Reaction
An international anti-fascist show run by a Scandinavian nerd, a Slavic alcoholic and an American unc that takes you to the darkest corners of the internet to help you understand the footsoldiers of online right-wing mobilization - content creators.
Reaction
Episode 11 - Zionist Content Creators (ft. Matt Lieb from Badhasbara)
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Because it's just that is something that you you can you grow up with, you know. You don't grow up with a material analysis. You grow up with being like, oh, you know, the the the people who live on that side of the street are fucking, you know, whatever. So just like it's it's useful. It's a useful tool, just playing on people's racism, playing on people's. I mean, shit, the fucking uh anti-Semitism that was happening uh in you know Eastern Europe and uh you know uh Russia, um uh specifically, a lot of that, like historically, the anti-Semitism was the uh fucking conditions had become bad enough that people uh you know, the fucking czar would be like, time to do some pogroms. It's those damn Jews from that, you know, from that little Jew town we got there. Uh we gotta we gotta kick them the fuck out because uh you know they're the reason why you guys are you know eating rats or whatever. Um don't look at the massive diamond on my own.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. Right.
SPEAKER_06It's it seemed like all the way back to like, you know, one of the arguably things that kind of started uh what would eventually metastasize into uh modern racism, like the first crusade, for example. Like that was called and then called in sort of racialized terms in order to shore up uh papal uh power. And the first victims of the first crusade were not in the Middle East, they were in like the uh in like Alsace Lorraine in like that area. There were Jews because people immediately who were like flocking to the crusades started just massacring like Jews in in Europe.
SPEAKER_04Well, there was also a material, the the looting, you know, you got to steal money, you know, enrich yourself.
SPEAKER_02They killed all of us too. Yeah, it was like, what the fuck?
SPEAKER_06These guys come in with crosses and they're like Yeah, rampage through the Balkans, yeah, exactly, all the way.
SPEAKER_03You know that that meme from that horrible, I mean, aesthetically beautiful but politically idiotic film, the Civil War thing, like what kind of American? You know, that the guy with glasses, yeah. What kind of American is like, oh, I'm Christian, bro. What kind of Christian? Oh, I'm Jewish, bro. What kind of Jew? Like it's it's you can always do this. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_06But then also same with like um, you know, the late 1400s in Spain and stuff, like the arguably one of the sort of origins of like a lot of modern anti-Semitism and stuff, all the myths there.
SPEAKER_01Same thing, it's just it's just shoring up support and 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean, Jew. That's what I said.
SPEAKER_04Uh yeah, I mean well simultaneously in Spain they were kicking out the Jews then, you know. They uh no, that's what I'm saying.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'm not saying he's a Jew who I think people remember it because of Christopher Columbus, but it's also the year of the beginning of the Spanish Inquisition, is that right?
SPEAKER_06I think it's the height of it, but yeah.
SPEAKER_01Or the height of it, sure. It just uh it's yeah, it's a very famous year, uh at least in Jewish history, um, in terms of Jewish persecution, um, 1492 is um yeah, no, I wasn't calling Christopher Columbus.
SPEAKER_05The new conspiracy theory unlocked.
SPEAKER_01No, he's Italian. We don't claim him. Get him out of here, get his Italian ass out of here.
SPEAKER_04You know, I when I look at the way that we have the right kind of spinning out, and as you rightly point out, the way liberals are, there's like a disconnect. You can see the way that like grassroots sentiment applies to like right wing power you know power. You can see it kind of turning against uh you know the way that the grassroots works. Whereas on the on the left side, you could see how we just seem to be crashing into an unmovable wall, right? Or a dam. There's all this pressure on pushing down on any of those efforts as opposed to converting them to some sort of useful political end. Kamala Harris famously would rather lose the election than criticize Israel. And it's like even self-preservation wasn't enough to get her to like change ideologically.
SPEAKER_01That to me has always been um, I think the most, you know, people talk about like that feeling of being gaslit for the last two and a half years. Yeah. Nothing I think has been more gaslighty and led to more f insanity uh in people, um, or made you feel more insane than the fact that it seemed very clear that to this day the Democratic Party and people who are like, you know, in those institutions, Democrat, you know, party institutions, would literally rather lose than than to even lie a little bit about their positioning with regards to Israel.
