The Word Cartographer (TikTok/Instagram Influencer): Language, History and Antisemitism

In this week's show our guest is Michael B, The Word Cartographer. We discussed radio host and commentator Katie Halper's obsession with Yiddish, Rolla Selbak's propaganda against Hebrew and historical issues related to languages. We conclude with our addressing of Dan Balzerian, Nick Fuentes and the Trump Effect on conspiracy minded people.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:05

Welcome to another episode of Mr. Skeptic Radio. On our on today's show we have Michael B from how do you pronounce your uh Instagram page?

SPEAKER_00 0:16

Uh the word cartographer.

SPEAKER_03 0:18

Okay, so we're gonna play two videos, one from Katie Halper, uh speaking about Yiddish, and then the other one from this lady that I can't stand who comes up on progressive uh groups. Uh so I want to get your opinion.

unknown 0:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 0:35

So we were basically put into camps, they rejected and the Hesperic Jews, they also reject the Arabic, which is spoken by Israeli Jews of the Middle East. Yiddish is an amazing language and it's dying out, and the reason it's dying out is because Israel chose to create a modern Hebrew which no one spoke, and they had a lot of disdain for a lot of Jewish culture. So Israel has always been a racist project in many ways against Palestinians, but even against Jews themselves, and it's been an anti-Semitic project.

SPEAKER_03 1:07

What's interesting, like she just said that uh matter of fact, but didn't give any um evidence. And then this is the other lady.

SPEAKER_02 1:37

She has an Israeli guy saying that uh in uh I guess in his accent or something, and it says, So why does Israeli Hebrew not sound Semitic at all? She's trying to compare it to Arabic. Any guesses? Do you think because it wasn't created by someone who's Semitic? Yes. I said created. Let's get into it. So modern Hebrew or Israeli Hebrew has only been around for a hundred and fifty years or so, because the ancient Hebrew or biblical Hebrew was non-spoken language for around two thousand years. It was mostly used liturgically, so for prayer and for sacred texts, and sometimes in poetry or literature, but it was not spoken at all. In fact, the Talma was not even written in Hebrew. It was written in Aramaic. So when was Hebrew revived to what we hear today? So revival Hebrew as a spoken language is largely attributed to a Russian dude named Eliezer Yitzhak Perlman, who lived from 1958. Hebrew is a spoken language, now it's native language was Yiddish, and the language of most Central European Jewish folks at that time. So what he did is he took the Jewish pronunciation and of course they overlaid that with the European pronunciation is heavily influenced by Yiddish, Russian, Polish, and German. And so, because of that, for instance, Hebrew does enroll as Rs like Semitic languages do. So they don't say, for instance, Israeli right, so they why they sound more German, for instance, when they say hummus instead of hummus. Another example is German, they don't have the Semitic sounds ha. Instead they have ha-a because they don't know how to say ha, so instead they say a la, they say ha halla. So they why they except sound so flat opposed to a big based dialect or ancient Hebrew. So how did Elijah who later changed his name to Eliah Ben Ezar, how did he when Yehuda guy is so fanatical that when he finally got Hassan, Itamar, he completely forbade him to speak any other language other than Hebrew, and in fact he forbade him to speak any other children when his mom was singing him a Russian lullaby, got berated by Ben Yehuda forever speaking to him and singing to him any other language than Hebrew. He was completely fanatical. And so Hassan Edmar Ben Jehuda is known as the first native speaker of modern Israeli Hebrew. And by the way, this whole idea of Hebrew becoming a spoken language was actually frowned upon by the Orthodox and devout Jewish community. Because to them, Hebrew was meant to be for prayer and sacred ceremonies. It wasn't meant to be used in everyday mundane context. It was meant to be something higher and holy. And also, Jewish people who already lived in Palestine had been for centuries spoke Arabaic. Arabic and their language, it was Angua Franca, Jewish people, Christian people and Muslim, they all spoke Arabic to each other. But at the end of, of course, because of Zionist movement, this was having a specific language, this Jewish only state was very, very enticing. And so in the 19th century, too, Britain declared modern Israeli Hebrew, one of the three languages of the land, Arabic, including English. And by the way, you so you know the song, uh Habam Megillah, we faulted with thinking there was centuries and centuries old song that has been passed out. In fact, the song we know today was Hebrew Ice and Libre Eyes, once in 1918. It was a song of rejoicing by the Sionist movement after the Ottoman Empire fell, and when Britain promised through the bulk for declaration, the Sionist movement, the land of Palestine. And at the end there was no real way of knowing what ancient Hebrew or biblical Hebrew really sounded like. But there are some beautiful indications of what it might have sounded like when we hear Yemenite Hebrew. I'll leave you with this. So then she plays a song by Yemenite group Goshir Gadassi. So that's Miss Rola Selbak. And the first video was Kay Halper, a community commentator and host of a radio show.

SPEAKER_03 6:22

So uh tell us about the work that you do in your um in your reos, and then we can go step by step uh describing what these people are saying and if there's any evidence for their claims.

SPEAKER_00 6:36

Yeah, so um I've run a few linguistic pages for a couple of years now, uh mostly just for fun, but um it's been a fun outlet for G. Um I studied linguistics and um a lot of languages in university, and it's been kind of an outlet to sort of keep up with a lot of those topics and uh you know talk about things I find interesting, but a lot of those are Hebrew topics. Um done a few videos on uh certain myths about Hebrew in general and uh specifically with modern Hebrew, but yeah.

