Angry Planet - The Precarious Nature of Being Jewish

Episode Date: December 12, 2022

Or: Why Jason has a Velcro mezuzah.An episode about Kanye West and violent family histories.Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribeYou can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is angryplanetpod.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/angryplanetpodcast/; and on Twitter: @angryplanetpod.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. People live in a world and their own making. Frankly, that seems to be the problem. Welcome to Angry Planet. Why don't you start that anecdote over?

Sure. So in Germany this morning, a bunch of people plotting to overturn the government were arrested. It's 12, right? Yeah. And they included someone from the government, actually a former member parliament from the government from the alternative for Deutschland group, which is a little right wing. Yeah, just a touch. Yeah, but my favorite bit so far about the whole thing is that one of the people arrested was actually a prince, a genuine German prince.

European royalty with Austrian bloodlines, German, but probably Austrian, kind of like, really? Is this the one that I'm seeing the pictures of being in a nice jacket? Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah, that's him. What was there? So I haven't looked at this at all. You were, you were just jumping on the call now at like noon on December 7th. I've seen, that's all I've seen is like that picture and coup and 12 people arrested. So I don't know anything else about what's going on.

Well, they had a great plan, as you'd imagine. They were going to take over the Reichstag. Mm-hmm. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. Play in the hits. Yes, exactly.

they were going to storm it all 25 of them and somehow that would change the entire government of Germany. So a good plan. Right. In other words. What were there? What was it going to be like a dictatorship or do we know or like what was there? What was there?

I mean, I guess when you've got a guy that's in a political party like that, you can imagine where you're going. Right. And I can't tell if they want to install the prints. But I really. hope so. You need a figurehead, right? I like the idea of Germany going that far back, you know, become a monarchy again.

I thought that would be fun for all of us. There's not many Jewish people left in Germany, right? Like, the population is tiny now. It's not huge. The largest population of Jewish people in Europe is actually France. And that is at half a million. But interestingly enough, they have been fleeing like crazy to places like especially Israel. Well, I mean, there's a there's like a joke that like if you'd gone into the like the 1800s and said like, oh, there's a big war next century.

Like the anti-Semitism finally gets out of control and like a European power like really goes for it. People would have said like, ah, France, we knew, of course. This is like the anti-Semitism is not a unique feature of Germany. No, not at all, not at all. Although they have a fantastic history of it. Yeah, I mean, well, so does France, right? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

But Germany actually, the first crusade way back when, you know, around a thousand, actually didn't go to the Holy Land. It, for some reason, went to Germany, or what's now Germany, and killed lots of Jews. I didn't know this. And went home. Yeah. Where was it launched from? It was a bunch of different Christians all coming together.

So it's like we have to purr, is this Holy Roman Empire era or is this? Yeah. Oh, the Holy Roman Empire was around. Yeah. They, you know, they lasted for almost a thousand years or about a thousand years. So this was kind of like we have to purge the Holy Roman Empire of jewelry? Is that kind of like that? Yeah, I mean, my guess is they probably owed a lot of money to the Jews.

So that's one of the things that's sort of, I don't know what the right word is, but it is true that when Christians were not allowed to. to lend money at interest, which was for how many, like, well over a thousand years. A long, long time, because it was like one of the big, it always fascinates me when we talk about like American Christianity, but that's like a whole separate conversation. You know, it's a sin. Usory is a sin. Like you're not supposed to lend money at interest.

That's like a pretty hard line in early Christian doctrine. Right. And I guess what's changed is a consideration of what you. is. It's now set at a particular rate of interest as opposed to interest in general. Right. Business has to get done. Right. Right. Protestantism must spread. Yeah. So, uh, also let me say, hello and welcome to Angry Planet. I'm Matthew golf. And I'm Jason Fields. Token Jew on this podcast. So let me, let me, let me, let me set us up a little bit. As I do this was going to be a more casual. and I almost said fun, but that's the wrong word, episode.