SPEAKER_04There was a very famous, there was a very famous quote directly from Nancy Pelosi, and she said she would rather see the capital of the United States fall than end her our support for Israel.
SPEAKER_00I have said to people when they asked me, if this capital crumbled to the ground, the one thing that would remain is our commitment to our aid. I don't even call it aid, our cooperation with Israel.
SPEAKER_04I mean, that's treason. That's literally treason. It is it is saying I will put another foreign interest above even our own holiest of holies, our own democracy, our own nation will fall and she will still be supporting Israel.
SPEAKER_01I mean, it's incredibly radicalizing because, you know, I think that for a lot of people, and myself included, you know, I'm not someone who's like, I would consider myself like a super, you know, like locked-in political expert on fucking anything, right? Um uh this particular issue is just happens to be an issue that I've um spoken out about and cared about and made content about for the last like 10 years, um, be just because my own personal experience with Israel and Zionism and all that shit. Um, but for me, I always kind of thought like at the end of the day, the politicians, you know, um care about one thing and one thing only, which is um gaining power, getting elected. Um, and it's really, really radicalizing um when you realize that they are actually um more less interested in that than they are in maintaining the uh system of money uh within DC, uh like that is actually at the top of the list. I always assumed it was getting elected. I mean shit, just you know, on a slime ball level, you you know, you could lie about fucking everything to get elected and then not do anything, but you're more afraid of the idea that the thing that you're lying about, I will, you know, don't I don't support Israel, it's a genocide, and I will uh, you know, fight against um, you know, Zionism and and defund Israel. You're more afraid of that sort of movement catching on and everything that comes with that sort of, especially from the left. You're more afraid of that. That is a bigger threat to you. Um, so you're not even gonna lie about it. You're actually very comfortable losing. It is actually part of the plan to lose in many instances. Or if it's not part of the plan, it's um a not that bad downside. Like win or lose, I win. If I win, then great, I'm in office. If I lose, I win because I get to spend the next four years fundraising off of the uh Trump administration. That is incredibly radicalizing for anyone who thought that uh there was um something more to it when it came to you know our politics.
SPEAKER_03Exactly because it is so radicalizing. Have we seen, as we mentioned earlier, the particular right wing uh switch up and split? And it is super important. I just I just very quickly just want to say it's super important for us not to lose out that moment of potential radicalization to reactionaries that just want to co-opt it into basically continuing the current status quo, including a little bit uh you know, with a slight spice of race science. While it is an incredible opportunity, it is also potentially uh a ball that can slip through our fingers and damage uh even the you know anti-Zionist and also general, like anti-reactionary movements in the states and and absolutely everywhere else, right?
SPEAKER_01A hundred percent and the biggest hurdle that we have to taking advantage of this current split uh are liberal and democratic institutions who refuse to do it. That is the and that's just the truth of it. The left is um is not hamstrung by the right. The you know, whether it's fucking Maoice or you know, pussy hat liberals, uh when ICame to Minnesota, to Minneapolis, uh all of those motherfuckers were on the street trying to stop them.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Uh there was a huge and people saw this like big liberal outpour of like support, you know, fighting against ICE, and people were like, oh, hell yeah, you know, way to go, liberals. Um this is uh this is something that can unite us, you know, being uh you know, trying to change the relationship between Israel and the United States.
SPEAKER_03And moments of crisis are opportunities, and they always have been. Right. That's how anything is changed. You co-opt moments of crisis, you cannot create moments of crisis.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. The right wing isn't stopping democratic candidates uh from you know calling it a genocide. Right. It is liberal institutions. It's it's Democrats, it's centrists, it's third way, it's it's uh Zionists with money, it's you know the democratic majority for Israel, it's the uh the Israel lobby, um, and it's also just you know general fucking you know, think tanks, uh, you know, centrist think tanks and shit like that, um, pouring uh money into its donors, these are the people, democratic donors, these are the people, these are the actual people who are trying to stop um the left in this very potent moment in which the majority of quote democrats are on our side, these are the people who are trying to stop it from happening. Yeah, vast, vast majority of the three.