SPEAKER_03 7:07

So Katie Halper is correct, uh nobody cared about Hebrew at all, even Middle Eastern Jews, and Yiddish was destroyed by the Israelis uh to try to create this fake uh narrative?

SPEAKER_00 7:20

So Yiddish has mostly declined in the last century because of um assimilation and because well the Holocaust, because a lot of those speech communities are just just don't exist anymore. That's the real reason. Um the you know, the old Yishu, well not the old Yushu, but the you know Zionist community in Ottoman and Mandatory Palestine didn't generally have the most positive views of Yiddish, but there's this there's there's some exaggerations about how much they actually tried to restrict. I mean, there were definitely fanatics in the you know the language wars uh in pre-state Israel, but um no, the government never really officially banned Yiddish. Um some people, some activists tried to disrupt Yiddish uh publications and Yiddish theater, etc. But um no, the language would have pretty much died out. It's only really maintained in you know ultra-Orthodox communities. Um really in general, even in the states, it's pretty much only restricted to certain Orthodox communities. But um, no, that's not what a Yiddish died out, it's mostly because of well, the Holocaust.

SPEAKER_03 8:34

And then Ms. Roselbach, uh, who very um like aggressively claims that uh Hebrew was forced upon the population of um uh I guess uh historic Palestine, and then it was um somehow um like a mixture of a bunch of uh different languages because nobody knew biblical Hebrew, and then she contradicts herself at the end that the Yemenites do speak some type of uh version of that. Uh what do you think about her claims?

SPEAKER_00 9:11

So um the Jewish community in Ottoman Palestine. Um I mean it's hard to get certain exact demographics, but it was a pretty the bulk the bulk of the community was of Safari origin. Um and they were primarily Latino-speaking well into the 20th century. Um there were some Arabized communities, and Arabic was definitely the lingua franca, but um it was a mix of Ladino-speaking communities, Arabized communities, uh Yiddish-speaking communities, um Bukharan Jews, Yemenite Jews. It was a pretty diverse community, wasn't a like a singular Arabic-speaking Middle Eastern Jewish community, uh, like some of those narratives say. Um there's a there's a Netflix series called The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem. Uh, there's some little historical nitpicky things about it, but that is pretty much what happens. It follows a Sephari family in Jerusalem from uh the Ottoman period up until the 1970s. Um and as they shift from Ladino to statehood to Hebrew, it's it's pretty interesting. But that is basically what happened. Uh, most of the uh opposition to speaking Hebrew as a common daily language mostly came from Ashkenazu uh Haredi communities, not so much from the Sephardi and uh Mizrahi world. Um it's it's more complicated than that. Um Hebrew definitely had its place, and it was already being used as uh somewhat of a lingua franca between Jewish groups. That's how Aliasir bin Yehuda got the original ideas. Uh the story goes he was in Algeria and um he communicated with uh a local Jew in Algiers in sort of ad hoc Hebrew, uh, when they didn't have a common language between them, and that's sort of what started the idea of making Hebrew the common language of a future Jewish state or just a Jewish Esperanto, I guess. But which it already kind of had been, especially in writing, um since pretty much ever. I mean, most major Jewish works in the Middle Ages, even if sometimes they were written originally in Arabic, they were always translated to Hebrew and known in their Hebrew editions, like you know, a lot of Maimonides' works, um, a lot of works from medieval Spain, um, and it had always been a language of correspondence. You know, Rashi wrote his, even though his first language would have been uh medieval French, um, you know, he wrote all his Torah commentaries in Hebrew because that was the universal language of Jewish study and it was widely known. But um sorry?

SPEAKER_03 11:50

In in my Jewish studies courses, they they would say that the reason that Jews were able to do um mercantile uh transactions among different parts of the world is because they had Hebrew as the common language. Is that a romanticized version of the facts? Or is it true that they were speaking Hebrew to each other or is it just written?

SPEAKER_00 12:13

Well, see, it's kind of complicated because like you know, Latin had a similar status and still has, and for in the Catholic world, even where priests from completely different backgrounds can communicate in Latin, maybe not perfectly on a conversational level, a lot of uh improvising. But I mean the the vocabulary and grammar structures were always all there, and people did do that. And supposedly Christopher Columbus brought a converso translator who knew Hebrew and Arabic, with the assumption that when they got to the other side of the Indies they would encounter other Jewish communities who knew Hebrew or Arabic. Um, so yeah, that was that's not romanticized at all.

SPEAKER_03 12:57

There was um uh show on PBS that claimed that all languages had a common um like basis. You know, they were using that you know, Aleph is like the head of a cow, and then if you look at um the Chaldeans and the Babylonians, and they went as far as Thailand and even China, they they would take the same letter and flip it and play around with it. Have you ever heard that theory that there was like a basic, almost like a paleo-Hebrew at one point, and then it developed into all the different languages?

SPEAKER_00 13:32

Yeah, I don't think many people uh think of either Hebrew or any other languages like the universal first language, like a Tower of Babel situation. Um I mean Hebrew is one particular little branch of the Canaanite languages in the Semitic family, but um the writing systems of most of the world are maybe not specifically for the Hebrew-Phoenician Paleo-Hebrew alphabet, still is because that became the Greek alphabet or the Etruscan alphabet and the Latin alphabet. So I mean, even the English alphabet now is a variant, very long divorced um relative of the old Phoenician Paleo-Hebrew alphabet. But yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:17

So so when you say that the there is a connection, um, is it from the Babylonians? Is it from the Egyptians? Like how far back can you go to like a basic language that everybody originated from?

