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NERMEEN SHAIKH: The death toll in Gaza has topped 31,300. At least five people were killed on Wednesday when Israel bombed an UNRWA aid distribution center in Rafah one of the U.N. agencys last remaining aid sites in Gaza. The head of UNRWA called the attack a, quote, blatant disregard to international humanitarian law.

This comes as much of Gaza is on the brink of famine as Israel continues to limit the amount of aid allowed into the besieged territory. At least 27 Palestinians have died of starvation, including 23 children.

Meanwhile, Al Jazeera is reporting six Palestinians were killed in Gaza City when Israeli forces opened fire again on crowds waiting for food aid. Over 80 people were injured.

In other news from Gaza, Politico reports the Biden administration has privately told Israel that the U.S. would support Israel attacking Rafah as long as it did not carry out a large-scale invasion.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we begin todays show looking at how the U.S. media is covering Israels assault on Gaza with the acclaimed TV broadcaster Mehdi Hasan. In January, he announced he was leaving MSNBC after his shows were canceled. Mehdi was one of the most prominent Muslim voices on American television. In October, the news outlet Semafor reported MSNBC had reduced the roles of Hasan and two other Muslim broadcasters on the network, Ayman Mohyeldin and Ali Velshi, following the October 7th Hamas attack on Israel. Then, in November, MSNBC announced it was canceling Hasans show shortly after he conducted this interview with Mark Regev, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This is an excerpt.

MEHDI HASAN: You say Hamass numbers I should point out,just pull up on the screen, in the last two major Gaza conflicts, 2009 and 2014, the Israeli militarys death tolls matched Hamass Health Ministry death tolls, so and the U.N., human rights groups all agree that those numbers are credible. But look, your wider point is true.

MARK REGEV: Can I challenge that?

MEHDI HASAN: We shouldnt

MARK REGEV: Will you allow me

MEHDI HASAN: We shouldnt

MARK REGEV: to challenge that, please? Can I just challenge that?

MEHDI HASAN: Briefly, if you can.

MARK REGEV: Id like to challenge that.

MEHDI HASAN: Briefly.

MARK REGEV: Ill try to be as brief as you are, sir. Those numbers are provided by Hamas. Theres no independent verification. And secondly, more importantly, you have no idea how many of them are Hamas terrorists, combatants, and how many are civilians. Hamas would have you believe that theyre all civilians, that theyre all children.

And here we have to say something that isnt said enough. Hamas, until now, were destroying their military machine, and with that, were eroding their control. But up until now, theyve been in control of the Gaza Strip. And as a result, they control all the images coming out of Gaza. Have you seen one picture of a single dead Hamas terrorist in the fighting in Gaza? Not one.

MEHDI HASAN: Yeah, but I have

MARK REGEV: Is that by accident, or is that

MEHDI HASAN: But I have, Mark

MARK REGEV: because Hamas can control Hamas can control the information coming out of Gaza?

MEHDI HASAN: Mark, but you asked me a question, and you said you would be brief. I havent. Youre right. But I have seen lots of children with my own lying eyes being pulled from the rubble. So

MARK REGEV: Now, because theyre the pictures Hamas wants you to see. Exactly my point, Mehdi.

MEHDI HASAN: And also because theyre dead, Mark. Also

MARK REGEV: Theyre the pictures Hamas wants no.

MEHDI HASAN: But theyre also people your government has killed. You accept that, right? Youve killed children? Or do you deny that?

MARK REGEV: No, I do not. I do not. I do not. First of all, you dont know how those people died, those children.

MEHDI HASAN: Oh wow.

AMY GOODMAN: Oh wow, Mehdi Hasan responded, interviewing Netanyahu adviser Mark Regev on MSNBC. Soon after, MSNBC announced that he was losing his shows. Since leaving the network, Mehdi Hasan has launched a new digital media company named Zeteo.

Mehdi, welcome back to Democracy Now! Its great to have you with us. I want to start with that interview you did with Regev. After, you lost your two shows, soon after. Do you think thats the reason those shows were canceled? Interviews like that?

MEHDI HASAN: You would have to ask MSNBC, Amy. And, Amy and Nermeen, thank you for having me on. Its great to be back here after a few years away. Look, the advantage of not being at MSNBC anymore is I get to come on shows like this and talk to you all. You should get someone from MSNBC on and ask them why they canceled the shows, because I cant answer that question. I wish I knew. But there we go.

The shows were canceled at the end of November. I quit at the beginning of January, because I wanted to have a platform of my own. I couldnt really spend 2024, one of the most important news years of our lives genocide in Gaza, fascism at the door here in America with elections couldnt really spend that being a guest anchor and a political analyst, which is what I was offered at MSNBC while I was staying there. I wanted to leave. I wanted to get my voice back. And thats why I launched my own media company, as you mentioned, called Zeteo, which weve done a soft launch on and were going to launch properly next month. But Im excited about all the opportunities ahead, the opportunity to do more interviews like the one I did with Mark Regev.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Mehdi, could you explain Zeteo? First of all, what does it mean? And what is the gap in the U.S. media landscape that you hope to fill? Youve been extremely critical of the U.S. medias coverage of Gaza, saying, quite correctly, that the coverage has not been as consistent or clear as the last time we saw an invasion of this kind, though far less brutal, which was the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

MEHDI HASAN: Yeah, its a great question. So, on Zeteo, its an ancient Greek word, going back to Socrates and Plato, which means to seek out, to search, to inquire for the truth. And at a time when we live in a, some would say, post-truth society or people on the right are attempting to turn it into a post-truth society I thought that was an important endeavor to embark upon as a journalist, to go back to our roots.

