed against Cori Bush, he dropped out of the Senate race, which he was going to lose — he was just running to raise his profile — and decided to run for the House instead, to kind of ride this river of AIPAC cash.

How’s the Bush-Bell race looking?

UA: I think that race is really interesting, because you have a man who is, like you said, running against Josh Hawley, who I think dropped out for whatever amount of money AIPAC said that they would get in for, to now be running against Cori Bush. And now he shares donors with Josh Hawley, he’s taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from Josh Hawley’s donors, and other antiabortion Republican Missouri politicians’ donors. And so, I don’t think anything could embody more of what an empty vessel and empty suit looks like than Wesley Bell going against Cori Bush.

All he has really spoken on is his record as a prosecutor. You don’t hear any vision for everyday people in that district, you don’t hear any policies or things that he cares about. It’s really just referencing what small levels of reforms he may have been a part of on the prosecutorial level, while what he’s going to do is let AIPAC do all the attacks against this working-class Black woman, former nurse who has been an abortion rights champion, been a champion against insurrectionists, been a champion for everyday people sleeping on the steps of the Capitol to stop an eviction moratorium. The contrast couldn’t be clearer in that race between those two folks.

And I think it makes sense that a Cori Bush is such a massive threat to the kind of Republican billionaires and right-wing movement that backs AIPAC, because nothing is a greater threat than a former single mother who’s lived homelessness, who’s lived through sexual and gun violence, who is willing to tell her abortion story, and is willing to put her body on the line for everyday people in that district. When I promise you Wesley Bell is not sleeping on any steps of the Capitol to stop an eviction moratorium.

RG: Cori Bush also learned from an unsuccessful race in 2018; you guys backed her then. Then she wins in 2020, wins reelection easily in 2022.

I’m curious, how big an issue is Israel-Palestine in this race? Because I wonder, like you had said, in 2022, none of the AIPAC super PAC ads ever touched on the issue, but the salience of it was lower, because it was pre-October 7, and there wasn’t a war and a plausible genocide according to the ICJ going on. So, has the fact that AIPAC is pouring so much money into the race itself been registering in the race?

AR: Honestly, I feel like they’re continuing to not run ads publicly on digital, at least right now, in those districts that are focused on what’s happening in Gaza right now. They’re continuing, it seems like, to do the same playbook as they’ve done. They polled very early about what attacks they want to hit on that are recycled from what they’ve had in previous years, except updated with information about particular issues that are really impacting certain voters. So, we haven’t seen it, and we haven’t seen AIPAC’s super PAC starting to spend. But what they have done is they’ve bundled over a million dollars directly to Wesley Bell and George Latimer’s campaigns that they’re now starting as those individual campaigns to spend. So, they are definitely here.

They are previewing, you know, Cori and Jamal’s opponents as their primary at their conferences, where they’re fundraising and bundling money. So, they’re definitely involved in the races and, I think, recognize the same thing we do, which is that Democratic Primary voters for the most part don’t know who AIPAC is. And when they do know who AIPAC is and where the money comes from, they don’t like that it’s basically obfuscating and funneling in GOP Donald Trump money into Democratic Primaries to challenge these incumbents.

And so, I think that it’s something that we’re going to continue to deal with. I think, as Usamah mentioned, there’s a lot throughout Wesley Bell’s career before he decided to switch over to challenging the first Black congresswoman the state of Missouri has ever had. He’s also not someone that has done well with his public service career, and that will be continuing to come out throughout the primary.

But I’ll also just say, in Jamal’s race, we’re talking about two very different districts, right? Two very different media markets. In St. Louis, what we’re worried about, the campaign and AIPAC will be able to run, it’s a relatively cheaper media market. If you move over to New York 16, it’s very different. It’s New York city, it’s definitely who has the most [and] can spend the most on things like cable and paid communications and stuff like that.

It’s also the place where redistricting has been something that the local political establishments have been very much— As Jamal in particular and candidates like Cori are truly, as Usamah said, the former principal, the former nurse, they are the most working-class champions in Congress right now. And they’re not like the politicos in the back rooms dealing with all of the redistricting stuff. And so, there have been, systematically, over the past two cycles for Jamal, a carving out of historic Black neighborhoods in his district.

Now, we still feel like we are in this fight, but it’s definitely been a process to get here. And I’d say that Latimer, George Latimer, who’s Jamal Bowman’s opponent, is the former county executive. He’s also been more similar to, I’d say, like an incumbent, because he’s been in the local and state political establishment for over 20 years. So, this is not someone that is some random outsider coming in. And, even to a large extent Bell, except maybe less so, this is someone that has been actively known to people as an executive person for some time.

So, I think in Jamal’s race and Cori’s race, there are different challenges, but I think the big, big piece is that these are two people that are challenging historic elections, representatives to these seats, with really not a whole lot of cause other than this issue, but then won’t actually campaign and run on it in the same way.

UA: To your point on Palestine, and this issue, and whether it’s actually coming up, I think the truth is the reason AIPAC didn’t run ads on Israel last cycle or, likely, this cycle, is because they can’t win on that issue. Not only, one, is it an issue that is not necessarily the issue that a majority of voters are necessarily voting on, but it’s also not an issue where their policies are actually popular among Democratic voters.

You know, where the Squad was at, where Jamal, Cori, Summer, and everyone was at since six months ago, has been where Democratic voters have been. They overwhelmingly support a ceasefire, they overwhelmingly support conditioning military funding to Israel. And it’s not voters who are evolving over this cycle as the genocide unfolds in front of us, it is Democratic politicians and leaders who are catching up to where their voters have been for months. And so, that is why you see a Chuck Schumer speak on the floor of Congress, or Nancy Pelosi sign on to letters conditioning funding. Or more Dems than ever voting against military funding to Israel.

That is showing, one, not only where the Squad’s leadership is, which is at the front of the Democratic Party, but also that Democratic voters are right there with them. And, finally, eventually, some other folks are catching up. You won’t hear George Latimer and Wesley Bell talk about those things. You won’t hear them condemn even the killing of World Central aid kitchen workers, when even President Biden is condemning it and everyone else is, because AIPAC won’t let them.

And it just shows how deeply, one, right wing the policies are that AIPAC supports, because the only other people who espouse the same views are the Mike Johnsons of the world and the Donald Trumps of the world.

RG: How much do you still hear about that crazy fire alarm thing? Is that a problem for Bowman?

UA: I don’t think it’s a real problem. I think if you look at his Twitter replies, you will see a lot of folks who have MAGA in their bio comment and reply in it. But I don’t think it’s an issue for voters who actually care about substance, because they know what Bowman has done for that district, they know what he’s been fighting for. And they also remember what he got to Congress for in the first place, which was defeating a politician that’s very similar to who we’re seeing right now.

George Latimer is just Elliot Ingle 2.0. And what we had already seen when Jamal first got elected was a career politician who did not care about his district, who didn’t even live in his district, and had left behind Black and brown communities that Jamal was actively working with as a principal of a middle school.

And so, there are folks who are in the community and who show up for the community, and there are folks who show up when it’s politically advantageous. And I think Elliot Ingle and George Latimer are the latter

RG: Would it be fair to call both of them underdogs at this point? What’s your sense on the races? And when are the primaries?

AR: I think that they’re definitely incumbents. We’re walking in as incumbents in this fight. And, also, they’ve unfortunately got a hundred-million-dollar threat coming down the pike. And so, as working class candidates, as a working-class movement that is backing them up, it does mean that we’ve got a lot to overcome, but we’ve done it before.

And so, it is very possible, but it’s going to be, just like everybody that came together to protect Summer against GOP billionaires, we need the whole of our movement — organizations, donors, everybody — to do the same for Cori and Jamal, because they are going to be hit with disingenuous lies and attacks. And, because these primaries are, really, as Usamah was talking about, an existential fight, not only in the fight to defend Palestinian lives and rights in this moment in D.C., but for all marginalized people in this country who are at risk of — and because we’re at risk of losing some of our two biggest powerful megaphones — and as folks that have been with them and recruited them, we can tell you that it is a lot easier to defend them than it is to get back these seats.

And so, this is a really big fight. And it’s because of our success over the years that we are being targeted so heavily. They want to protect their investment, they know that it’s under threat. They are losing a generational fight, that’s why they’re on the ropes. And former Bill Clinton officials are talking about them having an identity crisis, despite having such a massive war chest. And it’s showing that money is not the only thing that matters here.

But we definitely do need it. We need to keep an amount to stay competitive. Jamal’s election is going to be June 25th. And then, a couple of weeks before that, is early vote. And early vote we’re also treating as just as important as election day.

UA: Cori’s primary is on August 5th and Jamal’s primary is on June 25th. 

RG: Those are probably going to be pretty low-turnout affairs.

AR: I think, in general, most elections, unfortunately, in this country that aren’t presidency are low-turnout elections, which means that we’ve got to really hustle to turn our people out, in a way that, unfortunately, the millions and millions of dollars that are coming down the pike are meant to suppress. And, even right now with the $100 million threat, they want us to be cynical, they want us to think it is impossible to overcome that level of spending, and Summer’s race just showed that that’s not the case. And the work that we’ve been doing alongside dozens of other national progressive groups— and our Palestinian and Muslim community especially in this moment — have been [able] to overcome that and keep them out.

So, I think that it’s unlikely we can keep them fully out of Jamal and Cori’s race. But we’re walking in as the incumbents. We’ve got a plan to win, we just need the money, resources and the whole movement to come together in the same way that we did to elect them in the first place. And we got this.

RG: All right. Well, Usamah, Alexandra, thanks so much for joining me.

UA: Thank you, Ryan.

RG: That was Usamah Andrabi and Alexandra Rojas, and that’s our show.

Deconstructed is a production of The Intercept. This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. The show is mixed by William Stanton. Legal review by Shawn Musgrave and Elizabeth Sanchez. Leonardo Faierman transcribed this episode. Our theme music was composed by Bart Warshaw. And I’m Ryan Grimm, D.C. Bureau Chief for The Intercept.

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The post Let’s Check In on AIPAC’s Assault on the Squad appeared first on The Intercept.

“There were kids in the ICU that had bullet wounds to the chest or bullet wounds to the head,” Dr. Mohammed “Adeel” Khaleel recounts the harrowing scenes from his recent medical mission in Gaza to Ryan Grim on Deconstructed this week. An orthopedic spine surgeon hailing from Dallas, Texas, Khaleel witnessed firsthand the crushing toll on human life amid the rubble of decimated hospital infrastructure. Despite the overwhelming challenges, Khaleel highlights the unwavering dedication of medical personnel committed to providing whatever aid they can through the devastation. He returned back to the U.S. with a message from patients and doctors in Gaza: “Don’t forget us.”

[Deconstructed theme music.]

Ryan Grim: Welcome back to Deconstructed. I’m Ryan Grim.

Today, we’re going to be talking with Mohammed Khaleel, a doctor from Texas who just returned from a medical mission to Gaza. A husband and father of four, Dr. Khaleel is a spine surgeon in Dallas, but handled all manner of trauma while at the European hospital in Gaza this month. It’s effectively the only one not yet destroyed by the Israeli assault.

Dr. Khaleel told me that he would often ask people in Gaza what we back here in the States could do to help, and the answer was always the same: don’t forget us. Tell the world what is happening. It’s a sign of faith in humanity, the belief that if only enough people know what’s going on, the world won’t stand for it.

I don’t know if that’s true. But, if the Palestinians in Gaza can remain hopeful, the least we can do is try to spread the word.

Dr. Khaleel joined us from a medical facility in Dallas. Here’s our conversation.

RG: Dr. Mohammed Khaleel, welcome to Deconstructed.

Mohammed Khaleel: Thank you for having me.

RG: So, when did you get back from Gaza?

MK: We actually got back on April 11, I was there for about a week. We initially planned to be there for ten days, but we had some delays getting in, so we spent about a week at the beginning of April.

RG: And you were at the European Hospital in Khan Yunis. Is that correct?

MK: Exactly.

RG: Before we get into the work that you did as a surgeon, as a medical provider there, what were the conditions like where you stayed? Did you stay in a tent? Did they have rooms inside the hospital where visiting doctors could stay? Like, what’s the situation on the ground?

MK: They do have some rooms, like call rooms, where doctors can stay. Through the organization that I went with, FAJR Scientific, they had arranged a safe house, it was about three kilometers away. And so, that was the initial plan, was to stay in the safe house. But it took a while to try to travel between the safe house and the hospital, because you had to get clearance to start the trip, and then you had to go to a holding point, and get clearance again to get to the hospital.

So, most of the days we ended up staying in the hospital. We actually slept on the floor in the hospital CEO’s office, because the call rooms were taken when we initially got there. It’s a difficult situation with the overwhelming of the hospital system. There’s about 35,000 refugees living on the hospital campus. So, anywhere that you go in the hospital, in the hallways, there’s people sleeping. The ceiling tiles are kind of falling because people are hanging curtains from the ceiling tiles to make [makeshift] tents. 

And so, it’s a very overwhelmed system, but they accommodated us in the administrative offices.

RG: And what’s the food and water situation like there?

MK: So, we actually brought in some water for the team, because we traveled through Cairo, so we made some purchases of some emergency-type food packages and water through Cairo. The actual water in the hospital we tried to avoid, in an attempt not to get sick. But I think, unfortunately for a lot of people staying on campus, they are relying on that water, which may not be clean.

With the hospital system being overwhelmed, you could actually smell raw sewage in certain parts of the hospital where there were pipe leaks and stuff. Unfortunately, the people staying in those parts of the hall had to just kind of put up with the smell.

RG: What about food? You brought enough for yourself the entire stay. I’m curious, what about the tens of thousands of people in the hospital grounds itself. What was their access to the food like?

MK: When we drive in, there are miles and miles of trucks just stopped at the border that are not able to bring food aid in.

RG: You said “miles and miles?”

MK: Yeah, there were thousands of trucks parked outside the border, and you pass by those going in. But doctors bring in — as part of their medical team — they are generally able to get in through the Rafah border. And so, every one of the teams that went in brought a lot of bags.

So, we brought about 80 to 90 suitcases full of medical supplies. But then, also, emergency food packets for people. Infant formula, feminine supplies, those basic necessities were also part of the luggage that we brought in.

The food situation, I mean, it does seem like there’s scarcity at every level. I think the team that we went with, they had—FAJR Scientific had done a couple of medical missions in the past before the war. And so, that was one of the comments that a lot of the surgeons were making, is how much weight the residents and the doctors have lost. And then the people living on the hospital campus, it’s really just you trying to get what you can.

The holy month of Ramadan was going on while we were there, so people were fasting, during the daytime we were all fasting. But to break fast, it is possible to get some basic supplies like rice and some food items, but it’s just, the pricing is incredibly inflationary.

So, our plan was to actually have a cow, and do like a— Typically, people will butcher a cow at the end of Ramadan and give the meat out to people in need. But what would normally cost about a thousand to twelve hundred dollars for a cow is about five thousand. But, when we got there, there were no cows to actually butcher. So, we ended up doing food packets for the people with that money, which was basically rice and chicken.

RG: And you said the residents and the medical staff had been losing weight, they were talking about having lost weight recently. Was it noticeable, or because Ramadan was going on and people in general weren’t eating during the day, [as if] it was something you didn’t really see until later?

MK: No, I think this was a significant amount of weight loss. Like, generally for Ramadan, you may lose a few pounds here and there, a lot of people don’t lose much weight. A couple of the residents in particular, the guys that were there the prior year, would give them a hug and say— They were talking about it. They’ve lost about 30, 40 pounds, because you may have to skip meals for days at a time, sometimes

RG: What were the medical services like? What do you remember the most from your interaction with patients?

MK: Yeah. The hospital infrastructure is completely collapsed. The European Gaza Hospital is probably the last standing tertiary-level hospital. So we had things that were referred to the hospital treated there, more complex types of surgeries. There are a few field hospitals still running, like al-Aqsa Martyrs and Al-Awda further up north, but European Gaza is kind of the main hospital where we’re seeing revision-type work.

A number of the patients that we saw had ex-fixes in place, or external fixators, which are pins going into the bone with carbon fiber rods attached to them to kind of hold the bony fragments in somewhat approximation, but with the plan of definitive treatment when the patient’s more stable or their wounds have healed somewhat. So, that was a bit of the work that we were doing, was trying to revise things so that people could actually walk. Because on those external fixators, you can’t typically bear weight on those.

And so, it was frustrating to indicate some patients for surgery. And then, I know that on a number of occasions, we had a full schedule that day, and so, we would tell the residents, this patient’s going to go tomorrow. But then, tomorrow would roll around and they couldn’t find the patient anymore, because they probably got lost in that sea of refugees, the 35,000 people staying on campus.

RG: What kind of patients did you treat?

MK: My specialty is spine surgery. I did one spine case. The majority of it was orthopedic trauma. I [did] my fellowship at Harvard, but I did my residency at Parkland Hospital in Dallas, and we get a ton of trauma experience there. So, that’s what all of us basically relied on.

So, converting external fixators to internal fixation for definitive treatment, and then the acute injuries did require some placement of external fixators, closure of wounds. One particular patient that really got to me was a kid that was about six or seven years old. He had an external fixator on his right arm, external fixator on his left leg, and then, on the right leg, he had a below-knee amputation that we were trying to clean up and get closed. He’d already been in the hospital for a few weeks, and it was just heartbreaking to see this kid wearing a diaper with a cartoon elephant on it, wearing a kid’s diaper with injuries that you would expect to see in an adult, maybe with a motorcycle accident or something.

And so, the amount of kids that we saw was really the most heartbreaking thing. Like, there were kids in the ICU that had bullet wounds to the chest or bullet wounds to the head and, because of how young they are, patients are often able to survive these injuries, but it’s a lot of supportive care. And then it overwhelms the system, because anybody that needs to be in the hospital for an extended period of time occupies a bed that someone else doesn’t have access to.

So, after a few of these surgeries, I remember we were putting patients onto hard gurneys, because there were no mattresses left. 

RG: In general, what kind of people were coming in there with injuries? Is it mostly children? And how are the injuries occurring?

MK: So, a number of them are blast injuries, people that have been injured in either the blast itself or the rubble that has resulted from it. There are a lot of children, but there are also a lot of young adults. Not as many elderly patients as one would expect; it was mostly children and young adults. That is a large portion of the population there.

Unfortunately, talking to some other teams that have gone there were more of a medical focus than a surgical focus, they saw a number of elderly patients unfortunately expire. I don’t know if they had the reserve to do all the displacement, and moving, and deal with the medical problems.

So, a number of the patients that we saw several months into this war were younger patients. And there were gunshot wounds, blast injuries. That was probably the majority of what we saw.

RG: Did you talk to any of the children about how they got shot?

MK: Yeah. So, a number of them, these were high caliber bullets. So, the children weren’t really the best historians, but their parents would explain that they were— It sounds like it was either sniper fire— I mean, most of them did not actually see the soldiers at point blank range or anything like that. These are high caliber bullets that kind of came from a distance.

RG: That’s why I ask, because there was a Guardian report somewhat recently that said that doctors were seeing this in hospitals in Gaza, sniper bullets hitting children in the chest and in the head, in ways that led a lot of these doctors to question, how this could have happened other than deliberately, other than as if it was just target practice on children. A lot of the instances that the Guardian wrote about, it would be just a couple children playing in the street alone, with nobody nearby that could explain some type of missed shot or mistaken identity.

What did the parents that you talked to understand about how their children had come to get attacked?

MK: I think, unfortunately, for a lot of the parents, they are— I mean, they’re heartbroken. You’ve had the highest court in the world suggest a plausible genocide. For the people on the ground, they firmly believe that this is a genocide, and so, they feel that their kids were targeted.

A number of them were playing in an area where you would expect kids to be allowed to play. Some of them were playing in the rubble, and what remained of these homes and complexes. They believe that their children were targeted. A lot of the adults that you talk to feel that this is a war on children, and that the injuries are intended to kill and to maim.

RG: What are the other doctors who’ve been there for months now — or had been there or who lived there — what did you gather from them about their experience?

MK: We actually ended up working with some of the doctors that were displaced from Al-Shifa Hospital. And I know one doctor, Dr. Munther, he’s an orthopedic surgeon in Al-Shifa, and he’d been displaced to European Gaza, to the Khan Yunis area. And he was explaining how his home is destroyed, he’s lost family members. He felt that the destruction of Al-Shifa hospital was more heartbreaking to him than the destruction of his own home, because he was like, his home will eventually be rebuilt. But with the destruction of Al-Shifa— I mean, I guess that was the largest and most advanced hospital in Gaza? And he was just saying that the resources that were lost there will probably never be able to be replaced, at least in his lifetime.

That was one of the remarkable things about going over there. It’s very humbling to see what these providers are dealing with. I mean, they haven’t been paid in months, they’re literally volunteering to care for other people. Some of the medical students, one of the young ladies that we worked with, her medical school has been destroyed. There is no record of her first three years of medical school, she doesn’t even know who to contact to try to get documentation of that, but she’s just coming to the hospital and volunteering, and she scrubbed into a number of cases with us. And it was just remarkable to see how far ahead they are in their training; I mean, for a third-year medical student.

We had one case where a patient had bilateral tibia fractures and a humerus fracture. And when we fixed one limb, we moved on to the next limb, and she sewed up all the wounds pretty efficiently. I mean, that’s something that [makes up] the type of training people get later on in med school.

So, the resolve that some of these providers have is really incredible. And I think they’re kind of in a situation where they said it’s better to just come to the hospital and help than to be stuck in their tent just lamenting the situation.

RG: There’s also been an increasing number of reports in the last couple of days of newly discovered mass graves at different hospital sites around Gaza. Some of those we saw in reporting in the past were created and dug by Gazan doctors and medical personnel themselves, because there was no other way to handle treatment. Others are reported to have been dug by IDF soldiers.

Did you hear anything about these mass graves? And what was the situation if somebody died in your care?

MK: I think the mass graves situation, some of it may be just the only way to safely dispose of the corpses. But the perception that we got from some of the doctors that were up north at Al-Shifa and Al-Nasser in particular was that they felt that they were being targeted, and that the hospital, which would normally be a safe environment, is no longer safe.

So, it was actually kind of chilling to hear some of them discuss how they appreciated the European and the American teams being there, and they were very welcoming and generous while we were there. But they knew that once we stopped showing up that the European Gaza Hospital was going to be destroyed next.

And so, they’re anticipating either getting some heads-up and leaving. But yeah. I know one of the doctors in particular said that the notice to leave Al-Shifa was not feasible to get people out. So, a lot of the people that left Al-Shifa before that got destroyed were the refugees that were on campus that were able to walk away. But a lot of the patients, a lot of the doctors that were taking care of those patients, they couldn’t leave immediately. And so, they were lost.

RG: My colleague Jeremy Scahill had heard from some medical personnel at other hospitals that, when IDF soldiers were coming in, some doctors were taking off scrubs and were putting on more civilian clothes, and that they felt that being dressed as a medical personnel actually made them more of a target. And so, they did everything they could to kind of blend in with the crowd.

Did you hear anything from Dr. Munther or others who came from Al-Shifa, does that sound accurate? Because when I first heard that, I was like, that’s the most ghoulish thing I’ve ever heard. That wearing scrubs wouldn’t protect you, but it would actually make you more of a target.

MK: That’s consistent with what they were relaying.

So, that doctor in particular, I asked him if he’d feel comfortable making a video, if I just recorded his story. And that’s, specifically, he said he didn’t feel so comfortable relaying his story as if it was that bad, because he told me the story of his colleague in the orthopedic department who had passed his boards a year prior. And now, one year being board certified, he was targeted, sustained a bullet wound to his spine, is now paraplegic, has lost his entire family, and had to get transferred out for care. And so, he was like, when you compare that story to my story of getting out, there’s no comparison.

So, I think a number of the doctors there felt that they were targets for attack, and that’s specifically one of the reasons that they felt having foreign nationals in the hospital was probably more protective than anything else. Because just being a doctor was not going to be protective.

RG: And so, they now feel that now that you and some other foreign national doctors have left, that the European Hospital will be next on the chopping block?

MK: That’s the overwhelming feeling. The resolve is remarkable. I mean, they talk about it pretty frankly that, you know, this is next.

There’s been communications from the Israeli leadership that it’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when. And I think the people on the ground are totally convinced of that, that Rafah will be next.

And so, they don’t know if that’s going to mean having to move back up north; there’s very limited ability to live anywhere up north. Some of the teams that were with other groups — I mean, we connected with all the surgeons that were there — and there were a number of different groups there at the same time. But the day before they left, some of the groups from the north stopped by European Gaza Hospital before going back to Cairo, and they were just relaying some of the pictures and the videos that they took. I mean, it is completely destroyed up north, the entire cities are flattened.

And so, the people in Rafah, a number of them don’t know if it’s going to be feasible to go back up north, but they assume that that’s where they’ll have to go whenever Rafah gets invaded. Or, I think they’ve reserved themselves to the idea that there may not be anywhere to go.

RG: What makes this war unique — certainly, in our lifetimes, and maybe multiple lifetimes — is that Russia brutally invades Ukraine, for instance, and you see people fleeing into Poland, Romania, the rest of Western Europe. This is the first time that people haven’t been able to flee from the fighting.

MK: Exactly.

RG: Just stuck there for months and months and months on end. They can move somewhat around, from Gaza City to Khan Yunis, Khan Yunis to Rafah. But, like you said, what are people hoping that they’re able to do?

MK: We had discussions with a couple of doctors that were trying to ask about the possibilities of getting out and continuing medical training. But the majority of them, they’re like, once the war is over, we’ll continue if. If we can’t continue, then it is what it is.

I think, for a number of them, there’s no getting around the fact that— The times where you would hear the bombings and the gunshots most frequently were at the times of prayer, where people were congregated together. And so, as far as the population there is concerned, this is a targeted effort for ethnic cleansing. And so, they’re like, if that is the price that we pay, then that is what it is.

I think a number of them don’t expect to be able to get into Egypt if those borders open up. It’s a controversial thing. You talk to people who say, this is our home, we don’t intend to leave. And then you talk to some people that would say, we would leave if we could.

And a number of the doctors, unfortunately, have left. That is another strain on the medical system. But that was the discussion that they were having among the physicians when we were all sitting around to eat, is that it’s heroic in the sense that some people stay and continue to provide medical care, but it’s also, in some ways, heroic to try to get your family out.

And so, I think it requires a lot of resources to try to get out, which a lot of people just don’t have. I mean, I think, currently the discussion was that it’s about $5,000 American to try to get someone through the Rafah border. That’s just money that people don’t necessarily have.

And everything is in American. It’s wild that there’s no discussion of other currency. When we were talking about getting a cow for Ramadan, that was $5,000 American, not in any other sort of currency. And that’s one of the most heartbreaking — we actually took a video of it — one of the most heartbreaking scenes was when we were leaving, the day that we were leaving Rafah. There was a kid just crying and waving through the window, and you can see his father on the sidewalk trying not to cry; you know, he’s sending his wife and kids out, to try to get to safety.

And then, the driver that we had to get us from the border back to Cairo, that’s what he was explaining, was that a lot of these people that are getting out are women and children. And he tries to lighten the mood for him, and share his Wi Fi, because a number of them haven’t had any internet access for the past several months. But he’s like, the overwhelming majority of people that he transfers across are women and children without the father.

RG: There was a report recently, and actually some audio of it released, of a quadcopter, a little drone that was playing the sound of women and children screaming. People would then rush to it because, if you hear women and children screaming, you might think that somebody needs help. So, people would run toward it, and then it would open fire on these crowds.

Did you hear of anything like that while you were there? And what are these kinds of quadcopters and drones, like, in an ever-present way?

MK: Oh, yeah. So, I didn’t hear anything about the ones that were playing decoy, I heard about that after I got back. The drones that we did hear were just incredibly loud. I mean, it’s remarkable to think that you’ve got kids that are going to sleep through that noise. For those of us that are not used to it, it was overwhelming.

You know, generally, in this part of the world, you can hear the Azan being announced, the call to prayer being announced from the local mosque, and these drones were drowning out that sound. And so, I actually, out of the window, I caught a picture of a drone. The rest of my team was like, do not share that until you get back into the States. But it is an overwhelming sound, and it’s nonstop.

You hear that a lot of this bombing is indiscriminate, but that’s where the question comes in, of how much of it is targeted? Because the drones are ever-present. You get the sense that nothing moves in that area without it being caught on drone video. They’re all over the place.

I think it’s just one of those things where they’re ever-present and they’re a constant reminder that you’re being watched.

RG: And just so people understand — and correct me if I’m wrong here — those calls to prayer are loud.

MK: Yes.

RG: At their peak, that is loud. You’re like, ah, gee, does it have to be that loud? Like, we hear it, it’s time to pray. But you’re saying that they were drowning out even that.

MK: Yes. Yeah, they were. I mean, they’re just incredibly loud.

The video that I took, actually, I was trying to capture the sound, and then in the background you can see bombs going off. And so, it’s really unnerving. I think, as a medical team coming from the outside-in, you understand that there’s risk associated with that. But then there’s some level of safety that’s kind of suggested with clearance from the W.H.O., clearance from the U.N., clearance from COGAT.

But I know when we got to the safe house that first night, we found out that the coordinates were in error. And so, the correct coordinates weren’t communicated. That freaked out some of the guys in the group. Luckily, it was corrected by the morning.

But even still, at our safe house, we lost water for a couple of days because one of the water tanks had a bullet hole in it. And so, the team on the ground tried to repair it, and got it up and running after a couple of days.

But just to think that that’s— It’s ever-present. And, for us, we have some sense of privileged security that the people there do not have.

RG: What is the interaction like with Hamas or Hamas-adjacent police forces? And I ask because the presence of Hamas is always used by the IDF to justify the bombing of a hospital or the raiding of a hospital. At the same time, Hamas is the governing body in the area. And so, Hamas has police officers, Hamas does some security.

But, in the context of drones everywhere and a live war, I’m wondering, do those police officers, are they visible? Do they show up? What is security like? And, by security I mean, pickpockets, your tent getting robbed, the kinds of things that you might expect to fall apart after seven months of this.

MK: That’s actually one of the things that was somewhat surprising. There wasn’t that much— I mean, there was no point in time where we felt uncomfortable walking and getting mugged or getting pickpocketed. Even though it’s so overcrowded and you’re shoulder to shoulder with people walking through the hallways, I think people would ask where you’re from, and then you tell them you’re American, and they’d be like, you’re welcome. And they’d actually hand you their kid to take a picture with them. There wasn’t much of a sense of that much of a loss of order.

Now, in the market areas where people were trying to sell— Like, gas stations have turned into basically these canisters full of diesel that people are trying to sell on the sidewalk. And so, to protect that, you did see some people in street clothes carrying a baton, just to kind of maintain some sense of order. But at no point in the entire trip did we come across anybody that visibly looked like what you see on the news, like, a Hamas soldier wearing any face covering or anything like that. We didn’t really come across anything.

Now, we didn’t seek out to get a handle on anybody’s politics, either. We specifically don’t want any part of that. I mean, the only reason we’re there is to help the civilians. And so, we tried to avoid any political discussions or anything like that.

But no, we didn’t see anybody that looked like a Hamas soldier at all.

RG: What was it like leaving, knowing that, now, the doctors you were leaving behind and the patients you were leaving behind felt like, uh oh, there goes some of our protection. And were there any other international personnel coming in to replace you, or were you guys kind of the last round?

MK: No, I think they’re coming in. That’s what’s really remarkable about these missions, when you come across some very remarkable people that are willing to give up their time and willing to risk their safety. And it’s a constant stream.

While we were there, there were probably 15 different medical teams on the ground in different specialties. Like NICU services, medicine services, ER. And I don’t think there’s any shortage of doctors willing to go. I mean, the guys from Norway were particularly impressive, because they landed and immediately went straight up north to Al-Awda, which is an even more dangerous setting. There was a German team of paramedics that were setting up a field hospital.

So, I think as long as it is being allowed, there’s no shortage of doctors willing to go, and medical providers. I think we’re all blessed with certain skills to be able to help. And I think, when you have that call, I think a lot of us feel uncomfortable saying no, so I don’t think there’ll be a shortage of doctors willing to go. What is going to be the problem is when we’re no longer allowed to go.

So, whenever the teams are no longer getting the clearance to get in, I think that’s when everyone knows that it’s about to go down.

RG: Were the types of injuries that you were seeing different in only degree? Or were they also different in kind? Or was there anything that you kind of hadn’t seen before? I mean, working in Parkland Hospital, you must have seen enormous amounts of trauma from one end to the other, but I’m curious how it compares.

MK: Yeah. No, you see a lot of polytrauma with these terrible car accidents, highway speed accidents in Texas. But, particularly, the high caliber bullets are really unique. Because normally you see a gunshot wound from a nine millimeter, or you can go up a little bit from there. But these high-powered rifles, these large sniper bullets, that’s really unique.

And then, the amount of trauma sustained by, really, the children, these very small bodies that are broken at all four extremities, or three out of the four extremities, flailed chests from rib fractures from something heavy falling onto the chest. I mean, these are unique injuries that you don’t typically see in the States unless somebody has had a terrible accident. And that’s just once in a while.

RG: I remember reading about a category that they had created in the medical community there called WC NSF: Wounded Child, No Surviving Family.

MK: Exactly.

RG: When I heard that, it’s just such a gut punch. Is that a category that you would see?

MK: Yeah. That was one of the questions that I had for one of the other doctors when we were treating one of the kids. The question is, who’s going to take care of this child once they’re stable enough to leave? And he said that, generally, an aunt or an uncle will pop up. And, if they don’t, then a neighbor will take them. It’s really remarkable to me to see how parts of the community, really, would come together for these children, and for neighbors.

One of the medical students — she’s actually an intern, she completed her intern year — her house fell down because the neighbor’s house, actually, was targeted, but it was close enough to where her house also turned into rubble. And they ended up moving in with the neighbors, into a tent for the surviving families.

RG: How did your experience there compare to what you expected you would see there?

MK: From following things on social media— I think the sad part is, I don’t know if we’re getting the full story on a lot of the mainstream media outlets. Following social media and independent news organizations like yours, you get a little bit of a better sense of what to expect. So, I expected it to be bad when I went in, but I was surprised to see that it was worse than expected.

I think you always get this wonder, if there’s some of it being exaggerated and stuff, but it is not at all an exaggeration. It was very eye-opening and incredibly humbling to see these injuries, and the destruction. And the sad part is, on an individual level, as doctors, we’re able to help the patients that we treat but, on a larger scale, you feel so powerless to help in these settings. Because we really have no way to sway the support of our elected leaders and do anything to effectively stop what’s going on.

But talking to the people that we came across, they have no doubt that they are likely to be ethnically cleansed.

RG: Well, here we are six months— More than six months into it. I remember the U.S. Secretary of State telling the Israeli government it couldn’t go past December.

MK: Yeah,

RG: It is well past December. It seems like everybody’s just given up on it ever ending.

MK: Yeah. And that’s the thing. I think even a lot of these families will say that they’re waiting to go back north to rebuild their homes. And talking to some of the doctors there, they were just like, realistically, that is probably going to be resettled, and a lot of the people that are in Rafah right now have just kind of accepted that that’s where they’re going to be.

It’s interesting. They don’t seem to have much interest in — a number of the people that we talked to don’t seem to have much interest in — moving down past the Rafah border. I think a lot of them have this resolve that you’re not going to be able to wipe Palestine off the map. Like, we’re going to stay right here.

RG: All right. Well, Dr. Khaleel, thank you for what you did while you were over there. And thank you for joining me on Deconstructed. I very much appreciate it.

MK: My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

RG: All right. That was Dr. Mohammed Khaleel. And, in case you bump into him in Dallas, he goes by “Khaleel.”

Deconstructed is a production of The Intercept. This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. The show is mixed by William Stanton. Legal Review by Shawn Musgrave and Elizabeth Sanchez. Leonardo Faierman transcribed this episode. Our theme music was composed by Bart Warshaw.

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The post “Tell the World What’s Happening Here,” Say Patients in Gaza appeared first on The Intercept.

“None of us benefit from a burning planet,” says activist and documentarian Astra Taylor on this week’s Deconstructed. Taylor and Leah Hunt-Hendrix join Ryan Grim to discuss their new book, “Solidarity: The Past, Present, And Future of a World-Changing Idea.” Delving into the philosophical depths of solidarity, they trace its origins back to ancient Rome and explore its relevance in today’s interconnected world.

Focusing on transformative solidarity, they highlight its potential to bridge diverse experiences and causes, offering a unified approach to address the multifaceted crises we face. Taylor, a co-founder of the Debt Collective, a union of debtors, and Hunt-Hendrix, co-founder of progressive philanthropy networks Solidaire and Way to Win, draw on their experience to underscore the necessity of transformative solidarity in movement building.

[Deconstructed theme music.]

Ryan Grim: Hi, I’m Ryan Grim. Welcome to Deconstructed.

When we think about the concept of solidarity, it’s hard not to get Pete Seeger immediately stuck in our heads—

Pete Seeger, Jane Sapp, and Si Kahn.: [sung] “Solidarity forever, for the union makes us strong.”

Though curiously, in the West, it’s an idea that has stayed strictly siloed to the labor movement. But why? And does it have to be that way? After all, it’s an expression of a truly human universal impulse.

A new book called “Solidarity: The Past, Present, and Future of a World-Changing” idea tries to unpack why we have generally ignored the notion of solidarity, and how our world can be made a better place by embracing and enacting solidarity. It’s co-written by Leah Hunt-Hendrix — who cofounded Solidaire, and also Way to Win, which are both networks of donors trying to rethink philanthropy — and author and documentarian Astra Taylor, who cofounded The Debt Collective, the first union of debtors.

Astra and Leah, welcome to Deconstructed.

Astra Taylor: It’s great to be here. Thanks for having us.

RG: And Leah, thank you kindly.

Leah Hunt-Hendrix: So happy to be here.

RG: So, let’s talk about solidarity.

You mention in the book that it has a really interesting root, coming from a debt that is collectively owed just by virtue of being born. Talk a little bit about where this concept of solidarity, this idea of solidarity, came from in the ancient world.

AT: It’s something that Leah found out while researching her dissertation on the history of solidarity, which is sort of the original genesis of this project, but it is how I got wrangled into cowriting this book with Leah; who is a friend of mine, of course, but also a longtime movement collaborator.

I think sometime in 2019 we were scheming, as we do, about how to build power and make change. And she said, Astra, there’s something I really have to tell you, I just think you’ll find it interesting. And that’s that the root of the word solidarity comes from ancient Roman law and the concept of debts held in common, collectively-held debts. So, imagine a group of farmers all on the hook together who have to bail each other out in a time of crisis.

And this spoke to me, and Leah knew that it would, because I’m one of the cofounders of The Debt Collective, which is the world’s first union for debtors. We’ve been fighting for student loan debt relief, and medical debt relief, and more. And I just found that incredibly fascinating for many reasons.

One, because what it does is it adds this material economic dimension to the concept of solidarity. Solidarity is not just a fuzzy feeling, or an affect, or, like, I gotcha, or I empathize with you. It has this material element. And so, there’s a complex history of how that ancient roman concept gets transmitted into political theory and into labor. Of course, it’s a word we associate with the labor movement, and we tell that history.

But that phone call is how I got hooked on the topic with Leah, and what set us on this adventure together.

RG: And so, Leah, you’d been studying this concept for a very long time.

LH: Too long.

RG: Yeah, too long. And discovered that there really isn’t much out there. Like, if you’re talking about concepts like liberty or justice or equality, you’re going to find shelf after shelf after shelf of books and libraries dedicated to this concept. But when it comes to solidarity, there really isn’t much, yet it’s equally as profound an idea.

What is the history of the thought around solidarity? And why is it so frail?

LH: Well, it doesn’t actually become a real political term until the 1800s.

So, it was striking finding this obscure article that traced it back to ancient Roman law. And what happens is, it gets transferred into French law in the early 1800s through the Napoleonic codes. And then it seems from the literature that it gets moved out of its financial sense into kind of a political sense, sort of by metaphor. People start thinking about, what are the debts that we owe each other? What are the debts that we have in common? And what debts do we have to past generations and to future generations?

And there’s a group of thinkers in the late 1800s that go by the name The Solidarists, and they are like, wow, this idea might be the solution to all of our problems. It unites the individual and the collective, because individuals can only thrive in a thriving collective, and it essentially unites the past and the future, thinking about what we inherit from the past and what we owe to the future. 

There’s a lot of beautiful writing and thought about how the concept might be the term that could really create a foundation for a democratic society, particularly in the wake of the revolutions that were happening in the late 1700s and early 1800s. The fall of many monarchies, the decline of the church, and people were kind of looking for, like, how are we going to hang together?

And in fraternity, during the French Revolution, liberty, equality, fraternity was kind of the rallying cry. But then, in the mid-1800s, the women’s movement is on the rise. And fraternity has this masculine connotation, and it also has a kind of familial connotation, that you’re brothers, and the nation is now— It’s not just a band of brothers, these are becoming pluralistic societies. So, these thinkers in late 19th century France are saying, maybe solidarity can be the guide as kind of the new framework.

At the same time, the labor movement is also on the rise, and as workers were organizing, building solidarity communities, solidarity structures to support each other through mutual aid and begin to organize together, that became an important term of the labor movement. But, as you noted, it wasn’t really strongly theorized. Emile Durkheim is the first real theorist of the concept in 1891, in “The Division of Labor and Society.” And it has a lot of traction through that decade, but then you really see it kind of drop off by the beginning of World War I. Even folks involved in social movements at the time were saying, this war was going to roll back the solidarity that was being built through the labor movement. 

That is what it did. It kind of pushed people into their national silos, and sort of put a halt to some of this thinking. And so, you see it taper off, and a more liberal kind of individualistic orientation sort of wins out in the academy, and political philosophy goes in a direction that’s more procedural. John Rawls becomes a key figure, and a kind of relational concept like solidarity begins to lose traction.

RG: Yeah. And I wonder, Astra, as somebody who’s an organizer, and active, and in the world, I wonder if the fact that solidarity is not really a thing, it’s more an action. You’re doing it. Like, if you think about liberty, equality, justice, and then fraternity or solidarity — which sometimes got swapped in, but not completely appropriately — but you could say, liberty, equality, solidarity, liberty and equality are things that you’re striving for, but solidarity is kind of an action.

Like, you guys write in the book that if you’re not enacting it, it doesn’t exist.

AT: Yeah. It’s just empty.

RG: Do you think that has something to do with why the academy is just less interested in it? You can’t study it in the same sense, because it’s always and forever kind of evolving based on people’s willingness to enact it.

AT: Yeah, I think that’s right. One thing we’ve taken to saying in our book talks is that a lot of the people thinking about solidarity and trying to do it were too busy. Too busy building movements, too busy trying to make change in the world.

And I do think you put your finger on something we talked about a bit in the introduction, which is a kind of academic aversion to a concept that isn’t just procedural, that isn’t just abstract, but is always kind of messy, and invested, and engaged, right? It’s also relational, but I think that’s really important to democracy. 

I wrote a book on democracy before this book, and I spend a whole lot of time thinking about liberty and equality in it, right? Because those are the concepts I inherited. And it strikes me now as a very North American perspective to have, that I kind of had these blinders on, that I left out solidarity, which is a relational concept. It’s something that has to be forged between people.

So, our theorization of the concept: solidarity reaches across difference. At its most basic, [it is] a measure of group cohesion, it’s what keeps us together. That makes it very interesting philosophically, but it also is literally what you’re doing as an organizer, day to day, when you’re calling people into a movement, trying to build bonds, trying to make people feel connected, trying to make different causes feel connected to each other in a coalition.

Like, that is the day-to-day work of organizing, and so, it is really important that we think about it, and get it right, because it is what’s going to save us in this moment of so many intersecting crises.

RG: And I think it’s interesting in the way that it kind of comes in the wake of the industrial revolution, as you said, in the 1890s. It feels like, back in a time period when there was just obvious solidarity everywhere, maybe you didn’t need to even theorize it. It was only when it was being stripped apart by the atomization of these transformations in the workplace that Durkheim is writing about that it becomes important to then start thinking and bringing back this concept of solidarity.

And Leah, maybe this one’s for you: I was kind of expecting as I was reading the book that there’d be some Confucianism, or some exploration of that element of solidarity. You have a line on Page 276, where you say, “On a fundamental level, solidarity comes down to relationships.” I mean, this could be either of you, but you’ve basically defined Confucianism, in a way.

Confucianism says— I think there’s one line that says, “if there are not two people, there isn’t one person.” Like, a person is defined by the roles that they play and by the relationships that they have, and defined in such a way that they’re literally different people. Like, you are a different person in your relationship to your mother, than you are to your daughter, to your friends, to an activist group that you’re part of, to your colleagues at work. If you’re a CEO, you’re a different person to your workers than you are to your friends and your family. But you’re literally a different person. How effectively and ethically you enact the different roles that you play in society is what Confucianism is kind of all about. 

I’m curious if you came across any of that in your study of solidarity, because it feels like the West, in its thinking through concepts of solidarity, is kind of pawing at something that Confucius was on to a long, long time ago.

LH: I don’t know a lot about Confucius, but I do agree that there is sort of a spiritual element to the concept. And you’re right, Durkheim was writing about the rise in suicide rates at this time in Europe in the Industrial Revolution, and the rise of what he called anomie, this sense of social dislocation, and losing your sense of your role in a community, in society.

So, the question was, what holds us together? And, interestingly, in his early work [he] thought, well, maybe this new division of labor in society which is making us actually technically more interdependent, maybe it will make us feel more interdependent, because I’m producing a piece of something here, and another piece is getting manufactured over there. And, like Martin Luther King’s quote that, by the end of breakfast, you’ve already benefited from more than half the world. Because your tea has come from China, and your towel has come from Turkey.

But Durkheim realized that wasn’t happening. People were not feeling more interconnected. So, by the end of his life, he realizes solidarity is really created by having a shared sense of what’s sacred. And he’s looking at books on religious communities, and realizes that it’s not always a religious concept, or the sacred is not always something supernatural. But having a sense of what matters to a community, what is valuable, what is worth sacrificing for, what is worth protecting, that these are things that actually create our sense of who we are and who we belong to.

And I think that’s something that’s really important for us to consider as we build social movements, and construct organizations and social institutions. How do we tap into that deep sense of meaning and purpose, and not just rely on the facts and figures and rational arguments, but tap into people’s desire for something deeper? And I think that that’s how we will build stronger senses of solidarity.

RG: Astra, do you have any thoughts on the role of Eastern ways of viewing what we’ve identified as a Western problem?

AT: Your comments really intrigue me. I’m sad to say that I don’t know more either.

What I hear in your summary is a different way of engaging with the idea of identity. When you say we’re pawing around it, right? Because we say very clearly that solidarity is not reducible to identity. And we have multiple selves depending on our relationships; that’s not an essentialist view.

And I think it’s really important that we, as organizers and as theorists on the left, start figuring out other ways to talk about identity that aren’t reactive and essentializing, and make space for that multiplicity. We might very well be invoking a more Eastern perspective without being fully conscious of it. Because what we try to do is present a vision of defining the self and the groups that’s porous, immutable, that changes over time, you know? And that has the idea of transformation at the core.

So, we distinguish in the book between what we call reactionary solidarity — which is the solidarity of like to like, the solidarity of ethnonationalism, and white supremacy, and patriarchy — versus transformative solidarity, which is always seeking again to bridge across divides and differences. It has boundaries and names enemies, but in a way that’s porous, that doesn’t seek to annihilate other groups or exploit them, but rather to expand the circle of inclusion and create a more just society.

So, yeah. I’m very intrigued by what you’re saying, and it makes me want to learn more. And the book does have, I think, a very Western perspective, because we’re kind of arguing with the Western political tradition, right? Leah mentioned this, the way that political philosophy was sort of shaped in the 20th century, became more individualistic, became focused on the idea of basic liberal rights instead of a more expansive view. So, it’s partly the tradition that we’re arguing with.

