Speaker A
Okay, Streamyard says we are live. Welcome back, everyone, to round two between Stephen, aka Destiny, and Jay Shapiro.
Debate between Destiny and Jay Shapiro on Palestine, Zionism, and anarchist philosophy, exploring moral and political perspectives.
Key Takeaways
- Zionism is contested as either a legitimate self-determination movement or a colonizing project.
- Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state is defended but criticized for current political decisions.
- The Israel-Palestine conflict involves deep historical grievances and moral complexities.
- Political discourse on the topic is often polarized and emotionally charged.
- Understanding Zionism requires engaging with historical texts and perspectives.
What the video covers
- The video features a debate between Destiny and Jay Shapiro discussing the Israel-Palestine conflict and anarchist philosophy.
- Jay Shapiro introduces himself as a left-leaning filmmaker and author focused on moral philosophy and Marxist ideas.
- Destiny presents himself as a political commentator and gamer with a Zionist perspective supporting Israel's right to exist as a Jewish majority state.
- The conversation centers around the meaning of Zionism, with Jay framing it as a colonizing project based on historical texts like Jabotinsky's Iron Wall essay.
- Destiny defends Zionism as the right to Jewish self-determination in Palestine, acknowledging political mistakes but supporting Israel's existence.
- Jay challenges the moral implications of Zionism as colonization and discusses historical resistance from Palestinian Arabs.
- The debate touches on broader themes of colonization, self-determination, and the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
- Both participants critique current political decisions and the toxic nature of discourse surrounding the conflict.
- The discussion also includes reflections on historical immigration policies and the impact of colonialism in other regions.
- The video is part of a series, with this being round two of their ongoing dialogue.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and 60-second intros
- 07:24Defining Zionism and initial positions
- 20:20Historical context and Jabotinsky's Iron Wall essay
- 30:35Moral implications of colonization
- 43:00Holocaust and British immigration policies
- 52:46Philosophical reflections on borders and colonization
- 59:19Personal background and Zionist family influence
- 93:45Marxist critiques and capitalism discussion
- 111:29Two-state solution and political feasibility
- 118:20Closing arguments and historical facts debate
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
Let's do 60-second intros real quick just to catch people up on who either of you are, and then I'll pass it to Jay to kind of get the conversation rolling. So, Jay, yes. What is your 60-second elevator pitch
Speaker A
for those who don't know who you are? Filmmaker, mostly documentaries. Uh, now an author. I have a book out, little pitch. Ding, ding, ding. It's about moral philosophy and history stuff. I think we're going to end up talking
Speaker A
about not all Israel, Palestine. Um, and have a podcast called Dilemma that I interview and do essays with intellectuals. Definitely left-leaning and bring sort of a left justice-oriented Marxist kind of idea to these conversations. So, that's me.
Speaker A
Destiny. I'm a, uh, world champion Factorio player. I build mega bases without even trying. Uh, sometimes I cover politics and I scrim at people on the internet.
Speaker A
Yeah. Beautiful. Well, uh, the two of you were in the last conversation. Um, so there were probably multiple doors and threads that, um, we can walk through and pursue. To, um, I'll leave it to you to
Speaker A
get the ball rolling. What is most pressing on your mind after the last conversation?
Speaker A
Yeah. Well, thanks again. Um, and I thought it was interesting and it was fun and I'm excited to do more of it.
Speaker A
Um, yeah. Uh, so I have questions or things I would like to respond to that I think were maybe not from you or from your audience, but I'll save those. I wanted to start because I still couldn't quite pin down your position. Not that
Speaker A
you need a solid one on Israel, Palestine or whatever, but I just kind of wanted, and I know you deflected this last time, about sort of any shift or change that you have made over, you know, the years watching this in the
Speaker A
last couple years. If I could just take your temperature, like a scale of 1 to 10, warmness, 10 being like the most sort of excited and confident you are sort of defending Israel and one being like the least confident, like where
Speaker A
where are you these days with it? And I know that's a loaded question of sort of like Israel as it currently is, Israel's government, whatever, but like can I just take your temperature on that just as I can't quite pin it down? Can you
Speaker A
clarify what do you mean by defending? Yeah, I just how you're feeling about. Yeah, I guess maybe that's even the word. Maybe you wouldn't say defending.
Speaker A
Maybe you, maybe you don't feel that way. You feel like you just sort of are a referee on the sideline trying to make sure people have, I don't know, um, better conversations about it or factual conversations about it or like how would
Speaker A
you put that broadly speaking? I think I would defend like a Zionist perspective that I think Israel as it stands today I think has a right to exist as a Jewish majority state. Um, I think they are making a lot of
Speaker A
foolish decisions politically right now. Uh, I'm pretty salty that we have a really stupid president that seems to have gotten baited into dumb military action that I don't think the US should be involved in at all right now. Um, I
Speaker A
think that conversations around it are super cancerous in a lot of different ways. Um, yeah.
Speaker A
Yeah, that's fair. Okay, then can I, so can I go then to the Zionist thing because that is like underneath all of it is this difference when you said Zionist perspective. I'm not sure what Zionism means to you, but it's such a
Speaker A
loaded word that I do think it's worth sort of uncovering and taking apart. So, I mean, for example, like my last two essays on my show that I did, the last one was actually just does Israel have a right to exist? And I
Speaker A
answer it in a, in a no in 20 minutes with sort of a philosophical moral perspective. So, already we have a disagreement there. But the one I did before that was just flat-out reading with a little analysis Jabotinsky's iron
Speaker A
wall essay where he lays out in 1923. Then it was translated into English in 1937 for the first time ever in a South African newspaper, not surprisingly. Um, you know, his, his what Zionism meant and means to him and it's on in no uncertain
Speaker A
terms colonization of Palestine by force. These, you know, I have it here in front of me. It's not very long. People should read these. It's not a book. It's like a basically equivalent to like a viral Substack post if he had
Speaker A
written it today that lays out the plan for Zionism. And I know Zionism could be a big word, but like that. So when you say maybe the Zionist perspective or whatever, what goes off in my mind is Zionism is a colonizing project by its
Speaker A
own definition, by its own terms. And I have a moral problem with that. So I want, like, I want to pick on that word.
Speaker A
And I know we brought up colonization last time and I lean on it a lot and I'm going to do it again and I'm going to respond to some of the audience, uh, you know, stuff I got out of it,
Speaker A
but can you just, can you, can I guess I'm asking you like what Zionism means to you there when you say the Zionist perspective. Yeah, I would take a pretty straightforward approach to it that I think most people mean when they say
Speaker A
Zionism, uh, which is the right of self-determination of the Jewish people, which necessitates a state that has a Jewish ethnic, uh, majority in Palestine specifically.
Speaker A
Um, I mean, I mean, it doesn't seem like realistically there's any other alternative right now. So, yeah, I would say in that, in that area right now.
Speaker A
Yeah. Yeah. Because what's, like, what's ironic about that and I think this doesn't get talked about enough is that in Jabotinsky's essay the iron wall he points out that, you know, the people who aren't just going to read it or aren't
Speaker A
going to watch me read it or whatever, it's not very long, is that he understands that it's a colonizing project and the Zionists are colonizers and every, in his, in his mind, every colonizing project is always met with
Speaker A
resistance by what he says the native. He called them Palestinian Arabs, the native population, of course they're going to fight us. And he says, you know, no matter how lovely we are and how nice we are, we, they always get fought. And he
Speaker A
compares it to like the pilgrims getting resistance from the Native Americans, which was like, ah, historical, but, um, and he said that, you know, there could be a solution to this, which is to go somewhere else. And he mentions Uganda
Speaker A
specifically, which was the Uganda scheme offered by the British. It's modern-day Kenya, sort of on the border of Kenya and Uganda. And he says, "Well, that's no good either because there's people there and so we'll get called
Speaker A
colonizers there and we'll face resistance there anyway." And he goes on to say, it would be even maybe possibly more immoral because, you know, the Africans are like children and they won't even know how to fight back
Speaker A
and they'll, but they'll figure it out. They'll get white people to help them to fight back and we'll get resistance there. And so he's, you know, he's like, well, you know, we may as well just do this. We're going to be
Speaker A
fought anywhere, so we may as well just duke it out in Palestine. Um, but so like self, I, I guess, are can you accept the framing of colonization or like what does colonization mean to you there? Because I'll just point out this
Speaker A
one thing. One thing I wanted to respond to is I definitely use it a lot. Maybe Elon Pap and other thinkers do too. Um, I never get told I'm wrong, right? Like I, it used to be people would chime in
Speaker A
being like, "How could you say it's a colonizing project?" And then I think people have done their homework and they're like, "Okay, of course it's a colonizing project. Of course it is." The best they can do is say like, "Oh,
Speaker A
you're just picking on them. There's, you know, a lot of colonizing projects. Why, why aren't you talking about America or like last time we talked about Islamic colonization, whatever?" Which I, which I just want to point out is we
Speaker A
should talk about those things, but is not denying the...
Speaker A
that Zionism even as you defined it there maybe necessitates or is unavoidably colonial or colonizing?
Speaker A
No. Who would they who who would Israel be a colony of? I don't know if like a people moving to another country and then forming a country there is like a colonization project.
Speaker A
Yeah. Well settler colonization. But yeah, they called themselves colonizers. And so I'm using their words. So you could ask Jabatinsky, you could ask the Lud party, you could, you know, read it yourself. Like this is this is what they
Speaker A
are. They're an outsider. I got cut off for a second. So, wait, hold on. You say use um using his words. Um yeah, I'm I'm in what in what way would you consider like Israel a a colony?
Speaker A
Um so, colonization of Palestine. This is the the heading from the iron wall, right? In the newspaper that he went and gave the speech to every Zionist uh conference everywhere. And I mean, I don't need to read the whole thing here.
Speaker A
Um it doesn't need to be a colony of something else. It was colonization of a population moving Can you give me what is the definition of colonization that you think Jabatinsky was working on?
Speaker A
Um an an outside population um making home trying to displacing as he said displacing by force. I guess I can just read it here because this was actually in his ethics of the iron wall.
Speaker A
He said let us consider for a moment the point of view of those uh to whom this seems immoral. This was him responding to critics of it. We shall chase trace the root of the evil to this that we are
Speaker A
seeking to colonize a country against the wishes of its population. In other words, by force. Everything else is undesirable, grows out of this route with axiomatic inevitability. Um so these are his words that we are seeking to colonize a country against the wishes
Speaker A
of its population. I'm just I didn't hear a definition there. So in your mind is colonization just when any group of people moves to a place to form a country there? basically uh I guess at the expense of the the
Speaker A
native population. Sure. I mean like we can get into whether it grew into sort of an outpost of a client state of the west generally. This also I'm just saying it's not it's not so it's not very fair because colonization
Speaker A
is a heavily normatively negatively loaded term these days. And wheninsky was talking about colonization whatever definitions or whatever is existing in his mind he's just talking about some kind of displacement of the population that would have been there. um it
Speaker A
wouldn't have been as negatively loaded as how people are making it now. And I don't know if he would have used that word or would have been okay with that word being used at all of the negative normative loading that it has now in
Speaker A
writings that he's used in the past. It would be kind of strange to take that and just transplant the word and then to inject into it all of the normativity today that surrounds that word. Often times some of the most anti-semitic
Speaker A
attacks made on Israel or on Jewish people is the idea that Jewish people are not from the Middle East. That none of them have they can't trace their ethnic history back to there. that the idea of uh prior Israel existing that
Speaker A
that's a myth in and of itself and the concept of them being a colony is that it was a European colony that was made to extract value from the Middle East and that all of the people that were
Speaker A
there now that are Jewish should be sent back to Europe or back to Brooklyn because as colonizers they are just foreign entities that are coming to a place to colonize it on behalf of somebody else. This is why I push you on
Speaker A
what your definition for colonization was. I understand Jinsky wrote about um in in the Iron Wall about colonizing the place, but I mean he was talking about a bunch of Jewish people moving there to to live there and that the Arabs that
Speaker A
were there probably wouldn't accept the Jewish people moving there, which is which is fine and and I can accept his definition of colonization there, the way that he uses it in a in a colloquial sense there. But it would be silly to
Speaker A
take his framing of the 1920s or 30s [ __ ] Why does this keep disconnecting?
Speaker A
Oh hello. You're you're good. You're good. Oh, yeah. to to take his negative framing or to take his framing of colonization back then and then inject it with all of the normativity that we have with the word today. So if you want
Speaker A
I can for the purpose of this argument I can say that I guess it's a form of colonization if you want but that word I'm I would I would vacuum all of the normativity out of that word and I would
Speaker A
just discuss the concepts. Yes. I mean I so if you're saying 100% all of it so also I mean you should read the iron wall for someone who's so uh okay.
Speaker A
So, so, so you know that he's saying what he's saying not just to live alongside or he's writing specifically to be the majority. In fact, he says two nations would be fine with him as long as Jews are the permanent majority.
Speaker A
Right. Well, he's saying that because he say because he acknowledges in the Iron Wall that the Arabs probably will never accept a Jewish population there, which is true. That was but not just the Arabs. He's saying yeah, he's saying like anyone, nobody
Speaker A
would do this because he says it's bad to be a minority. The Jews know this better than anyone.
Speaker A
Yeah. He well he talks about this in a general sense, but he says in a specific sense as well that the Arabs won't accept any Jewish state there, which is true. That's just a true analysis. So he's saying the only way that two states
Speaker A
could exist there is if there is a majority Jewish state and then there can be another Arab state, but there could not be just one majority Arab state because the Jews would never be able to live there, which is true. That's that
Speaker A
was a true thing that he said at the time. Yeah. They're they're establishing a state and it could have two nations in it. We could get to what he means by nation there, too, which is fascinating.
Speaker A
or what what what has come to be meant by nation in Israel which is fascinating but that the Jews Jewish will be Jewish majority. He says this he says you do not want to be a minority. The Jews know
Speaker A
this better than anyone right and he of course was yeah inspired by Italian fascism. I mean you you can pull out he was inspired by Italian fascism or he was inspired by thousands of years of persecution of Jewish people who lived
Speaker A
as minorities in other absolutely both. Absolutely. Probably more that than the other. Well, maybe do you think that Italian Do you think that Italian fascism has been applied to the Arab minority population that's lived in Israel proper over the past 80
Speaker A
years? You mean like that the Mussolini style thing of that that Jabatinsky brought this? No, you know, it's it's it's I'm just I'm still just trying to get Are you okay, I guess, then with colonization in this sense because
Speaker A
you're being there's a lot colonization is a big word. I get it. And I'm even trying to get the normative out of it just to talk about it to get a definition here. Um, and your your first question was sort of is there like a
Speaker A
metropole to feed wealth back to that's extractive capitalism whatever we could talk about that cuz I wonder if you think the American colonizers once America had declared declaration of independence and broken off from Britain moving westward were colonizing Cherokee
Speaker A
nations like it's you know the word just becomes I would say there were no American colonizers as far as I'm aware there were British colonizers that had a revolt against the crown and became American but so so what this is I mean I think this
Speaker A
is is interesting and we're kind of all over the place. But what would you call then the American expansion westward uh and all the broken my understanding is that typically we consider colonization or colonies are usually things that exist independent
Speaker A
from the main body that are probably some kind of extractive force in the area that they're set up for American expanding I think you could consider if you wanted to talk about colonization you consider like Puerto Rico or Guam
Speaker A
maybe are more in in a sense of that rather than the expansion of the country itself.