In terms of why I launch it and the media space, look, there is a gap in the market, first of all, on the left for a company like this one. Not many progressives have pulled off a for-profit, subscription-based business, media business. Weve seen it on the right, Nermeen, with, you know, Ben Shapiros Daily Wire and Bari Weisss The Free Press, and even Tucker Carlson has launched his own subscription-based platform since leaving Fox. And on the progressive space, we havent really done it. Now, of course, there are wonderful shows like Democracy Now! which are doing important, invaluable journalism on subjects like Gaza, on subjects like the climate. But across the media industry as a whole, sadly, in the U.S., the massive gap is there are not enough I dont know how to put it bluntly, truth tellers, people who are willing to say and when I say truth tellers, I dont just mean, you know, truth in a conventional sense of saying what is true and what is false; Im saying the language in which we talk about what is happening in the world today.

Too many of my colleagues in the media, unfortunately, hide behind lazy euphemisms, a both-sides journalism, the idea that you cant say Donald Trump is racist because you dont know whats in his heart; you cant say the Republican Party is going full fascist, even as they proclaim that they dont believe in democracy as we conventionally understand it; we cant say theres a genocide in Gaza, even though the International Court of Justice says such a thing is plausible. You know, we run away from very blunt terms which help us understand world. And I want to treat American consumers of news, global consumers of news its a global news organization which Im founding with some respect. Stop patronizing them. Tell them what is happening in the world, in a blunt way.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Mehdi, talk about this. I mean, in your criticism of the U.S. medias coverage, in particular, of Israels assault on Gaza I mean, of course, you have condemned what happened, the Hamas attack in Israel on October 7th. Youve also situated the attack in a broader historical frame, and youve received criticism for doing that. And in response, youve said, Context is not causation, and Context is not justification. So, could you explain why you think context, history, is so important, and the way in which this question is kind of elided in U.S. media coverage, not just of the Gaza crisis, but especially so now?

MEHDI HASAN: So, I did an interview with Piers Morgan this week. And if you watch Piers Morgans shows, he always asks his pro-Palestinian guests or anyone criticizing Israel, you know, Condemn what happened on October 7th. Its all about October the 7th. And what happened on October 7th was barbarism. It was a tragedy. It was a terror attack. Civilians were killed. War crimes were carried out. Hostages were taken. And we should condemn it. Of course we should, as human beings, if nothing else.

But the world did not begin on October the 7th. The idea that the entire Middle East conflict, Israel-Palestine, the occupation, apartheid, can be reduced to October 7th is madness. And its not just me saying that. You talk to, you know, leading Israeli peace campaigners, even some leading Israeli generals, people like Shlomo Brom, who talk about having to understand the root causes of a people under occupation fighting for freedom. And its absurd to me that in our media industry people should try and run away from context. My former colleagues Ali Velshi and Ayman Mohyeldin, who Amy mentioned in the introduction, they were on air on October the 7th as news was coming in of the attacks, and they provided context, because theyre two anchors who really understand that part of the world. Ayman Mohyeldin is perhaps the only U.S. anchor whos ever lived in Gaza. And they came under attack online from certain pro-Israel people for providing context. This idea that we should be embarrassed or ashamed or apologetic as journalists for providing context on one of the biggest stories in the world is madness. You cannot understand what is happening in the world unless we, unless you and I, unless journalists, broadcasters, are explaining to our viewers and our listeners and our readers why things are happening, where forces are coming from, why people are behaving the way they do. And I know America is a country of amnesiacs, but we cannot keep acting as if the world just began yesterday.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask you about a piece in The Intercept you also used to report for The Intercept the headline, In Internal Meeting, Christiane Amanpour Confronts CNN Brass About 'Double Standards' on Israel Coverage. Its a really interesting piece. They were confronting the executives, and One issue that came up, says The Intercept, repeatedly is CNNs longtime process for routing almost all coverage relating to Israel and Palestine through the networks Jerusalem bureau. As The Intercept reported in January, the protocol which has existed for years but was expanded and rebranded as SecondEyes last summer slows down reporting on Gaza and filters news about the war through journalists in Jerusalem who operate under the shadow of Israels military censor. And then it quotes Christiane Amanpour, identified in a recording of that meeting. She said, Youve heard from me, youve heard my, you know, real distress with SecondEyes changing copy, double standards, and all the rest, Amanpour said. The significance of this and what we see, Mehdi? You know, Im not talking Fox right now. On MSNBC

MEHDI HASAN: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: and on CNN, you rarely see Palestinians interviewed in extended discussions.

MEHDI HASAN: So, I think theres a few issues there, Amy. Number one, first of all, we should recognize that Christiane Amanpour has done some very excellent coverage of Gaza for CNN in this conflict. Shes had some very powerful interviews and very important guests on. So, credit to Christiane during this conflict. Number two

AMY GOODMAN: International

MEHDI HASAN: I think U.S. media organizations

AMY GOODMAN: I just wanted to say, particularly on CNN International, which is often not seen

MEHDI HASAN: Very good point.

JUAN GONZLEZ: on CNN domestic.

MEHDI HASAN: Very good very good point, Amy. Touch.

The second point, I would say, is U.S. media organizations, as a whole, are engaging in journalistic malpractice by not informing viewers, listeners, readers that a lot of their coverage out of Israel and the Occupied Territories is coming under the shadow of an Israeli military censor. How many Americans understand or even know about the Israeli military censor, about how much information is controlled? We barely understand that Western journalists are kept out of Gaza, or if when they go in, theyre embedded with Israeli military forces and limited to what they can say and do. So I think we should talk about that in a country which kind of prides itself on the First Amendment and free speech and a free press. We should understand the way in which information comes out of the Occupied Territories, in particular from Gaza.

