Juno News - November 04, 2023


Why do leftists support Hamas？ (ft. Andy Ngo)


Episode Stats

Length

7 minutes

Words per Minute

135.68314

Word Count

1,006

Sentence Count

40

Hate Speech Sentences

1


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 On the weekend, 100,000 people took to the streets of the city I'm in right now, 100,000
00:00:15.020 to get, I mean, we thought the Freedom Convoy was great because of how many people it brought
00:00:18.740 out, but 100,000 people on the streets, many of whom were very explicitly supportive of
00:00:26.520 violence against Jews and violence against Israelis.
00:00:30.320 I'm not going to say every one of the 100,000 was, but enough were that it should give a
00:00:34.140 lot of cause for concern.
00:00:36.440 So you can make an argument that is a logical argument, even if you disagree with it, that
00:00:41.780 people who are of Muslim background, Arab background would have a reason to align with the Palestinian
00:00:48.680 cause.
00:00:50.040 Why do people on the left outside of that?
00:00:53.320 Why do people on the so-called queer left, who would have no home in Gaza that would
00:00:59.620 be particularly comfortable with them, do that as well?
00:01:01.760 I wanted to talk about that and this idea of coalitions, which are really at the core of
00:01:06.000 why wokeness has been so powerful.
00:01:08.060 And I did so with Andy Ngo, who is a fantastic contributor.
00:01:12.300 He is a great exposer of the far left and has risked his own safety on a number of occasions
00:01:18.800 to do what he does.
00:01:20.560 And it was interesting that his take on that very dynamic.
00:01:24.040 We've seen, obviously, pro-Hamas or pro-Gaza protesters who are Muslim, in which I think
00:01:31.240 we can understand a little bit about where they're coming at it.
00:01:33.660 But we've also seen supporting Gaza and Hamas, people on the far left that are in these very
00:01:38.880 weird coalitions, people that wouldn't really get along very well in Gaza.
00:01:42.700 And I'm wondering, with your experience covering far left protests, how these people rationalize
00:01:47.920 support for a society that doesn't really have a place for them in it?
00:01:51.040 I think the narrative that the public has been sold on the very complicated conflict involving
00:02:01.740 Israel and various Palestinian militant factions is that it's about oppressor versus oppressed,
00:02:10.120 which is this cliche that you hear brought out a lot.
00:02:13.920 But really, that's simply sort of the way it's framed.
00:02:18.580 So to a leftist mindset, they want to be on the cause of the oppressed.
00:02:28.240 But there's also been quite, I mean, it's not quite as simple as that.
00:02:33.600 There's a long, we've had years now of radical leftist ideologues, many of them academics,
00:02:43.220 pulling in the Palestinian-Israel conflict, weaving it into the decolonization theory and
00:02:55.500 ideology, I would say.
00:02:57.140 And that, we're also now post three years after George, more than three years after George
00:03:07.500 Floyd, in America, you have a generation of young people who were radicalized.
00:03:17.560 And now they've been mobilized again to sort of be the foot soldiers.
00:03:21.080 The ideologies, the thread that runs through BLM, Antifa, decolonization, critical race theory,
00:03:31.380 Israel hatred, it's a very, it's a thread of bloodlust.
00:03:38.340 The ideologies for each, these different things are quite different.
00:03:41.980 I mean, you have to wonder, what does Palestinian nationalism and radical Islamic politics have
00:03:52.660 to do with Antifa or BLM?
00:03:55.060 Well, really very little other than the fact that they would like to see America suffer,
00:04:01.560 and its friends and allies internationally suffer as well.
00:04:04.980 Do these people understand or have an ability to rationalize this internal cognitive dissonance
00:04:12.900 if pressed?
00:04:14.260 Or is it that they genuinely are never pressed, and they do not give it any intellectual weight
00:04:18.660 whatsoever about how they can support these two things that are contradictory or that have
00:04:23.400 nothing to do with each other?
00:04:24.380 They're, they're not pressed in their circles, for one.
00:04:28.440 So I think they generally don't have to really think about it.
00:04:34.240 Or, they've been radicalized to become the faithful and the devout, that it doesn't matter
00:04:44.440 actually what countering evidence you present to them, they're able to reject it.
00:04:48.900 What is, I guess, the logical outcome of this?
00:04:54.040 I mean, a few weeks ago, we had in Canada, a lot of Muslims and evangelicals linking arms,
00:04:59.240 supporting parental rights, speaking up against transgender ideology.
00:05:02.180 Now, you know, two groups that are on this different side on Israel-Palestine.
00:05:07.300 I mean, are we just going to see more and more of those fractures?
00:05:10.160 Or do you think the left will just keep getting larger and larger as that sort of amorphous
00:05:14.420 protest blob that I know you've seen?
00:05:18.900 Well, what's been happening with the left is that their alliances and their coalitions
00:05:23.160 have been growing.
00:05:23.860 It hasn't gotten smaller.
00:05:26.260 They've added to the long list of people who have grievances.
00:05:29.940 It's only grown.
00:05:31.320 I mean, you know, first it was about black grievance, then it's about brown grievance,
00:05:40.020 then queer and gay grievance, trans grievance.
00:05:43.460 It just keeps growing.
00:05:45.620 And the danger of all this is that present within that type of worldview, there's a lot
00:05:55.980 of support for the use of extreme violence and terrorism.
00:06:01.880 And I think what surprised me a bit about some of the rhetoric that's come out in the last
00:06:08.920 three weeks since the 7th of October is that how open they are about their incitement to
00:06:16.540 violence.
00:06:17.440 Before, during the George Floyd-inspired BLM antifa rights, it was a bit more subtle.
00:06:22.840 It wasn't, when I say a bit more subtle, it wasn't subtle then, but there was a bit of
00:06:29.080 enough plausible deniability, sort of like when people were smashing up businesses and
00:06:36.320 setting fire to police stations.
00:06:39.640 They were saying they were doing it for racial justice or out of rage because of what's been
00:06:47.620 happening to blacks in America, that it justifies this type of reaction.
00:06:52.580 Now it's like the sentiment is people expressing the support for the actions of Hamas.
00:07:01.500 Like that is, uh, they've crossed the line and, uh, some of them have been called out for
00:07:12.040 it, but a lot of them have been called out and their response is, yeah, and so what?
00:07:17.060 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:07:19.420 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.