Speaker A
So, okay. I mean, yeah, this is extractive capitalism versus like settler trans. I don't know that has anything to do with capitalism or anything else. It's a country. It's it's a new country expanding its border by taking over more
Speaker A
territory from other I don't know if you call them nations of people or whatever the natives that would have lived here were.
Speaker A
Yeah. But it's conquest. Yeah. And conquest. Yeah. Go for it. Jay, my question would be okay. So if we put forward a definition of colonization, Mhm.
Speaker A
what I guess what is the underlying moral question that you would be getting at by okay whether or not Israel is colonizer or not?
Speaker A
Yeah, let's just say they are or they aren't for the purpose of this discussion like what what what why are you putting forward that question? What are you trying to get at underneath from a moral perspective? Let's say that they are.
Speaker A
Therefore what then? Cuz like you know America's a colonial nation, England, all these different places. Well, that that just like Jabatinsky said that they would face resistance and it would be and it would be natural and it would be obvious and
Speaker A
it has a sort of so I guess I'm putting the normative back in there. Whatever your definition of colonization is, I think we're all agreeing that it involves um expansion, hierarchies of ethno or you know privileges of national
Speaker A
groups or whoever is there at the expense of the natives or the people who are already there to begin with and and it it will not go well for them and therefore they'll fight it and they'll resist it. And so this is I mean this is
Speaker A
this was like sort of my my starting point last time or my finishing point and it's still sort of the point that I that I I'm getting on the table to start the ball rolling that it's yeah morally um sympathetic to to fight
Speaker A
against that that the project in and of itself as conceived is a colonial one in the sense that it is dominating and we could call it apartheid or whatever else we want lump into it that it wasn't just some
Speaker A
innocent, you know, live with our neighbors, we need a lifeboat out of Europe project. Jabatinsky was pretty clear about that. I mean, I'm glad Steven's not like rejecting Jabatinsky as just some old like doesn't matter anymore Zionist. It really does start
Speaker A
the ball rolling even way before 1948 in a way that really really matters. And then just one more thing to put out with the Jabatinsky thing because I want to get to this other question on Israel is you could I'm trying to be sympathetic
Speaker A
with him here. I'll give a sympathetic reading at least the way I read it.
Speaker A
Stephen like I I think this is trying to be fair of like abs [ __ ] is well you can explain this because I'll shortcut all of this. So the reason why you want to use the term colonizing
Speaker A
or colonies because it allows you to assume all of the normative sympathy that you would have had for the Arabs and the Palestinians in the early 20th century and to transplant it into modern day which I wouldn't agree with. Um, if
Speaker A
you want to say that there was a sympathetic uh reaction that we all should have had to the Arabs fighting the Jews that came there originally, of course I'm going to agree with that.
Speaker A
Every single Arab population was getting its own state surrounding them and then in the Levant you had a whole bunch of people that seemingly came from Europe and got a country, you know, without you having much of a say in it. So I'm
Speaker A
sympathetic to the Arab populations there, the fought against the Jews that were coming. But I'm not going to say that some conflict that happened 100 years ago gives somebody an enduring right to fight perpetually and infinitely up to the modern day. I'm
Speaker A
pretty sure you could have territorial disputes all over the world infinitely with every native population if you wanted to do that. So I find that conversation to be largely worthless because it just tries to assume a whole bunch of normativity from the past and
Speaker A
and for any fair definition we use if we're trying to say colonization exists in this way we could imply the same thing retroactively to all of the calipites for the reasons why the Palestinians are there but then but then
Speaker A
it's pointless. So like why like Jews were there before uh you know before Muhammad conquered whatever and before the Ottoman Empire and the and the caliphates before set up you know the the Muslim conquest all across uh you
Speaker A
know the the Near East and in Northern Africa and Southern Europe and everything else. So what's the point? We don't get much out of that.
Speaker A
Yes. So well the normative question is interesting. I mean we we could get philosophical and talk about sort of objective timeless morality if we really want to go there or we stay with the sort of normative time you know
Speaker A
timebound contextual stuff which is also fine. But even if we're staying in the timebound contextual stuff, um, you know, the I think I think flattening all conquest and colonization into just like, oh, you know, it was just all bad
Speaker A
and the world was all all made. This is really missing a lot of important details of the way things changed. And last time I put a big emphasis on European capitalist colonization being a specific form, again, it's sort of a
Speaker A
Marxist lens, but a specific form of aggressive global uh disruption. This doesn't mean, again, I'm just gonna I'm gonna pull the plug on this one. Now, it's not just that only white people can do bad things. Brown and black people
Speaker A
can obviously do terrible things and participated in tons of that all over the world from Mexico, everywhere else.
Speaker A
I mean, the Arab slave traders from Mosamb beek, Zanzibar, like yes, this is not just like a white thing only. But it was it was a so if if I can do this that I think will actually maybe be on topic
Speaker A
and help us and not shortcut it in this way is to be sympathetic in the way that I read something like Jabatinsky that I think matters here because it is the way the be sympathetic but like Jabbatinsky was
Speaker A
not the sole he was he was a minority voice in the early in the early movement right like I'm sure he left or he was expelled I don't know it was called the Jewish conference whatever but like the
Speaker A
the leading voices against him um which would have been Benurian and it would been um uh uh what is it? Kim Vitzman or whatever. Um yeah, that these were voices that that were against Jabatinsky. He wrote that iron wall
Speaker A
essay because he opposed their silly diplomatic ways of trying to approach things and ultimately some could say that Jabatinsky was actually correct that the taking the diplomatic approach actually didn't work because the Arabs would never accept a Jewish population
Speaker A
there which led to civil war until eventually a war war and then yeah here we are today.
Speaker A
Yeah. Yeah. I mean and there's no way to relitigate that history. Manakim Bagan was the the era parent of it who got uh have it here like 12% in the first election but you know Bengurian only got 35 or whatever in the first and so no
Speaker A
one ever had a had a majority which is something that we should talk about um uh did yeah Ben was the the hir party which then became the Lud party um but yeah but just just as far as so let me
Speaker A
just that's a very quick shortcut he was also the the he was the Israeli prime minister that signed the peace treaty with Egypt he had a very big role yeah he was also somebody who fought against the he fought against the Russians when
Speaker A
he lived in eastern Russia. He fought against the Nazis when he was in Poland and then he fought against Benurion uh and the and the Haga uh when he came to to the shores of Israel. So I mean or
Speaker A
well to the but well he was in the Urggon. Yeah. But anyway, he was in the Argon for sure. Yeah. I'm just saying you're selectively quoting bits and pieces as all pro Palestinian people do and you're not you made him
Speaker A
sound like a terrorist the entire time. No, I I'm not I'm not trying I'm not trying to to selectively quote. Let me get this point out because I think it's like it's I I really am trying to be
Speaker A
fair here. Okay, that was a very unfair summary to say that. Oh, and then his party became the liquid party. It was a pretty unfair summary of Bean's history.
Speaker A
I would say of Bean's history. I mean, anyway, people can go back and read like, you know, the the famous letter from Einstein and Hannah and stuff. He's he's not he's not my cup of tea, but he's definitely part part of the Jabatinsky
Speaker A
and you're saying maybe maybe they were proved right by history. So, let like let me give like that some of some of that love to you is like the the thousands of years of persecutions of the Jews in Europe or whatever. Like,
Speaker A
let me just let me just get some of the lens on the table. that I think is uh you know defensible here in a way of you know I live in Europe. I'm in Germany right now and and like the longer you
Speaker A
stay in Europe and the longer you stay in Germany and and the longer you I I think can start to understand the crisis of capitalism I know this is like not quite the way you like to think about
Speaker A
these things but if you understand fascism as a way of capitalism is in crisis and a way to to prevent labor from organizing to you know lead the proletariat as Markx always wanted is fascists are funded by capitalists the
Speaker A
Nazis were funded massively by capitalists Right. And this happened all over Europe. And it was, you know, so the rise of fascism, which is a great [ __ ] way to prevent upset labor from organizing, right? Because when you when
Speaker A
you inject fascism, and I'm I'll I'll give credit to Michael Pari here with this idea of rational fascism. When you inject fascism and you tell get people fired up about nationalism or their ethnicity or their religion or whatever,
Speaker A
you you prevent them from talking about class struggle because suddenly, you know, the the poor Aryan German who probably in my eyes should have a big problem with the ownership and capitalist class of his country. Well, no, it's actually you're both Germans.
Speaker A
You're both white. You're both Aryans. You're both on this good team. The real problem, the real bad guys are the Jews or the communists or whoever else it is.
Speaker A
And it's a great way. This is like a classic sort of argument about fascism.
Speaker A
And let me just like that thesis if you buy any of that at all exploded in a massive way in Europe where you have like these these these insane outbreaks of fascism and ethnofascism and nationalism which I'm with you like was
Speaker A
leaving no room. I mean these are my ancestors too. No room for the Jews, right? This is an absolute disaster problem.
Speaker A
And I could have some historical sympathy for even the Jabatinsky idea. I mean, I could see the problems with it obviously of like we're out of options. [ __ ] this. We need our own place. There's nowhere in Europe that's
Speaker A
ever that we could ever survive. You know, we're adopting some of these brutal fascistic type methods and we're going to go take this. We really don't have any other choice. Sorry Arabs.
Speaker A
Like, we're here. We're showing up. We're taking this this space. Um and and he was like, "Well, we're gonna face resistance, but you know, we're done giving a [ __ ] and we're gonna fight." But they were giving a [ __ ] And they
Speaker A
tried to make it work peacefully originally, but that No, that was the that was the stated position of of the Jews there was to try to make it work out diplomatically and it was what the Brits wanted as well. And then that
Speaker A
became impossible because there was no Jewish state that the Arabs there would have accepted, right?
Speaker A
I mean, we could always debate that there's certainly no there was certainly no Jewish. You think that they would have accepted a Jewish state in the Levant pre48?
Speaker A
I don't know how big or how small. I really don't know. But I do know that someone like Jabatinsky was would never accept one where he wanted it with a Jewish minority.
Speaker A
That's fine. Didn't Jabinsky when did he didn't Jabinski die before Israel was even founded?
Speaker A
Yeah, maybe quite I think. So that's he was also a minority voice in the he was a minority voice in the in the early Jewish movement.
Speaker A
He was pushed out in favor of voices like Bengurion and and Vitzman. So, I mean, you can cite him all you want, but I mean, I don't know how that I don't even know how that factors in here.
Speaker A
Also, I'm pretty sure the way the Nazi party made most of their money was the fact that it was the ruling party of Nazi Germany and they were able to take and and mobilize the entire state to do
Speaker A
what they wanted to. It wasn't because capitalist funded them. It was because they owned the country.
Speaker A
Go ahead and look at Go ahead and look at at at who funded. You could read Michael Parenty's Black Shirts and Reds and and look at the footnotes if you want. But it's I mean it's fascinating history because we're seeing it again
Speaker A
repeat and and we should all be quite aware of it because I feel like we're all being played by it again. Um I'm just I'm using Jabatinsky not as a person but as an idea as a as a you know
Speaker A
this very I'm using him as a misrepresentation of the entire early Jewish Jewish movement pretending that the entire early Jewish movement was a militant movement set upon I'm not you're you're the one who keeps saying that I'm making it an entire I'm
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let what can I say 10 15% an an important minority that had a lot of influence and weaponry. Can I just like keep saying it that way? I'm not saying out on their on on what the the early
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Jewish nation settled for. Ultimately, it was not it was not Jabbatinsk's ideas that prevailed. It was Bengurians who was the first prime minister for a reason.
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And you're you're saying well won the vote with with 35% or whatever the first election in 1949 or yeah 19 was it 49 but not 47. Uh but yeah this UN partition that they accepted or whatever which was obviously much smaller than
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something like Jabatinsky was ever hoping for. just as proof for that, just so we're all clear of like what uh and I don't even need to defend if the Arabs would have ever accepted any Jewish state in the in the region. I have no
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idea. Like I I'll say I don't know. I don't know how big I do know. I know they would not have.
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Yeah. Okay. But but so but but what we do know historically is that someone again like Jabatinsky even himself were were were setting off bombs and and attacking Churchill because Churchill was forbidding Jewish settlements. This is just the name they use, the Jewish
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settlements east of the Jordan River, which is now of course modern day Jordan, not the West Bank, but the East Bank, something that is not even not even in in play. And so whatever was in their minds of this idea of we need, and
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again, I can have this like sympathy for it. We need a Jewish majority state somewhere in the world. Okay, we're doing it here in Palestine. Where's it going to be? Like they never really drew it. We could talk about greater Israel
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or not, but terrorist attacks that were happening. I don't think they were happening east of the Jordan River, but they happened when Church Hill forbade at least some of them forbade Jewish settlements east of the Jordan River. And they were not happy.
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I think it was I think it was when they limited all Jewish people, all Jew, no, not this as well. This was the reason.
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And it was because during the Holocaust, the Brits said no more immigration to the to the area after the Jewish people had already secured an agreement in 1917 from the Brits that they would be allowed to migrate to that area. So
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they're getting holocausted and now the Brits all of a sudden said, "Sorry, we've had too many problems with the local Arabs who are not happy with this." And so they started to forbid all Jewish immigration. That wasn't because
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they couldn't make settlements east of the Jordan River. It was because they were Go ahead and look it up. I think like you're on Go ahead and look up Church Hill forbidding Jewish settlements east of the Jordan River. I don't know the
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exact years where these were happening, but Jabatinsky, I think he was still alive for it because he he was part of the the group, not happy with it. He's I'm not saying it's the whole story. You keep like I don't know if it's it's a
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debate tactic that you're trying to peg me as like painting I know it's a complex I'm sorry it's not it's it's not a complex picture. What you're doing is you're misrepresenting the historical record by claiming that the terrorist
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attacks against the British which largely started in the early 40s was a result of then banning all Jewish immigration.
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I didn't say that. Paul, can can can you just refer me for a second? I didn't say it. Go ahead.
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Well, hold on. Because what's Wait. Okay. No, just sir. Um, it's a lot of We're unpacking a lot of individual historical factoids which are relevant.
