Chapo Trap House - 298 - The Israel Nerd feat. Eli Valley (3/18/19)

Episode Date: March 19, 2019

Eli Valley stops by to talk Ilhan Omar, Meghan McCain, Chelsea Clinton, and the latest act of fascist mass murder in Christchurch, NZ. Also Virgil solves the Israel-Palestine conflict. https://givealittle.co.nz/cause/christchurch-shooting-victims-fund

After all that you have done and all this on the podium that you have soaked. I'm so sorry. I'm certainly listening from the Asian attention. I do believe that it's a matter of religion. We do matter. This right here is the result of a massacre stoked by people like you and the Lord that you have put out into the world. And I want you to know that.

I want you to feel that deep inside. 49 people died because of the rhetoric you put out there. I'm so sorry. I don't think so. What is this? I'm sorry you feel that we need you. What does that mean? Oh friends, it's me Will. We're back.

It's Chapo. I've got Felix and Virgil on deck. But our guest this week, making his, you know, longtime collaborator, making his second appearance on the show itself. We're back. We're back. It's Chapo. I've got Felix and Virgil on deck.

But our guest this week, making his, you know, longtime collaborator, making his second appearance on the show itself. The guy I'm sure you're familiar with. It's popular anti-Semitic cartoonist, Ellie Valley. It's our favorite, our favorite anti-Jewish cartoonist. Hell Hitler. No, Ellie, we wanted to have you on because I swear to God,

like we've been, you know, checking in on this, this Elon Omar controversy that's been going on over the last couple of weeks. But now we are, of course, coming across, you know, news of yet another, you know, fascist massacre of innocent people, this time in two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. And, you know, it's time that our sort of the political and media class in this country, when coming face to face with horror like that, has, you know, united to protect the daughters of rich, powerful political dynasties.

Tulsi Clinton, Megan McCain, you know, and like this is your, this is your wheelhouse, L.A. Yeah, it's amazing. Also, I think Elon Omar and what happened in New Zealand, it's like bookends to this horrific Islamophobic explosion we're experiencing. Yeah, and I just feel like, Ellie, like over the last, like, certainly like in the midst of the Megan McCain thing and the Elon Omar controversy, and then you have people, you know, like a Ben Shapiro flunkies,

comparing you to Joseph Goebbels or whatever. And then, yeah, supporters of Donald Trump, you know, accusing you of, you know, misappropriating Judaism for bigoted ends. It's like, do you even have to draw anymore, Ellie? Like, are you still drawing? It's true. I mean, it's a cliche now when I keep saying, you know, satire has been eclipsed by reality.

But the last comics I've done, I really don't feel like I've changed much. You know, like the Ben Shapiro videos are racist, and I just drew him with his crocodile tears. I mean, you know what I mean? Yeah, you know, there are photographs. No, I actually like doing something that is so literal, and then just focusing on the art, because the art brings out the grotesqueness behind the words that they're using.

You just had one today, of course, about Chelsea Clinton. Yeah, Kavi, at that, I was up all night drawing it, and so I'm a little bit less than a student at the moment. Drinking Coca-Cola, though, so that helps. Not branded. This was not a native advertisement. Yo, do you guys know there used to be cocaine and Coca-Cola? No, but so Chelsea, we saw a video over the weekend of, you know,

she was sort of put on the spot by a young activist after she showed up at a vigil for the 50 people killed in Christchurch, and, you know, she was sort of put through the paces for her sort of co-signing of this absurd line of attack on Ilan Omar for being anti-Semitic, or, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And, you know, she maintained her like, you know, impenetrable, veneer of niceness, for sure. Obviously, but then there was just, like, the Protect Chelsea Brigade came down,

full force. And it really made it like the victim of Christchurch was the scion of, you know, an oligarch in America. But also, she could have put out a tweet saying, listen, this woman was in pain, please don't go bullying her, because both her and her friend have received death threats and, you know, sexual assault threats and all that kind of shit. But Chelsea, and also they're saying Chelsea's not powerful, like, you know,

she's not elected official. She's, like, one of the most powerful, non-elected officials in the country, in the world, you know? I mean, yeah, she's not powerful. She was at an interfaith dialogue because of her expertise on all the faiths and dialogue and all that. I mean, it does show the limits of people who claim to just interpret spaces and bodies all the time, that not just this woman who not just co-signed

on Omar, basically implied Omar wasn't American. As an American, you know, I find this distasteful, what she said to the initial, about the initial Omar tweet, after the massacre of Muslims to go there as some sort of expert, some fellow in interfaith dialogue, how wouldn't you fucking scream at her? Yeah. But the response, like, the response... The woman didn't scream at her either.