LH: We don’t talk a lot about Eastern philosophy, but we do talk about some indigenous orientations, which really do have a very relational orientation.

You know, Standing Rock was a part of a lot of our formation, maybe, if you were around during the social movements of the 2010s. And that movement was really about the water, the water is life, the water is sacred, land is sacred, and that it’s our relative, that the river is a relative and we’re in relationship with it. And I think that there’s so much to draw on from that orientation, and we would all really be better off if that was the general orientation towards the natural world, and that we had towards each other.

RG: Picking up on the point that you made about pursuing a world in which identities are mutable, relationships are porous. You guys have a pretty long section on the relationship between solidarity and identity politics — and I’m just thinking out loud here — but your point is an interesting one, in the way that identity politics and intersectionalism, as you guys elaborate on it, thinks about identity versus how I was just describing Confucianism, thinking about identity.

In a Confucian perspective, it is the action, it is the role that you play in the world that creates your identity. Whereas from the intersectional perspective, it is the way that the world acts on you that kind of creates your identities, the oppressions under which you’re operating; or the privileges. So, it’s kind of a reversal of the perspective of what creates an identity.

And so, I’m curious from both your perspectives how you grappled with this both tension and relationship between the growth of identity politics on the left and solidarity. Because you describe the way that intersectionalism was designed in order to pursue solidarity, but oftentimes is used as a weapon to make solidarity impossible.

LH: One thing that that brings up for me is that the concept of solidarity, I think you’re right. That there’s something about [how] it’s taking back the role of being the active agent in society, and that that action is part of what defines your identity, rather than how the world is defining you. And so many of the political concepts that we have —like benevolence, and charity, and philanthropy, and even allyship a bit, pity — are unidirectional and act on the other, rather than acting with, where the other is also an active agent. I think [with] solidarity it’s like you’re all active agents, you’re all protagonists acting together, rather than one being acted upon.

And I think that’s an important intervention into some of the conversations around philanthropy, and effective altruism, and things where the agency of others is sort of denied, even amidst the good intentions of the project. But I’ll turn it over to Astra to talk a little bit more about intersectionalism.

AT: Yeah. I sort of bristle at the idea that — not that anyone has said it here, but it’s an idea that’s commonplace — that it’s identity politics or economics, right? I think the world is raced and gendered and classed and, as Stuart Hall said, “race is the modality through which class is lived.” And that capitalism divides people up in order to justify the exploitation of certain groups and the privileging of others.

And so, we just have to be able to navigate that.

RG: Yeah. Last week we had Anat Shenker-Osorio on the show making that a legible point for people. 

AT: Yes. And, at the same time, it is true that identity can be invoked in a way that justifies the status quo. We say very clearly in the book: we don’t want a rainbow oligarchy, right? We don’t want massive economic inequality with a bit more diversity.

It’s just to say the basic thing, which is: we have to think about identity and economics together. And when you’re organizing, you have to connect with people’s actual lived experiences, and the fact is that people experience being discriminated against, people experience misogyny, people experience ableism, as well as exploitation on the job, and poverty, and debt, and all of that. So, we’ve got to meet people where they are.

But the categories through which we experience our lives are not set in stone; they are created. There are a few key points to the book, and one is that solidarity is not found, it’s made. We have to generate it, we have to cultivate it. And that’s why it’s so important to tell these deeper histories, the history, for example, of the labor movement, which we return to again and again.

The category of worker didn’t just come from on high, it didn’t even just magically appear with the industrial revolution. Workers forged it by coming together across their differences. They initially saw themselves as members of guilds, as cobblers, and smiths, and farmers, and very distinct groups. And it was only over time and through effort that people began to develop the category of worker-at-large.

I’ve seen this in my own work at The Debt Collective, where we started working with people who had gone to different predatory for-profit colleges who didn’t see themselves as having anything in common. Ten years later, we now talk about student debtors as though it’s a group that is legible. But that’s only because we work to shift the narrative, we work to build relationships.

And so, I think identity is incredibly important, but it should be a doorway, not a destination. It’s something that should help. We can move through it to see connections with other people, and we can invent new categories, new ways of understanding ourselves.

And so, I think it really does have both those dimensions of, it’s something— There’s an element of agency, right? We can be part of this process of inventing new ways of understanding ourselves and each other, but we’re also responding to stuff that’s being put on us from the outside. Whether that’s stigma, stereotypes, wage discrimination, a passport that denies us the kind of mobility that other people take for granted, and the like.

So, both are true, and we have to navigate these seeming paradoxes if we want to change things.

RG: As I’ve been thinking through the concept of enacting solidarity, one sort of metaphor that’s occurred to me is, the people who have a principled belief in free speech. It is very easy to defend speech that you agree with; that’s not really a principled defense of free speech.

It’s when, say, like the ACLU defending who— Where was it? The Skokie or whatever Nazis who were marching in the seventies or something. When an organization or a person is defending something that they abhor on a principled level, that’s when it’s difficult, and that’s when enacting it comes with real principle.

And when it comes to solidarity, you really only need it when you’re under assault. Like, it’s easy to have solidarity when times are good, when things are flowing. The solidarity of a rock concert doesn’t take a whole lot of work on behalf of the people that are there to all collectively have an awesome time together. It’s when one small group of you are getting attacked that, then, the inaction of solidarity actually matters.

And, oftentimes, some of the people getting attacked are the worst. Like, they suck, and they did something wrong to be getting attacked. Yet the principle of solidarity maintains that there ought to be some defense if you’re all in the pursuit of the same goal.

Now, you killed somebody. That kind of solidarity is not the right thing. That would be like the Fraternal Order of Police type of solidarity. And, actually, some of the teachers union solidarity back in the ’90s that got the teachers unions into real political trouble, and which they’ve since backpedaled from. Where they were unwilling to give an inch on even the worst teachers who were, like, showing up drunk and beating kids

AT: The solidarity of the Catholic church

RG: The solidarity of the Catholic church, to pick a an easier one to knock around. That what’s also so interesting about this concept of solidarity, is that it is obviously not necessarily always a good thing. Yet, also, when it’s hard, sometimes that’s when it’s the most necessary.

How do you guys think through differing kinds of solidarity? And when it’s moving in the right direction, and when it can move toward a reactionary, fascistic, MAGA-type of solidarity?

LH: I think this is why theorization, and distinctions, and the work of political philosophy are so important, so that it helps us parse through when something is moving in the right direction or the wrong direction.

There have been some other shorter articles and books trying to make distinctions about solidarity, political or civic solidarity, social solidarity. So, like Astra said, our main distinction is between transformative and reactionary solidarity, and we see these as really structurally different. We think transformative solidarity is the goal. Solidarity writ large is kind of neutral. Social cohesion is a good thing, but not if it’s at the expense of a large section of the population.

We’re kind of fighting for transformative solidarity, we’re open about that, and we see that as different from reactionary, in that it seeks to broaden the circle of inclusion, whereas reactionary solidarity is shrinking that circle for the sake of its own kind of status.

Like Astra said earlier, the borders or boundaries of the community are more porous, whereas with reactionary solidarity they’re much more rigid, and seek to annihilate the other, that which is outside the community. And we think it’s very possible to use this in any given kind of social movement situation to clarify what side to be on. Which is the side that is seeking to narrow the social benefits, which is the position that would expand those benefits and have more lasting consequences.

Maybe to go right to the controversial topic of Gaza and Israel, part of why I think it’s so important to take a position of solidarity with those who are advocating for a ceasefire and for peace is because that really is so important on an international level. That is the only position that upholds international law, that upholds international institutions. The horrors of what’s happening on the ground speak for themselves but, even when you step back, the two orientations that are at stake are very different structurally.

So, I think the idea of transformative solidarity helps us see why peace is a key priority for the perspective of transformative solidarity. I think that helps us navigate how to relate to social movements.

RG: Astra, you’ve spent 20-plus years in these social movements. How do you approach this question of when to enact solidarity in the face of adversity, and when internal turmoil is needed, because a group is going through some type of real debate about its future? How do you sort through those questions which are becoming increasingly dominant?

AT: Yeah. Well, I think you can have solidarity and turmoil at the same time, right? I mean, solidarity to me, organizing entails turmoil in tough debates, and we’re seeing that right now, as Leah just said, in the movements for a free Palestine. And this is a moment where my advice to folks who don’t agree with every tactic or every disruption of demonstrators need to accept that, and not undermine the bigger cause, which is standing against the devastation of Gaza and its people. So, we have to be able to have some internal tensions and debates without solidarity totally breaking down.

And your question about free speech is an interesting one. I’m just reading a book right now about the billionaire backers of a lot of the campus wars. And I think part of a full analysis needs to be, like, OK, we’re standing up for free speech, but what speech is being paid for? What speech is being promoted opportunistically in certain environments, right?

So, is a controversial speaker coming to a college campus, because they’ve got tons and tons of funding from a right-wing thinktank? They weren’t actually invited. In the case of one lecturer, [they] cost the University of Berkeley $800,000 in extra security.

I think a real analysis has to take into account all of these sort of material economic dimensions, and be like, OK, what is the goal of what’s being promoted here? Is it really demonstrating about free speech, or is it actually a bunch of right-wing billionaires trying to inflame tensions, and to divide and conquer people on the ground? By making some students look unreasonable in the eyes of the liberal press.

It’s complicated, there’s not a hard and fast rule. But I do think that disagreement is just going to be part of any organizing effort, any effort to build solidarity, you know? And, in the book, we try to give some advice for navigating that stuff, and try to say that we need to recognize again that people are changing. People are not set in stone, people have the capacity to change, and that we need to treat each other with a bit of forbearance and humility, if we want to actually build a movement that’s big enough to win the structural changes that we need.

RG: And Leah, I wanted to ask you about your chapter on philanthropy, too. For people who don’t know, you’ve spent most of your career kind of in the world of philanthropy. A charity that you’re affiliated with has actually supported The Intercept in the past, along with a whole host of other organizations.

So, I’m curious how you think of the concept of solidarity and how it relates to philanthropy, and how your own view of philanthropy has kind of changed throughout your time in it.

LH: So, just for transparency, I was born into a family with a family foundation. My grandfather had started an oil company and my mom used resources from that to fund the women’s movement, and helped start organizations like the Ms. Foundation and the New York Women’s Foundation.

When I was younger, I was really critical of it, and saw it as a kind of ladies who lunch, and a little patronizing, and just nice around the edges. To me, it was just always a problem that so few people had so much money and so many people had so little, and that like fundamental disparity was an important societal problem to address.

And so, I was interested in what can really change our economic system? What’s beyond neoliberalism? How do we actually redistribute wealth and power? And, as I got involved in social movements — starting with, really, the global justice movement, and then Occupy Wall Street — what I realized is that social movements need financial resources.

There’s an interesting book about the history of the labor movement that came out in 2023 by a French author, I think it’s called “Struggle and Mutual Aid.” And he writes a lot about the resourcing of the labor movement, and how the unions would kind of resource each other in France and England. And even then it was very hard and controversial, [in terms of] who got what money.

So, resourcing movements is hard, but is there a way to do philanthropy in solidarity and have it not just be palliating and pacifying, but actually transformative? And I think there is, and I think it’s really important for people in philanthropy to be extremely self-critical, and to read and learn about all the ways in which philanthropy can be destructive.

Megan Francis Ming is a really important thinker on this topic who writes about movement capture, looking at the history of the NAACP, and the effects of the Garland Fund on that organization.

RG: Yeah, you go into that in the book. I didn’t know that story, but that’s a really interesting story. That, yeah, the NAACP wanted to work on antilynching work, and to help organize Black workers. But instead, their rich donors said, no, why don’t you hire a bunch of lawyers and sue your way to integrating schools— Which, obviously, Brown v. Board of Education, a landmark decision. But if you don’t build the structures around it, that can be erased. And now, here we are, back to basically segregated schools again. And you look back, and you’re like, oh, maybe the actual activists and people involved with the NAACP did have the idea that, by building economic power and by protecting their communities, that they then could build the political power on top of that.

Anyway, that was a really interesting example.

LH: Yeah, a really important example. And the Garland Fund was a progressive foundation. It was a foundation that we wanted to support racial justice.

RG: Right. And segregation is bad. You can see how the grant proposals breezed right through. Yeah.

LH: But who gets to decide what the strategy is and what the goals are of an organization or of a movement? And philanthropists can easily use their financial power to kind of meddle with those goals or strategies. And so, I think it’s really important to have a clear view on if you’re doing that or if that’s happening. And the structure of philanthropy itself is the consequence of policy decisions made over the last century that created the 501(c)3 and tax breaks for the wealthy. So, that very structure needs to be challenged.

So, that’s something you can do. If you’re in philanthropy, you can lobby or participate in trying to change those laws. You can think about the concentration of corporate power, and how to break up that accumulation of wealth at the top through antimonopoly law. And then, of course, supporting social movements, supporting the labor movement. There are lots of ways to get involved supporting The Debt Collective as an effort of organizing debtors to be a movement that can challenge the financial industries and think about the role of debt in society.

So, there’s a lot that can be done. I just think it’s really important to have a really critical eye on philanthropy, but it’s not that helpful to just completely write it off because, at the moment, it exists and nonprofits need it. And so, ideally, I think philanthropy and solidarity should fight to put itself out of business — philanthropy as an institution — but how do we be constructive in this moment? That’s the effort that we make in that chapter.

RG: Yeah. And I feel like there is philanthropy that can be challenging to power centers, and I think Astra’s organization is a good example of that. Obviously, selfishly, I would say that ours is as well. But I think one way that you can tell that that’s true is, there really are not rich donors beating down the doors to fund our work.

AT: Tell me about it.

RG: Exactly. One way you can tell what I think Leah’s giving is in that direction is, there aren’t a whole lot of people following you down that path. It’s not as if there’s hundreds of millions of dollars following you saying, let’s go after The Debt Collective, for instance.

LH: Well, I have worked to build several networks of philanthropists. One is called Solidaire, another is called Way to Win. There is also Resource Generation and Movement Voter Project. And there is a growing ecosystem. Mike Gast is actually someone who is working on naming and clarifying this movement within wealthy communities that [are] trying to be in the service of progressive social movements. So, I think that there’s something there.

I love to go back and read these debates in the First International and earlier on in socialist movements. Where they were like, is there a role for the bourgeoisie in the workers movements? And mostly people were, like, no. But it was a real debate. Rosa Luxemburg was involved in this debate.

RG: Certainly Frederick Engels and Karl Marx are the one that people talk about all the time. Yeah.

LH: Yeah. There often are class traitors involved in almost every successful social movement. So, I definitely don’t want to be heard as saying, like, open the doors to these wealthy bourgeois comrades, because I think there should be some skepticism. But can we build an ecosystem of people who want to participate? I think it’s work worth doing.

RG: And what do you think, Astra?

AT: We have to. I mean, movements take resources, and the right-wing knows this. I mean, there are just mind-boggling mountains of money being moved in the most mercenary directions, right? The thing they’re saying on the right now is, we want The Federalist Society for every institution in America, right?

So, we can’t expect ordinary people who are overworked at their multiple jobs to be able to withstand this assault without resources. And I think the perspective that we’re trying to emphasize in this book in solidarity, though, is that these class traitors, what they recognize is that, actually, this is in their self-interest too, you know?

Ultimately, none of us benefit from a burning planet, you know? We are all interconnected. It sounds touchy-feely, but it’s really the truth of living in a world where you know that your privilege doesn’t depend on other people’s desperation. That’s the case we’re making and we really believe it.

We need more people to pony up for things that really challenge the status quo. It’s urgent.

RG: Well, it’s a fascinating and thought-provoking book, and I really recommend it to people. It’s called “Solidarity: The Past, Present, and Future of a World-Changing Idea.”

Leah and Astra, thank you so much for joining me.

AT: Thanks for having us.

LH: Thank you. It’s great to be here.

RG: That was Leah Hunt-Hendrix and Astra Taylor. Check out their new book, it’s called, “Solidarity: The Past, Present and Future of a World-Changing Idea.” 

And that’s our show.

Deconstructed is a production of the Intercept. This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. The show is mixed by William Stanton. Legal Review by Shawn Musgrave and Elizabeth Sanchez. Leonardo Faierman transcribed the episode. And our theme music was composed by Bart Warshaw.

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The post Solidarity Forever: Building Movements Amid Today’s Crises appeared first on The Intercept.

A recent Gallup poll found that 29 percent of respondents said neither Donald Trump nor Joe Biden are fit for the job. To unpack how voters are feeling about the two candidates, this week on Deconstructed, Ryan Grim is joined by Anat Shenker-Osorio, a returning guest, messaging expert, and host of the podcast “Words to Win By.” Together they dig into what she’s been hearing from voters in swing states disillusioned by both parties and the whole electoral process.

[Deconstructed theme music.]

Ryan Grim: Welcome to Deconstructed. I’m Ryan Grim.

The last two presidential elections have been decided not by the traditional swing voters we’ve come to think of in politics, but what political consultants now refer to as “double haters.” A double hater hates both candidates running, and is faced with a choice of picking between them, sitting it out, or voting third party. In the last two elections, the double haters who showed up to vote swung the election.

In 2016, double haters broke for Trump; it turned out they hated Hillary Clinton a bit more. In 2020, they had some regrets, and less hostility toward the Democratic candidate. The double haters that election broke for Joe Biden. But voters are stunned to find themselves facing the same stale choice yet again. As Bo Burnham puts it:

Bo Burnham: [sung] They’re really going to make me vote for Joe Biden.

RG: A recent Gallup poll found that 29 percent said that neither Trump nor Biden are fit for the job.

Today, we’re going to get into the heads of the double haters, and we’ll be guided on that tour by Anat Shenker-Osorio, a return guest on the program. She’s been part of a team running focus groups in key swing states. Here’s how a group of Latino voters in Nevada, for instance, responded to a question about Biden:

Focus Group Lead: Joe Biden. First thing that’s popping into your mind. Joe Biden.

Focus Group Speakers: Senile.

Focus Group Lead: Senile?

Focus Group Speakers: A puppet.

Focus Group Speakers: Yeah, a puppet. That’s a good word.

Focus Group Speakers: For the “they.”

Focus Group Lead: Joe Biden, but— Joe Biden, who is he a puppet for?

Focus Group Speakers: The “they.”

Focus Group Speakers: Yeah, the “they.” It’s like, they tell him what to do, and he’s just like, OK, this is what I’ve got to do, this is what I’ve got to say.

Focus Group Lead: I’ve used the “they.” Do you know who the “they” is? Or, who would you say is the “they?”

Focus Group Speakers: Well, the people above him.

Focus Group Speakers: Uh-huh. And the elites.

RG: Anat — a researcher, campaign advisor, and host of the podcast, Words to Win By — joins me now to unpack how voters are feeling about the two candidates before us this November. Welcome back to Deconstructed, Anat.

AS: Thanks for having me back.

RG: So, it’s been a while since you’ve been on, a lot has happened since then. We don’t do a ton of horse race focus here on Deconstructed, but I also don’t want to completely ignore the fact that there is a horse race between these two tired horses that are galloping toward an inevitable finish line in November, and wanted to get your sense of what you’ve been seeing out there in the world of polling and focus grouping and electioneering.

So, thanks for coming back on.

AS: Galloping is very generous, that’s very kind of you.

RG: Yes.

AS: So, I think your lead in is a very apt one. These are known horses. So, this is a redo election, which you would expect would mean that people have their opinions pretty firmly cemented. A lot of opinions are firmly cemented in any election because most of voting behavior is just reflexive partisan identity. People are team blue or they are team red, and that’s what they’re going to do, and that’s what they’re always going to do.

So, an interesting — and I would go farther and say a surprising — dynamic in this election, given that these candidates were the exact same candidates in 2020, is that, in a recent battleground state’s poll that we conducted for the research collaborative, what we found is that, while 6 in 10 voters across the six battleground states are cemented — they are going to vote for Trump or they are going to vote for Biden, and that’s that — 4 in 10 are still some form of up-for-grabs or undecided. And that’s a lot of people, even in March, which was the time that we did that poll. 

So, 4 in 10, these folks, what they appear to be doing— There are some authentically drawn towards RFK, that is a decided magnet, but that is the minority, by a lot. Mostly what we see, both in this survey and in qualitative, is that these double-no’s — I call them the no-no’s, they’re commonly called the double haters — they’re kind of cycling through what am I going to do when I don’t want to do Biden or Trump. And sometimes they say “I’m going to sit it out,” and sometimes they say, “I’m going to vote third party.” And, sometimes, the newer permutation that they’re offering, if they are higher-information is, “I’m going to skip the top of the ticket. I’ll vote, but I just won’t vote this one line at the top,” which is a pretty sophisticated political calculus out of people who are different to the kind of people who are, like, “I’ll just sit it out, I just won’t do anything at all.”

And so, in this kind of toggling between, “I’m a double-no, double hater, or whatever. What can I do? What can I do? What can I do?” One thing that we’ve really noticed decidedly is that, when we are engaged in a conversation that starts off by saying Trump is, right? Trump is racist, Trump is a criminal, Trump is under indictment, Trump is a sexist, Trump is a— There are so many ways to fill in that sentence, we could do that all day. It instantly gets the response from people in qualitative that goes, well, but Biden is. Because, basically, the meta message of Trump is, I want you to think of this election in terms of the characteristics of these two individual candidates, and I want you to weigh these characteristics. And even though for Democrats that should seem a no-brainer, it sort of draws top of mind all of these associations that a lot of these double-no’s are not thrilled with Biden about.

When we shift, instead, from “Trump is” to “Trump will do,” away from identity and towards future agenda, that is where we are on much more solid ground. And even more solid ground is when we shift away from the candidates at all toward, this election is really about which country we will be, which future we will have, as opposed to which man — let’s just cut to the chase — we’re going to elect at the helm.

RG: OK, that makes sense because, as you were saying, Trump will do — and I’ve seen some of your analysis of these focus groups — it made me ask, then, OK, doesn’t that raise the question of, well, what will Biden do? You know, in the same way that “Trump is” raises people’s hackles, and they say, well, “Biden is X, Y, Z.”

And Biden, at least in my lifetime, is the only candidate — other than maybe Trump, actually — who is running for another term in office without really telling you what he’s going to do. He recently started to say that he’ll codify Roe v. Wade, but beyond that, if you polled a typical voter —or polled me — and said, what will Biden do if you put him back in, give him four more years? It wouldn’t be at my fingertips what he would do.

Is there an effort to change that? Or do they think that they can just move it to vibes about the kind of country that we want and that we want to be, and that that will get enough of these double haters?

Is this deliberate, or they just haven’t gotten around to telling people what they plan to do if they get reelected?

AS: I’ll answer the question, but I just want to disaggregate between what the main campaign “team Biden” is doing, which is not under my control, is not, like, you know, I’m not in there telling them what to do, so I just want to, like—

RG: Yes. Me neither. So, let’s be clear about that.

AS: Slice that out.

RG: We’re just a couple of people talking.

AS: Yeah. So, as far as the latter part of your question, is that just not what they plan to do? I think — and here I’m offering an informed conjecture, to be clear — I think they would argue that that’s what they’ve tried to do. That they’ve tried to sort of tout their accomplishments as an opening salvo to, this is what we’ve done, and this is what we’ll continue to do.

But I think what you’re hitting upon — and then I’ll answer the other part of your question — is that they ran into a roadblock last year, when they were on the touting-accomplishments train. When they were on the, you know, “here’s what we did,” like, you get a prescription drug, and you get a solar panel, and you get a paved road. And I’m exaggerating; they didn’t get Oprah to come. Maybe if they had, it all would have sunk in better, and that would have been a more solid approach. Maybe she didn’t want to. Don’t know.

But I think that they understand that that, trying to popularize Bidenomics, trying to kind of sell, here’s all the things that we did for you, it buttressed up against people’s lived experience, and their own feeling of precarity, of frustration, of hardship of, you know, WTF. And I think the fundamental problem with saying the economy is good is that you’re saying to people that the economy is good. By which I mean, this system, which the majority of voters we can see in polling know to be vastly unjust, funneling money out of the hands of working people, that you can work super, super, super hard and still not exit hardship.

So, to say to people the economy is good is to say that the status quo is as it should be, and people don’t feel that. So, I think that what team Biden would probably argue is that they have moved toward this, here’s what we’re going to do, we’re going to continue to tackle drug prices, we’re going to continue to take on corporate price gouging, we’re going to continue to expand these programs. They’ve talked about codifying Roe, as you noted. I think that they sometimes — maybe they will more often — talk about passing the Voting Rights Act, both the Freedom to Vote and the John Lewis Act. So, I think that they think that they’re giving an agenda.

To the previous part of your question: yes. When you shift from Trump is to Trump will do, it does invite the same thought bubble out of the respondent, and they go to, well, Biden will do. And, basically, where that lands them — and I’m speaking sort of in broad strokes, people are individuals — is most often toward a, well, I guess what Biden will do is keep doing what he’s been doing. It will be a maintenance of what we presently have.

And, to be sure, for a lot of people — and by people, I’m now specifically talking about this 4 in 10, these no-no’s, these double haters — they’re like, I don’t love the status quo, I’m not thrilled with how things are, but I am much, much more concerned with this dystopia looming of a group of people, in the form of macro-Republicans, trying to control us and decide our futures for us. And so, they’re weighing a continuation of a present they don’t love with a future that they truly find repugnant.

RG: How is it that it’s so close, if they find this future that repugnant?

AS: So, multiple reasons. The first I stated earlier: a lot of political behavior just really comes down to partisan identity, and it is not dissimilar to people’s fanatical attachment to a sports team, and that’s just how it is. So, that’s a big chunk of people that have decided, before there is a named candidate, who they will be for, because of the team.

The other reason why it’s extraordinarily close — and there’s multiple — is because of the features of our supremely undemocratic system, wherein the election gets decided by a handful of people in a handful of states. And people who live in the most populous states — like my own, California — kind of don’t matter at the presidential level. So, that’s part of the dynamic as well.

And then, the other part of the dynamic — and this is where I will frequently quip, I’d rather win elections than polls — we do see a systematic difference of behavior when it comes to surveys than when it comes to voting. It seems that voters know the difference between answering online or, on the phone, someone asking them, hey, what are you going to do right now? Whether that be back in October, November, December of last year, more recently now. That that question, to some degree, registers as, how do you feel about things right now? Are you happy with Joe Biden or not? And that people treat that survey question differently to how they treat the actual act of going into a polling booth and filling out the form, or whatever. Pushing the levers in times gone by.

RG: Got it. As I think about it — and tell me if you think I’m wrong here — I think about five threads running through this election, and I’m curious if that’s what you see showing up in your focus groups and in the polling.

Like, three issues: abortion, the genocide in Gaza, and immigration/the border. And then kind of overlaid over all of that, you’ve got Biden’s age, and then you’ve got just Trump as a phenomenon, what people think of him, and just Trumpism and MAGA-ism.

Is that right? I have spent so much time the last five months reporting on what’s going on Gaza. I wonder sometimes if I’m in something of a bubble of people who care about this ongoing genocide. Because I can’t tell, if I walk outside of it, how much it’s resonating with a typical voter.

So, first of all, I’m curious: how much of an actually-caring-about-this-genocide bubble am I in? How much do you see it among the voting public?

AS: It is a bit of a bubble. You’re right to ask that question, in terms of, for whom is this not meaningful, I would say, but salient. By which I mean, not that people don’t feel that this is, to use the lightest possible term, distasteful, horrific, horrible, not OK, all those things. But, rather, whether or not it rises to the level of their daily thought patterns, their electoral calculus, etc. So, that’s what I mean by saliency. That is a bit of a bubble. You are sort of existing among outliers, if we’re just looking at statistics.

We even purposely did focus groups in Dearborn, Michigan among young disaffected voters of color, because we wanted to sort of go into where we thought the bubble would be most highly concentrated, because we wanted precisely to look at that. I mean, a focus group is an idiosyncratic thing, and it’s anecdotal, especially when I’m talking about that one single focus group. We were surprised to not get more of that coming at us initially, in terms of people volunteering that as being core to their calculus. Definitely aware of it, but there’s a difference between aware and core to the calculus.

I think the thing to say about the bubble that is really important is that we tend to forget — or political campaigns, to their peril, tend to forget — that it’s not just about how many people, it’s about which people this upsets. And why I say that is because the people that it upsets — and rightly so — are, in many places like Michigan, an important part of the choir. They are, if you will, the lead tenor, lead alto, etc.

And so, if the people that you rely upon to knock on doors, to drive voters out, to speak about this, to get their friends and family to be paying attention to this election, and to be wanting to participate, even if it’s relatively few in numbers, it’s not just the how many, it’s the who. And that’s where it does matter as a political calculus, not to mention that it matters just as a moral question, which I would argue is more important.

RG: Yes. And I want to underline that, that this is ultimately, first and foremost and lastly, a moral question. But here we’re talking about the election, and so, we’ll just have to muscle through the discomfort associated with talking about it in those terms.

But I think you’re right, in my experience. That the types of people who are going to go out and vote uncommitted or uninstructed are also the types of people who, in their friend group, are the ones — and in their family — are the ones that people are going to for advice. Now, that might be more relevant on a congressional or senatorial level than on a presidential level, where everybody kind of has their own opinion of Trump and Biden, but it does seem like those are your workers, those are your messengers. If the messengers aren’t just not unwilling to canvas, but actively hostile to you, that’s a significant problem.

This week, in Wisconsin, roughly 50,000 people voted uninstructed, with a very tiny budget for a campaign, one that’s not intuitive at all, yet still managed to get one-and-a-half times the margin between Biden and Trump in 2020; I think Biden won it by about 20,000 votes.

So, to see 50,000 Democrats voting uninstructed does seem concerning, but what is your sense of what the Democratic Party’s plan is for this? It doesn’t seem like any policy change is on the horizon. And, absent that, I can’t imagine that there’s any— Messaging has its limits, I would imagine.

AS: True story. Messaging does have its limits. You cannot solve a policy problem with a message.

So, I’m going to answer in two ways. The first is, what do I think from my own perch is their plan. And then, what do I think, as a messaging answer, as opposed to a policy answer, because I’m in full agreement. The answer is that the policy has to change. That’s the answer, period, the end.

I think that probably their calculus is that one of two or both things will happen. And, to be honest, I certainly hope for moral reasons that there is a leadership spill within Israel. It’s poised to happen. I don’t know how closely you observe politics happening there. I’m actually Israeli. There are growing demonstrations, over the last weekend there were the largest demonstrations, I believe, to date. And it was a merging of a demonstration movement that’s been led by a group called Omdim Beyachad — Standing Together — which is co-led by Palestinians and Jews.

RG: Oh, yeah. I saw the Standing Together duo when they came to D.C., actually. A really, really interesting organization.

AS: Yeah. I am not objective, because they are friends. So.

RG: Oh, actually, I noticed some of your rhetoric on their website, now that I think about it. Some of your messaging.

AS: Oh. That’s very kind.

RG: Yes, your kind of Anat approach to, they’re highlighting our differences so that they can enrich themselves and dominate.

AS: Yeah. Basically ascribing motivation to the villains in order to explain how they use this divide and conquer strategy that’s actually bad for all of us. Yes. They’re great.

So, big protests, and a merging of ceasefire protests within Israel, with the hostage families very much in the lead, as they’ve always been, and rightly so. And protest to demand that Netanyahu step down, or that there be a sort of reconfiguration of what we already know to be a very precarious coalition. I know this is hard for a lot of American listeners to understand, because we don’t have a parliamentary system and, so, if you’re not used to it, it sort of seems like gobbledygook. But there can be leadership change without an election within a parliamentary system. 

So, I think that part of the hope — and like I said, my very naked hope — is that Netanyahu begone, for reasons that I think would just be beneficial to humanity, not to the U.S. election. And that change, and a change in policy, because I think the person poised to kind of lead a new coalition — I’m not saying he’s a shining star of humanity, but he is much, much better than Netanyahu, which is a low bar — that there will just be a change within Israel, and that will sort of reflect, and it will help the situation, and so on. So, that is, perhaps, calculation number one.

I think calculation number two is something that you’ve already intuited, which is that November is a long way away. Most people are not paying attention to politics, and that is actually the bigger divide than even partisanship that I’ve spoken about before. It’s really a divide between people who are following all the machinations and the news and what’s going on, and people who are like, huh, there’s an election in November? And, believe it or not, there are many people who are, huh, there’s an election in November. I know if you’re listening to this podcast, that sounds like I made that up, but trust, that’s most people.

So, I think that the calculation is probably that something will change internally with time in the region, and this just isn’t going to be what people are focused on. I’m happy to talk about what feels like an interim-for-right-now sort of message in the absence of policy change; which, again, I’m intentionally repeating is actually what’s required here.

RG: Right. Yeah, what is the interim message shift that you’re noticing?

AS: So, not noticing, but experimenting with, and seeing has promise; I’m not saying it’s actually being undertaken.

So, what we find is that with these higher information folks that we’re talking about, that are contemplating things like skipping the top of the ticket, or who are engaged in the effort that you just detailed, coming from Wisconsin — and previously in Michigan, Pennsylvania, etc. — of uncommitted, or whatever it’s called in their own state.

When we talk to folks about how progressive change happens in this country, how it has happened in our past, and we give examples, like the civil rights movement, women voting, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the eight-hour workday, child labor laws, whatever. Stuff that we as progressives agree were good things, a good thing that happened, and we say to people, not a single one of those things happened electorally. Not a single one of those things were a consequence of voting.

And, in fact, if you try to kind of get your brain around the idea of civil rights heroes of our past, sitting around and thinking, you know what, the way we’re going to end Jim Crow, and end segregation, and change the laws that are here, is by canvassing to vote, picking a different leader. They never would have thought that, because that wouldn’t have worked.

And so, when we remind folks that every bit of progressive change that we’ve had in this country has come through agitation outside the electoral system, then what we can say to them is, voting is really about setting the preconditions for who will be in power to respond when you want to go on strike, when you want to protest, when you want to yell in the face of the person, the policymaker, the leader. And the question before us is, really, will we have the freedom to protest, to strike for better wages, to tell the President of the United States that we don’t agree, or will we be thrown in the gulag for doing so?

That seems to help contextualize what this voting decision is, and that it is part of the toolbox. It is one of the tools in the toolbox, but it’s certainly not the only one.

RG: It’s a statement of what a difficult position Democrats are in, that the best they can do is say, OK, yes, Joe Biden might be committing a genocide, but you can protest him for it and not be thrown in the gulag. But I guess you work with what you’ve got.

And if we want to give Democrats the most optimistic slant on the election, let’s take abortion. That continues to seem to break through in every special election as a decisive issue in ways that we haven’t seen in electoral politics in forever. What are you seeing among voters when it comes to their willingness to continue to come out for Democrats this next cycle, despite everything else, simply because of abortion rights? And how much has the IVF Alabama debacle played into that?

AS: It not only continues to break through, but it continues to be a giant surprise to centrist Democratic mostly-male pundits, that women are not done being pissed off. I’m not sure if they’ve ever spoken to a woman, and why it is they think that women are done being pissed off. And not just women, but obviously, principally, that is who is the most pissed off in this situation.

So, yes, what we are finding is both that abortion and IVF as an add-on, what we call the freedom to decide for yourself whether and when you have kids, that’s sort of the encompassing freedom-ized version of what all that package— You know, because it also includes — eventually, if you read Project 2025 — ending no-fault divorce, right? Ending adoption for certain kinds of people, sex education, contraception. I mean, they have their sights set on a big set of ways of controlling us and deciding our futures for us.

And so, what we find is that, not only is abortion — and then, newly, IVF — really, really motivating and energizing, and that people continue to turn out to protect their freedoms in this most bodily-important domain, but that what abortion is, is what we call a salient exemplar. It is the thing that makes Democrats no longer sound like Chicken Little; the sky is falling, sky is falling, they’re going to do this, they’re going to do that, they’re going to do this, they’re going to do that. 

Back before pre-Dobbs, there was a certain amount of hesitancy among voters to hear that as real, as opposed to just, well, that’s what you say. Like, Team Blue says shitty things about Team Red, vice versa, whatever, that’s just you yelling and screaming, right?

Because of the actual decisions made and the consequences of those decisions, it then makes talking about the rest of their agenda no longer seem like, oh, that’s just politics, where you intentionally make the opposition sound really draconian, but that’s not really what’s going to happen. It snaps it into, oh, no, this is what’s going to happen. And so, it has that twofold— I mean, I hesitate to say the word “benefit” because, in terms of real people’s lives and what’s going on with policy, there’s nothing beneficial. But, just in terms of political calculus, yes. People are still very, very angry, and they feel that MAGA Republicans writ large are here to control us. And that’s the word that they use over and over again, that’s what they come to. They want to control us. They want to decide for us. They want to take away our freedoms.

And that brings us back, if I can split back to earlier in the conversation, to why toggling into this frame of these two competing futures seems so much more effective than talking about candidates or even parties. Because people don’t want a future in which the last decision they’re going to make is who do I get to vote for in 2024. That is not the future they want.

RG: How does Biden’s age fit into this? Because everybody that I talked to who previously had voted Democratic but is planning to vote for Trump this time says the same thing. “The guy’s just too old,” and they just don’t think he’s up for it. And there’s no amount of spin or hopped-up performance at the state of the union that’s going to change that.

My sense has always been that people have come to this conclusion organically based on their own assessment of seeing Biden and their understanding of what it is to age. We all know elderly people. This isn’t something that is a mystery to any of us. In D.C. [there] seems to be a sense that, actually, this is a creation of the media that is just looking for clickbait cynical journalism, and it’s a but-her-emails style attack on Democrats by these journalists who just can’t help themselves, and have to go after Democrats so that Republicans don’t call them liberal media. Combined with, you know, nefarious RNC accounts and Republicans attacking him for his age.

What’s your sense of where people are getting the idea that he’s too old?

AS: My sense is that it’s a bit of both-and. That it is a reaction to what you said — real-world viewing of Biden — and that it is also inflated and propped up and fed. 

And the reason why I say the latter thing is multifold. Number one: Trump’s not that much younger than Biden. The difference is, really, pretty minimal. If you watch Trump, he has also [proven] to be generous, unhinged, and illogical. I mean, you’re nodding, I think it’s hard to disagree. What he says just simply doesn’t make sense.

RG: Yeah.

AS: To people.

RG: Period. Yeah.

AS: Period. So, it’s not, like, he’s this shining beacon of lucidity and coherency, and that he’s also 50 years old, or whatever.

RG: He’s not speaking in Obama’s paragraphs.

AS: Exactly. No, he’s not presenting like a young robust guy who will then go on to the basketball court and make a three-pointer, Obama style.

So, the reason why I say that part of it is fed and spread is, number one, like I said, how is it possible that there is this kind of discourse around Biden and not this discourse around Trump, when they’re really not that different in this count? The second reason why is because we absolutely see variance among different subgroups in terms of how much this figures in and factors in for them.

And I think where I would point to — and again, I know that the plural of anecdote is not data, and focus groups are what they are — but in our Latino group in Nevada, it was striking. We had a very, very seasoned moderator who’s done Latino groups forever and ever and ever, and I’ve never seen him shook in a group like he was shook in this group.

The right-wing propaganda that they were able to spout, and made up things about stumbles that had not happened, and made up things beyond what actually occurred in life, that you could just quickly then Google and see that this was clear disinformation that had been spread, particularly among Latinos, particularly through channels like WhatsApp, which are very popular for communication, and just people reciting that to us. Whereas that didn’t happen among white women in Pittsburgh; they were not recreating memes for us.

So, you can actually see in certain groupings of people which ones have had this disinfo treatment served to them more, and that lines up perfectly with the folks who monitor disinfo and say, this is where they’re spreading most of it, this is where they’re concentrating their firepower. We see a match.

And that’s why I say that, of course, it is based on a true story. Biden is 81 years old, he is how he is, that’s not untrue. But some of this feeling about it is absolutely produced.

I think the funniest way of illustrating that is when people tell us in groups that one thing that intrigues them about RFK is how young he is. I’m like, he’s 70.

RG: Yeah. But he’s jacked up, and he goes around with his shirt off, and looks younger than 70. But, yes, it is funny that RFK Jr. counts as the young one.

But, OK, that’s fair. I will amend my assessment to say that you can move the needle, you can move the dial on how decrepit people think Biden is.

AS: Not just how decrepit, to be clear, but it is 100 percent about saliency. People only have so much room in their attention span to toggle through which issues are important, which are not, what they think about, what they don’t, you know? They’ve got to get through a day. And so, it’s not just the ability to take age and turn it into infirmity or senility; that’s one thing. But it is to take that and — to use your but-her-emails analogy — to make that be the top line in people’s brains over and over again. That’s the magic trick being performed.

RG: Got it. What are you seeing when it comes to the border? You’ve seen a lot of political consultants just pulling their hair out at the Biden strategy of trying to out nativist Trump on the border. To say, look, the only thing standing in the way of Democrats and doing an immigration crackdown is Trump, because he’s cynical, and wants to exploit it for his own political perspectives. And Democrats really seem to feel like they had won something there, that they really got one over on Republicans by showing how cynical they are, and showing that, to them, immigration and the border are just election issues that they’re here to exploit.

My read on it is different, though. That it seems to just be playing right into Republican strengths. I mean, what are you seeing?

AS: Yeah. I wish that I could say people are tearing their hair out. I think what I’ve seen is a lot of applauding, and that this was a brilliant gotcha maneuver on the part of Democrats, and I could not disagree more with that assessment.

I very, very much would underscore what you said, and I would put even a finer point on it. When you tell voters, when the meta message that you send to voters is, you should make this electoral decision on the basis of who is going to be the bigger xenophobe, or who is going to be the bigger asshole, or who is going to be the tougher on, whatever, fill in the blank — in this case, border, previously -crime and, I’m sure, -crime again — then what you’re doing is you’re sending them into the arms of Robocop. You’re not going to make them hunger for mall security.

And, regardless of what Democrats actually do and put forward, that is the way people understand the brand. It’s just as simple as, people understand Coke to be classic, and Pepsi to be the next generation. It is sort of cemented into the calculus of who these two groups of people parties are.

And so, it’s not just that you’re doing that, you’re undermining your broader story. If your broader story is, these people are fascists and they are coming for your freedoms, they will decide your future for you, they will take away every decision that you’ve ever wanted to make, from whether or not you can retire in dignity, to whether or not you can go to the picket lines to demand a fair return, to whether or not you decide whether and when you have kids, and what your kids learn in school— And the list just goes on and on and on and on, right? I think project 2025 is 900 pages; they took it away, but it’s archived somewhere.

If that’s your overarching story, you cannot say, on Monday, these people are fascists and, on Tuesday, I promise to work with these fascists. That is a fundamentally contradictory message. It would be as confusing as saying, Putin is this extraordinarily terrible person, and he’s dangerous, and he’s a dictator, and he’s this and he’s that, but he’s got some decent ideas on clean energy policy, so I think we’re going to have a summit and figure out windmills. Like, if you said that to people, they would be like, what, what, huh?

And so, how is it possible that you would call out — and I would argue rightly so — Republicans for the extraordinary danger they present, including calling them out specifically for their Hitlerian, Hitler-like rhetoric when it comes to immigrants, and then say, I’ll meet you, or you meet me, and we’ll work out a deal together? Because what you’re doing is, you are tacitly crediting Trump as a leader, as a person who is in charge. And you’re tacitly crediting Republicans with having decent policy ideas, decent legislative proposals. And that just doesn’t make sense.

RG: And what’s crazy is that this has actually been tried over and over and over in Europe. I wonder if you’ve worked with any of these parties, but the center-left parties in Europe, particularly in response to the Syrian migration crisis, began embracing xenophobic rhetoric to try to outflank the rise of the far right in country after country. And the results are in, that voters, whenever that was a salient issue, went with the right-wing party, rather than the center-left party claiming to be a right-wing party. 

I saw — and maybe you’ve seen this — an analysis of some focus groups that the Obama 2012 campaign did, where they talked to voters about immigration. And even when they could get voters to kind of agree with their take on immigration versus Mitt Romney’s — who, at the time, was doing this hardline immigration thing — just talking about immigration moved voters towards Republicans, no matter what they said about it. And so, they concluded: let’s just not talk about this, there is no winning argument for us here.

So, have you worked with any of those European parties? And how does it that an entire continent can undergo this experiment for the last 10, 15 years, and our own political class just ignores it?

AS: Luckily, listeners can’t see my face, but every wrinkle on this face is made out of the consternation I have from, like, let’s just try to out-centrist them again, surely this time it will work! And, literally, it never works. And even in the places that they would point to it working — i.e. the election of Bill Clinton — to some extent — they would maybe argue, it depends on the day — the election of Barack Obama. Clinton presided over the greatest midterm shellacking of any president ever in a hollowing out of Democratic elected leaders all the way down to the dogcatcher level, and it was because he made the Republican’s case.

For me, what crystallizes this entire ethos is the famous quotation by Margaret Thatcher. She was asked what her greatest political accomplishment was. Do you know what she said?

RG: No, what’d she say?

AS: She said, “Tony Blair and New Labor.”

RG: Yeah, there you go.

AS: We forced our opponents to adopt our position. I mean, I think there is no greater crystallization than that for this phenomenon.

I have worked in the European context, especially at the European Union at the parliamentary level, and then on specific issues. And I think that the illustrative counter-case, the positive case, is looking at Germany very recently. And what happened when intrepid journalists, as they should, leaked that the center-right party met with pretty nakedly white nationalist folks. And, instead of the center-left party genuflecting to the altar of, “we will also bash on immigrants, don’t worry, you can have your immigrant hatred with us too, you can just have it with a side of politesse, we’ll just do it more nicely,” they had huge demonstrations that were led by center-left parties and more left wing parties, basically saying, no, absolutely no, this is not who we are, this is not what we want.

For these uncommitted, these conflicted, these whatever-voters you want to call them, a lot of what we see out of them, there’s this conditioned idea that they are moderates, that they want a center-of-the-road thing. And so, center-left parties around the world are like, OK, well, we should approach politics vis a vis the hot dog vendor problem in game theory, and we will just position ourselves in the middle of this ideological beach, presuming that voters are rational actors, and they will go to the politician that is closest to them, because all politicians are exactly the same. They’re serving an identical product and, really, it’s just kind of ideological proximity on a unidimensional plane, as if people are not thinking of multiple issues, and have different issues, and different saliencies. I mean, the whole thing is built out of nonsense, because people are not rational actors to begin with. So, that thinking just is silly.

But that dominant thinking, that if you position yourself in this kind of quote-unquote “middle position,” or closer to what people in polls report wanting, then you will get more people, that just fundamentally goes against the ways that people come to political judgments. And what we actually know about these middle-of-the-road, uncommitted, swing voter, whatever they’re called in different geographies, is that they are especially prone to what we call in psychology anchoring effects. That is, changing their mind about what is true, and the way the world works, and what is common sense, on the basis of what is repeated over and over again in their environment. And so, they don’t have a fixed ideological position, they are not decidedly pro-migrant or anti-migrant. They kind of don’t know.

But, if what they hear repeated over and over and over and over and over again is, basically, everyone hates immigrants, everyone is against this, everyone is upset by this then, of course, they’re like, OK, well, I guess that’s what people think. And that includes me.

RG: So then, the final one, Trump himself. One reason that, despite the polling, despite everything, it seems to me that Biden still has a fighting chance to win this election, is Trump. And that the more Trump becomes salient, gets in people’s faces in the election, my guess is, the worse he’s going to do.

I think one of the best things that liberals did for Trump was kick him off of social media and give him distance from people. Like, the closer he gets to people, the more they seem to recoil. He gets further away, and they can kind of just think back to, inflation was low, wages were high. Yeah, he was maybe causing an international incident every other day but, you know, we didn’t actually nuke North Korea, and now we have two wars under Biden. So, let’s go back to the growing wages and the low inflation.

But he can’t stay out of people’s faces throughout the entire election. How significant an issue do you think Trump ends up being? Will it be like everything throughout his life, that the whole planet just orbits around him?