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Fair enough. In the final kind of overall picture. I guess my question would be what is the what what are all the what is this historical debate? Can you tie this historical debate to the moral question now of whether or not
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Israel should exist as a Jewish majority state, right? Because we're painting a picture with the different historical factoids, but presumably to get to a conclusion about therefore the morality of Israel as a Jewish majority state is this. And I think
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that's the substantive question. And if that if that is if part of answering that is getting into a more underlying sort of capitalist or or discussion around capitalism and kind of basic philosophical concepts around that, that's fine. I think that's
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probably the lens that is most divisive here. So that could be relevant. But, you know, the the history is going to endlessly be debated. Not that it's not relevant, but I guess Yeah. Jay, can you tie it to the current
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moral? I'll do it. Yeah, I'll I apologize, Stephen. I'll sidestep because I it's like I'm not trying to get hung up on these details. I think they're interesting and they matter because we're trying to glean intention from the
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history, whatever. Um, my punchline is and and what I would like to see to talk about more solutions because people like me on these channels even last time they're like kind of like what I'm saying a little bit, but I'm not really
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like presenting a solution. I talk about justice emerging and all this [ __ ] What I'd really like to see and I think you would like to see too, we sort of agreed about this last time is I want to see
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Israel at a [ __ ] constitution and tell me where its borders are. We've been waiting for this since 1947. Not many states in the na and and it's not the only country in the world that doesn't have a constitution. I wanted to
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write a constitution. Show me a constitution. And I think I I think what they're afraid to do and obviously it was like 2018 or something.
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Why doesn't Israel have real borders? What where what what are their announced borders that they've told us?
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Well, I don't know. Where do they come from? They they should tell us, right? They should define this. Tell tell us what their final borders. Where did the b Where did the borders of Israel come from? I don't
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know what Israel's borders, dude. Do you? They don't tell anybody. Their fi What is their final borders? Their final state of is Gaza in the West Bank. Is that Israel or not?
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Where do borders come from? Well, okay. All right. So, if Okay. If you're asking a question about international law and who gets to mandate these things, I think it's a good discuss discussion, but it's a bit philosophical. Should we go?
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It's not. It's a super simple question. I'm asking you where do borders between two countries come from?
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Consensus space in our minds. They're [ __ ] pulled out of our ass and their their consensus that's not even remotely close to true.
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They come from a negotiation between two countries. The reason why Israel was founded formal borders is because all of the surrounding states went to war with a refusal to acknowledge Israel existed as a country. So of course you can't
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have borders as a state if the other countries around you don't recognize their existence. Now they do have borders formerly recognized with Egypt and Jordan. They never were able to with Syria because Assad there was for Hz, I
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think, but that's a different story. But the the area to the north of them is because they've never had another leader that was been willing to come to the table and and recognize Israel as a state and then say that the borders as
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such are here. Israel cannot unilaterally declare its borders. It it necessarily involves a cooperation with the state surrounding you to do it.
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What what they can do I I think I agree that's a negotiation. But what they can do is announce or or tell us what their final borders are in their in their picture of things. Why not? Why not?
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because it does because you you do it as a negotiated position with the with the neighbors that you have.
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So so so why don't so if they can prop what why don't they propose what their borders are then to to everyone around them right now they they can do because because the Arab League they don't want to accept Israel as a Jewish
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as a state they didn't Egypt was kicked out of the Arab League for 10 years when they made peace with Israel so why don't why don't they just do this why don't they do this because this would be a really great point for the
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Israel defenders to prove your point that that they can go to the they can go to the UN question. It's a nonsense question. You would have to have the surrounding states that would be willing to come together with Lebanon. Do you
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think Lebanon and Syria would right now acknowledge and recognize where Israel's borders should be?
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You can you can just propose this and say we're waiting for negotiating partners. Here's our borders.
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Who's Has anybody ever done this in the history of all of border propositions? No. This is not a real thing.
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Okay. Why don't they have a constitution? Let's go let's go to that one. If you think if you think announcing a border is something by the way, the UN is Yeah. Go on. Go on. If you think if you think that one's not
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not a thing, why don't they have a constitution? Because I'm telling you what I think.
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Not every every state. Does every state have a constitution? There's only a few that don't. They're one of them. They were supposed to UK. Doesn't the UK don't they have like a parliamentary rule? They have a constitution. Right.
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UK does not have one. There's like It's like 97% or so have one. About 4% don't.
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Yeah. Pick on them, too. I don't I want them to. So, so here here's like if you want like like my punchline is Paul of like all this stuff about borders and colonization and really what the endgame is here is I think I would like to live
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in a world obviously international law is failing right Stevens like where borders need to be negotiated we have no table where we can actually enforce these things it's completely failing the UN is obviously a failed or a failing
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project and I and I fear that we have World War II when it fails um what I would like to see is some sort of cooperative ative global order that required this is sort of just an idea required all states that want to be
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legitimized to write a constitution tell us how they want to organize the principles of their society really clearly on paper as best they can we can disagree about things we could have socialist states and democrat whatever we could have but I think there's bounds
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that we would say are morally legitimate or not legitimate I don't think the Taliban would bring us a constitution that we would sort be like, "That's morally legitimate. You're in the club of nations here." And I don't think
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Israel can do it either, which is why they've never written one because they would. And maybe you and you know, you just think it's so easy to say that they can just write a permanent Jewish majority and be a democratic state. But
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there's no way with writing that that you're not going to write down basically an apartheid state. And I think they just they won't do it and they can't do I think it would be rejected morally by most sane people and so they refuse to.
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I don't know if this is goofy. This is just a deeply unserious goofy proposition because they don't have a constitution. Pakistan has ethnic majorities written into their constitution. So do a couple other theocratic states around Israel. The idea that they couldn't write a
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constitution that that confers immigration power to the parliament that doesn't even or to the explicitly like Jewish majority state written into the constitution. I mean they could very trivially and easily do that. But the idea that you would have to demand they
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have a constitution for it to be all these just seem like weird goofy little traps that are trying to avoid proposing an actual solution. Like coming out and saying like they need to propose a council go to the UN and uni and
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unilaterally propose what they think their border should be. Like why? That's not real. That's just not a real thing.
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They we need to force them to write a constitution. Why? I don't UK doesn't have I don't think Canada has a constitution. I don't why why would it matter if they have to have a constitution. They could have a moral or
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an immoral one. They could have a a moral one that they don't enforce. They could have a moral one that is enacted in an immoral manner in their Knesseta.
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Like it's just such an unc like I've never in my life heard like a serious discussion on resolving the Israeli Palestinian problem that involves forcing upon them some unilateral declaration of their borders or the mandate the mandate that they have to
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write a constitution. This is just not a thing that matters that much. Well, it's maybe the first time you've heard it. I think it's a good one and you should take it seriously because I I I'm actually proposing all of those
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states you mentioned that don't have constitutions. I think they should. I'm not like picking on Israel here. I'm saying they absolutely should. I think like this is an interesting we're at a time in human history where and and why
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this matters to your point Paul and why we started on sort of this like detailed esoteric Zionism thing is clearly no one [ __ ] knows what the project of Israel really is. Jabotinsky was saying stop lying to everybody. He was talking to
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the liberal Zionist being like you could keep lying to people but our real aim is this which is what he said. And he wouldn't want to define his borders again. He was thinking east of the Jordan River. Whatever doesn't really
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matter. He was ha he would be happy with earning, you know, by force that they would be forced to accept this agreement after seeing the sort of unrelenting truth of the power of of Zionism and and the powers in the world and and that
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would earn Israel this place at the table in the na of the you know in the nations of the world. Uh and it would be permanent. It would just sort of like announce itself in the world. The sort
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of like might makes right thing. I I'm I am proposing I think that would be an interesting uh proposition for peace, an actual solution of like let's make them write this out. And I think they can't do it.
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I I mean I think Israel is really they're about to have an election in October.
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I don't I don't even know if they're going to be able to get through it.
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They're all they're at each other's throats already. they don't know what their project is or they're afraid to admit it or they've, you know, grown so that that it's too brutal for them to actually complete the job. I would like
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to see them do that. I don't think it's, you could say it's goofy. I'm not picking on them. And yes, hold every country in the world to the same standard. If you're saying there's nowhere there's no we don't have an
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international body to do this, to enforce this, to be this table, I probably agree with you, right? Like, you know, who's America to say that we're so morally clean to be the arbittors of the world or whatever. No,
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this is a big problem. And but but I just think it's like I don't think that's a crazy thing to say, hey, Israel, what's the project? What how are you organizing your society and where are your borders? And if they write,
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we're a Jewish state and here's what that means and our constitution and here are our founding principles and here are our borders, we can evaluate it. I if they write it now, including Gaza and the West Bank, then we're like, "Hey
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guys, that's that's an aparttheid state." Or what are you going to do with all those non-Jews who live there?
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You're not a majority anymore. This seems to be in violation of your constitution. Why do you think they couldn't write a constitution that literally just enshrines them as occupied territories?
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Like it's not like the 50 states are included in the US Constitution. Our borders don't come from our constitution. Like this is just not it doesn't solve this doesn't go to solving literally anything.
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Wait. So So you think they could write a constitution that says the the West Bank and the and Gaza are not part of Israel or like are sort of just like we have US the US has territories of
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people that don't have much of a say in our federal elections. the people in Washington DC don't have much of a say and they still to pay federal taxes.
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Puerto Rico and Guam are US territories. I think the Virgin Islands are US territories. Like you could literally do this and still have a constitution. Like like none of this is solved by having a constitution at all.
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So it would be I mean it's I mean it's so I mean this is interesting now we're talking because it's like so because I haven't thought it all the way through.
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So you would think it's possible for them to say the West Bank is like a territory of Israel but but who's the governing body and who gets to vote for who and who's paying taxes to who? like they still have to work out all the
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details there. Uh I don't know exactly how it works like in Guam, but uh you know is that sort of I mean couldn't they literally just enshrine in a constitution the way it's set up right now?
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They could. So I think they could try. Here's my thing. I think they could try and I think the world would be like oh [ __ ] like this is we're not cool with this and we're rejecting this. I mean I
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honestly just think that's the point that we're at. And if you if you ask me like in my heart of hearts again, I'm I'm just Jabbatinsky is useful. I'm sorry I keep bringing him up, but he would if he could come if he in a time
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machine could see where we're at now because interestingly and for people who haven't read it. He's like he thinks his ends are peaceful, it's just going to like, you know, crack a few eggs to get there. It's going to be an unpieceful
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way to get to this peaceful end. He said he's like willing to sign, you know, a promise that he and his ancestors will never restrict the rights of of the Arabs, which is interesting. But he was demanding that we will be a majority
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because Jews will never be a minority again because look what happened again. I have sympathy for that sort of like mentality. Um would he say, "Okay, this is enough actually." Like guys, we're a majority if you just draw it this way
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and like the iron wall is not working. The iron wall has been pierced for a million reasons. Maybe they were fiercer fighters than you thought or the geopolitics didn't work out exactly the way he thought. and like let's go back
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to 47 borders or something and give Jerusalem back and we're a majority and this is cool and we're good guys and and I'm hearing you Stephen saying like okay cool that sounds good there's no way that the Palestinians would agree to
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that or go for that you know I don't know I don't know either you know that's not my preferred result or solution at the end I'm obviously not a fan of Jabatinsky style sort of politics at all here but you know uh I I don't know I
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don't know how you respond to that but I actually I think this constitution thing is just like just tell us what the project is here guys because I'm sure you deal with people tell telling you about greater Israel and Erit Israel and
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Euphrates to the you know I don't know tell us what the project is tell us what the end goal is I just don't think even now like you said could they just write what they're doing now I don't think the
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world would go with it and I don't think they I don't think their own population frankly just wants to to see it codified I mean they're at each other's throats already and they will be again in this election cycle more than America
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I mean, do you want to respond to that, Destiny? There's nothing to respond to. I don't know. This constitution doesn't do anything. Like they they have a system of laws. They have like they're a functioning democracy. They also have
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what I would argue are unacceptable conditions right now in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip. So, I don't know why you don't think like the United States had a constitution when we had slavery. So, I I don't know why we're
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thinking that like a constitution somehow would magically save the day for Israel. I that's I just don't know how you engage with the I mean I think it saves the day with the Palestinians, but we could we could
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leave an aside. I just encourage people to think it through. I think it's an interesting Well, can can we talk about the whole greater Israel thing because this is something that's always brought up and I'd like to know both of your thoughts
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on it because Jay, it sounds like one of the reasons you think they're not they don't want to write a constitution is because there is a contingent of people within Israel that do want a greater Israel that do want Nile to Euphrates or
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some lesser version of that. And we talked last time, Destiny, I asked about, you know, Benny Morris in his interview with Coleman Hughes was pointing out that the right-wing kind of far-right Bengavier type um voters are having more children than the liberal
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secular Israelis and that the demographic shifts are moving in such a way that that faction is going to gain more and more power and they seem to be the more pro- greater Israel people, however you want to define that. So
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maybe we can talk about I mean Jay, do you think it's a con conspiracy? What what is your assessment of greater Israel? And then Stephen, how would you kind of I mean, it's it's obviously insanely unrealistic whether it's a conspiracy or
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not. I'm sure there's biblical believers in it and always have been. I run in into them from time to time as well. I don't know how seriously any any of them any people take them. But the the the
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problem that you're putting your finger on there is like and this is also almost perverse is like were there enough Jews in the world who were willing to go to Palestine and again around World War II not a lot of options totally sympathy
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for this um but it already probably you know not a great place to be because the fighting and distrust had already started etc. It wasn't, you know, if you had a if you had a brain to project that, it just wasn't a great place to
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be. But were there enough Jews kind of in the world to to be there and create a sort of Steven thinks it's a functioning democracy. I really don't think it's functioning. I don't think it's a democracy. I think it's why they can't
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write this constitution. But would you have enough Jews to form a sort of liberalish parliament that got together and, you know, was able to sort of keep its extremist fringes in Wait, was the US a democracy when we had
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slavery? No, I would say no. No. Were we a democracy when women couldn't vote?
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No. No. Absolutely not. Were we democracy when we had Jim Crow? Absolutely not. No, I'm not.
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We weren't a democracy until 1965. That's when the US became a democracy. That No, this is I don't know what definition of democracy you were using here. Democra Democracy is when good and no bad thing can exist in a democracy.
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That's good. No, I'm I'm talking in Fran I'm talking in franchise men and a a you know a government of and for and by the people whatever that means but really that the people have a legitimate say in
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in the direction of things but wait to that point of America because I just did like an essay on this and I think it's again I'll you don't have to accept this argument but I think one thing that
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helps America is that in the Declaration of Independence it says we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal 1776 And the same exact newspaper that was printed, you know, on on page four is a
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slave auction. And that moral contradiction has always, I'm not the first to point this out, right?