SPEAKER_00 14:32

Uh linguistic, like speaking the same language, um or same uh alphabet. Oh, the same alphabet. Um the Phoenicians the Greeks got their letters from the Phoenicians. There were a couple of other scripts. Greeks used like linear B uh in Crete, for example, but um that would have been the Phoenicians, probably um a little rusty on the dates, probably like 1200 BC, a thousand BC around then. So the Greeks would have gotten uh the Paleo-Hebrew slash Phoenician alphabet around you know 3,000 years ago. But then they spread that to Italy, and that became the Etruscan and later Latin alphabets.

SPEAKER_03 15:15

So your Instagram page, uh, what is the focus? And um it's been so long since I contacted you. Um there was something that you said about history or politics or something that was very poignant, and that's why I wanted to have you on the show.

SPEAKER_00 15:31

Uh which specifically? Well, uh was the uh Hebrew Guttles video, I think was what you what was your what is your focus?

SPEAKER_03 15:39

What are you trying to convey with your specific Instagram um page?

SPEAKER_00 15:44

Well, it was just kind of talking about just any topics I felt like at the time. I mean, I love reading and talking about linguistics still, so just an outlet for that. Um I don't know if there's a specific to teach. I mean, maybe I don't like doing debunking content. I've done about a dozen or so videos like that, but there is a lot of really crazy, especially on TikTok in particular, a lot of really crazy misinformation that goes beyond just you know goofing up some facts, but um you know, some very like neo-Nazi adjacent stuff, and uh there's a lot of myths about Hebrew, like sort of the ones we watched earlier, um, that have really taken off that might have small grains of truth but are really exaggerated or framed really incorrectly for political reasons. But um, I do hope to correct some of those, and I think I've helped a little bit in certain spaces online, but I mean, uh, yeah, there's some really crazy nonsense in social media these days.

SPEAKER_03 16:45

Well, some of your hits are um did the king of England uh then speak English? Um, is English occultic? Um did you ever do one about how some people say that uh British Israelism is true because Brit means uh covenant in Hebrew, and then they start finding stupid stuff like that?

SPEAKER_00 17:08

I would, I haven't seen that one as much. I feel like that was abandoned a lot. You see more of the the uh you know the black Hebrew Israelite stuff more than the British Israelite stuff. Um I mean it would be interesting to go over. I just don't I don't haven't really seen that many people um say that recently. But that one I feel like is so obviously kind of wrong that it's just maybe not even worth touching, but then again, so are a lot of other things that people say online. So we'll see. That would be an interesting topic.

SPEAKER_03 17:41

But uh as as you know, we're getting older, we're starting to see how history, um, objective facts, and uh context don't really matter anymore. It's more about like almost like a gacha thing where everything on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram, it's like let me prove these people wrong with a bunch of factoids and don't even look it up, just believe me. Uh so are you having a hard time um like expressing um historical truth when you're dealing with people who don't really care for?

SPEAKER_01 18:18

Not really.

SPEAKER_00 18:19

Um most of the people I've responded to directly, uh, with a few exceptions, I thought were being really, really malicious. Like um, I think the video you contacted me about um about over that one, that guy's been straight up neo-Nazi. Like, I mean, he just paints pictures of Hitler just casually. And um I was gonna I couldn't help myself. I try not to get sucked into that, but um no, I try to be as factual as I can uh and specific as I can. Uh most of the time I've responded to to a video is because one, again, they were being really, really malicious just top to bottom. Or um they had they they had a video that popped off really big, and I really hate some of those pseudo-linguistic ideas and pseudo-historical and pseudoscience. I tried to get into the debunking flat earth kind of stuff a little while back, but um there are some better creators who do that better than I do, so I'll just stick with the linguistic and historical stuff, I guess. But yeah, there's some while I've it's made me a little nervous sometimes because I haven't gotten any like serious backlash um because there's not much they can really say. I mean, that sounds a little arrogant, but like I don't hit that record button uh lightly. So if I'm gonna come at something to debunk it, I'm gonna make like sure I'm right. But um I've been had some mild issues with trolls and harassment, but nothing as serious as I've seen other people go through.

SPEAKER_03 19:53

But can you describe how was the guy that paints uh pictures of Hitler um the uh deconstructing Judaism or attacking uh Hebrew?

SPEAKER_00 20:04

He Yeah, he was just attacking Hebrew, but uh the reason I responded, he's not a huge creator, but that video had like tens and tens of thousands of likes, and um he was talking I forget exactly it's been a while since I've rewatched it, but he's like talking about how German Germanic languages don't have gutturals when that's kind of something their favorites for, you know, all the rolled R uh rolled in the back of the throat R's and you know the phlegm sound as he would put it. Um just stupid, but um I don't know. There's a lot of wild stuff. Part of it is just it's so easy to make content now, uh, especially the way TikTok and Instagram are set up now. I mean, you can pretty much just say anything with an authoritative tone and and come off like you know what you know what you're talking about. But um, and you know, it's you know, getting something wrong is not like the end of the world, but some of these just I've seen so much wild stuff. I mean, the conspiracy theories, especially on TikTok, because of the way the algorithm works, some so many people in certain echo chambers will see something and then they'll snowball it in a certain part of the the internet, and it's it's some cra I've come on on to some really crazy comment sections. It's really it's made me a little depressed in the last year or two, to be honest.