And the third point, I would say, is, yeah, Palestinian voices not being on American television or in American print is one of the biggest problems when it comes to our coverage of this conflict. When we talk about why the media is structurally biased towards one party in this conflict, the more powerful party, the occupier, we have to remember that this is one of the reasons. Why are Palestinians dehumanized in our media? This is one of the reasons. We dont let people speak. Thats what leads to dehumanization. Thats what leads to bias.

We understand it at home when it comes to, for example, Black voices. In recent years, media organizations have tried to take steps to improve diversity on air, when it comes to on-air talent, when it comes to on-air guests, when it comes to balancing panels. We get that we need underrepresented communities to be able to speak. But when it comes to foreign conflicts, we still dont seem to have made that calculation.

There was a study done a few years ago of op-eds in The New York Times and The Washington Post on the subject of Israel-Palestine from 1970 to, I think it was, 2000-and-something, and it was like 2% of all op-eds in the Times and 1% in the Post were written by Palestinians, which is a shocking statistic. We deny these people a voice, and then we wonder why people dont sympathize with their plight or dont arent, you know, marching in the street well, they are marching in the streets but in bigger numbers. Why America is OK and kind of, you know, blind to the fact that we are complicit in a genocide of these people? Because we dont hear from these people.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Mehdi, I mean, explain why thats especially relevant in this instance, because journalists have not been permitted access to Gaza, so there is no reporting going on on the ground thats being shown here. I mean, dozens and dozens of journalists have signed a letter asking Israel and Egypt to allow journalists access into Gaza. So, if you could talk about that, why its especially important to hear from Palestinian voices here?

MEHDI HASAN: Well, for a start, Nermeen, much of the imagery we see on our screens here or in our newspapers are sanitized images. We dont see the full level of the destruction. And when we try and understand, well, why are young people why is there such a generational gap when it comes to the polling on Gaza, on ceasefire, why are young people so much more antiwar than their elder peers, part of the reason is that young people are on TikTok or Instagram and seeing a much less sanitized version of this war, of Israels bombardment. They are seeing babies being pulled from the rubble, limbs missing. They are seeing hospitals being you know, hospitals carrying out procedures without anesthetic. They are seeing just absolute brutality, the kind of stuff that U.N. humanitarian chiefs are saying we havent seen in this world for 50 years.

And thats the problem, right? If were sanitizing the coverage, Americans arent being told, really, arent being informed, are, again, missing context on what is happening on the ground. And, of course, Israel, by keeping Western journalists out, makes it even easier for those images to be blocked, and therefore you have Palestinian brave Palestinian journalists on the ground trying to film, trying to document their own genocide, streaming it to our phones. And weve seen over a hundred of them killed over the last five months. That is not an accident. That is not a coincidence. Israel wants to stamp out independent voices, stamp out any kind of coverage of its own genocidal behavior.

And therefore, again, youre able to have a debate in this country where the political debate is completely disconnected to the public debate, and the public debate is completely misinformed. Im amazed, Nermeen, when you look at the polling, that theres a majority in favor of a ceasefire, that half of all Democrats say this is a genocide. Americans are saying that to pollsters despite not even getting the full picture. Can you imagine what those numbers would look like if they actually saw what was happening on the ground?

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, I want to go to what is unfolding right now in Gaza. You said in a recent interview that in the past Israel was, quote, mowing the lawn, but now the Netanyahu governments intention is to erase the population of Gaza. So lets go to what Prime Minister Netanyahu said about the invasion of Rafah, saying it would go ahead and would last weeks, not months. He was speaking to Politico on Sunday.

PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: Were not going to leave them. You know, I have a red line. You know what the red line is? That October 7th doesnt happen again, never happens again. And to do that, we have to complete the destruction of the Hamas terrorist army. Were very close to victory. Its close at hand. Weve destroyed three-quarters of Hamas fighting terrorist battalions, and were close to finishing the last part in Rafah, and were not going to give it up. Once we begin the intense action of eradicating the Hamas terrorist battalions in Rafah, its a matter of weeks and not months.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Mehdi, your response to what Netanyahu said and what the Israelis have proposed as a safe place for Gazans to go namely, humanitarian islands?

MEHDI HASAN: So, number one, when you hear Netanyahu speak, Nermeen, doesnt it remind you of George Bush in kind of 2002, 2003? Its very you know, invoking 9/11 to justify every atrocity, claiming that youre trying to protect the country, when you, yourself, your idiocy and your incompetency, is what led to the attacks. You know, George Bush was unable to prevent 9/11, and then used 9/11 to justify every atrocity, even though his incompetence helped allow 9/11 to happen. And I feel the same way: Netanyahu allowed the worst terror attack, the worst massacre in Israel to happen on his watch. Many of his own, you know, generals, many of his own people blame him for this. And so, its rich to hear him saying, My aim is to stop this from happening again. Well, you couldnt stop it from happening the first time, and now youre killing innocent Palestinians under the pretense that this is national security.

Number two, again George Bush-like, claiming that the war is nearly done, mission is nearly accomplished, thats nonsense. No serious observer believes that Hamas is finished or that Israel has won some total victory. A member of Netanyahus own war cabinet said recently, Anyone who says you can absolutely defeat Hamas is telling tall tales, is lying. That was a colleague of Netanyahus, in government, who said that.