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Historians like Jill Leapor, whatever, have written about this, that moral contradiction has always been uh this this thing, this document, what not that it's God or whatever, but this constitutional document. And I know that's a declaration of like here are
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the principles that we aspire to live by or we want to live by that people get to point to and say, "Hey, that's hypocritical. I want that too. Am I not a man?" And and it's again, America, it's all nations. I'm I'm an anarchist
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at heart, right? Like I'm not going to sit here and tell you states are the best way to organize people to like, you know, find our true liberation, but we can argue about Thomas Hobbes another day. Um, but but I'm just saying that um
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sentence, even just that sentence is really helpful to have on paper to sort of say like, okay, those are America's principles and they're failing to live by them all the [ __ ] time, but we but at least we have this paper to look at
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and push them towards and they can, you know, we can all point to that in the world. I just wish Israel would have something and I know they've written their they have a declaration and stuff.
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I think that they don't know how to write that and this is a normative thing. So, you are right. When American 1776 wrote all men are created equal, they meant men, right? And they went meant white men. But they wrote men and
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they wrote they appeal to God and all this kind of stuff. I'm not trying to say, you know, America could write that today. They couldn't and be held, you know, by this by our standards now. Um, and in some ways, Israel's really late
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to the party. I said last time like the world, especially after World War II, at least formerly, said, "Hey, we're going to start deolonizing." And it's been a long struggle. And that's why the colonization framing is is useful for me
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of like, well, there's this one project called Israel that's still trying to do this like very 20th century style, maybe 19th century style colonization, even the way they think about race to a degree out there in Palestine. And it
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just sticks out like a sore thumb. And to the to the Jabatinsky style Jew who thinks well [ __ ] a America got to get a seat at the table and they did all this crazy [ __ ] We're just trying to
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take our seat amongst the nations. This is actually something my mom I grew up in a Zionist uh liberal Zionist family.
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She used to say like Israel taking its place amongst the nations. Taking its seat amongst the nations. And how did everyone else get a seat amongst the nations in our sort of consensus minds?
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Pretty brutal colonization ways, right? And so like I I understand the kind of moves that you're making or the Zionist wants to make of like what the [ __ ] like we're trying to do exactly what you did
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and and obviously I'm with you like less less brutal in some ways or less obviously racist in some ways. Um so yeah anyway you can respond to that but I just think it's another point in favor of like it was helpful to have that
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constitution but yeah I'm not trying to be sort of you know precious about the word democracy here.
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I don't I don't know if there's a question. I I just you can have a constitution. You know, you said it yourself. You didn't consider America, I guess, a real democracy until 1960. So, I mean, felons can't vote right now.
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Some people would argue the voting age is unethical. That you can work and pay taxes as 16-year-old and you're not allowed to vote. So, I mean, are like, if we allow children up to the age of 16 to vote um in the future, does that mean
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we weren't a democracy until then? You're just I think you're you're trying to you're trying to save the argument by by tology. You're just trying to define away things that you don't like as being not democracy and define the things that
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you want as democracy and then so we consider ourselves a democracy. Then that means that we should aspire to the semantic content that you load democracy with. The same way that you're quoting Jabbatinsky and his use of the word
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colonization and you're trying to normatively load it today, you're injecting it with the normativity that we have today with the term colonization when he never would have meant it in the past as being a negative thing. So I
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mean like I don't know. Um, yeah, I just there's not much there's like not much to deal with there. Like if they just write a constitution, like there's a million ways that you could write a constitution that would un that
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would enshrine the exact same unethical position that Israel holds today, I'm sure that you think that the United States is an unethical country and we have the longest enduring constitution of any country on the planet. So I just
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the idea that this would be a good thing or this would get us any closer to solving any problem is just it's there's no foundation for it.
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I I think it would help. No, I'll just I'm going to let you ask a question here, Paul, but I would object to I'm going to edit one thing. I don't know if Jabatinsky would say colonization is like a super negative normative thing.
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You might be right. He absolutely would say it's a brutal thing. It's a brutal thing and that it that it is um yeah, he he might say a necessary but brutal process to the natives. Let me just use
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that word brutal, but he might not say it's like bad. He just says like that's that's the way [ __ ] goes basically.
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Which was true after he wrote it. It was just coming off the end of World War I.
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you saw the collapse of three great empires at least like I mean so I mean yeah the the whole world was still taking shape and even coming to a mutual understanding of what it meant to be a nation or a country or to have borders
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or to conquer or whatever. So I I I we agree on that like it was true it was brutal and going to face resistance and I think uh yeah that's kind of that yeah he's not saying we're evil and we're going to do an evil
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thing. He was saying we're doing a necessary thing. We have no options. We're going to face resistance. It's going to be bloody. Yeah. And so get ready for it. Yeah.
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I think it would be good to get into the underlying kind of philosophical debate that is almost uh can be had separate from Israel Palestine. I mean that can be the foil to bring things back but because we're all I guess approaching things
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from a different fundamental philosophical lens. So Jay when you say you're an anarchist Mhm. In my mind, that's, you know, a lot of teenage larpers meme lording as we're going to abolish the government and all that. So what is the what is your
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conception of anarchy that is presumably realistic and moral and involves you know not having a collapsed state uh and warlords you know running around like what is what is your perception of anarchy that you're I'll give you like the simple definition
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that I sort of got from Sophie Scott Brown which is just that anarch anarchy or anarchism is a a denial or refusal to have permanent hierarchy hierarchies to solve problems. You can certainly have meetings and and then of course the
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question is how do you know when the problem's over? There's all kinds of problems with it. I I just want to say like I I I use the word anarchy as an adjective more than sort of a a thing
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and probably democracy as well. Like there's anarchistic thought which aims to have sort of like horizontal uh you know decision-m you can certainly have a boss. You can certainly elect a boss but it can't be a permanent boss to solve
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all problems. You could have experts and all these kinds of things. There's I'll just say this because it's it's too big of a topic for a debate. Um and probably off too far off where we're going to go,
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but I too until like maybe like the last five or six years would have pegged just like sex pistols and you know anarchy, you know, red spray paint on the wall as this silly unrealistic thing. And still I until I started to take it a little
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more seriously about the history of it. Like Prude Home is a name people are going to want to look up. Uh you you're going to want to look up things like in Barcelona where they actually had decades of basically an anarchistic
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successful commune situation near Barcelona which was then crushed by the fascists. Um it's situations there that that that they're certainly anti- capitalist which I think is more of where I wish where I would probably take this debate with Stephen or this
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conversation with Steven because I'm not going to sit here and defend anarchy but but I'll tell you at the base of it I'll defend this part of it and I mentioned him once already. Thomas Hobbes is the philosopher who is is the one that
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anarchists have to contend with because at its at its base, anarchy rejects this notion that that humans are unavoidably naturally um competitive and brutal and you know that we need states to keep us safe from ourselves and from each other. So it was
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people like Krypotkin you can look into who fiercely disagreed with Marx. He was a he was an anarchist communism. He he wrote the book Mutual Aid and the Conquest of Bread. So, I'm just I'm just putting this out there for the listeners
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who are like, "What the [ __ ] anarchy?" Like, there's serious good thinkers in history to talk about here. Um, but I'd rather talk about the anti- capitalist positions that I that I that I probably have, which are anarchistic, but a
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bigger tent. Yeah, that's fine. I mean maybe like I mean where do you think I guess in the simplest sense like can you put forward an anti- capitalist position that you think most people including Stephen would disagree with and you know something
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that most people take for granted that you think is just wrong because we do operate in a something resembling a capitalist system.
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Yeah. Um dependent define it. So what I mean when you when when you say you're anti- capitalist what does that mean like in the most consequential sense?
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Yeah. I'll lay it out this way and then I would love see because I'm just gonna try this and I would love Stephen to respond to it is like a lot the socialism which is clearly a word that's
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back in the US which is interesting but socialism communism Marxism whatever and capitalism I think sometimes gets real like we get confused about it because they are as Stephen keeps saying like super loaded at this point there's so much that comes in um but in some in
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some sense I like to think about it philosophically in sort of a toy universe of these two different kinds of problems that I think of. So, let's say on, you know, this podcast we're three humans in a toy universe and um Stephen
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wants to, you know, uh make uh t-shirts. He just like thinks that's cool. It's a human need. Humans need t-shirts. We need we need to protect ourselves. And I want to make t-shirts. And Steven's like, "Cool. You know, I have this cool
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idea for one and this cool design. I'm going to make t-shirts and I'm going to set them at a price given the currency of whatever we're using in my community.
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Um sort of as as high as I can. I'm going to have help people help, you know, get workers to help make them. And I'm going to sell them at the price as high as I can. What people are willing
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to pay. Like if if they're selling a lot, I'm going to raise the price. And if I reach this point where I realize people are aren't buying as much, I'm going to I'm going to stop there and that's going to be the price. We're all
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very familiar with that. This is capitalism, right? And I'll keep the surplus and this will be a business and the surplus and I won't pay my workers as whatever as much, but it'll all work out. That's what we call capitalism. But
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I say, you know, I see some problems with that. It's like a bad idea and I've for I see it going in in really bad ways and so I have a different idea. Instead, um I'm gonna figure out how many
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t-shirts the community wants and needs and I'm going to I'm going to make them sort of and set them at a price based on sort of how much labor goes into them in this abstract way of how many labor
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hours go into each shirt that gets made. And that's going to be the price. And then we're going to sort of plan this, you know, centrally in the world. and that's how we're going to get t-shirts into my society. And I'm describing, you
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know, pure socialism, right? And I and I and that's just like sort of an innocent starting point, but you could see already that we can't share currency, right? Like cuz Steven's t-shirts, the currency that's operating in his world
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is this capitalist currency that has a certain very fluid value based on desires and needs or whatever. And it's very fluid and it goes different places.
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And mine is like fixed in this very different way to calculate. And so we can't actually like live together very closely. We might have to build a wall in between ourselves, right? Which ends up happening a lot. So already you get
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this problem of of like he has capitalist t-shirts and and and I can't really buy his products because they're they're just calculated in a totally different way than mine. So suddenly it's like dirty capitalist products and I have communist t-shirts and we have
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these different things and we have these two different systems. Now I'll say I they both can fail for different reasons. The Marxist looks at the capitalist system and he's done he did all this math and whatever and figured
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out surplus value and figured out all these phases that it's going to you know uh lead to overp production and then it's going to need to consume more and it's and it's alienation every I hope people are familiar with Marx's really
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good criticism of capitalism no matter if you think he had the right solution after he talked about all of the potential problems of capitalist overconumption let alone sort of the psychological problems of living with it and that might happen Right. And the the
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socialist one or even say communists in a political way can also fail cuz it's like well if I make shitty t-shirts but I have to pay everyone the same, you know, they're not as incentivized to work as hard and maybe it gets corrupt
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and I start start skimming off the top or I start saying, you know, these people ordered more t-shirts than they needed and I put them all in my pocket like basically what happened maybe in parts of the Soviet Union. And so in
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general, this is like the the takeaway point as I see it and I think as Mark saw it too is they both might fail but socialism when it fails decays and shelves start being which is not great right shelves start being empty and
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there's starvation and there's different problems but capitalism when it fails it explodes because it over consumed and it needs to find more markets to exploit because it's you know printing out too much currency and it needs to sell its
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[ __ ] somewhere so it needs to like invade more. So, we have these two systems existing in the world. And again, I'm not going to defend either of them. This is why I'm more anarchistic, but I think socialism decays and
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capitalism explodes is there's something true about it in a Marxist lens. And to go back to connect it to this political stuff we're talking about, and I hinted at it earlier, you know, the c the the anti- capitalist sees World War I and
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World War II as capitalist crisis and wars. that capitalism is this underlining assumption that led to all those dead bodies, right? And and and that's where in that world you get these rises of fascism and you get all these
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things and Zionism comes out of that world. But I'll leave it there of sort of like that's why I am an anti- capitalist, put it that way.
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I mean, there were plenty of wars for exploitation on this planet far before capitalism and mercantalism appeared.
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Um, I mean, we can look at the It's not like the Soviet Union was without its satellite states that it worked as an extractive entity over. Um, it's not like the Soviet Union didn't partner with Nazi Germany when it came time to
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divide up Poland. Um, you know, it's not like socialist regimes have never failed before in in semi fantastic fashion. I mean, like the idea that um I don't know the the idea that all the evils of the world are necessitated by capitalism
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because they happen to occur when capitalists entities exist. I think is a is a bit of a naive thought process. The idea that things couldn't be worse than they are now or the idea that you know absent capitalism we'd be doing way
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better when when that model just hasn't and been proven anywhere. And I don't have any reason to think that would be the case. Um again like these are hypotheticals that have been tried in reality that have failed miserably. But
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for some reason we're encouraged the hypothetical will work next time. I don't know how I can ever possibly engage with that. Like I don't like you're going to tell me basically that in that society where I want to make
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shirts I'm not allowed to hire an employee. that would be illegal in your society. You can't do it. And I I just can't conceive of a way to make that society function. And it doesn't seem that there's any place on the planet
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that has ever made a society like that function. So I I Yeah. Yeah. Are there are there practical prescriptions like laws you would advocate like tomorrow? like tomorrow, I mean, or like what what what are the practical steps that you would want
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people to begin taking or governments to begin taking to move towards society that is more Well, I think the whatever the interim is, you would have to ban all oppositional political parties that advocate for different modes of production. So, capitalism would have to
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be banned. That means no more owners, no more owners, no more employees, no more starting a business where you hire people. And it would mean oppositional political parties that were liberal parties um that were advocating for some kind of capitalism would also
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necessarily have to be banned because these are going to be seen as not only oppositional economically, but they're going to be oppositional politically and arguably revolutionary in your country if it was a socialist country. So that that would have to happen which has
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happened in you know your vanguard party state. So I mean I don't know it's kind of So Jay, are you banning my Tucker Carlson Marjorie Taylor Green nationalist ticket then?
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I mean I'm not I'm not banning anything. this this is a problem in socialism and in communism I agree that they they um you know someone like Fidel Castro famously said like listen we guys we can have disscent but you can't be against
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the revolution and then that became this a bit like well what's the revolution and became a little bit more narrowly defined um but yeah like trying to overthrow so just the one thing I want to point out to there then again is like
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I didn't say all evils in the world are due to capitalism but I by any means um but when you say like socialism and communism failed has failed spectacularly.