SPEAKER_04Well, there's a story that I that I want to explain kind of limit it link both of these ideas, the ideas of like the establishment doesn't care about winning with these kind of propping up the pro-Israel position, even though nobody likes it on the left center, uh, which is the race that just concluded in Philadelphia between Sharif Street and Chris Robb, or Ray, excuse me, it's Chris Rabe, who is uh like the anti-Zionist socialist candidate who won. Yeah. Now, Corey Booker, who refused to endorse Zora Mamdani even after he won the primary in New York City because he was pro-Palestinian, or at least perceived to be, right? He flew in the or he drove in the Philadelphia to campaign for Sharif Street. But Sharif Street was famous, infamous in Pennsylvania for working with Republicans to gerrymander the state of Pennsylvania so there was less Democrats. Right? So Sharif Street was a machine politician in Philadelphia that had been working with Republicans to try to rat fuck Democrats. Just not even about any specific policy. Just, hey, you draw me an even bluer district and I'll help you win more swing districts for the Republican Party nationally. And Corey Booker looked at that race and he said, I'm gonna intervene on behalf of the guy who's corrupt. I'm gonna intervene on behalf of the guy who is interested in the Democratic Party getting structurally less power. Now, luckily for Pennsylvania Democrats, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court threw out the Sharif Street map, the the you know, the map he drew with the Republicans and drew you know what they call fair districts. And so his maneuver was failed, but to the Democratic Party, that's not disqualifying. It's not disqualifying to betray your own party and try to give more power to the Republicans. It's it's and and to me, why were they willing to overlook that? It's because he was in the pockets of Israel. Because he was willing to countenance a genocide.
SPEAKER_01Right. And and as someone who you know doesn't know much about you know the you know, that candidate um Sharif, um from the outside, it's like at the very least, it's because the other candidate, uh Rabe, um is uh openly anti-Israel um and is openly um you know socialist. Exactly. Those things matter more than even even party loyalty.
SPEAKER_03They do, they do, but enough about all this serious stuff, my beautiful people. Let's talk about some uh fascist reactionary figures in a more like let's say um looking at people in a zoo, I guess, for a second. Oh, yeah. Uh, people who have dedicated most of their online presence to being, let's say, proud Zionism defenders. Yeah, I'll drop a name and I would love you to tell us a story about these fascinating characters, background critique, and so on. Feel free to lol cow them as well. Uh for the audience, just to give context. These are some of Matt's absolute faves. Okay, so if any of these faves tune in, like this should kind of be like a medal of honor because uh Matt himself chose you.
SPEAKER_01I yeah, I chose him. He loves you, yeah.
SPEAKER_03He he loves being bad to your husband.
SPEAKER_01I I'm entertained by them, and they are my favorites in the way you that you know you can have like a favorite villain or like a um you know favorite natural disaster or whatever. Beautiful.
SPEAKER_03Let's start with number one, the number one, Alon Levy. I hope I pronounced that right because yeah, I think you did.
SPEAKER_01I think you did. Big fan of Alon. He is uh not to be confused, yes. No, different guy. He is a an Israeli um uh spokesperson, uh Hazbarist. He used to be uh the um uh a spokesperson coming out of the uh prime minister's office. Uh he was employed by uh Benjamin Netanyahu. So at the beginning uh of the you know genocide, uh he was on TV constantly um doing uh interviews and going on panels to call the panelists like anti-Semitic for even questioning Israel's motives and stuff. He's like a British, he's got like a British accent, so I think he is he's was born in England or lived there at least long enough to have a thick British accent. Um like a like a posh one, I guess. Yes, born in London, yeah. But uh he is you know was the the guy uh for the English speaking world Hasbara um that you would see at the beginning of this genocide. He then got fired for lying too much.
SPEAKER_04Wow, that's a lot of lying. And for Israel, bro, that's crazy.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, Israel, wow. That was at least the claim uh as to why I think the truth of why he got fired is it was demanded by Netanyahu's wife Sarah, who didn't like him because uh he had been revealed to before he got the job. Um, have been uh slightly critical of some of the judicial reforms, I believe, that Netanyahu was doing. And um, and I guess Sarah Netanyahu just didn't didn't trust him, you know, anymore, or whatever personal beef, but he was, I think, essentially fired allegedly by uh Sarah Netanyahu. He then went on to rather than I don't know, do something else with your life, you know, take up knitting, start an Etsy store, whatever the fuck. Hey, how about this? Uh join the IDF and fight because you love war so much. No, instead of doing that, he uh was able to uh grab a bunch of money, um, and I don't mean that antipathetically.
unknownOh god.