AS: I want to draw a distinction in how Trump plays out. In your narration, Trump’s increased presence and people’s increased exposure to this toxin will sort of fix this memory hole problem that we have— Which we absolutely do [have], where people have blacked out the onset of the pandemic and lots of other things, and they kind of intentionally, I think, for human survival, we have these mechanisms that let us block out certain things, or at least background them very, very deeply, because they’re painful and hard.

It’s not so much that Trump’s presence will change people’s calculus who were, like, maybe I’ll vote for him. It’s that it changes the calculus for people around whether or not participating in the first place matters. This election will be won or lost in the battleground states on the basis of differential turnout. Yeah, there are some swing voters, but there are very, very few. Because not only have people already cemented their partisan identity, like I said at the outset, they’ve actually made this specific electoral choice before. They have decided [on] Biden or Trump. 

What Trump’s presence has the ability to do is remind the people who are thinking of just sitting out, not paying any attention right now at all, thinking of skipping the top of the ticket, making salient for them why those are not options. Why they’ve got to turn out, they’ve got to vote all the way, up and down, and they’ve got to vote for Biden in order to stop Trump from taking power. That’s actually the name of the game. So, it’s what you’re saying, but it’s a tiny bit distinct.

I think that the main thing is the reminder that — I mean, this is what we see over and over again, and it’s one of the most widely replicated findings — is that when it comes to the various trials— And it’s hard to keep track, and I’m speaking not of the civil trials that have to do with financial matters, but of the criminal trials. The one that’s about to start up in New York, the commonly referred to Bragg case, what I would name as the OG, the original voter deception case. Obviously, the machinations going through the Supreme Court with the January 6th case, the Georgia case—

When people See Trump on trial, or hear more about Trump on trial, we are a very courtroom-trial-obsessed culture. There’s a reason why legal procedurals have always dominated as one of the top TV shows in every generation. I know it sounds like I’m being silly, but it’s a big part of our popular culture, this kind of obsession with trial, and law, and crime, and true crime, and blah-blah-blah.

And so, what we see is that it’s not just exposure to Trump, but it’s Trump within the context of being judged by a jury — I refuse to call them a jury of his peers, because I don’t know them like that to hate on them — a jury of Americans. When that is the context in which Trump sits, it does absolutely change people’s view and calculus around whether or not this election is worth paying attention to. Whether or not they’re tuned in, whether or not they’re watching, and whether or not they’re going to recreate what they did in 2020, and what they did in key states — not all states — in 2022.

RG: Out in the wild, I have met a decent number of people who voted for Biden in 2020, but are now leaning towards Trump. Is that unusual, that I’m running into them? Are you seeing that, or no?

AS: That’s very unusual.

RG: You’re seeing mostly fixed. And the question is whether they vote or not.

AS: Yeah. We’re seeing what I said at the top. We’re seeing 6 and 10 fixed doing what they’re going to do. I’m speaking of battleground voters. I don’t spend time hanging out with other state voters, except when I’m working on other kinds of races. So, you and I have been talking at the presidential level, and that is why I’m so fixated on the voters in these six states.

So, in these battleground states, when we’re talking about presidential [elections], we find that most of them are going to do what they’re going to do. But, 4 in 10 — that is a lot of people — are toggling between, I don’t know what to do, I’m unhappy with these two choices. But not, oh, I did vote for Biden and now I’m contemplating Trump. That’s a pretty rare person.

RG: Any guesses? I’m sure you get asked that a lot. What do you tell people?

AS: Oh. Well, I have a very clear answer. I’m a pathological optimist. I don’t have guesses, I have the necessary certainty until it’s disproven. It’s one of the reasons why I’m so frequently disappointed, because I believe so much better of voters than I often get.

I believe that, based on the only poll that matters, which is elections, between when Trump came into office and now, basically, Democrats have been doing much, much, much, much better than Republicans, and much better than polls, and much better than would be expected based on the conditions on the ground. And I believe that once voters are fully aware of not just Trump as the architect and lead of a criminal conspiracy in which MAGA Republicans are happy, willing, eager, and able to act as accomplices, but that the future that they contemplate for us is one that is anathema to the majority of Americans. They’re going to turn out, and they’re going to turn out for Democrats.

So, yeah. I mean, I have to believe that. That’s how I do my job.

RG: Well, Anat, thanks so much for joining me. Really appreciate it.

AS: Thanks for having me.

RG: That was Anat Shenker-Osorio, and that’s our show.

Deconstructed is a production of The Intercept. This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. The show is mixed by William Stanton. Legal Review by Shawn Musgrave and Elizabeth Sanchez. Leonardo Faierman transcribed this episode. Our theme music was composed by Bart Warshaw.

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The post No to Biden, No to Trump: Insights From Swing-State Voters appeared first on The Intercept.

Meta — Facebook and Instagram’s parent company — refuses to provide evidence refuting widespread reports that it’s censoring Gaza-related content on its platforms. This week on Deconstructed, technology reporter Sam Biddle joins Ryan Grim to discuss his recent reporting on the efforts of Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., to press Meta for specifics.

Grim and Biddle dig into debates blaming the horrifying images coming out of Gaza for turning young people against the war. “When people see images of horrific bloodshed,” Biddle says, “when they see bodies blown apart by bombs, that’s upsetting to most people. There doesn’t have to be any ideology attached.” They also dive into how pressures to sanitize Israel’s war is being used to ban TikTok, and how X, formerly known as Twitter, is profiting off of government surveillance.

[Deconstructed theme music.]

Ryan Grim: Welcome to Deconstructed. I’m Ryan Grim.

Social media has played a really interesting and unusual role in the way that we’ve understood the conflict between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza over the last several months, in a way that reminds me, in some ways, of how the advent of Twitter and Facebook in the 2010s really shaped the way that the world understood the Arab Spring, and how people at the time were able to connect. And then, also, how the dictators that faced the consequences of the ability of those people to connect started to blame Twitter and Facebook on the fact that they were now getting toppled.

And so, I say all that to preface the conversation that I’m going to have today with my colleague, Sam Biddle, who reports for us on technology, with a focus on surveillance, privacy, corporate power, and all other things related to tech and power.

Sam, welcome to Deconstructed. Thanks for joining me here.

Sam Biddle: Thank you so much for having me on.

RG: So, we’ve got this really interesting situation that has developed where, on the one hand, you’ve been doing a ton of really fascinating reporting on the way that social media platforms, these social media giants, have been censoring users kind of in a pro-Israel direction. Yet, at the same time, that’s overlaid by this fact that, the more somebody is on social media — and the younger they are, in some ways — the more likely they are to sympathize with Palestinians in this conflict. The more likely they are to get a more accurate insight, more accurate window into what’s going on on the ground, despite the fact that all of this censorship and push in one direction is going on. And maybe that’s simply because the corporate media here in the U.S. is just so, so slanted, that even any window into what’s going on the ground creates that change.

You’ve been doing a lot of work on Facebook in particular. How would you say that they responded in the first couple of weeks after October 7th?

SB: So, Meta, which is the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, controls the speech of billions of people around the world, including Israel and Gaza. It was really striking to see how little had changed since the last time there was a prolonged period of intense Israeli military action against Palestinians, Israeli state violence against Palestinians, in 2021. There was a lot of debate and controversy around the way Meta handled itself in 2021; namely, the suppression and abrupt deletion, and general, I think what’s fair to call censorship of information about that violence.

In the aftermath of that, Meta made a lot of promises to various civil society groups and the general public about lessons learned, and how it had— You know, there were some mea culpas. But then, fast forward a few years and it was essentially the exact same: posts disappearing, people having their accounts locked without explanation, in a very, I think it’s fair to say, slanted — as you put it — way. Most of this suppression intentionally or otherwise ended up affecting Palestinians, or people sympathetic to Palestinians.

And so, yeah, it just really seemed like just a total rehash of the past. So, I think very little has meaningfully changed since the last time Meta was in a position to control people talking about a war.

RG: The ubiquity of the censorship is what has always struck me about. It’s like, almost anybody who you spoke to or who you speak to about posting on social media — particularly Facebook and Instagram — have stories of their posts getting throttled, taken down, their account suspended. Often with no explanation, no obvious reason.

I think even the watermelon emoji that people started using. It had some connection, but it was also a way to kind of get around the censors. People were just coming up with all of these different codes to try to make sure that they weren’t getting caught in these nets, but they didn’t know how the nets were designed.

So, what did the civil society groups say in the first couple weeks after October 7th? Because you now have two years, three years of Meta saying that, we hear you, you’re valid, we won’t do this again. And then, all of a sudden, it seems like the exact same thing is going on. So, what response did they get back?

SB: To meta, I think it was just sort of a, are you kidding me? Are we really having these exact same conversations again after the assurances you gave us the last time, and the time before that? I mean, the groups that I speak to are very frustrated for obvious reasons, but I think that they see themselves as taking their relationship with Meta in a kind of stakeholder/consultative role as something they take very seriously and put a lot of work into. And I think they do not always feel as if Meta is taking it as seriously and, really, to the extent they’re listening, not really doing anything with the feedback they get from these groups. As evidenced by the fact that, like I said, the same things were happening all over again.

Back in 2021, you had widespread removal of content attributed to breaking the rules. And then, you also had widespread disappearance of content with no apparent explanation, that Meta later blamed on technical errors.

After October 7th, the exact same thing. A combination of things being taken down for breaking the rules, whatever those rules may be, and then just inexplicably vanishing, that the company later says, oh wait, sorry, that was a problem. Or, not always just disappearance of content but, for instance, there was, I think, maybe in November of last year, 404 Media reported that certain phrases in Arabic in Instagram profile text was being translated to the word “terrorist,” in the context of a Palestinian user. Which the company then said, oh, sorry, that was just a machine learning translation error.

But that response, I think, is really emblematic of Meta’s approach. It’s a very, I think, problematic combination of the system working as intended, and the system being broken. And when you apply a system that is that dysfunctional to the speech of billions of people, you’re going to get many, many, many, many false negatives, false positives, however you want to categorize it. But the end result is censorship, whether it’s intentional, or a byproduct of Meta using stuff that doesn’t work.

RG: Despite all that, Instagram and TikTok really changed the way that the world understood this conflict, and now understands it to be a genocide because we — and I say the collective “we” around the world — have been able to watch it unfold through Instagram and TikTok, despite all that.

You had people like Motaz, Bissan, Hind Khoudary, reporters who would go direct to Instagram, direct to TikTok, in ways that were very familiar to people. You know, starting out with a, “hey guys.” Except instead of “hey guys, like, here’s my makeup routine,” it’s like, “hey guys,” and you can hear the thudding of the bombs around them.

How did Facebook and, and Instagram respond to that? There was a lot of pushback at the same time from pro-Israel forces that were saying, this is unfair, you’re indoctrinating kids by giving these direct linkages, creating these parasocial relationships.

So, what was it like for Facebook now to be kind of caught between both sides? Because now, not only do you have the pro-Israel lobby wanting to straight-up ban TikTok, they’re also livid about how they’ve lost control on Instagram.

SB: Yeah. I think that Meta realizes they can’t. And, in fairness, nor is there any indication this is something they would want to do. There is no will to censor depictions of the war. Where you start to see trouble is in the edge cases, in the gray areas.

An example that comes to mind is, immediately after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Meta reminded all of its moderators that images of Russian airstrikes, even if they are very, very gruesome and graphically violent, things that would typically be potentially subject to removal, should be preserved, because they have news value. It wasn’t a carveout, but it was a specific reminder to preserve documentation of Russian atrocities.

No such directive or memo or anything like that was ever provided in the aftermath of October 7th about Israeli airstrikes. So, there’s been no effort on Meta’s part whatsoever to institute some sort of blackout about this, but they, to say the least, have not taken the kind of proactive steps they did around Russia and Ukraine, and I think that is where you start to get into some really concerning areas here.

The thing about TikTok and Instagram, I think, is really fascinating. Because so much of the hysteria around the indoctrination of youths treats these platforms as if there’s some sort of sophisticated brainwashing operation, when I think it stands to reason the explanation is pretty simple. When people see images of horrific bloodshed, no matter whose blood is being shed, people don’t like that. When they see bodies blown apart by bombs, that’s upsetting to most people. There doesn’t have to be any ideology attached to that or any indoctrination attached to it. People see that happening and think it’s awful.

As much as the Palestinian perspective does get suppressed, enough is getting through, right? Thanks, in large part, to some of the journalists that you mentioned. Enough is getting through that the facts on the ground are undeniable, and just viscerally disturbing to anyone who sees them.

RG: Tell me if you think this is right, but what seems to be unique about this conflict here is the way that people were able to develop these parasocial relationships with the reporters who were themselves under threat. The rise of TikTok and Instagram as real sources of news for people is somewhat recent. It’s around during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and I think if, let’s say, the assault on Kyiv had lasted longer than a couple of days — it was repelled very quickly, and then you wind up getting this trench warfare, and these offensives and counteroffensives —  if the assault on Kyiv had lasted longer, I think you would have developed those same parasocial relationships with Ukrainian journalists or citizen journalists, who would have been broadcasting from their apartments and creating those connections.

Whereas once it moved to more trench warfare and more traditional warfare, then you had plenty of journalists who are on the front lines, but, A, people were trying not to use phones, because the second that you would use a phone, someone would figure out where you were, and you had instances of that. Russians were doing it, Ukrainians were doing it, and then, boom. So, it’s not worth it.

But also, those are reporters who kind of traveled to the front lines, and it’s a more traditional type of setting. Whereas these reporters, these were just people who were normal people on October 6th; some of them working in journalism, some of them not, at the moment, working in journalism. And then, October 7th, 8th, 9th, they have nowhere to go. It’s not as if they’ve thrust themselves into this for some thrill-seeking, or even professional reasons. Just, they’re there, and they’re telling you about their life.

SB: They’re trapped there. I mean, not to at all diminish the bravery that it requires to document something like that, but they don’t really have a choice, right? I mean, they’re literally trapped in this war. Whereas, right, as you point out, to the extent that there are reporters covering the war in Ukraine now, they’re embedded, and there’s a formal process there.

I mean, a lot of the footage coming out of Gaza is just people wandering around, because they have nowhere else to be. It’s an extremely densely populated urban area, whereas the fighting between Russia and Ukraine is happening in, I think, at this point, completely depopulated areas, where there’s no one there to see any of it, except the people doing the fighting, and maybe a handful of embedded Western reporters.

That’s something that’s really interesting. You brought up the Arab Spring earlier, that phase of thinking about social media. And, as much as I agree that the footage and imagery coming out of Gaza has been extremely powerful, I do think that it challenges some of the premises of Arab Spring discourse. A lot of that was basically sort of digital democracy stuff; if you give people access to Twitter, you will overturn dictators. Like, the technology is itself powerful enough to cause change, right? To cause actual political material change.

It’s hard to imagine footage coming out of Gaza, of Israeli airstrikes and other Israeli assaults, that are more disturbing than what we’ve already seen, right? We’ve already basically maxed out the capacity for horror, right?

But the war is still going on. There doesn’t seem to be any real challenge to the prosecution of that war. Popular support for it in the U.S. might ebb and flow, but the government’s commitment to supporting that war, material commitment, hasn’t changed as far as I know an iota. So, I do think that this really undermines a lot of that Arab Spring optimism, that you could post your way to change.

And, again, this is not to diminish at all the efforts of the people doing it.

RG: In some ways, sometimes, dictators are easier to overthrow than democracies.

SB: Sure.

RG: Some of those pre-Arab spring dictatorships turned out to be extraordinarily fragile. You get enough people into the streets and the people at the top turn on them, and they’re on a plane, and they’re out of there, where they’re dragged through the street.

Whereas, in the U.S., I think it clearly has had an effect on public opinion. We just had a Gallup poll come out this week — that was the first since the first Flower Massacre — that found, I think, 75 to 78 percent of Democrats to only 18 percent opposed; basically, about 78 percent of Democrats opposing Israel’s war effort. Overall, it was like 55 percent of the entire public against, even Republicans, something like 30-plus percent had turned against it. And you see the numbers wildly fluctuating, depending on your age. And it seemed like, the more you’re seeing, the more you’re against it.

Now, the fact that that hasn’t led to policy change is a separate question.

SB: Right. Yeah. I think it says more about the disconnect between public opinion and policy, which isn’t a social media thing. But it does remind me of how there was so much hope among technologists that social media would be what it takes to make changes in public opinion history. And maybe they are, in their own way, but the extent to which public opinion about this war has been shaped by documentary, unimpeachable evidence, and yet nothing changes, has been, I think, really revealing and disillusioning, in a lot of ways.

I mean, you can have all the evidence in the world right in front of you, and so, what? I mean, at the end of the day, nothing is happening. I think, in a way, it might be the official end of that kind of Arab Spring idealistic thinking about social media specifically. Not to suggest that people should stop caring about this stuff, but the divide between what people want and what people think from the people they put into power and what those people do, I cannot remember an example of it being more stark.

RG: At the same time, I think there’s another interesting parallel to the Arab Spring, because those in power do still seem to feel threatened by this relationship that people have developed with the people they’re seeing destroyed on social media. And you can tell that, by the fact that they’re trying to ban TikTok.

You see all this energy put into this argument that the Chinese are manipulating young people into hating Israel’s war effort here, like that’s what’s going on here. It’s not what you think it is, it’s actually that they’re being brainwashed into it.

So, tell me a little bit about TikTok’s relationship to Palestinian descent as well. Because, over the years, I’ve also heard either Palestinians or people who are supportive of the Palestinian cause, that they too have had enormous difficulty posting without getting nuked.

So, how have we gotten to a place where, despite that, it’s still a threat big enough that they could get the house to pass a bill to either sell or ban it?

SB: Yeah. I think that the anti-TikTok movement has become a pretty big tent. I think it is, at this point, largely a movement of neo-Cold Warrior types, China hawks, people who have a material interest in hostility with China, short of warfare — worse than friendly, not as bad as going to war, although I’m sure a lot of them would be very thrilled with a shooting war with China —  a union of that branch, which is very old, and political Zionism.

I think a lot of staunch supporters of Israel and the current war are scapegoating TikTok. I mean, it’s very hard to tell to what extent people who say TikTok is brainwashing children into hating Israel, or TikTok is brainwashing our college students into being Hamas guerrillas, it’s hard to tell how much they actually believe that, versus how much they resent TikTok for sharing images of dead Palestinians with young Americans,

RG: The argument feels as absurd as we heard back during the Arab Spring because, back then, you’d hear Mubarak and his supporters saying, the problem here is Facebook and Twitter, and if it weren’t for them, I’d be fine. Iran saying the same thing the year before that. OK, but everything that they’re saying is true about you. They’re not making anything up. It’s just that they’re able to now share it more freely.

And so, to see Americans making that same complaint almost 15 years later, when the same is true. Like, nothing they’re saying is untrue, it’s just that people have the freedom to kind of share the things again. It’s like, you sound like Mubarak. You sound like a tinpot [dictator].

SB: Also, the great irony here is, who bans social media platforms because they present a national security threat to the populace? China, right? I mean, that was supposed to be one of the great differentiators between how our societies treat information. Which is, if you don’t like it, that sucks, but you let it happen, because the alternative is tyrannical.

Yeah, there a great irony, but I think that it is, if you are a supporter of the Israeli war effort, you can’t say, we can’t allow young people to see images of dead Palestinians — as much as I’m sure that is the underlying desire — but you can say we want to ban scary Chinese communist software that is allowing people to see those images.

To your point before, yeah, plenty of people — not exactly the same demographic cohort — but plenty of people are seeing the exact same stuff on Instagram, or on Twitter, or on Telegram — a Russian app. But you don’t see the same legislative push, obviously, to ban those platforms. I think that the resentment towards TikTok because it is Chinese gave those who resent it because it allows unfettered access to documentation of atrocities. There’s something very convenient there, right? It’s like, here’s a mega-popular app that is undermining support for this war. The good news is, there’s already this built in movement to ban it, because it’s Chinese, so I think there’s been sort of a bandwagon effect there.

But those two lobbies combined are very powerful. Whether they’re powerful enough to actually push the legislation through all the way, I don’t know, but they’ve made it this far.

RG: You had a story, recently, about this guy Jacob Helberg, who was kind of one of the leading advocates of the TikTok sale/ban. And you reported that not only is he a member of the U.S.-China economic and security review commission, but he also works for Palantir — a Peter Thiel-linked tech firm — that really benefits from U.S.-China conflict escalating. What was Jacob’s role in this?

SB: Predating his employment at Palantir, he was a long time China hawk. The Wall Street Journal had a couple very illuminating reports about this — one from early March, I believe, and one from last year — about his effort to just basically whip up support for a ban. I think the journal said that he had met with something like a hundred different legislators. He advocated for banning TikTok to all of them.

If you take him at his word, his view is that TikTok represents a genuine national security threat to the United States because it is, in fact, not a social media platform, it’s a Chinese military intelligence operation meant to do what, exactly? Hard to say, because there’s no proof.

RG: Spread makeup tips.

SB: Yeah, there’s no evidence for any of this, you sort of have to use your imagination, I guess. But the difference is that now he works at Palantir, which markets itself increasingly as a necessary counter to Chinese military power.

I think it is very fair to assume that any escalation in tensions between the United States and China benefits military contractors who pitch themselves as counters to Chinese military power. That is just how defense contracting works. That’s not a conspiracy theory or even, really, controversial. War, or the approach of war or hostilities, even, are good for the defense industry. That has always been true, it always will be true. But what you have with Jacob Helberg is, someone who is essentially pushing legislators to dial up tensions between the United States and China while he is an employee of a company that profits from deteriorating relations between the United States and China.

Now, look, this is not anything remotely unique to Jacob Helberg, or Palantir, or TikTok. People in these conflicted positions have advisory roles with the government all the time, same as it ever was. But I focused on that in my article just because the fact of his employment at a defense contractor has been — I mean, he doesn’t hide that fact — but the fact of it is essentially absent from discussion of his role, which I thought was relevant to that role, to say the least.

RG: And, since the House passed that legislation that would require it to be spun off to a non-Chinese buyer or band within, what, 180 days or so? Steve Mnuchin came out and said that he was putting together a group of investors. We know that Mnuchin’s investors in his firm include the Saudis, the Emiratis. At one point, before he retired, the Mossad spy chief was reported to be talking to Mnuchin about a major investment in his firm.

Has that put the brakes a little bit on this? Like, there was a couple of days of stories of saying, like: Wait a minute, we’re going to force China to sell it to Saudi Arabia, who put Pegasus spyware on an American journalist’s wife’s phone, and then chopped him to pieces?

SB: Right. I think, in a lot of cases, U.S.-Saudi relations expose the hollowness of a lot of stated American values. I mean, Saudi Arabia owns a chunk of Twitter. I have not seen — maybe he has, and if he has, I apologize — but I’m not aware of Jacob Helberg and his fellow China hawks making a stink about that. For, I think, reasons that are pretty clear.

I think China is a very effective boogeyman right now, and that doesn’t require denying or whitewashing Chinese human rights abuses. But they are a very helpful adversary right now if you are in the business of defense, intelligence, weapons, now including AI. I think the only anti-China voice in Silicon Valley louder than Peter Thiel is arguably Eric Schmidt, who also has an enormous vested interest — financial interest — in the deterioration of U.S.-Chinese relations.

The Saudi presence, I think, just reveals a lot of this is a put-on.

RG: So, back to Meta, you reported that, what, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, I believe, reached out to the company to ask them what was going on? Because, you know, civil society groups don’t have any luck, users don’t have any luck, so maybe a couple of senators could get some answers.

What did they ask, and what did they find out?

SB: In December of last year, Senator Warren sent a letter to Meta asking something like a couple dozen different, very specific questions about content moderation pertaining to the war in Gaza. The marquee questions were about how much speech has been removed, broken [down]— and this was crucial — how much of it has been in Hebrew, how much of it has been in Arabic?

So, asking for specific figures about censored speech, whether it was a genuine violation of some rule or whether it was an inadvertent takedown, or whatever. Asking for concrete figures, broken down by language, because the point of the letter was to get documentation about prejudicial content moderation. Essentially, the idea that Meta is treating Palestinians and those sympathetic to them differently from Israelis and those sympathetic to them.

RG: What did they find?

SB: Well, they found nothing. Meta replied with a letter that I actually noticed a lot of it was just copy and pasted from a press release they put out in October. The only new information that I could see in the letter was that Meta disclosed that they had removed 2.2 million posts in the week after October 7, but that was not broken down by language. They totally punted on the underlying question of, are you treating Palestinian speech different from Israeli speech, or speech about Palestinians different from speech about Israelis and about Israel, and about the war? Is there discriminatory content moderation happening here? And they just ignored it. They didn’t answer any of the questions.

Now, Senator Warren, joined by Sanders, they’re basically sending the same letter again, saying, we’re giving you another shot here, one more time. Can you answer our actual questions? We’ll see. I would be surprised if they received specific answers.

RG: Where is all this headed?

SB: As far as Meta is concerned, I think it’s headed nowhere. They are not obligated to divulge that information just because someone asked nicely. You can draw whatever conclusions you want about why they may not want to divulge that information. But there are a lot of civil society groups around the world that have documented many cases of speech that is critical of Israel or sympathetic to Palestinians being treated differently than speech that is not.

Only Meta, however, has the motherlode of data that could demonstrate the scale of this discriminatory enforcement. I mean, again, there’s no reason that I’m aware of to doubt the work that’s being done by groups like Human Rights Watch, and 7amleh, and many others to document this kind of stuff but, at the end of the day, Meta can say, OK, well, that’s anecdotal, or that’s circumstantial. You know, you’ve got a thousand examples of biased content moderation, but you don’t have the whole picture. Only they have the whole picture.

What we know about large internet companies is that they do not voluntarily disclose information about how they enforce their policies unless they have to. Meta puts out a transparency report about the ballpark figures of the number of pieces of content they’ve removed, but nothing about the specific mechanism by which it was removed, or why. We know the what, but not the why, and I think that’s what Sanders and Warren are trying to get at.

But, you know, good luck. I have a feeling they will not be able to get much out of them.

RG: While I’ve got you here, last question. Talk to me a little bit about this story you did this week about Elon Musk, how he’s been kind of publicly fighting government surveillance, but apparently profiting off of it at the same time.

SB: Yeah, and I think it’s very important to preface this by saying this is a relationship that predates Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter by many years. But, back in 2014, Twitter sued the government so that they could say exactly how many national security letters they had received.

National security letters are a way for the government to compel companies like Twitter, or Google, or whomever, to turn over private customer information. So, the government could go to Twitter and say, hey, we want this person’s Twitter DMs, and it’s a matter of national security. Also, you are gagged, and can’t disclose the fact that we asked you for this, and forced you to give it to us.

Twitter, I think rightfully, said, this isn’t good, we need to at least be able to tell people this is happening. Under Musk, they tried to take it all the way to the Supreme Court. In a petition to the court, Musk’s lawyers — Twitter or X’s lawyers — said in no uncertain terms that government surveillance of electronic communications is prone to abuse, and is something the public needs to be informed of.

While this is all happening, Twitter essentially leases all of the information, all of the public information on its platform to a company called Dataminr, which then sells it to law enforcement agencies all across the country, and the DOD. And, as my reporting has demonstrated, police departments, including federal police, use Dataminr to spy on Black Lives Matter protests, abortion rights rallies, and other First Amendment-protected activities.

So, it would seem to be the exact kind of abuse that Musk’s lawyers were talking about in their petition to the Supreme Court, which the Supreme Court declined. They declined to hear the case, so that is sort of dead.

But I’m curious what you think. I think that Musk has really positioned himself in a way that previous Twitter executives did not, as a kind of heterodox government skeptic, right? Like, he doesn’t trust the government, he thinks that you shouldn’t either. He’s suspicious of U.S. foreign policy and police powers but, you know, then, at the same time, he is a major defense contractor through SpaceX, and also a surveillance vendor through X and Dataminr.

So, there are inconsistencies in the man’s ideology, to say the least.

RG: The height of the level of conspiracies that he’s willing to accuse the American government of you would think would rule out, then, selling all of your personal information to that very same government.

SB: One would think. Yeah.

RG: You would be wrong.

SB: You sure would.

RG: Well, Sam. Thank you as always. I really appreciate you joining the show.

SB: My pleasure.

RG: All right, that was Sam Biddle and that’s our show.

Deconstructed is a production of The Intercept. This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. The show is mixed by William Stanton. Legal Review by Shawn Musgrave and Elizabeth Sanchez. Leonardo Faierman transcribed this episode. Our theme music was composed by Bart Warshaw.

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The post How the Gaza War Is Reshaping Social Media appeared first on The Intercept.

Chanting “power and food,” demonstrators have filled Cuba’s streets in recent days. This week on Deconstructed, Ryan Grim delves into the complexities of Cuba’s current economic crisis with Andrés Pertierra, a historian of Latin America and the Caribbean. They discuss the various factors deepening the crisis and driving people to the streets, from the half-century-long U.S. embargo on the island, its own economic policies, pandemic-related destabilization, and sanctions the Trump administration imposed and the Biden administration kept in place. Pertierra is in the fifth year of his Ph.D. program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and hosts “Orígenes: A Cuban History Podcast.”

[Deconstructed theme music.]

Ryan Grim: Hey, I’m Ryan Grim. Welcome to Deconstructed.

If you’re ever making a list of the top ten best Karl Marx riffs, one that’s always going to make it on there comes from the 18th Brumaire of Napoleon Bonaparte, when he said, “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.”

It’s an important concept to remember, and one that Kamala Harris riffed on recently when she mused, “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree? You exist in the context of all in which you live, and what came before you.”

Now, Kamala’s father was a Marxist professor from Jamaica so, perhaps, he passed down to her his spin on that old idea. But, either way, it’s a concept I’ve been reflecting on as I think about the crisis in Cuba today. Protests have broken out recently as an economic catastrophe has gripped the island, with the Cuban people being slapped around by the dead hand of the Cold War.

On today’s show, to walk us through how we got to this point, and who today is doing the slapping, we’re joined from Havana by Andrés Pertierra, who’s a fifth-year PhD candidate in Latin American and Caribbean history at the University of Madison.

Andrés, thanks so much for joining me.

Andrés Pertierra: Thanks so much for having me on. I’m excited to be here.

RG: So, just for fun, for the audience — I don’t know about fun — actually, let’s talk a little bit about how tricky it was to get on here. What’s it like on a day-to-day basis engaging with people who are over here on the mainland in the U.S. through the embargo? What kind of obstacles does it throw up that you might not even think of?

AP: A lot of apps are blocked. And then, of course, the Cuban government blocks things online. But a lot of these things are blocked because they’re trying to avoid OFAC sanctions, the Treasury Department sanctions. So I can’t download a lot of apps, I have to have already have had the apps on my iPhone. I can’t just use the nifty new eSIM that I have. Only iPhone, because eSIM doesn’t work in Cuba, and carriers from the U.S. don’t really want to work with Cuba in a normal way. It’s expensive to do phone calls. I can’t get into my university accounts online because there’s a two-factor authentication system, and that app is apparently blocked in Cuba, as is another of the apps we tried to record on.

RG: And that’s one of the things that people don’t really understand about sanctions, is that the treasury department will sometimes say that these are narrowly targeted sanctions, and they’re aimed only at this particular thing. But the penalty for getting hit with them is so extreme that companies around the world are like, if we can even see the sanctions from where we are, we’re just going to get out of Dodge.

And so, yeah. You can’t use the app, can’t use this, can’t use your two-factor authentication, can’t get into your university email account from Cuba. What are you doing your dissertation on, specifically?

AP: In broad strokes, I’m doing a dissertation on Cuba after 1991. And there are historians who have done really great work on Cold War Cuba, but there’s not a ton on post-1991 by historians, because it’s seen as too recent. And that’s kind of let the space get flooded with cranks of one inclination or another.

And so, I’m trying to do a more serious study of Cuba after 1991, and how the system kind of survives losing 70 percent of its foreign trade, all this aid and credit, all of this overnight. Losing that, because the USSR fell, and somehow reconsolidating and, in the 2000s, into a very poor, very anemic, but still stable system, which is not at all what people predicted in the depths of the crisis of 1993 and 1994.

RG: There was a phrase, I remember, that Cubans used to describe that period that was very evocative, that kind of trough right after the Soviet Union collapse. What did they call that era?

AP: Special period in times of peace. Just “special period” for short is how they often call it. And it’s to refer to wartime shortages in times of peace, that’s why it’s the special period.

RG: And so, let’s start there. So, what economic reforms did Castro implement in the 90s to bear the brunt of this absolutely unimaginable shock. You know, you’ve got this superpower that’s basically subsidizing you, and then, overnight, it’s gone.

AP: Yeah. And I want listeners to understand, it’s not the just that Soviet subsidies were just in the form of military aid or general economic aid. Cuba was sucking up about a third of all Soviet aid per annum in the 1980s. It was massive. It was pissing off even the Soviets. They were like, look at Cuba, it’s taking up so much aid.

And then, they were also selling the oil for super cheap to the Cubans, and then buying sugar way above market price from the Cuban. So it was a lot of subsidies, billions and billions of dollars.

And, overnight, it loses that. But it’s worse than that, because Cuba was integrated into the socialist economic organization — the CAME — they were insulated from the embargo. And now, not only do they lose subsidies in the 90s, but the embargo was there, as ferocious as ever, and they even tighten it in the 1990s to make it even more aggressive, in the hopes that — kind of an accelerationist logic — that hopefully that makes the government fall.

The 90s were absolutely brutal. People who had been fat all of their lives become rail-thin. Even if you had money, there wasn’t necessarily anything for you to buy with it. People were going temporarily blind from vitamin deficiency. The infrastructure was absolutely falling apart. If you ask any Cuban for their horror stories about that period, every single person has their own personal hell from that era, and the response of the state was to do a couple of things.

Even though they had the clear counterexamples of Vietnam, and China — which had already begun serious market reforms, moving away from the Soviet model and working towards a kind of compromise with a socialism in politics, but quasi-capitalism or full capitalism in the economy — Fidel does not permit that at all. But he does open the door to a kind of hyper-state capitalism, as it were.

Tourism is what they turn to because, at this point, it’s not just that the Soviets aren’t buying sugar at subsidized prices, it’s that sugar is no longer a luxury commodity like in the 19th century. Sugar is dirt cheap. The only way you can really make money is value-added alcohol or something.

So, they shift to tourism hard — which is ironically already what Cuba was doing in the 1950s before the revolution — but they move to tourism hard and they start building all these hotels, many private public partnerships with Spanish hotel chains, which leads me to another big leap, which is: in addition to trying to capture as much tourism currency as they can — though mostly not American, because Americans can’t legally come — they also begin to reach out to diversify their economy.

The lesson of the 1990s was, we cannot bet on one patron. We’ve got to really diversify. And they start reaching out to all these different European countries, African countries, Latin American countries, anybody who will do business with them, they’ll do business with them. Except maybe, I think, Israel and South Korea, and maybe Taiwan. Maybe, with carveouts, it really starts to diversify its economy.

The key thing is that in agriculture, there’s a partial dismantling of the state collectivization of agriculture that has never worked in any of these socialist countries, but there’s not a full shift to markets like in Vietnam and China. And that’s a big mistake, and it’s a big problem that they’re kind of still trying to deal with today.

Fidel doesn’t allow capitalist reform in the countryside, but he does allow kind of like, state capitalism, and people to allow to rent out rooms in their houses, or open small cafeterias and restaurants in Havana, as a way to try and capture as much tourism capital as they can.

You also have, in the last couple of decades, the rise — it was already happening here, but it’s continued since — the use of doctors abroad. So, doctors, Cuba will kind of loan out its doctors to other countries who will pay money to the doctors, but also to the Cuban state. And it mostly goes to the Cuban state, and then the Cuban state then uses that money to reinvest, and all the rest.

So, it really tries to shift away from agro export, because sugar is a dead end, and that’s why Fidel ends up dismantling most of the sugar sector by 2005. Cuba actually imports sugar now, which is the crazy thing. So, it’s a big shift to tourism.

So, think of it as: the 90s, in short term, in a few words, is shifted to services. That’s basically Cuba’s business model now.

RG: How much does Venezuela help in the 2000s? With the rise of Hugo Chavez, and selling subsidized oil to Cuba, and the pink tide of the 2000s? Did that give Cuba a boost? Did they sort of hang on long enough to get a little lift there? Or were they already kind of making the corner?

AP: Both. So, Cuba was already starting a very anemic recovery. It hits bottom. I think, ’93 or ’94 is the absolute worst moment of the special period. But by the late 90s it was starting to recover. Still lots of scarcity, still lots of problems, but it’s kind of OK.

And Fidel lucks out that Chávez, who he had invited to Cuba after Chavez’s failed 1993 coup, 1992 coup. He invites him to Havana and kind of mentors him. And Chavez wins the election in ’98, and starts sending an absolute ungodly amount of subsidies to Cuba; not as much as The Soviet Union, admittedly, it’s not that good of a patron, but it still was an absolutely, not disgusting, but just outrageous amount of subsidies, direct and indirect, which helps the Cuban economy get out of the worst period. And by the tail end of Fidel’s tenure, there was enough to do more harebrained schemes; like, classic Fidel.

Because old refrigerators use a lot of electricity, Fidel’s solution was to buy every family in the country a new refrigerator.

RG: Hey, I like it.

AP: Which they were supposed to pay back, and they never did. No one kept track, and blah-blah-blah. But then, of course, the newer refrigerators were kind of cheap, and they broke down, and so, a lot of people then returned to the old refrigerators, if they still had them.

But, instead of investing that in agriculture, right? Which is extremely decapitalized. That’s one of Cuba’s big problems. It’s gone back to oxen in agriculture, and so, you have very low ag productivity per person, and it’s a big reason why things are so expensive here, because the food is outrageous by Cuban income standards.

RG: And so, how did the great financial crisis 2007/2008/2009 impact Cuba?

AP: So, I was actually here for that. I was an undergrad. I arrived right before that. Actually, before the economic crisis, Cuba got hit by three hurricanes; one in the east, one in the center, and one in the west, because it’s hurricane season in the fall. And then the economic crisis happens. So, it was really bad.

Cuba had just imported a fleet of Yutong brand buses from China, but then, because of the financial crisis, they didn’t have the money to keep doing payments. And so, the buses started to break down, because they were being used so heavily, and it’s so hot here, and the Chinese wouldn’t send replacement parts, because the Cubans were behind on payments, on the principal.

It was really hard going, that first two years. Just shortages of everything, infrastructure was breaking down again, and then it starts to recover. And, in no small part, thanks to the fact that this is also the period when Raul comes into power. 

Fidel gets sick in 2006, but only passes power formally to Raúl in 2008. And so, from 2008 to 2013 — that period when I was an undergrad — those first five years are when Raúl really starts to engage in more market-oriented reforms, especially in the cities, which help the economy come back to life after a long period of barely getting by.

RG: And so, the U.S. hope with these strangulation sanctions after the Soviet Union fell, like you said, was, they were going to heighten the contradictions and immiserate the population so savagely that they would rise up and demand freedom and liberty and democracy, and overthrow the government.

So, what was the protest movement like throughout the ’90s and 2000s? What did the U.S. achieve in generating? And it’s not just the U.S. driving it; when people are miserable, oftentimes they’re moved to protest those conditions.

AP: Right. I should stress that the embargo is explicitly about making people hungry and making them go into the streets. This is declassified State Department stuff. Like, that’s not a bug, that’s a feature, of what the embargo is supposed to do, and it’s been supposed to do for a long time.

Since the 1990s, the problem has actually been that even most of the State Department has come around to the idea that it’s a bad policy, because it just gives the Cuban government fodder for blaming everything on the embargo. And the real reason that it’s kind of still in play is that it’s not a national security priority, because the Soviet Union’s gone, and there’s no nukes in Cuba. So, a small national lobby, in a very strategic state that is Florida — the Cuban Americans — can basically have veto power over reforms on Cuba policy. That’s kind of why it stays in place. But, yeah. It is still meant to harm; the cruelty is the point.

And what happens? What happens in the 1990s and the 2000s with protests is— I mean, I’m sure there are more than the one famous one, right? Which is 1994, August of 1994, which is called the Maleconazo, which is a name that derives from the fact that it was along the Malecon, which is the seawall around Havana.

In Central Havana, which is a very working class neighborhood — people live cheek to jowl there — they were exhausted by the constant blackouts and shortages, and they take to the streets. And they make political demands and material demands, and they’re just like, yeah, we want change. And that was successfully diffused because it was a very spontaneous movement. There was no Twitter, no Facebook to kind of spread the news about what was happening or why. There were no leaders, no list of demands, specifically.

And so, when Fidel Castro leads a countermarch, people aren’t really sure what to do, and he’s able to— His gamble of leading a countermarch in person is able to diffuse things, along with, of course, police action. But those two things in combination are able to neutralize it and avoid a more Tiananmen-style response from China. Which, I think, no country — even Cuba — wants to do. So, that’s kind of what happens with the 1994 protest.

And it becomes the exception, rather than the rule. A lot of people at the time thought it would be the beginning of something, but it kind of dies on the vine. Part of that is also just technological; the state still has a monopoly on radio, television. You can’t protest, you can’t organize. You know, it’s hard to build consensus in that context, right?

There is kind of an incipient civil society movement with varying ties and sympathies to the U.S. oftentimes; not solely, but oftentimes. Partly because they can’t really make a living If they are antigovernment activists, and almost all the jobs are with the state, right? So they need foreign funding, and then that opens them up to accusations of being foreign agents. And some of them are, but it’s kind of a catch-22 for them.

And it starts to gain traction by the late 1990s and early 2000s, but then it’s kind of broken by 2003, which is called, in opposition circles, the Primavera Negra. Which is when — I think it’s 75 — activists were mass-arrested? There’s actually a kind of funny anecdote in Richard Gott’s book — he’s a journalist who writes about Cuba, and he wrote a book about Cuban history — and he says early on that when journalists went to the press event for the arrests in 2003, many of them were shocked, because they found out that the opposition activists that they’ve been talking to a week before turned out to be double agents for state security in high-up places.

RG: Oh, wow.

AP: So, it was kind of amusing, in that sense. Just how many people, and how many opposition leaders, ended up being state security aid plants.

There’s a movement that’s born of the 2003 arrests. which is the Damas de Blanco, which means “ladies in white,” and it’s a Catholic-centered movement of family members — women family members — of those who were arrested in 2003, and they do marches and things like that. And there was a lot of sympathy for them, especially with the state responses to them to try and suppress them but, at the same time, they never really become kind of a mass popular symbol, in the way that I think the opposition wanted them to.

There were other attempts as well to organize a constitutional reform to pluralize the society; that’s the Varela Amendment that they wanted to do. But that is stymied in committee, and then they added something else to the Constitution to prevent that exact strategy from happening again in the future. So, it basically stagnates.

RG: My guess would be that it also had something to do with Raúl’s economic reforms — you know, his opening up, his adopting a little bit more of the Vietnamese or Chinese model — working, and people seeing some improvement. Is that right? Not “working, ” in the sense that, all of a sudden, everybody’s wealthy. But if your life is improving, month to month, year to year, that might drain some of the energy. Just the same way that the State Department thinks that making people starve will bring them into the streets, feeding them, presumably, keeps them off the streets.

AP: I would say so. The Cuba that I lived in, during undergrad, 2008 to 2013, you had a block of people who were very strongly in support, a block of people who were very strongly against, and then a huge swath of the population — maybe even the majority at that point — who were not politically neutral, but just like, dude, let me live my life, take care of my children, take care of my parents, you know? Go out with my girlfriend occasionally. Just don’t bother me. And the reforms really do help that. A lot of people just kind of make peace with the system for a time.

The way I describe it to people is, Raúl Castro’s — and then Díaz-Canel’s —bargain was, if you leave politics to us, we will make slow but steady economic reforms that will improve your lives. A friend of mine actually mentioned once seeing a sign in Havana that said, “socialism and prosperity,” which is a very different kind of slogan, but it gives you an idea of that idea of, things are going to get better, just trust us, give us time, we’re moving in the right direction.

And then, of course, the last few years — the crisis, partly pandemic, partly sanctions, partly just all these different factors — has kind of nuked that bargain for the time being, and I think that’s where the crisis is coming from.

RG: “Socialism prosperity” sounds very Chinese. You can imagine seeing it there. 

So, I’m curious, did China warm up to Cuba over this time period? Are they seeing Cuba adopt some of their kind of socialism and prosperity ideology, and being impressed? And saying, “let us help out?” Or no, that’s too much trouble for them, because they’re over here? They don’t want to anger the angry tiger in the United States. What was and is the relationship between China and Cuba in that decade and a half?

AP: I can give my appreciation as someone who does not study China-Cuba specifically. But from everything that I’ve seen, China’s relationship is much more transactional than the Soviet Union. But the Soviet Union, the reason that they gave Cuba so much subsidies was that they were in an inter-power competition with China — Maoist China in particular — for the emerging third world and the decolonizing world. And Cuba was such an important symbol to the third world that having that feather in their cap was important for Soviet prestige abroad. 

That’s not true of the Chinese. Cuba is still a symbol, but China doesn’t need that symbol in the same way that the U.S.S.R. did. This calculus may change. Especially one hypothetical scenario that I’ve given people is, for example: if things really heat up over Taiwan, I could see Cuba being used as kind of leverage to, the more you push us on Taiwan, the more we’ll get into Cuba. But as a rule, they’ve sent aid, they’ve sent credits, they’ve forgiven certain things. It’s not that it’s 100 percent transactional, but it’s not as obviously just huge tubes of money to Cuba in the same way that the Soviets did.

And we can see that the Chinese-Cuban relationship is strengthening by the fact that, last year — or it might have been just earlier this year, but I think it was last year — Cuba signed on to Belt and Road, so it is integrating into the Chinese sphere, and it’s aligned with China in many ways. But, so far, it has no signs of being the new patron in the way that the U.S.S.R. was, and Venezuela was a kind of poor imitation of, China does not seem, as of yet, interested in playing that role.

RG: So, everything that I’ve heard about the situation in Cuba now is that it’s just getting bleaker and bleaker. What are things like now, and why are we seeing this rapid kind of unraveling?

AP: Part of it is that tourism hasn’t come back. One of the gambles that the Cuban government made was, even in the middle of this crisis, we’re going to keep building hotels because, once the pandemic is over, we are going to be in serious need of foreign currencies. Cuban pesos is play money, basically, on the international, currency markets. We want hard currency. We want the dollar, the euro, right? We need it bad, and we’re going to build these hotels with an eye to that.

Tourism to Cuba has not recovered, so Cuba is short hard currency. Venezuela is another part of this equation. Venezuela, as I’m sure your listeners know, had a very profound economic crisis of its own in the 2010s because they thought that high oil prices were going to reign forever, and they mismanaged the oil sector. And it’s not just a question of oil prices, but they mismanaged the oil sector so [badly] that they are still recovering production capacity for their oil sector.

So, there’s less for them and, of course, there’s less to send to Cuba. Because the trade was, they sent it to Cuba at very subsidized prices, Cuba uses it for its own needs, and then refines it and re-exports it for cash, right? That was part of the way that Venezuela subsidized Cuba. But that, especially in the last couple of years has been greatly diminished, and Venezuela’s had issues keeping up it’s part of the bargain.

The U.S. has tightened sanctions. Trump went full maximum-pressure sanctions, not just in terms of putting Cuba back on the international list, the list of state sponsors of terrorism, which was an entirely, nakedly, disgustingly clear case of politics. They did it right before they left office as a way to impede the Democrats from being able to return to kind of like an Obama-era policy. It was a very finger-in-their-eye kind of thing. It was politics.