Because, like, I wanted to talk about anti-Semitism, which I think has been a huge feature of American life for a long time and kind of this thing that's always simmering in the background. Then the Kanye West and Alex Jones interview, like, really freaked me out. It was a little super surreal. And we'll get into that and talk about that. that. So I reached out to Jason and I said, hey, we should probably do an episode about anti-Semitism and violence. Who do you think? And then you reminded me of your priors.

Yeah. As a matter of fact, last week I actually wrote a column on it for Newsweek, in fact, particularly former President Trump being involved with these folks, which, you know, I mean, I think the conclusion in some ways is simply new, which is what's new, you know. Well, tell us, tell the audience, you know, tell the, tell the audience, uh, your, I mean, obviously you're Jewish, but also you've, like, you studied this subject and have studied the subject for a long time, right? Yeah. Um, it comes naturally.

My, uh, family actually fled from, uh, Belgium in 1940. my mom was six weeks old, put on the back of a pickup truck, and driven through fascist Spain. They traveled at night because Jews weren't allowed to go through Spain at all. And they ended up in Lisbon and were able to get on a ship to the United States. It was actually one of the last ships to the United States during the war. So it's just that's how it worked. out. So there's that, and that made me, of course, interested in the whole subject. And I then, after a number of years, I went to the Holocaust Museum here in Washington, D.C., where I live now,

and worked there for a while and learned more about the history of anti-Semitism, which is fascinating. It's also, it's a story of conspiracy theories. Yeah, that's a really big part of this, too. And I think it's part of what's going on with Kanye West specifically, right? It's like you start getting into the conspiracy theory rabbit hole in a lot of these stories, if not in their direct dimensions up at the front, probably in their origin, are rooted in some sort of weird anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, right? kind of going back to the protocols of the elders of Zion.

Oh, yeah. And before then, I mean, Jews were killed in the Middle Ages for what was believed a plot to poison Christian wells. And you also, you wrote a novel, too. I did, which was set in the Holocaust in a Jewish ghetto. And it was actually reviewed by a number of historians. uh okay friends who were historians but uh you know i mean it was at least uh found to be somewhat accurate so that's that was kind of something i'm very proud of so i mean with that in mind i was like well yeah i mean i guess we just talk to each other about what the fuck is going on

uh also i'm cheap i'm already paid for so you know why not um so i guess you your to circle back around to the Kanye thing, which was my impetus for wanting to talk about this, uh, you said you, you, you meet this with kind of a shrug and you're like, yeah, I mean, especially because, you know, the dinner that Trump had with Kanye and Nick Fuentes, who is a known fascist, who would tell you he's a fascist. He's cool with that. Uh, you know, it's not name calling in this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's, that's a really important, like, point to make about Fentes is that, you know, a lot of these people are like, oh, they, they flirt with fascism, but they don't want to be called a fascist. Like, they, they flirt with being an in-cell.

They don't want to be called an in-cell or a racist. He's, he's an avowed racist, in-cell fascist, proud of it, proud of having never touched a woman. Very weird guy. Somehow now palming around with Kanye West. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. And Donald Trump.

I mean, if there was any question as to whether Donald Trump was something of an anti-Semite, I mean, how do you end up at dinner with these people? I mean, how do you, oops. It's funny. I was talking to some of our mutual friends about this, and they were bringing up the Secret Service angle. Oh, the Secret Service let them in. Well, yeah, yeah, exactly. this is like, you know, normally like Flintez is on lists, right? Like he's not, this is a known quantity, um, who again is like extreme fringe.

Most people don't want anything to do with him. Uh, I just, it's weird to, like, how abusive has Trump been to do his secret service detail? Oh, yeah. For the past five, five, six years that they're just like, yeah, this guy, sure, whatever. We don't give a shit anymore. Let him in. Whatever. Yeah.

And if he gets in, who else? Right. And, you know, who gets to take the documents home in a goody bag? That's another question. Okay, but on the Trump thing specifically didn't, I mean, and this gets into the complicated nature of anti-Semitism in modern America, I think. Like his son-in-law, Jew, Jared Kushner, right? Yeah.