SPEAKER_01He was able to get enough money uh together to start something called the citizen's spokesperson's office.
SPEAKER_03Uh why can't you just make a YouTube channel, motherfucker, and call yourself a content creator?
SPEAKER_04I hate these guys, they come in from TV and they're like, I demand to be taken seriously in the robe and wizard half. It's called to be taken.
SPEAKER_05Let's clap. It gets funny as a spokesperson. He's like, I'm gonna make my own spokesperson office so I can keep doing this, like that, which is crazy because it's like, wait, okay, at that point, you're not really a spokesperson.
SPEAKER_01You're you are speaking for yourself. That's just called podcast. That that's all you're doing. And the thing is, he couldn't say I'm starting a podcast. He already had a podcast at that point. Uh so he couldn't be like, I'm now starting another podcast. The problem was he was so committed to this job of being a spokesperson that he was like, but I will miss having a podium. So he created the citizen spokesperson's office.
SPEAKER_03Does he also talk from a podium in the citizens?
SPEAKER_01Yes, he does. Oh my god, I'm gonna kill myself. So we got to have a you gotta find an image of him at the uh citizen spokesperson's office. Is it like a room in his house? Like where is I I I don't know if it's in his house. I imagine he got enough money together in order to at least rent out a studio.
SPEAKER_03I just found it just for the boys to have context. It literally looks like he's a representative of the state of Israel, okay? Israeli citizen spokesperson's office, the logo, the flag behind me.
SPEAKER_06The fake the fake flag, the one that's like plastic that doesn't like curl and stuff, yeah. Exactly.
SPEAKER_03But like this, this, if you don't know what you're looking at, you are seeing a clip of this on Twitter. It it looks like a legitimate uh it looks like he has a job.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, LARPing as a government spokesperson after getting fired is so fucking funny, dude.
SPEAKER_04Like, can we talk about what he got fired for really quick? Because like, yeah, obviously it's gonna make the mood go down a bit, but I think it is good context, which is basically the UK foreign uh secretary David Cameron had made a statement saying, Hey, Israel, allow more aid trucks into Gaza. And he had uh wrote a message that said, I hope you are also aware that there are no limits on the entry of food, water, medicine, or shelter equipment into Gaza. And in fact, the crossings have excess capacity. Test us, send another hundred trucks a day to Karim Shalom, and we'll get them in. And yeah, the United Kingdom's government was like, No, you're fucking lying. Like, we cannot get more aid in because Israel is not letting things in because of clearance procedures. They have like very short operating hours during the day, and they will like approve something but then screen it again. They'll they'll pull the truck back. So you're a liar. Right. And yeah, you know, when you call the foreign secretary of a major ally a liar uh on the issue of whether or not aid trucks are going into a population under siege. Yeah, which is like easily provable or disprovable, yeah. That was too far even for even for Benjamin. Netanyahu, I guess.
SPEAKER_01Right. But but some more context to that. I remember because I remember very vividly at this time being like, what, now we're going to admit that something's a lie? That's very strange to me. And it's like, well, he did say this to, you know, the prime minister and the you know foreign secretary. So like maybe that maybe you're maybe you're not allowed to do that. Because you have to realize at this point, it was like, oh, I think there's nothing that's not allowed when you are uh an Israeli spokesperson. Like you're you're allowed to go onto any interview show, and if someone asks you about uh what are you doing to limit civilian casualties, you're allowed to call them anti-Semitic for even suggesting that they should care about uh the civilians in Gaza. So I was like, that's so weird that now they're gonna be like, oh no, not a lie. You know, we we have to fire him. He did a lie. We would never um so you have to take into account, number one, the uh the like I said earlier, the reports that, you know, because um he had had some prior political activity that you know uh made him anti-Netanyahu, or at least placed him in opposition to some of the things, that uh, you know, either Sarah Netanyahu or people and other people around uh BB, you know, wanted him gone. But also he was uh one of the reasons that he may have been fired is that he auditioned for Dancing with the Stars without obtaining official clearance.
SPEAKER_03But wait, is it an Ellie dancing with the stars or a Yank dancing with the British movie?