Right, no, she didn't. They were having a dialogue. They were having an interfaith dialogue, yeah. That's what she signed up for. But my favorite response in all this has been that, like, Chelsea's trying to help. I would love to see one of these people down in, like, an interrogation room and explain to me how Chelsea is helping. I would love to learn that.

What possibly could she be doing that is helping anyone? At all. In the world. She's just showing up and sitting at a table and just spitting out the same fucking word salad she does every day about faith and dialogue and communities and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but just what? Who is getting anything out of this?

I mean, I think it should be reiterated again. Like, it was only, fuck, like, not that long ago that we saw an act of terrorism against the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in which the shooter selected those people and his target because that synagogue was working with groups to resettle refugees here in America, refugees like Representative Ilhan Omar. And then, again, and then this latest atrocity in New Zealand, they were targeted because they were immigrants

and some of them were refugees and then were Muslim. And then, so, this is in the midst of, up until what happened over the weekend in New Zealand, all the same people are just telling us that this anti-Semitism from the left is a big problem and it's getting worse. And it's just like, are they unaware of the people, the ones who are actually walking into houses of worship and gunning down 50, 60 people? Yeah, I did like a quick comic of a Klansman saying, Linda Sarsour must announce Farrakhan.

Did you see, this is a fellow cartoonist, Bill Bromhall in the New York Daily News, had a cartoon, an editorial cartoon last week that was like, it was a line outside Ilhan Omar's office and it was a Nazi officer, a KKK guy in Lewis Farrakhan and like the next secretary was like, Representative Omar, your constituents are here. Yeah, yeah. And it's like, what I liked about that commercial is like, Ilhan lives in Minnesota. But like, out of context, if you just...

Brothers and sisters, we are gathered on Lake Wobagon. But like, outside of that context, you just looked at that image, you'd be like, oh, they're lining up outside her office to kill her. Like, that's what's going on there. Yeah, and by the way, I had this comic idea I was toying with, at first when Pelosi was like, reprimanding Omar, I was going to do it with Pelosi, but then when she sort of backtracked a little bit, I was going to do it with like, Brett Stevens, Barry Weiss, Ben Shapiro at all.

And I mean, it was a very visceral cartoon and I might still do it if this continues, which means I'm going to do it. But it's basically, the caption is, after it all ended, the Jewish right or Pelosi visited her grave. And it's going to have, I know it's really actually disturbing, but it was before Christ Church that I was working on it. It's going to have her, you know, Ilana Omar birthday until 2019. And they're all going to be skitsing out,

because it's going to say, rest in peace. And they're going to be interpreting that as saying that Israel doesn't really want peace. And they're going to say, this tombstone is, you know, tear down this tombstone. Something like that. But clearly it's falling on deaf ears. But yeah, like so, the usual suspects are of course, at full force to, you know, say, you know, let's not take too seriously, you know, the politics or motivation of the shooter.

But like, I kind of agree with that. And that like, I don't want to waste any time parsing what's in his fucking manifesto or trying to like, you know, suss out the different levels of like in jokes or like trolling or they're like, oh, this is just, these are just internet related mass murders. But like the point is, you know what the fucking ideology is. You know it because you see it every fucking day. It's just a matter of like how it's presented. You hear it in the mouths of politicians like Steve King, Louis Gohmert,

and yes, our president, Donald Trump. You heard it in the post of the guy who walked into a synagogue in Pittsburgh, and now this guy in fucking New Zealand. You saw it in Trump's reaction when the first thing he links to is Breitbart for breaking news. Yeah, that's a fucking dog whistle right there, clearly. And in the same Breitbart that same day, he had been boasting about his fascist gangs, right? For Trump, they're going to kick everyone's ass. Let me bring up that quote, actually, because this was stunning.

He said this like, I think two days or a day before this happened. He said, you know, the left plays a tougher game. It's very funny. I actually think that the people on the right are tougher, but they don't play it tougher. Okay. I can tell you, I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the bikers for Trump. I have the tough people, but they don't play it tough until they go to a certain point.

And then it would be very bad, very bad. But the left plays it cuter and tougher, like with all that nonsense they do in Congress. So, I mean, terrifying that he is just sort of like, you know, not so subtly, you know, implying that the police, military, and bikers for Trump will take matters into their own hands if, you know, democracy fills them. Yeah. But again, the bikers for Trump, we saw those guys. Imagine how you'd feel if you were like a Ted Shackley character and you're paired up with a biker for Trump. Yeah.

You're just like, how did this guy get promoted? Can I say another thing about this shitposting after this? I mean, he's been shitposting nonstop, but also the next day, you know, after he did the Bright Bar, the next day he did something like best wishes to the families of the slain. Yeah, that was really bizarre. He said best wishes to everyone in New England. But wait, no, after that, though, he did another tweet about Jexodus, this ridiculous astroturfing organization that implies that Jews are actually leaving the Democratic Party.