Moved the embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, which is something that is my understanding, like, Jewish Americans and people in Israel wanted? Some, definitely people in Israel, some Jewish Americans, a large number of Jewish Americans actually thought it was a terrible idea. Okay. I mean, I have so many questions, but also. partly responsible for the Abraham Accords, right? Oh, yeah. You know, like this kind of normalization of relations between the state of Israel and its neighbors, some of them. Yeah.

So, like, is this not, are these not the action, are these the actions of an anti-Semite? It's kind of interesting because American history with Jews in, let's say, the last 30, 40 years, maybe even, back to Israel's founding, which was now almost 75 years ago, is all about evangelicals and their belief that there has to be a Jewish state and a certain number of Jews in Israel before the rapture can happen. So that being the case, these people who really don't particularly care for Jews as individuals are in love with the state of Israel. Well, and it's also, it's a place for them to go, right? That's not America.

Sort of like Liberia after slavery. Exactly. I was, yes, exactly. Like, I think there's an idea among certain parts of America that, like, we, we like you because there's a place that you can go to repatriate that's not here, right? And that is also tied up in all of the, the apocalyptic, like all this apocalyptic thinking, of which Israel is like a centerpiece of. We've got guys in Texas. I think they finally did it.

One of the prophecy says that there has to be a red heifer in a certain church. Oh, yeah. And he's been genetically engineering red cows to send over there for a long, for a while. And I think recently they finally, I'm going to. I'm going to let you vamp for a minute while I Google there. Yeah. It's amazing how prophecies come true when you actually take action to make them true. Yeah.

September 20th of this year, the heifers have been bred five of them, and they are being shipped to the third temple. What can you say about people who actually want to bring about the end of the world? Yeah, I mean, that's... I don't know. And there's the, everyone always thinks that they're living at the end of the end times, right? That's been a feature of humanity for a long time. Imagine living in the Middle Ages while the black death is raging all around you.

It would be hard to look up and not think you're living through the end times. That's a good point. And at the year 1,000 was a huge deal as well in terms of people believing that it was the end times, that that was the significant year. just like the year 2000 when that happened was supposed to be the end times. The lovely 2012 that we've all forgotten about now when the Mayans stopped making calendars. I had actually forgotten about that, but good point. All of a sudden, the Mayans take on an importance that, let's just say they hadn't had previously in the world.

All right, England, planet, listeners want to pause there for a break. We'll be right back after this. All right, Angry Planet listeners, we are back. But, okay, anyway, back to this. So did you watch, did you watch the, so it seems like you're more, and probably justifiably so, more disturbed by Trump having dinner with Fuentes and Kanye than Kanye going on to Alex Jones and talking about how awesome Hitler is? I feel like, first of all, I'm very upset that we're paying any attention to Kanye West. as a whole, as a nation, that we are actually paying attention to a guy who apparently does have mental health issues. Yeah.

And instead of suggesting maybe he get treatment and let's turn off the mic until he's ready to come back, we've decided to give him the airwaves. And at Newsweek, we've given him column inches beyond, you know, all reason. What, yeah, look, what, without getting you in too much trouble, what is being, in what possible way can, uh, the powers that be in Newsweek spin the Kanye thing? There's been nothing positive. Okay. Um, you know, at most there's been, and I, I think it's fair to say it's, it's elsewhere as well, that this whole, idea that Trump can do this and not be tarred by it. You know, we've had a mix of opinions on it, but, but the fact that you actually have anybody

saying, you know, hey, it's just dinner. It's like a bad date, you know, like I went out with this guy and it wasn't really cool and we had a bad time. And it turns out he's not very nice, but it was just dinner. I mean, we've seen this time and time again with him, though, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. How did it, like, and I can't stress enough, I don't know how Kanye justifies hanging out with him,

Nick Quintas, specifically either, because he said some pretty fucked up stuff about black people, too. You know, he's called them subhuman. It's not the line, the ideological lines in that man's brain are very clear and he's very vocal about them. Yeah. So this stuff always, it bubbles over into real world violence, right? Well, it certainly has in the past.