And number three, the red line on Rafah that Biden suppposedly set down and that Netanyahu is now mocking, saying, My own red line is to do the opposite, what on Earth is Joe Biden doing in allowing Benjamin Netanyahu to humiliate him in this way with this invasion of Rafah, even after he said he opposes it? I mean, its one thing to leak stuff

AMY GOODMAN: Mehdi

MEHDI HASAN: over a few months

AMY GOODMAN: lets go to Biden speaking on MSNBC. Hes being interviewed by your former colleague Jonathan Capehart, as he was being questioned about Benjamin Netanyahu and saying hes hurting Israel more than helping Israel.

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: He has a right to defend Israel, a right to continue to pursue Hamas. But he must, he must, he must pay more attention to the innocent lives being lost as a consequence of the actions taken. Hes hurting in my view, hes hurting Israel more than helping Israel by making the rest of the world its contrary to what Israel stands for. And I think its a big mistake. So I want to see a ceasefire.

AMY GOODMAN: And he talked about a, well, kind of a red line. If you can address what Biden is saying and what he proposed in the State of the Union, this pier, to get more aid in, and also the dropping the airdropping of food, which recently killed five Palestinians because it crushed them to death, and the humanitarian groups, United Nations saying these airdrops, the pier come nowhere near being able to provide the aid thats needed, at the same time, and the reason theyre doing all of this, is because Israel is using U.S. bombs and artillery to attack the Palestinians and these aid trucks?

MEHDI HASAN: Yeah, its just so bizarre, the idea that you could drop bombs, on the one hand, and then drop aid, on the other, and youre paying for both, and then your aid ends up killing people, too. Its like some kind of dark Onion headline. Its just beyond parody. Its beyond belief.

And as for the pier, as you say, it does not come anywhere near to adequately addressing the needs of the Palestinian people, in terms of the sheer scale of the suffering, half a million people on the brink of famine, over a million people displaced. Four out of five of the hungriest people in the world, according to the World Food Programme, are in Gaza right now. The idea that this pier would, A, address the scale of the suffering, and, B, in time I mean, its going to take time to do this. What happens to the Palestinians who literally starve to death, including children, while this pier is being built? Finally, I would say, theres reporting in the Israeli press, Amy, that Ive seen that suggests that the pier idea comes from Netanyahu, that the Israeli government are totally fine with this pier, because it allows them still to control land and air access into Gaza, which is what theyve always controlled and which in this war theyve monopolized.

The idea that the United States of America, the worlds only superpower, cannot tell its ally, You know what? Were going to put aid into Gaza because we want to, and youre not going to stop us, especially since were the ones arming you, is bizarre. Its something I think Biden will never be able to get past or live down. Its a stain on his record, on Americas conscience. The idea that were arming a country thats engaged in a plausible genocide, to quote the ICJ, is bad enough. That we cant even get our own aid in, while theyre bombing with our bombs, is just madness. And by the way, its also illegal. Under U.S. law, you cannot provide weaponry to a country which is blocking U.S. aid. And by the way, its not me saying theyre blocking U.S. aid. U.S. government officials have said, Yes, the Israeli government blocked us from sending flour in, for example.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Mehdi, lets go to the regional response to this assault on Gaza thats been unfolding with the kind of violence and tens of thousands of deaths of Palestinians, as weve reported. Now, what has how has the Arab and Muslim world responded to whats going on? Egypt, of course, has repeatedly said that it does not want displaced Palestinians crossing its border. The most powerful Muslim countries, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the Emirates, if you can talk about how theyve responded? And then the Axis the so-called Axis of Resistance Houthis, Hezbollah, etc. how they have been trying to disrupt this war, or at least make the backers of Israel pay a price for it?

MEHDI HASAN: So, I hear people saying, Oh, were disappointed in the response from the Arab countries. The problem with the word disappointment is it implies you had any expectations to begin with. I certainly didnt. Arab countries have never had the Palestinians backs. The Arab quote-unquote, Arab street has always been very pro-Palestinian. But the autocratic, the despotic, the dictatorial rulers of much of the Arab world have never really had the interests of the Palestinian people at their heart, going back right to 1948, when, you know, Arab countries attacked Israel to push it into the sea, but, actually, as we know from historians like Avi Shlaim, were not doing that at all, and that some of them, like Jordan, had done deals with Israel behind the scenes. So, look, Arab countries have never really prioritized the Palestinian people or their needs or their freedom. And so, when you see some of these statements that come out of the Arab world at times like this, you know, you have to take them with a shovel of salt, not just a grain.

Also, I would point out the hypocrisy here on all sides in the region. You have countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which were involved in a brutal assault on Yemen for many years, carried out very similar acts to Israel in Gaza in terms of blockades, starvation, malnourishment of the Yemeni children, in terms of bombing of refugee camps and hospitals and kids and school buses. That all happened in Yemen. Arab countries did that, lets just be clear about that, things that they criticize Israel for doing now. And, of course, Iran, which sets itself up as a champion of the Palestinan people, when Bashar al-Assad was killing many of his own people, including Palestinian refugees, in places like the al-Yarmouk refugee camp, Iran and Russia, by the way, were both perfectly happy to help arm and support Assad as he did that. So, you know, spare me some of the grandiose statements from Middle East countries, from Arab nations to Iran, on all of it. Theres a lot of hypocrisy to go around.