And he did that like right afterwards. And to me, it was like, it was shitposting, but it was like, I think like subtly saying, you know, even though Muslims were murder, Jews, you know that Muslims hate you. This is my little wink and nod towards that. And also dividing the left. Yeah. No, I agree with that. But, I mean, then again, he could just be like tooting them out.

So it really really hammered at home how just send Arden had to talk to him after this. Oh, man. Can you fucking imagine just like fucking dozens of your people just get fucking killed by a guy who like subscribed to the same like strain of like far like just neo fascism that like the global empire is exporting. And then you have to get a phone call from just the fucking doddling baby president who's yelling at you about Bruce and Nellie or he's like, by the way, good luck to those who died. It fucking sucks so much. It's breathtaking.

Like New Zealand is a country that probably had like 40 murders over the last decade in that country. And now they have 50 in one day. Yeah, carried out by a guy who, as Felix said, was, you know, a supporter of a neo fascist ideology that is, you know, basically being brood here in America and of which President Trump is a, you know, vital figurehead for these people. Yeah, then he calls you and he's complaining about like the Fox weekend lineup. And you can't hang up because he has all the nukes and military bases and can sabotage anyone's economy. You're just like, yeah, no, Nellie or is ugly as shit. You're right, sir.

Oh my God. DJ Kennedy made a great point, Mr. President. Holy shit. But like, Ali, the interesting thing is like the people who are our most furious at you, like I said, like the Ben Shapiro punk flunkies who say that this is like Joseph Goebbels or I think Eli Lake said you do cartoons for anti semites because he's smart enough not to call you an anti-semite, you know, you personally. I'm doing the work of anti-semites before that. And also minstrel.

He's repeatedly called me a minstrel. A minstrel and stuff like that. Yeah, you're a Shabbos Jew. Shabbosch Mench. They all hate Trump or at least claim to. Yeah, when push comes to shove. Yeah, but when push comes to shove, like... He rolls down that hill.

Which is baffling to me because he gave them everything they want. He moved the fucking embassy to Jerusalem. But yeah, how do you people like Brett Stevens and like Barry Wise square it in their own mind? That like, I think the tone that they've adopted is like, the left is making people support Trump and by... Like, they're implying subtly me as well. Because of things like Elon Omar. I honestly think they wish that they could just be open Trump supporters at this point because thinking it through, you could make the credible case that if you're anti-Trump, you're anti-Israel.

Well, that's the case they're making. I mean, not Barry and Brett, but that's what the Republicans are doing. But we're talking about people like Barry and Brett. Like the rational, never-Trump conservatives and Zionists. Yeah, I wonder if it all comes down to that. I mean, it's ridiculous that they're actually equating fascism, you know, ascendant fascism with basically a neutered opposition. Yeah, but I mean, a theme that you return again and again in your cartoons and comics too,

is this idea that in a moment in which there is a genuine breakup, especially among young people, in what was considered the consensus about US and Israel and America's policy towards Israel and this sort of special status as like Israel is like the second America who's like our little brother in the Middle East and the scrappy guy that we'll always stand up for, that consensus is breaking up right now, especially among young people and among young Jews. And the people who are essentially shackled to it or are the most devoted to it are having to find a way to deal with that. And the way they're dealing with that is getting in bed with basically, you know, with Donald Trump

and a neo-fascist right wing in this country that is going to toe the line on Israel but at the same time, you know, yeah, like Steve King, people like that. And redefining anti-Semitism to mean criticism of Israel and ultimately they're going to redefine it to mean criticism of evangelicals because they're the most fierce Zionists in America and that's the trend we're heading towards, you know. So what is it like to be, you know, accused of hating Jews or being a self-hating Jew by people like Ben Shapiro or the Mandel brother, you know, the brother and sister wife? Who?

Beth and Seth. Oh, yeah, yeah. It's Beth and Sethony Mandel. Yeah, Sethony. Sethony Mandel, yeah. I like Sethony. Yeah, I mean, I want to say about them and I've said this repeatedly and I'll keep saying it. Six weeks after the Pittsburgh shooting, the most horrific pogrom in American Jewish history,

they went to the White House Khanukah party, they rejoiced, they took smiling selfies in front of the presidential seal when we should all have been out in the streets and we should be out in the streets every fucking day, but especially while the bodies were still warm, essentially. And they're calling me a fucking anti-Semite. That's like excommunication in Syria. I thought they don't like Trump. They went to his fucking Hanukkah party.