It does now. You know, we had synagogues where people have been killed or under threat. I mean, both. In Pittsburgh, people died. I believe the number was nine. And it was born out of anti-Semitism that is just in the air and shared online and this belief that somehow Jewish people are both the contradictory belief, I should say, that Jewish people are both subhuman and, and. weak and all these other things, and yet control the world. Right.

The close of the company at the same time. The classic Umberto Echo fascism sign, right? Where your, your enemies are both very strong and very weak at the same time. Yeah. I'd love to, yeah, square that circle. That's pretty awesome. Do you worry about, is this something that I struggle with? And I think we've talked about this.

I think we've talked about this with Danny Gold a little bit once. one of the things that I struggle with is this idea that speech directly leads to violence outside of incitement, outside of somebody saying, like, go over there and kill that guy. Yeah. That speech kind of in the air like normalizes these ideas

and creates more, causes more violence. I think anti-Semitism is a really important example when we have this conversation because it is something that we have such clear examples of both of the speech and the violence and over long periods of time. Do you think like Kanye West getting up there and saying saying fucked up stuff on info wars, do you think that that will inspire people or lead to more violence? I think that it gives justification certainly to people who already feel the way they do.

And I think it allows for a comfort level for people who already had suspicions of Jewish people or had some inclination towards anti-Semitism. I don't want to be the guy who says that free speech should really has to go right over stuff like this or that just because you see it on TV makes you

automatically like as if you were a robot being reprogrammed you know turns you into something that you weren't before I think it's more likely that you're talking about people who are easy to be persuaded people who are looking for something

in, you know, someone to blame for issues in their own lives or as they see it in wider society. I think it provides people like that with cover and gives them someplace to aim the guns. But I don't think that if you're of sound mind and body, you necessarily are going to, listen to Kanye West in any way and become anti-Semitic. I think the seeds already had to be there, right? I think so. I mean, and I think having this in society broadly and then taught to you children, that is, that's a real thing. I mean, that is, you know, values being passed down from parents to children.

I think we all agree that that's a thing. Yeah, can you, how did they systematize this in, this is the starkest example we've got, right? How did they systematize that in Germany during the Warriors? They were building on something that was very much already there in Germany. I mean, we just talked about how far back it went to the, you know, year 1,000 before, you know, that. and they took something that people were all kind of feeling and they were able to then impose science on it, which, you know, everyone was looking at Darwin and survival of the fittest, and that concept, which was actually still fairly fresh. Yep.

You know, to have it actually codified, I'm sure the idea that, you know, this only the strong survive, I'm pretty. sure that goes back all the way to humanity. Right. You know, I mean, that's, that's not new. But I would say that having a science behind it was relatively new. And the concept of science was relatively new, actually, even that. So you have a trend that is science. You have an idea of hygienics, racial hygienics, but also just humanity hygienics, that you know, you want to build a better society. That seems pretty natural. And that means, you know, people forget that the Nazis started executing people with disabilities first. Right. They tried out the gassing. They tried out various methods that they then used on Jews in a program called Tiergarten 4, or the T4 program.

And they had a lot of ideas about who was subhuman. It wasn't just Jews. I mean, so, but Jews became, you know, I mean, Hitler, boy, he was not a nice man. So I've heard. Yeah. And he really, it's incredible. I mean, his beliefs were just off the charts as far as what he thought Jews were capable of. Even for the, was he like even for the time extreme?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he wasn't alone. Right. I mean, he, again, he wrote a book, Mind Conf, which my struggle, which found a vein. of anti-Semitism and helped to create something that made sense within itself. Have you ever read it? I actually have only read excerpts.

I think I talked about this before on the show. I had to read it in maybe he was ninth or tenth grade. Are you serious? I had a very bizarre English teacher. and we read Slaughterhouse 5, Catch 22, Mind Conf, and the Communist Manifesto.