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Uh yeah, and of course from the outside it also looks like that. But I hope people can see in that sort of toy universe they always again this is oversimpl over oversimplification but felt like they were under siege from
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capitalist [ __ ] with them and not wanting not allowing them to evolve in any kind of way. Again but nothing has been allowed to evolve in its own little vacuum in its own little [ __ ] capitalism though. I mean
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like the Soviet Union was oppositional. What do you mean? The United States was under siege by Yeah, we were funding, I don't know, domino theory. We were all funding different proxy wars across the planet to see whose economic and political theory
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would ultimately reign supreme. There was the Korean war. There was the Vietnam war. We had the entire cold war that involved the Cuban missile crisis and the nuclear arms race against each other. We were funding different sides of wars in the Middle East like
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Afghanistan. You had communist entities were being funded in South America and then the US supporting fascist entities sometimes on the other end of that. I mean what like there were wars everywhere over this. What do you mean?
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But the but the Yes, but the capital So yeah, but who like the capitalists were Why were the capitalists fighting in Vietnam? Why were the capitalists fighting in in Korea? Like I it's because we were worried that if the that
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if some became socialists and then they fell under the watchful gaze of the Soviets that it would take over the entire world, which was their plan. They which is what they wanted to do, right?
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Yeah. And so and so and and so this is well they both want to take over the entire world but when I say capitalism wants to take over the entire world it's it's to get a market in the entire world
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right they can't have something else that's functioning and succeeding in the world and I think socialists can't have something else that definitionally capitalism theoretically can work with a socialist entity a socialist entity can't work with a capitalist one it's why all of
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the socialist countries eventually gave way to liberal market reforms happened in Vietnam it's obviously happened in China it's happened in Russia like that's the only way your country can function more competitive at that point.
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So when you say though that like it failed spectacularly on these ways and I'm not I'm not going to defend them as again there's no such thing as a pure experiment in this ways but do you think uh World War I and World War II were
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spectacular failures of capitalism? Yeah. No, I don't think so. So So what like what how did they get themselves what was driving Germany, France, Britain to scramble for Africa?
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to I mean there was a degree of exploitation for racing to these places to to extract resources and everything from them but I mean are you saying that what was driving the Soviet Union Russia to include so many other things into the
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Soviet Union itself and what what was driving them to have the Warsaw pact right so so so the answer would be you said it exploitation of Africa whatever which I would say yeah capitalism right sure was Russia exploiting its it its
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member states So I'm not sorry. I want to hear I want to hear yes or no to that and then you can give your answer. Was was the Soviet Union exploiting their member states?
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The ones that all left in '91 and none of them wanted to rejoin. Was the Soviet Union exploiting them?
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Say I'm going to say I'm going to say this yes, but in a different way. I'll say um because and it sounds like you have to you know you have to be a believer in the revolution, right? If
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you if you're Soviet and you really think and again I don't trust them, right? Like I don't trust any of these powers. I'm I'm the anarchist talking here. But if you're tell telling me like why was the Soviet Union interested in I
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don't know Kenya not becoming a capitalist place and you're saying oh because they needed the resources and they wanted to exploit them rather than sort of the western capitalists. Yeah.
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You know you might be right. I don't know. But on like structurally there would be no definitive reason for a communist regime to do that and want if it was functioning. If it was functional, why not? Everybody wants more things.
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Why would they not need it? Why what would they need? So So you're saying they would need the stuff in Kenya to bring it back to Russia rather than just computers. They don't want electricity.
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They don't want better homes. They don't want the things they don't want that capitalists inherently want. What's the different breed of humans exist in a communist society where they don't want material things?
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No, no. I I didn't say they don't want material things. I'm saying like there there's no for the Soviet Union to be expanding its spheres of influence or whatever. You're you're saying they want to do this so they can they can u have
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more. Okay, let me let me agree with this. Of course, they want to do this so they could have more things. It would be great if they could take over the whole world and the whole world would be sort
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of cooperative in the Soviet Union and they could all be trading with this thing in one big happy family I suppose and have more access to things where I'm just want more things like exploitation and imperialism always existed way
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before capitalism. Kings and queens were doing it. Your calipites were doing it. Tribes were doing it like capitalism did not create exploitation. It did not create invasion and conquest.
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I never said that but capitalism absolutely lights a [ __ ] rocket fueler under it. I mean this again is it's hard to refute the history and again I I will repeat it's not just white people but you know I lived in
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Madrid Spain and if you go to the Palasio Ri Royale there and you visit the throne room you look up on the ceiling and the fresco the height of the Spanish Empire is all around the fresco is all of their you know native
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populations feeding like paintings of it. It's really kind of cool. uh you know there's Indians over here and Peruvians over here and like everywhere where the Spanish Empire was feeding into this grand thing in the center of the room which was like the throne which
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was a Christian one of course um you just you're not it's not that they're the unique evil in the world Europe but you're just not going to find that anywhere else in history in the world it never happened on that scale yes of
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course the scale has gotten bigger but you're also not going to find a scale of a king in Europe creating vaccine programs for people in Africa you're not going to find people in countries that are separated by entire oceans doing
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donation drive. This is what I'm correct right? Yeah. There's a level of good that we're able to do that we're able to export to other countries that have never existed on the scale before. So everything is increased in scale. Of course, technology
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necessitates that. So to delay all of the bad stuff at the at the feet of capitalism and then to just end it there, you could give them the good you can give them the good stuff too. You know
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what what's interesting about this too because it we're sort of agreeing on this. If capitalism is like is, you know, a really powerful engine, a really really powerful engine that has these incentives. If it's going to overproduce, it better find a new market
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to sell it before the debt comes due. Like it's going to it's going to overproduce. It's going to be very aggressive. It's going to be very expansive. Yeah. I don't think it can cooperate. The domino theory, of course,
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they didn't even really believe like this was all just bluster for the for the media. Um but yes, it's not all bad.
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Like of course I can talk about the good things here because what's interesting and again we didn't I didn't introduce who I you know Coleman and Sam Harris and these people who I sort of used to be closer with where they really in
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their deepest thinking about these things and I think a lot of it's coming to a head the the guy that they actually end up having to lean on the most to make their arguments is Hobbes certainly for human behavior but Steven Pinker
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when it comes to like measuring flourishing and trying to make a defense of sort of the like I don't know postworld war II capitalist status quo Oh. Um, I think people are losing faith in it for all kinds of reasons. And
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that's why people are starting to look take a closer look again at at at Markx and his critiques of capitalism because it's certainly starting to ring a lot more true. All of Marx's critiques of capitalism were dog [ __ ] None of them
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came through. The the falling rate of profits was a thing that he thought he would see in his lifetime, and it never ended up being true. the natural tension between labor and capital. I don't think he ever imagined that an average worker
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could have access to airplanes and take vacations around the world. Now, this isn't to say that everything on the planet is perfect or that we couldn't do better with our distribution of wealth, but all of Marx's predictions about how
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there would be this worldwide uh revolution that capital would give way through the the national natural tensions and everything between capital and labor and you would have you would just naturally see these socialist, you know, revolutions happen everywhere and
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there'd be this huge social. It never happened. It didn't happen in his lifetime. It doesn't happen over 100 years later. I mean, what prediction did Marks make? The labor theory of value is a bunk way to try to measure value in
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anything aside from some abstract relational philosophical sense. It doesn't tell us anything meaningful about the world. Um, like I I don't understand what we say Markx made good predictions. What predictions did he make that?
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Well, I think we're at the the monopoly phase of capitalism for sure. I mean the exploitive nature of it I feel like a lot of people are feeling quite alienated and yeah if you're thinking we can redistribute wealth a little better
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obviously I think we agree on that and I and and people think we need you know some socialism obviously in America people felt what was it the Dutch East India trade company you know was a monopolistic when it came to trade
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around the world and we had slavery in the United States that was a pretty bad thing I'm sure a lot of people felt alienated when all of their family members were getting killed in World War I and two like we're not this is not
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like a unique part in history in terms of there are bad happening. There always going to be bad things happening. But even if I grant you that there are bad things happening, whatever the answer is, it doesn't seem to be anything
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having to do with socialism. Well, do do you think places that wanted to be socialists should have been allowed to be? Because I mean, you talked about like the a lot of these revolutions you just sort of said didn't
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happen were trying to happen and they were squashed of course by the CIA and by America after but they were also foreign funded as well. It's not like these countries weren't also getting assistance from the Soviets that were trying to revol
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like but but what's so scary about that? Like that's the question I keep getting to is like what's so why why should America give a [ __ ] if in Oman they wanted to try a socialist economy? What is so bad
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about that if they were then and if the Soviets were like let give them the credit to be like you know hey we want your liberation too and we want to throw off the yoke of European capitalism from
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your back too and we want to liberate you. They want their liberation. They wanted them under their sphere of influence more than anything else. What do you mean their liberation? They they installed false governments and they killed they ruled tanks over people in
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Hungary. That's where the term tanky comes from when they thought they were being oppositional to the to the governments that they were trying to set up there. The idea they didn't care about the people in Afghanistan when they were supporting their Soviet guys
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over there that were the minority leadership. I mean, the idea that the Soviets or socialists were looking out for other people, that was the propaganda line. If you're going to say that you don't believe that the Americans actually thought domino theory
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was real and that was a propaganda line, there's no way that you could sit here and say that the same type of people that presided over uh you know the great leap forward in the holiday among all the other famines that these countries
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experienced were were genuinely interested in the well-being of of all the peoples of the earth. That's not true.
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No, I'm not. Yeah, I'm not. I'm not. Yeah, I'm trying like I'm trying to speak more toy universe and philosophically here rather than get sucked into like I'm not going to sit here and defend the Soviet Union. Um,
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and I don't want you But then you brought up Oman and whether or not we were interested in this particular country. I mean, interesting countries in the Gulf, right? So why why should America give a [ __ ] right? Let if they were like, "Oh,
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you're being exploited by the Soviets. You think you're getting your liberation. You're trying this socialist thing, but you'll find out the Soviets really just want to take all your oil, so we want to come and crush you and put
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the Sultan back in power. Uh, you know, [ __ ] the feminists there. thought you know what they were afraid of like this is and parent is really quite good here.
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I don't know if you know Michael Parent's work, but his work, you know, when he when he talked about um he he did a million talks on YouTube, he's dead, unfortunately. But when he talked about sort of the four futures for the
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Middle East, because now we're coming back to some of this stuff again. He talked about sort of uh what they could have looked like after World War II, which is like revolutionary socialists, which was definitely a thing happening
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from D4, like we talked about last time, or South Yemen that the CIA tried to crush but lost. Even in Western Sahara, which is getting a little play again now because of the Odyssey filming there.
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Um, so it could have been this like revolutionary socialism which you can say maybe they were being played by the Soviets. Fine, whatever. Arab nationalists. This was another sort of potential future. It could have looked like Nasser, Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein,
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this kind of look that was oftentimes, you know, very distrustful of the communists, but definitely interested in sort of nationalizing the resources and spending some of them locally. We can obviously disagree with a lot of their politics or Islamic fundamentalism which
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was a thread that you know I would say was reactionary to sort of the western secularism and became very boo haramish in a way like literally that everything western is bad and um and the all three of those were futures that America
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absolutely did not want in in that descending order. They could live with the Islamic fundamentalists. They weren't wasn't that big of a problem.
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Arab nationalists this, but the revolutionary socialists, no [ __ ] way. And you could prove that by who they were funding, right? We fund the mujaheden to get the communists out.
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We're always funding in that particular order. Or the fourth potential future for the Middle East after World War II was what he called comprador states.
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This just an old word like client states of the empire that America would sort of feed into. And the deal with them is that, you know, you have to open your markets to all the multinationals. You have to be capitalist in this global
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sense. we'll keep you in power forever like Saudi Arabia, whatever. We'll take care of your family. We'll we'll help suppress uprisings if your labor class gets a little too out of hand. And you know, that's the deal. And obviously
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that's the preferred one that America tried to engineer obviously more than just in the Middle East, but in that descending order. And so in that like there was a lot of revolutionary socialist movements and they called themselves Marxists. Maybe they were
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trying to make history come true and trying to make Marx come true, but it's it's not that it it's not that it didn't happen. It's that it I don't know. It it it's trying to happen. The Markx would
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say it's inevitable. So, you're just going to see another wave of it. Maybe he's right. Maybe he's wrong. Maybe his timeline was off. I don't know. But these things did try to happen. And I just don't know why. We don't let them
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[ __ ] give it a try. But obviously, you know, it's not just them giving it a try. No, it's because a lot of them were funded by the Soviets and they were going to be used as oppositional forces to US
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interests around the planet. If some country is encroaching on every single country around you, you're not going to feel very safe when you know that their entire political program exists in opposition to the existence of your entire mode of production. I think it's
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pretty obvious. It sounds like it sounds like Russia and NATO right now. I don't want I don't want to open up.
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Well, except that doesn't really make any sense at all because NATO has never and will never attack Russia. And in fact, I actually agree with you. It does sound like Russia NATO right now where Russia is attacking a nearby state
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because they didn't like the idea that that state would freely join with the European Union in terms of just making trade and they wanted to control them under a more restrictive trade union where they would have total and complete
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control over their imports and exports. So in a way I do agree with you does kind of sound like that but in the same way that you're misstating the NATO threat to Russia and the only threat to Russia that NATO is is a threat to
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Russian expansionism. There's a reason why in order to join NATO you vote to join but in order to join Russia they invade you and force you to like they did in Muldova like they did in Georgia and like they're doing now in Ukraine.
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So the false comparison you're making is the exact same there that I would say historically there is to the Soviets and and the US.
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I I was really just making a joke. I didn't want to bring in Ukraine, Russia until the example. I mean but that's what is happening. That's true.
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Stephen, I'm not it's weird. I'm not like you're a very strange debater because these aren't even points that I'm actually making for this. But the one thing that you did say is the point you're making the entire argument that
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you're making rests on these historical facts that are all either horrendously taken out of context or you're just giving one shade of them. And then as soon as I push the context, there can be lots of context to history. If you're a
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Marxist, you know this. There's plenty of different framings, absolute narial conditions of history. But I'm just saying that like of course if you're going to give historical examples, we're going to push back on your historical examples. You can't
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retreat to the realm of philosophy every time you the realm of the material. Like I mean disagree with here's the realm of the material. You said of course they're going to push back. There's American interests all over the world and we need to defend
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them. Why are there American interests all over? Why is my American interest the exploitation of people in Oman who want to live a certain way, feminists who want their who want their freedom and don't want to live under a king or a
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sultan after World War II? Why is it in my interest or why is it in America's interest to make sure that that revolution doesn't happen?
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Why is it in an American interest for the United States to be heavily influential over the Gulf States, which are the answer it exactly how how I said it.
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Don't say heavily influence. Why do I Why are there American interests in keeping a a woman in Oman from getting her her revolution that she's fighting for? That really should have nothing to do with me.
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I don't think there are American interest in keeping a woman in Oman away from feminism. That but that question is there is no American interest. America doesn't fight against women in Oman getting independence and freedom from oppressive picture. No, they did not.