SPEAKER_03 21:31

Tell us about the Ten Commandments in New Mexico.

SPEAKER_00 21:35

Oh, yeah, that one. Um the Las Lunas Stone is um it's a forgery of the Ten Commandments that was uh found in New Mexico. Um we're not really sure who did it. Um it might have been the guy who supposedly found it, it might have been some overzealous Mormons in the area or someone just playing a prank. Um A lot of people believe it though. There's a lot of like hoaxes and claims about um, you know, ancient Hebrews or ancient Phoenicians visiting the New World. And while it's not like literally impossible, some wayward Phoenician sailor made it over here. There wasn't some huge population migration or anything like that, and there's no other evidence of, you know, Semitic languages having any connection to any languages in the Americas. Um, but yeah, that's a pretty that's a hoax a lot of people really believe, but there's a lot of spelling mistakes and grammatical mistakes um in that stone. It's pretty obviously a forgery, but uh a lot of people cling to it. There's a few other like the like the Bat Creek Stone. I haven't gone into that one. I should probably do that in a video, but um it's been because for years, um the LDS church, or some element at least, uh you have you know, I'm not sure if you're familiar with Mormonism, but um, you know, all the stuff about Jesus and the Hebrews visiting the Americas and stuff, um, some of that seems to have crossed into and merged with uh conspiracy theories, and so um, especially like the black Hebrew Israelite stuff, they seem to have adopted that. That um even that like ancient Egypt was actually in Arizona or like this crazy stuff, and there's a lot of stuff about the Grand Canyon. Um, there's some sensationalist piece, I think it was in the 20s that someone wrote about some cave in the Grand Canyon that had all these Egyptian artifacts, even though no one else ever saw it. And some people just a hundred years they cling to it. They just it's a very, I guess, romantic idea to think about ancient Hebrews in the Americas, but um, there's no evidence that's true.

SPEAKER_03 23:42

Are you familiar with how the Nazis uh de-Judaized Jesus and made him into the son of Odin or some type of Viking guy?

SPEAKER_00 23:53

Not so much. I've heard a little bit about that, but there's the movement online to sort of you know de-Judaize, you know, Jesus, and you know, Jesus wasn't a Jew, he was a Nazarene, or some crazy stuff that's just amazing, mental gymnastics that makes no sense.

SPEAKER_03 24:10

But it's but uh that it's scary because the the Germans were very intellectual and very knowledgeable, and it was they came to the point where it was like sophistry where they could find like a weird thing and then build like a case from it. So, what I've read is that they said that Jesus was Ashkenasi because he was from northern uh ancient Israel and that he wasn't a real Jew. And it's like, well, you know, Ashkenazi means European Jew. So it they just went with that, and then but they also had crazy ideas that the the Hindus were their original ancestors, and that you know, I don't that's where they got the word Aryan from. So they were mixing like Tibetan stuff and like all kinds of different things altogether, but it it caught on, and and that's why it was so scary when Kanye West was pushing the Black Hebrew Israelite stuff because it very quickly became very popular.

SPEAKER_00 25:09

Yeah, it's mixed with some uh elements of Nazism, and it's it's kind of wild to again see all the various like pseudoscience and conspiracy theories kind of meld into weird to the point. There's there's one um I have a troll page where I sometimes like follow um some of those like neo-Nazi accounts just to like keep tabs on them. One of them has the whole as well Hitler wasn't racist because he was nice to Jesse Owens and Nazism was actually inclusive of black people, and it's it's just bizarre, like historically illiterate nonsense. But there's some people even some I've seen some African Americans like interact with that page, and uh it's it's pretty wild. Um and a lot of that is spreading unchecked on social media, and there's not that many people talking about it, and it's it's a little scary.

SPEAKER_03 26:05

So tell us about your background, what got you interested in languages, and what has been your journey in that field?

SPEAKER_00 26:12

Um, I always was, even in high school. Um even just studying like Hebrew and Spanish uh when I was younger. Um I don't know, it's been a lifelong kind of pursuit. It's something I always want to get better at, uh, whether it's just speaking or knowing a lot about uh languages, um yeah, just a lifelong hobby. Um I don't know, I can't not read about it or study about it.

SPEAKER_03 26:40

Um you do it professionally or is it just a hobby?

SPEAKER_00 26:46

Uh so I have I've had most of my uh I work almost full-time as a musician now, but um most of my normal jobs were uh doing Portuguese or Spanish translation. So I I did use it professionally to a point, just not linguistics specifically, because I'd probably have to teach or go into academia, but I mean it's always an option um to go back to I've thought about going back to school for a while, but um the more strictly linguistic side rather than the speaking side is more of a hobby, I guess.

SPEAKER_03 27:25

And do you have any insights on how Spanish and Portuguese spread throughout the Americas? Um we've been seeing uh a rise of uh people that speak Mayan uh coming through the border, and it's amazing that uh they've been able to keep their languages alive because growing up in Mexico, the the Mesoamericans were discussed, but but once Columbus or Cortes came, the indigenous people were treated like they didn't exist, and we were never uh allowed to learn about them, to celebrate their culture or even their language. And and now people are coming out of uh the jungles and the mountains that still speak uh some of their languages, and slowly they're being brought back. But for 500 years, they were completely oppressed and uh treated like like it would they were unimportant, and that Spanish and Portuguese was the way to survive or to assimilate. Um any uh any things you've seen or that are interesting from that, um what happened historically?