And he said, like, these are important books for understanding the 20th century and where we are now. He's right. I mean, we had to do, we had to break MindConf off into like sections and do

presentation on it. I remember, I think the part I did my presentation on, if I remember correctly, was the horse metaphor. You know what I'm talking about? Where he's talking about, you were talking about, like, racial purity.

He does, he describes what he sees as the, like the Aryan race as like a person riding a horse and the horse is like all of the different, quote unquote, subhumans, and now it's time to get off the horse.

It's like that kind of thing. I mean, it's been, it's been, you know, more than 20 years since I've read it. But I remember feeling very ranty. And like, I can't believe it's sold as well as it did. Well, so I have a question for you, which is, how did people respond to it in your class? It's a good question. I mean, I think this is one of those things where there was the only place I remember

the idea that the Holocaust, like there was a totalizing knowledge that the Holocaust was bad and that Jewish people had suffered and that Hitler was crazy. And like it was the way people reacted in class was like we were dissecting like a madman essentially. Like everyone was on the same page there.

From that age, the only place I remember any of that stuff ever being in question and jokes being made and people doing like weird pro-Hitler shit was on the internet and I was in those spaces like it was a lot of like the gaming spaces a lot of the early online forums

I would say it was part of the lingua franca of those communities to be like mildly anti-Semitic because you thought it was funny because it was a taboo you weren't supposed to cross and I wish now that I had been I think this goes to a broader discussion of why the internet can often feel so anti-Semitic, especially in places that are like heavily male and heavily like oriented towards video games,

which is a lot of the places that I was hanging out in, is because like people that knew that stuff was wrong didn't tell other people to shut the fuck up. We didn't enforce a cultural taboo against anti-Semitism or, you know, we allowed people to be racist in the space. and told ourselves that's just the way the internet is. And it was, but we didn't realize that we had the power to enforce our own set of taboos against the stuff. And we didn't. And now here we are.

That's really interesting. Yeah, but the class, I think, reacted like appropriately. Like, we didn't have any edge lords. Everyone was very serious about everything. I think the Communist Manifesto was a little bit It's because it's very I don't know if anyone's ever Have you ever read that? Yeah, it's very short.

Yeah. It's very short. I've read actually a big chunk of capital also. Oh, wow. Like, marks and angles are pretty like, especially in the Communist manifesto, pretty succinct and like clear, right? Yeah.

But I think like the, the economics of the stuff that they were talking about where it was a little over our heads. And also we were like middle class kids in affluent North Texas. And so like so much of the stuff they're talking about is so far out of the realm of our experience. We didn't have anything to kind of wrap around. I remember Catch 22 and Slaughterhouse Five hitting pretty hard, though. I remember those books very clearly. And I've read, I think, have you ever the better von it,

like Slaughterhouse Five, but I think the better Vonnegut book that kind of ties into what we're talking about here is Nightmother. Have you ever read that? I don't know. I haven't. So absolutely fascinating. I've read it twice. The moral of the book is be careful what you pretend to be. And it's about a guy who was a playwright in Berlin, American playwright in Berlin, when the war started. And the precursor, like the precursor of the CIA approaches him and is like, hey, you know, you're a very popular playwright here. You're an American. We need you to stick around and like cozy up to these Nazis and feed us information. And he does. But at the same time, he's becoming like a noted playwright in the Reich. And then that extends. And they put him on the radio.

And he's like, we've got this American who speaks perfect German, who's also an anti-Semite and like hates the Americans too. And like listen to him. And he becomes like a like a propaganda figure for them on the radio. And survives the war. And like no one knows. Like that's that image of him as the propaganda guy on the radio is like all anyone knows. Nobody knows that he was feeding information back. nobody knows that he was instrumental in X, Y, and Z in the war.

And, like, how much of that matters? Like, what is your legacy if you were also doing all this other fucked up stuff and, like, spreading the anti-Semitism over the airwaves? It's really good. It's a very interesting book. Well, I would recommend similarly, I mean, the concept, actually may very well have been taken from Bonaget, is the episode of Star Trek, the original series, Patterns of Force. I don't remember that one.