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Okay. Okay. So, so, so what what they did just for the capitalists in your heart, what they did is obviously you're refusing to answer the oil there as well.
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I'm not refusing to answer. Correct. That's right. They were fighting for oil. Now, there might be a byproduct of that where we support people that we shouldn't be, but to pretend that they were oppositional to feminism and and
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what like socialists are are massive feminist proponents themselves. The the DAR the DAR revolution certainly was. And and and and so and so you you said yourself there's oil there and we need it. And why do we need the oil at
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the price that we want it? So this is the kicker of capitalism at the price that we want it. This we can go to Iran and Mosedc of course of what we're talking about.
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Every single person wants a thing at the price they want it. Socialists and communists are not exempt from that.
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What do you mean? There's a cost to doing anything whether you denominated in dollars or human labor and suffering.
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There's going to be some cost you pay to to accomplish anything or to achieve anything.
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Yes. So now now you get the critique of capitalism though is like who gets to set the price? And and the the the socialists again I I'm not going to you could I'm not going to talk about the
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Soviets. I agree. Like they they I'm sure they were corrupt and they had all these kinds of problems. But if Mosedc and Iran is like, you know what, this oil is ours here. We're we're totally cool selling it to you, America or the
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Soviets or whoever. We want to set the price at a fair price and we're going to rip up that corrupt deal that was made with, you know, the British uh Empire under BP or whatever. That was the part
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that was and then and then you say, "Oh, well, who wants that there? Oh, communists. the big red scare or socialists or nationalists or whatever.
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No, America comes in and fights for the capitalist class that will sell us the oil at the price that we want at the expense of it's so the price that we want be $1 a barrel. So that's not true. It's at it's
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at whatever the prevailing market price is as opposed to what arbitrarily setting a price on your own. People just won't buy it. I mean no no it's it's it's not it's not it's not arbitrary price on its own. Yeah.
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Absolutely. who gets the shop owner gets to set the price in capitalism when we did our t-shirt thing. If if we're true global capitalists, but we're not. We understand how this works. It's imperialism. Iran gets to be the shop
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owner and set the price. If it's too high, we won't buy it. If it's too low, we'll buy it. We'll figure out the price. Obviously, you know that that's just not a deal that America was willing to take. We fought World War II to take
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that empire. Britain was getting really, really good prices. And after the fall of World War II, we didn't really decolonize and do global capitalism on a national scale. We we entered this new phase where it's uh you know,
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imperialism and neocolonialism or whatever. Like this this is the critique. I mean that's I don't know what's wrong with that argument.
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Um okay, so in the last like 20 minutes or so, we've gone through a lot. We've gone through some fundamental differences. We've gone through the individual facts of history and then the deep philosophical lens that we're even using to arrange these facts. So at the
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risk of derailing the entire conversation, maybe in the last 20 minutes we can talk about we can have a meta conversation about truth making or truth detecting or sensemaking apparatuses.
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Um because Jay and certainly this is a topic that comes that many people are interested in which is like debate bro culture and debate and conversation and even the the last hour and 20-minut conversation we've had and whether or
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not it's effective at helping people find truth. Um I mean Jay you had some thoughts I mean what is your what what are your questions or your assessment of sort of you know man mentality? Certainly I, you know, am
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not a huge fan of the uh like when Andrew Wilson and and and Destiny step in a debate about the definition of January 6. I don't find it to be as productive as other potential discussions that people have.
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I mean, um, but what is your kind of assessment? And then Yeah, man. I don't know. Feel free to respond to anything.
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I'm obviously curious what Stephen thinks because he's like so in it. I mean, I don't kind of just totally get it. I'll just say this is that like I know anyone watching out there people are watching tuning into this stuff
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obviously I hope they get something out of it. Um the comments section is goofy and fun and a lot of like dunking and like you know I'm getting all these no offense Destiny your fans come in with some like some some barbs out of left
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field sometimes like his mask really slipped at the end there. It's like what [ __ ] mask are you talking about man I'm just like a dude I'm just trying to talk on this thing. I'm just, you know,
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not hiding anything here, but it does seem that clear, I think the mask had to do with the fact that you were like take a heavily pro Hamas position.
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See, everything related to that. So, I think that was probably some of the mask something that people were referring to.
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But Stephen, like even saying that, like, wasn't it this pro- Hamas position? Like, don't put it that way. I think it was because I said something like if I had to guess on October 7, something like 60% would have been like
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triggers from Israeli tanks or something that killed them which you know that's like the super pro- Hamas position and if you haven't researched it even more but why would you call it like pro Hamas and I took absolving them from the responsibility
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of their attack accomplishing literally the goal they set out to accomplish which was to maximize civilian death and trying to claim that it was actually some weird Israeli thing that caused No, I'm not trying to claim that. you're
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trying, you're like slipping in there. I'm saying like of who actually maybe pulled the and I don't like I just don't even know what firepower they brought over that day to do that kind of thing.
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People like electronic and Ali whatever he's done like good research on this and all I responded to to all your fans being like guys [ __ ] relax if you I'd like to know the truth too. So would
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apparently a lot of like the Israeli families that day who are begging for an investigation and it doesn't seem to be coming. So talk to [ __ ] Israel about it. Let not that they can do a fair
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investigation but like I'm not the one asking for it. Obviously, Israel needs a commission on it, but who knows what we'll trust about it. But no, it's even things like that. It's like this like uh obviously there's there's money to be
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made here with clicks and views and everyone I'm monetized on YouTube, too. It's not very big, but like I I could I could project what people might be getting on these things and engagement is worth something. And all I'm gonna
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say is like I was I was in a bit of these wars before with again Sam Harris and you know that the IDW thing and Travis Pangburn who I know Stephen you've been on stages with and I have
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like some history with because I was there during that collapse in New York and I was part of the rescue mission of it and stuff and like I just like I get itchy about it because from the beginning I've been involved in this
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thing since like Dave Rubin was interviewing ex-Muslims on his show and starting to get a really big platform like ages ago and I realized like this [ __ ] can get really big really fast. And not long after that, some billionaires
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started getting involved. I think it was like Andre and people like this. And I was like, "Guys, I I was just behind the scenes, but I was like, take this [ __ ] really seriously." Cuz pretty soon, it
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was like Elon Musk and like presidents are being elected after this. It's like massively consequential. We're not just like [ __ ] around on microphones and little, you know, shows in the garage.
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There's real cost to this. And I'm not saying this to like pat myself on the back or anything like this. What I've genuinely cared about is that people coming to those audiences and everybody watching this right now I think like
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really really deserves a real serious good conversation and there's real serious good questions to be asked about a lot of [ __ ] that they're not getting in other places and we all for whatever sort of like lanes we're in have a
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responsibility and an opportunity to try our best and to deliver really sort of top quality things. And like when I was just trying to catch up on what you've been up to, Destiny, and stuff like this, it's like I found what's his name?
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Professor Dave or something and it has like a million views and it's like you and Travis Pangurn in like the dumbest [ __ ] thumbnail of all time and he's just like cursing the entire time. Okay, I guess there's like a lane for that.
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But I just like I I've given a lot of names and people could love or hate anything I've said in this or they can what, you know, check any of it out.
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Like I have I have a deep respect and desire to give the audience wherever it is who are coming to these things like full attention and full and I just don't see it in the debate bro culture a lot.
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There's a lot of sort of like who's winning the slam dunk contest. I guarantee you because no one watches to the end there's already like crazy comments down there about how much of an [ __ ] I am or the mask slipped or
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self-hating this or whatever. And it's just like we all have to cultivate something better now because it's getting it's getting [ __ ] serious again. And you can dismiss the argument about fascism and its connection with capitalism. I think there's a lot to it.
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Check out Michael Parenty's Black Shirts and Reds and the history repeats itself. It's a way I bet most of us watching this, including myself, like we're not very happy with the system at all. And if there's something to the argument of
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labor or whatever is like the the worst [ __ ] thing that could happen is that fascism grows again and what we have is team sports and nationalities fighting against each other with scapegoats of immigrants or whatever it is here and
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there that is distracting us from the actual coales coalescing of labor or the 97% of us who don't live off of the [ __ ] interest of our investments in the stock market like the three top 3% do or whatever or the rentier class that
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like we I think a lot of people aren't happy with the economics with the politics everything out there and fascism thrives when capitalism feels that it's under threat and I think global capitalism feels like it's under threat and that class is going is
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pulling the fascism trigger again and I worry debate bro culture is just like charging us right into it yapping at each other fighting at each other so it's when we all should actually be out on the streets s against the [ __ ]
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capitalist bourgeois class. Put it that way. Destiny, what do you have to say for yourself?
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I mean, I reject all forms of authoritarianism. I think that Jay represents a very dangerous form of authoritarianism. I would reject it just as much as I would fascists. And I think that it's a big um it's a big red
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herring to always throw up the fascist boogeyman when other types of authoritarians are trying to rule in your society. So, yeah, that's my position on it. What's can I what's the form of fascism that I'm representing or authoritarianism because because I mean
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you you you you would ban all competing forms of economic just rewind the tape I never I never said that but that's cool like this is the stuff well okay then let's ask very easily in a socialist society would
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there be room for people to hire employees I am an anarchist and I don't I and I don't want this kind of uh you know room for hiring employees kind of stuff I want people to have self-determination self-determination to hire somebody or
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work for somebody, right? If you want to work for someone, that's fine. If it's a mutual aid agreement, that's totally fine. You can I'm not banning [ __ ] I'm not I'm not trying to wait for pay for pay
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to pay someone for their sort of exploited labor or whatever. Exploited is your term. So, I mean, if if you don't if you don't feel exploited, go ahead and enter it. I I see some for problems that could
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happen in the future of it. But no, I'm not trying to sit here and ban this or ban that. I just want to say like this is the move that that somehow fascism and fascism and social difficult to
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answer is what makes me not trust you people of your political persuasion. Like it's this is a very simple question to answer. You're dodging it like crazy because you know that you can't survive.
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I said you could I could I said you could hire someone and someone could be hired. I don't 50 billion qualifiers.
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You don't agree with that. That's not true. You wouldn't accept an ownership structure or selling stock in a company.
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You wouldn't accept an owner class. You can't have it. Especially I don't think I don't think a stock market should exist. That's true. I think I think that this will lead to So don't say you agree in free exchange
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or free whatever because that's not true. You wouldn't accept that if if people willingly wanted to engage in that form of of that in that mode of production. You would not be okay with it. we would have to ban it using either
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a state apparatus or some kind of I guess deoized violence or whatever. Yeah, I think I mean I think it would lead eventually to you know expansionist problems. But let me let me like historically weirdly fascism and communism in in the American mind which
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Stephen is representing were linked which is cra es especially World War II style which is crazy because people should just do their their homework.
Speaker A
Well, I mean like the people representing the socialist, which was the Soviet Union, teamed up with the people representing the fascists, which was were the Nazis. How was that so easy?
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No. So, look, look at the the when Hitler was running for the election, it was a communist party. It was Hitler and then it was what Heinrich, whatever, who represented basically the continued status quo. Just see where the
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capitalist money went and where the energy went. They were all capitalist money went to the capitalist money went to moderate right parties in Germany to the pro-democracy. It wasn't going to the to the Nazis. They were making all of their money off of
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memberships. It was selling memberships and it was selling merchandise. It was selling the whatever shirts or whatever weird things they were selling at their rallies. It wasn't from the capital class. It wasn't until they came into power as the Nazis that they were able
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to plunder the state and then the countries around them to fund themselves. But no, the early Nazi movement, the early in the 30s was not funded by capitalists. That's absolutely not true. Industrialists largely opposed the farright parties. It wasn't just the
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Nazi party. There was a couple others, too. But they the industrialists largely opposed those parties because they were seen as so as being so chaotic. So why did the capitalists give him so much money once he came into power then?
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Once he was the the once he had a single party authoritarian rule over the state where political descent was banned and where he was murdering his political opponents. Probably because they didn't want to get murdered. What do you mean?
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You think you think Henry you you think Henry Ford just did that out of the the goodness of his heart built in the that the which wasn't bound by the different this was a completely different argument than the early fighting for the Nazi party.
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No, the Nazi party, the Nazi party was more friends to to the Soviets early on when they saw themselves as being mutually beneficial. They divided Poland amongst themselves. They had they had an agreement. They had what was going to
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become an alliance. I mean, how do you ignore that? So the So I mean, again, reparent is that not true? Hold on. Did the Soviets and the Nazis not agree to split up Europe between themselves?
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Yeah, of course. Of course. I mean, I mean, why Henry Ford? Why not? Why Henry Ford? Why? Like what? And then how can you say there's such a confusion in the west when these two sides to say that
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these two sides originally weren't as oppositional as sometimes you guys like to make them sound.
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Wait wait wait you you don't think the Nazis and the communists were like oppositional after after a while. Yeah they were. And I think Hitler was never fully trusting of them. But the the Soviets were glad to work with
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the Nazi party. They were Yes. Yeah. But then they they you know I'm in Berlin. There's monuments here everywhere. I'm sure you know that are Soviet monuments and graveyards of their taking of Berlin. It's not like they were
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once Hitler backstabbed the Soviets. Yes. Yeah. So, all right. So, the um Soviets or the the communists obviously. So, the capitalists were interested in funding the the Nazis as a bull work against communism. This is just like okay, so
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you can say no. So, read black and res and go through all the uh the footnotes if you want. And I'm not like the first, this isn't like some crazy person on YouTube leftist coming up with this argument, but I just it's just
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interesting that suddenly uh you've you've fallen for it that anything other than capitalism and democracy is suddenly authoritarianism and fascism. It's just not true. It's just completely ahistorical and you're falling for it again. The domino would ban all private ownership in your
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society. It would be illegal because you could see it your words where it would potentially lead to Can I ask you just to Can I ask you because we're two hours in to make sure you know that I'm not a socialist.
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It doesn't matter. You're defending socialism. You can say you're an anarchist, but you're not an anarchist either because who are you who are you arguing against here? This is the weird thing. So to your question, Paul, if I
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could just cut it out here, this is this debate broke culture thing is just not serious. Stephen is trying to win an argument here against someone who's not even in the room instead of actually culture. The problem is you haven't you
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won't you won't occupy a a firm position on literally anything. So of course it feels like an attack when I push you on anything because your ideology is jelly.
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So anytime I poke or push or ask for a and I contest a historical example or a a philosophical point that you're making, it falls apart immediately and you feel like I'm being unfair. There are forums or there are places to go if
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you don't want any kind of critical thought or any kind of like opposition what you're saying. But that has nothing to do with debate bro culture. The same arguments happen in colleges and they happen in in research journals and they
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happen amongst educated people and they happen amongst factory workers and they happen amongst you know these things happen amongst everybody. I what do you want me to say?