SPEAKER_00 28:39

Uh more so with Portuguese. I'm more familiar with uh Brazil's history than uh the rest of uh Spanish-speaking Latin America, but um it's really interesting. Portugal didn't really start heavily mandating Portuguese as a language until the end of the 1700s, only like two or three generations before Brazil became independent. Before that, they spoke what were called uh Lingoserais general languages, which were sort of standardized forms of tupi. Um, and everyone learned it because even some Portuguese um chroniclers said if they used Portuguese in Brazil, they would be talking to themselves, because even among African slaves and various indigenous tribes, everyone learned these sort of standardized forms of tupi that had Portuguese influence. But um that kind of came to an end in the late 1700s, then Portuguese became more official and mandated, and then we start to see what you were just talking about, where you had to absolutely to get anywhere in life. And there are still some indigenous languages in Brazil, um, but uh they've hugely declined. I think only like maybe one percent of the population can speak an indigenous language, um, and a lot of them are in very remote areas of the Amazon. Um but um yeah, Spanish, it was also spread in Spain like that too. Uh, because it's it's what's interesting is that um Spain was somet uh Spanish was sometimes more widely spoken in some parts of Latin America than in Spain itself. Um because Spain has many regional languages like Catalan, Galician, uh, Basque, um, which wasn't always um as heavily mandated until the beginning of the 18th century. But um for a while there were some you know urban parts of Latin America that were more Spanish speaking than some parts of Spain were, um specifically, but but yeah, and there were a fair number of current verse posts and uh undercover Sephari Jews and the earliest generations of uh the colonization of the Americas. And there's still a little bit of Ladino. Also, I think they they mentioned Ladino in uh one of those videos we watched earlier, um which Ladino in Israel is and in Turkey um is hugely declined. Uh I've I've met a few speakers, but it is heavily declined because of uh the exposure to more standard Spanish and assimilation into Turkish and Hebrew speaking and in English speaking in the United States society.

SPEAKER_03 31:23

So I I attend um and participate in the Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies, and a lot of the conversos um they speak kind of like um like non-educated Spanish. Uh, so it's like a pick Spanish, and they they were thinking that it was Ladino, but then they realized that it was actually like uh Castilian Spanish, that it was like in a lower form, and it had no connection to Ladino uh because Ladino was mostly in the Mediterranean. So um so that's the latest on the Ladino uh among conversos in the in Latin America and Southwest uh US.

SPEAKER_00 32:08

Yeah, I have to look into that more. Um I'm mostly familiar with Ladino in the Mediterranean and the Middle East, but um that's really interesting. Um there are a lot of archaisms still, um, even in like northern New Mexico Spanish, um it's still very archaic and have a lot of older features that were present in older Spanish. I meant to do a video on that, it's still on my topic list, uh, so I haven't gotten around to that.

SPEAKER_03 32:34

But well, I wanted to ask you what is the um the issue with the US being so xenophobic about other languages and how come they feel so threatened by Spanish speakers and um and stuff like that. Like if uh everywhere else, the more languages you speak, the more culture you are, and here it's uh unpatriotic to be interested in other languages.

SPEAKER_00 33:00

That's a broad topic. Well, uh I mean a lot of it is just straight xenophobia. I mean, it's not even necessarily so much, I think, about English as being English or having necessarily pride in English literature or you know, the history of the English language, it's mostly about xenophobia when it's expressed like that. Um and it's kind of funny because I it's I rarely meet people um even growing up in Tennessee that had no interest whatsoever in learning an all another language. Some people don't, but in but when it comes to dealing with immigrants, then it's a different level. It's one of those something that's classy when you're rich, but kind of trashy when you're poor, I guess, mentalities, but um it's still out there a lot. I mean, it's become I maybe less PC, especially the with the internet and you know, someone chastising someone in public will probably get cancelled and end up on the internet. But I mean it's still out there, and it's I think it was just straight up xenophobia. It's kind of the difference, a little bit of a difference in British colonization versus Spanish or Portuguese colonization. Um and just wanting a more uniform society and not having a lot of respect for the calf.

SPEAKER_03 34:33

Have you ever heard about uh the indigenous president of Mexico, Benito Juarez?

SPEAKER_00 34:39

Benito Juarez, uh yes, he was the first indigenous one, right?

SPEAKER_03 34:43

So but he didn't consider himself indigenous. Uh he was so assimilated by the Jesuit priest that raised them that he actually went into native communities and told them to behave, to become uh uh Spanish, and for them to be fully assimilated. And then my friend who's uh native um Canadian said that the French had this idea where you can either become nativized, like uh have your own tribe and have a treaty with them, or you can become French and be fully assimilated to the culture, but you will lose all your indigenous rights. And I always feel that Mexico was trying to emulate the French colonists and that idea that if we're gonna have a true democracy, everybody has to be under the same language, the same culture, the same um you know mentality, and it uh wiped out all native um like possibilities. And there was some issues that that Benito Juarez was dealing with, such as every town had different uh laws, so people would duke out their troubles by killing each other, and that wasn't working for the Mexican, um, early Mexican community. Uh, have you looked into Native American uh languages and how those 5,000 nations uh have dissipated through colonialism as well?