Well, it's actually, it's very simple. An ambassador from the Federation is supposed to go and watch what's going on on this planet. And instead, he says, you know, you know what would work better than what they got going on now? fascism. And he introduces some of the ideas of fascism, and it turns into a full-blown Nazi planet with people from a different planet, Zeon. Oh, good. Okay. Who they're persecuting and killing.

So Kirk shows up and says, what the heck is this? and they actually have Spock wearing a Nazi helmet, a German helmet. I think I've seen this screenshot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It hides his ears. It's great. And eventually they get, they find out that the Federation guy has been even corrupted and co-opted by the real Nazis who had taken over. And he'd been drugged and all these other things.

and, you know, the lesson is that fascism really isn't nice. It poisons you. Yeah, and that you also can't take parts of it. Yep. That it's all of a piece. Yeah, I think that that's accurate. And that's what I think about, like, when I look at Kanye West or I look at Trump, I thought about this a lot during the early days of the Trump administration.

I kept thinking about be careful who you pretend to be. Because at a certain point, the mask is all that's left. That's all that anyone will remember or care about. And it won't matter if you actually don't believe all this stuff. If you're acting as if forever, then all that matters is what those actions lead to. I think you're so right. And that was the same thought I had about Trump was, you know, is this convenience or conviction? Right.

and he would do anything for a vote. So I always thought that he was pulling on anti-Semitism as a way to trigger the worst in people, but then get those people to vote for him. I thought that's what it was really about. But I also agree with you. It doesn't matter what he actually believes or that he has Jewish people in his own family. I mean, none of that matters if what he's doing is acting as a. demagogue and breeding anti-Semitism out there in the world or giving people who are already, again, susceptible cover to then come out from underneath the rocks.

Do you think, one of the, I think a free speech absolutist argument that I've heard is that it's good when Kanye West, maybe not that it's good, but when Kanye West goes on to Info Wars, sunlight is the best disinfectant. And it exposes how stupid and insane all of this stuff is to most people. What do you think of that argument? I think it's like any other kind of absolutism. It works great until you bring in human beings.

I mean, we screw up everything. Communism is a great idea. And if we weren't human, then things would be great, but people are greedy, people are nasty, brutish, and short to, you know, quote Hobbs. I mean, you know, everyone knows that line from Hobbs, and it's a fantastic book. And I really recommend Leviathan, just as a look at human nature, at least the darkest parts of it. And I think that because people will then take what said, and do terrible, horrible, nasty things with it, it makes absolutism a problem.

And what do you do? People should be able to speak. The question is always, do you give them a platform? Right. I mean, that's what we've been arguing about. We've been arguing with Twitter whether or not these people who are saying things that are truly awful should be given a public forum. and who decides who gets to have that forum. Is it Elon Musk or is it the government or, you know, there are, and I think these are all legitimate questions too, I got to say.

I don't feel like I have all the answers, but I do feel like free speech absolutism probably won't work just simply because people are people. What about the argument, though, that, and again, like we're talking about hypothetical people in hypothetical situations. Someone watches the Kanye thing. And I actually saw quite a bit of this on Reddit. I followed some of the social media fallout from all of this. Someone sees the Kanye thing, sees a guy, you know, in a Gip mask that has a net and a Yahoo bottle out. He's talking about the Prime Minister of Israel. and says, you know what, this is not great.

Maybe this anti-Semitism stuff is really stupid. And I should pull away from this. And I saw some of this on Reddit. And some of the Kanye West fan subs, one of them became like a Holocaust memorial page, whereas people just posting like information and footage and stories about why this stuff was bad. So I think when you have as wacky,

and see this also falls apart when you have a guy that's not in a get mask too, right? When you have someone that can dress up the message a little bit better. I have my doubts about whether it changes people's beliefs that the messenger is sort of a weird messenger. I mean, not least because Hitler was a guy with a funny little mustache. like Chaplin, who ranted and raved. I mean, I don't know if you've seen much by way of the footage of Hitler giving speeches or, you know,

shaking and sitting and being a weird little guy. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that didn't stop anything. That's true. That's true. Yeah, I guess that's like another aspect of this that I think we discount because Hitler is now built up in our minds as the, this kind of like this avatar of all the shit, all the blood that he's built on, that he, that

stemmed from him, right? That we forget that he was a weird little fucking guy with a strange voice and a funny mustache that some people thought was a joke when he came on the scene. Exactly. People really did think that he was a joke. They really did. And I think that. It's easy to look at so many of these ideas and just my favorite idea.