But it’s also the fact that Trump had activated Title III of Helms-Burton. Helms-Burton is this law that was passed in the 1990s that really strengthened the embargo, and gave the U.S. government the capacity to really go after foreign companies that trade with Cuba but also trade with the U.S., and sanction them. And, among other things, it had a section which is called Title III, which had never until Trump been activated, even under Bush. Even under Bush, with Bolton there, the most hawkish guy you can imagine, even they never activated Title III. Title III allows U.S. citizens to sue people who trade or benefit from their assets that were nationalized in Cuba.

So, for example, if you have a cruise ship, and it docks in the port, and the heir to that dock is still alive, and he’s a U.S. citizen, guess what? You’re about to get a lawsuit in the millions and millions of dollars by a very litigious, very angry, and very well-funded Cuban American with the full backing of the U.S. government behind him if he wins.

RG: Some of these judgments have reached into the billions of dollars, and they’re seizing Cuban assets all over the world. What’s been the economic impact of that?

AP: Well, I mean, there’s no more cruise ships, among other things.

When I left Cuba in 2013, cruise ships hadn’t become big yet. When I visited again in 2018, I knew multiple people who are making a living off of very short term cruise ship tourism. The Americans, or the Italians, or whatever, would be let out at the port, and every day there was a new ship, a new ship, a new ship. And it wouldn’t spend a ton of money individually, but collectively, a lot of people were able to work the tourism trade by serving as guides, whatever.

And then, of course, they took that money and then they consumed, and they made jobs for other people. So, that was a huge influx of cash for the country, and cruise ships are dead.

The hotels, at night, you’ll see one or two rooms in use, but they’re mostly empty, in what’s supposed to be part of the high season. It’s been devastating. And, because that’s a source of key foreign currency, and Cuba imports 60 to 80 percent of all of the food it consumes, that’s bad.

RG: And so, the Trump administration did this maliciously on the way out, trying to reverse the Obama administration’s policy. And I’ve done some reporting on this particular piece. The Biden administration indicated to Democrats in Congress that they were reviewing whether Cuba actually belonged on this state sponsor of terror list that the Trump administration put them on right before they left.

Not that long ago, in a private meeting, the State Department informed some members of Congress [that], oh, actually, that review hasn’t even started.

AP: Oh Jesus.

RG: Which just absolutely shocked everybody in the room. Because once it starts, then other things kick in. Statutorily, it has to take six months, and you’ve got to do this, that, and the other thing.

So, by saying that that it hadn’t even started, the Democrats were just reeling. Having heard that, I asked the State Department about that, and they more or less confirmed it in their answer, without confirming it.

But do you have any sense of why Biden would continue this malicious policy? Given the impossibility of him winning Florida — he’ll be lucky to come within ten points in Florida — so it’s hard to say that the Miami Cubans down there are so essential to his political strategy that he has to just drive this country into the ground for them.

What is your sense as the Cuba watcher, of why Biden just has refused to buck Trump on this? Just jealousy of Obama or something?

AP: I don’t think that anyone has a clear cut answer just yet. I can give my theory, but I do think this is a case where we need a Bob Woodward-style deep dive into the deep politics of it, because I’m sure it’s a very complicated story.

But my big theories on this are, number one, the curse of Cuba since 1991: it doesn’t matter enough. It doesn’t matter enough for Biden to use his precious political capital, time and energy, and also potentially risk turning Florida even more red to do it. I don’t think he cares enough, is number one.

He’s got domestic and foreign issues that are far higher on his list. And that’s not unique to Biden; it’s something that has kind of plagued Cuba since 1991 because, like I said to your listeners, after 1991, Cuba gets off the front burner, gets on the back burner, and that’s why Florida has such a lock on it, because not enough people care to reverse the policy, even if most people, even in the State Department, know that, as a policy, it doesn’t make much sense.

Number two, it was only a few months into Biden being in office when July 11th happened — the protests, the massive protests, and the state response to them — and that made Cuba radioactive for a while because, if he starts to do a reform in the middle of that context, he could be seen as being soft on communism or whatever. And so, it looks bad, and Cuba was already not a priority, so they just put it into not a priority, but even lower on the list.

I think that that’s kind of started to change. Sometimes [there have] been movements here and there to slowly bring back some stuff from the Obama era, but I think it’s been much more transactional. I think part of it is the fact that Cuba has had allowed a large number of people to migrate through Nicaragua to the U.S. via Mexico, to the point that the traditional triangle of immigrants, which is Mexico and Central America, or whatever, were displaced at one point — I’m not sure if it’s still true — but were displaced at one point by Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Cuba.

So, immigration has kind of pulled Biden back to the table, and that was, I think, part of the intent of that strategy on the part of the Cuban government. And it’s an older strategy; we will collaborate with you on immigration, on drug stuff, on this, and that, and another thing, as long as you’re reasonable with us. And if you guys aren’t reasonable with us, we have no reason to help you out on your priorities either, right?

This brings me to point three, which is, I don’t think Biden sees this as part of his legacy. He seems to treat it as, that’s Obama’s legacy, right? And it’s kind of come to become a problem, so he’s trying to kind of distance himself from it and be very transactional, but I don’t think he sees it either as a priority, or as something he really needs to or wants to burn political capital on since it can be reversed again in the future. And it becomes a cycle of two different people sharing a wheel, and they drive right and they drive left, and nothing gets done, so it’s kind of back to the backburner, I guess.

RG: So, we set up all the conditions. What triggered this recent round of protests?

AP: The most recent protests —I’ve seen videos, we’re still getting a clear picture of it, because it’s still a developing story — broke out in the eastern provinces, in particular in Santiago, which is the second biggest city in Cuba, Bayamo, which is a smaller city, but it’s also very symbolically important. The national anthem is called “La Bayamesa,” “the woman from Bayamo.” And El Cobre, which is also very symbolically important, because of La Virgen del Cobre. It’s kind of like the La Virgen de Guadalupe, the Virgin of Guadalupe, but for Cuba, La Virgen del Cobre.

So, there’s one really big city plus two very symbolic cities, and they have these protests. People were complaining about corriente y comida, which means electricity and food. And you also had political slogans like “libertad,” which means freedom. You also had other political slogans there.

So it’s, again, a mix of material problems, electricity, food. We’re in the middle of a major inflationary crisis here, and that’s combined with politics and political discontent. And the government’s response to that has been to basically say, we know things are really bad right now, we’re not blind, we understand things are bad. But the government’s position is that the anger is misplaced, and that it should be fundamentally put on the shoulders of the U.S., due to the fact that, even as bad as things are in Cuba right now and have been, the U.S. is still maintaining a pretty, If not maximum pressure, really high-pressure sanctions strategy against Cuba.

I think that the embargo is completely wrongheaded. I don’t think it’s justifiable, either morally or practically. It’s a mess. And sanctions against Russia for invading Ukraine makes sense, because it’s a war of aggression, Russians are going to get hurt by the sanctions, but Ukrainians are important too, right? You can justify it. 

But Cuba’s not invading anybody. And all the sanctions do is, they make the government kind of hold up and get down into the trenches, and fortify themselves, because they feel like this northern superpower is trying to overthrow them and impose a puppet regime. And so, as a nationalist government, first and foremost, they cannot allow what they see as foreign intervention in Cuban affairs.

So, it’s counterproductive, on top of just being flatly unethical, because of the fact that the burden is almost exclusively being felt by everyday Cubans who are just trying to live their lives.

RG: And no government is perfect, I’m sure the current Cuban government could make some different decisions, but how much room do they have? What could they do differently, within the context of these lawsuits by Americans around the world? The state sponsor of terror designation, the treasury sanctions, the embargo. What policy room for maneuver do they have that they’re not using?

AP: There are very clear reforms that they could do here that I think that would make life better. One of them is they really just need to give up on the ag model, the agricultural model that they’ve been using for years. It doesn’t work. They really have to shift to something like the Vietnamese or Chinese models, or adapt it to Cuban conditions, but do it.

And they’ve been doing experiments for years on a more market-oriented economy, and don’t just have this system where you have to produce so much, and everything above this quota can sell for the market, but everything under this quota you have to sell to us at a price we determine. That model just does not work, flat out.

And you’ve got to liberalize the agriculture, you’ve got to shift to a small farmer model where people own the land again, and then can invest in it, and then can import directly, not having to depend on the state and its institutions’ fuel, tractors, inputs, that kind of thing, that they can potentially also export and get hard currency for that. I think that that would be a huge help, because Cuba is an extremely agriculturally-rich island. 70 percent of it is arable, 90 percent of it in a pinch. That is an insane surface-area-to-arable ratio. And there is no good reason why Cuba needs to be importing 60 to 80 percent of its food, especially when it doesn’t even export sugar anymore.

Now, with all that said, I think that’s a clear example of a domestic reform that they need to do. But on the other end, part of the problem, I think, is, there’s a lot of reforms that would have been extremely delicate, and extremely difficult, even under the best circumstances, like political reforms. And they were put off, and they were put off, and they were put off. And now, to do them under these circumstances, might be seen as a repeat of what happened in the U.S.S.R., right?

What is the lesson a lot of these socialist countries drew from Gorbachev? Gorbachev reformed the economy and politics at the same time. He also mismanaged the economic reforms. People were very miserable, they were discontented, blah-blah-blah. But if you first reform the economy, maybe then you can reform the political system with people who are, by and large, if not in love with the system, at the very least, they’re like, I can work with this. I don’t want change because change can be scary, this is the devil I know, whatever, right?

But now, how do you do those really deep political reforms, or seemingly potentially dangerous economic reforms in ways that don’t just fuel the fire? That is, I think, the kind of the catch-22 that they’re in right now.

RG: And the Soviet leadership also thought that If they surrendered in the Cold War, and did these reforms that the West wanted, that the West would embrace them, and lavish a new Marshall Plan, basically, on the post-Soviet world, which was just a fundamental misreading of the West’s posture toward Russia. We were not going to suddenly turn them into friends; it was much more intractable. You know, they believe that it was ideological, and it was obviously partly ideological, but it was also just geopolitical and imperial.

And so, I would imagine that the Cuban leadership understands the same thing, that just giving up is going to lead to probably the same looting that you saw post-Soviet collapse.

AP: And when they talk to people— Elián González said, Cuba won’t become a Costa Rica or something, it’ll become a Haiti. Like, I’m not saying he’s right or wrong, I’m just saying this is kind of—

RG: Elián González? The Elián González?

AP: The Elian Gonzalez.

RG: Oh. Look at that.

AP: Yeah. He was at my house before he left in the U.S.

RG: No way.

AP: Yeah, yeah. My dad helped work on his case.

Yeah, Elián González made that comparison. I’ve also seen people say we’re going to be like the D.R. or something, and there’s going to be a lot of violence and instability. In addition to, the Americans are going to come, blah-blah-blah. So, that’s kind of the government’s mindset.

And one thing that I’ve told people is like an analogy for this is, maximum-pressure U.S. sanctions, and political pressure, economic pressure, are kind of like a Chinese finger trap with Cuba. By trying to tear the government apart, it actually consolidates the government’s argument that they are besieged and, because they are besieged, they cannot allow the kind of liberalization, be it political or economic, that many people, even within the government, would like to see.

And so, it’s actually counterproductive. But because you have this very staunch lobby in Florida, the cruelty is the point, it’s to make everyday people hurt. Because it’s not that, especially with the older exiles — who didn’t live their whole lives under Fidel and just happened to come in the last few years — for these people, they don’t just hate the government. Many of them have a lot of frustration and anger at everyday Cubans, because they’re like, you guys are traitors, because you guys let Fidel into power, you kept him in power, you supported him. And then things got bad, and now you turn to us. Like, screw you.

And so, it is emotional. It isn’t realpolitik. This is, in many ways, a revanchist policy.

RG: Right. They’re going to make them pay.

AP: Exactly.

RG: Well, this has all been very depressing, but I very much appreciate you joining me anyway. Thank you so much.

AP: Thanks for having me on. Anytime. 

Deconstructed is a production of The Intercept. This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. The show is mixed by William Stanton. Legal review by Shawn Musgrave and Elizabeth Sanchez. Leonardo Faierman transcribed this episode. Our theme music was composed by Bart Warshaw.

If you’d like to support our work, go to theintercept.com/give. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to the show so you can hear it every week. And please go and leave us a rating or review. It helps people find the show.

If you want to give us additional feedback, email us at podcasts@theintercept.com, and put “Deconstructed” in the subject line. Otherwise I might miss your message. And, Andrés, what’s your Twitter handle? Because that’s where I see a lot of your work, and I’ve found you to be a really great one to follow on that terrible platform.

AP: Thanks so much. It’s @ASPertierra. I’m also only one of only two Andrés Pertierras on Twitter, so you should find me that way as well.

RG: And the one who’s often giving good book recommendations, that’s the right Andrés.

AP: Thanks.

RG: All right, everybody. Thank you for listening, and I’ll see you soon.

The post Havana Syndrome: How the Biden Administration Is Driving Cubans Into Misery appeared first on The Intercept.

Haiti’s Prime Minister Ariel Henry has been compelled to resign as armed gangs tighten their grip on the nation’s capital, seizing control of police stations, the main international airport, and freeing thousands of prisoners. This week on Deconstructed, researcher and writer Jake Johnston, who has spent more than a decade reporting on Haiti, joins Ryan Grim to discuss the latest wave of violence hitting the country and the events that led to it. Johnston’s new book, “Aid State: Elite Panic, Disaster Capitalism, and the Battle to Control Haiti,” details how U.S. and European goals have continuously undermined the nation’s governance and economy. Johnston is also the senior research associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research where he leads Haiti: Relief and Reconstruction Watch.

[Deconstructed theme music.]

Ryan Grim: I’m Rxyan Grim. Welcome to Deconstructed.

Today, on the show, we’re joined by Jake Johnston. He’s the author of the new book, “Aid State: Elite Panic, Disaster Capitalism, and the Battle to Control Haiti.”

Jake, thanks so much for joining me.

Jake Johnston: Thanks for having me.

RG: This was a conversation we’ve been planning for quite some time, but it turns out that you’ve published your book on Haiti quite into the news firestorm, which seems like [it] happens every, what? Three to ten years? You’ve written for The Intercept a bunch in the past, I’ve been following your great work for a long time, so this is something that you’ve seen unfold. What’s the timeline? How often does Haiti pop into the news?

JJ: Yeah, certainly there’s been a bit of a cycle, we’ve seen this happen time and again. Each decade there’s been a big event that has certainly captured the world’s attention in regard to Haiti, and there’s a contrast there, with the moments of intense attention, and then far longer periods of total silence.

RG: Let’s set the stage a little bit. Let’s start around the earthquake and, also, the election of 2010. That seems to be a defining moment that sets the course for now. So, talk a little bit about this wild election of 2010.

JJ: So, as you’ve mentioned, this was 2010. There was a devastating earthquake, a huge earthquake that hit just outside of Port-au-Prince in January 2010. Hundreds of thousands, up to a million displaced, up to hundreds of thousands of dead. It’s hard to overstate the destruction of this earthquake and the ripple effects that it had for the whole country.

That’s obviously a really challenging environment to hold an election in, right? A million people displaced, where are they supposed to vote? Do they even have their documentation? Things like this. But this was also a moment of extreme importance for the international community. And when we talk about the international community in Haiti, we’re talking predominantly about the United States.

There were $10 billion pledged from Governments across the world to “build back better,” which is a phrase that keeps getting recycled in various different contexts. 

RG: It’s just too good. You’ve got to keep using it.

JJ: Too vague and too good to not keep using it.

So, that was the mantra. There’s all this money. Bill Clinton was the special envoy in Haiti, Hillary Clinton was secretary of state at the time. So this was not just important in terms of the money, but this is a political thing.

RG: She was sending Cheryl Mills over there, her chief of staff.

JJ: Yeah, all the time, right? Exactly. So there was high level interest in this process, and that meant there was a lot riding on this electoral process, and getting a government that could be the desirable ally that we have looked for in Haiti for a very long time, and failed to achieve, certainly from the U.S. perspective. And so, there was a lot riding on this vote, and a lot of challenges to doing it.

And so, it was really pushed forward by these international actors. [They’re saying] OK, we have to have this vote, we need to have this vote. So they scheduled it about nine months after the earthquake, and it was, quite predictably, a mess, right? It was really difficult. People were turned away from the voting polls.

And that day of the election, around midday, a number of political parties held a press conference. And there’s an interesting note. I get into this in the book: the statement had been drafted ahead of time, the room had been reserved ahead of time. This was a coordinated effort. But, [at] midday, on the election, a group of parties come together and denounce the whole thing as a fraud, accused the government — then led by René Préval — of orchestrating this huge fraudulent plan to choose his new leader, denouncing the whole electoral process, and setting off street protests, both in the capital and in rural areas, that shut down the vote entirely.

And so, hours after that, there’s a meeting at the headquarters of the chief U.N. diplomat in Haiti. And this goes back to a little more context, but the U.N. has had a permanent presence in Haiti for the last 20 years, a political mission on the ground that has served, in a lot of ways, as sort of a de facto fourth branch of government in Haiti. And they convened all the diplomats together and The Haitian prime minister at the time. And actually discussed at that meeting sending a plane to take the president and fly him out of the country. At this point, it was no longer an election, this wasn’t about democracy. This was just a political problem to be solved, right? And it goes on from there.

Of course, when we actually get the results of the election a few days later, it shows an extremely tight race between three candidates, which generates more chaos and more confusion and what’s going to happen. And, in that context, the U.S. reached an agreement, put some pressure to the Haitian government to bring the organization of American states — this is the regional grouping, all of the hemispheres governments — to come in, analyze the vote, and give the true accounting of what happened.

But what they ended up doing, without any full recount of the votes — without any statistical analysis of the 20 percent of the vote that never even showed up at the tabulation center — is they just changed the results. And they took the government-preferred candidate out, and they put this individual and ostensible newcomer to Haitian politics — a popular musician, Michel Martelly — into the all-important second-round vote. And he eventually went on to win the presidency. 

RG: And Michel Martelly, in my understanding — you know Haiti and U.S. foreign policy better — this was Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton’s candidate. Like, this is who they wanted to see make it through.

JJ: Yeah, I’d say this: I think there are often crimes of opportunity, right? And so, whether this was their candidate from the beginning, or whether there was a moment—

RG: This is a guy we can do business with.

JJ: Exactly. Was recognizing that, [of] what was on the table in front of them, this was the one they wanted, right? And I think there was that choice that was made. And Martelly and his campaign had a lot of help. I mean, this was the time where there was a lot of celebrity interest in Haiti. You had big name Hollywood stars showing up on the ground, Sean Penn was down there, right? Later became an ambassador-at-large for the Martelly government. Big musicians, Wyclef, Pras. So, there was a lot of tension and high-level focus.

And Martelly is a showman, right? That’s his background. He’s a stage persona, and I think he played into that really well, and fooled a lot of people.

RG: And your assertion here that they just changed the votes, that’s not just a supposition on your part.

You and I were talking yesterday about this radio interview that has bounced around Haiti for years now. The head of the electoral commission, years afterwards, went on the radio with a journalist. We can play a very tiny clip of it, [but] it’s not in English.

[Interview audio plays]

RG: Tell us basically what the head of this election commission is claiming here. Claiming isn’t the word; admitting to and apologizing for is, I think, a better way of putting it. 

JJ: I mean, in most simple terms, he’s saying, “the results we presented were not the actual results.”

RG: Directly from the head of the election.

JJ: That’s what he’s saying. And it’s also, it’s not just the head of the electoral council. There were members of the electoral council who denounced this as it was happening. We did our own — the organization I work for, the Center for Economic and Policy Research — we transcribed by hand 12,000 tally sheets that were processed by the electoral council and posted online, and ran our own statistical tests to see where the fraud was happening and what was going on.

And it’s not that there was no fraud. The real lesson here is that any choice about who was going to advance out of this process where the vote was shut down halfway through the election on election day, where a million people were displaced and turned away from the voting polls, where 20 percent of the vote never even got counted or brought to the— It was going to be a political decision. You couldn’t tell who won this election, right? It was that flawed.

And so, you had to understand that any answer they gave was going to be political, unless you reran the election. And the government actually offered to do that, and it was flatly rejected by the international community.

RG: And so, you use the phrase “aid state” as the title of your book. What to you is an aid state, and how does Michelle Martelly and his gang fit into that?

JJ: Yeah. So, I use it because it’s really easy, I think, for folks coming in and out, or seeing Haiti pop up in the news once a decade, or something like that. When there’s a crisis, you look at Haiti and you say, oh, this is a failed state. The impression that that gives is [that] Haiti can’t govern itself. Of course, more outside intervention is the answer to what’s happening.

And so, “Aid State” is really trying to push back on that as a narrative, and to broaden our understanding of what has led to the failures we see. And that involves not just Haitians; and, in fact, maybe in a leading role, non-Haitians, and, particularly, foreign governments. And, again, the United States government, who’ve played an outsized role in Haitian affairs, certainly over the last few decades. But this is obviously a story that Haitians know go back centuries, to its independence, successful slave revolts, a country punished by the rest of the world for its freedom, right?

And so, there’s a long history there, this dynamic has existed. But I think, really, over the last 20 years, and especially since the earthquake, this influx of foreign assistance of outside assistance and support has had really negative political implications.

And so, the way Martelly, I think, fits into this most directly is, again, through this electoral process, he was then in power. And then you had all of these international actors whose interest was supporting this new person in power, getting all of their projects done. Ribbon cutting ceremonies, big brochures and flashy things, and celebrity intrigue. It was something other than the interest of the Haitian people at stake here. And so, he was sort of the frontman for this whole thing, but the results of that are twofold: one, these aid policies totally undermined local organizations, the state itself. And two, Martelly was in power, systematically dismantling those institutions from the inside as well.

And instead of saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, why are we backing this guy as all of these democratic checks and balances and corruptions start to proliferate? We just continually backed that because, for the United States, for external actors, the priority in Haiti has almost always been short term stability over all else.

RG: I think for a lot of well-meaning people who are following the tragic saga of Haiti over the last decades and centuries, they often throw their hands up and say, “what a shame, what a mess, we really don’t have any other choice other than to have the U.N. send in a peacekeeping force, or we just need to take control of this of the situation from them,” without thinking, that is what external forces have been doing to Haiti for decades. 

Yet we continue to think, well, the problem must be the Haitians. It can’t be the thing that we keep doing year after year after year. We just need to do it better and harder, and this time we’ll do it.

JJ: And we’ll learn our lessons, right, we’ll learn from our past mistakes. 

RG: Right. And so, in that context, I want to talk about some of the internal Haitian politics that you touch on in the book, and I hope that listeners can think about it through the lens of the constant screwups, the constant making things worse that the West has brought to bear when it comes to Haiti, rather than thinking, OK, well, it’s a real shame, the U.N. needs to send in a bunch of Kenyans to crack down. To think, well, maybe not. What if that’s not the thing to do? What if we’re going to get the same result from that that we got all these other times?

So, a couple of characters in your book that I wanted to linger on: Guy Philippe, who has such an absolutely fascinating life story. A police officer who runs death squads and leads a coup, but is a much more complicated figure today.

So, who is Guy Philippe? 

JJ: This is a fun history here with Guy. Guy’s story in a lot of ways starts in the early 90s. He was trained in Ecuador, actually, he was training to become part of the military in Haiti. Ecuador, strong presence of U.S. military at the time. Human Rights Watch said he received U.S. training at this time in Ecuador, and he’s there with a cadre of other people training to become military officers. When they come back to Haiti, they come back to the recently restored Jean Bertrand-Aristide, who was overthrown in a military coup in 1991.

So, in ’95, he actually disbands the military. Says this military for decades, being involved with coups, internal repression. We don’t face external threats, we face internal threats, and the military is not for that.

RG: The Dominican Republic is not invading.

JJ: Exactly. So, the military gets disbanded, and that leaves a bunch of these new recruits — including Guy Philippe — with nowhere to land.

RG: Like De-Ba’athification did in 2003.

JJ: And, at the same time, there’s a new police force being stood up in Haiti with a lot of international support. Vetting officers, overseeing who’s getting put into it. And a bunch of these military, trained for the military, get incorporated into this new police force, including Guy Phillipe, and a number of other former military or people trained for the military are put into positions of leadership in the police.

And, in 2000, Guy Philippe leads an attempted coup or attack on the National Palace, then held by René Préval, the president. But he was about to hold an election, and the most likely outcome was Aristide’s return to power in 2001.

RG: So it was really against Aristide.

JJ: A preemptive strike to stop Aristide from coming back to office.

After that, this is denounced. OK, Préval, this is a coup. And kicks off from the police — a number of these section chiefs or people who control different communities in Haiti — a big group of them who were involved in this are all trained in Ecuador, this is a little clique. And they flee to the Dominican Republic, get safe haven from the Dominican authorities there, and basically set up shop across the border, and begin organizing, training, and coordinating to lead paramilitary assaults on Haiti, which they begin in earnest a number of years later in 2004.

And that is the paramilitary side of, again, not the only reason or the only factor in the overthrow of Aristide in 2004, but certainly a significant player in that effort.

RG: And so, he has hinted that he had links to the U.S. Do you think that’s accurate? And, also, what was his beef with Aristide?

JJ: Yeah. His beef with Aristide. I mean, this is a guy who has said just about everything over the years, right? He’s an admirer of Che and Fidel, but also Bush and Pinochet, OK? So, what his ideology is here [is] very much unclear, or what his ultimate goal is, I think, is also a little bit unclear.

What we know is that he was also deeply involved with drug trafficking at the time. I think as much of anything, from what I understand, there was some sort of a beef over control of the drug trade.

In terms of U.S. support, there’s no doubt that there was general U.S. support for the coup. The U.S. was trying to undermine the Aristide government from the moment they stepped foot in office. And so, there was a certain shared goal in that regard with Guy.

RG: He was involved in ousting him the first time.

JJ: Exactly. So, going to something in the book, I cite a former CIA analyst who was looking at this at the time, and sees this group of guys in the Dominican Republic, and is like, they’ve got good logistics, good comms, they seem to be getting all these big arms. Like, OK, what’s going on? You know, is this us? Was the CIA doing this?

According to him, he looks into it. No, it wasn’t the CIA, but it was the State Department that was actually providing this support. And at the time, the State Department has a number of these cold warriors who had been around in the early ’90s when Aristide was overthrown the first time, and they’ve come back, and just tried to overthrow Chavez in Venezuela; Chavez was the only one in Latin America who actually denounced the coup against Aristide in 2004.

So, there are all of these players and connections. And there’s something obviously much bigger than just Haiti, right? This was a concern of the neocons inside the Bush administration at the time.

And so, I think the best evidence we have is that that was the main U.S. support for this effort. It was actually through the State Department. 

RG: And so, then Guy Philippe, gets, what? Kind of backstabbed a little bit? He’s successful in coup-ing Aristide, but he doesn’t really manage to take power. And then it seems like he slinks away back to obscurity for a while.

JJ: Yeah, there’s a certain parallel to what we’re seeing now, where Guy is going around and claiming himself to be president.

At the time, his threat of force was almost leverage to push Aristide out, right? Not necessarily a direct threat to Aristide, but provided the leverage necessary to push Aristide out.

So, he made deals with many people in the private sector who were pushing for Aristide out, civil society, etc. He was the muscle behind this political effort to topple Aristide; or, at least, the perceived muscle. But, once Aristide’s gone, nobody wants him to be the one in power, or his buddies.

And so, exactly. He gets basically ditched by the people who had just been using him to seek this overthrow, and basically fades [away]. Originally, his base of support is in the Grand Anse. It’s one of the most remote parts of Haiti. It’s in the Southern Peninsula, all the way at the tip there, and that is where he stayed for most of the next decade, but he pretty quickly found himself on the DA’s most wanted fugitive list.

Those drug connections came out pretty quickly after this, and there were a few high-profile raids, helicopters—

RG: And he says he’s framed. He says this was—

JJ: Because he did plead guilty — eventually we can get to this part of the story — he gets arrested many years later after winning a Senate seat, in fact.

RG: So, he runs for Senate in these later elections. He believes, probably, this is a coming-out-of-the-shadows, this is becoming legit. You write in the book about the bandits becoming legal in this election.

So, talk about that one. 

JJ: Yeah. “Bandi legal,” which is “legal bandits.” It was the name of a song, one of Martelly’s popular kompa songs from back in the day. So, these guys have power and then they’re making it a reality.

Again, [this] gets into this concept of an aid state, and how this intervention plays out, because it’s not just public services that have been outsourced through aid programs; it’s elections themselves. Foreign donors are funding the electoral apparatus, they’re providing training to the electoral council and the polling staff. They’re writing the rules of the game, right? The electoral law, the law and political parties. These are drafted with the consultation of foreign experts. And then, ultimately, it’s a foreign entity that deems it legitimate or not.

And so, there were a few changes in the runup to this election. One, you only needed 20 signatures to create a political party, so you had this massive proliferation of parties. Hundreds participating in this, because you get access to resources, access to voting booths, [which] can be manipulated, but they also removed a criminal check in the electoral law. And so, even people who had criminal backgrounds, have been arrested, were perfectly allowed to run in this electoral process, and Guy Philippe is certainly one of those.

And so, he participates, and there’s no doubt that he has a certain base. We can be honest about that. And he won the election, and was set to take office in January, 2017.

Now, it’s interesting, because here we see these Faustian bargains that are made all the time in Haiti with international community brokers. So, that electoral process, it was so fraudulent, so problematic, that they ended up having to throw out the presidential results altogether and re-hold the election. But all of the deputies and senators elected in that process? Well, they agreed to swear them all into office, because Haiti needed some functioning institutions. You need somebody to work with.

So, with the U.N. and the U.S., they swore in a legislature full of bandi legal, right? I mean, they had just dominated an electoral process marred by violence and fraud, and who wins in that environment? 

RG: And, as you point out, too, the Haitian people are not idiots. They had recognized that these elections were fraudulent. And so, participation in them had dwindled quite low, which makes it even easier to go ahead and just kind of—

JJ: Exactly, that low electoral bias. So, this electoral process had about 20 percent participation, right?

RG: It looks like American levels, it’s so low.

JJ: Yes, faith in institutions might be even lower in Haiti than here. But in all seriousness, in that environment, it takes very little to actually secure political office, right? And you’re talking about not that many votes that you need to get the spot that you’re looking for.

RG: All right. So, he then winds up locked up. How does Guy Phillipe go from senator to a federal prison inmate? 

JJ: Yeah. So, certainly, this was just a few weeks before he was set to be sworn in, maybe even less days. And he went into the Capitol, to Port-au-Prince, he had largely stayed in his base of support during the campaign and electoral process, but he shows up in the Capitol and goes on the radio.

And somebody got a tip somewhere that he was there. And that’s how they found him, they showed up and they arrested him. There’s a whole sort of saga of DA agents driving him around Port-au-Prince trying to avoid political actors in Haiti who are lobbying to have him released but, of course, he’s quickly sent off to the U.S.; “extradition” is sort of a difficult word to use in this context, because there’s no real legal process—

RG: Rendition seems like a more accurate term.

JJ: Totally fair, right? I mean, there’s a reason why the U.S. arrests a lot of high-profile people in Haiti and brings them there for drug trafficking, because you don’t actually need to go through an extradition process.

RG: You throw them in a van, put them on a plane, and you’re in Miami. 

JJ: You got them in U.S. custody.

So, that is what they did with Guy. And I think you can criticize that. Guy certainly did, and plenty of Haitian politicians did, whatever their motivations may be.

But, fast-forward six plus years, Guy just got out of prison.

RG: And he pled guilty to drug trafficking.

JJ: He pled guilty to a lesser charge.

RG: He was going to get convicted no matter what. I mean, he was saying he was set up, basically, right? But no chance of fighting it.

JJ: Yeah, and he blames ineffective counsel, and appealed this multiple times, and fought it out. He got a nine-year sentence. He pled guilty to money laundering related to drug trafficking, based on money laundering for drug proceeds, and coordinating with the Colombian cartels and corrupt police officers to facilitate the entry of drugs into Haiti and, eventually, onto the United States.

He served just over six years, and then was released this last fall, when he was then held in an ICE detention center for about two months while the Haitian government and U.S. governments negotiated, discussed, debated, figured out what the hell they were going to do with this guy. And they ended up deporting him back to Haiti with a planeload of other people from ICE detention centers in November of 2023.

RG: What I hear from Haitian sources [was], after he came back, he’s even more eloquent in his revolutionary speechifying, he spent a lot of time in prison reading revolutionary tracts. And he’s always kind of had, like you said, he talked about Fidel, he talked about Che, but he also talked about Pinochet. But now he seems crisper in his kind of revolutionary PR, and seems wildly popular.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but he does seem like a powerful figure at this moment now. What a wild turn of events. 

JJ: It is certainly wild. I think, for me, personally, and I think a lot of folks in Haiti, they don’t necessarily believe the rhetoric, right?

RG: Of course.

JJ: But I think you do have to understand that he is saying things that appeal to a lot of people, right?

RG: And what is he saying? What’s his message, generally?

JJ: A perfect example is his response to this new presidential council. Which is, negotiate with these external actors, with CARICOM, with the United States. And he says, the time of foreign powers picking our leaders is over. It’s up to Haitians to determine our future. That’s something that’s going to resonate with people in Haiti, right? He said one thing that I think is not a particularly popular opinion in Haiti, is amnesty for these armed groups.

But there’s an important thing to flesh out here, because he actually went on to explain what he meant by that, right? And he said, we need to understand the networks that financed these armed groups. Who armed them? What are the political connections, what are the connections with the private sector, with the business elite? Because we know that these connections exist. If we ever want to do something to stop this, we need to understand the system that we’ve created and unwind it.

And, again, I don’t think he’s the one to do that, I don’t think he wants to do that. But he’s not wrong, and he’s the one making that case. And I think that’s a really dangerous thing. I think it is a risk to underestimate his ability to obtain significant popular support.

RG: And so, when he was running for senate, he campaigned with Jovenel Moïse — who’s the president who was assassinated back in 2021 — who was, himself, had kind of a— Would you call it an alliance with the G9 and the gangs in Port-au-Prince, or some type of an understanding?

Let’s talk about Moïse a little bit, and his politics.

JJ: Yeah. So, Jovenel Moïse was the handpicked successor to Martelly. And Martelly made this plan pretty clear from the get go: he’s my choice, he’s going to come into power, he serves his five-year term, and then I’m coming back. You can’t do consecutive terms in Haiti.

RG: Like Putin did, you need to break it up a little bit.

JJ: Right. So, he was the guy to break it up, and he was a strategic choice. He was from outside of Port-au-Prince. This is a country, a nation where you have the Republic of Port-au-Prince, and then everything else. And the government is basically absent in everyone’s lives outside of Port-au-Prince, and even large parts of Port-au-Prince, which is a bigger dynamic we can talk about.

He was a rural entrepreneur, an agricultural guy who had this banana plantation. His nickname in the campaign was “the banana man.” And they’ve done a lot of work on this. I went up to the banana plantation. I mean, it was a way to launder state money to your preferred candidate. It was never a successful banana exporting operation at all.

But it did succeed in giving him a mantra, a name recognition. And, again, this was a deeply flawed electoral process with very low participation, but he did eventually emerge victorious from that process, and take office in 2017. But he faced immediate hurdles in office.

I think, again, we say, oh, there was just an election. Why doesn’t this government have a mandate? Why don’t they have legitimacy? Well, you got 500,000 votes in a country of 12 million people. It just doesn’t actually mean that much to most people. So it’s about what you do, right? And how you can build a coalition once in power to actually govern and deliver for the population.

And there’s a dynamic that’s played out in Haiti for a very long time, where political leaders in Haiti are more responsive, and get their legitimacy from external actors, generally the United States. So if you have the support of the U.S., it sort of gives you carte blanche to not bother building that domestic base or that political coalition in the country, because you perceive that you can just go on. If you have U.S. Support, nothing can stop you, right?

And I think, in the end, that was ultimately Moise’s undoing, was that he failed to build any sort of coalition or broad coalition to actually govern Haiti. And, at each moment of crisis, when the terms of parliament expired and he was ruling by decree, when people said his mandate expired and he should leave office, instead of broadening your support, instead of reaching a deal with opponents, the U.S. came in and said, nope, we still recognize him. Nope. You have another year in your term. And that empowered him to push forward in his agenda that faced stronger and stronger and stronger rejection, and ultimately ended in his assassination in July of 2021.

RG: You see the same dynamic, I think, in Israel, that anytime Israel would encounter difficulties negotiating with the Palestinian interlocutors over the last decades, they would just say, well, the U.S. has our back anyway. We have zero incentive to compromise one inch.

Israeli political parties that urged compromise were then undermined, because the hard right would be like, well, compromise? Why? Uncle Sam’s got us to the hilt.

So then, let’s talk about Barbecue. Let me tell his, like— I don’t know if it’s a fantasy or not, but it’s the story that kind of Barbecue supporters tell of him. And, if it were true, it would be the most incredible Marvel backstory you could ever possibly imagine.

So, imagine you’ve got a kid, his mom sells barbecue on the side of the street. He becomes known as “Jimmy Barbecue,” he becomes a police officer, widely regarded as one of the best police officers in Port-au-Prince. 

He serves more than ten years, and then his enemies — his corrupt enemies on the inside — falsely accused him of involvement in a massacre or several massacres. And he’s eventually, as a result, forced out of the police department.

That kind of origin story turns him into this Robin Hood gangster superhero who’s going to take vengeance out in the areas that he controls. He’s a just Robin Hood, and has become the spokesperson for this gang or this network of nine gangs, who are now in a revolutionary effort. They seize power in Haiti for the Haitian people.

That’s the kind of Marvel version of Barbecue’s story. So, tell us who is Barbecue. It’s a good story, right?

JJ: It’s a fascinating story. I share your, you know, if it was real, it would be great.

RG: Yes. It’d be incredible.

JJ: And yet it’s not. So, Chérizier is somebody who I’ve been familiar with, investigated, looked into for a long time. So, yes, I think that is probably how he got his nickname, he was indeed a police officer in Port-au-Prince.

RG: He was indeed accused of being involved in massacres.

JJ: Yeah, but this is an interesting little bit, because I think going into the origins of his separation from the police forces is illustrative.

So, a lot of attention has been focused on this massacre in La Saline where two politically connected armed groups clashing over turf resulted in up to 70 civilians dead, OK? And Barbecue Chérizier has been publicly alleged to have been involved in that. But the story of Chérizier begins before that, right? It begins almost exactly a year before that, at a school in the Grand Ravine neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, which is an incredibly impoverished part of the city. And there was a police shooting at that school.

I was in Haiti at the time, and the reports, a bunch of people dead at the school shooting, nobody really knew what was happening. And just a few days after it, I went down to the school with a reporter from Al Jazeera who had the car and the logistics to actually get me there. And we started talking to the people there.

There was a ceremony happening at the school, family members and community members who had lost people in the crime, in the massacre, and whatever had happened, we were trying to figure it out. The courtyard, littered with bullet shells. Big bullet shells, right? Blood still on the ground, staining the courtyard.

And people told the story of what happened, which was: there was a police operation, an anti-gang operation in the neighborhood, and police believe that there were people they were after hiding on the school grounds. And this school, it’s sort of an oasis in the middle of a concrete jungle. It’s got big trees in a place where there are very few trees, it’s got a surrounding wall. It was a refuge.

But the police come into the school. They say, where are these guys? They say, nobody’s here, nobody’s here. But then the director of the school hears from one of his staff that, actually, there’s a few guys hiding in this shed on the property. And they tell the police that.

The police open the shed doors, and the guys inside shoot and kill two police officers. And the story that was told from the dozens of people we talked to on the ground that day was, after that, the police turned and took vengeance on the school director, on the teachers of the school, and on people who were present there, and beat them in the courtyard, shot them, and killed nine people that day.

And, at the time when I’m doing all of this, I didn’t know who Chérizier was, right?

RG: What year is this?

JJ: This is 2017. November, 2017.

RG: He’s still a cop then?

JJ: Yeah. Oh yeah. He was a member of the police force then.

What was interesting to me at the time was, I was interested in the role of the United Nations police. At that time in 2017, there were more than a thousand foreign police officers stationed in Haiti, and they were running help, they were backing up this anti-gang operation. And so, at the time of this shooting taking place at the school, U.N. police officers were guarding the perimeter of the school. I didn’t even know who the Haitian police officers were.

But there was an investigation launched, and the Haitian inspector general called those officers who were present at the school that day to give their story. And, instead of showing up to participate in that process, Chérizier blocked himself in his neighborhood and got into a shootout with the police, and that was his separation from the force.

He stayed on the payroll and continued to receive money from the police for well over a year, until after the La Saline massacre. But he was divorced from the police then, and that’s, really, what caused this.

And so, there’s a lot of focus on these other things, but I think it’s important to back up and tell that full story. Because this wasn’t some psyop. I mean, this wasn’t an effort to tarnish Chérizier. At the time, nobody even knew who he was. This was just a massacre at a school, and it seemed like justice was important.

RG: So how did he become the dominant gang leader?

JJ: First, we have to push back, even on that narrative.

He’s the most outspoken. He is the spokesperson for this large alliance of armed groups in the capital that we’ve seen sort of starting to work together over the last couple of weeks.

RG: They call themselves, what? The revolutionary armed something-something?

JJ: The new moniker for the big, broader Group is “Viv Ansanm,” live together, which is ironic.

But he is the most outspoken. He might have the most political ambition of any of these armed group leaders, but he’s certainly not the most powerful. And what’s really changed here — this is an interesting dynamic — Chérizier presented himself over recent years, he adopted this sort of revolutionary rhetoric— That was not always the case, that came later, once he was isolated from his prior world.

He framed himself as, I’m the one who’s fighting the bad guys. I’m protecting my neighborhood, but I’m opposed to the kidnapping, to the rapes, to these other groups. I’m protecting my territory and my people from their attacks, right? That was his narrative.

But now, over the last two weeks, this new alliance, the Viv Ansanm, live together, is his direct alliance with those armed groups that he at least claimed to be fighting over the last number of years. And that’s where the power is coming from. The muscle, right? The resources. Because the actual most powerful armed group in Haiti is under the control of a guy, Izo, who is a wannabe rap artist who puts everything he does on TikTok. It is streamed live to everybody, and he got a YouTube Creators Award last year, because of all the followers he has on YouTube. They then suspended his account shortly thereafter.

RG: They’re like, oh, wait a minute. He’s doing it through murder.

JJ: When there was an attack on the National Penitentiary a few weeks ago — which was sort of one of the early events in the last two weeks of chaotic news coming out of Haiti — Izo was flying a drone over it, and the footage from the drone was being broadcast on Tik Tok. None of this was a surprise, but you could see it happening on social media in real time, from these guys, OK?

So, I just want to say that because he’s getting a lot of attention right now, Chérizier. And [it’s] understandable, he’s the one talking. But he’s not the only one fighting right now. He’s not the only one controlling armed groups, and he’s certainly not the one with the most actual firepower.

RG: So, Kenya is now bucking the United States, actually, a little bit. Kenya, in the last couple of days, has said the resignation of Ariel Henry — who replaced Moïse — means that they want a new government in place that will invite them in. The U.S., at their briefing this week, said, no, it’s good, Henry’s team signed it. It’s still legal, it doesn’t matter what.

And they’re also saying, the condition for joining this transitional government is that you have to invite in this foreign force. So, Kenya, don’t worry, you’re still invited, and the U.S. is picking up the tab. They’re balking at it because it’s going to be a debacle for them. They can see that happening.

What would happen if nobody sends in troops? How does this get sorted out? Is there a world where Guy Philippe and the G9 just actually take power? What other domestic power is there in Haiti that isn’t just built in hotel rooms in Texas or Jamaica?

JJ: Yeah, I think there’s a few dynamics to try and provide a little context to it, right? Part of what this has been about, and the proliferation of armed groups, and the strengthening of armed groups in Haiti, is about control.

So, they really took off in 2018, really gained power there. It was a pretty direct response to a nationwide anti-corruption movement that was hundreds of thousands of people in the street. That was the threat, and that’s when you started seeing massacres, that’s when you started seeing fights for territory, that’s when you started seeing higher-powered weaponry getting into the hands of these armed groups, more money flowing in. 

There are connections to bigger interests, private sector interests, elite interests, political interests, right? Unsaid and unspoken about in Haiti are the oligarchs, these families— And we know the names and we probably don’t say them enough, and we probably don’t say them specifically enough, which probably has something to do with their litigious nature. 

RG: I noticed there’s some of those names in your book.

JJ: There’s a couple. We’ll see what I hear back. But, you know, we need to understand this context, that this was created for control. But the reality is, you can say, oh, well, let the Haitian people decide. The Haitian people are locked down right now in the capital. People can’t organize, people can’t take to the streets to express themselves. So, what we’re seeing, what we’re hearing is tightly controlled. And so it’s hard to judge where this real support lies.

What is the average person? I mean, I can still tell you what I hear talking to my friends in Haiti, everyone can tell you their— There’s, obviously, like any place, a diverse array of opinions across Haitian society about all of these issues, right?

One thing we understand is, there is capacity. It’s not [that] everybody in Haiti is crooked or unable to do this. There are highly trained and highly professional people in Haiti who want to do something about the security situation. I think there needed to be a change in leadership and governance in Haiti to facilitate that process, to give some encouragements, morale back to the police, who’ve been saying for weeks and months and years that the leadership of the police is not supporting us, our government is not supporting us. Police officers aren’t even getting paid their salary right now, and we’re surprised that they’re ceding certain ground or not risking their life on a daily basis.

So, we’re talking about spending $600 million on a one-year mission of a thousand Kenyans, and maybe a couple hundred from other countries. That’s three times the Haitian police’s annual budget.

So, I think it’s not just what exists there now, but also, if we’re going to do something to help, what kind of help are we actually providing? Are we importing security, or are we going to try and help Haiti provide a sustainable goal path forward for themselves?

RG: About a year ago, you had the Bwa Kale movement take off. What does it mean, cut the grass?

JJ: Cut it.

RG: Cut it, yeah. Which seemed to be a pretty organic anti-gang and anti-corruption movement from regular people, which turned— Well, it didn’t turn violent. It basically began violently, based on the name, as you can imagine.

JJ: Citizen justice, right? I mean, this was a population. And, again, I mentioned this earlier but, at the root of so much of what we see in Haiti is the absence of the state in people’s lives, right? A broken social contract, a state that is not accountable to or representative of the vast majority of the Haitian people.

You survive, you take things into your own hands, you do whatever you can. And the abandonment of these communities, you totally understand this movement of vigilante justice.

RG: Did it have any success in taking back territory from the gangs?

JK: 100 percent. It was a significant change in the dynamics, for sure. And there was also police involvement too.  

RG: It was teamed up with police in a populist way. There were some police officers. What’s his name? Sniper? This famous guy, famous populist figure. You saw these police kind of almost disobeying orders from the very top, and joining in with the vigilantes. And just murdering— 

JJ: Look, this is a lesson. Community policing is more effective, right? You need ties in the community if you actually want to give that community security.

And we’ve seen that happen. The Bwa Kale as a movement petered out a little bit for, I think, various reasons, but this is still happening in Haiti to a certain extent. Neighborhoods are putting up barricades and working with the police officers who either live in that community or have a base somewhere near there. They’re not going to sit back and take this, right? This is the real lesson of Haitian history, is resistance is real, and they are going to fight for their own future. And that process is playing out.

RG: I wanted to finish by playing this clip from the State Department briefing, where I was at this week. And this is an exchange between me and State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller. I wanted to just get your kind of general reaction to it.

Matt Miller: The multinational security support mission will be there at the invitation of the Haitian government. That is a key prerequisite for their deployment, and it’s what the—

RG: But you guys just made that government in Jamaica.

Matt Miller: It’s what the— Hold on. It’s what the Kenyan government said in their statement. They have to have a government that has invited them with which they can collaborate, and it’s why they’re looking for the appointment of this presidential transition council and, ultimately, a new prime minister. And, ultimately, a new government.