Yeah, like the hors d'oeuvres must have been, you know, more than worth it for the fascism. I doubt it. No, she actually wrote a post in which she's bragging about the buffet. She took pictures of it. God, these people can be bought so cheap. What a fucking room. What a bunch of cheap dates. Can, you know, the PFLP was still kicking if they could have just gone to Costco.

I could make a great Maviko meal. No! All right, all right. We're talking about, you know, fake anti-Semitism versus real anti-Semitism. This is a violent threat to the Jewish people. No, what's the food? It's like brownies. Brownies?

Brownies? Brownies? This motherfucker said brownies. Oh, my God. I'm going to teach you something actually here. The Hanukkah meal is actually not supposed to be good or good tasting or enjoying. It's supposed to remind you of the hardships. Let's Passover, you fucking goi.

Oh, wait. What's Hanukkah meal? No, the oil. Not the harshest, but the oil could last. Oh, it's the same. It's Passover. It's a bad one. Oh, it's like a fish fry.

I mean, I think those are included among some people, I think. I don't know. Wait, can we get back to anti-Semitism? Doesn't that have a virtual take in the floor there? But I just want to say that when people ask me, like, if it bothers me, I mean, it used to bother me somewhat. But now, like, when people are on the side of actual Nazis calling me an anti-Semite, it just becomes so absurd. It's like, it just drove off my shoulder because, you know, they had zero argument, you know, coming into this game. So maybe they could have made some argument.

It was totally immaterial and unjustified 10 years ago. But now they are explicitly on the side of fascism. And, you know, it's just, it's preposterous, you know? Not just in America, but also in Israel, too. And the Netanyahu government, which is becoming explicitly tied, like, has reformed with, like, the Kahanist Party to, you know, eke out another election. And supporting European fascists as well. Victor Orban and the likes of them. Oh, I also want to say, when Megan McCain, everyone was like, they said it was sort of silly, you know, so absurd, this obvious, gentile cyan in America, accusing a Jewish cartoonist of anti-Semitism.

I think it's people, maybe it didn't know my work too well, but for me, it didn't even occur to me that that was the absurd thing, because I've been so used to being called anti-Semitic for years now, just for criticizing Israel's treatment of Palestinians. That when she did it, it was like, of course, because they consider, and Bethany Mandel actually said, you know, you're invited to Shabbos because of the cartoon idea. You got a hot pass now, Megan. Megan, you could say Keik now. Oh, yeah, I could start saying that. Yeah, I don't know why the Jewish people are punishing her by sending her to the Mandel Shabbos, but people like Bethany consider McCain more of a Jew than me. Yeah, well, did you see what David Frum said, how the McCain family would put on yellow stars? Yeah, the apocryphal Danish, the king of Denmark one.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then he published this thing about how immigrants shouldn't be allowed into America. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can't make it up, and why would you want to? Why would you want to think about anyone like this? I have to say, I was not really surprised by the amount of wagon circling around Chelsea, you know, because it's like, a lot of completely average people need to protect their jobs. And upward momentum in their careers makes sense. They're well connected.

But Megan shocked me because what, first of all, what can Megan do? I know she's on the view, but what can she do for any of them? It was just this, I'd say an even more mediocre person than Chelsea Clinton with even less abilities. And I had never seen just the blood loyalty to her was incredible. Just for going on TV and crying the big girl tears, it was fucking unreal. I didn't feel like I was witnessing reality. You mean not what she did, but the the rallying around her? Yeah, I mean, Megan, these people used to fucking hate Megan McCain because she wrote completely ineffectual blog posts that no one read that were like, I'm a Republican, but I don't think we should kill gay people, you know, like very courageous stuff.

And they'd be like, hey, hey, Mrs. Boobs, calm down. And now it's like, read Ben Shapiro's old blog post about her. Yeah, exactly that. Tweets, I think they're still there. Yeah. Or her husband's tweets for that matter. Yeah, just the, it's, yeah, it's a stage mentality, I guess, but like, holy shit. No, but yeah, as we, as we said, leading off the show, I mean, like, yeah, the victims of these terrorist atrocities are, of course, you know, the people in the media who get made fun of for their, you know, idiotic appropriation or comments on, you know, these things.

It's also either before or after it, you could just see the dehumanization of Muslim life clearly in the reaction to the Chelsea thing at NYU, because I mean, you know, the only comparison that is, I mean, that occurs, the main comparison that occurs to me is it'd be like, you know, a day after the Pittsburgh shooting, and I'm forced to sit with somebody who's in the Republican Party, who's been, you know, dog-wessing this Soros caravan bullshit. I would have yelled at them, of course. And I think because, you know, you know, Jews in America have, have been normalized into the country more so obviously than Muslims have. I don't think, I think there would have been sensitivity towards my rage. And this woman, this college student at NYU, she wasn't even, it wasn't even rage. It was just like, she was, it was tears. It was so raw, her emotions. She was angry for sure. But I mean, it was also like, it was, it was, it was rage born of mourning and like the immediacy of the tragedy, you know. And for people to be telling her that she needs to find a better way of communicating these things when she's in the middle of grieving at this atrocity, you know. It just like, it just shows that, it's just a devaluing of Muslim life in my view. And a lot of the response to it was from volunteer RAs.