SPEAKER_00 36:15

Um, not as much as I would have liked. Um, there's just so many, it's hard. I've studied Yaqui, uh, which is originally from Sonora in the northwest in Mexico. Uh a little bit dabbled in Navajo, but a lot of people have. But um it's really Yaqui's the only one I actually tried to study with any like actual depth. But um yeah, it's one of the problems is that well, Navajo's done a lot better than some because when there's just more speakers, they have more territory, um, more resources, I think, uh more than some smaller because a lot of smaller ones, especially in Oklahoma, uh, have gone extinct even in this the last few years because even COVID did its toll on some really elderly speakers um um during the pandemic. But a lot of them will go extinct in the next few years. Um it's really sad, it's really unfortunate. Sorry.

SPEAKER_03 37:19

What what would you like for people to uh learn or uh take away from this conversation regarding the importance of languages?

SPEAKER_00 37:28

That well they're important, that seems like a simple sentence, but even um languages that aren't major global languages um or viewed as important are still worth preserving and learning, especially if they're attached to your family heritage. Uh no language is necessarily really better or worse than another. There are just forms of human expression. Uh humans form languages, it's a reflection of their culture and identity and life, and it's worth preserving. It's worth learning about.

SPEAKER_03 38:05

Have you heard about uh the latest research on monkeys and other animals being able to communicate?

SPEAKER_00 38:13

I was just talking to a uh a colleague or friend about this. Um, yeah, it's it's a broad topic um because you had to have to go species to species to species, and you know, there's millions and millions of species in the world, if not tens of millions, but um, yeah, some one of the problems is the difference between you know, all animals can communicate, but is it really language? You know, dogs can communicate, you know, territory and aggression and submissiveness, but you know, they can't understand literature or intangible things necessarily. I mean they feel them, but they can't communicate it. Whereas, you know, Coco the gorilla could look at you know something and just she learned sign language and signal that she was sad, which is you know an intangible feeling that she could communicate, so it varies wildly across species. But I mean, a lot of animals do have proto-language or some early form of language, and it's kind of an insight to the beginning of human language, but especially with um you know primates. But yeah, it's something I've meant to do a video on it because uh generally I feel like the linguistic community would say like animals don't maybe a few have proto-language, but uh most animals don't have what we would specifically define as language, even if they communicate. But uh that's a fascinating topic. Um really goes deep into our own psyches of you know why we even speak or communicate the way we do.

SPEAKER_03 39:50

Is it true that uh they're banning Arabic in Israel? Or there's some proposition to do that?

SPEAKER_00 39:57

No, um a few years ago uh it was removed. It used to be an official language, it was uh Hebrew and Arabic. Um now it got downgraded to a special status, um, is what they're calling it. No, it's not banned. I mean I mean I wouldn't I mean you could probably, you know, maybe in some parts of the country, uh it it's kind of hard to explain because Arabic is literally everywhere if you go there. Um it's on virtually every sign. There are Arabic speakers everywhere, um much more in the north, uh, than in say like the the central part of the country, but no, no, no one's banning it. Um not that I've heard of. I mean there's a certain amount of prejudice in some parts of the in some parts of the country against it just in general and some racist prejudice against it, but I don't know, there's they're not banning it, I don't think. Maybe some extremists on the right wing would try to, but uh no, they're not banning it.

SPEAKER_03 41:03

So there was uh an Israeli guy that was speaking at a conference and he was saying that uh when Israelis uh would learn about Arabic culture, language, and history, there would be more understanding. Do you do you agree with that? That um part of the xenophobia or fear of the other comes from not being aware of where their ideas come from?

SPEAKER_00 41:30

Well, it's an interesting thing, is about half or more of the Israeli population of the well, one-third of all Hebrew speakers are Palestinian Arabs, and then of the you know, 75 to 80 percent of Israelis who are Jewish, about half of those have full or partial family origins in the Arabic-speaking world, Moroccan Jews, Yemeni Jews, Iraqi Jews, or some mix like thereof, and a lot of their families did, and um that was one of the more heavy-handed things. It was highly discouraged, especially in the early days of mass immigration to the state during the 50s, to not speak Arabic. Don't and they did come down pretty hard on uh some groups of immigrants for speaking Arabic. I don't think it was ever outright legally banned, but it was very, very highly discouraged, especially in a lot of early immigrant camps and transit camps. But um so it's interesting that yeah, a lot of the population did actually come from Arabic-speaking origins in the first place. But um a lot of Israelis do learn Arabic in school, um, but not super well usually, unless they've worked in some sort of uh security background or military background that necessitated that. Um, there's a ton of slang that most Israelis learn, but uh I think it would be helpful to make Arabic you know a full-on required subject. I think it might technically be, but a lot of people can opt out of it. Um but yeah, it would be more helpful to you know study Arabic literature, learn the language and alphabet, and you know, it is you know, it would help a lot with xenophobia and a lot of uh certain sentiments that exist in society.

SPEAKER_03 43:15

So we're gonna get hate letters for this question, but um, when they said that there was uh Israeli operatives in Iran, um, wouldn't they be very quickly able to um find them, either because of their their accent, their chutzpah, or their um, you know, were they Iranians that defle defected? Like what could be a way that uh I know there's a story about in Egypt there was some Egyptian Jews that were uh causing trouble at one point. Um isn't it um pretty clear or easy to spot people at times? Or everybody just looks the same, they just uh are from a different religion or culture.