But when it comes to what just happened in Jamaica, again, this was a collaboration of CARICOM leaders, Haitian civil society, the United States, Canada, France, Mexico, Brazil, all of whom have an interest in seeing stability, and all of whom have the same goal, which is to address the immediate security situation on the ground, restore calm, restore peace, restore law and order for Haitians, and then establish the conditions in which free and fair elections can take place. That is our only goal. It’s what we’ve been trying to achieve from the beginning, it’s what we’re continuing to try to achieve.

RG: Are there any Haitians that the U.S. would not allow to come to power through that process?

Matt Miller: There’s not a question of the United States allowing anyone to come to power. Ultimately, as I said, that is a question for the Haitian people.

RG: What jumped out at you from that, from the State Department perspective? 

JJ: Two things. One, the idea that it will be up to a new Haitian government to determine the security assistance they need from external powers, what we’ve been talking about. A condition of joining the new government was accepting the deal that the government that now everyone sort of acknowledges was an illegitimate de facto authority that was doing nothing good, negotiated with Kenya at the urging of the U.S., and that the U.S. plans on funding, right? So, that was a condition for joining the government, so to present that as a Haitian-led process is obviously ludicrous.

And the other thing is just the concept of this as a Haitian-led solution. I do want to say one thing, which is that Haitians have been pushing for a political dialogue, for a political negotiation with Henry to broaden governance, to check his power, to put some structures in place, since the day he took office. And those efforts have been rebuffed over and over and over again. And that same dynamic we saw with U.S. support giving a leader that de facto authority to just push forward no matter the cost of that U.S. support, that’s what’s played out over the last three years.

The situation got worse and worse. The U.S. stayed by Henry, undermined these negotiations, and now presents it like, well, we’ve been asking for a year for a broad-based governance in Haiti. And, rhetorically, sure, they’ve given some lip service to that, but the reality is, they undermine that at every step of the way.

So, to now come out and say, oh, it’s the Haitian-led process. Well, if you had backed it six months ago, a year ago, there may have been an opportunity for Haitians to come around a table, to do this in a more open, democratic way, to speak to the Haitian population as this is going on. But now it’s happening with a literal and figurative gun to everyone’s head, happening in Kingston, Jamaica, where the Haitian participants can’t even fly there because the airports closed. They’re participating on Zoom, right?  And the urgency of making an agreement in 24 hours because you’ve got Chérizier, and armed groups, and Guy Philippe, demanding power, right? 

And so, that puts the Haitians who are trying to come up with a solution in an absurdly difficult bind. So the optics of this whole thing of, of submitting your proposal for governance to a board of foreign leaders who are going to come up with the appropriate pattern is ugly, right? And I think you’ve even heard it from a few people who are participating, that this process was not appropriate.

But the broader framework of trying to balance power, of getting a bunch of people on a presidential council to try and negotiate together. This is, in broad strokes, what has been negotiated and discussed by plenty of actors in Haiti over a period of a year and a half, two years. This didn’t start 24 hours ago. 

RG: Right. Jake, thanks so much for joining me. Really appreciate it.

JJ: Hey, it’s a pleasure to be here.

RG: Alright, that was Jake Johnston. The book is “Aid State: Elite Panic, Disaster Capitalism, and the Battle to Control Haiti.” And that is our show. 

Deconstructed is a production of The Intercept. This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. The show is mixed by William Stanton. Legal review by David Bralow, Shawn Musgrave, and Elizabeth Sanchez. Leonardo Faierman transcribed this episode. Our theme music was composed by Bart Warshaw.

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In 1960, the Congo gained independence from Belgium. Patrice Lumumba was elected prime minister and Joseph Kasavubu president. Within a year, Lumumba was deposed and assassinated. This week on Deconstructed, executive editor of Foreign Affairs and author Stuart Reid joins Ryan Grim to discuss U.S. Cold War paranoia and the plot to assassinate Lumumba. “The great tragedy of these events,” says Reid, who has read the American cables, “the Americans are seeing Soviet ghosts everywhere and every possible move Lumumba makes is interpreted as he’s under Communist influence and from the flimsiest evidence.” Reid’s new book is titled, “The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination.”

[Deconstructed theme music.]

Ryan Grim: I’m Ryan Grim. Welcome to Deconstructed.

Today we’re going to be talking with Stuart Reid, who’s an executive editor at Foreign Affairs but, more importantly, for the context of this conversation, the author of the new book you may have heard of, “The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination.”

We’re going to talk a lot about this new book, but also fit it into the context of what we’ve been talking about on this show recently. That’s the U.S. relationship today with countries that either attempt some form of neutrality, like Pakistan, or have histories of that, but are veering in other directions, like we talked about recently with Indonesia. I think our history of this really informs how we ought to understand what we’re up to today.

I think there’s, really, no better place to start than Lumumba and the Congo. And so, Stuart, thank you so much for joining me here on Deconstructed. 

Stuart Reid: It’s a pleasure to be here. Thanks, Ryan.

RG: And so, let’s set this up a little bit. This is the U.S. and its Western allies because, importantly, Belgium is kind of the main character when it comes to colonialism and imperialism in Congo here. Set the stage for us. By the time Congo finally gets its independence in 1960, Belgium by that point had, well, almost, what? Three quarters of a century of colonization in the area.

Set up for us what type of a colonizer Belgium was, because that turns out to basically drive how independence unfolds.

SR: Right. So, Belgium first became involved in the Congo in the 1880s, when King Leopold II of Belgium founded it, or declared his rule over the Congo River Basin. And what was different about the Congo compared to other European colonies in Africa is that it wasn’t a part of the European state in question; it was actually King Leopold II’s personal fiefdom.

RG: I found that part fascinating. It’s like, this is my thing, not even Belgium’s thing.

SR: And even more bizarre, he never, in his entire life, set foot in the Congo, the place he cared so much about and ruled terribly. As those of your listeners who’ve read the book “King Leopold’s Ghost” will know, his rule over the Congo Free State — as it was misleadingly called — earned him a place in the pantheon of human atrocities, and that there was forced rubber collection, there were famous photographs of people whose hands were chopped off for failing to collect enough rubber, and so on.

So, that was a period of extreme abuse, and it ended, sort of, in 1908, when the colony was transferred to the Belgian state, after an international outcry and early human rights campaign.

RG: You have to be a rather brutal colonizer to have early 20th century Europeans and Americans saying, this has to stop.

SR: Right.

RG: And what was the Congolese role in pressuring the global powers to make that change, that reform?

SR: I mean, it’s not an era I’m an expert on, but my understanding is that, even then, the Congolese voice was not really considered in other powers’ views of what was going on there. So, it was seen as a human rights scandal, but it was informed by, often, missionaries and other white Westerners visiting the Congo.

But in 1908, when it was transferred to the Belgian state, a lot of the same abuses continued. You still had conscription into the colonial army, all sorts of rapacious rule going on. So, it wasn’t as if everything was fixed in 1908, obviously.

RG: So, you have Lumumba born—

SR: In 1925.

RG: OK, 1925. So, Lumumba was born. Talk about his upbringing and education, because that becomes quite relevant to how Independent Congo is able to govern.

SR: So, Lumumba’s personal story is a remarkable rise, especially given the context, which was that the Belgian colonial administration really wanted to prevent the emergence of any sort of Congolese elite. They had this expression, “no elites, no problems.” The idea being that, if you prevented Congolese from attaining the higher rungs of various professions, if you banned certain literature from reaching them, if you prevented them from accessing higher education, then you could forestall the independence movements that were breaking out in other European colonies in Africa. So, that was the context.

But Lumumba, to a remarkable degree, got around that by being a self-taught man who took correspondence courses in French. He was very active in all sorts of societies for various Congolese.

So, backing up: he’s born in 1925. He then moves to the city of Stanleyville, a provincial capital now called Kisangani. And it’s there that he does all that self-education. He meets other Congolese elites, he becomes a postal clerk; so, joining the colonial administration, rising up the rungs. And then he’s caught embezzling money from the post office.

He admitted to it. His excuse was that he was running out of money trying to live life as a quote-unquote “Europeanized African.” I should also point out that he was making less than a fifth of what a white colleague would make for the same work.

RG: He actually did need the money to live a decent lifestyle. Like, that part wasn’t wrong.

SR: Correct. He was sending his children to the good school in town, he wanted them to eat proper food, etc. And the thing to understand about Lumumba is, he was tireless. So, he was always organizing, he was the secretary of many different associations of elite Congolese in Stanleyville. He had magazine subscriptions to pay for, etc.

And so, he was caught embezzling, thrown in jail. And then I think that’s where his political awakening began.

RG: And the way that the Congolese independence movement unfolded was so much different than Algeria and other places. In the sense that, when you think of some of these independence fights, you think of guerrilla fighters, national movements, sometimes sectarian ones. Maybe national fronts come together and win either guerrilla campaigns or actually take over territory. But this was quite different.

How does Congo end up winning its independence in the face of this strategy — “no elites, no problem” — and seemingly overnight?

SR: Yeah. So, for a long time, the “no elites, no problems” strategy works, and you can search hard for and basically not find evidence of any Congolese independence movements until the late 1950s, let’s say; ‘57, ‘58. There had been anticolonial revolts before, but nothing akin to the movements in other colonies for national independence.

And so, what happens, you mentioned those colonial wars going on. That was the great fear in the Belgian’s mind. They looked around and saw what had happened to the French in Indochina, the Dutch in Indonesia, what was going on in Algeria with the war against the French there. And they became fearful of having a Congolese version of that.

Everything really changed in 1959 when, in January of that year, there was an anticolonial riot in Leopoldville, the capital of the Belgian Congo. And that, unlike previous ones, people were openly calling for independence, there was no question about what the Congolese were demanding. And, at that point, the Belgians realized they needed to offload this colony relatively quickly, and they had done basically zero preparation for that.

One detail that sticks out to me is, in 1955, a Belgian academic wrote a pamphlet called the 30-Year plan for the independence of the Belgian Congo. 30-year. The idea being that, only by 1985 would the colony be ready for independence. He almost lost his job because that was seen as heretical and way too fast a timeline. 

Then, in the rest of the 50s, things changed extremely quickly and, by early 1960, in January and February of that year, the Belgians caved and held a roundtable where they negotiated the details of independence with the Congolese. And it was there that they agreed the independence would be on June 30, 1960.

RG: It’s just quite incredible how it goes from completely unthinkable to actually happening. And you’ve got Lumumba himself campaigning around the country in ’59 or ’60, and winds up getting arrested. He gives a speech somewhere way outside of Leopoldville. The next day, people riot, and he gets charged with basically inciting the riot and thrown in prison.

You mentioned that roundtable that’s going on in Belgium. Their main demand is, Lumumba needs to be freed. And I thought it was interesting how you laid out the politics that his supporters obviously wanted him to be freed, for obvious reasons. They support him and they want him there as their leader. But his opponents also wanted him there, because they didn’t want him to be able to sit on the outside and throw stones at the inevitable compromises that they were going to have to make with the Belgians to reach an agreement on independence. So, they say, OK, fine, Lumumba can come up.

He gets let out of prison, and he’s negotiating for independence the next day. He winds up as the prime minister very, very quickly after that. But that’s where that “no elites, no problem” arises for the Congolese.

I thought it was amazing the way that you detailed just how unprepared the Belgians had left the entire country to govern itself. How many college degrees were in the government in that first government? I think two?

SR: Yeah. Two of the 23 ministers had university degrees. And, in fact, there were only about 20 Congolese university graduates in the entire world, because the Belgians had prevented this until very, very late in their rule, when they finally allowed Congolese to attend university. 

RG: And Lumumba, a brilliant autodidact but, himself, hadn’t gone beyond what grade?

SR: Some form of primary school. The education thing, you don’t want to make too much of it because, as you mentioned, Lumumba was brilliant and self-taught. I think the other two characteristics to note about him were [that] he was incredibly charismatic; even his bitterest foes conceded that. He was also an effective what you might call today community organizer, in that he really could rally people, get pamphlets printed, hold meetings. He knew the nuts and bolts of how to organize a movement. 

RG: Right. There’s no question that there were enormous amounts of intelligence and talent. And for a group of people to throw off one of the greatest powers in the world, barely firing a shot, takes a lot of skill, too.

But there’s also value in having not just a college education. Like, that’s the bare minimum. That just, to me, stands in as a proxy for how little experience there was operating in elite circles. Because running a country is not intuitive, necessarily.

SR: Even the contact with outsiders had been so prohibited, so Lumumba and his fellow ministers had very little experience dealing with any Westerners besides Belgian colonial officials.

The other thing is, there were no sort of quasi-democratic institutions. In other European colonies in Africa, you had legislatures. In French West Africa, you had Black Africans serving in the National Assembly in Paris.

You had none of that in the Congo. And so, there were no real institutions to pass on when the country became independent. Not even fake institutions.

RG: Right. And then you’re expected to play cold war power politics at the highest existential level, without any of that experience with institutions, which I want to get to in one second.

But, before we get to that, the problem that kind of blows up that the Belgians had left as a ticking time bomb is the military. So, you had the Belgian-run Congolese military as this institution that had all white officers; I think the highest might have been a staff sergeant, you might have said. And so, this presents obvious problems and contradictions, because Belgium offers independence, but clearly wants to remain influential, wants to extract resources, and still wants to play a significant role.

So, their intent is that they’re going to leave. You know, the entire officer corps has these white Belgians; probably, they would love to do it indefinitely, but certainly for the short and medium term. Lumumba kind of agrees to that out of the gate, but then it leads to this mutiny that basically leads to the unraveling of a smooth transition.

Do you think that there was any way that you could have done a smooth transition without this type of mutiny, given the fact that the Belgians had left them with zero Black officers?

SR: The answer is, basically, no. Because if you think about the timing, Lumumba only took charge on June 30th and, really, on July 1st.

So, the mutiny happens on July 5th. I don’t think there’s really much Lumumba could have done in those four days to prevent the mutiny; that was all sorts of foretold, because of the decisions made earlier. 

RG: Like, if he would have announced we’re going to get rid of the white officer corps and replace it with a purely Congolese Africanized Officer Corps, it wouldn’t have been done, probably, by July 5th.

SR: That would have been hard, to affect that quickly.

The other thing, as you alluded to, is Lumumba himself supported the idea of a white officer corps. I don’t think he was particularly enthusiastic about it but, at a practical level, he came to accept the Belgian argument, which was that, we need to maintain order, the officers are qualified and experienced, and they will be able to discipline the rank and file. That obviously proved completely incorrect, so the soldiers not entirely surprisingly rose up against their all-white officer corps. And that was the spark that lit the fire of the entire chaos to come.

RG: And then the mutiny leads to riots. And what’s the white population at the time? Like 80,000?

SR: Yeah.

RG: And almost all of them, in a matter of months, roll out.

SR: Yeah. I think even faster than that. And that instantly drained the new country of so much expertise. Again, because the Belgian approach had been to have the whites in charge and running things, and you then were lacking in air traffic control officers, doctors, dentists. All sorts of people who are running the administration and making the country work on a day-to-day level fled with their families, mostly across the river into the French Congo.

And so, the country was instantly bereft of the mechanics of working on a day-to-day level. 

RG: And so, this is where Lumumba turns to the U.N., and the U.N. tries to send in administrators, like air traffic controllers, doctors. Like, these are things that a country needs. And, obviously, you want to have Congolese people in those positions, but you can’t build a medical school and graduate a class of doctors in time for the surgery that’s needed that afternoon.

So, the U.N. does try to surge those types of technocrats and experts in. But then — interestingly and more importantly for our purposes here — they start sending in troops.

So, talk a little bit about how the U.N. for the first time starts sending in these armed blue helmets,

SR: Right. Well, I should add one more, actually, two more elements to the crisis.

One is that, as the white population was being terrorized by the mutinous soldiers, the Belgian government sent in the Belgian military, with paratroopers dropping across the country. In effect invading a sovereign country; they did it without Congolese permission. And then you have the mineral-rich province of Katanga announcing that it’s breaking free from Congo. So, you have those added elements.

The country’s falling apart with these various crises, and Lumumba turns in desperation to the United Nations, sending a telegram to Dag Hammarskjöld, the Secretary General, asking for some sort of help.

RG: Before you move to that, I did want to underline one thing: you pointed out that a lot of the Belgian support for this military invasion — because now it’s an invasion, they’re a different country at this point — was propped up by extraordinary atrocity propaganda, about Belgian women being raped by Congolese. And there certainly was violence, and there certainly was some level of rape and sexual assault, when there’s widespread violence around the country. It seems like it was exaggerated to an absolutely extraordinary degree that relied on a lot of racist tropes about Africans, but without which they may not have been able to kind of galvanize as much public support for that. Is that right?

SR: Correct. That played a huge role. The other thing to note is that the Belgian military was ostensibly protecting its population, but if you look at what they actually did, especially in the province of Katanga, it went beyond that, where they were occupying all sorts of places that had no violence or mutiny going on. This was seen widely and correctly as an attempt by the Belgians to sort of claw back independence.

They had a very different conception of independence from what the Congolese had demanded, and what they had assumed they were getting.

RG: Which helps explain why they were so quick to grant it.

SR: Yeah. To give one more example, there was a thought — this died away eventually — but there was a thinking that the King of Belgium would remain the head of state of independent Congo. There was even the idea that the Congo’s ambassadors to foreign countries would be filled, those posts would be filled by Belgians, so that gives you a sense of what sort of independence the Belgians were thinking of. 

RG: Which would be crazy because, very quickly, the Congolese diplomats are before the U.N. doing battle with the Belgian diplomats. One of the two with college education became a U.N. permanent representative for Congo. So, he goes, making the case for this U.N. intervention.

So, how does that unfold?

SR: So, Lumumba appeals to the U.N. The U.N. impressively reacts with this very fast and large peacekeeping operation, and that was really the first of its kind. Before that, the U.N. had sort of monitored truces and ceasefires, mostly in the Middle East. For the first time, it was being asked to restore order to an entire country.

And so, within a week of the appeal going out to the United Nations, you had thousands of troops drawn mostly from other African countries, other independent African countries, landing in Congo, fanning out and the idea was that they would replace the Belgian troops who had intervened illegally. And so, they start to restore order.

It’s also a moment amid the Cold War, it’s initially seen as this great act of international cooperation. You have the Soviets and the Americans helping with the airlift to get troops to Congo. But there’s a major sticking point, which is that secessionist province of Katanga. The U.N. troops do not enter into that, and Lumumba wants them to help him bring that secessionist province back into the nationalist fold. Dag Hammarskjöld decides that that is not a possibility, and that he doesn’t want the U.N. troops to have to fight their way in and be involved in a secessionist war, which he sees as an internal manner.

And so, Lumumba and the U.N. really clash over what to do about Katanga.

RG: And so, the Katanga separatist situation feels extremely familiar around the world. Because you have these separatist movements that are organized around genuine feelings of kind of local pride among the people who live there. Some of it xenophobic and tribal, some of it just pride in the place where they’ve lived for hundreds or maybe thousands of years. That’s all real.

But then you get the outside actors who see this as useful for their own ends. And so, it didn’t seem surprising to me that the Katangan elite there were the ones that were the tightest with the Belgians. And, as they are kind of these champions of the most radical independence — you know, every region of Congo ought to be independent — they’re also the ones allying with the Belgians, because the Belgian interest is in maintaining access to the this resource-rich area of Congo, and undermining the rest of the project.

So, Belgium takes this L at the U.N., but it’s still able to fend him off from coming in there. So, what options do you think the U.N. genuinely had there?

SR: It’s a fair point. And Lumumba was unrealistic to assume that the U.N. troops would do his bidding; they answered to the security council, not him, even though he invited them in.

Basically, in August, 1960 — so independence in June 30th, mutinies in early July — in August of 1960, Ralph Bunche, the American who was a high-ranking diplomat at the United Nations, he leads this mission to try and introduce U.N. troops into Katanga to negotiate with the secessionist leader there. And he’s scared out of doing so, basically. The secessionists tell him, if you send a single U.N. troop here, there will be a massive war.

He bought into that argument. He had doubts about it, but didn’t want to take a risk. In retrospect, that would have been the time to send in the U.N.. The Katangan secessionist forces were very weak, everything was still up in the air. There’s a good argument to be made that, had the U.N. in early August, 1960, just decisively acted and sent in a bunch of U.N. troops — who, again were fellow Black Africans, would not be seen as so much of an invading force — that this could have stabilized the situation quickly.

Bunche decides, no way. And so, then it takes until much later for the U.N. to enter Katanga. But, even then, it wasn’t until 1963 that the Katanga secession finally ended and it joined the rest of Congo. So, this was sort of always going to be a problem, but I think the U.N. acted late and was overly skittish. And then it allowed the secession to really consolidate, and became more of a fact on the ground that couldn’t be changed.

RG: So, the context of this U.N. decision making, as I hinted at it at the top, is the Cold War.

And so, from the one perspective, the only connection between Lumumba and the Soviet Union seems to be the Belgian Communist Party which is anticolonial, you know, good old lefties, who were always supportive of efforts at independence. And it seems like they may have tried to bribe Lumumba and his party, and were a conduit for information to the Soviet Union.

It appears, though, that the Soviet Union had zero interest. And, actually, kind of zero ability, even if they did have interest, to do anything remotely serious on the ground and in Congo. Whereas, from the perspective of the United States, Lumumba was seen either as an actual secret crypto-communist, or a kind a Fidel Castro, who started out as an anticolonial left-leaning, and then, over time, winds up allying with the communist bloc out of pragmatism, and then becomes an ideologue down the road; there were some in the State Department who thought Lumumba might go that direction.

But there were others that seemed to have more of a finger on the pulse, who were like, no, Lumumba is actually exactly what he says. He is a nationalist and he’s anticommunist. He rejects the entire notion of this secular communism, even rejects nationalizing companies.

So, what was the U.S. perspective on Lumumba, what was the Soviet perspective on Lumumba? And how much do you think the U.S. is serious about its claims that they were worried that Lumumba was a secret communist, and how much of that is just cover for wanting a compliantly pliant dictator there?

SR: The great tragedy of these events, the great irony, is that, if you read the American cables, as I’ve done, the Americans are seeing Soviet ghosts everywhere. And every possible move Lumumba makes is interpreted as, you know, because he’s under communist influence. And from the flimsiest evidence, most of the American officials spun this elaborate conspiracy theory, basically about how Lumumba was going to hand his country over to Soviet domination.

When the Cold War ended and the Soviet archives opened up, it turns out that there wasn’t much about Congo in them, because the Soviets didn’t care all that much about Congo. This is 1960. The Soviet Union was not as powerful as it would later become. Its ability to project power far away from its borders was limited. The Soviets, by all evidence, viewed the Congo as good propaganda, because you had this colonial power backed by the Americans, strangling third world nationalism in the cradle, so you could score some nice political points on the floor of the U.N. But it wasn’t a place where the Soviets ever thought they were going to have serious influence.

The United States and the Soviet Union sort of agreed about Lumumba; they both viewed him as unreliable, and not someone who could firmly be on your side. But, from the American perspective, it was the Cold War, and the paranoia pervaded every act of interpretation.

RG: And it also seemed like sometimes they wanted to push things in that direction just to make it easier for them.

One great example you mentioned is, Lumumba decides overnight that he wants to go visit the U.N., which is a really funny, funny chapter. Like, normally these things take months or years to set up and he just, with pieces of paper, comes down to the embassy and gets visas, and says, we’re coming to the U.N., because we’re clearly not making our case well, we want to be heard in person. And Ralph Bunche, the U.N. guy says, it’d be a nice gesture, he wants to come to the United States. If you sent him on it on a U.S. plane, he’s asked for a U.S. plane. And Bunche points out that that’s another indication, that maybe you should take seriously his claims that he’s not anti-Western, and he’s actually quite pro-Western in general.

And the response from the State Department is incredible. They say, no. Force him to take a Soviet plane, because that’ll show his true colors. I feel like talking about that as kind of naïve or paranoid is almost giving them too much credit. It’s so dumb, it feels orchestrated. Like, even if he’s not an enemy, you have to turn him into one for your own purposes. And so, we’ll force him on a Soviet plane. Which he ends up not taking a Soviet plane, by the way, you mention he just goes down to the airport and commandeers some British plane and just flies it over there.

SR: Yeah. In that particular instant, there’s also a sort of bureaucratic explanation, which is what happens in Washington; official opinion about Lumumba changed before it changed in the Congo. So, that’s why you have Ralph Bunche and the U.S. ambassador to Congo, Claire Timberlake, saying, let’s put him on an American plane. And the response from headquarters comes back: no way, let him go on a Soviet plane.

The officials in Congo quickly got in line with the new mood in Washington, but the crazy thing — and it does it seems so puzzling in retrospect, but here I think you just have to put on your Cold War glasses, and imagine the extreme paranoia and the recency of World War II, and all that — but Lumumba was, as you mentioned, he was so much more pro-American.

To give you a few examples: he signed over the entire mineral wealth of the Congo to an American entrepreneur. He talked about educating Congolese children in American schools, not Russian schools. Even when he was visiting the United States, [he] called on the United States to send American troops to the Congo. So, that is hardly the action of someone who is pro-Soviet, and yet you see it again and again, the Americans just can’t really update their priors, and update their view of Lumumba, which was heavily influenced by their Belgian ally, and see him for what he really was.

With the exception of — you mentioned this earlier — there’s a State Department memo that lays out exactly who Lumumba was, saying, no, he’s not a communist, he’s a nationalist, he wouldn’t submit his country to foreign influence. That memo gets entirely ignored, but it was so refreshing and tragic to read it in retrospect, because you think, OK, someone understood what was really going on here, but it got ignored.

RG: The thing the state department leaders really seized on was, as he’s under intense pressure, and he’s unable to convince the U.N. to do what he thinks they ought to be doing, he says, basically, if you don’t do it, I’m going to call in the Soviets, and I’m going to have them do it. Now, we now know that, even if he begged them to do it, they weren’t going to do it. Like, that wasn’t going to happen. But that kind of hung like a sword over his neck for the rest of his short life.

So, how do we go from there to the plotting that leads to his assassination?

SR: Yeah. So, Lumumba had first tried the U.N., was frustrated with their response, then knocks on the United States’ door. [He] gets rebuffed, isn’t able to meet with Eisenhower, who’s not in Washington.

And so, it is then and only then that he turns to the Soviets, and he asks the Soviet for specific military aid, which he hopes to use so that he can invade the province of Katanga and bring it back to the national fold. The Soviets agree, and send some token aid, basically, but either none or only a very little amount of that aid ends up reaching the Congo because, in the meantime a lot had happened.

So, his appeal to the Soviets set off alarm bells in Washington, the CIA puts in motion this bizarre assassination plot involving poisons that are delivered to Congo, and that the CIA station chief in Congo — a man named Larry Devlin — is told to inject in Lumumba’s food or toothpaste, and it’ll kill him fairly quickly, and make it look like he died of natural causes.

So, there are all these plots in the works, but what happens is, that poisoning plot sort of fizzles because, in the meantime, Lumumba’s been ousted in a CIA-backed coup led by a military officer named Joseph Mobutu, who — spoiler alert — would go on to run the Congo for more than three decades, and become this American client.

RG: What I didn’t realize is that they had been good friends almost their entire adult life, it seemed like. Mobutu was a journalist who was sort of like Lumumba’s, I don’t know about “best friend,” but a close, close lieutenant and ally, all the way through, including suppressing the mutiny. It sounds like they had a falling out around that time.

But, yes. How does Mabuto wind up as such a satisfying alternative to the Americans than Lumumba?

SR: At the heart of this story is this personal betrayal between friends and allies. Mobutu eventually turns on Lumumba, replaces him, and has a hand in his death.

So, Mobutu was very much a background character for a while. He was 29 at the time. And when Lumumba’s government formed and Congo became independent, Mobutu was a junior minister. And then, when the mutiny happens, Mobutu receives this extremely important promotion — which he would later profess to be ungrateful for — and he becomes head of the military, de facto head of the military, and he’s in charge of Africanizing the officer corps. That put him in a very key position.

Lumumba ended up sort of sowing the seeds for his own demise, because in Congo in 1960, amid the chaos, being in charge of the military forces, however tenuous that command was, was the most important position you could have. Just, literally, to be able to move troops from this location to that location, to protect this house and not that house, that became of utmost importance.

And so, to move through some complicated events fairly quickly, as Lumumba’s flailing and trying to put his country back together, the president of the Congo — a man named Joseph Kasavubu, who held the ceremonial position of president — engages in this legally dubious maneuver of claiming that he’s firing Lumumba according to the powers in Congo’s provisional constitution.

And so, the president announces that Lumumba has been fired. Lumumba says, you can’t fire me, I fire you. And so, the two top political leaders of the Congo have announced their mutual dismissal. And into the void steps Mobutu, who had been meeting with the CIA Station Chief, and previewed his plan with him, and received $5,000 in cash, as a sort of incentive to go ahead with this.

Mobutu steps into the void and says, I’m, “neutralizing both politicians.” He begins his announcement by saying, this is not a military coup; it was exactly that. And then, eventually, after he dispenses with the fiction that he’s remaining sort of above the fray and neutral, and puts Lumumba under house arrest. And that’s sort of the beginning of the end for Lumumba. 

RG: The other poignant part was that Lumumba himself had chosen Kasavubu. Kind of a more radical politician than him, different than him in a lot of different ways. And it sounded like Lumumba felt like the two of them together would help to bring Congo together as one nation. And maybe also a little bit about, you know, keep your friends close and your enemies closer. But everyone who knew Kasavubu at all warned Lumumba, do not do this. Like, he will turn on you, you will deeply regret this, you’re being arrogant and not listening to us.

What was your sense of why he made that fatal blunder?

SR: It was sort of the obvious move to do, in a way.

So, Lumumba and Kasavubu were the two big pro-independence figures in the Congo. And, as you mentioned, Kasavubu was actually the more radical one; he had started earlier, called for independence earlier, stuck his neck out earlier, and Lumumba was sort of behind him for a while. Kasavubu was older — I mean, in his forties, I think, because everyone was so young here, but that counted as old in Congolese politics in 1960. And he was sort of distant, and regal, and so, it made sense, in a way, for him to be president of the Congo.

And I think, as you mentioned, also, the idea was, have him as part of the government, inclusion was the name of the game, that’s why Lumumba had so many ministers, 23 ministers from all sorts of ethnic groups and regions and political parties. And, indeed, after the mutiny, there was this brief moment of unity, where Lumumba and Kasavubu are flying across the country in a small plane.

Interestingly, for being relatively quote-unquote, “radical” pre-independence, after independence, Kasavubu becomes very much pro-Belgian, under the spell of Belgian advisers, listening to their advice, and hardly the pro-independence activist he had been known as.

And so, the Americans are also leaning on Kasavubu. One of the things I found in my research was a document that no one else to my knowledge had seen before in decades, which was the outgoing CIA Station Chief in Leopoldville meeting with the president early in August, 1960, saying, by the way, Mr. President, you should consider firing Lumumba, you have the power to do this.

And so, that may have been where the idea was planted in his head, because he ended up following that advice not long after, and escalating the crisis to a new level, and leading to Lumumba’s demise. 

RG: I thought that that was so interesting, how you had this radical who took so many risks when he was without power but, once he had power, he became this establishment figure and stooge for these imperial powers.

And so, why then does Lumumba need to be eliminated? And what do we know about how he was killed?

SR: So, the timing here is important. OK, he’s under house arrest in late November, 1960. He escapes house arrest. He hides in the back of a car with his servants, and slips past the rings of troops guarding his house. And he tries to make it back to his political stronghold in the east of the country, but he’s caught — with CIA help, I should mention — and he’s thrown into military prison. The idea being, OK, now he can’t escape from here. So, that’s December, 1960, is when he’s caught and put in the military prison.

And, as you know, Kennedy had won the U.S. election, was coming into office in late January, the Eisenhower administration was on its way out. And there was a well-founded belief that Kennedy might have a more pro-Lumumba policy.

The Congo was still in chaos despite Lumumba no longer being in power, and there was a real movement among some of Kennedy’s advisors to figure out some sort of solution where Lumumba would be freed from prison; parliament, which had been shut down, would spring back to life; and Lumumba could return as prime minister. This was a legitimate strain of thinking among certain Kennedy advisors who focused on the Congo.

And Larry Devlin, the CIA Station Chief in Congo, knew about this, and so did Mobutu. He was also worried. Both of them were worried that Lumumba could come to power, even though he was in prison.

And then, at a more practical level, there were stirrings among the guards guarding Lumumba that thought that they might rise up and spring their prisoner. He was so popular, and so charismatic, and there were gripes. And so, this real fear develops both in Washington and in Congo that Lumumba might come to power.

And so Mobutu, who’s in charge, or someone from his circle, tells Devlin, hey, we’re going to send Lumumba to his death, to another province where he will almost certainly be killed; there were two secessionist provinces at that point. Devlin hears this explosive news, and he does two things— Or, rather, he doesn’t do two things.

One, he does not try and talk Mobutu out of this plan, even though he had enormous influence with him, he was handing over briefcases of cash regularly, giving advice on every single question. So, he doesn’t tell Mobutu to put the brakes on the operation to kill Lumumba.

And then, quite deviously, he doesn’t tell headquarters in Washington about what’s about to happen. Even as he’s updating them about other twists and turns, he sits on the most important news.

Why does he do this? Because he understood correctly that if he did keep Washington abreast, he would almost certainly be told to intervene and save Lumumba’s life, because at that point, official thinking in Washington had changed. The assassination operation was no more, Lumumba was out of power, and also — to the Eisenhower administration’s credit — they thought that you had to wait until the Kennedy administration took power, took office, and so you couldn’t have big decisions on the ground. 

RG: You can’t assassinate any other foreign leaders during a transition. Good old establishment process norms.

SR: Exactly. And so, Devlin sits on this news. And then, on January 17, 1961, Lumumba is put on a plane, a series of planes bound for Katanga, the secessionist province. He’s tortured the whole flight through, and he’s killed by a firing squad just hours after his arrival in Katanga. And then, three days later, Kennedy is inaugurated.

The mechanics of it have a lot to do with the U.S. power transition, and that explains the timing of Lumumba’s death.

RG: Talk a little bit about Mobutu, who holds power for more than three decades.

SR: So, Mobutu was seen as this pro-American military leader and, at every turn, the United States decided to back him rather than not back him. That begins in 1960, with him taking power in that coup, and it continues throughout the early part of the 60s, where after Lumumba’s death there’s this massive uprising across the Congo, where Lumumba’s followers are fighting the central government. Mobutu requires enormous CIA help to help put down those rebellions.

And then, in 1965, Mobutu, you know, dispenses with the fiction that he’s not technically in charge, and appoints himself president. The United States approves of that coup and recognizes the new government quickly.

And then, throughout the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, the United States is lavishing his regime with aid. The great irony here is that Americans thought they were getting this pro-American dictator; in fact, Mobutu did things that Lumumba would never have been forgiven for. Nationalizing large swaths of the economy, kicking out two U.S. ambassadors for displaying insufficient respect, inviting in North Korean communist military advisers. So, the United States barely got what it paid for.

And then, the Cold War ends, and Mobutu’s outlived his usefulness. He’s become an embarrassment in Washington, the U.S. pulls the plug eventually, and then, not long after, his regime implodes in ’96, ’97, kicking off a devastating civil war.

RG: Well done, U.S.A. and Belgium. Impressive work all around.

SR: You really can draw a straight line from the decisions taken in 1960 by the United States to what ended up happening 30-plus years later in Congo. And what is happening today; so much of the current dysfunction and violence dates to that collapse of the Mobutu regime.

RG: What became of Devlin? Any accountability?

SR: No. He was promoted for his work in the Congo, to Laos, of all places. And then, interestingly, he’s pulled back into the Congo, because no other U.S. official has the type of rapport with Mobutu that Devlin does. And so, he comes back to the Congo as Station Chief, serving two nonconsecutive terms there, which is unusual. And then becomes head of the East Africa branch of the CIA. And, eventually, retires, when he realizes there’s no further path upward.

And where does he go after retirement, of all places? Congo, which was then known as Zaire, and he works for Maurice Tempelsman, the Belgian-American diamond merchant, as Tempelsman’s man in Kinshasa, the capital. And his actions in Congo would define the rest of his career and life.

RG: Well, Stuart, I really appreciate this. Thank you so much for joining me again.

SR: Thanks so much for having me, Ryan.

RG: You got it.

That was Stuart Reid, and that’s our show. Check out his new book, “The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination.”

Deconstructed is a production of The Intercept. José Olivares is our lead producer. Our supervising producer is Laura Flynn. The show is mixed by William Stanton. Legal review by David Bralow. Leonardo Faierman transcribed this episode. Our theme music was composed by Bart Warshaw. And I’m Ryan Grim, D.C. Bureau Chief of The Intercept.

If you’d like to support our work, go to theintercept.com/give. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to the show so you can hear it every week. And please go and leave us a rating or a review. It helps people find the show. And, obviously, subscribe to Intercepted as well.

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Thanks for listening. See you soon.

The post Fatal Neutrality: Lumumba, the CIA, and the Cold War appeared first on The Intercept.

Starting Tuesday, a U.K. court will review Julian Assange’s appeal against extradition to the United States. At the center of the extradition controversy is concern that Assange will be tortured and put in solitary confinement in what’s known as a CMU — communications management unit — in federal prison. This week on Deconstructed, Ryan Grim is joined by Martin Gottesfeld, a human rights activist who was formerly imprisoned in two of the nation’s CMUs. Gottesfeld shares his experience incarcerated in CMU facilities, where his access to visitors including his wife were severely restricted.

Ryan Grim: Welcome to Deconstructed, I’m Ryan Grim.

Later today in the United Kingdom a court will be reviewing, over the span of two days, a high court decision made to extradite Julian Assange to the United States. This could be the final appeal, the final hearing that Julian Assange has before he’s sent over here to the United States.

At the center of the controversy over the extradition in the court proceedings has been whether or not Julian Assange will be tortured, will be mistreated, here in the United States, whether or not he will be put in solitary confinement and, specifically, in what’s known as a CMU, a “communications management unit.”

Now, the Department of Justice sort of pretended to make some kind of offering to the U.K. high court that they would not do this. But then, in the very next sentence of their pleading, they said, unless we decide that we actually would need to do this.

So, to talk today about what a CMU is, and why this has been the focus of human rights advocates who are concerned that he may actually wind up in one of these, we’re going to be joined by Martin Gottesfeld, who himself has spent a significant amount of time in an American CMU.

Marty, thank you so much for joining me on Deconstructed.

Martin Gottesfeld: I’m happy to be here, Ryan.

RG: And so, Marty, before we get to your experience in the CMU, let’s talk about how you wound up in prison in the first place, because I actually think that’s relevant to this conversation. Because it does appear like this is a place where a lot of people who are essentially political prisoners wind up.

MG: Yeah. And I was not the only one, although I do think my case is representative of the larger group, largely representative of the larger group.

So, the government alleges that I am a master hacker with Anonymous. The government also alleges that during a 2014 human rights and child custody matter, I launched one of the largest distributed denial of service —DDoS — attacks that the government had ever seen, to try to free Justina Pelletier, who is being held against her will and against her parents will in a Boston Children’s Hospital psych ward, and then in various residential facilities throughout the state.

The case reached the very highest levels of the political system, with people on both sides, parties on both sides of the aisle commenting on it. Mike Huckabee, Sean Hannity, others on the right, and then the Massachusetts HHS Secretary, uh, Polanowicz; he actually ended up getting involved from the left to eventually send Justina home, which is where most people felt she belonged the entire time.

And before that case, I had been involved — I don’t want to say with, but I guess kind of alongside — Anonymous, protesting the American troubled teen industry, which is also just a political lightning rod, and has been subject to congressional hearings, GAO reports, media exposés, for well over a decade, for the torture and death of American children for profit.

RG: And so, your journey in federal custody actually began in New York. Talk about that a little bit before we get to the CMU, because you actually wrote a piece for us about what it was like in the first jail you were in. And, if I recall correctly, wasn’t Chapo there too? 

MG: So, that wasn’t my first jail. I was arrested in Florida, and then I made a very long extended journey through the federal system to get back to the Northeast. And then I started writing for the Huffington Post, back when you were the D.C. bureau chief. And very shortly after I began writing for the Huffington Post and started a hunger strike seeking pledges from the 2016 election to curtail institutionalized abuse against children and political prosecutions, the Justice Department transferred me to MCC, New York, the Metropolitan Correctional Center, New York, and it’s 9 South SHU and 10 South Sam’s Unit.

And that is where Chapo was held at the time, and it’s also where Jeffrey Epstein later died. And the communications program they have in those units is kind of connected at the hip to the CMUs. It’s run by the same so-called counterterrorism unit inside the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons, which is part of the Justice Department.

And yeah, I wrote a piece there for the Huffington Post — several pieces, actually — about that facility, calling on public officials to do something to reform the facility, because I foresaw, even in 2016, that people were going to die there. And then, sure enough, a few years later, Jeffrey Epstein died there.

RG: It was my sense that your willingness to write for us — both at The Huffington Post and then later at The Intercept — while you were behind bars was one of the things that led to you eventually getting moved to a full-on CMU. Do you think that that’s accurate? What do you think? What drove the decision making that got you stuck in that hole?

MG: Oh, I definitely think it was the journalism. Twelve days after my first Intercept article was when they transferred me to the CMU. And that Intercept article was about El Chapo, his confinement, the conditions of his confinement, the human rights violations, and that was what directly precipitated the move to the CMU.

And then, on top of that, when they transfer you to a CMU, there’s not really a lot of due process involved in that decision, and the courts have tolerated that, but they do have to give you this one-page paper with the supposed justification, right? And mine just basically said, you’re a member of Anonymous, Anonymous is this group that we have to watch. So, therefore, we’re putting you in a CMU.

The problem with that, of course, is that there were other guys in the federal prison system associated much more with Anonymous than I was who never were placed in the CMU. So, Jeremy Hammond was one… And I’m trying to remember the gentleman’s name, but he wrote for the Intercept a lot, but his articles didn’t really challenge federal judges, challenge federal prosecutorial discretion. He just kind of satirized the whole thing. And they were very good, but they didn’t really make people uncomfortable the way my writing made people uncomfortable. I named names.

RG: Right.

MG: And I named facilities. I named specific human rights violations, and that, I think, made them very uncomfortable.

And I can tell you, too, from how I was treated, and the other cases that were there, which I guess we’ll get into in a little while, it certainly seems that I was placed there to suppress my first amendment-protected conduct.

RG: Right. And so, where were you sent, and what’s the place like as you first get there?

MG: I spent time in both CMUs, there are two in the federal system. I was first sent to Terre Haute, Indiana, and that’s kind of the first, and that’s the harsher of the two CMUs. And then, later, I spent time in the CMU in Marion, Illinois.

When you first walk into the CMU, it’s a relatively small unit, there were only about 30 guys there when I first got there.

RG: This is the Terre Haute one.

MG: Yes, the Terre Haute one. It’s actually the old federal death house. So, they built a new federal death row elsewhere in the compound, and then they put the CMU in the old federal death house. So, like, I’ve been inside Timothy McVeigh’s cell. And there are guys who say they’ve seen the old electric chair in the basement, that they have not moved that.

And you can actually see the new death house. Like, we have a very small quote-unquote “outdoor rec area,” right? Where you can go and get fresh air. But they make sure that, within sharp view of that place, whenever you’re outside, you see the actual building, where in 2020 and 2021 they killed 14 people. 

RG: What is your cell like? Because this is the place that people assume we will send Julian Assange if the U.S. successfully extradites him.

MG: The cells are very small. They were built in a former era — the building itself dates to, like, the 1930s — and they were built, I think, for a single person, even back then. So the cells do not actually meet the minimum square footage that the Bureau of Prisons publishes in its own policies, in terms of the minimum needed for a human being.

And then what they did is they went in, and they retrofitted a bunk bed onto each one, so that they can double up, and they did do that in the time that I was there. It’s a sardine can, and it’s smaller than you would get elsewhere in the Bureau of Prisons. It’s a concrete and brick building without air conditioning so, in the summer, you just bake. And if there’s a lockdown, and you’re not out of your cell for three or four days, they’re just baking you, they’re just cooking you like a turkey.

RG: So, while you are there, there are two of you? How much room is [left] after the bunk beds are put in there?

MG: There’s less than 56 square feet in the whole cell, and a lot less if you don’t count the toilet, the actual bunk. Now, I spent time there both single-celled and with a cellmate, it depends on the number of guys they have in the unit. But when you’re a journalist like I am, you’re one of the first people they double.

When they try to double you up as a journalist, they doubled up… They doubled me up with a guy who was a known informant, who was actually in the law library as an informant, right? And when I reacted negatively to that, they acted like I was the one who was misbehaving, you know?

But, again, these are all political cases. So, to force you to bunk with an informant and risk violence, right? Because that’s something that’s a direct risk of violence. And the Bureau of Prisons does not care. They do not care.

RG: Yeah. In general, do people want to be doubled up or not? 

MG: No. People generally want the single cell. You have no modicum with privacy any other way.

RG: Right. So, you’re doubled up. How often can you get … If there’s not a lockdown, how often are you out of that cell?

MG: So, you’re out, actually, most of the day. They pop the doors around six, seven in the morning. During the weekday schedule you’d be out until just before four, and then there’d be a count, and you’d be released after the count anytime between like 4:30 and 5:30.

Sometimes the guards are lazy, right? And they don’t want to do the count right away, or they don’t want to unlock you right away after the count. So, even though the count’s done, you can be in your cell till 5:30, 6 o’clock. Then you’re out for dinner, and then you stay out until about nine o’clock.

On the weekends, there’s an additional count at 10 o’clock in the morning. And so, you lock in at like 9:45 and be out around 10:30, 11.

RG: And so, what’s the communication management part of it? Like, what’s different about Terre Haute or Marion, compared to a typical federal prison? When it comes to your ability to communicate with the public, with your attorneys, with your family, and so on?

MG: So, the unit is entirely self-contained. It’s part of a larger federal complex, but if you’re a regular prisoner in that complex, those times that you’re out, you’re not stuck in your housing unit. You can go to the athletic facilities, you can go to the sports fields. There’s a lot more to do.

In the CMU, when you’re out, you’re still kind of stuck in this sardine can. And the communications management … So, elsewhere in the federal prison system, you get between 300 and 500 minutes a month of phone time, and that’s kind of in flux now with the First Step Act and all that. And you get in-person contact visits; like, your family can come and hug you.

In the CMU, you get two 15-minute phone calls a week, max. You have no contact visits, you basically never leave the little unit until you’re either released or you’re transferred.

Those phone calls elsewhere in the Bureau, they say they monitor, but there’s so much call volume that they cannot really effectively monitor; they kind of keep recordings for a little while in case they have to go back and do something. But in the CMU, your phone calls are monitored in real time, and they can be cut off in real time. And so, several times I was speaking with journalists, and they would just cut the call off. And they would never provide any justification for that.

After NBC dropped the four-part docuseries on my case, they just deleted my wife from my contact information, never provided me any written justification for that, effectively banned me on the phone without providing any written justification whatsoever. And you get lawyers involved, and nothing really happens. The system is completely unwilling to check their discretion. The judges just don’t want to hear it.

The judges in Terre Haute get spun. They hear that this is the terrorist unit for Al-Qaeda guys, and that whatever they file is frivolous. And these judges are mostly former federal prosecutors. Like, you’re dead on arrival in court.

I have a federal habeas pending now that I’ve been released, but it’s been pending since July, fully briefed, right? And the judge won’t rule on it, just to give you an example. And federal habeas is supposed to jump to the front of the list, it’s the very first thing a federal judge is supposed to rule on. And in Terre Haute, it becomes the very last thing. Especially if it looks like you’ve got a case.

RG: Let’s talk a little bit about who goes out there, because I remember from more than ten years ago, there was a lawsuit, or there were complaints against the CMUs on religious grounds, where the argument was, you’re sticking all of the Muslims in these prisons, and you can’t do that, that is discrimination based on religion. The Bureau of Prison’s response to that was, oh, well, we’ve got a couple people convicted of ecoterrorism here and there. And so, they kind of just threw them into it, and said, well, look, it’s not all Muslims anymore, so you don’t have your case anymore.