Yeah. Talking about how she's going to get written up by the provost. Oh, yeah, yeah. Like she's not, there's a lot of snitching, a lot of snitching, trying to get her in trouble with NYU for like not comporting to NYU's like student handbook or behavior or whatever. Yeah. Really, really gross. Yeah, that's fucked. And people get, yeah, dig up tweets from when she was like 14, you know, using bad words to talk about Drake, which is compare what she's doing to what Chelsea was doing at the same age, protesting for the Iraq war. Yeah, I forgot that was apocryphal. But apparently it's true. It's actually, I can't believe that. But she was at, was it like Oxford? Yeah, yeah.

Rhodes, another, another thing she achieved by her own merit, by the way. That was amazing. One guy was defending Chelsea and said, you know, oh, she got into, you know, for these four elite universities, she's set on five boards. You think that wasn't from her own merits? Someone really said that sentence. Yeah, that's like why you shouldn't really argue with those people. That's just, that's just being insane. That's just being, I mean. That's just insanity if you think that. Well, that's just being a sucker. No, it's, I think that just, you literally look at Chelsea Clinton and look at the fucking pablum she said her entire life and her green pancakes.

And you're like, yeah, no, she, everyone just notices smart woman and didn't see her last name till later. You remember when NBC hired her? I think it was NBC hired her to be like a correspondent. And it was like, the contract was something insane, like $750,000. Yeah. And she did like two on-screen appearances throughout the entire 2016 election. Didn't they do it with a Bush kid too? Bush kid did way more actual work than Chelsea did. Why do these networks, they hire every failed daughter?

Like, okay, I kind of get hiring the Bush dark is like presumably that gets you access of some kind. But Abby Huntsman? Abby Huntsman's a weird one. We got to know what's, you know, we got, we got to have access to John Huntsman. We're losing the John Huntsman primary. It's, yeah. The thing is though, I was like, I was never one of the people who like hated Chelsea Clinton until like Dylan Omar thing, really. Did I?

I was just like, yeah, she's just a completely fucking dull. She's the woman version of Luke Wilson in Idiocracy, basically. That's what I thought, you know, until all this. It's just like, it's fine. I was like, she's so much better than Megan McCain. And it's like, no, they both said they're just both equally fucking shit. But Megan's like a more openly malicious and. And sanctimonious and toddlerish.

Well, Megan's more of a caricature that you can relate to. Like you can see that person, you know, screaming out of returns to the department department store. Chelsea's like more ambiguously bad, you know. The Jews are so lucky to just have both of them with the combined power to write a single entire children's book. Oh, that was one of that was one of the things on Chelsea's resume. Oh, she wrote two children's books. Wow. It is funny that the the victim of anti-semitism last week was Megan McCain

and the victim of Islamophobia this week is Chelsea. Chelsea. Yeah, I mean, you know, God works in unexpected mysterious ways. But when the Megan McCain with the cartoon controversy was going on, and yeah, again, people were like, I think Megan, was it Megan said like the reaction to like, you know, to her crying on the view was, in her words, quote, the most anti-semitic thing I've ever seen. No, the actual comic was the comic itself.

And I joke, you know, she was in a coma during Charlottesville and Pittsburgh. Yes, you didn't notice those. She didn't notice that. Yeah, she said your comic was the most anti-semitic thing she's ever seen. A satire of Christians fetishizing Jews. Here's the thing, like what in the imagery or content of the comic was anti-semitic? Yeah, exactly. Because it's like you drew her and let's be honest, I think in a way you were,

the way you portray most people, like Trump, you just did like this pulsating blob of flesh with like teeth in it. It's like very sort of like some sort of like tumor come to life. Megan McCain, you pretty much drew her as Megan McCain. It wasn't very exaggerated. Yeah, I was actually a little flattering. Yeah, try not to do the fat-shaming thing. But like, and then she was surrounded with like a Mantis Yahu CD and like,

so was that what they interpreted as anti-semitic that she was surrounding herself with like Jewish cultural? Wait, let me just say whatever I do. I could have drawn her with the Chabad and Lubavitch rabbi, you know, ascending to heaven, and they would be anti-semitic, you know? I think. Megan, most Iac is here, but it's Megan. Yeah, exactly. But no, I think they would have called it regardless.