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Yeah. Well, what is an argument can you think of a single argument I've given thus far that's been unfair?
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Uh no, you just represented a whole bunch of You're arguing you're shadow boxing against someone who's not here.
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But what what argument have I shadow box? What is an argument I've made that is shadow boxing?
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I guess you said I would ban workers. I would ban hiring people. There was a few other things. all things uh evil. You seem to capitalist. No. Would you stop?
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I would not agree with that. This is Paul. I don't know if we have a transcript of just highlights of like this is so weird. I wouldn't agree with that. I don't a few people organize and they decide
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that they want to have an owner guy who's going to own a shop and bring in employees to work. You'd be okay with that arrangement?
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I mean, I I I I don't know and I don't care. It has nothing to do with me. I think it would fail when I say jelly.
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that it's not jelly. Mark Marx was a Why would you say it would fail?
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Literally the dominant mode of of of production across the entire planet. It clearly didn't fail. We're living it right now. That doesn't even make sense.
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Okay, so that's So here we go. I think it's failing, right? I think it's failing. And I think it's failing to deliver a world that people are happy with. I think it's failing to deliver a world that's sustainable. I think it's
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failing to deliver an ecology that will survive its consumption of itself. I think it's failing. Maybe that's the biggest difference between us and that's it. and maybe you don't think it's failing and that's it. Like that's kind of it is like I'm just saying like it's
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failing and and if you don't sort of peg I don't know like where you think you know obviously a war is about a lot of things but if you can't factor in the the the the problems built into capitalism into what
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happened here in Europe or the scramble for Africa then I think you're the one who's just being like well I'm just not going to not going to pin it to that or it also did good things which is fine.
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They didn't say it's like you know this in fact Markx himself said there's like this amazing production within capitalism and then it will run into these problems like fine. So yeah I'm not it's just like I'm not trying to
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wiggle no one's try on my show I try to do more exploratory conversations rather than debate bro culture because I'm not trying to sit here and win and get people to you know you know high high five me. It's just
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like it's it's just ugly and I I don't know. I I just I'm not sure it's I'm just not not sure it's being as serious as it can be because again we we went off of the Israel thing. But and I don't
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I don't know. It just doesn't even matter anymore. Look what's happened in Israel and Gaza and it's a [ __ ] nightmare. And we're not even talking about that. Instead, we're here talking about whether I would hire a worker or
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not. And it's just like we can talk about Israel Palestine all you want. You're the one that wanted but I don't even know if you know anything about Israel. Seems like you're just you think that Jabatinsky was the sole
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progenionator of every single Jew and he gave birth to every single Oh, him and him and Bean, I guess, were the only two guys that were populating early Israel. So, I mean, I don't know about any any part of the
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conversation you want. I mean, Paul, like, is this is this the move? Like, I'm actually sort of just like talking to you oneonone here now because like I've known like I Yeah. Like, is that is that the move? Oh, no.
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You piece. Um this is what what I what I think is this is an example of um two different types of minds operating. It's the autism versus schizophrenic framework. Yes, it's absolutely the case.
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It's like when Richard Dawkins and Jordan Peterson try to have a conversation. That's not too Yeah, they're talk they are they are talking past each other in some sense because they have a literal a different perceptual perceptual lens. And that's
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fair. I mean, I think um I think we can wrap it here. Um you don't want to moderate or anything?
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I got all day. I got six more hours. I Well, I chat about really.
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Well, well, okay. What do you feel like we haven't made progress on? Uh I mean anything.
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Well, here's what I think. Here's No, here's what I think. I think Jay coming from the the anarchist tradition is that is philosophically there's a lot of there's a lot of distance between that tradition and sort of the average kind
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of I can talk about the anarchist tradition though he just doesn't want to occupy a firm position on anything like what do you want to talk about related to anarchism I can talk about anything you want I mean what
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cuz because what I wanted because what I want to do more is talk about the critique of the world we're in now which is certainly not anarchist or anarchistic and you know The constitution thing is certainly not an anarchist position,
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right? I'm I actually gave you a solution or a proposition for something to think about with Israel. That was actually just a critique of the world we're in. And you know, I thought it was critiques just it can be interesting in
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like a you're locked in a room with a bunch of people getting high off their own farts is interesting. Like I could propose to you that the best solution to the Israel Palestinian problem would be for one generation mandate every Jew
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marry a Palestinian. And then now boom, now you've got the whole ethnicity is all mixed and now the whole problem is solved. like nobody's going to do this and that's not going to solve any problem. So it's not so idea of like
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Israel gaining a constitution that magically fix everything is a meaningless thing. Nobody's okay. Okay. It doesn't need to magically fix anything. But I just want to point out that all I did was suggest that a a a state which claims to be a state on
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earth, write a constitution and define its borders for the world and you went to an equivalent of like mandating that every Jew marry a Palestinian. Like mine seems insanely basic and just do it. And the you know they you just know they
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won't and they can't. You should also look into why because Israel won't because they won't write because a constitution doesn't guarantee that it'll fix any of the problems you think it does. You yourself acknowledge that there were constitutional countries constitutional
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republics that were deeply immoral countries. We had a constitution and we had slavery. We had a constitution and women couldn't vote. Right.
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Wait. But but but then I I I made the point that I think part of the reason, not the entire I don't think the Constitution magically fixes everything up. Yes. Uh but uh I think they're helpful to to why women got the right to
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vote and we abolish slavery. What do you think was writing those principles? Israel Israel inside itself today or the United States in the year 1800?
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Oh, is Israel inside itself today? But I but I think so. How so? Yeah. Yeah, but with no constitution. So I don't know why we think the constitution so let let me let me play it out for you. You're saying it won't
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fix everything. I mean we should define what you think anything but yeah fix anything. Okay. So I'm saying just write it then. Why not write it?
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They don't want one. I don't know why why would you force a country to adopt a constitution or they don't have one.
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Maybe they just don't. They do. You know they were supposed to have one. The people voted on having one and then they abolished it because they said, "Oh, it's a war. It's an emergency. We can't write one. We'll
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kick it down the cannon." They never That was 1949. They've never gotten around to doing it. Um, I I think they do need one. I think the fact that, you know, the constitutional crisis or not a constitutional crisis, this
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non-constitutional crisis of the judiciary that they were having before October 7th was partially because they really live in a state where it's pretty wild westish that no one knows what the firm rule of the law is. No one knows
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sort of how it's all going to, you know, I think I think they they they need one.
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I think it's going to tear themselves apart. I think there are enough factions in Israel itself now that do not agree on what the project is that they're trying to accomplish that they cannot write one. And I have a feeling that was
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the case even back in 1947 or the 1949 the very first vote. It's pretty it's just it's just not a cohesive enough concept of what they're trying because of the I won't use his name again or the the the BAR crowd what they wanted
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versus maybe what some you know socialist Zionist wanted like they didn't agree on what the project was supposed to be where it was supposed to finish what it was supposed to look like and they I don't know if if I play it
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out it forces them to try to write one I don't think they can do it and they probably dissolve I think we should give every country in the world like an opport opportunity to write one and if they can't write one well then you kind
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of can't you know you don't have any legitimacy to continue to exist and they should redefine themselves or break apart into smaller nations whatever obviously this isn't like my final form of human liberation but I think it would
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actually be a really useful practical like let's [ __ ] see it let's see it let's see a constitution not the borders let's see a constitution okay so if I could put Paul if I could put one small thing there too that we also could
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put out too is like because this is An important point of why I think they can't write one as well is um they so if Stephen are are you were you raised Jewish or not? Are you Christian or
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something? I raised Catholic. Nothing to do with Jewish. Raised Catholic. Nothing. But so I'm I'm atheist. Doesn't matter. But I was raised Jewish. Everyone see my last name. If we both immigrated to Israel, we tried to immigrate to Israel. Uh for
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me it's making aliyah. For you it's something else. Um for me it's just converting to the religion. But yeah what's that?
Speaker A
It would just be converting to the religion. You could convert. But let's say you don't want to convert and you go and you try to get uh citizenship. So this used to be on the ID cards. They took it off
Speaker A
the ID cards in about 2002, but it's still in the registry and it's been sued a lot of times. Your citizen, we would both get a citizenship. Let's say we both get it. Mine would be very easy.
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Yours would also be not the worst. We would both get a citizenship. The citizenship would be called Israeli.
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The nationality that we would get, mine would be Jewish. Yours would be American or whatever else. Mine would be Jewish.
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And religion if in the registry would be atheist or ca Catholic or whatever the [ __ ] you wanted to say. The my nationality would be Jewish even though I do not believe a word of it and I'm
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not Jewish. Whatever people have sued in Israel. What do you mean not believe a word of it?
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I don't believe I I don't follow I'm not kosh if Judaism is a religion like everything else.
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Judaism Judaism is not a religion. It's an ethnicity. We're not talking about Judaism. We're talking about Jews, right?
Speaker A
But is it an is it a nationality? Well, I different countries define nationality in different ways, but I imagine in that sense they're talking about your ethnic background or your racial background depending on how that's a different it's a different list
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in their registry. The nationality is Jewish. They've people have sued over this to get Jew to get an Israeli nationality. And the Supreme Court, again, there's no constitution, so there's nothing to really like lean this on. The Supreme Court, I think it was
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2018, you can look it up, ruled, and maybe there's been a few after that, that there is no such thing as an Israeli nationality. It's a Jewish nationality. And this is and again no offense to it. This is the Jabatinsky
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vision as he wrote the nations. Two nations can exist in the same state. He said and he's fine as long as the Jewish one is the majority. Use the word nation. We could say it's from the time whatever it is. This is still the ethos
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of that country. And me in the registry used to be on your ID card. They took it off because I think it was the PR was too bad. Gives me certain privileges in that society that people who don't have
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that having to serve in the military. What are the what are the special privileges you get?
Speaker A
Well, I I'm I'm part of the permanent majority forever, which is the most one.
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Obviously, people will say, "Oh, you could still be in the Supreme Court. You could still be this." But in practice, on the ground, there's a pretty big difference of who gets what. That they keep the registry in order to make sure
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there's always besides the fact that if you're not Jewish, you don't have to be in the military. So, I would go and I wouldn't have any mandatory military service, whereas you might.
Speaker A
Yeah. your your treatment in there and and and my you know the fact that I was offered citizenship and nationality because of my nationality the moment I landed in Israel which they did in the airport the moment I got there is
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something that you weren't offered and you could say this is a very like light form of apartheid or whatever but why not this is every single planet on the country no that keeps a nationality of Jewish a religion this is this is nobody does
Speaker A
this preference in the United States of America do I have an easier time getting here if I have a blood relative in Germany the country you're in. Would I have an easier time immigrating if I had a blood relative? Isn't the argument for
Speaker A
the Jewish people that they're saying that there are blood relations and as long as you have Jewish blood that you're allowed to immigrate there? Like it's a bit more extended for the Jewish version. Sure. But in every country on
Speaker A
the planet, if you've got a blood relative, it's much easier for you to immigrate to that country than if you don't.
Speaker A
Yeah. So, so yes. So, what they're saying is there's a Jewish nationality. It was called the Jewish nation. It existed there 2,000ish years ago, and we're reclaiming the land, and that's my special right. And that's this story that they tell. you know, it was only
Speaker A
recently that they codified, not in their constitution, but in their basic law or whatever, that it was a Jewish state, a state for the Jews. Um, you know, and and I think that was a little controversial to do in Israel. But I I'm
Speaker A
just putting it out there. I think these are the reasons why Israel would be uncomfortable finally writing all of this out in a constitution. And and to their credit, I don't think they could do it because there's enough people in
Speaker A
Israel itself who aren't comfortable with that codified uh story of the of a Jewish nation perma majority in that country. I just I just don't I don't think they could possibly do it. So, in some ways, yes, I I I want
Speaker A
to see liberation in that in in that part of the world. And I think it would be an interesting practice to force Israel to define its borders finally, its final borders or its intended final borders, whatever you want to say. With
Speaker A
negotiations, I get that that would be a huge issue and write a constitution. And I think it would be the end of what we know as Israel for better. It would have to reconstitute itself into something that was acceptable in this day and age.
Speaker A
I'm with you. Like maybe there's objective. Just to be clear, your final your final goal is the destruction of the Jewish state, right? Were you are you at least willing to me into a state that is necessarily an Arab majority state?
Speaker A
Right. That's the only thing that interests you. No. And and I it doesn't interest me.
Speaker A
Could you lay out one conceivable pathway where it would remain a Jewish majority state in your world?
Speaker A
I think its potential with much smaller borders than it has now in a defined way. Perhaps 1947 or whatever. I don't, you know, I've always said this before.
Speaker A
I don't really care what it looks like in the end, but I think that's conceivable. And I think there would probably be factions of the Palestinian people who would be okay with it.
Speaker A
So two-state solution is what you think works. I mean, I don't think it works. Frankly, I don't think it works. I don't think it comports with your philosophy. You just said a much smaller state. So in that much smaller state they would have would
Speaker A
they would you be okay with them claiming that they want to be a Jewish majority state or would that state as well have to have a constitution that comports with your American western views of ethnicity and nationality? So
Speaker A
if a bunch of Arabs wanted to immigrate to that and make the Jews there a minority, they would have to accept that in your world as well, right?
Speaker A
Well, so it's interesting that you put on sort of like Jewish western morality there because I mean we could talk about morality and where it might come from, but no, I'm not I'm not okay with any any state if any state in the world
Speaker A
defining itself as a perma majority based on okay. So you would any any path that you have leads to the end of the Jewish majority state. There is no two-state.
Speaker A
there is no magical state solution because necessarily in all those places Arabs would be able to remigrate back to or migrate back to um any area that they had perceived they've been kicked out of during the Nagbar or anything else. So
Speaker A
so it's so I don't know why you say yes. Right. This is why I don't think that you're operating in good faith. Of course you want to destroy any Jewish majority state can't continue to exist.
Speaker A
Yes. Okay. Yes. But I'm not operating in bad faith because I'm saying yes and I'm saying that to to many many others. But I do want to say what you did whether you know it's in bad faith or good faith.
Speaker A
You said Arab versus Jew. Judaism is a religion. Stephen, it's hard to break it to everyone.
Speaker A
No, it's not. This is the most historically illiterate take on the entire conflict. Does everyone see my name in here right now? Yes, there there's a couple people who agree that Judaism is not a religion. Nazis and Zionists, you could
Speaker A
go on and tell me more. And I have some sympathy for this in sort of a James Baldwin type way, but I just want people to understand young and a banel on the screen and the Shapiro is getting told what Judaism
Speaker A
that I can't leave it that I just can't not be a migrate to. Could you make aliyah? Could you make aliyah as an atheist?