SPEAKER_01Uh I don't believe it was an Ellie dancing with the stars. I believe it was a UK dancing with the stars, or possibly the don't even he went fucking absent without leave to do a dance. Dancing with the stars audition. And because he didn't get clearance, uh, they you know, he was drawing a lot of criticism. So at the time, he was drawing a lot of crit criticism for lying, he was drawing criticism for trying to do dancing with the stars, um, and for uh, you know, uh being somewhat anti-Netanyahu at one point.
SPEAKER_03How do they introduce him at dancing at the stores? The spokesperson for the state of Israel.
SPEAKER_01That's the thing. The problem is that, you know, they probably he was probably that close to actually getting the job, uh, like actually booking the gig, and then they're like, oh no, he got fired. What are we gonna say? The former spokesperson doesn't work. Doesn't work. He's not Sean Spicer. That's the other thing, is like you have to you have to understand the ego of a lot of these Hezbarists where they truly believe themselves to be celebrities, like household names. Like Alon Levy thinks he's a household name. He thinks he's uh famous, like he probably looked at like what was it, Sean Spicer or whoever went on dance with the cars um and said, like, well, that's like me. Everyone in America will know me. Nobody knows who you are, dude. You are not a famous person, and that's true of everyone that I think I named. They all think they are incredibly famous, important people. Um, just to end Alon Levy's story, so he creates a citizen spokesperson's office. Not a podcast, yeah, and uh he creates an another podcast as well, because his other one, um, I believe it was called uh I forget the State of Israel or something. I forget. It was something stupid like that.
SPEAKER_03I thought it was uh kill all Palestinians 1488, Becca Hitler.
SPEAKER_01Like, yeah, exactly. Uh and he uh, you know, so he started that with a bunch of money. Um, and then later uh he is now involved in a lawsuit with the state of Israel he is suing because they did not pay him for any of the things that he was doing. So State of Israel actually owes him a bunch of money that I believe they promised him for uh his, you know, after, you know, for his citizen spokesperson's office bullshit. Um and uh they yeah, they they definitely they definitely did something classically anti-Semitic.
SPEAKER_03Thank you very much, Matt, because this is like one of my favorite Lol Cows uh forever. He's fucking incredible. I love it. Uh let's go a little bit more old school with uh Benny Motherfucking Morris.
SPEAKER_01I mean, just from what I know about him, because I'll I'll admit I have not actually read his uh groundbreaking uh books uh that he wrote at a time uh when um Israel had begun to uh at least pretend to reckon with the uh Nakba. Um and Benny Morris is one of the you know handful of people called the you know new historians um that uh you know were writing about sort of the uh the actual truth of the Nakba of the ethnic cleansing of you know 750,000 Palestinians from uh Palestine. Um and uh you know he he backed it up with uh not only just you know data um but also with the actual words of the people, the uh documents that uh had not been seen before um of uh Israeli officials um or you know pre-Israeli officials uh admitting to the crimes that they were doing and crimes they were about to do.
SPEAKER_02Okay, yeah, but no, we're gonna have to cut this because like this is in the segment where we make fun of fucking Zionists.
SPEAKER_06No, no, no, no, because I no no because there is another element to this though. So Benny Morris presents all these things, but he still has to find a way to like be like, well, maybe like you know, Zionism is still cool.
SPEAKER_01Like he Yes, yes, yeah, yeah. It's very important to get to the next part of his career, in which the new historian after October 7th, and before then too, um all of a sudden started to back out on all of his work. He started to um uh do pro-Israel propaganda.
SPEAKER_04In fact, can I just interject to just say one thing? Like, I think you're right, but I actually think it's even worse. He basically he didn't refute his old work, he just said, yeah, that's what every nation does. Right, exactly. Yes, yes. Every nation has to do crimes to you know to establish itself. So what is special about the Israeli genocides and death of cleansings? He creates a moral relativism and he brings it and he says, like, that's just what happened, and it's okay. Just like America exterminated the indigenous population, so did Israel. What's the big deal?
SPEAKER_01Well, uh, I just want to say that the the difference in um his rhetoric uh post-October 7th was uh that of I think this is a common thing, this was like uh almost a condition that happened after October 7th within Israel called sobering I uh sobering up. Uh in that's what they called it, but in in modern Hebrew, and it describes a lot of the liberals and quote left in Israel who after October 7th sobered up because they realized this podcast is 100% financed by you guys, the listeners, and we have to pay our editor.
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