But I think the Judah, the German star of David, you know, forced upon Jews in Germany during the proceeding and during the Holocaust or throughout Europe. I think maybe they did some twisted, you know, reaction to that. It's really hard to analyze. I mean, you know, I mean, it's clearly a very, very intrinsically Jewish, in my view, piece of art, which has intertextual Jewish playfulness regarding like the Mantis Yahu shit and stuff like that. And it's being fun of Christian Zionist anti-semitism via the Jewish Race Explained book and what she's actually saying. But because they have already adopted Christian Zionist into the Jewish fold,

any criticism of that has to be anti-semitic. Now, again, it was the exact same ideology that led that guy into Pittsburgh and led this person into those mosques in New Zealand. But like for people on the Jewish right like Ben Shapiro, it's obviously a lot more difficult. It's a lot harder for them. I noticed like right after the Christchurch massacre happened, you know, Ben Shapiro was like, you know, don't share the video. Don't say his name. Don't say my name.

Don't say my name. Don't search his browser history. Don't see like, don't see what he like. Like the guy who shot up that mosque in Quebec was a huge fan of Ben Shapiro. I agree with like, don't share the video or say his name. And I don't think anyone should spend any amount of time like trying to understand his manifesto or like parse it or find any kind of meaning there. It's fascist insanity. It's not meant to be consistent or have any kind of cohere. It's an ideology of death. That's all you need to understand it.

And we know who's stoking it. It's an ideology of violence towards immigrants, towards Jews, towards Muslims. Like that is what's going on here. So for someone like Ben Shapiro, then just be like, yeah. In fact, actually, don't tell us anything at all about the shooter whatsoever. And just let's just assume that like, just bad things happen, you know. Yeah. And like, like, they're having a hard time towing that line, but they're going to do it.

And of course, no one's going to, mostly no one's going to call them on this bullshit. Yeah. Because like Ben Shapiro or like any of these, these YouTube guys, like these, these, you know, the logic brigade have been saying for years now in books and tweets and videos or whatever that, you know, Islam and Muslim immigrants represent an existential threat to your life, your identity, and your safety and Western civilization. And it was interesting. Louis Gohmer, he had one of the most bizarre and terrifying reactions to this where he was like,

he was like, wow, it was basically like sickening what happened in Christchurch. Doing the courts. He said like, he's like violence is never the answer. There are legislatures and like laws. If you want to get rid of undesirables, like do it through the proper channels. Franchise them step by step. Don't shoot them. Exactly.

Yeah. But like for a guy, yeah, for a guy like Shapiro to again play, you know, see no evil, hear no evil about this bullshit is pretty rich. Yeah. Yeah. And also you're talking about like the anti-Semitic accusations, et cetera. And I think it's partly that, and you know, if you try and see through their, through their, their eyes, they see the future of Jewish life around the world in Israel.

And so to them, especially, you know, Ben Shapiro himself has said that I am a gino that, you know, it's this fucking word Jews and name only that everyone who voted for Obama is a gino is not really a Jew. That's 80% of no, exactly. It's 80%. And so I think he's already written this off and he doesn't. It just doesn't really enter his radar, the safety and security of Jews outside of Israel. And that's why he can sleep, I suppose, at night while implicitly, tacitly, outlying with

the forces seeking the destruction of the Jews. Shapiro, yeah, Shapiro had his just explicitly said like, oh, bad Jews are destroying Westerns. Like he found a way to be, to do the Zionist version of the, you know, Jew. Judeo Bolshevik shit. Yeah. Yeah. And then, and then of course, you know, other people like, you know, I saw Dave Rubin was like, yeah, he's like, not even going to tweet today.

Just like, just, just thoughts and prayers or whatever. And it's just like, why not, Dave? Yeah. Why don't you tweet out that fucking interview? It was Stefan Mullen you on your fucking shit, your asshole YouTube channel for fucking babies. Like, I mean, these people are, again, like when it is convenient for them, they will become so Jewish and talk about how unsafe they feel by when, you know, someone criticizes

Israel or waves of Palestinian flag or, you know, support solidarity at any level with the Palestinian cause. They will immediately tell you how Jewish they are and how afraid they personally feel as Jews. But then it's just like their ideological fellow travelers basically do nothing, did nothing other than take the things that they've said and done seriously, then they got to clam up. So, I mean, I think it should be pretty clear to everyone what's going on with regards to,

you know, yeah, the people who have spent years, you know, flirting with, yeah, the intellectual dark web, the alt-right, you know, like the race IQ people, the fucking, oh, let's just have a conversation about, you know, immigration or Islam or all that bullshit. Like, they're all drinking from the same fetid sewer, basically. Yeah, they just erase Jews from it when they're making their arguments, but the people that they're, whose philosophies they're subscribing to, add Jews to the Muslims, to the Mexicans, etc., that are bringing down this country and Western civilization in general.