Speaker A
Uh, yes. Yeah, exactly. Thank you. Wait, but but can I but do I get special privileges because of my last name?
Speaker A
Israel doesn't think I'm Israel thinks I'm a Jewish. I'm sorry. Is your last name religious?
Speaker A
Is my last name religious? It's just a very well-known common name of of Jews.
Speaker A
Yes. Jews. The ethnicity. Yes, the ethnicity. That's what we're talking about. Yes. Jewel. So, is it a nationality or an ethnicity?
Speaker A
Is it a nationality or an ethnicity? And is Arab a nationality or an ethnicity?
Speaker A
Because you're the one that used them interchangeably just now. I just want you to point that out.
Speaker A
It's whatever it is. It's not a religion. Different people refer I think in Canada they swap how they refer to race and ethnicity. Are you saying that in Israel they there's a different name for what does nationality mean in Israel?
Speaker A
Are you saying that they prefer like a different set of leom is the word and and in the registry it used to be on the cards you get Jewish. You could look up this 2018 Supreme Court case where someone tried
Speaker A
to sue to get an Israeli nationality, which seems like a really basic thing. I have a friend who's an activist. He's actually maybe will be in my show one time who wants to sue uh it's sort of interesting. He's Israeli. He wants to
Speaker A
sue Israel for their passports, which lists Israel as the nationality on their passports as all fraudulent documents because their own Supreme Court says the Israeli nationality doesn't exist. He's he's sort of he's a lawyer who's always trying to like poke holes at this
Speaker A
because there's so many absurdities in it. And okay, so it seems to be in Israel everybody gets citizenship if you're an Israeli citizen, but under nationality, it sounds like they just treat nationality as ethnicity because they'll have Jews, Arab, Drews are listed under
Speaker A
their nationality thing. So it sounds like they just use the word nationality for what they would consider ethnicity.
Speaker A
So there's no such thing as an Israeli nationality. This is the kicker to it.
Speaker A
Where in America you'd say there's an American national. Nationality is a weird word, but it's the one doing all the work. But there is there is an Israeli citizenship.
Speaker A
Yes, exactly. Which everyone can they call it citizenship, right? In America, we have an American citizenship right?
Speaker A
I don't know if we have a nationality in America. I think we don't even list that. We're just your citizenship.
Speaker A
It's redundant. It's USA, USA. Most countries do it that way. But in Israel, we do list like ethnicities in the United States when you do like the census. There's not a kicker at It sounds like how every country
Speaker A
well there's only a kicker if the treatment and the practical treatment of those like why do why is the registry not allowing people to just have a blanket Israeli nationality and it's because of this they want to keep the
Speaker A
and the rabbis mandate this too like they want to keep the Jewish character of the state whatever the hell that means and I'm apparently a part of it it's just I mean it's just really frustrating to be like why can't
Speaker A
when they recognize there's there's a Jew nationality right not in the registry I don't 2018 is like the Supreme Court case. I don't think it's been updated since then. I mean, these are the kind of things that I
Speaker A
would just like them to put in a constitution to be like, okay, we have, you know, this is how we want to organize things. I The interesting thing is if they wrote in a constitution, if they wrote this is a Jewish state and we
Speaker A
have a Jewish majority no matter what for all time like that defines the state and we keep it in a registry. And so, you know, I don't know if it's like 50/50 in our exact census one day and
Speaker A
then you want to immigrate and I want to immigrate, they pick me to get the to keep the majority and they can't get you because it would would no longer be a Jewish majority. I don't know these absurdities just become apparent and I
Speaker A
just don't think they want to write that for the world. And again, back to the jabinsky sty style of things. I think he at this point he might say the iron wall has been pierced.
Speaker A
This is as good as it's going to get. Where can we draw a state that we retain the Jewish majority for all time? You know, again, that would be I just don't think that that would be even be
Speaker A
acceptable to the world and for good reason. And of course, they would have to, you know, where is that state? Get everybody out of the West Bank, etc.
Speaker A
Last time we talked about um the realities of the right of return. Yeah. For wait, wait, real quick. Hold on.
Speaker A
Wait. I'm sorry. Because this is so goofy. For the national 8 minutes, just we got eight minutes.
Speaker A
Sure. For the nationality thing. So if you're Jewish now, your nationality becomes you have to go to Israeli.
Speaker A
No, no, no. They don't have Israeli nationality. This is what they saying my vision of things.
Speaker A
But no, no, but I'm saying like right now if you're an Israeli Jew versus if you're an Israeli Arab, you both are citizens of Israel, but your nationality is written differently because it sounds like this is what he uses to stand for
Speaker A
ethnicity. Why would you want would you want to force Arabs and Jews to identify the same ethnically or well n like nationality isn't I mean these are all like really weird stupid terms that could become slippery. It's I
Speaker A
want to know what you can't say it's slippery now that I'm pushing you. I don't think they're doing anything meaningfully different other than my understanding is that Jewish people don't have to or I'm sorry Arabs don't have to serve in the IDF. I
Speaker A
believe that's only for people who are Jewish ethnicity. Arabs are not forced to do that. But other than that I'm not aware of any rights that are conferred differently on Jewish nationality people versus Arab nationality people. They can
Speaker A
both serve in the Kessa. can both serve in the Supreme Court. Like what are the different rights?
Speaker A
Yeah. So, so it's that the Jewish majority retains its it's it's it's always the majority. And so like that's correct. It's it's an in Jabbatinsky's mind whether it's true or not or and why for the founding of Israel. I don't
Speaker A
know why you keep bringing I know why you keep bringing it back. It's because it's a spooky scary name but it's not relevant at all for our Okay. It is it is relevant because it's not Israel wasn't founded under
Speaker A
Jabatinski's vision. It was founded on the opposition vision. It was founded upon the vision of of Bengurion. It was founded upon his his opposition.
Speaker A
But but you do agree that the vision the Jabatinsky vision has been in power for nine elections won now by Netanyahu and the Lulu party. But still Jabatinsky like on their website as like their their guy that the vision his vision is
Speaker A
their vision. They've won nine elections. You could go to I don't think a betm would exist in a Jabatinsky version of Israel.
Speaker A
That's possible. Yeah. I'm not like this is not sometimes you go to these like all or nothing like it's totally evil and I know you debate some people like that. I'm just I'm not I'm not one of them. I'm trying to be like there
Speaker A
there's this thing here. So yeah, that we can we can drive that to the finish line there. But I do think uh you know what you said is is true there. The reason I'm bringing it up in let's say
Speaker A
the loot vision of things, the Netanyahu vision of things is that by dent of my Jewish nationality, I will always be in the majority of whatever that means in the in the nation in the sorry in the in
Speaker A
the state of Israel and that will afford me privileges. They say, you know, it's just to keep retain the Jewish character of the state, whatever the hell that means. Um, I don't know if it sounds like a very
Speaker A
I don't know what it means because it because I I grew up my guess is it probably means a state that will always ethnically favor Jewish people existing and being free from any other type of majority class that wants
Speaker A
to dominate in some way. Am I the same ethnicity as somebody who believes in Judaism as a shas member Jew in Morocco whose ancestors probably branched off 2,000 years ago?
Speaker A
the diaspora that Israel does. Yeah. They would they would include Exactly. And so this vision of things of of reclaiming a nation that may or may not have existed in this form 2,000 years ago on that land is is still the
Speaker A
kind of wacky founding story you have to accept. How is it a wacky founding story in Germany? Did they try to differentiate between where they thought the Jewish ancestors came from or do they throw them all in the same camps?
Speaker A
I agree with you. This is when Israel was founded, right? Yes. Well, by Ashkanazi Jews. Yes. Which is like I'm getting a lot of Misrai Jews who tell a very different story of this, but yes, it was it was Ashkanazi Jews
Speaker A
that started this from Europe. And Yes. And Misrai Jews are now the majority of the Jews living in Israel. Right. When you talk Sure. But earlier when you talked about problematic problematic replacement of of populations and them, you know,
Speaker A
moving in a different direction that might be more scary in terms of the treatment of Arabs. Those are the Misrai Jews that are making more children than the Ashkanazi ones. But I know this none of this works. It's
Speaker A
like Israel is going to fail. None of this is going to work. Because that story of a nation 2,000 years ago coming back and all being kumbaya and reclaiming a nation 2,000 years later or whatever is in their crazy minds is a
Speaker A
crazy story. It's a nutso story that doesn't work. What was a better story in the Middle East? It wasn't panabism because that failed catastrophically. It wasn't the calip because that failed multiple times catastrophically. What was the better competing vision in the
Speaker A
Middle East? Well, they I mean they didn't have to go to the Middle East. This is the vision.
Speaker A
And and again, I I totally What do you think is the best? If you look at all of the Middle East, what do you think is the model country that everybody should be like, "Oh, they got it right."
Speaker A
You're I'm not I don't think there's any I mean, you're you're shifting sort of like the the conversation here where it's like I I gave a sympathetic reading of Europe was a like James Baldwin once said really well in his famous debate
Speaker A
with William Buckley, uh when Buckley gave this kind of like colorblind society, I don't see you as a black man, we should all be equal kind of thing, this Martin Luther King Jr. kind of vision of things. and and Baldwin for
Speaker A
all intents and purposes. Just to be clear, your sympathetic reading of the founding of Israel was a whole bunch of Jews that were doing terrorist attacks because the Brits wouldn't let them expand east of the river Jordan.
Speaker A
No, like this is who was dead before Israel as a country even found it. This is a sympathetic up here.
Speaker A
No, but Stephen, that wasn't even like I don't know if that's the way the debate bros just like straw man the other side.
Speaker A
You were sitting quoting back this is exactly what you were saying. No, that that they that Yes, that was part of the project. that wasn't the entire project, but that yes, they were looking for a lifeboat in a situation
Speaker A
that was really, really bad for them. That's the most sympathetic reason. And to create that lifeboat, they were going to have to do some brutal things. Not everybody agreed. Some people thought we could do some nice things and we could
Speaker A
buy land and we could be friends with the Arabs. Not all the Arabs trusted them. It's a bigger story than that. But yes, of course, a faction of them were saying, "Well, [ __ ] that. That's [ __ ] We have to do some brutal
Speaker A
things." And to be clear, the brutality was the thing ultimately because the Arabs refused to have any Jewish people there in our country, right?
Speaker A
I mean, I disagree with that, but it's a catch 22 that we can't answer through history and and you know that that is what it is. Yeah.
Speaker A
You know, as Jordan Peterson says, if you walk into a library with infinite books, the probability that you will pick out the same book as another person is very low. And when you look at history, there's an infinite number of
Speaker A
facts that you could look into. That's not true. historians that study these things whose names are wellnown who are considered experts in the field I can name some I'm sure he's read he probably knows a few that I've read um he
Speaker A
mentioned Pape earlier that's a famous dude both of us probably take parts from Avi you a famous dude there are infinite infinite facts there is an archive available no I'm not going to let you just muddy THE WATER AND SAY ANYTHING
Speaker A
I'M NOT MUDDYING THE WATERS no I'm pointing out one way history happened one way and there are historians that study these places that know a great deal about them and the idea that history could be anything is goofy
Speaker A
okay history did not happen one way. That's definitely not true. Hold on, hold on, hold on. Oh my god.
Speaker A
No, no, I was trying to bring a wrap up here before we open a whole can of worms. I think there there is a there's an there's history happened the way it happened. But I what I would say with to
Speaker A
agree with you and with Stephen is that you can morally analyze history in a lot of different ways. Like I said, Jabotinsky can say, "Look, I was right.
Speaker A
They were always going to fight back against us. We have to be brutal." And the the more sort of kumbaya kabut zionists were like no they only fought bad back against us because you were brutal and you could always tell at
Speaker A
least so you can't solve the moral history. There are clearly a there are objective facts about history. No doubt that there's an infinite amount of them and there's an infinite number of ways you can interpret a book interpretation to to support your moral.
Speaker A
That's just basic postmodernism but yeah but it's I'm not saying it goes both ways to end here before I wrap up. One minute. I would like to know each of your position on the Lindsy Clansancy situation.
Speaker A
I have no idea who that is. You know who Lindsay Clancy is? I have no idea. No idea.
Speaker A
Thank God. This is how awesome for all of us. Thank Thank God for all including Lessie.
Speaker A
What's going on? Probably from some severe mental health issues. I think she was having a mental health crisis. I don't think it robbed her of her ability to appreciate the wrongness of what she was doing.
Speaker A
Probably shouldn't be killing your kids even if life is really bad. Okay. the the the girls that I have talked to said there was no DNA on the exercise band that allegedly was used to kill her. Her DNA was
Speaker A
I don't Whoops. Oh, I haven't Wait, can you hear me? I can hear you. Yeah.
Speaker A
Oh, I haven't gone into all the conspiracy theories yet on what people do with this, so I can't speak to that, unfortunately. Yeah.
Speaker A
Okay, that's fair. I have no idea who that was. Now I'm super fascinated by an exercise band in a murder.
Speaker A
That's fair. Um All right. Well, I'm I'm very glad that we could do round two.
Speaker A
Um, I'm going to wrap up here. Uh, thank you both. We we will we can correspond via email and Discord um in the future.
Speaker A
Do you have any final 30 seconds and I'll somewhat be aggress. I'll give you 60 seconds each person.
Speaker A
I'll I'll be aggressive on wrapping it up. But Jay, final 60 seconds. Is this the last time you're stepping foot in the debate bro arena?
Speaker A
I mean, I like these. They're frustrating. Maybe I'm not being as clear as I want to be. And Stephen, I I'm not saying you're trying to be unfair, but they're a little I just Yeah, I won't I I'll try it again. I
Speaker A
think Israel should write a constitution. I think they should define their borders. I think it would be a useful practice. And they're not the only one. I'm not picking on Israel. I think the I think capitalism is in a
Speaker A
crisis and the world is not uh doing so well and we need a new a new arrangement. That's it.
Speaker A
Um I think a new arrangement could be fine. I I don't think there's necessarily a problem with that. But the people who are advocating the hardest for it don't seem to have any genuine interest in moving society forward.
Speaker A
They're weirdly obsessed with a really bad economic theory that nobody uses anymore because it would never has worked. All the predictions that Marks made were bad and dumb. None of them came true. Um, whatever we evolve into for the next steps in society, it's
Speaker A
probably not going to be found in a book written in the 1800s. That's fair. All right. Thank you both.
Speaker A
Thank you everyone for watching. I will now remove each of you from the studio and do final messages. Thank you both.
Speaker A
All right. Bye, guys. Bye. Thanks. Ladies and gentlemen, nobody loves Jesus more than I do.
Speaker A
God speed everyone. Peace.
Topics:DestinyJay ShapiroIsrael Palestine conflictZionismcolonizationanarchist philosophymoral philosophypolitical debateleftist perspectiveself-determination