Very few countries in the world, especially in that region, actually have Palestinian interests at heart. If they did, we would have a very different geopolitical scene. There is reporting, Nermeen, that a lot of these governments, like Saudi Arabia, privately are telling Israel, Finish the job. Get rid of them. We dont like Hamas, either. Get rid of them, and that Saudis actually want to do a deal with Israel once this war is over, just as they were on course to do, apparently, according to the Biden administration. We know that other Arab countries already signed the, quote-unquote, Abraham Accords with Israel on Trumps watch.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about the number of dead Palestinian journalists and also the new U.N. investigation that just accused Israel of breaking international law over the killing of the Reuters video journalist Issam Abdallah in southern Lebanon. On October 13th, an Israeli tank opened fire on him and a group of other journalists. He had just set up a live stream on the border in southern Lebanon, so that all his colleagues at Reuters and others saw him blown up. The report stating, quote, The firing at civilians, in this instance clearly identifiable journalists, constitutes a violation of international law. And its not just Issam in southern Lebanon. Well over a hundred Palestinian journalists in Gaza have died. Weve never seen anything like the concentration of numbers of journalists killed in any other conflict or conflicts combined recently. Can you talk about the lack of outrage of other major news organizations and what Israel is doing here? Do you think theyre being directly targeted, one after another, wearing those well-known press flak jackets? It looks like we just lost audio to Mehdi Hasan.

MEHDI HASAN: Amy, I can I can hear you, Amy, very faintly.

AMY GOODMAN: Oh, OK. So

MEHDI HASAN: Im going to answer your question, if you can still hear me.

AMY GOODMAN: Great. We can hear you perfectly.

MEHDI HASAN: So, youre very faint to me. So, while I speak, if someone want to fix the volume in my ear. Let me answer your question about journalists.

It is an absolute tragedy and a scandal, what has happened to journalists in Gaza, that we have seen so many deaths in Gaza. And the real scandal, Amy, is that Western media, a lot of my colleagues here in the U.S. media, have not sounded the alarm, have not called out Israel for what its done. Its outrageous that so many of our fellow colleagues can be killed in Gaza while reporting, while at home, losing family members, and yet theres not a huge global outcry. When Wael al-Dahdouh, who we just saw on the screen, from Al Jazeera, loses his immediate family members and carries on reporting for Al Jazeera Arabic, why is he not on every front page in the world? Why is he not a hero? Why is he not sitting down with Oprah Winfrey? I feel like, you know, when Evan Gershkovich from The Wall Street Journal is wrongly imprisoned in Russia, we all campaign for Evan to be released. When Ukrainian journalists are killed, we all speak out and are angry about it. But when Palestinian journalists are killed on a level weve never seen before, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, where is the outcry here in the West over the killing of them? We claim to care about a free press. We claim to oppose countries that crack down on a free press, on journalism. We say journalism is not a crime. But then I dont hear the outrage from my colleagues here at this barbarism in Gaza, where journalists are being killed in record numbers.

The rest is here:
Mehdi Hasan on Genocide in Gaza, the Silencing of Palestinian Voices in U.S. Media & Why He Left MSNBC - Democracy Now!

Donald Trump exposed his profound condescension and blatant manipulation with the notorious 2016 declaration, I love the poorly educated.Election results and polling dataconsistently show that the most poorly-educated Americans at least, those who are white love him back with almost religious reverence, treating him as guru, despot and pop-culture idol all in one. While it is easy to chortle at the hillbilly-Deadhead vibe surrounding Trump rallies, it is more important to consider how the better-educated are weakening their country by rejecting the tools necessary to maintain the structure of liberal democracy.

Decades ago, universities across the country began making cuts to the liberal arts. The humanities, fine arts and social sciences are endangered everywhere, as evident by the staggering variety of state colleges and private universities no longer invested in their survival. In 2023,West Virginia Universityeliminated its world languages department, reduced its education department by a third and slashed its programs in art history, music, architecture and natural resource management. In the same year,Lasell University, a small private school in Massachusetts, killed five majors, including English and history. InOhio, numerous of the state's best-known institutions of learning have announced cuts to the liberal arts, including Kent State, the University of Toledo, Miami University, Youngstown State, Baldwin Wallace University and Marietta College.

But the academic carnage in the Buckeye State is hardly an outlier. A quick Google search reveals intellectual wreckage piling up across the nation. The University of New Hampshire permanently closed its art museum, the University of Tulsa eliminated degrees in history, and the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin system has instructed all 25 of its campuses which enroll more than 160,000 students every year to prepare for reductions in liberal arts programs.

My alma mater,Valparaiso University, is now preparing to join in the self-destruction. A Lutheran liberal arts college on the shores of Lake Michigan, 50 miles or so southeast of Chicago, Valparaiso recently announced that it is considering the discontinuation of 28 programs, including philosophy, public health, theology and the graduate program in English Studies and Communication, where I earned a master's degree. When I graduated in 2010, Valparaiso had a regional reputation as a small, private institution with excellent educational standards, bolstered by an emphasis on the arts and humanities.

The English Studies and Communication program was a hybrid, requiring study of creative writing, journalism, English literature and mass communication theory. Professors collaborated with the directors of the campus art museum and instructors in the social sciences and business departments, to demonstrate that knowledge is impossible to segregate or compartmentalize. A truly educated person should be adept at making connections across disciplines, cultures and different sectors of society.

Time and again, college and university leaders across the country have cited a business-model imperative for transforming their institutions into glorified vocational schools.

Gore Vidal defined an intellectual as someone who can deal with abstractions. Valparaiso, at its best, did exactly that equipping its graduates with an ability to handle abstractions, while showing that abstractions arent all that abstract. What might seem abstract in the academic context, as recent American history ought to have taught us, may soon transform into the concrete, creating situations of urgent social consequence. Arguments about democracy, disinformation, the public good and moral philosophy are inseparable from such issues as climate change, gun violence, the effects of new communication technology and the struggle to defeat autocracy.