When you were there, what’s the kind of demographic, and what’s the profile of the kinds of people that you’re with?

MG: At any given time, it’s between about 30 and 45 percent Muslims, most of them. It tends not to be the big cases that you would actually associate with a unit like that. It tends to be, like, some 20-year-old guy who got indoctrinated over the internet and was trying to fly to Syria, and they catch him at the airport, right? And he’s never actually hurt anybody. In some cases, these people were entrapped, right? And it tends to be those kinds of cases.

These are not really the serious terrorism cases that one would think they are, but these cases are worth a lot of money. The Bureau of Prisons gets a lot in their budget based on building these guys up as some international threat, even though they’ve never hurt anybody, and had no serious potential to hurt anybody. That’s the majority of the Muslim cases there. 

Then you have probably about 15 percent political cases. And then the rest… They actually started changing the demographic after I started complaining that there was a high concentration of political cases, so now they’re running through guys who get caught with a cell phone in federal prison. That was largely a reaction to my coverage.

It’s definitely not what the public is sold. And these CMUs, they cost millions of dollars, they hire dozens of so-called intelligence analysts to review the cases there. My understanding is that the qualifications of these so-called intelligence analysts wouldn’t meet the bar at the state department or anywhere else. A lot of cases, these are just former prison guards who have no special intelligence training that I’ve ever seen, right? But they do get these exorbitant salaries, once the Bureau of Prisons kind of designates them as intelligence analysts.

And the CMUs, they were started during Iraq and Afghanistan, and the idea there was that, by mining the communications of these jihadis, they would come up with actionable intel to use in the war effort. And the one thing that — to my knowledge anyway — the CMU has never, ever produced, is actionable intel to use in any war effort whatsoever.

RG: So, how often would you wind up in solitary? What’s that system there?

MG: So, I started doing the prerequisites to file a lawsuit that they didn’t like, and they called that extortion, and they threw me in solitary.

RG: How long, that first time?

MG: So, that was about a month and a half. And then they celled me up with that informant. And when I started talking to the media saying they celled me up with an informant, they threw me in solitary for another three, four months. Those are the two stints that I did in solitary in the CMU.

And the solitary cells in the CMU, by the way, are even worse than the regular cells. They’re insect infested, cockroaches everywhere. There are serious sewage issues. The water is not really drinkable. And so, they go out of their way to make those solitary cells very, very heinous, and it’s something that Julian, I’m sad to say, can expect to experience himself the first time he reaches out to a journalist, the first time someone tries to file a lawsuit to vindicate his First Amendment rights, you know? It’s hell.

RG: What kind of insect infestation? That sounds utterly terrifying.

MG: Spiders, cockroaches, various other insects that we couldn’t identify. I actually, at one point, got in — it took some effort — but I got in a North American field guide to insects and bugs, just so that we could identify all the various creepy crawlies, and so that we would know what’s potentially venomous and what’s not. Because they don’t provide any training, any safety. There’s nothing to tell you, don’t get stung by that one, don’t get stung by that one, right?

And there’s an insect there that’s called a “cow killer,” OK? And it’s called a cow killer …

RG: That doesn’t sound good.

MG: Yeah, it’s not because its sting is so venomous that it would actually kill a cow, but the sting is so painful that it can cause a stampede. So, one of these things stings one cow, the cow bucks because it’s in so much pain. This causes a stampede, and you end up with a herd of dead cows, right? And that insect was crawling around the rec yard out there. And, again, there’s no signage, no warning, no anything. If you don’t have the knowledge of the guys who are already there to say, hey, don’t get stunned by that guy, you might step right on it.

RG: What’s it like trying to sleep, knowing that the cell’s crawling with bugs?

MG: In my cell I always slept on the top bunk, even when I didn’t have a cellmate, because they’re just less likely to get at you up there. But yeah, I’ve woken up there with a cockroach staring at me, like, on my chest, just staring at me, and I’m like, oh hi. Had to brush him off the bed.

Guys wake up with spider bites, you know? Like, a big rash going all the way down the leg.

Yeah. Just, nothing is done. I filed remedies all the way up to Washington, in the Bureau of Prisons, saying, you guys got to do something about this. And they basically said, we don’t see any bugs, you guys are fine. And they just lie. I mean, they lie, in writing, on federal documents, they sign them … You know, if you see something, anything from the government talking about the conditions in the CMU, from my perspective, they’re just lying.

RG: And this is all related because — as people I’m sure have gathered by this point in the conversation — you’re the kind of person that is going to be a squeaky wheel. Like, they can do whatever they want to you, and you’re not going to stop pushing back and fighting for your rights. That is also the kind of person that they’re going to retaliate against constantly.

MG: Yeah. They’re trying to break you. That’s their goal. Really. I mean, they’ll never admit to it, but there’s a widely known thing among the CMU prisoners that, if you kind of go to them and you say, hey, look, I’ll stop, just get me out of here. And you drop all your lawsuits, and you stop complaining, that’s the one time they’ll let you out.

And no staff ever threatened me, but I’ve talked to a lot of guys who were threatened, who staff told them, if you don’t stop, we’re going to make sure you never see your kids again. If you don’t stop, we’re going to keep you here. Or, complaining is not the way to get out of this unit, right? That’s the one you hear the most, is that complaining is not the way to get out of this unit. 

RG: The way you got into it, and the way you stay in it.

MG: You stay in it. Yeah, exactly. I think that’s the implication.

RG: Right. And Julian Assange is not the kind of person, either, that is just going to just sit back and accept the fate that he’s dealt. He’s somebody that’s always been completely about transparency.

MG: I mean, the only reason they’re prosecuting Julian — let’s just be real here — is because he told the truth about some things that people in power found really embarrassing.

RG: Yes.

MG: Without that, there would be no prosecution. They’re, they’re, they’re grasping at straws to try to make a federal violation out of something that is arguably protected press conduct. And that’s why the Obama administration didn’t prosecute him in the first place. They had the so-called “New York Times problem.” If we prosecute him, how do we justify that we’re not prosecuting the New York Times?

So, I understand he’s become somewhat of a controversial figure because of a lot of the media narrative that has been run against him. But there was a time in this country ten years ago when he was widely perceived as a hero, and very little in terms of his conduct has changed since that time. 

So, his case, my case, many other cases that are at the periphery of prosecutorial discretion, right? Those are the kinds of cases that end up in the CMU. And we as a country, I think, have to ask ourselves an existential question of, can we tolerate these kinds of units?

Because you go to prison, and you’re supposed to keep your first amendment rights, right? There’s no valid, what they call penological reason. There’s nothing relevant to protection of the public, rehabilitation, any of what the supposed goals of prison are that says you shouldn’t be able to speak, you shouldn’t be able to speak to the media, you shouldn’t be able to file in court. But those are the things the CMU exists to curtail, right? That’s why those units are there.

And the actual stated purpose of the unit — keep the public safe, help fight the war on terror — again, the units never produced a single piece of actionable intel for that. And they’ve slept. They’ve missed more than a few of these things.

There was a shootout in Texas where the mass shooter was trying to get a female federal prisoner freed from the female-equivalent of these CMU’s. And there was no intelligence to say that he was going to do that, they didn’t stop that. She was in one of these units, supposedly to stop that very kind of mass killing. And these people missed it, and Americans died.

And had they not put her there in the first place, frankly, it wouldn’t have happened. I’m not saying that justifies the shooting, of course. But if you’re going to put people in these kinds of units to stop terrorist actions, and you’re going to take millions of dollars from taxpayers to do it, then you ought to at least stop the terrorist actions. And they’re not even doing that. They failed at that.

RG: Let’s even grant them, though, in some imaginary world, where they actually managed, at some point, to do that with somebody who was convicted of a charge of terrorism. How do they justify putting Julian Assange or you in a CMU, when there’s not even any claim that you’re even remotely connected, that either of you are remotely connected to terrorism?

MG: We actually had a district court ruling in my case. The federal judge, who’s not a pro-defendant judge, he’s known as a hanging judge, a very harsh sentencing judge, right? He was Aaron Swartz’s judge. And we actually had that judge rule that the government could not say, could not imply that anything I did was terrorism, right? Mine was an activism case. We actually had a ruling from the bench before the trial and sentence, right? That argument would literally be frivolous in my case, because a district court already decided the matter, and the government never appealed it to challenge it, right?

So, the thing is, they don’t really have to justify it at all. That’s, really, the scary thing. The relevant precedent in the Supreme Court is called Sandin v. Conner, OK? And the Supreme Court basically said, unless what the prison is doing is an atypical and significant hardship as compared to the normal hardships of prison life, then the prisoner has no due process to challenge his placement, wherever the system wants to put you.

So, what they do in the CMUs … You asked before, how often are you out of your cell? So, you’re out most of the time. The reason you’re out most of the time is not out of the goodness of their heart. It’s because they have to say we treat them just like any other prisoner. This is a general population unit, they actually try to maintain that the CNUs are a general population unit. But then you look elsewhere in what they say and in what they do, and it becomes very clear that this is not really a general population unit. But, so long as they keep lying and saying it’s general population, and as long as the federal courts continue to credit them that it’s a general population unit, they can really put whoever they want in these CMUs.

RG: And I guess when it comes to the definition of atypical, it’s in the eye of the judge and the prison. Because when I think about what you said about getting just, what, two 15-minute calls a month? That to me feels like an atypical and radical departure.

MG: Yeah. That’s mentioned with no-contact. I wasn’t able to hug my wife for four years.

RG: I feel naïve asking as if they’re going to give some rational answer to it, but what did they say to you when you would challenge them, and say, this is an atypical deviation from the rest of the federal prison system?

MG: No, they just say it’s a general population unit. You have all the same things everyone else on the compound has. It’s because we have to manage your communications to ensure public safety.

RG: They go back to the public safety argument.

MG: Yeah, even though we had a federal judge rule that mine was an activism case with no real public safety ramifications. And the government in my case failed to prove that anything that I did affected a single human individual. They put it before the jury, right? They asked the jury to find that something I did had affected, or even potentially affected a single human being, and the jury would not convict on that.

So, they got me for financial damage to multimillion- and multibillion-dollar institutions that tortured and crippled a human child, but that’s actually what I was convicted of. And when the government sought to convict me for actually being a potential danger to even one human person, they were not able to convict me of that. But they still sent me to a CMU.

RG: What was the time in solitary like for you? What are the phases that you go through?

MG: So the first time I was in solitary I was on a hunger strike, and that actually lasted 42 days; it was the second longest hunger strike I did in federal prison. The longest one, which we covered together at HuffPost, was a hundred days, and that was during the election.

So, after that hundred-day hunger strike, I had lost a lot of muscle mass. I prepared for that hundred-day hunger strike for six months. People ask me all the time, how do you do that, how do you survive a hundred days? And the answer is: you prepare ahead of time. I prepared for nine months to survive that.

So, the second time, I didn’t have that preparation. I had lost a lot of lean body mass. It was actually much more concerning from a health perspective the second time than the first time, but that colored my experience in CMU solitary quite a bit. Because it’s one thing to be in solitary, it’s another thing to be in solitary and reject, I think it was, 105 straight meals where I did not eat.

I was trying to fight my case at that point, I was still up on appeal, I was trying to change attorneys. Your legal calls are pretty much entirely at their discretion. They open your legal mail, they opened and read my legal mail right in front of me when I was in solitary the first time, even though they’re not supposed to do that. Legal mail is supposed to be kind of sacrosanct. Like, they can inspect it for contraband, they can like make sure no drugs fall out when they open the envelope, but they’re not supposed to read it.

But they went through my incoming legal mail, reviewing for content, and actually confiscated things; like, parts of my appellate brief they would not let me have. When I was trying to change lawyers, they made that very, very difficult, and it was something that, had I not had my lovely and talented wife Dana on the outside fighting for me — and that’s something most of these guys do not have, a spouse, a significant other — I wouldn’t have been able to do that.

So, they make it very, very hard to fight your case, and that adds a lot of stress, too. If you feel you have meritorious claims, you want to get these claims heard before the court.

So, the first time I’m in solitary in the CMU, I’m on a hunger strike, I’m trying to change attorneys, they’re interfering with my legal mail. I mean, they’re basically trying to drive you to kill yourself. To me, that seemed like what the goal was. Like, if I had hanged myself in that cell, they would’ve just wiped their hands of it, and they would all consider that, you know, a squeaky wheel, as you put it, had now been silenced.

RG: Right. Do you have books in solitary? Do you get to leave at all to go outdoors, but only by yourself? Like, how does that work?

MG: So, there are books. The Bureau provides, really, kind of shoddy, like, pulp fiction kind of stuff. Thankfully, in the CMU, since you have this concentration of political prisoners, and it’s really a very smart crowd in that unit compared to the rest of federal prisons. So, the books have been interspersed with books that other guys received from their families. So, you actually have really good reading material, it is one of the best libraries in the Bureau of Prisons, is the irony.

But it’s not that way because the Bureau provides good reading materials, it’s that way because they only allow you to keep so many books in your cell. So, you either can donate them or give them away, but what ends up happening is that the library gets filled with really interesting… And a lot of the classics, a lot of the Western canon. I’d say there’s a better selection there than there is in most public high school libraries. So, that’s one of the good things, I did get a lot of good reading.

RG: So, how much time did you spend in both of these CMUs?

MG: So, I was in Terre Haute from April 1st, 2019 through January 21st, 2021, then I was in Marion from January 21st, 2021 to, I think, November 10th, 2022. And then, again, in Terre Haute from November 10th, 2022 till, I think, June 9th of 2023.

RG: What was it like when you finally got out of there? 

MG: Words fail me, because you’re out in public again. Like, they just put you on a greyhound bus; when I was released, it’s like, they just drop you off at the bus station, and you’re out in public again, and you can talk to people.

RG: Like, 24 hours earlier, you’re just…

MG: Yeah, you’re completely cut off, isolated from the world. They blocked Dana, so I couldn’t talk to my wife for seven months, with no kind of process, no official anything ever handed to me to justify it. And you get out, and you get to the Greyhound station, and it’s just … Can I borrow your cell phone, I need to make a call real quick.

And they didn’t want me to leave with my legal work. So, I had 210 pounds of documents about the CMU, and about my case, between the two, right? And I still have them, but they would not allow my lawyer to come to the prison the day before I was released to pick up my legal documents, even though their own regulations kind of specify that they have to allow a prisoner to exchange legal documents with an attorney, and they knew I was being released. They were really hoping that they would make it logistically difficult for me to bring my legal documents with me, and that I would then trust them to mail these documents home. But, having spoken to guys who had been through the CMU program — and some of them, it’s like their 2nd, 3rd, 4th trip through the CMU program — I was not prepared to rely on the Bureau of Prisons to mail these very sensitive, very compromising legal documents home.

So, I actually had to carry, by hand, 210 pounds of legal documents to the Greyhound stop, and then Dana arranged for somebody to meet me there. And I put the legal documents in that person’s car, and then that person — you know, bless her heart — took them to UPS, and had them shipped home for me. And that’s the only way that I have these documents that show, in detail, the kind of thing that Julian can expect. And the writeups, the bogus disciplinary charges that I got for trying to speak to the media, trying to litigate, trying to tell people what’s going on, trying to help other guys who I feel are wrongfully incarcerated in the CMUs, [to] litigate.

And there’s one case in particular that I really want to mention, and that’s Donald Reynolds, Jr. His case is related to Operation Fast and Furious, which was when the Justice Department walked high-powered, fully-automatic, so-called cop-killing firearms to the Mexican drug cartels. You had mentioned Chapo earlier, right? And so, this was when the Justice Department was actually handing those cartels armor piercing firearms.

RG: Yeah. This became a scandal under the Eric Holder Attorney Generalship.

MG: Yeah. So, Donnie was a Black NRA member, firearms collector. He had a lot of historic weapons, like World War II-era firearms, and a lot of high-powered stuff. And they went to him, they asked him to become an informant for them, he refused. They buried him as a first-time nonviolent offender with a life-plus-75-year sentence; so, they actually hit Donnie off with a longer sentence than El Chapo received. And it looks to me and to others like Donnie is wholly innocent, and they basically just did this to keep him quiet.

And we actually had The American Conservative from the other side of the aisle do a months-long investigation into Donnie’s case. And The American Conservative ended up recommending clemency for Donnie, because of the prosecutorial irregularities. And then a different organization — similar name, The American Conservative Union — on the other side of the aisle, not really known for taking a pro-defendant, anti-law enforcement kind of stance, also recommended clemency for Donnie because of these prosecutorial irregularities.

RG: What charges did they end up hitting him with?

MG: Drug trafficking, and using firearms in pursuit of drug trafficking. But here’s the thing: they never found any drugs on Donnie. Never. They searched his house, they searched his parents’ house. They never found anything.

RG: And he was a player in this entire scandal. So, the thinking is, from your perspective, that holing him up somewhere is an effective way to do PR for this scandal. Is that what you’re thinking? Or what’s the rationale for why in particular they would go after him?

MG: I think that, in his case, you have a lot of what are called Brady violations, which are discovery violations. Donnie’s defense was entitled to information about Operation Fast and Furious to prepare his defense, which he never received. And if it comes out that this information was never turned over to his defense attorneys, well, then that’s a big issue. Because then his conviction is going to have to be overturned, and if they choose to continue to prosecute the case, he’s entitled to all this information about Fast and Furious, which the House committees were trying to obtain from the White House, and the Obama White House asserted executive privilege to quash those subpoenas.

Well, you can’t assert executive privilege to quash Brady, right? Donnie’s entitled to that information if they’re coming for his liberty, which they are. And Donnie had no idea that it was Fast and Furious. It took years for information to come out about Fast and Furious for Donnie to put it together that this was likely Fast and Furious.

And then, when these months-long investigations were done, lo and behold, the names involved in his case are some of the same names involved in Fast and Furious. The dates all line up, as one would expect them to line up. It’s really uncanny. So, there’s a piece at The American Conservative about it called “The Knoxville Kingpin Who Wasn’t,” and that has more of the details about it. 

But this is another great example of a CMU case, right? The Obama administration literally asserted executive privilege to stop any investigation into Fast and Furious. Here you have an innocent guy who is being held in a CMU to keep a lid on that, even to this day. And I’m convinced of that, and I think the facts do bear it out, but if people can read the investigation, then they can come to their own conclusions.

RG: What’s he like?

MG: Donnie’s a great guy, he’s a smart guy. He was a businessman. He ran four businesses before they locked him up, he was married before they locked him up, he’s a father. His father worked at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, had a security clearance. He’s a great friend to have, and he doesn’t deserve at all what’s happening to him, and I really hope someday the truth comes out.

Donnie is one of the many guys who helped keep me safe while I was there. He was also the unit barber, so he cut everyone’s hair. And he’s a funny guy, he’s got a great sense of humor. You’d think after they do all this to you, it’d be very hard to keep your head up, right? And Donnie maintains this sense of humor.

RG: How old is he now?

MG: He’s a few years older than I am, so he’s in his 40s, he’s in his early 40s.

RG: And looking at life.

MG: He’s doing life. He’s been locked up longer than I was. He’s been locked up since, like, 2011 … I might be off by a year or two there. And he’s been in the CMU practically the entire time.

RG: And you mentioned, keeping you safe. What is the violence like there? It’s a small place, and I don’t know if that makes it less or more violent.

MG: Yeah. Six months before I got there, one of the jihadis garroted to death one of the minimum security prisoners there, and stabbed another guy 11 times. And they just completely covered that up. There was a press release that there had been a death at the Terre Haute federal complex, but they did not mention that it was the CMU. There are multiple theories about what predicated that attack, but the one thing that everyone seems to agree, is that the Bureau of Prisons knew ahead of time that it was going to happen, and did nothing to stop it.

There is sectarian violence, but I’m a brown Jew, and they put me in a unit full of radical jihadi Muslims. Like, it’s hard to say that that itself wasn’t an assassination attempt. What they weren’t banking on, though, is that the government’s saying this whole time that I’m a member of Anonymous, right? And Anonymous has a fairly good reputation in the Middle East after the Arab Spring. So, you know, it didn’t work out the way they thought it would.

RG: So, you were cool.

MG: Yeah, I was cool. And I do a lot of legal work for guys. I’m like the resident jailhouse lawyer, anywhere I go. And so, that always keeps you safe. Like, if you’re headed to federal prison through no fault of your own, pick up a Black’s Law Dictionary and get good with the law, because you will become an indispensable person.

But the thing is, about prison, especially about that unit, is it’s never going to be one-on-one. Like, it’s him and his boys versus you and whoever’s going to get your back. And that’s also what is potentially so very dangerous about these units. These units are a powder keg just waiting for a spark to go off. And, in 2018, before I got there, they had that spark go off and, and one person died, and another person was stabbed 11 times. 

RG: And, since you got out, you mentioned all of that information that you were able to take with you. I know you’ve been in touch with Julian Assange’s legal team. I don’t know what you can say about that. How are they feeling about this upcoming hearing? And were they able to make use of any of the insider CMU knowledge that you were able to give them?

MG: So, in terms of their feeling about the hearing, I’m going to defer to them. You’re going to really have to speak to them on that matter.

They were limited. By the time I got out, the lower-court proceedings had already been concluded, and so, they were limited to that record on appeal. So I don’t know that they were able to actually use any of the documents that I got [over] to them, because it was just too late by the time those documents got there.

Now, if the case gets reversed, if he gets to go back to the lower courts, then I think, potentially, some of the documents that I have are really potentially useful. I don’t know what they’ve used and what they haven’t used. Presumably it’s a public docket and we can see.

But I think unfortunately, very unfortunately for Julian, my experience and my records in the legal sense will not really come to bear until the next CMU extradition case. And, at that point, all this stuff can be briefed in the district court, in the lower court, where it’ll become part of the record of the case, and be arguable on appeal, and on appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.

RG: I think one thing I just want to leave people with, you know, you’re no fool, you knew what kind of system you were getting into. And the prosecutors offered a plea deal that would’ve given a significant —  because I remember you and I talking about this at the time — would’ve given you a significantly shorter prison sentence. I don’t remember exactly the details now, but I remember you saying, it’s not about that. I am not ashamed of what I did. Like, I was standing up for Justine. I’m going to take this all the way to the jury, and if the jury finds me guilty, then so be it. 

That’s just an unusual amount of courage, I would say, to willingly stare down a much more extended sentence under brutal conditions. And I think that it’s a fact that that is unusual courage, because I think something like 95 percent of federal cases — some extraordinary number of federal cases — end in plea deals. 

MG: Yeah, it’s higher than 95. The trial system is so unfair in the federal system. I mean, it’s not a fair system. And I would invite anyone who finds that shocking, as I did initially… I get that it’s a shocking thing. This is America, you expect the courts to be fair.

Go do a little research on the federal system, look at cases like mine. They would not even let me plead defense of another, right? Like, they wouldn’t let my jury consider it, that I acted to defend a human life, right? They found that defense inconvenient, so they simply prevented the jury from hearing it.

RG: Yeah, I think any system that has a 95-plus percent success rate for the prosecution, you can pretty fairly say is tilted in their favor. And that’s why so many people take deals.

MG: Well, they want you to believe that these prosecutors are just that good, and they’re just that righteous.

RG: Absolute geniuses. Yes.

MG: Yeah. But, again, just look at it, and just look at the cases they’re bringing. Look at the case they’re bringing against Julian. Look at the case they brought against Barrett Brown or Jeremy Hammond.

RG: Now, Barrett Brown, that’s who you were trying to think of earlier.

MG: Yeah, yeah. But just look at the cases they bring, and look at the cases that they do not bring, right? You had the 2008 financial crisis, right? Who went to jail? The whistleblower. You have the Bush torture program, right? Who went to jail? The whistleblower.

RG: Right. And look at the war crimes that Julian Assange exposed, the only people to go to prison, Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange, right?

MG: Julian, yeah.

RG: Well, Marty, thank you for fighting, and thank you for joining me today. I really appreciate it.

MG: Thank you for having me, Ryan.

RG: That was Marty Gottesfeld, and that’s our show.

Deconstructed is a production of The Intercept. Jose Olivares is our lead producer. Our supervising producer is Laura Flynn. The show is mixed by William Stanton. Legal Review by David Bralow and Elizabeth Sanchez. Leonardo Faierman transcribed this episode. Our theme music was composed by Bart Warshaw. Roger Hodge is The Intercept’s Editor-in-Chief. And I’m Ryan Grim, D.C. Bureau Chief of The Intercept.

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Gen. Prabowo Subianto, who has expressed a desire to rule the country as a fascist, declared victory Wednesday in Indonesia’s presidential election. This week on Deconstructed, Ryan Grim is joined by Allan Nairn, a longtime investigative journalist focusing on U.S. intervention around the world. Nairn, reporting from Indonesia, describes the current election process in the country and the crimes Prabowo has been implicated in. He details the government’s intimidation tactics to attempt to install Prabowo, his right-wing political leanings, and the history of Indonesia, including how the U.S. government trained Prabowo and his father-in-law, the late dictator Suharto.

Ryan Grim: This is Ryan Grim. Welcome to Deconstructed.

I wanted to start today with a series of thank yous and some bad news. You’ve probably noticed that the journalism industry seems to be imploding everywhere. You’re right, and this week, it hit The Intercept, too, and a ton of great journalists got laid off. I thank every one of them for everything they’ve given us.

One of those was a guy whose name you’ve heard in the credits of this podcast, José Olivares, and we’ll miss him badly. He’s a fantastic producer. A huge thank you to Jose, and here’s hoping we get to work together one day soon.

The other thank you — and this might sound counterintuitive right now — is to all of the listeners and readers who’ve become paying members of The Intercept over the years. If we didn’t have such a robust membership program with tens of thousands of small donors, I can quite honestly tell you we’d be shutting down right now. We’d be gone, and the world, I think, would be worse off for it.

If you’re one of those current donors, our sincerest thank you, and we promise we’re going to work even harder to earn your continuing support.

If you’re not yet one of those donors, but have thought about becoming one, please do, and know that it really does matter. You can go to theintercept.com/give to become a member. Or, for something bigger, please email our fundraising team at philanthropy@theintercept.com. You can also, as always, get me at ryan.grim@theintercept.com.

Now, speaking of fundraising, I’ll be making a short West Coast fundraising swing in two weeks and, as part of that, I’ll be doing a reading/talk about my new book, “The Squad: AOC and the Hope of a Political Revolution.” That will be on Sunday, March 3rd at 2pm, at Book Passage in the Ferry Building in San Francisco. It’s free, but we’ll hit you up for a donation if you come, so be warned.

Today, meanwhile, we really have a good show. I’m going to be joined by journalist Alan Nairn, who has been covering the abuses of the Indonesian military and its American sponsors for decades now, including with a number of investigative pieces at The Intercept, one most recently this week.

I don’t want to spoil the conversation, so all I’ll note up front is that Indonesia had what it tried to call “presidential elections” this week, and the result was equal parts to be expected, and shocking to the conscience. 

Here’s my conversation with Alan Nairn.

Alan, welcome to Deconstructed.

Allan Nairn: Thanks. Good to be with you.

RG: I’m really excited to have you on to talk about this election and, also, the history leading up to it. First of all, tell everybody where you’re joining us from, what time it is, and what the current situation is.

AN: I’m in Jakarta, Indonesia, it’s 9 p.m. And General Prabowo — the worst of the massacre generals, and the closest U.S. protege in the Indonesian military — has just been elected, or selected as president, with the full support of state power of the current government. It’s the beginning of a whole new era.

After General Suharto, the U.S.-backed dictator, fell in 1998, there was hope that Indonesia could move to a kind of democracy. And, indeed, there was a series of elected presidents. But the last elected president — President Jokowi, who will be in office until October — he’s decided to turn the country back toward the Suharto era. And this general, Prabowo, who he just helped install, in fact, is Suharto’s son in law. So, people are now deciding how to deal with that.

Just today, I was at a demonstration called the Aksi Kamisan. Every Thursday, survivors of the massacres and their friends and relatives gather in front of the palace to protest, and military intelligence was all over, and they were harassing people afterwards. And those there all agreed that this is going to get worse once General Prabowo comes in. 

RG: Did they harass you at all? I’m sure you’re on their radar.

AN: At the demonstration? Yeah, apparently two of them did try to detain me, but the activists got between us and put me in the car. And, after a while of apparently being followed, we were able to get away.

RG: I noticed that you gagged a little bit on the word “elected,” and I want to get back to that in a moment. But first, for an American audience that is fairly well educated, but the history of Indonesian politics is often kind of off the center stage, even despite its kind of central role in our CIA’s history, our State Department’s history, our American Imperial history.

So, can you go back a little bit? Start with the Non-Aligned Movement. What was the Non-Aligned Movement? What was Indonesia’s role in it, and how did that shape how the country’s history unfolded and its relationship with the U.S. unfolded?

AN: Well, President Sukarno — who was the founding president of Indonesia after they won independence from the Dutch colonialists in the 40s — Sukarno was the main moving force behind the Non-Aligned Movement, which basically stressed the aspiration of independence for what were then called third world nations. The idea was they would stand between the Soviet Bloc and the United States.

RG: Right. And “third world” wasn’t a pejorative at the time. It was, like, there’s these two blocks, these superpowers, and then there’s a third one.

AN: Well, it was a broader term referring mainly to poor and developing and attempting-to-develop countries. But many of them, perhaps a majority at a certain time of the countries in what was called the third world, were either in, or sympathetic to, the Not-Aligned Movement, and Sukarno was really the key mover in that.

And he, Sukarno, a civilian, was overthrown by the Indonesian army in a coup in 1965. That Indonesian army was armed, trained, and supplied by the United States. And General Suharto, who took over during the coup, he, with his army, immediately launched one of the largest slaughters in world history to consolidate their power. They killed anywhere from 400,000 to a million civilians across the country. Some estimates go higher. And they did that with explicit U.S. support; the CIA supplied a death list of 5,000 names of people that they wanted targeted.

And that did indeed consolidate their power. And, after that, the army worked hand-in-glove with the U.S. Including in 1975, when they invaded East Timor, the small neighboring nation of East Timor.

General Suharto met face to face with President Ford and Henry Kissinger to get their permission, and he got it. They gave him weapons, they invaded East Timor. And, over the course of their occupation, they killed a third of the population, which in proportional terms was the most intensive slaughter since the Nazis.

RG: And so, how did the Indonesian people eventually rally and restore, or move on a path back toward democracy?

AN: Well, General Suharto lasted until 1998, when he was finally overthrown by a street uprising. And one of the factors in that uprising was a massacre that took place in 1991 in occupied East Timor: November 12th, 1991, the Santa Cruz Massacre. And I happened to be there, I happened to survive that massacre.

RG: You and Amy Goodman, and other journalists, right?

AN: Yes. I was there with Amy Goodman and Max Stahl from the U.K. was there, and he filmed from a distance what happened. A crowd had gathered outside the Santa Cruz cemetery, they were commemorating the death of a young man who had been killed by the army ten days before. And then, the army marched on the crowd. And I thought if they saw there were outside witnesses there, maybe we could stop them.

So, we went to the front of the crowd, but that didn’t stop them. They were carrying their US M-16s. They beat me, they fractured my skull with the rifle butts. And then they opened fire on the crowd from very close range; the closest people were ten feet away from them. They killed at least 271 civilians on that day, but we survived, and were able to report this to the outside world.

And then, back in the U.S., mobilized grassroots support helped to found a group called the East Timor Action Network. And, over the years, we were successful in getting Congress to pressure the Executive Branch, and to all but cut off all U.S. military aid to Indonesia and General Suharto.

And, later, Suharto’s security chief Admiral Sudomo told me that that arms cutoff was pivotal in Suharto’s downfall. Because, as the Indonesian population took to the streets in 1998 in this mass uprising, according to Sudomo, Suharto’s security chief, the troops were reluctant to open fire on the crowds as quickly as they should have, because they were afraid that if that happened, in his words, it would be another Santa Cruz, meaning they would lose all the U.S. aid, since practically all their military aid had already been cut off by Congress. And that hesitation proved fatal for the Suharto regime, because people saw to their surprise that they could come down to the streets and demonstrate, and face the soldiers, and not necessarily be killed. So more and more people came out, it became an overwhelming mass force in the streets.

And then, finally, first outside a university called Trisakti, a few soldiers did open fire, a few people were killed, and because by that point people had grown accustomed to demonstrating for weeks without being killed, when it finally happened at Trisakti and in a couple of other places, it was just a mass explosion of outrage.

And, within days, Suharto had fallen. 

RG: I just want to underline that for a second, because we often talk about U.S. military aid in the abstract, and we’ll say, alright, this massacre happened, this slaughter happened, and it was done with U.S. weapons. The kind of implicit response sometimes is, yes, but that government is bad, and they would have done that anyway. You can withdraw some U.S. military support, but that you’re not going to change the nature of evil in the world.

And what you’re saying is, actually, no. Like, the U.S. military aid was a necessary and essential function, a necessary and essential piece of Suharto’s ability.

AN: A condition was derived from it. Yeah.

RG: And pulling that away, it undermined him fatally.

AN: Yes, that’s a very good point. Another argument that’s sometimes made is, well, if we don’t give it, somebody else will give it.

In a large number of the cases — I haven’t gone through it systematically — but I would guess, with the countries I’m familiar with, maybe close to a majority of the cases, the U.S. aid to oppressive militaries and intelligence services at a minimum increases their repression. And sometimes, as you just mentioned, is the thing that enables the regime that brought those forces into existence, that enables it to survive. And pulling that aid can, at a minimum, be expected to decrease the repression, and often, with still larger impact, it can endanger the survival of that repressive regime that is being artificially propped up by the U.S. in the first place. And that’s exactly what happened with General Suharto.

But what Indonesia is faced with now is that Suharto’s son in law, General Prabowo, the worst of all the massacre generals in Indonesia … And that is saying a lot because, as we just described, these were two of the epic slaughters of the 20th century. First, the consolidation of power by killing half a million to a million civilians, and then the invasion of Timor, where they killed a third of the population. And this man is the worst of the generals, and now he is set to become the next president of Indonesia. And he is also the general closest to the U.S. He described himself to me as “the Americans’ fair-haired boy.”

RG: Yeah, you had this fascinating interview with him that you wrote about for us recently at The Intercept, where he talked openly about what he saw as the PR problems related to the Santa Cruz massacre, and what his ambitions were for the future.

Talk a little bit about how he understood his role in those atrocities, what went wrong, and what he could do right in the future. And “wrong,” we’re using it not in a moral term, but kind of in a pragmatic — from his perspective — term.

AN: In terms of the Santa Cruz massacre. He was not involved in that one, that was not one of his. He did many other massacres in Timor. For example, at Kraras on Mount Bibileo, he commanded a massacre where many hundreds were killed. And he did similar operations, including political assassinations in Ache and West Papua. In West Papua, in one case, he brought in a helicopter disguised as a Red Cross helicopter, and, as people approached, they machine gunned them from the air.

But what he said about the Santa Cruz massacre, he said that “was an imbecilic operation.” And he said it was imbecilic, because they did it in front of me and the other surviving outside witnesses. And he said, you don’t do that in front of the foreign press, you don’t do that in the capital city. You do that in an isolated village where no one will ever know.

And he did not admit to the massacres, his own massacres. But, in some cases, he all but admitted to it. For example, in ‘98, when the mass demonstrations had Suharto in danger, General Prabowo staged a series of kidnappings of pro-democracy activists. He kidnapped 24 activists, and he disappeared 13 of them. They’ve never been heard from since, their bodies have never been found.

He also staged a series of what are known as The Anti-Chinese Riots, where his men — his special forces troops in plainclothes and their operatives — did arson, burning, shootings, mass rapes, aimed mainly at the ethnic Chinese population. And when I asked him about various military crimes that were committed in ’98, he blamed a number of them on General Wiranto, another general who was his chief rival. But when I asked him about the Anti-Chinese Riots, he did not attempt to blame Wiranto, and he spoke of them with something like pride, basically saying: that was a very professional operation.

RG: Why is he not in prison? And how did his opponent go from beating him and preventing him from taking office to now supporting him and ushering him into office? How did we wind up 25 years later where we are tonight?

AN: Well, he should be in prison, he should be tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity along with his U.S. sponsors. And, in fact, in the early years of the Jokowi administration — President Jokowi, the incumbent, the civilian — Jokowi discussed with his staff putting General Prabowo and some of the other massacre generals like General Wiranto and General Hendropriyono on trial.

I discussed this with some of Jokowi’s staff, once in a meeting at the palace; at the time, I was publicly calling for them to all be tried, along with their U.S. sponsors. And what his staff said when we discussed it at the palace essentially was, well, yes, this is necessary, and we’re working on it. But it’s dangerous, we have to proceed slowly. It will take time. So, internally, his administration, in fact, was working on or heavily considering a war crimes tribunal for Prabowo and the other generals.

And when he ran for president — first in 2014 and then in 2019 — and defeated Prabowo, one of the things he said was that we, Indonesia, cannot return to dictatorship. He didn’t speak openly about war crimes trials, but the insinuation that many took was that he was in favor of that. And, in fact, at that time, Jokowi, as he was running against General Prabowo, had the support of many human rights advocates and massacre survivors. And, as I mentioned, in his first years, they were internally discussing bringing them the generals to trial.

But all through his time in office, he was constantly under pressure from the army and from General Prabowo, who was by that time retired. For example, at one point, the Jokowi administration convened a forum called The Symposium — where survivors of the 1965 slaughter that Suharto, with U.S. backing, after they did the coup as they were consolidating power — survivors at this symposium were allowed to come and speak publicly about what had happened to them, and what had happened to their families, their loved ones who were murdered.

And this was a real breakthrough in the public speech of Indonesia, and the army was just outraged. There was no talk at The Symposium of trials of the generals, or even of stopping the practice of killing civilians, which continues to this day. In West Papua, which is in the eastern part of the Indonesian archipelago, an area which is under de facto occupation, and where Freeport-McMoRan, the U.S. mining giant, is stripping the mountains, and turning the rivers green with their pollution. There, they continue to kill civilians.

But there was no discussion of that ongoing practice of killing civilians. There was just a recollection of, and reflection on, the 1965 mass killing. And the army was outraged. Jokowi had to go to army headquarters and bow down before the generals. And he actually made a speech to them where he made what on its face was a nonsensical statement. He said, “I will never apologize to the PKI,” meaning the Indonesian Communist Party. But the Indonesian Communist Party no longer existed, it had ceased to exist decades before, as its remnants were utterly annihilated in that 1965 slaughter. And the term PKI — Indonesian Communist Party — only lived on because it was the catch-all term that the army used to refer to those dissidents who it hadn’t yet killed.

So, Jokowi went and humbled himself before the soldiers, but that didn’t work, that didn’t calm them down. After that, in response to that symposium, there was a street movement which turned to violence. I actually wrote about it in The Intercept in 2017. That movement operated on a religious pretext but, behind the scenes, it was being pushed by the army, particularly the generals loyal to General Prabowo. And there was a series of events like this, which really shook President Jokowi.

And then, in 2019, when he was running and defeated Prabowo, right after the Prabowo forces staged yet another street riot, with burning and looting, and at that point, Jokowi basically said, well enough, I can’t take this anymore. He had his people reach out to general Prabowo to try to bring him inside the tent. And he offered him the job of minister of defense. 

Prabowo accepted, he came inside shortly thereafter. And, once inside, immediately, as Jokowi had hoped, the threat of coups, the riots, all evaporated instantly. And Jokowi and Prabowo started to grow close because Jokowi, who had slowly been ramping up repression during his time in office — particularly against labor rights and a whole series of other things — he was looking for a way to extend his own term. He was term-limited to two terms, as the system works in the United States.

So, for this election, he was looking for a successor who would work with him, and he settled on General Prabowo, who by that time was his defense minister, who had come in and, with Jokowi, continued the policy of army killings of civilians in West Papua. And Jokowi even lent General Prabowo his own son, Jokowi’s own son, Gibran, as his running mate. And he did that, even though the president’s son was legally underage.

As in the U.S., there’s a minimum-age requirement — in Indonesia it’s 40, the son is 36 — but he rammed approval for it through the Supreme Court, where the president’s brother-in-law was at that time the chief justice. And through the electoral commission, both of those actions by the electoral commission, the Supreme court, were later ruled by other official oversight bodies to be unethical, but it made no difference. Because Jokowi had made his deal with General Prabowo, and he, the president, was really the main force behind the Prabowo campaign that just concluded, and the whole state apparatus was mobilized to put General Prabowo in power.

And this is especially meaningful and ominous for Indonesia’s population of poor people, regular people, who, to a large extent, live at the mercy of the Aparat, the army and the police. And the army and the police were going around directly ordering people to vote for General Prabowo. And, at the same time, the social welfare agencies, which hand out bags of rice and cooking oil — which are very important to many families in maintaining a minimal standard of nutrition, because they can’t otherwise afford it — and they were explicitly telling people, if you don’t vote for General Prabowo, your food allotments will be cut off.

Sometimes people, in order to pick up the rice and cooking oil, they were obliged to go to General Prabowo’s campaign offices, where, when they went in, they had to show their I.D. cards, their photographs were taken, they were put on a list, and they were given a stern warning: if you don’t vote for the general, we will find you and we will cut off your food. And, at the same time, local government officials… And, in Indonesia, the system is almost entirely nationalized, what we would call federalized in the United States, so there aren’t really truly local officials in the sense of autonomous from the central government. They all ultimately branch out from the central government. These local officials were being threatened with prosecution for corruption if they did not mobilize the resources they controlled in their neighborhoods, and their districts, and their towns, and cities, to elect General Prabowo. 

And then, on the national level, especially in terms of targeting of the middle class and young people, Prabowo very smartly hired the campaign consultant who had helped Bongbong Marcos of the Philippines, the elected president, and Prabowo was presented as a “gemoy,” a fat, cuddly, adorable cartoon character, a dancing cartoon character who appeared in TV ads. And this was quite a leap, considering not just that General Prabowo was a mass murderer, the most notorious mass murderer in Indonesia, but also that his rhetorical style is to yell, to threaten.

He routinely blames anyone who criticizes him, accuses anyone who criticizes him of being an “antek asing,” a foreign lackey, even though he himself is the Indonesian officer closest to the United States over the years that he was carrying out the worst of his crimes. So, all of these forces together made him an almost unstoppable political force. That and the power, the option of electoral fraud.

In the piece in The Intercept, I describe a meeting that took place — well, it was the Wednesday of the previous week, so it’d be about, I guess, ten days before this is released — where military and intelligence officials discussed the existence of a plan to, if necessary, do electoral frauds by tampering with the local vote tabulation sheets, and then, with the data entry process at the regional administration office. And then, if needed, hacking of the national elections commission system.

And the final result that was announced yesterday gave the general about 58 percent. And it’s still not clear how much of that was real, how much of that was fabricated, or if they actually needed to resort to tampering with the vote count, because there was so much pressure brought to bear by the state beforehand, that might not even have been necessary. We don’t know yet, that hasn’t become clear yet.

What is clear is that President Jokowi, the incumbent civilian, has dragged General Prabowo into office, and he’s dragging Indonesia back to a new version of the Suharto era.

RG: You know, Jokowi may think that he pulled off something clever here, but as somebody watching this just unfold from the outside, the first thing I wonder, is Prabowo just going to finish off Jokowi at this point? Like, once he’s in power, why would he tolerate even a quasi-allied power center that could be a rival?

AN: It’s an interesting question.

RG: Right? Did Jokowi just dig his own grave?

AN: Well, I don’t think it will go completely in that direction, because even though Prabowo will have full power once he’s in, and he has called for going back to an older version of the Indonesian constitution, which would give the president even more extensive powers, and would essentially give him the power to appoint most of the members of what is the Indonesian equivalent of the U.S. Senate. So, he really will be able to rule.

I don’t know that he would have any motive for necessarily turning on Jokowi because, at this point, there’s no indication that Jokowi would be at cross purposes with him. Jokowi gave him his son as his running mate, the son would become vice president. And Jokowi remains popular because of two basic reasons: one, he’s the first president in Indonesian history who speaks the language of the people, literally. It’s referred to as “bahasa pasar,” market-talk, and that’s the way Jokowi speaks, and it’s different from the higher flown language that other politicians and national figures use, and that people see on TV. And he’s very effective at making a connection with people.

And he also did a lot of public works and economic development programs that many people liked during his term in office, President Jokowi did. So, at least until recently, where it’s declined somewhat, he has been very popular, so I think Prabowo will want to take advantage of that popularity and not clash with him.

But the people who will be in danger, the people who will be in trouble with general Prabowo and the presidency, are basically anyone who he perceives as an enemy or a potential enemy. In 2014, when he first ran for president against Jokowi, I published my interviews with him, where he talked about imagining becoming a fascist dictator. Where he said Indonesia is not ready for democracy, where he talked about how the Santa Cruz Massacre was imbecilic, because it was done in front of surviving witnesses.

In 2019, when he ran against Jokowi, I published an internal government document which described a meeting at Prabowo’s house, where he and his generals — Prabowo’s generals — made plans for mass arrests of his opponent once he took office. Including, remarkably enough, mass arrests of many of the Islamists who are aligned with ISIS who, during that campaign in ’19, were the grassroots basis for General Prabowo’s campaign. And they were very good, they did a very effective door-to-door campaign job on his behalf but, in the meantime, he and his generals were planning to arrest them as soon as they took office. Because, as they said in this meeting, according to the minutes, this would get them in good with the United States.

RG: No doubt it would.

AN: Yes, probably so.

Now, no equivalent planning document has leaked this time around, but there’s no reason to think that General Prabowo’s thinking or plans have changed at all. He’s still someone who imagines himself in the role of the fascist dictator. There’s every reason to think that he will — as his people planned in ’19 — to go after his opponents in a massive way.

So, it’s now very dangerous, not just for the independence movement in West Papua, which includes a small armed resistance force, but also many civilians and activists, but also for grassroots activists of all kinds across Indonesia. Especially human rights activists who expose and criticize the army, labor activists, environmental activists, anti-corruption activists, because corruption is a central part of the Indonesian political and economic system. And also, it may start to get uncomfortable for people who are critics of the United States, if Prabowo decides to continue his past practices of currying favor with the United States.

It’s very interesting, it’s a very interesting maneuver that he uses. Because, on the one hand, he goes around denouncing everyone as an antek asing, as a foreign lackey but, at the same time, in every matter of substance, he does what he can to prove his loyalty to the United States.

For example, in the period leading up to the last election, one of his top aides, Arif Wibowo, was filing a workers rights lawsuit against Freeport-McMoRan, the U. S. mining giant, and General Prabowo stepped in to kill that lawsuit. He ordered him to pull it, because he said, well, they’re a big investor, we can’t be bothering them like this, we’ve got to help them.

Now others, including the workers of Freeport-McMoRan and environmental activists in Papua and elsewhere, all these people face grave danger, because they’re up against the worst mass murderer in modern Indonesian history, who will be sitting in the palace.

RG: And what’s been the U.S.’s contemporary role in Prabowo’s rise? Is he a kind of zombie U.S. dictator just surviving from the past, the dead hand of CIA’s past? Or has the U.S. been taking active measures to help usher him into power?

AN: It is more a consequence of the past actions, but the U.S. does not oppose him in any way now.

As Suharto was falling in 1998, as the U.S. often does, it drops its people, its local operatives, its local agents, very quickly. As Suharto fell, Prabowo was suddenly, overnight, not as useful as he had been. He was Suharto’s son in law, he was Washington’s best channel to Suharto. General Prabowo was essentially working simultaneously for both the U.S. and the Defense Intelligence Agency and his father-in-law, General Suharto. But, with Suharto gone, Prabowo immediately became less powerful.