I mean, again, like this is, it just seems like it's one after the other, not just mass shootings, but mass shootings with an explicitly, you know, fascist, racist, ideological program and targets, like, and how they choose it. Like, I mean, again, this is hard to talk about, you know, on a show that's supposed to be funny or whatever, but it's just like, the thing I'm tired of hearing is that, like, it's the internet is making this, is the reason for this or, like, it's, you know, the memes or the trolling. And I just think, like, that's just covering up for, I don't think, like, there's anything

like particularly special or interesting about, like, the internet's relation to these kinds of terrorist acts. It's just like, I mean, that's where people, it's being shared and people, I guess, are sort of finding purchase for this kind of ideology, but like, it's not like it created it or it would, you know, not be there with absent the internet if we just took everyone's Twitter account away or whatever. It's like, just the new medium to broadcast this kind of hateful ideology. Every time, yeah, something inconceivably awful happens that we see front and center more

than pretty much anyone in human history could see it. It's like an immediate, I don't think, bad impulse to want to do something. So it just turns into this, like, referendum on the closest thing in front of us. So it's like, it's the internet because, you know, it's true, the internet makes it easier to disseminate, like, hate and conspiratorial thinking and, yeah, make it easier to, like, buy guns and talk yourself into it, but let's not act like that didn't happen before or it's a billion other, like, value neutral things. It's irony or it's fucking, it's internet forums or it's just the concept of videos

on the internet. And you go through the same cycle every time where you see, like, some very navel, gazey thread from everyone who ever posted on a forum. Talk about how, you know, this is, I saw a fascism firsthand when I posted about Long Cat in 2006. And it's tiring, but I don't, yeah, I don't hate anyone for that or, like, we've got to fix the algorithm. That's the only problem.

It's a very normal impulse, but, yeah, it's short-sighted, I agree. I mean, yeah, fix the algorithm or, like, you know, just quarantine all of them on GAB, like, fine, I don't care about that. But the point is, like, you know, even before social media was a big thing, you know, way back in, let's say, 2001, the U.S. government since then has been dedicated to, you know, killing Muslims en masse throughout the world. And, you know, like, Islam has been, like, the enemy for quite some time now. And you know, I'm sorry, even the good President Obama spent a lot of his time in office fucking

killing a shitload of innocent Muslims in the name of our, you know, safety and security. What do you think has, like, a bigger effect on the culture? Like, is it, is it, like, 4chan or is it, like, you make a cent-a-million-dollar movie, like, American Sniper, about how cool this guy was, because he could just fucking one-tap all the Muslims? Yeah. Or, spending an entire week prior to the atrocity, finding out, you know, Congress trying to figure out a way to ostracize and humiliate Ilhan Olman.

Yeah. Yeah. So, Trump is actually signal-boosting white supremacists throughout the world. And, like, right. And I don't, like, blame anyone for not looking at that shit first, because, like, A, it's, like, incredibly less appealing. That's such a harder problem to fix than, like, YouTube. Absolutely.

But, yeah, it is, you do immediately want to go after the thing that you think is right in front of your face. But sometimes it's the thing under your nose. Thanks for doing this, these are, like, the hard episodes to do, because everyone's, you know, thinking about this horrible thing that can happen. But it's just sort of, I don't know if there's anything new to say, which is what makes it so terrible other than, you know, our expressions of grief and solidarity along with America and New Zealand's Muslim community, and just, you know, I can't help but be inspired by

all the people who showed up to, you know, services over the weekend and will continue to do so, knowing full well that there's probably another person out there fantasizing about making them, you know, their next live stream, you know. I will say it was nice to see New Zealand just be like, yeah, we're getting rid of guns, and that was it, and they did it. Yeah. That, I mean, not going to happen in this country, but it's good to know that someone somewhere can just be like, yep, we're banning semi-autorac weapons, and they're like, yep,

that's it. Seems reasonable. That's amazing. It's like, you know, it's not worth it if like, you know, shit like this can happen otherwise. What are you going to do if you don't have a semi-autorac weapon and you're confronted by a cacopoe in the wild? There are a lot of scary animals, you know, in that part of the world, you know.

More so in Australia, though, you know, a lot of poisonous things over there. Yeah. In the already- And venomous. In Australia, I forget. What's the Australian? The Port Arthur Massacre. Okay, yeah.

You know, you have to have gun buyback after that, and what do you know, there hasn't been another mass shooting there, and their suicide rate, like, dropped by a third or something insane like that. I think how easy it is to just commit suicide by nature out there. That's it. Instead of reaching for a cop service weapon, you just reach to a kangaroo's pouch. That's how you kill yourself in Australia. Well, I'm just going to walk in one direction for a while.