SPEAKER_00 44:00

The thing about Iran is that um there was a pretty strong wave of immigration after statehood in the fifties, well even well before um the Islamic uh regime came to power. But um then there was a big accident after uh we're I think uh almost a hundred thousand Jews left uh since you know 7980. But uh the thing is is that um and this was a huge asset for you know Israeli intelligence throughout the last few decades is that there are lots of people who don't have accents that they really do. Like one of the things that I remember reading a story during the 73 war, one of the radio operators they instantly knew Iraqis were coming um during one part of the war, and they could even identify what specific region of Iraq because some that radio operator was from the same region, um, originally in Iraq, and there's so many, you know, fluent Persian and Arabic speakers, especially from specific backgrounds, that you know, you know, Ely Cohen, I don't know if you're familiar with his story, I mean he was a Syrian Arabic speaker. He grew up in Egypt, but uh both of his parents were Syrian, and uh you know he blended in perfectly. No one could even guess that he well, he was Syrian, no one could ever guess that he was actually a spy. And with uh Persian speakers, I mean a lot of um, you know, I know a lot of more recent uh immigrants who from Persian speaking backgrounds, Jews, um, who left in the 90s or 2000s, um, there's some here in Nashville, um, and you know, they're not really distinguishable from most uh Persian speakers. I think the only thing would be keeping up with you know more current slang or cultural reference. But I mean, yeah, I can totally believe that they uh had plenty of agents in in in country that wouldn't be detected.

SPEAKER_03 45:59

And doesn't that add to the conspiracies that the Jews are everywhere and you can spot them and they're every color and every uh in every part of society?

SPEAKER_00 46:11

I mean well from that perspective, yeah. I mean, but I mean from an intelligence perspective, I mean that's uh I mean being such a multilingual community, I mean it's easy to do, um, at least in Iran or a lot of parts of the Arabic speaking world, but um I mean if they want to look at it that way, but I mean that's just a conspiracy though.

SPEAKER_03 46:38

So I was just watching this young lady who very well uh described how passing as a white uh gets you in the door, but then once people find out you're from a different religion or a different um you know community, then you become a target or a scapegoat. Uh have you experienced any of that, or any of your friends felt that uh having uh you know European features is is only good like when you enter the door. But once people find out about your background, your last name, then it becomes an impediment or a reason to be um like what's the word, um not trusted.

SPEAKER_00 47:24

Uh me personally, not really. Um, I mean, especially in the South though. Um there is that thing of you know, there's not a huge Jewish community necessarily. Atlanta and South Florida, well, but um yeah, you know, might look similar, but were not you. And there are some reactions to that. I haven't seen them as much or heard. I've heard of a few things here and there. But uh yeah, that is something I feel that's growing. Um and some people are getting more bolder. I don't know if you read that story about someone who turned down a job application or a job uh offer because the business owner was Jewish and was pretty uh blunt and rude about it. Um, you know, it's very emboldening in the last few years, which that you could I couldn't imagine that even ten years ago, hardly. At least not at this scale, but um maybe in an American context wider, because you know, there's there's a historical context, you know, anti-Irish, anti-Itan sentiments, and you know, anti-Jewish sentiments as well, uh, in a lot of the same periods in the late 1800s, early 1900s, maybe still to a point to this day, but um yeah, there is that sort of passing when it's okay, but not really being part of the club in some ways that that does exist still.

SPEAKER_03 48:56

For audience in in Nashville, where uh the the show was broadcast. Uh, were you in Nashville when the guy went into the Jewish community center wearing a fake beard in a in a Halloween costume trying to pretend to be a rabbi?

SPEAKER_00 49:11

Yeah, um about that. Uh yeah, I was here. Uh I've been here for a lot of incidents, like uh the conservative synagogue on West End, you know, getting a drive-by. Um there was a few bomb threats in the 90s to the same synagogue. I mean, most most holidays, there's a series of threats coming from either uh like Islamist types, not Muslims in general, but very specific organizations, whether they're real or just claiming to be to cause fear in white supremacist types. I mean, it's a pretty common um occurrence here to get those sort of threats or uh messages or emails, calls. Um yeah, I remember that it was a little uh scary. Uh I've been to that community center um more than a few times. Uh it's weird reading about something and it's you know here and it could happen here. Um it's very you know, it's hard to put into words. It's just like because you know you read about so many things in the world and then it happens here in you know a community that's usually relatively quiet.

SPEAKER_03 50:27

But so we left um Nat, Tennessee in 2016, and then six months later, that guy blows up uh in a van at uh BB King's, and I went there with my wife one time for a date, and it was so sad to hear that that area was um I don't think too many people were injured, but um just to know that you passed by there.

SPEAKER_00 50:53

Um kind of you mean the Christmas bombing, the whole ATT thing? Oh, yeah. Uh I I I woke me up. I wasn't all that far from it. Uh, I thought it was just like a transformer or lightning or thunder or something, but yeah, that's pretty well. They just recently fully reopened that street. Uh it's been closed down ever since, just a few months ago. I think they reopened it, but a lot of the damage is still there, and it looks almost like a war bone still to a bit to a point. But uh yeah, it's weird seeing that close to home.

SPEAKER_03 51:30

Well, 10 years later, there's still um you know leftovers from it. But um, well, we want to thank you for your time. I know that uh there's a lot of topics to discuss. Um we've had multiple Instagram uh influencers on the show that um they're giving their perspective on what's going on in the Middle East, what's happening in the current culture? Is there something as your final question that worries you about the where this country is heading, where the world is heading? Do you feel like people are less disconnected and and more uh reactive? Do you feel that people are more apathetic and and careless? Uh as a young person, what are the things that uh keep you up at night?