Just weeks after Suharto fell, Prabowo attempted a coup against the new civilian president, Habibie, who had been the vice president to Suharto. He failed in that coup attempt. But also, within the Indonesian army at that time, after Suharto’s fall, Prabowo’s status declined. His rivals in the army moved against him, and they actually publicly blamed him for one of his crimes, actually one of his smaller crimes, and that is the kidnapping of the 24 activists in Jakarta that I mentioned earlier.

They didn’t blame him for any of the mass killings, they didn’t blame him for the Anti-Chinese Riots, but they focused on those particular kidnappings, and the 13 who were still disappeared. And one of the basic arguments they made was, well, these crimes were not authorized. And, I don’t know, that may have been true. We don’t know. Clearly, everything that he had done was in accord with the policy of General Suharto, and the subsequent policy of the Indonesian armed forces, and also the policy of the U.S., which was backing them, and arming them, and training them, and sustaining them politically. But the argument they made was, well, these particular kidnappings were not authorized, essentially, they were out of line with policy.

So, Prabowo was demoted and temporarily humiliated by his own army. And he went into exile in Jordan for a time. And, as this was happening, the U.S. also distanced themselves from him. And, in fact, when I met with him in 2001, which was not long after this, he had already come back to Indonesia — and he comes from a rich family to begin with, he was running a very rich palm oil business — he was clearly bitter about how he felt the U.S. at that point had betrayed him. It was in that context that he said, “Oh, I was the American’s fair-haired boy.” Now Wiranto, General Wiranto, his main rival, now he is their fair-haired boy.

RG: Yeah, you can’t trust your American spymasters. 

AN: No, this has been proven time and time and time again, in country after country, because Washington just makes a calculus of power. If you suddenly don’t have the power, what good are you? That’s the basic approach. Unless they see your potential to return to power, as Prabowo is now in the process of doing.

But that one particular case of the kidnapping of the activists, it’s interesting. In Indonesian political discussion, it’s the one case that you’re essentially allowed to talk about. It’s the one thing that most — or, I don’t know if most, but a lot — of the population has heard about. A lot of the population has heard about those kidnappings, because it is discussed in the press from time to time. But almost all the rest, including the largest slaughters, are expunged from the textbooks, are almost never mentioned in the press. Certainly, the U.S. sponsorship of those atrocities is also never mentioned in the press. That one incident was the one case of Prabowo having his sponsors in the army and in Washington distance themselves from him.

But, in more recent years, As Prabowo has staged his political comeback, the U.S. has been OK with him. In this current election, just-concluded election, there were three candidates. I think the U.S. was neutral as to which one they would back. They’re ready to accept Prabowo. It may prove to be a bit embarrassing to them once he comes in, if, at least outside Indonesia, people start talking about some of the massacres that he did with full U.S. sponsorship and support.

But, you know, they’ve basically got no problem with him, they’re ready to accept him. And I think he will be thrilled to once again be working together with Washington.

RG: And from Pakistan to Gaza they have plenty of other embarrassments at the moment to deal with, so, what’s one more on the pile?

And, last question. Just curious, from your perspective, how concerned are you about being in Jakarta? Does he still feel like it’s imbecilic to go after Western reporters who have a megaphone and can bring negative attention to human rights abuses in Indonesia? Or do you think that now that he’s moving into power, he might be willing to take more risks than he was, even in the past? 

AN: Well, you don’t do it in front of witnesses, you do it where there are no witnesses. No, it’s my own situation, I’m not worried about that. I mean, I was banned by Suharto, entry is a threat to national security, and was arrested by the army many, many times. During Prabowo’s last two presidential campaigns, ‘14 and ’19, in both cases his campaign announced that they had filed criminal charges against me. First, for publishing what he had said to me, and then later for publishing the document about his plans to do mass arrests, including mass arrests of his own supporters.

But, no, I’m not worried about that. But the people who do have reason to be concerned are activists across Indonesia, and especially people across West Papua, where the current Indonesian military — for years now, before Prabowo takes office — has already, on a regular, persistent, unending basis, been killing whatever civilians they feel is necessary to keep pro-independence sentiment in check. And now, there’s a very good chance that that will get even more intensive in West Papua, and become much more dangerous for activists across Indonesia, especially human rights activists.

RG: Well, Alan, thanks so much for your reporting over the years, and your continued reporting on this. And thank you for joining me here and sharing all this on Deconstructed.

AN: Oh, you’re welcome.

RG: That was Alan Nairn and that’s our show.

Deconstructed is a production of The Intercept. José Olivares is our lead producer. Our supervising producer is Laura Flynn. The show is mixed by William Stanton. Legal Review by David Bralow and Elizabeth Sanchez. Leonardo Faierman transcribed this episode. Our theme music was composed by Bart Warshaw. Roger Hodge is The Intercept’s Editor-in-Chief. And I’m Ryan Grim, D.C. Bureau Chief of The Intercept.

If you’d like to support our work, go to the intercept.com/give. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to the show so you can hear it every week. And please go and leave us a rating or a review, it helps people find the show. And, obviously, subscribe to Intercepted as well.

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Thanks for listening. See you soon.

The post “America’s Fair-Haired Boy,” Notorious Mass Murderer, on Brink of Indonesian Presidency appeared first on The Intercept.

Within the first 100 days of its war on Gaza, the Israeli military systematically destroyed every single university on the strip. International human rights monitors have found significant evidence that Palestinian scholars and intellectual figures have been targeted by Israeli strikes. The Israeli military has decimated Gaza’s education system and its infrastructure. This week on Deconstructed, Natasha Lennard, a columnist for The Intercept, fills in for Ryan Grim and speaks with Dr. Ahmed Alhussaina, the vice president of Israa University, one of Gaza’s most celebrated institutions of higher education and research. At the start of the war, Israel turned the university into military barracks, and later destroyed it in a massive, controlled explosion. In mid-November, Alhussaina fled Gaza; he has been able to escape to Egypt with his direct family members. Israel’s current war has killed 102 of his relatives. Alhussaina told Lennard about academic life in Gaza before October 7, the unending terror and desperation for Palestinians since the war began, and his hopes for the future of Palestinian intellectual life.

Natasha Lennard: Welcome to Deconstructed. I’m Natasha Lennard, a columnist for The Intercept, sitting in for Ryan Grim this week.

It is day 126 of Israel’s war on Gaza. Not a single university on the besieged strip has survived the military onslaught. Israeli forces have bombed hundreds of schools and educational institutions, including libraries, heritage sites, and museums. All schools are closed.

Human rights monitor Euromed, a Geneva-based independent nonprofit, reports that the Israeli army has targeted academic, scientific and intellectual figures, bombing their homes without prior notice. Over 94 academics have been killed, alongside hundreds of teachers and thousands of students. Every university has been systematically destroyed.

In a video shared by Israeli soldiers on social media, a soldier walks through the rubble of Al-Azhar University.

[Social media audio of the soldier.]

He says, “To those who say why there is no education in Gaza, we bombed them. Oh, too bad, you’ll not be engineers anymore.”

Today I speak to Dr. Ahmed Alhussaina, the vice president of another destroyed university, al Israa. Israeli forces seized his university soon after they invaded Gaza, using the buildings as a barracks and a detention center to interrogate Palestinians.

In mid-November, the Israeli military released a video showing a massive explosion. The IDF had flattened al Israa in a controlled detonation.

Dr. Alhussaina, speaks to us from Egypt, where he and his family have fled. Dr. Alhussaina, thank you for joining us. 

Ahmed Alhussaina: Thank you very much.

NL: You are joining us from Egypt, but you were previously in Gaza, and working at Israa University. Tell us a little bit about the university before it was destroyed.

AA: The Israa University was established in 2014. We started teaching in the fall of 2015, September 2015. When this university was established by pioneers and academics, and our vision was: poverty, would not stand an obstacle in front of any Palestinian that wants to pursue a college degree. And we followed this with action.

We had so many scholarships; for minorities, for females, for divorced women. We had, at that time, right before the war, we had 4,300 students, which mostly 65 percent were females.

We were about to open the building of the first university hospital in Gaza, we had accredited for the Bachelor of Medicine, which we just started teaching a couple of weeks before the war started; that was our first semester for that. We had a museum that [housed pieces] from a lot of collectors and regular people around Gaza. We had 3,000 artifacts in it, and we were going to open it to the public, we were just about to finish the building.

The small building next to the main campus building also was destroyed and looted. All that was gone, over 3,000 artifacts from the pre-Islamic [period], from the Roman Empire, from all the history of Palestine. We had all the currencies from the state of Palestine, 1905, 1920s, all these times. Like I said, we have ancient, we have recent modern history, and that’s all gone. Nothing is there. They looted it before they destroyed it, and then they just booby trapped the building. 

Like I said, we had a lot of hopes for the university. We were moving up the scale. We became number three in Gaza, as the [third] largest university on record in Gaza.

We were moving up. Last year we joined the Scopus, you know, the credential? You know what Scopus is, right? We were the first university [in Palestine] — [with] our journal of applied science — to join Scopus, the research database.

NL: Yes, this was in the midst of crucial work, and building work.

I want to talk a little bit about daily life before the Israeli bombardments began, but also, just because you mentioned it, the looting and sacking of artifacts, and the eradication of histories and culture, and ways in which Palestinians could speak of their own history, and their own sources of memory. Of course, numerous museums and heritage sites have been desecrated and decimated.

Can you talk a little bit more about what that means going forward, for being able to speak of Palestinian history and culture, and preserve that kind of knowledge production?

AA: Like I said, that’s all gone. And all the news knows that, like you just mentioned, most of the places that have cultural value or archaeological value to the Palestinian is gone. I think it’s a deliberate act of deleting, or just getting rid of everything that points or shows an estate or a people, actually. And they destroyed everything. I don’t know how we’re going to get all that stuff back. These irreplaceable things like that.

I don’t know where to find it, god knows where they’re going to get it. How are you going to get it? I mean, these are limited things that cannot be replaced. It’s not something that we can just build. And we can build new buildings, but I don’t know how we’re going to preserve this sentimental and archaeological value of our culture and heritage, and everything that proves that there were people living there. 

That’s what defied the occupation. Propaganda says people with no land came to a land with no people. I mean, they’re saying the Palestinians had no people, there was no such thing as Palestine, and this thing defies it, and I think that’s one of the main reason they attack these kind of things.

They uproot trees. They uproot, even, cemeteries. They uproot churches; the third-oldest church in Palestine was bombed. So many mosques, hundreds of mosques, hundreds of schools. Every single university was hit somehow. Some of them partially damaged, some of them totally destroyed. Schools are all mostly gone. Mosques, hospitals, medical centers. Even, like I said, libraries, the oldest library — Gaza City Library — also was destroyed.

I don’t know, what else can you explain [about] this? It is what it is. It is a destruction of everything Palestinian. They want to make Gaza unlivable and they want to destroy its history. Even if you go there now, you’re not going to see anything but rubble and destruction. Over 70,000 of the buildings were destroyed, and I don’t know where people are going to even have a life.

NL: No, absolutely. So, yes, speaking of that — have a life — tell us a little bit about daily life before this particular war. You told us a little bit about what the university was building… Your life, and the life of your colleagues and students — can you give us a sense of what that looked like?

Especially because, obviously, it’s not like history began on October 7th. I am curious about some of the existing challenges for academics, university life, in Gaza and Palestine more generally under Israel’s blockade and occupation. 

AA: Like I said, we were teaching, life was going fine. We had actually graduated our fourth class of last year, 2023, in August we had the last graduation ceremony for our fourth class of the university.

Life was going on. Like I said, we just got accredited for the Bachelor of Medicine, we had so many new programs we just started. We started the Center for Statistics and Surveys to do polls and surveys in Gaza. We had the building ready, also, inside the main campus, and that is also gone. We had so many hopes for the future.

Like I said, the obstacles, we had so many hundreds, even when we were building the building, you have to get approved for every single piece of cement, they have to get… Let’s say you get two tons of cement? You have to get approved by the Israeli side, they have to know where it’s going, and they have to be supervised by the UNDP and the staff of the UNRWA.

They have to see it. They had a storage house with cameras [where] you have to pick up exactly the amount that you need for this particular area. Let’s say you’re going to build a hundred meters, square meters, that’s what you’re going to need, cement for this much, and stones for this much. They calculate everything. So, you have to wait in lines, with delays and all of that.

Other than that, everything that you need to buy for laboratories, equipment for laboratories, also was delayed for years. You know, we ordered, for example, when COVID 19 happened, we had purchased a real-time PCR. You know, that’s the instrument that you use to test for coronavirus. We ordered at that time, we still haven’t gotten it up until now. They say that it’s not allowed, it’s not permittable. 

We had to get involved with the Red Crescent, the ICRC also couldn’t help. They helped us before. Last year, we got one of the instruments they [obtained] themselves after so many negotiations. It took us years to get it in. We got it, but the PCR never got there. They say, this is forbidden and it’s not permissible. “I don’t know, it says dual use. What are you going to use it for?” I have no idea. 

There’s so many things that you’re not allowed to bring in, even pipes. That’s, oh, they say it’s for dual use. Anything they want to deny entry to Gaza, they have the excuse of saying, it’s dual use, they can use it for something else. And so many things go under that category.

Also, when our academics and intellectuals try to travel, there’s always restrictions on who can travel. You need a permit from the Israeli side to go to the West Bank. If you want to go to attend a scientific conference, or you go to visit a university, or even go to the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research. You need to apply for a permit months ahead, and most of the time it’s rejected, for no reason. It’s a security reason, sometimes they don’t even tell you a reason, sometimes they just tell you it’s still pending, and it takes six months or seven months, when the occasion is gone, the conference’s date is expired and it’s gone. So you don’t even need to travel after that, if you get approved.

Same thing for traveling overseas. If you want to go through that, you have to go through the same thing. If you’re going to go through the border crossing, it’s also hell, because it’s not open all the time, and there’s so many restrictions on it.

So, we missed a lot of conferences, and even for our academics to go to another university, to go overseas. We had so many invitations. A lot of people had to cancel.

NL: Yes. So, even before this war, academic life was under a lot of control and faced many obstacles. Now it has been decimated or put into exile.

As mentioned, I’m speaking to you while you’re in Egypt, and if you’re able to, would love to hear more about your life after October 7th, what you’ve been through. And your journey to Egypt, and what your life is looking like now.

AA: Before the war, I was the Vice President for Financial and Administrative Affairs at the university, and I also was teaching in the business department. And we had my house, I had a nice house. I had a vehicle I had just purchased, which is also worth now, it cost about $45,000.

The house was almost totally destroyed. Not totally; it was mostly, it’s unlivable right now. And, of course, the university is gone, you don’t know what to go back for. We left the house after it was unlivable.

We left the house on November 14th, trying to go to the south. We were living in the city of Gaza, in the north side. So, we tried to leave, we’ve been trying to leave since the beginning of the war, my family and I. We had so many obstacles, it was so dangerous. You know, you get in the car, they shoot the cars, you walk, they shoot at people. There’s so many snipers after they started their ground operation.

On November 14th, I decided to leave with the family. So, we took a small car, which dropped us far away from, you cannot get close to where they are, because they shoot anything that moves. Then you have to walk, pull your bag on sand, of course, because all the roads were uprooted by the bulldozers and tanks, so you have to walk in the sand pulling those bags.

And, once you get there, there’s some cameras, and you have to go through a whole container or something, you walk through a little room. And then there’s cameras and all kinds of stuff, and then you walk. And then once you cross the room, they gather you in batches of 200 people, or 150 people. You stand in front of the Israeli army, which is about 100 yards away, and they’re looking at you with binoculars and cameras and all that. And then you have to stand up and hold your ID in your hand like that. And we stood in this position for two and a half hours.

And it was sunny. It was 12 o’clock and it was kind of hot. You’re feeling dizzy and you can’t even sit down because, if you move, you might get shot. And if you drop something, you cannot bend down to pick it up. You’re not allowed to move, so if you drop something, you lose it. So, that’s how bad it was.

And then, while you’re standing there, they’re making fun of you. They’re calling people donkeys and stuff. “You, red donkey with the red shirt, come on out. You come out.” They call you, you come out. You get close to them about, I guess I’d say 30 yards. There’s a big ditch in the sand, they make you go in there and take your whole clothes off. Everything, totally butt-naked. I’m sorry to say that. Naked. And a lot of people got through that. Even a 65-year-old man was there, they have him totally naked.

And then you need to make a turnaround, I don’t know what they’re scared of. Then they come out, handcuff you, blindfold you, and take you inside. They arrest people. Some people, they make them just sit on the side, they use them as a human shield overnight, and let them go in the morning. Some people got arrested and went away to unknown places.

Then after, like I said, the two-and-a-half-hour ordeal, they told us, you can walk, just start walking that way. So we start walking. We pulled our bags, our luggage, and what was left of our dignity. We walked about another mile, and then we got to a place where there’s a car pulled by donkeys that we rode on for another mile and a half that we have to pay for. And then, a mile and a half later, you get where some people are, you find a taxi, which we took, rented to the border, to Rafah crossing, where the Egyptian side is.

While we’re going, walking through, there were bodies on both sides of the road. Once you start walking from the Israeli side, where the Israeli army is, there’s bodies on both sides of the road. There’s nobody to pick them up, they’ve started to decompose. There’s a lot of them decomposing already. And we look at … You cannot see this kind of stuff ahead. My granddaughter, she’s three years old. I had to cover her eyes just not to see this kind of stuff.

And once we got there, we went to the border, and we crossed to Egypt.

NL: And which is, actually, of course, something that many people are also not even able to do, even this ordeal many people are hoping to do. It’s expensive, it’s difficult, and not possible. So, this ordeal that you went through is also something that many, many Gazans wish they could.

AA: Yes. Like I said, we were the lucky ones that day. Two days later, people were not allowed even to carry luggage. You have to walk with barefoot, bare hands, nothing in your hands. I mean, we were lucky enough to get one luggage of our clothes, we had some clothes, but other people when they crossed after — I heard stories from my cousin — two days later, he left after me, and he went to the south side, he just went to Rafah to stay there. He said it’s safe, safe to stay there.

They had to go on there with no nothing, with no luggage or anything. And they had no clothes, just whatever they wearing. No food, no money, and they had to go stay in another city where they didn’t know anybody. I don’t know how they are making it right now. People are living in tents, and in this cold weather, and it’s been raining for so many days. There’s no food, people are very hungry, and if you find food, it’s very, very expensive, that you can’t afford. Whatever it was, for five dollars right now, it’s like ten-fold over, ten times. They can’t afford it. Nobody has any money right now. Where are they going to get money from? 

NL: Those who are not able to get to Egypt, but also relatedly, are you in contact with your colleagues from the university? Family members who have not been able to cross with you? Other people you may have worked with in Palestinian academia or students?

Have you been able to maintain contact, and know how the people you worked with every day are doing?

AA: I still have family there, I still have brothers and sisters back in Gaza. I have a brother and sisters in northern [Gaza], still in the Gaza city where I used to live close by. And they can’t find food, and they keep moving from one place to another, because the bombing is close by. And then they move, then they come back to the house, and you just go back and forth.

My other brother moved with his family to the south side of Gaza. They went to Khan Yunis, where the bombing is. He’s been living there for a month and a half with his family, his kids, and wife, and grandchildren. And that’s how they’re doing.

I mean, you keep worrying, you try to get in touch. You have to call, like, ten times to get [through] sometimes, and sometimes you will never get it. Sometimes you just send messages by using social media, WhatsApp, or any means of contact to get an answer back in a couple of days. They’re saying, we are OK, how are you doing?

All day we’re watching the news, that’s what we’re doing. We’re seeing Al Jazeera, we’re seeing all other kinds of news channels. And we listen to it, we’re watching it, and every time we hear a bombing close to where they live, we have to call them and send… Because you don’t know. You don’t know who’s next and who’s not.

Last night, it just happened. They bombed the house where my cousin lived in Ra’a, like, the border of Rafah. They bombed the top apartment above their head. And when we had seen the building, and they said it belonged to these people, we thought they were gone. And they were the rest of the family, you know? We had to keep calling and calling until we got somebody. They left. The bomb didn’t come there, so, once they bombed the top, they just ran out. They walked out. I mean, they made it [out] alive, but it’s something I wanted to mention.

Like, one week later, on the 23rd, I think, after I left, seven or eight days later, they found the block where I lived, and 102 of my family and relatives have been killed there. A few of my nephews, my nieces, a couple of my cousins, my uncles, their grandchildren, their wives, their kids, a lot of their families been wiped off the world, of the register, you know? And the problem is they’re still under rubble till now. I mean, it’s been two months, almost, or 50 days now, and they’re still, most of them are still under rubble.

Because you can’t get anybody, there’s no equipment whatsoever, they bombed everything that you can use. And you can’t even drive in the street with that. If you call somebody to help, they bomb those kind of things. You have to use hands, and now, you cannot pull all this concrete, this heavy concrete, and you can’t take it out, you can’t pull it out. So, they’re still under there, they’re probably decomposed already, you know, with bones or whatever. I don’t know how you’re going to recognize them, and then, God knows when is this going to end. And I feel sorry for the parents who cannot even bury their own children, still.

My sister goes there. She lost her two only boys. They’re still in the rubble. I mean, they’re old enough, they’re 25 and 24. She goes there in front of the building with all the rubble. And I heard them, my other sister, she goes there every day in the morning. She’s like, I smell my kids. And just, every single day.

NL: I’m so sorry for your loss. It is intolerable.

Tell me about your life in Egypt now. You mentioned that you’re now glued to the news, of course, trying to keep in contact when possible. What is day-to-day life aside from that? Your place of work, destroyed, partially destroyed.

AA: There’s nothing to do in here, like I said. We are just, refugees right now. I mean, we just, like I said, the news, watching the news all day. Sometimes I try to walk around just to look like, you know … To feel that you’re doing something. We walk around to the market and come back, that’s all we’re doing. And we’re not working and there’s nothing to do. You know, there’s no working. Anyway, even if you tried to, it’s just, so many people are out of work here.

So, all you do is just sit down in the house, or just walk around and watch things, and just to move your bones or whatever, just so you don’t have to sit in the house all day. And, like I said, my kids, also, my two sons here, and they lost their uncles and cousins. And, you know, so many things, it’s…

My brother lost his son with his kids, his grandchildren, all together. My brother’s an American citizen. I know how hard it is, but there’s nothing to do. It’s just, like I said, news, and I try to get in touch with people back home all day.

I get in touch with people sometimes, with my colleagues, like I said. Some of them — not all of them — there’s some of them already got killed. One of them, Dr. Fadel Abu Hein, he’s the most prominent psychologist, he used to — he’s the head of the department of clinical psychology at our university. He got killed with his family, they also bombed his house. Everything was gone. So many people that I know have passed away like that, and just got killed.

NL: And indeed, a number of human rights monitors have noted that there seems to be incontrovertible evidence that academic intellectual figures were not just killed in the bombardments, but also targeted.

AA: Yes, that is a proven fact. They target so many intellectuals and professors, and most of the university. Like you said, the president of the university has been found with his family, his wife and kids, so many doctors that I personally know, professors, intellectuals, they were killed.

Like journalists, where they were threatened. Actually some of them were threatened; Dr. Refaat Alareer, he was teaching English literature. He was a poet, also, he was raising awareness, he was conveying our message to the world. And he was threatened, and he was killed, he was bombed with his house.

I think they’re targeting intellectuals because they are role models for people, they teach nationalism, and they shape opinions. We teach our students self-confidence. We sow resistance in people, and we organize opposition. And, as intellectual academics, we can expose the barbaric nature of this regime, this occupation, and that’s probably why, mostly, they try to target these sections of people. It is deliberate. 

They aim to obscure the truth, like I said. They don’t want … These intellectuals are the best people to convey, or to make our tragedy reach the outer world, the Western world. And, especially if most of [us] went to schools or colleges in other countries, Western countries — most went to Europe or United States — so, we are the best people to represent our case on a struggle, both to America and the Western world, and that’s probably the main reason [why] they want to conceal the truth, and they want to oppress the people. Not to show, like I said, the true nature, barbaric nature of this regime.

NL: Yes, indeed. And, in the words of Dr. Refaat Alareer, have indeed echoed through the poem he left: “If I must die, you must live to tell my story.” And that is … These stories that so much death make impossible to share.

So, let’s talk a little bit about international reception, international support, lack thereof, or where it has been present for you and your family. Can you talk a little bit about feelings around international support that you have been able to receive, or not? And what you would hope to see shifting.

AA: I was lucky enough. My family and I had the State Department help us to get out of there. I mean, you know, I can thank them for that. They’re the one who posted our names to the Israeli side and Egyptian side so that we could cross the border. As you know, there’s nobody allowed to cross the border, except for these people with dual citizenship, and all their own countries get them out. Or other people like, you know, injured people, which… [there are] not much [of them] coming out of there.

They helped us out through that, and they drove us to a hotel for a couple of days, and then they told us, you’re on your own. I guess that’s the only help that we got so far from anybody.

Back home — I mean, in Gaza — they did not get any help. I’m talking to my sisters and brothers. Every day, the kids go around, and they try to find food even to buy. You don’t find it, especially in the north, you can’t find anything to buy. Even if you had the money, money can’t help you much, because there’s not much things to buy. Everything is gone, everything has ran out. You know, it’s been four months, and there’s nothing coming into North Gaza, there’s nothing in, except a couple of bags of flour. That’s what they need every day to make bread, and it’s not much. And, like I said, the prices went up like ten times. 

They don’t find food, they don’t find much stuff in there. Even chips, potato chips used to be there. Whatever they find, they buy. I mean, there’s nothing left in the stores. Most of the supermarkets are shut down, closed, either bombed, or there’s nothing in there to sell. And you just buy from the black market. People walk in the street and try… They find something, they try to sell. That’s their daily life.

My other brother in the South, he sleeps in a tent. They’re sleeping in a tent with their kids and their grandchildren. And one tent, you know, it doesn’t even stop the cold or the air coming in, you know? The wind is moving the tent, and even the water from the rain, rainwater goes underneath them. That’s how they live their day-to-day life. And the same thing, it’s very hard to find food in the whole shelter. Whatever you had on you, that’s what you’ve got.

They say the United Nations is helping out, they give out food sometimes, the flour that comes as international aid from other countries, from Kuwait, and Algeria, and Turkey, and then other European countries, Spain and France. They send the food, also, and supplies, medical supplies. But, like everybody knows, it doesn’t go [far]. 

Before the occupation, Gaza used to have 500 to 600 trucks going into Gaza from the borders. That’s how much they use every single day: 500, 600 trucks, those trailer trucks. Right now, what goes in is, like, 20, 100. Now they’re saying it was going up to 80, so I don’t know what the numbers are. But that’s not enough for one day, let alone if nothing got in for four months. If they get a thousand a day, that’s not even going to be enough, and you have to keep bringing stuff in.

And, in the south, because of the displacement and exodus of people, there are so many people in Rafah close to the Egyptian border, it’s over, say, 1.5 million. There’s more than half of the population that are already living there in tents, and in one town, because that’s what the Israeli army told them is a safe place to go to. They told them to go to Khan Yunis; Khan Yunis got bombed, you know? They’re bombing it right now. They went to the hospital, and they bombed the hospital yesterday in Khan Yunis, which is the main hospital, Nasser Hospital. You know, there’s no safe place to go there.

During the war before we left there was no safe place. We were thinking that we might just get killed every single minute, any minute now, you know? We’d sit there at night, we just said our prayers and goodbyes to each other with the family. We’d gather in one room. So, let’s say, if we die, we die together, and we say we don’t even know who’s going to make it to the next morning. That was the feeling every single night until we left.

And I know that’s even worse for them now. God knows what on their mind. Especially when you move one place, from one house to another, from one tent to another. I know you keep running around, and you don’t know when is the next hit is going be. It’s really hard.

NL: And in terms of not just since this particular onslaught, but the treatment of Palestinian scholarship and scholars internationally, you mentioned before, the sheer difficulty of leaving the strip for scholars based in Gaza to attend international conferences, and be part of international communities. Those of us based in the U.S. are certainly aware of some of the difficulties Palestinian voices have had in holding standing in U.S. universities, and that’s true of non-Palestinian academics who support Palestinian liberation.

How do you feel about the international support and lack thereof of Palestinian scholarship, in your experience, prior to this war, and now, and thoughts going forward?

AA: There was some international, at least, let’s say, sympathy with the Palestinians. But if you have a Palestinian passport, it doesn’t get you anywhere. That’s one of the main obstacles, also, for Palestinian intellectuals or academics or scholars. If you try to travel anywhere in the world, you always need a visa. It’s not a strong nationality or a passport that you can go to so many countries without a visa, like the American passport, or any other countries. Even in the Arab world, the Palestinian passport is not considered a passport. They treat you like one of those third-class citizens or whatever.

You’re always subject to a stop or an interrogation. You have to sit aside for a couple of hours waiting before they stamp your passport, they have to find out who you are. Even if you go to any Arab country, your passport, it’s a flag. You’re always a suspect if you’re a Palestinian, especially coming out of Gaza.

No matter how, how prominent or a known scholar you are, you have to go through this horrendous — I don’t know how you call it — treatment every single time. If you’re lucky enough to have a different passport, a dual citizenship, that might help you a lot if you’re going into Arab countries, or even other European countries, it’s easier for you to get a visa. You could do it online with a lot of countries, if they require a visa to start with. But if you have a Palestinian passport, you have to wait, probably, a couple of months before you can get a visa.

Once you go in there, they don’t cover, exactly, even your expenses most of the time, because, I guess Palestine is not a recognized state according to their standard. In some countries, not all. Some other places, you go there, they respect you and they treat you right, like your other colleagues of other countries, but that’s in rare conditions.

That’s before the war. After the war, I haven’t tried to … There’s nobody, there’s nothing to do. There are no scholars to go anywhere, to see if the treatment has changed or not. But I don’t know if it’s going to change much, to be honest with you, the way I see it. 

NL: And, given that that feels like the case, and there’s a lot of evidence to believe that is the case, tell me a little bit about what it felt like to observe —as was televised and shared in video around the world by the Israeli military — images of the university you were part of, you were building, and strengthening, being detonated and raised to the ground, in a video that was then shared widely.

AA: It’s hard to describe this feeling, because we have so many memories in that building. We built every single piece of it. Because, when we started the university in 2014, it was in a small campus in the north of Gaza. At that time we were building this main building. This is one of the biggest or the nicest buildings in Gaza. We built it and we followed every single step of it. So, it’s like, you know, we have emotional relations to this place, we have attachments to this place.

And we would go on there every single day when we started teaching, when we opened the building at the campus, people were coming and just taking pictures of the place. The place was very nice — I don’t know if you’ve seen pictures of the building — it was one of the largest and nicest buildings in Gaza. And a lot of people, when they come there, they get impressed.

And, like I said, we had medical laboratories, we had all kind of laboratories, everything was there. Everything was destroyed and is gone right now. We got attached to it, because we spend more time in there, probably more than we spend with our families in our houses. We were there every day from 8 o’clock in the morning till 5 o’clock in the afternoon, every single day.

When you get attached to this kind of … It’s like your house. And if you lose your house and it gets destroyed, also, you have a lot of memories in there. You can’t describe it. I don’t know how long it’s going to take to get this back up, if we ever get a chance to rebuild what we had in there.

A lot of students are now out. A lot of our students have been killed, their families have been killed. A lot of staff members, I have coworkers that have been killed with their family. Some of them were detained by Israel. So, it’s like I say, catastrophe. And you can’t comprehend it, can’t even keep up with it.

When you sit there alone and start thinking about it, you feel frustrated, despair, I don’t know how optimist— you don’t know — pessimistic. You don’t know. I don’t know what to feel, to be honest with you.

NL: Is it possible to think about the future at all? And, if it is, if there is a sight of hope or desire for what you hope the future could look like, what do you think about in those terms? 

AA: I hope this ordeal will end at first, that this war stops the killing, and the genocide, and ethnic cleansing. That it stops now, right now. Not tomorrow, not today, right now at this minute. I hope this will stop and, once this stops, we will start thinking about rebuilding. Of course, we will rebuild. We’re not going anywhere. That’s the way I feel, the way everybody, every Palestinian feels. We want to rebuild, and we want to live our life in the same place, in Gaza. We are not going nowhere.

And I think that the world will help us. I think God is will help us stay in there, Inshallah, God willing. We will stay there. We will go back and rebuild again. This is another, like I said, catastrophe from the Nakba, 1948, when people got kicked out of their homes. My father and my grandfather worked there and they went through that.

My uncle, he’s 95 years old, he was telling us about the Nakba in 1940, when they left their houses, they were thrown out of their house, and then left it. They still have keys for the house. He got killed, also, in the last bombing a couple of months ago. Him, and my father, and everybody was telling us about what happened in 1948.

I think this history is repeating itself exactly to us, but we are not going anywhere. We will go back. Whenever we get the chance, we will go back and rebuild again and go on with our lives.

NL: Thank you so much, sir, for joining me today on Deconstructed. I wish you well. 

AA: Thank you, Natasha. Thank you, everybody there. And I would love for this, the word, to get to everybody, every American. I know a lot of Americans don’t know what’s going on. This is my granddaughter. 

NL: Just for listeners, a beautiful little girl has popped into screen. How old is she?

AA: She’s three years old.

[Small child saying hello.]

NL: Hello. It’s lovely to meet you. And it was wonderful to talk to you, sir. Thank you so very much.

AA: Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you, guys.

NL: That was Dr. Ahmed Alhussaina, the vice president of al-Israa University, a university near Gaza City that Israel first turned into a military base and, later, bombed and destroyed.

Deconstructed is a production of The Intercept. José Olivares is our lead producer. Our supervising producer is Laura Flynn. The show is mixed by William Stanton. Legal review by David Bralow and Elizabeth Sanchez. Leonardo Faierman transcribed this episode. Our theme music was composed by Bart Warshaw. Roger Hodge is The Intercept’s Editor-in-Chief. And I’m Natasha Lennard, a columnist for The Intercept.

If you’d like to support our work, go to theintercept.com/give. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to the show so you can hear it every week. And please go and leave us a rating or a review, it helps people find the show. And, obviously, subscribe to Intercepted as well.

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Amid ongoing congressional negotiations for a new immigration bill, a bipartisan effort is underway to deter migration through measures such as immediate detention and deportation, as well as more stringent restrictions on asylum-seekers. This week on Deconstructed, John Washington, a staff writer at Arizona Luminaria and contributor for The Intercept, argues the humane — and economically sound — solution is to open the border. Washington joins Ryan Grim to discuss his new book, “The Case for Open Borders,” which takes a historical look at migration and the current crisis. Washington asserts that free and unrestricted movement of people across borders strengthens security, fosters economic growth globally, and can address climate change challenges.

Ryan Grim: All right. Welcome back to Deconstructed.

I’m Ryan Grim, and today we’re going to be talking about the border. It’s a huge issue here in Washington, and I’ve been predicting for months that nothing is going to come from this, because nobody really has incentives to get it done. Or, I should say, Republicans don’t really have incentives to get it done. They would much rather continue to have Biden talk about a crisis — he used the word “crisis” this week — talk about a crisis on the border, run against that crisis and then maybe do something [or] maybe not do something when they take power, but power being the end goal there.

Donald Trump conveyed as much to Republican senators, and Mitch McConnell then conveyed it to his Republican conference that, look, we don’t actually want to fix this, quote-unquote, “problem.”

I’m joined today by John Washington, who’s the author of the new book, which is out on Tuesday, you can preorder it now. It’s called “The Case for Open Borders,” and that’s why I kind of put “problem” in quotes there, because I personally understand that, as a political matter in this political moment, it’s pretty untenable to be arguing in the mainstream for open borders.

On the other hand, open borders are basically what we had all throughout the 19th century. Europe has open borders, you can just drive right from France to Spain, you can drive from Poland all the way to France, and it doesn’t really seem to cause them a whole lot of problems.

But, setting all that aside for our later conversation with author John Washington, John, I wanted to first ask you about what you make of the facets of the deal that have been leaked into the press. Now, I call it a deal, it’s still in negotiations, and I don’t think it actually will become law for the reasons I said, but we have gotten some nuggets of what Democrats are willing to agree to. Does any of it jump out at you as particularly revealing?

John Washington: Thanks for having me, Ryan.

You mentioned the lack of incentives for the Republicans. I think there’s sort of a lack of incentive for the Democrats, as well. They’re in a corner on this. The only way that they have been trying to get out of the situation at the border is to implement further crackdowns, which is revealing, in that they are playing politics with this. They are trying to appease the Republicans, appease the right in order to gain some political points, and this is something that we have seen done repeatedly, from administration to administration.

Some of the more specific facets of this that have been leaked or that are allegedly on the table right now. Including things like, Biden has said that he would shut the border down — whatever that exactly means, as if there’s an on/off switch for a border — or that he could implement something like a rehash of the Title 42 authority, which he had, just less than a year ago, used extensively, he used it even more than Trump.

Just a little bit of background on that: Title 42 is an 80-year-old public health authority that allows the executive branch to effectively push people back across the border as soon as they come over. Just under 3 million people were pushed back across the border from early 2020, until last spring. And one of the really notable things here is that that didn’t work. It didn’t work to stop people from crossing the border. In fact, after Title 42 was implemented, more people started crossing the border. A lot of them were repeat crossings, but a lot of them were individual first-time crossings as well.

And here we see this trap, or this cycle, of thinking that deterrence is going to work to stop people from crossing the border, and Title 42 is one example. We go back just a couple of years earlier to an even more draconian policy, the Family Separation Policy, or the Zero Tolerance Policy, implemented under the Trump administration. And that is where we saw families separated, kids taken out of their parents arms, a lot of the parents got deported, detained, the kids were shipped elsewhere in the United States… One of the most inhumane policies we’ve seen on the border in a long time.

You would think, if you’re following the logic of what deterrence might work on the border, that that would stop people from coming. But we saw in the months immediately following that policy, even after it ended, that more and more families were coming to the border. So, that didn’t deter people from coming, that didn’t deter people from trying to find some sense of safety, or reunite with other family members, or economic security, or whatever the underlying motivations are.

And we could go back and back and back, and just go, administration by administration, and see that crackdowns don’t work in stopping crossings. What they do is they force people into more precarious situations. That is, the outer reaches of the desert, to dangerous river fjordings, and people suffer, drown, die of heat, environmental exposure, and it just implements more suffering, rather than actually stops them from crossing. 

RG: Yeah. You’ve got a cool appendix to your book called 21 Arguments for Open Borders, and I wanted to run through a couple of those with you. And I’ll see what a good job I can do, kind of arguing back at you, even though I don’t necessarily disagree with you, to see if I can pull that off.

But let’s start with number seven. It’s the one that has always been the most interesting to me, where you say, “open borders doesn’t mean a rush to migrate.” Because the running assumption among a lot of Americans is that everybody wants to be in America, everyone around the world, all 9 billion people. And then, if you just gave everyone a green card and a plane ticket, that, tomorrow, you’d have all 9 billion people on the planet here within the borders of the United States, and we’d have social collapse immediately.

You’ve actually got some interesting research on this. To me, that never scanned, because most people like the place that they grew up, it’s where they’re comfortable, it’s where their family is, it’s where their friends are, it’s what they know. But you’ve dug in a little deeper on that.

So, what did you find on this question, of mass migration being sparked by an open border policy?

JW: Well, I want to reframe two things here really quickly. One is, when people talk open borders, I don’t think folks mean a green card necessarily right away or a plane ticket. And the reason I’m harping on that for a second is because there have been so many claims about current asylum seekers getting gift cards, getting free plane tickets, and that’s just not the case.

RG: Five-thousand dollar is one of the myths circulating on the right. Just, you get, that you just get a card with $5,000 on it.

JW: Completely false. I’m in Arizona, we have one of our senate candidates here, Mark Lamb, who claims to have knowledge of this happening, and it’s just not true.

That’s not happening. No one is getting plane tickets, or vouchers for anything, who are crossing the border.

But the other reframe I want to do is something that I think a lot of folks in the United States see as an issue that affects the United States [uniquely]. And the current migration problem — and I agree that it’s a problem — is not a United States problem, it’s not an American problem. It’s a regional problem and it’s a global problem.

If you think about it in [terms of] just, where people are going currently, a lot of people are coming to the United States, a lot of people have always come to the United States. We can get into some numbers on that in a second, I think that’s really important work to do as well.

But look at, for example, the number of Venezuelans and the number of Nicaraguans who have resettled in neighboring countries, compared to how many have come to the United States. There are, approaching, 3 million Venezuelans in Colombia right now, and over the past 20-some years, the number of Venezuelans who have come to the United States hasn’t even topped 1 million.

Nicaraguans are largely resettling — or maybe temporarily resettling — in neighboring Costa Rica. Some of them are coming up through Central America, Mexico, and trying to get into the United States as well, there’s been a parole program. But people generally stay close to their home countries.

This is the same for Africa as well; there’s a number of African states who have become “receiving countries,” in immigration speak. Gabon, which is a country probably a lot of people never think of and couldn’t necessarily point to on a map, has been an enormous receiving country for a lot of African refugees right now. Same with Uganda, for people from other different countries in Africa. Turkey, as well, for Syrians, has welcomed far, far more people than some of the neighboring states in Europe that have complained and cried foul for supposedly being overrun.

So, I think, if you consider where people are going, they typically don’t want to go far. And there have been a number of examples of, when the border has been effectively open — you mentioned that in the 19th century — there was a lot of immigration in the 19th century in the United States. Something like 50 million Europeans went from different countries in Europe to the United States over a hundred-year period, ending in the late 19th century.

But there are a number of other examples where… I think Puerto Rico is a telling case. Puerto Ricans can move freely. They’re U.S. citizens, they can move to New York, to Miami, to wherever they want to go. And plenty of them have, but not all of them have. And you can look at even some of the economic differences between the island and different parts of the United States. You’d think, well, we have higher wages here, we have all these other things that people think would attract migrants, and sometimes does, but it doesn’t empty out, and hasn’t emptied out Puerto Rico.

You can go case by case and see that people want to stay where they are. If they can, they will. And if they can’t, they’ll often go to the next easiest place to get to. Of course, there are exceptions to this, and a lot of those exceptions are due to prior relationships.

But if you look at the history of colonialism, a lot of the states who have gone in and meddled with these so-called “developing nations” are now receiving citizens of those same countries, where the empires have destabilized, have engaged in conquest, have tried to exploit as much as possible. So, there is a connection, and so, some people will go further than their neighboring states, but it’s not an inevitability.

Migration costs money, it’s expensive, and opening the gates doesn’t necessarily mean people are going to rush, because it costs a lot, both monetarily and emotionally, professionally. They’re going to leave behind everything they knew, and folks don’t tend to do that.

RG: All right. So, to push back on that a little bit, you’re seeing record numbers of migrants approaching the U.S. border over the last months and year-plus. So, what does that tell us about how much kind of pressure there is on outward migration, and what we might see if you actually did just fully say, you know what? Come on in.

JW: Well, I think it’s too early to say if this is just another peak, and we’re going to drop down into a valley in terms of numbers of migration, or if this is going to be necessarily a steady upward trend.

If you look at the big picture, there are right now about 270 million international migrants; that was based on last year’s count by the U.N. That’s about 3.5 percent of the global population. That number, 3.5 percent, has held steady for about a hundred years. If you look at forced migration — so people who aren’t just migrating for economic or family reasons, but are actually forced out of the country — the count topped 110 million last year. And that, too, is about the average of the global population. It’s a little bit hard to count, because the tabulations weren’t done as thoroughly in the mid-last century, when we newly defined what a refugee was.

I’m going to give you another number, and then I want to get into that, what this means about the outward pressures of migration. The United States, too, a little bit less than 15 percent of all people living in the country are foreign born, and that number is almost identical to what it was 100 years ago.

So, there’s a number of things to think through that might imply that these numbers are going to increase. I mean, climate change is the biggest one of them. Large parts of the world are becoming less habitable because of all the reasons we know and, increasingly, strong storms, droughts, floods, heat, etc. So, we might be in a new era, but I think it’s so far a little bit too early to tell, going back to that 100-year perspective.

And then you can go further than that, too. There’s something that is true here, is that humans are moving, and humans have historically moved. That is how humans have always been, and that has been true before the rise of nation states, that has been true before the rise of empires.

So, I think the question is not how to stop migration, but how do we respond to migration? And if we can think through that, how we want to actually respond to migration, and if we understand the fact that … We were talking about this earlier, about these deterrence policies that don’t work. One of the other big things that we’ve found doesn’t work is a wall. Walls have never effectively worked to keep people out. They deter, or just make crossings more deadly.

So, when we think about responding, I think this, to me, gets to what are commonly called the root causes. So, it seems like, well, if we’re just going to think about how we’re going to settle folks, maybe we’re not really addressing those root causes. But I think, actually, when we think about how we respond to people who are moving, we can elaborate that or extrapolate that into addressing the root causes.

Because the root causes, really, are wrapped up in how we are to other people, how we are to other nations, how we decide to respect our environment or not. And if we start thinking about, well, we want to actually respect the humanity of folks who are forced to flee, then we might also be able to carry that approach over to … We might also want to respect people who live in so-called underdeveloped nations, and not just exploit them for their labor, being able to give them less worker protections or less wages, but we may actually be able to figure out some way to stop the exploitative relationship, and allow folks to move or stay as they please.

I think that thinking that there is an approach that will stop them is actually the first problem with the border crises around the globe right now. 

RG: When I was growing up, the way that our immigration system seemed to work was that you’d have a lot of seasonal workers who would cross into the United States, many of them with actual work permits and employers. They had fields that they were going to, and they had destinations, their families would stay back in Mexico, or wherever else. And then, when the seasonal work was done, they would go back home to their family.

As the anti-immigration sentiment grew, and we created a much tougher, firmer border, it became untenable for a lot of those people to make that journey twice a year, up and back. So, if the idea was that they would just never come, that was foiled immediately. Instead, they just sent for their families.

And so, instead of having one seasonal worker coming for the season, we now had that worker’s entire family, which then leads to some immigration reform, and then leads to three decades of nothing, and just kind of spiraling immigration policy out of control.

JW: Closed borders or policies towards closing borders have actually been shown to increase migration. And that can be understood in two ways.

One is that it traps people who would normally do that seasonal migration, or would maybe come and work for a couple years and then go back, they decide that it’s not worth it anymore. It also incentivizes people to make the trip before policies that are written into law actually are implemented, and we saw this with Brexit.

In the year after Brexit, there were more migrants that made it to the U.K. than the year before Brexit, which is ironic.

RG: So, they passed Brexit on an anti-immigration sentiment, and it actually produced a spike in immigration.

JW: Exactly. And there’s another example of this as well.

So, if you look, a lot of the border lockdowns at the beginning of the pandemic, the people who were able to migrate freely from Eastern Europe to Spain and Italy — Romanians, for example, some of my family members — they were able to get back, they left, and they went back to their home countries. Whereas some of the people who didn’t have papers, some of the undocumented populations in those countries, decided to stay, that it wasn’t going to be worth it to try to leave, because they didn’t know when they were going to get back in.

So, there are just a number of different ways that, actually, trying to implement lockdowns locks people in, or incentivizes a quick rush to get in, rather than do what they’re supposedly trying to do. And here, too, I think it’s important to talk about the perversity of thinking that we don’t want migrants, because — especially in the Western world or the Global North — we are hugely dependent on migrants. 

This came into sharp relief during the early days of the pandemic as well, when an enormous percentage of the so-called essential workers were migrants, were the ones who were still out there in the fields picking food, in the hospitals, tending to people who were getting sick and dying of COVID, who were doing all the other sorts of social services. I was in New York at the time, the people who were delivering food when folks were too scared to go out or couldn’t go to restaurants.

These are migrants, these are people who largely have come to the country recently. And if they were all kicked out, or if more people were not allowed in, the economy would collapse. And this is something that lawmakers know, but they just use the idea of a border, they use the fear that they themselves often spark as a political tool.