In the 14 years since my graduation, Valparaiso has suffered from poor leadership that has caused consistent damage to its reputation. In 2020, it shut down its law school after years of lowering its standards to attract enough more students. Last year, the university's current president, Jos Padilla, launched a bizarre crusade to fund the renovation of a first-year dormitory by selling off a Georgia OKeeffe painting, along with other signature works of art from the campus museum. Despite widespread opposition from students and faculty, and condemnation from the American Alliance of Museums, Padilla seems determined to proceed with this philistine maneuver (I wrote about the proposed sale for theNew Republic.)

The potential gutting of Valparaiso's liberal arts programs is one small part of a much larger social and cultural trend of viewing education as nothing more than a business proposition. AsMatthew Becker, a theology professor at Valparaiso, wrote, this decision, "if implemented, will completely dismantle the stated mission of the university":

Valpo will no longer be "grounded in the Lutheran tradition of scholarship, freedom, and faith," nor will it really be preparing students "to serve in both church and society." With the elimination of foreign languages, music, the theology programs, and other programs in the humanities, Valpo will no longer be a liberal arts university.

My nephew, Justin McClain, a recent graduate of the endangered public health program, stated the obvious: On the heels of a pandemic that resulted in millions of lives lost and trillions in economic losses educational institutions should be embracing students interested in joining a field that has proved far too valuable to the functioning of society at large yet remains chronically understaffed.

Becker identified Valpo's plan of self-destruction as completely market-driven, and that's a critical point. Padilla and other university leaders have offered exclusively economic reasons to explain their agenda.

Time and again, college and university leaders across the country have cited financial justification and a business-model imperative for transforming their institutions into glorified vocational schools. And this wrecking-ball campaign runs in parallel with an ideologically motivated war on learning.

Right-wing governors and legislatures in many states, including Florida, Texas and Tennessee, have attempted to strip-mine universities, often by eliminating diversity, equity and Inclusion programs, prohibiting instruction in topics related to race and gender, and eventhreatening to deny loansto students who want to major in an impractical discipline.

This anti-intellectual campaign of destruction against higher education takes place alongsidebook-ban campaigns in many of the same states, where astroturf organizations funded by right-wing groups have worked to remove books from school curricula and libraries that focus on issues of racial justice or LGBTQ equality.

It may be worth noting that many of those who claim to hate education are blatant hypocrites. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis holds a bachelors degree in history from Yale and a law degree from Harvard. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, a defender of book bans who routinely bashes institutions of learning, also has a Harvard Law degree, as well as a B.A. in public policy from Princeton. Even Donald Trump despite his incoherent rambling and his impressive lack of knowledge on almost every conceivable topic doesn't technically qualify as poorly educated. Although exactly how and why Trump was admitted to the University of Pennsylvania in the first place remains unclear, he holds a B.S. in real estate from Penn's Wharton School.

Many of those who claim to hate education are blatant hypocrites. Ron DeSantis holds a history degree from Yale and a law degree from Harvard. Ted Cruz also has a Harvard Law degree, as well as a B.A. from Princeton.

For all their phony anti-educational posturing, Republican officials and pundits have succeeded in selling ignorance as virtuous to their voters and viewers. A2022 Pew Researchsurvey found that 76 percent of Republicans now believe that colleges affect the country negatively, while 76 percent of Democrats said they believe colleges affect the country positively.

A good rule to follow is never to trust highly educated people who tell you that education is a waste of time. A good question to ask, after that, is why they want so many people to remain ignorant.

If democracy is to function as intended, it demands a well-informed and reasonably sophisticated citizenry. Without an intelligent electorate, democratic governance is under threat from despots and demagogues who can acquire power by appealing to base emotions and instincts. Thomas Jefferson called information the currency of democracy. America is now at risk of bankruptcy.

Jefferson was also one of the founders of the University of Virginia, where organized a committee to develop aholistic program of learningthat, in todays ruthless, profit-obsessed climate, would not survive at Valparaiso, at West Virginia University or at countless other schools. Its program was to include ancient and modern languages, mathematics, physio-mathematics, physics, botany and zoology, anatomy and medicine, government and political economy and history, municipal law, and Ideology (rhetoric, ethics, belles lettres, fine arts).

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George Washington advocated for a national university that would teach the arts and natural sciences, along with literature, rhetoric and criticism. But the father of our country might now have pariah status on most campuses perhaps as an adjunct instructor with no health benefits, begging for a summer course.

In an age of extreme partisan rancor, there is dispiriting bipartisan unity on one point: Most Americans are increasingly hostile to the liberal arts. While only Republicans are overtly hateful of higher education as a whole, many students and administrators no longer claim to see the value in programs that, according to their standards, lack immediate and practical application to the job market. Recent data indicate that only10.2 percent of college studentsmajor in any humanities discipline, and barely over 1 percentmajor in history or political science.

High schools across the country, meanwhile, have been cutting courses incivics, the social sciences, humanities andfine artsfor decades.

Divorcing education from philosophical, political and social ambitions creates a culture in which people view public-health measures during a pandemic as stepping stones to the gulag.

Richard Hofstadter, one of the premier historians and public intellectuals of the 20th century, explained in his 1963 classic, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, that most Americans view intelligence as merely functional. Brainpower, in this view, should serve some practical and tangible purpose, typically one that can be measured in dollars and cents. Abstractions, to return to Gore Vidals remark, are seen as irrelevant distractions from learning the skills that can earn a bigger paycheck.

One of the numerous things people seem to have forgotten amid this rat-race competition is the question of how to maintain a democratic system of governance. Representative government is complicated, and often moves slowly. It requires sustained wrestling with the complex and thorny questions of ethics, personal freedom versus social responsibility, and balancing the progress driven by new knowledge and new ideas with the benefits of existing norms and traditions.