If we can get to Marjorie Taylor Green, why not? Sure, Jewish space lasers. Why not? Yes. Yes, that's so fantastic. This idea that Jews somehow can control the weather that comes up again and again and again. And we actually had a councilman here in D.C. who just went on and on about the Rothschilds and controlling the weather and all this stuff.

I believe he was reelected. Good. Just, again, that, you know, that all this stuff, that that should be enough that people would start laughing about the conspiracies. And, I mean, you know, I'm trying to think what our space lasers would it be able to do. Who would be zap? And if we can control the weather, I would just point out that it would have been much nicer on my wedding day. Can I think it was pretty plenty nice on your wedding day? Oh, sorry, which one?

Fair enough. Fair enough. I have a really basic question. Really dumb anti-Semitism 101 question. Why? Why? Why is it always the Jews? Why does so much of this stuff come back to the Jews?

well it's it's interesting because i would also say that it isn't always the jews i mean other peoples have been wiped out yeah um the uh indigenous americans were almost entirely wiped out um in a lot of a lot of early american conspiracy theory centered around indigenous populations and the slave populations And there was a belief about both being subhuman. Yeah. And I think we've talked about before on the show that some of Hitler's ideas were tried out in the United States. Yeah, we had.

He actually took some of the ideas back to Germany. Yeah, we had, it was from a Snyder episode, one of the ones we just re-ran. That's one of the subjects of Black Earth. By the way, because a substack commenter gone on me for calling Snyder's recent work a little sloppy, there is a quote that he attributes in Black Earth to Hitler that does not exist. It is like widely a mis-itributed. It's just something that nobody ever said. But anyway, I'll set that aside.

Snyder, good, a little grumpy to deal with on the phone. And he's gone very hard on the becoming a pundit and not less of a historian thing. The books are getting shorter and less researched, but that's a tangent. Sorry. It's true. I think some of it for him is that he's genuinely afraid and thinks maybe he can do something about it. He thinks he's in a position where writing a book like on tyranny might have an impact. Yeah, I think that's an undersold point to all of this.

I hear a lot of criticisms of the Jason Stanley's, who we've also had on the show, and Timothy Snyders, these professors of fascism who like study this stuff and know the history, people make fun of them for getting really excised in the last five years. But if you were, again, if you were a guy that studied this stuff and like you're starting to get worried, like maybe, I don't know, maybe pay attention a little bit to what they're saying. Yeah. I think you make a really good point. And what if you are Jason Stanley, who as a fellow member of the Jason Club, I highly respect.

But if you are him and you do see similarities, what are you supposed to do? Yeah. I mean, you're going to try to take action, right? But what's action for you? well, you're a professor. So you're going to speak and you're going to publish books. I mean, that's just what you do. And he feels like that's better than nothing.

Yeah. I mean, if you actually believe that there's a rising threat of fascism in America, isn't it your moral obligation to do that at the bare minimum, right? Yeah. Yeah. Hey, there's one thing I kind of want to talk about just a little bit, which is, you know, the imagery of Hitler and how it's used on both sides of the aisle. It's so fantastic. Do you remember when the Tea Party and Barack Obama were sort of going at it? Yes.

Barack Obama. As Hitler, yes. With a little mustache. And it's fantastic because, you know, I, you know, I. I mean, he would have been up against the wall when the revolution came. I mean, it's just such nonsense. But, you know, in intellectual circles, we're also very afraid of calling anything Nazi or Hitler to use that word because we're afraid that that's going too far. That that is just, it's untouchable.