RG: And you talk about the 19th century in your 21 arguments in the back of the book, but you also point out that it was a lot more than just the 19th century. You had some statistics about, in 1990, there were something like four border walls, or maybe even fewer, in the entire world. Now there are dozens, scores; I don’t remember the exact number. You talked about how you thought that could possibly be representative of the death throes of nationalism.

I’m curious for you to unpack that a little bit, and then I want to talk about the history, what it was like when the border basically was open.

JW: Yeah. So, here I was leaning on scholar Wendy Brown, who has written about this a lot; also, Jacqueline Stevens. And some of the approach they take or the way that they understand what’s going on with the rise of bordering, the rise of immigration crackdowns, is that with the rise of globalism, with the increased interconnectivity of the world in the past 30 years, the rise of the internet — also the downfall of a number of long-entrenched institutions like organized religion — people falling back on nationalism as a key component of identity. And nationalism is the basis of nation states.

So, there’s this idea that we create this state — which is an organized political institution — and then we tie it to this idea of a nation, which is a much more ambiguous, almost amoebic concept, where we have this supposed common identity. But a number of people, even before those two scholars I mentioned — Benedict Anderson is one standout — who have described and gone into detail about what nationality really means and how it’s forged, and it’s forged artificially. Because you have as much in common with someone who may be your neighbor as you have in common with someone who is across a state line — or, rather, a national line — and yet you’re only supposedly in community with the people within your border nation state.

So, as that seems increasingly and obviously a false construction … I live in Arizona, as I already mentioned. There’s a divided city here on our southern border — Nogales, Arizona, and Nogales, Sonora — [and] a lot of people who live in those two cities have family on either side. They have intense familial, cultural, linguistic, culinary, etc., connections. And yet, because of this dividing line, they are not co-nationals.

And so, you look at someone who’s living in Nogales, Arizona, and compare them to someone who’s living in, say, Seattle, or some other city in the country, and they have so much less in common. And yet, we try to create this tie through nationality.

And I think that politicians in particular are able to play on those concepts of identity and try to instill fear that this is something that your very identity is going to be lost. But, really, you understand identity, I think, truly, through community ties, through family ties, through who you know and interact with on a daily basis. And, though that is definitely changing with the rise of the internet, politicians want to try to make sure you do maintain those national ties, and scare you that they will be broken, and the bordering is one way to do that. Saying we’re going to maintain who we are as a nation but, you know, the United States is the most diverse country in the world — and there’s been many other very diverse countries as well — but really trying to border off who we are doesn’t make sense, because we’re so intersectional, poly-linguistic, poly-cultural, in many different ways, that really trying to draw lines around that would be drawing this frenetic scribbled border line, which doesn’t really make any sense.

So, I think it’s really based on fear. And, yeah, it’s increasing the number of border walls every year, [they are] increasing in length, increasing in number.

RG: It does feel like the internet, generally … But more specifically, the ease with which people can share video across borders has really made borders seem less relevant when it comes to common cultures. In the video game world — I’m too old, really, to be playing video games, but talking to people who do — they are playing with people who are in Korea, they’re playing with people who are in Gabon, they’re playing with people who are in France. And they’re all playing the same game, and they don’t see themselves as in distinct communities. They’re all in the Fortnite community, or whatever they’re playing at the time.

But, I’m curious. When did the United States start to have an actual immigration policy?

JW: Yeah, one other thought about that. So, we do have these cross-cultural ties. You’re basically describing open cultural borders right there. People playing Fortnite from Brooklyn to Gabon, or whatever. Think of everyone else who has open borders as well.

I mean, most people who are citizens of the United States effectively can waltz through the world as if there were completely open borders. And that is true, also, of the wealthy from many other countries in the world. Much of Western Europe could do basically the same. The ultra wealthy in many even so-called developing countries can do much the same.

The U.S. military. What border stops the U.S. military right now? Maybe a few are contested? But there’s, what, 800 bases, nearly, American bases spread throughout the world? 

RG: That reminds me of a moment that I’ve really never forgotten. A friend of mine, Christian Parenti, and I were down doing reporting in Bolivia, and we were able to tour a Bolivian military base, and interview military figures, and they were going to talk to us about the war on drugs and all this. And, while we’re waiting, there’s a couple soldiers, they’re kind of just sitting in the waiting room with us, and one of them says to us, “Why are you guys allowed to walk around our military base, when I’m not even allowed to come into your country?” And Christian said, “It’s called imperialism,” and he kind of nodded along.

But that was a moment that always stuck with me, because it did seem bizarre to me. That, well, what am I doing here? Like, why am I able to just wander around here and be welcomed onto this base?

JW: I think imperialism is a good answer. I have another one, too. I think it’s also just definitionally called apartheid. There’s different laws for different people, and when you zoom out from just within a nation, we are allowed to do things that other people are not. How is that fair?

RG: Like, global apartheid.

JW: Global apartheid. I mean, it seems like a silly question, or almost a juvenile framing, but I think fairness is actually key here. Some people are allowed to do and have the freedoms that others do not. That is the way that the global border system works right now.

RG: Right, based on where they’re born or their ethnicity. We understand that as apartheid inside the borders of a country like South Africa, but when we stretch it out to the entire globe, we say that’s just how it is.

JW: Right. So, you asked about the rise of federal immigration law. For the first hundred-plus years of the existence of the United States, there was no immigration law. There was maybe something like implicit understanding of who would be allowed in, based on tradition, based on just common practice, based on the definition of who a citizen could be, which was, you know, white men.

There were some state laws that go back, actually, to before there was a United States, that tried to keep poor people out of their states, or poor people out of their towns and cities. And then we really saw the rise of immigration law in the late 19th century, with anti-Chinese legislation that barred Chinese people from being allowed into the country. There was some version of these Chinese Exclusion Acts that were on the books well into the 20th century; it lasted a really long time. 

Those Laws were based on previous anti-Irish sentiment, and you can see, there’s sort of this idea, there’s almost this concept of whack-a-mole. The newest incomers are the ones that are going to be scapegoated, the ones who are going to be said to be un-American, impossible to assimilate.

I was doing some research about this situation in New York, the crying foul of Mayor Adams, and this idea that New York is existentially in peril is ridiculous, and ahistorical. And yet, that is the sort of rhetoric that has been used by politicians for a long time.

And so, going back to the 1850s, when a much larger percentage of new migrants were coming into New York City at that time, people were terrified. They were mostly Germans and Irish, and New Yorkers thought that they couldn’t handle it. But the percentage was like 30 percent of the population of New York arrived to New York City in a single year. Right now, it’s like 1 percent or something like that, the asylum seekers who have come to New York City in the past couple years.

And it is expensive, and it does change things, and there does need to be some, I think, help with resettling. But, that New York can’t absorb 160,000 people and be actually invigorated by them, by those new incomers, I think is just completely ahistorical, and betrays the very essence of New York City, which I think also stands in large part for how we can think about the United States as a whole, or any other country with immigration.

RG: Since your book is called “The Case For Open Borders,” rather than the case against closed borders, you make the point that there has to be a vision, a positive vision of what benefits this is going to bring to humanity, rather than just a knocking down of the arguments against it.

So, to you, what is the vision that makes the case for open borders?

JW: Yeah. I grapple with that a lot. You know, I’m not a policymaker. As a reporter, what I do is find, basically, malfeasance, or major traumas, and report on them. And I’ve documented for years now the problems that borders cause. And so, it was a stretch for me to start thinking about the benefits of this hypothetical future, of something with open borders, of a world with open borders.

But I think it comes down to looking at some examples that are already in existence. The United States of America is a good one. We transit freely from California to Virginia, from Florida to Nebraska, wherever, and it’s pretty seamless. People can move wherever they want. There are enormous economic and cultural differences between different places in the United States, and people kind of figure out where they want to settle, where they can settle, and do so. And it doesn’t upend the political system.

You mentioned previously, people also traveling freely within the Schengen zone in the European Union. And that, too, there was a lot of nerves about that, especially as they incorporated some more Eastern European states. But those Western states haven’t been overrun, despite the claims of the Brexiteers, and now the rise of the far right in the Netherlands, and France, and elsewhere. And people go back and forth with relative ease, and they settle where they want to settle.

And what incentivizes people to move are open jobs, that’s one of the major incentives. And when there are open jobs, it’s good that they’re filled. There are a lot of open jobs in the United States right now, and they need filling. And so, if there are not open jobs, I think they won’t be filled, and people won’t move as much.

So, I think that this also goes back to your question of, there won’t be a run, or will there be a run on the United States border if suddenly it was open? It doesn’t seem to be, because I think people are driven by the things we’re all driven by: opportunities. And, if they’re not there, they won’t go.

So, there’s a number of other free migration zones in the world. There’s a Nordic Passport area, there’s a Trans-Tasmanian area, there’s the Central America-4 region, and Mercosur in South America. There are so many that we don’t think of — also, there’s a couple in Africa — where people can cross borders easily. And expanding it, I think, seems to be a very doable thing, and that’s based on the evidence that we’ve seen with, as I was mentioning, the now past steady expansion of the E.U., or the incorporation of new states in the United States.

There’s a good quote that I think about a lot [by] Nicolas de Genova, who’s a researcher, and he says, “Without borders, there is no migration, there’s only human mobility.” And I think he’s absolutely right, but what’s interesting is that there’s human mobility no matter what. That people will move, as I’ve said before, and the way that we see it and term it, and the way that we designate it, whether it’s migration or just movement, I think is actually less important than people really realize.

RG: One interesting way to think about this — and I want to get your take on this thought experiment — would be, so, we had the Civil War here in the United States. So, imagine that at the end of the Civil War, the Union decides that there are going to be borders, hard borders.

And we can take that thought experiment in two different directions. One, you’re going to put hard borders around all of Mississippi, wherein every single southern state is going to have a hard border around it. Or you could say, it’s going to be a hard border at the Mason-Dixon line. And you can come up with all sorts of justifications for why that would be necessary for the reconstruction of these states, or whatever.

Now, when you think about the Great Migration that happened in the early 20th century. That was a movement of individuals, but it was also a political movement, and it was an organized political movement with civil rights leaders who had fought against Jim Crow for 50 years at this point, saying, we are not going to be able to defeat Jim Crow in the south, and we just need to move. And there is a process of industrialization going on in the North, there are jobs available to people, the largest Black newspapers in the North were flooding the South with polemics and advertisements and arguments — as the book “The Warmth of Other Suns” so deftly lays out — saying, look, come up here. Come to Los Angeles, come to Chicago, come to New York, come to Milwaukee, it’s better. 

And if you imagine a world in which that wasn’t possible, where Jim Crow was not able to be overthrown, and also the people subject to Jim Crow were not able to leave, you could very easily imagine situations like we’ve seen in Central and South America rising up. That people, organizing together violently, and saying, if we can’t vote, if we’re going to be lynched for trying to vote, and we can’t leave to make a better life for our families and build better communities, we’re going to take up arms. Like, we outnumber the ruling class here in Mississippi, in an organized militant fashion.

And, frankly, there’d be nothing wrong, they would have the right to do that. Would that make the world a better place, though? You may just have, then, cascading cycles of violence for a hundred years, with strongmen getting replaced by populist leaders. Then, you’ve got people up in the North who have their own interests, who might organize coups down in Mississippi, and put in a leader that they find to be pliant to them, assassinations of leaders.

Like, you could very easily imagine all of the crises that we’ve seen in Latin America developing in the American South, rather than what we got. Which is by no means perfect, but a much more organic path toward living together peacefully than we have elsewhere.

JW: It’s an interesting counterfactual. I think we can look at examples right now, and we can just try to ask how this plays out, if we try to maintain lockdowns, if we try to immobilize entire populations that are under threat of authoritarian governments, are under threat of devastating climate change. What do we do? How do we immobilize them? Do we wall them off into slums? Do we try to erect ever higher barriers? I think that is something that we are trying now, and I think what you create there is a political powder keg.

When people don’t have freedoms, and they don’t have security, and they don’t have any economic opportunity, they rise up. And they either rise up and they leave, or they rise up and they try to remake the societies that they’re in. And, either way, it’s going to be a tumultuous response.

So, yeah, I think you’re exactly right. Letting people move, and letting people try to find their way out of these untenable situations, rather than lock them into it, seems to be a pretty obvious approach. And yet, I don’t think folks are seeing it that way, or they’re not thinking long term.

And what it would actually mean if, somehow, you were able to, say, seal in all the people in some of these Central American states. What does that look like? Just morally, what does that mean? When we continue to rely on some of these states for fresh produce, for coffee, for apparel? And we’re able to somehow sneak just those goods out, but the people who are consigned to dangerous situations, who are facing hunger, who are facing extreme insecurity, political violence, oppression, they are just stuck there?

I mean, when you just back up for a second and think about it, it makes no moral sense. And it, also — going back to your hypothetical there — it does seem to imply that there’s going to be an explosion, it’s going to be a political explosion. And what that looks like is going to be probably very ugly. And would inevitably also lead to huge outflows of migrants.

So, how are you going to solve the problem? I mean, it doesn’t seem to be the way to do it is just [to] circle people in and hope that they figure it out?

RG: The great irony of the Great Migration, of course, as a lot of people know, is that the white elite down there hated it. As horrifying as their treatment was of Black people in the south, when Black people started leaving, they did everything they could to try to stop that, because they understood, through their racism, how essential they were to their economy. And it actually pushed them toward reforms that you don’t see for decades afterwards, but they understood it as this massive threat.

Now, at the same time, the migrants that were going north were often used by northern industrialists as strikebreakers, or to undermine the white working class up in the North, which creates, then, some serious tensions. And so, you always hear this argument that, “they’re going to take our jobs.” And, obviously, sometimes, like in many of those specific cases, they were.

But what is your response to people when they say we can’t have open migration, because it’s going to destroy wages and they’re going to take all of our jobs?

JW: Well, we have so much evidence that it doesn’t do either of those things. There is study after study after study.

Let’s start with wages. If there is any effect on wages of even huge inflows of migrants, it is minuscule, and it’s often, actually, a positive effect. One of the best examples of this, and a lot of people have written about it, is the Mariel Boatlift of 1980, when I think it was a hundred-and-sixty-some thousand Cubans landed in Miami in a span of a little bit more than half of a year. And study after study after study — there’s been some contending studies, but they’ve been disproven — has shown that it didn’t really affect wages very much. It didn’t really affect employment very much, either.

You know, this idea that they’re “going to take our jobs,” I think, is predicated on this fallacy — it’s called the lump of labor fallacy — that there’s a set number of jobs in any economy, and there’s not. Jobs often create other jobs. When migrants come in, they may take an open job, and their presence, or the presence of them and their family or their colleagues, will create another job. And also, often, migrants pay into systems like welfare states long before they’re able to receive any of the benefits.

So, economically speaking, it’s just a really easy argument to make. And anyone who actually looks at the data … And a lot of people have. You know, I quote The Wall Street Journal from the 1980s, there was a proposal for a constitutional amendment that was five words long, and it was “we shall have open borders.” And they weren’t doing it, that I know of, out of the goodness of their hearts. They were doing it because they realized that, economically, it made a lot of sense.

And you see now that serious trained economists will tell you time and again that, actually, it’s decent for wages, it doesn’t really affect unemployment rates, and it’s overall just a boon for the economy.

There was one study by George Clemens, it was called something like, “trillion dollar bills on the sidewalk.” And, if we had completely open borders throughout the world, the global GDP would balloon, would increase by hundreds of percent. And there’s a number of different reasons for that, but it just really isn’t a threat to the economy in any way.

And you could drill down into a number of different studies, a number of different ways that that makes sense, but start looking into it and you see, just any economist that you trust will be on the side of, yeah, migrants are good.

RG: And I would add, on the flip side, for people who this is counterintuitive for, it actually is much easier to find cases where labor shortages cost people wages and cost people jobs. If you think back to the labor shortage after the pandemic, a lot of restaurants had to close. They could not open, say, on a Friday night, because they couldn’t get enough staff to come in, either to work the kitchen or to work the front of the house.

And so, let’s say they had fifteen people, and eight of them were able to show up, but eight wasn’t enough to run the restaurant, all eight of those are now out of luck. Everybody that’s supplying that restaurant is out of luck, and all the downstream economic cycling down the drain that that creates …

If you look at the Israeli economy right now, they have shut off … It’ll be fascinating to see studies of this down the line, because you have such a stark dividing line. Like, after October 7th, all workers from Gaza were prevented from working in Israel, there were hundreds of thousands of them that did. And even workers from the West Bank were blocked from going into Israel, and it’s had a debilitating effect on the Israeli economy as a result.

So, it’s not as if, well, now there are a million fewer workers coming into the economy so, all of a sudden, wow, we’ve got a million new jobs for people, and wages are going to skyrocket because we need people to fill those jobs. No. In fact, the economy is just tanking is what’s actually happening.

And, by the way, our producer flagged this for me, some breaking news. It says the NYPD has created two full-time posts in Bogota, Columbia, and Tucson, Arizona, now expanding their list of foreign outposts to sixteen; the New York City Police Foundation pays for these deployments.

What do you make of the NYPD branching out around the world like this? The New York City Police Foundation is a pretty reactionary kind of right-wing civil organization, so this is probably some kind of political stunt as well.

JW: So, yeah. I want to underscore your last point really quickly. You talked about the opposite effect. I was saying how migrants actually have, typically, a positive, or almost a net neutral effect on the economy. The opposite is also true.

When you deport migrants, it has a negative effect on the economy, even in times of extreme economic hardship. There’s a number of studies done [on this topic]. In the years subsequent to the Great Depression where, after they passed the Mexican Repatriation Act, and the places they were deporting people from actually suffered higher unemployment than elsewhere in the country, wage loss, and just a myriad of other issues, because they didn’t have workers.

About the NYPD, it sounds to me like an exercise in futility. I don’t know what one law enforcement officer is going to do in Tucson. Tucson is not suffering from high crime rates because of migrants. You can look at a host of studies and examples in the United States and throughout the world of migrant communities being safer, less crime, less violent crime. There are, of course, outlying exceptions to that, but that is true the world over. Some people are going to cause harm, and that is actually less the case in immigrant scenarios, or immigrant populations, but not impossible to find.

So, I don’t know what they’re going to do. They could embed with the Border Patrol, and the Border Patrol here, mostly what they’re doing is saying hi to people, telling them to take off their belts and their shoelaces, looking at their documents, and putting them in a van. That is the majority of Border Patrol agents’ work these days.

Most of the people, the overwhelming majority of the people who are crossing the border are doing so to turn themselves in to the Border Patrol. They’re not in these high-speed pursuits or running through the desert. So, if the NYPD wants to pick up the backpack of a mother and put it in the back of a van, Border Patrol does need more folks to help with that kind of work, but I don’t know what else they’re going to really be doing here.

RG: Maybe this can be your next freelance piece for The Intercept?

JW: Yeah, it sounds interesting.

RG: John, best of luck with the book launch.

Again, that was John Washington, a staff reporter for Arizona Luminaria and a contributor to The Intercept. His new book “The Case For Open Borders” is available February 6th, but preorders are ready now.

Deconstructed is a production of The Intercept. José Olivares is our lead producer. Our supervising producer is Laura Flynn. The show is mixed by William Stanton. Legal review by David Bralow, Sean Musgrave, and Elizabeth Sanchez, so don’t even think about suing this one. Leonardo Faierman transcribed this episode. Our theme music was composed by Bart Warshaw. Roger Hodge is The Intercept’s Editor-in-Chief. And I’m Ryan Grim, D.C. Bureau Chief of The Intercept.

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The post The Case for Open Borders appeared first on The Intercept.

This week on Deconstructed, Munir Akram, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United Nations, joins Ryan Grim and Murtaza Hussain to discuss a wide array of topics, including the escalating conflict in Yemen and Israel’s attacks on Palestine. Akram also discusses the complicated relationships between Pakistan and some of its neighbors, including India, China, and Iran, as well as Pakistan’s own internal instability and challenges as it nears elections.

Ryan Grim: Welcome to Deconstructed. I’m Ryan Grim.

I’m joined here by Murtaza Hussain, my colleague at The Intercept, and my coauthor on a number of pieces about Pakistan and its collapsing democracy over the last couple of years.

Maz and I are going to be joined by Munir Akram, who is the permanent U.N. representative for Pakistan at the United Nations. He’s been in that office since 2019, so he actually straddled Imran Khan, who was ousted with the encouragement of the U.S. State Department, leading to the current caretaker government ahead of upcoming elections.

Murtaza, why do you think that the ambassador wanted to do an interview with The Intercept?

Murtaza Hussain: You know, that’s a really good question, I was wondering that myself at first. But I think that a lot of it is due to the fact that, because The Intercept at this time has done this very critical reporting on Pakistan at a time when the Pakistani media has been more or less blocked or suppressed from doing it themselves, there is a considerable listenership and readership in Pakistan and, ultimately, The Intercept has a lot of credibility in that country, despite some criticism from the government or attempts to rebut our reporting in various ways. It’s kind of undeniable, both in Pakistan and the diaspora.

Someone actually told me recently they were at a wedding in Pakistan, they said that people were talking about Ryan Grim, Murtaza Hussain in this context,  because it was very interesting to them in the wake of one of our recent stories about Imran Khan. So, I think, ultimately, at some point you have to recognize the fact that this is a media outlet which has a significant following in your country. And if you want to speak to people in your country, and also in the diaspora, you have to engage with it in some sense. You can’t ignore it as you would a purely Pakistani publication, or to suppress it.

RG: Yeah. So, I found the conversation interesting. You know, he’s a diplomat, and he’s obviously good at his job, which is using diplomatic terminology. But there were some moments I thought — not to tease too much of the conversation — but I thought there were some interesting moments, and some moments of honesty, and maybe some things that the U.S. might even get upset about. What was your take on it?

MH: Yeah. I think you said it very well, that when you’re talking to diplomats, really, you have to read between the lines of their answers here and there to see what’s interesting. I think that what you do is you kind of tease out what’s the most consequential or important points of what they’re saying.

I think that, in our context of a conversation with him, he laid bare some of the fault lines, really, between the U.S.-Pakistan relationship at the moment, and Pakistan’s relationship with its neighbors; India and China and Iran, which are becoming more and more fraught these days for many different reasons.

I think that in Pakistan’s case, it’s very interesting, because Pakistan is a very large country by population; it’s about 240 million people, it was the fifth biggest country in the world by population. And yet, its diplomatic stature has decreased year by year and decade by decade, from a point where it once was relatively influential, and now its influence is decreasing precipitously, particularly in relationship to India, which is a longtime rival.

It’s interesting to see from a diplomat how they navigate this, or how they actually see Pakistan positioned now, as year by year goes by, when the country’s sort of out of place. During the Cold War, it had a role with the U.S. During the War on Terror, again, it found a way to make itself useful to U.S. military and U.S. elites. But now Pakistan does not really have a country which is its patron, which is often something it sought, nor does it have a clear geopolitical role where it fits in these conflicts. How diplomats navigate that and what they foresee as a role of Pakistan is very interesting because, ultimately, it’s a very big country.

It’s very influential one way or another — positively or negatively, it’s going to be influential just by its size — so, the way he sees it and the way he sees the relationship has been fascinating. And, again, I think, in the subtleties of what he says, we see more consequential answers.

RG: Yeah. And we talked with him about why the U.S. may have encouraged the ouster of Imran Khan. We talked about the Pakistani arms sales to the Ukrainians, which he said they don’t officially acknowledge, but he suggested that after our story came out, there may have been some conversations between the Pakistanis and the Americans about where those weapons wound up, as if they didn’t know. We talked about the Iranian strikes inside Pakistan, the Pakistani strikes inside Iran. And, like you said, a lot about the relationship between Pakistan and the U.S., Pakistan and India, Pakistan and China.

So, here is our interview with Ambassador Munir Akram.

RG: Mr. Ambassador, thank you so much for joining us here. We really appreciate it.

Munir Akram: It’s my pleasure to be with you.

RG: There’s a wide range of things we want to get to while we have you here, but the biggest issue right now here in the United States is the U.S. support for the Israeli war in Gaza. And Pakistan, among many other countries around the world signed on to South Africa’s case before the International Court of Justice.

I know that a number of countries received private diplomatic pressure from the United States, either not to sign on to that application, those allegations, or, after they did so, received a call — just gently — asking, what the heck are you doing?

So, I’m curious. Did you receive any pressure from the United States? Did Pakistan in general receive any pressure from the United States, or any other country around the South Africa case?

MA: No. I mean, first of all, we have not joined formally in what is called the Declaration of Intervention in the case. We have expressed support for South Africa’s action politically but, so far, legally, we have not joined the case in the ICJ. So, I can tell you, we have not received any calls yet.

MH: So, in recent days, Mr. Ambassador, there have been some reports about diplomatic maneuvering over the conflict involving some Arab nations with whom Pakistan has close ties — such as Saudi Arabia — and Israel, negotiating through interlocutors and through messaging publicly, to the extent that all the parties are seeking a resolution to the war on as quick terms as possible. And it’s been floated that Saudi Arabia in particular may be amenable to recognizing Israel in exchange for a cessation of hostilities, and creation of a Palestinian state.

And, obviously, there would be some negotiations over the status of Gaza, and who governs it, and so forth, but the crux of the offer is that Israel can achieve normalization in the region, which has been a long-sought goal for Israeli leaders, in exchange for statehood for the Palestinians. Or, as it’s been described in the press, irrevocable steps taken by Israel that would create a pathway to a Palestinian state in the foreseeable future.

Pakistan has not been mentioned anywhere in the context of these conversations. Pakistan obviously does not have ties with Israel, since, for many decades, as a form of solidarity with the Palestinians and the Arab League, has declined to have ties with Israel. If there were a situation whereby the Gulf Arab states like Saudi Arabia were to negotiate a normalization with Israel in exchange for a Palestinian state, would Pakistan also normalize its relations with Israel in that case, if there were a Palestinian state created?

MA: Well, I think, first of all, this process of either Saudi Arabia or other Arab states recognizing Israel in exchange for Israeli agreement to the establishment of a Palestinian state. This has been a longstanding position; it is not a recent development as it has been portrayed recently, that diplomatic moves have been made, Secretary Blinken was in the region, and conversations have taken place around this issue. But the Arab position on recognition has been long standing, I think, since the Arab Peace Initiative was moved by the former king of Saudi Arabia.

The question, of course, is, at this time, how to get there? How to get to a stage where there will be, as you said, irrevocable steps taken towards the establishment of a Palestinian state. We are still far away from that.

First of all, we have to get a ceasefire. We have to get humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians, we have to get the release of the hostages. These are the immediate steps that need to be taken. And we still do not have a clear path of how those steps are going to be taken. There is no agreement as yet in the Security Council for a ceasefire. Israel has rejected calls for a ceasefire, even to scale down the conflict.

So, I think there are important steps that will have to be taken before we are at a stage where actual discussions can start on a two-state solution, and the first thing that has to happen is the Israeli government has to agree that that is the end state that we are aiming for. And, so far, there is no agreement from the Israeli government on this issue.

As far as Pakistan is concerned, I believe that if the Arab world were to move towards recognition, in the light or in the context of the establishment of a Palestinian state, I think a number of other Islamic countries — including Pakistan, but also Indonesia, Malaysia, other countries — will also, I think, join with the Arabs towards that end state.

But, as I said, I think it is still too early. We are not there yet. We don’t even have the first step, which is the ceasefire in Gaza.

RG: One of the areas that I cover here over in the U.S. government is, in particular, the State Department. And the State Department has been pretty vocal over the last couple of months insisting that the upcoming elections in Pakistan need to be free and fair, right? That’s the phrase they continue to use. They use that phrase as it applies to a lot of countries around the world.

We’ve also been seeing  a lot of reports in the press here of candidates who are filing for office getting arrested or abducted. We’ve seen the High Court, I think, remove a symbol from one of the major competing parties. Obviously, the leading candidate for the PTI has been disqualified.

But separate from that, there do seem to be a lot of pre-election irregularities that have gone against the opposition party, and I’m curious if you have heard from diplomats at the State Department about these issues, or whether they’re saying it publicly, but privately they’re not actually raising these with you.

MA: I must tell you that I cover the United Nations, and the issue of elections is not part of the responsibilities that I have to deal with, fortunately. So, if any such interactions have happened, they probably may have happened with my counterpart in Washington, rather than myself.

MH: Mr. Ambassador, a few months ago, The Intercept reported on a story which dealt with Pakistan’s foreign relations in the context of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict. And, over the last year, Ukrainian officials have expressed various forms of appreciation for Pakistani support materially of their position vis a vis Russia, and those statements have been echoed by British officials and others. But there’s been very little commentary directly by Pakistani officials about what forms of support that they are providing to Ukraine.

The story that we published last year dealt specifically with documentation of Pakistani arms sales brokered by the U.S. for the benefit of the Ukrainian war effort. This has not been directly publicly acknowledged, but it’s been hinted at, as I mentioned, very, very strongly by Ukrainian and British officials.

Can you say anything about what support Pakistan has provided to Ukraine, or continues to provide, particularly now as the war enters a stage of attrition?

MA: Well, as you know, our position on the Ukraine conflict is one of neutrality and, therefore, we have not officially provided any supplies to either side in this conflict. If some exports from Pakistan have been redirected, we are not officially aware of that, and our position remains that we will remain neutral in this conflict, and that we will not support either side, as far as equipment, defense, supplies are concerned. So, that’s our position.

RG: Have you taken it up with the United States, maybe perhaps after our reporting suggested that those exports were, in fact, being routed over to Ukraine? Is that something that the government took up with its counterpart in the United States?

MA: I don’t have direct knowledge of that, but I would imagine that some conversations would have taken place after your report,

MH: So, obviously, the Pakistani government’s moving towards elections, and is currently being led by a caretaker government. One of the major planks of Pakistani foreign policy from the inception of Pakistan has been the issue of Kashmir. And, obviously, it’s been a disputed issue between Pakistan and India for many, many years.

But it seems that, in recent years, the Indian government has taken steps to take the Kashmir issue off the table of bilateral relations between the two countries; most specifically, the revocation of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which granted Kashmir autonomy within the Indian state. And now, it seems the Indian government’s moving forward with plans to effectively, economically, and politically assimilate Kashmir, and remove it from the realm of political disputation between Pakistan and India.

The caretaker government has not taken any seeming overt steps on this subject, at least in public, nothing significant. I’m curious if Pakistan has any plans on how they plan to address the Kashmir issue going forward, given that it’s been such a central part of Pakistani foreign policy for many, many decades.

MA: So, Pakistan’s policy on Kashmir has not changed. Our position remains that Kashmir is a disputed territory, that the Security Council has decided that the final disposition of the state of Jammu and Kashmir will be decided by the people of Jammu and Kashmir, through a free and fair plebiscite held under the auspices of the United Nations. That remains Pakistan’s formal position.

The Security Council has also legislated in two resolutions that any unilateral steps taken by any of the parties to the dispute to change the structure within Jammu and Kashmir will not constitute a final disposition of the state, in accordance with the resolutions of the Security Council. And, therefore, legally, internationally, the unilateral steps which the Modi government has taken in India to change the status of occupied Jammu and Kashmir, these are legally null and void, as far as international law is concerned, as far as the United Nations is concerned.

So, opposition remains what the Secretary General of the U.N. has expressed on the 8th of August, 2019, after the Indian measures were taken on 5, August. And the Secretary General said that the settlement of Jammu and Kashmir has to be in accordance with the U.N. Charter, the United Nations resolutions, and bilateral agreements between India and Pakistan. That remains our position.

So, we do not recognize what the Indians have done to change the status in occupied Kashmir. Our position remains that this is disputed territory, and the Security Council resolutions must be implemented, a plebiscite must be held to resolve this issue.

While India has taken these steps, and it has been brutally imposed on the Kashmiri people, the fact of the matter is, no matter what is stated by the Indian government, the steps that have been taken have not been accepted by the Kashmiri people. Not even the chief ministers and political parties who are pro-Indian have accepted the change of status. And, certainly, the Hurriyat Party — which is the party supporting a freedom of Kashmir — they have not accepted. Most of those leaders remain incarcerated in jail or under home arrest. The public is still under major restrictions on freedom of expression, association, freedom of religion.

So, these impositions by the Indian government is not an indication that things have changed in Kashmir. The people of Kashmir have not yet accepted Indian occupation and Indian rule, and we believe that the freedom struggle will keep rising, will keep erupting, until there is a solution which is acceptable to the people of Kashmir.

MH: It’s interesting, because this issue has been the source of several wars that were fought between India and Pakistan for a number of years, including ongoing diplomatic tensions between the two countries. Is it the case that Pakistan would not move towards greater economic or political integration with India, absent a solution to the Kashmir crisis? Or, sorry, I should say the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan.

Because it seems, from the Indian perspective, they have decided that the issue is no longer subject for bilateral relations, and is purely internal to them. And, while Pakistan, as you mentioned, does not accept that position, it seems that India has developed a view that its relative power has grown significantly over Pakistan over the last two decades, I would say, such that Pakistan no longer has the ability to raise this issue effectively, vis a vis its relations with India.

So, would the non-recognition — or I would say the non-resolution — of the Kashmir issue to a status meeting Pakistan’s criteria, would that represent a barrier permanently to greater economic or political ties with India?

MA: Well, certainly, unless we have some sort of agreement on how to address the Kashmir issue, some resolution which is acceptable to the Kashmiri people, and to both India and Pakistan, this problem will remain a thorn in the side of both sides, and it will impede good relations between India and Pakistan. And we have said, time and time again, that the key to stability, peace, and security in South Asia runs through Jammu and Kashmir, and the resolution of this dispute is imperative for good relations between India and Pakistan. So, I think that reality will not change.

The reality that the Kashmiri people do not accept what India has done — its annexation of Jammu and Kashmir, its unilateral steps, its repression in Kashmir — those are not accepted by the people of Jammu and Kashmir. And, until that remains, it will remain a dispute, it will remain a problem for the Indians, and between India and Pakistan. And that is the reality of the relationship between the two countries.

RG: On that relationship, the conventional wisdom here in Washington, in the thinktank world, is that the reason that the United States and the State Department were willing to support the removal of Imran Khan for power and continue to kind of quietly oppose his return to power, has to do with India, and has to do, also with China. They feel that removing him is a way to bring Pakistan and India closer together, resolve the tensions over the years. And, through that kind of formation of a new relationship, push back against the rise of China, because everything in the U.S. nowadays revolves around pushing back against China.

Is that an accurate assessment, you think?

MA: I don’t think so. The fact of the matter is that the Jammu and Kashmir dispute in Pakistan is a national issue. No government — whether it is Imran Khan, or the People’s Party, or the Pakistan Nawaz Sharif Muslim League — none of these parties, when in power, are able to capitulate on Kashmir, to concede to India’s position on Jammu and Kashmir, to move away from our formal position on Jammu and Kashmir. It’s a national position. And, therefore I don’t think that that is any link between the position of Washington.

I, of course, do not subscribe to conspiracy theories. I believe that Pakistan and the U.S. have interstate relations, which have a much broader canvas than just the issue of Kashmir. But, certainly, I do not believe that that is something that will change with any government that comes into power in Pakistan.

MH: I’m interested in the sense that, as Ryan mentioned, in D.C., there’s great focus on containing China, or emerging to confront what’s seen by many in the U.S. as the threat of China, or the rivalry of China, politically, economically, and maybe even militarily, sometime in the future.

Obviously, Pakistan is a country which has quite close relations with China, it’s had [them] for many, many decades. One of the only close military relationships China has with a foreign country, really, is with Pakistan, ironically.

How does Pakistan see its own relationship in the context of a potential cold war between the U.S. and China? Because, obviously, Pakistani leaders and elites have also had very close ties with the U.S. as well, too. If there’s a situation where the conflict or the competition between China and the U.S. reaches a more acute stage, how may Pakistan position itself?

And I guess I’ll say one very particular question, it’s a specific scenario which has been raised by some U.S. military planners, that, if there is a conflict one day between the U.S. and China regionally in Asia, it could also involve India as well, too, as part of this alliance, which has been created to contain China. Would Pakistan stay neutral in such a situation? Or how would it navigate the fact that it has a close relationship with China, but also seeks to stay on good terms with the U.S.?

MA: Yeah. So, we’ve had good relations with both China and the U. S. across the board, [in terms of] economic, defense, etc. And, obviously, we see this rising competition between the U.S. and China not very positively for our interests as such, especially, since the strategic partnership between the U.S. and India is translated into the supply of major weapons systems, military support, information and technology support. Which, by the way, is by and large deployed by India against Pakistan, not against China.

All the weapon systems that have been acquired by India, what it is acquiring — the airplanes, missile systems, and so forth, the submarines — they are all being deployed, almost all, 70 percent of it is deployed against Pakistan as such. And, therefore, we see this as a direct impact on our security, with these supplies. And we have obviously been in discussions with the U.S., we have told them we want good relations, but this is a security threat to Pakistan.

And, since we do not have access to any other sources to balance this armaments, this buildup by India, we have to rely on wherever we can get those different systems, and that comes from friendly countries like China and other friends in the Islamic world, where we are able to mobilize, and to be able to continue to have a credible deterrence against Indian aggression. So, that is how we see it.

Of course, there are various scenarios of what will happen in the case of a confrontation between the U.S. and China. My one assertion is — and I remain convinced — that India will never fight with China on behalf of the United States. India, it may have its own differences with China — and they are resolving them, they are addressing them bilaterally, the talks are going on, on the line of control in the Himalayas — but India has never stated and will not commit to joining the United States as an ally against China in a conflict, say, over the South China Sea, or over Taiwan. We are totally convinced India will never fight on the side of the United States against China, as such.

So, I think those scenarios are very speculative. I think India-China relations will remain on their own, Pakistan’s relations with the United States will remain on a separate track, and I do not believe that kind of calculation will come into play, where the United States thinks that with China, in the context of a conflict. I think that’s a far-fetched scenario, as I see it.

RG: We hear a lot of concern here among Pakistani Americans in the United States, that around the collapse of democracy in Pakistan, around human rights abuses that are underway, you have a lot of people putting it in context of previous explicit military regimes, and arguing that things are even worse today in Pakistan than they were under explicit military rule, rather than what appears to be de facto military rule.

And I’m curious, as a diplomat, if that has been causing you problems at the United Nations, if these are issues that are being brought to you as part of your day job, making it more difficult for you. Say, when the Supreme Court justices are resigning from the Supreme Court, and then issuing rulings against the opposition party, things like that. Does that cause you problems in your day job, here in New York?

MA: Not so far, I must say. But you have to keep it in perspective, in the sense that, at the United Nations, there are 193 countries. Many countries, a majority of countries, everybody has domestic problems, some form of domestic issues that they have. But the charter of the United Nations is very, very clear: it does not allow interference in the internal affairs of states.

So, very largely, issues of internal concern are not overtly raised, unless they become uncontrollable, or they are a threat to peace and security, if a major conflict will arise out of that. So, to answer your question: I have not faced any sort of difficulty with regard to our domestic situation.

Our army chief was in New York just the other day, he had a very good meeting with the Secretary General of the United Nations, and we discussed all the foreign policy and security issues that face Pakistan, very frankly, and in a very nice and friendly way with the Secretary General.

MH: Ambassador, in the last few weeks, there was a very interesting and unexpected military exchange between Iran and Pakistan, particularly in Balochistan. It took many people by surprise, because, obviously, though Iran and Pakistan’s relationship is not perfect, they have a relatively constructive and non-hostile relationship, for the most part.

Iran bombed Pakistan, a target inside Pakistan, which it said was connected to a terrorist group involved in terrorism inside Iran, and Pakistan retaliated by carrying out attacks inside Iranian Balochistan as well, too. Thereafter, the two countries issued a statement saying that they had amended their differences, and were moving forward in restoring diplomatic ties, which had been briefly severed.

Can you talk a bit about this exchange, and what precipitated it? There were some indications in the press — reported and now confirmed — that Iran had given Pakistan forewarning of the attacks, but there was no specific clarity about that from the Pakistani side. I was curious what you know about this, and whether Pakistan plans to continue to pursue this issue in international fora.

MA: Well, as you know, both Iran and Pakistan face terrorist issues in their part of Balochistan and our part of Balochistan. And there are groups which utilize the freedom of movement across certain ungoverned parts of the border between the two countries to cross back and forth. And I think this is the case, both with the Jaish ul-Adl, which obviously crosses back and forth, as well as with the Baloch insurgents, which are the Balochistan Liberation Army, Balochistan Liberation Front. These are insurgent movements which also utilize the border to escape from action by either side.

We were surprised by the Iranian action; there was no forewarning, as such. But we responded by taking the opportunity to hit some of the Baloch insurgents — our Baloch insurgents — that had taken refuge across the border. But this is obviously not the way that we would like to address the problem of terrorism that both countries face. And, given the close relationship between the two countries, we have now decided that both sides will cooperate and coordinate their actions against such insurgents if they happen to cross on the  other side.

So, we would like to put that behind us, and to continue our part of close cooperation with Iran, to address the mutual problems of terrorism that both of us face in this restive part of our two countries.

RG: Several years ago, there was credible reporting that some of those Baluchistan insurgents were actually funded and backed by the Mossad. This was evidence that Iran had presented as well, at some point. That was a while ago, though, and I’m curious, from your perspective, if you think that there might still be foreign support for the insurgency, either inside your borders against Iran, or inside Iran’s borders against them.

MA: Well, I can’t speak about insurgency against the Iranians; I think they probably know the situation better. But I can say with confidence that the Baluch insurgents — the BLA and the BLF — are supported by India. They are financed by India, they take refuge in India, they have supplies from India, they go to India for their medical issues, and there are clear links between India and these Baluch insurgent movements.

Whether there are other countries which support them, I’m not very clear, but some of these Baluch leaders, these insurgent leaders, are residing in some European countries, as such, and seem to have safe havens in some places.

So, Pakistan certainly believes that these insurgent movements have foreign support — especially Indian support — and we have taken that issue up with all of our interlocutors.

MH: And, to that point of Indian support for separatism inside Pakistan, the Indian government has long alleged that Pakistan has provided overt and covert support to Kashmiri insurgents inside Kashmir, but also to Sikh insurgents inside Punjab. A few months ago, The Intercept also reported on some documentation showing that The RAW — or Indian intelligence — had carried out assassinations of Sikh dissidents living in Lahore, in the Punjabi province of Pakistan.

Can you speak a bit about Pakistan’s dispensation regarding Punjab and the Sikh movement for Khalistan, or an independent Sikh state? What sort of relationship does Pakistan have with this movement, and what is Pakistan’s view of this issue of Khalistan, in general?

MA: Well, as you know, there was an active Sikh movement, the Khalistani movement, back in the 80s, and there was a massive repression against the Sikhs in India, post the assassination of Madame Indira Gandhi, as such. That insurgency was put down in the 90s by India, and, so far, it seems that there is no resurgence of that movement within India itself.

So, I think that the Khalistani movement is largely now a diaspora movement, centered both in Canada, the United States, and some other countries. But what is shocking is that the Indians, despite the fact that there is no real Khalistani movement, they have gone to the extent of actually planning assassinations of people who are in the diaspora in Canada and the United States. As such, it is an indication of the sense of insecurity on the part of the Modi government, but also, it is an indication of the sense of impunity they feel that they have within the Western world that they can get away with doing something so blatant in two friendly countries, as such.

RG: You may have seen that we reported that, as well as the efforts that India launched in Canada and the United States, there were also some assassination attempts in Pakistan itself. Is that something that you’re aware of? Is that something that you have raised with the Indian government?

MA: Well, we have instances where some people have been assassinated. We have complete proof of Indian involvement in certain assassination attempts against the Kashmiri leaders, for example. There have been instances of people being assassinated on Pakistani soil; we presume it is the Indian intelligence which is behind it. Of course, we do not have an official dialogue with India, but we have raised the issue with friendly countries about India’s involvement in terrorism in Pakistan.

And this is not the only… I mean, assassination is only part of what the Indians are doing against Pakistan. Their major campaign is the sponsorship of the TTP, and the sponsorship of the Baluchi insurgents to disrupt Pakistan stability, to disrupt the China-Pakistan economic corridor — especially in Balochistan — and to sow fear and terror within our population, as such.

So, it is a well-planned, well financed, organized campaign of sabotage and destabilization of Pakistan that India is conducting.

MH: Obviously, Pakistan has had many different iterations and phases of its influence internationally. I think one of the high points, probably, was many years ago, when Pakistan helped facilitate the rapprochement during the Cold War between the U.S. and China, and it still maintains relations with both those countries, which have now become respective superpowers.

It seems like, in recent decades, Pakistan’s influence diplomatically has declined. And, particularly, it’s been manifesting vis a vis its relationship with India, where it seems India has more of the upper hand, and is courted internationally by different alliances, and economically and politically by various parties, whereas Pakistan seems to be more neglected.

Can you give your own perspective, as someone who’s a diplomat and seen this from the inside, what has been the source of Pakistan’s seeming relative decline of status, and whether and if you see a possibility of a revival of that, and how that may be accomplished?

MA: Well, I think you’re right in the sense that India has grown into a large economic market. India has also become more powerful, militarily. But the critical change that has taken place is the partnership between India and the United States. I think India draws a lot of its so-called influence because it is seen as a strategic partner of the United States, and it has a sense of impunity, in many respects, in Kashmir, in the treatment of its Muslim population, in this kind of assassination campaign that it carries out, in the threats to Pakistan.

All these are manifestations of Indian sense of impunity, its sense of power, its sense that it can adopt a very arrogant position vis a vis its neighbors. But the critical difference, the change that has taken place is the strategic partnership between India and the United States, which has changed all the calculations.

On the other side, of course, Pakistan has not kept pace economically, our economy has not done too well. We have structural difficulties with our economy. We have suffered, in several ways, economic setbacks and, therefore, we have been economically dependent, and that is a weakness, and that has to be faced.

How would Pakistan rectify this? The fact of the matter is, Pakistan is one of the most underinvested countries in the world. We have major resources, natural resources, human resources, and the ability to catch up and to accelerate our growth. We have to mobilize ourselves to organize ourselves in a strategic way in order to be able to capture the opportunities that exist in Pakistan for economic and social development. But that, of course, requires peace and stability, and it requires concerted, consistent economic policy, which is what we are trying to do at the present moment, is to establish [that].

RG: Last quick question from me. One of the biggest international issues right now is, on the one hand you have Operation Prosperity Guardian being led by the United States, which is attempting to stop the Houthis, the de facto Yemen government from blockading shipping around the Red Sea. And then you have the blockade from the de facto Yemen government, where they say they’re going to block shipping until Israel ends its assault on Gaza.

So, does Pakistan believe that the Houthis have the right to carry out this blockade? They cite their obligations under the prevention of genocide. And, if not, why hasn’t Pakistan joined in with the United States with Operation Prosperity Guardian?

MA: Well, I think that what the Houthis are doing — at least in their declared statements — is to support the Palestinians in Gaza who are facing the Israeli onslaught. I think there is considerable public sympathy in Pakistan with the Palestinians, and with the suffering that they have had to suffer under this Israeli military campaign.

So, I think that, politically — I mean, I will not delve into the legal situation, whether the Houthis are right or wrong — but politically, our sympathies are with the Palestinians, and the Houthis say that they are acting in support of the Palestinians. And, therefore, I think Pakistan, politically, would be well advised to keep away from taking sides in this particular aspect of the conflict.

RG: Great. Well, thank you so much, Mr. Ambassador.

MA: Thank you, Ryan. Thank you Murtaza.

RG: That was Munir Akram, and that’s our show.

Deconstructed is a production of The Intercept. José Olivares is our lead producer. Our supervising producer is Laura Flynn. The show is mixed by William Stanton. Legal review by David Bralow and Elizabeth Sanchez. Leonardo Faierman transcribed this episode. Our theme music was composed by Bart Warshaw. Roger Hodge is The Intercept’s Editor-in-Chief. And I’m Ryan Grim, D.C. Bureau Chief of The Intercept, and that was Murtaza Hussain, the cohost of Intercepted.

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