That kind of intellectual labor is taxing enough for those with a decent formal education, but with no training in the study of government, culture or mass communication, Americans are increasingly likely to fall for bad arguments and stupid ideas. Divorcing education from philosophical, political and social ambitions creates a culture in which people view public-health measures during a pandemic as stepping stones to the gulag, convince themselves that a racist con man most famous for hosting a game show could not possibly have lost a free and fair election, or believe that information about transgender people is more dangerous than assault rifles.

Democratic voters hope as should everyone else with a conscience that Joe Biden can overcome his poor approval ratings and doubts about his age by appealing to Americans' belief in democracy. He will have to consistently remind the electorate that his opponent presents an unprecedented threat to the system that millions of voters take for granted. For many Americans, however, democracy is a hazy concept at best. Survey results consistently show that large proportions of the American public don't understand theBill of Rights, cannot name thethree branches of governmentand are unfamiliar with the most important and basic facts of U.S. history.

Tech journalist Kara Swisher, author of the new history and memoir Burn Book, recently observed that leading figures in Silicon Valley, including Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, have "no sense of history."If so, they are little different from the average citizen in that regard, yet they are routinely heralded as geniuses. It is hardly surprising that theyve allowed hate speech, deceitful propaganda and other harmful material to proliferate on their platforms.

A society actually grounded in the liberal arts might see Zuckerberg and Musk as allegorical characters, perhaps as archetypal warnings against the reckless pursuit of wealth and the refusal to balance technical wizardry with more mature forms of insight and wisdom. But that is not our society. The outsized influence of Zuckerberg and Musk not to mention Donald Trump makes clear that we are at risk of handing our country over to cynical, power-mad morons who are, at best, indifferent to hate, poverty and violence. A little education might help.

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from David Masciotra on America

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Ignorance and democracy: Capitalism's long war against higher education - Salon

For Germany a country that knows something about how extremists can hijack a government the surging popularity of the far right has forced an awkward question.

How far should a democracy go in restricting a party that many believe is bent on undermining it?

It is a quandary that politicians and legal experts are grappling with across the country as support surges for Alternative for Germany, a far-right party whose backing now outstrips each of the three parties in the governing coalition.

Not only is the AfD the most popular party in three states holding elections this year, it is polling nationwide as high as 20 percent. German politicians have become increasingly alarmed that someday the party could wield influence in the federal government. Its popularity has grown despite the fact that the domestic intelligence services announced they are investigating the party as a suspected threat to democracy.

Germans have already had a front-row seat to the rise of so-called illiberal democrats in Poland and Hungary who used their power to stack courts with pliant judges and silence independent media. History hangs heavy over Germany as well the Nazis used elections to seize the levers of the state and shape an authoritarian system.

Today, German lawmakers are rewriting bylaws and pushing for constitutional amendments to ensure courts and state parliaments can provide checks against a future, more powerful AfD. Some have even launched a campaign to ban the AfD altogether.

But every remedy holds its own dangers, leaving German politicians threading a course between safeguarding their democracy and the possibility of unwittingly providing the AfD with tools it could someday use to hobble it.

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Germany Looks to Stop the Far Right From Assuming Power - The New York Times

Donald Trump entertained Hungarian prime minister (possibly for life) Viktor Orbn at Mar-a-Lago on Friday and lavished him with the praise he reserves for the worlds great dictators. He says, This is the way its going to be, and thats the end of it. Right? Hes the boss. No, hes a great leader, gushed Trump.

Orbn is a slightly tricky kind of leader to categorize. Hes not a dictator, exactly. Whats hes done is rig the rules of the game to a point where its almost impossible for his party to lose. His methods include stacking the judiciary and important government agencies with loyal cronies and aggressive gerrymandering, but his most important maneuvers have entailed gaining almost complete control over the Hungarian media ecosystem.

Orban leaned on the owners of Hungarys main media organs to fall in line or sell to his allies, so that all of them now follow his party line in the same way Fox News advocates for Republican Party interests. Andrew Kramer, the New York Times Budapest bureau chief, calls Orbns regime a propaganda state.

One of the most underappreciated developments in Trumps first term was an effort to employ the exact same model in the U.S. In an effort to pressure Jeff Bezos to make the Washington Post more friendly, Trump directed the Pentagon to deny a lucrative contract to Amazon, which it did. He also threatened AT&T both publicly and by using the Justice Department to block a proposed merger to pressure CNN.

Neither gambit succeeded at producing pliant coverage. But his pressure campaign failed in part because his targets expected Trump to be a fleeting phenomenon who would depart the scene after one term, after which the Republican Party would return to normal. (It is difficult to remember now, but Trumps miserable approval ratings were widely seen as proof he would lose decisively.) The safest move for media barons targeted by Trump was to wait him out. That calculation might look very different in a second Trump term.

This is especially so because the Republican Party has been transformed in Trumps image. His crude efforts to put the media under his thumb got little pushback and none whatsoever from within the party. If you listen to Trumps Republican critics enumerate his flaws, they will cite January 6, perhaps scold him for his trade policies or lack of message discipline, but never reprimand him for using state power to lean on the media.

Thats not because they approve of the tactic in the abstract. If President Biden did the same thing to Fox News that Trump did to CNN and the Washington Post, impeachment would be the mildest GOP response. There would be mobs in the streets. But Republicans were willing to look the other way when Trump used state power as a crude bludgeon against the media.

The discourse around democracy suffers from a tendency to frame the question in binary terms. Will Trump end American democracy? Possibly and the risk of him doing so alone justifies supporting his opponent. But the more likely scenario is not that Trump will destroy democracy completely but that he will further weaken it. The full descent to Putins Russia begins with a stop at Orbns Hungary. And Trump could not be more clear that this is where he intends to lead us.