It's not only that you go too far, I think, also. but like I feel like at this point, uh, the imagery has been diluted. Well, that's a good point. Yeah. You know,

when you like I remember, you know, to the point of like the Obama Hitler thing, I remember Bush is Hitler too. Yeah. Right. Like with the, the other side,

the other side always does this. Uh, they always call, you always call the other guy Hitler. Right. Um, and so I think when that is constantly in the air, it becomes hard for people that aren't like super plugged in and super know the history very well

to see anything other than hysterics every time it's invoked. Yeah. Right? Yeah. I mean, and the Holocaust Museum and my wife, Edna Freepard, who's been on the show to talk us through a bunch of this stuff, you know, is very concerned that Holocaust analogies are being used and they don't really apply. Right. or they don't help the conversation or they lessen what really did happen, you know, to say that Trump's dinner with Kanye and Nick Fuentes somehow is like the Holocaust, right?

I mean, it's just not an equivalence, but it cheapens the whole idea of what really did happen. And all of, you know, the quote that's misattributed to Stalin, I don't think anybody knows who said it about, you know, life being a tragedy and a death of 100,000 people or a million people being statistic, right? But it's come up and comes up working at the Holocaust Museum to try to remember, 6 million isn't a number. You know, 6 million means 6 million individual people who, you know, did good things, did bad things. I mean, every possible kind of person got swept up and they were all different. And they were all individuals. So I think you end up having to be very careful using those

analogies. You know, they are easy. Yeah. And they're facile. And the more you use them, the easier and more facile they become. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's right. I've got one more question for you, actually. Sure. That's all right. Where am I going?

Somewhere warm, I hope. Yeah, my furnace is out. How old were you when you kind of got your head, when you realized that like, how old are you when you were taught? about the Holocaust, I guess, when you kind of learned about anti-Semitism. I can't remember a time that I didn't know about it. I really can't.

And I've got fairly decent memories going back, you know, I mean, first memories when I was three, but by five I have pretty good memories. And, you know, part of it because I had a grandmother with a funny accent that brought up questions, partially just because my parents thought I needed to know. Yeah.

So, you know, I've got two sons of my own, and both of them know about the Holocaust. One of them is not even quite nine years old, but he's known about it for a while because it's important. It's important to know it, especially if you're a Jewish person, because there is still insecurity in this country. If we're talking about anti-Semitism in this country, we talk about certain amount of violence, a certain amount of just hatred that's not directed into violence, or just this feeling that Jews are somehow different. It's important to know what you face. We have this concept. You know, there's a little wooden, or actually you can have it made out of anything, little box that Jews put on their doors. and inside of that little box is a prayer.

And it identifies a Jewish household. That is not for you bad people to look for, but it's a thing that Jews put on their doors. And usually they're bolted in. Like, we're staying here. This is our home. Right. But we have a concept in my family of,

the pogrom ready Maziza, which you use Velcro to attach it to the door frame so that you're ready to go at a moment's notice. And I think there's an element of, for a lot of Jewish people,

of that, of being ready to go, of always being afraid that it'll happen again, wherever the hell you live. Jason Fields, thank you so much for coming on and having this chat about anti-Semitism before the winter holidays. Hey, it's been fun. That's been a good conversation.

That's true. As always. That's all for this. Angry Planet. Listeners, as always, Angry Planet is me. Matthew Gold, Jason Fields, and Kevin O'Dell. It's created by myself for Jason Fields. If you like us, if you really like us, please consider giving us $9 a month on Substack,

AngryPlanent.substack.com. You get early commercial-free versions of the mainline episodes, the occasional bonus episode. in our occasional rambling post. That's at angryplanet.substack.com or angryplanetpod.com. It really does help us keep doing the show. It is a bizarre labor of love. We will be back again, I think, one more time this year, with another story about conflict or a conversation.

Wow, I can't even do the outro right. That's how, like, Christmas brain I am right now, listeners. We will be back one more time next week with a, another conversation about conflict on an angry planet. It'll be reruns until we pick up back again in January. War does not stop, and we will be there to talk about it. Stay safe until then.