SPEAKER_00 52:17

Um to be honest, uh a lot of we've already we went we touched on it earlier, but a lot of the kind of crazier sides of um social media has made me more concerned than I have been in the last few years, especially the post-October 7th world. Uh, because I mean it's weird when you see things that are just, you know, objectively have nothing to do with uh the Arab-Israeli conflict and that are just you know, a lot of people aren't educated enough to actually know the difference between, hey, this is just actual regurgitated Nazi propaganda that has nothing to do with the Middle East, uh, then having an acquaintance or someone you're friends with on Facebook like it, and it's just like, oh, uh, or leave like certain types of comments. I don't like Dan Belzarian is running for office in Florida, which is bizarre beyond I can't even put into words how bizarre it is, but you know, him just saying the crazy stuff he does, uh, then having people you know like or agree with it is publicly is kind of concerning. And it's not so much about the more logical parts of society, but you know, there's just there's a lot of uh not so bright people, especially in this country, unfortunately, and uh a lot of them are very gullible to certain uh reactionary to certain things, and uh yeah, it does kind of bother me uh that you know some of this is you know seeped into circles of people I know, and uh you know, you just walk around like, hey, does this person even I don't know if you've noticed, but even in the gym world and fitness world, it's become um you know, being outright anti-Jewish has become almost a meme in some parts of the gym world. Like, I'm not sure if you're familiar with like Kenny K.O. who was a big gym influencer, he just straight up became a neo-Nazi. It's not even uh hyperbolic, like he just straight up sells like you know swastika t-shirts and stuff in his merch store. But there are a lot of people like kind of like him or adjacent to that in the gym world, and even going to the gym in the last like six months or so, it's kind of like got me looking around as like, is it you? Is it you? Is it you? And it's you know bizarre. I never thought I would see that.

SPEAKER_03 54:36

If you have a few more minutes, I wanted to to uh give your perspective. So uh I think one one of the reasons that the Nazis were so influential is because they're very good at creating a narrative of strength. And Nietzsche said that Christianity was silly because it was all about sacrifice and forgiveness, which he saw as like feminine, but the real uh wuzzas were the Jews because they gave us that mentality. So then he was he was able to say, Well, if you don't want to be like the Jews, be like us, and we're gonna be like the new Vikings and the new neo-pagans with tolerating some of the Christian stuff, but we're gonna transform Christianity into this higher, you know, Uber Mensch kind of mentality, and that's what these idiots are doing. If you look at uh Nick Fuentes and Balsarian and all those guys, uh even uh the guy that just got arrested, they have this like macho thing going, and it's all misogynist and hateful, and it's and it's building up this type of uh you know, we're not gonna let anybody mess with us. And and the weirdest thing is that some Jews have joined because they want to make it like the battle of civilizations, and that uh the only way that they can keep the the Muslims out or whatever is by being with the strong, and that's how the churches fell into the Nazi propaganda back in Germany. So uh, do you see some of the connections?

SPEAKER_00 56:12

I mean, yeah, I mean, a lot of it really is just straight-up regurgitated Nazi propaganda that you know most of us who paid attention in school, you know, got through in middle school, literally. I mean, I I'm convinced a lot of them can't read like past the middle school level. Like, I'm being completely serious, like they can't. The number of times I've seen someone post like a green screen overlay of something that directly disproves what they're talking about because they didn't read the entire page or read it in context is just mind-boggling. But um, yeah, it's it's a community thing. I I I mean, I think it does tie into directly what you said. I mean, it's wild how that's taken off in those a lot of those jam and fit fitness niches on the internet, but yes, it's alarming and it's it's an overly moderate world.

SPEAKER_03 57:04

And you know, we have Trump who's the grease pig that can get away with anything, and he can say all kinds of stupid stuff, and then he does Doug whistles uh for people who are supremacist or xenophobic, so he kind of emboldened them. Uh how do you feel about that?

SPEAKER_00 57:22

Well, uh, we're talking about Dan Belzari, and I feel like he's kind of Trump light because he's uh obviously much, much more stupid than Trump is, but at the same time, uh you know, he's the dumbest things, and there's still hundreds of thousands at least of people who agree with that, even though he's literally you know, I mean, the dude is literally an overgrown trust fund baby. I mean, all his dad was a huge scammer and criminal, and he basically hid money in plain sight by giving Dan you know hundreds of millions of dollars, and his entire career was pretending to be a poker player and paying women to hang out with him. Like he's nothing of value whatsoever, and still he has a following, and it's sort of the that same playbook. And uh I don't I don't know, he could get to that same point at this point. I thought it was kind of a joke, but I mean people thought the first Trump presidency was a joke until he actually won, or a lot of people did, and it's kind of the same playbook, it's you know the same same thing. And some of those candidates, you know, really scare me.

SPEAKER_03 58:27

Well, maybe next time we can have you on, we can go deeper into how I actually like when Nazis are honest and they're out in the open versus the ones that pretend not to be, like um uh Tucker Carlson and and Canada Zoans and stuff like that, where they use euphemisms for the Jews, even Alex Jones, the globalists, and they never come out straight and they just say what they really feel.

SPEAKER_00 58:52

Yeah, I've done a few videos on Canada. I'm quite familiar with that. But yeah, I agree.

SPEAKER_03 58:59

Okay, brother. Well, thank you so much for being on. Um, this will be playing sometime in October, November. We're recording for those um for the next season. But um, we appreciate you and uh hopefully we can stay in touch.

SPEAKER_00 59:11

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, all right, have a good one.

SPEAKER_03 59:14

You too.

SPEAKER_00 59:14

Thank you.