Irregular musings from the center left.

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Trump Tried Orbn's Most Effective Weapon Against Democracy - New York Magazine

So remarkable is the fine print in Canadas new law that Stalin and Mao would have been proud sponsors of such a law.

The annual Ides of March lamentation about the death of democracy in India has resumed in earnest. The reason: Sweden-based think-tank V-Dem has released its latest annual report n freedom and democracy around the world. The cover title is quite fancy: Democracy Report 2024: Democracy Losing & Winning At The Ballot. The authors were not surprised in the least when V-Dem reiterated its stance that India has descended almost irretrievably to become an electoral autocracy. In late 2021, the people who wrote the then annual report had already passed judgement that the Election Commission of India is no longer an independent body and has been subverted by the Narendra Modi regime. The authors wouldnt waste anybodys time by quoting chapter and verse the blithering nonsense written in the latest report. Some gems are enough. For instance, analysing South Asia, the experts at V-Dem write: The level of democracy enjoyed by the average human being in the region is now down to levels last seen in 1975almost half a century ago. That was when the Vietnam War ended and when Indira Gandhi declared a state of Emergency in India. India, with 1.4 billion citizens, it seems, is primarily responsible for the decline in democracy witnessed in South and Central Asia.

Quite predictably, the legions of critics whose life in India is dedicated to demonising Narendra Modi, have found yet another weapon to lash out at him and his government. According to them, Modi has subverted every democratic institution including the Election Commission and even the Supreme Court ever since he became Prime Minister in 2014. In fact, they insist he has been displaying authoritarian and fascist traits ever since he became the Chief Minister of Gujarat. Once again, the authors wont waste time analysing this irrational hatred towards a political leader. We are more interested in the astonishing claim made by V-Dem, and vociferously supported by its fans in India that democracy in Canada is genuinely liberal and far superior to democracy in India. Going back to actual facts, that is such a brazen lie that only liberals think they can hoodwink people by parroting it ad nauseam.

For those not following the state of democracy in Canada, its Parliament is enacting a new law that is called the Online Harms Bill or Bill B-63. Ostensibly, the new law is meant to protect children and other vulnerable groups from online predators. But so remarkable is the fine print in the new law that Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong would have been proud sponsors of such a law in the contemporary world. Under this law, hate speech has become a criminal offence and can even lead to a life sentence. How is hate speech defined? It is content that expresses detestation or vilification of an individual or a group of individuals based on their race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, family status, genetic characteristics and disability. Judges in Canada will have the discretion to determine if an individual has committed a criminal offence by indulging in this kind of online hate. Anyone can file a complaint against any fellow Canadian citizen under this law and apart from jail, judges will have the discretion to impose a penalty ranging from $5,000 to $50,000 that will be handed over to the complainant. There is no provision to punish the complainant even if she has levelled blatantly false accusations of online hate. A new Canada Human Rights Tribunal is being set up to receive such complaints and process them, even in secret and without knowledge of the accused if the complainant wishes to remain anonymous.

What would happen if such a law were passed by Indian Parliament under a fascist Narendra Modi? Some examples will suffice. DMK leaders Udhayanidhi Stalin and A. Raja could potentially face life in prison for hate against Sanatana Dharma. Lalu Prasad Yadav too could be convicted under this law for mocking and insulting the marital status of Narendra Modi. Rahul Gandhi too would be in serious trouble for asking why most people with the Modi surname are thieves. On can go on and on. The new Canadian law has a provision which is even more frighteningly Orwellian and dystopian. A person can be punished in advance by a judge if there is an apprehension that the accused might commit the crime of online hate at a future date. A potential victim can approach the court under this law and the potential criminal can be sentenced to house arrest and wearing electronic monitoring devices at all times. Failure to comply will result in a one-year jail term.

Now, if you happen to have even a modicum of common sense, how is this new Canadian law not a direct and murderous assault on free speech, civil liberty and democracy? The mainstream media in Canada is so beholden to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his gang of liberals that they are hailing it as a momentous victory for human rights and democracy. The critics who are slamming this law as an affront to democracy have been banished from mainstream media platforms. They use social media platforms to highlight their concerns. But then, under the new law, some liberal Canadian judge can send the dissenters to jail for online hate. Can you call any country that has a draconian law like this a democracy by any yardstick? Yet, you have experts at think-tanks like V-Dem gushing about the success of liberal democracy in Canada, while they moan about the descent of a once liberal India into an electoral autocracy. Of course, there are thousands of secular liberals in India who unhesitatingly share the worldview of V-Dem. What can one say about these gymnastics over free speech and democracy?

The authors would conclude by highlighting another stupendous act of double standards. When Indian farmers protested against the three farm reform laws and effectively blockaded the national capital region for almost a year, causing untold misery to hundreds of thousands of commuters, Justin Trudeau publicly supported them and warned India against curbing the rights of farmers to protest. What happened at the end? The farm reform laws were withdrawn and even those arrested for wanton acts of violence had their cases withdrawn. Trudeau became a completely different animal when truckers in Canada launched protests against strict and rigid restrictions imposed on movements because of the Covid pandemic. They started a Freedom Convoy. Not only were the protestors arrested under national security laws but they were de facto branded as terrorists. Even their bank accounts were frozen and confiscated.

But who is the fascist who suppresses free speech and protests? Modi, of course. And who is the living epitome of liberal free speech? Why, Trudeau of course.

Yashwant Deshmukh is Founder & Editor in Chief of CVoter Foundation and Sutanu Guru is Executive Director.

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You really think democracy is safer in Canada than in India? - The Sunday Guardian