Okay, why don't we dip into this now? We referenced it earlier. This is Bethany Mandel, one half of Bethany and Sethany Mandel, the awesome power couple of the Federalist New York Post, and generally being insufferable on Twitter. You referenced this. She wrote for the forward here. This is Trump's Hanukkah party. Reminded me why America is great for Jews.

Yeah, it's disgusting. But wait, I'm sorry. Ben Shapiro has a book coming out. Yeah. Yeah, go to his Twitter. And I think New York Post ran eight. I'm looking to read two. New York Post ran an excerpt or something, or I think one of these tabloids did.

And it's like really great synchronicity for his book with marketing that New Zealand happened days before. Yeah, another mass murder. The public said there will never be a mass shooting in New Zealand. The real, Ben Shapiro, the real reason I was attacked on college campuses. This is another hilarious thread to the reaction to all of this is the people like Jonathan Chait who has spent the last two years talking about like the threat to free speech on college campuses are still trying to hump that fucking, that corpse, like in the midst of this kind

of shit. Has it been like 40 by now? Aren't you too old to be pretending to be a college student? Okay, this is Hanukkah at the White House by Bethany Mandel in Ricochet. On Thursday, my husband Seth and I attended the White House Hanukkah party along with a hundred other Jewish guests from around the country. And this was a couple weeks after, six weeks after October was Tree of Life. And this was in early December, I think.

We saw friends from California, New Jersey, and quite a few local friends. I wrote about the experience at the forward. As we left the Marine Chamber Orchestra played the entire songbook of Jewish music from Havanigila to Dradle, Dradle, Dradle. It was an incredible moment that brought me to tears. The Marine Chamber Orchestra playing the Dradle song for her. I stood and watched the band and took a peek at their sheet music and marveled about how blessed American Jews are.

This is why we're making fun of this essay from this eighth grader. I'm like, man, we're all low energy today, but like, holy shit. I like, you know what, actually, yeah, fine, fucking fix the algorithm everywhere. I need like these people. They're just so dull. They're just, they just have no, the only like remarkable thing about them is their shitty people. Give me, I miss Rod Dreyer so much.

After spending like a week focusing on these fucking just dull pieces of shit, they just have nothing. Oh, you didn't see the pictures, did you? I mean, I try to avoid pictures of them, but yeah, neither of them are good to look at. But yeah, man, this fucking sucks. She says, but America distinguishes itself because our government, regardless of political party, as well as our media and our neighbors are by and large enormously welcoming of those of the Jewish faith.

Are there exceptions? Of course. Sure, let's go. But how many countries in world history or even currently would host a party like the one I attended last night at the White House? So there are no other countries in the world is governments. Every single country would maybe, maybe not Saudi Arabia. I mean, I do think that America is like the best country in the world to live if you're

a Jewish person, probably. Yeah. But like her reason is that like Donald Trump gave her tater tots. Yeah, exactly. Fucking idiot. For the second year, President Donald Trump hosted a party for Jewish Americans at his home and place of work, the White House. Thank you for clarifying.

I wasn't sure what the White House was or where Donald Trump was. That's not even true. He like does most of his work in New York and at Mar-a-Lago. Never having been to the White House, I eagerly accepted just as I would have done under President Obama or President Clinton or any other president. Funny how- Can you name some more presidents, Bethany? You're very smart.

It's funny how she couldn't catch and invite any of those other presidents and it's only Donald Trump who wants the Beth and Sethany at the White House. What are the odds you thought there was someone else? Oh, really? A 100 percent. He doesn't know who they are. He doesn't know who any of these people are. He thought Bethany is like Howard Stern's wife, wonderfully.

Upon arrival, after passing through several rounds of security, were you guys aware that there was security at the White House to get into the White House? This is amazing. The White House, originally invented by George Washington, is a place to sleep. We were greeted by a small band playing in the foyer and a selection of kosher wines. My husband, far more strict than I am about such things, walked past the wine, assuming he couldn't drink it. I asked the attendant who assured us that every single item at the reception was kosher.

There were several libraries to Peruse and Peruse we did before entering the buffet room and the general meeting room where the president appeared and spoke to the gathered guest. When he spoke to the gathered guest, did he refer to immigrants as an invasion? Yeah. Any Soros mentioned? Yeah. I knew Judah Maccabee. He's a beautiful, beautiful man.

He came with tees in his eyes. Like what was the fuck was that talk? I think I have to discuss it. No, that was a talk where he said Israel's your country. Remember? He didn't do it there, right? Oh, awesome, dude. Yeah.

He notoriously said that at the Hanukkah party. That's just how his brain works. Oh, Israel, that's the Jew country, got it. We didn't actually make it into that main room. We didn't leave the buffet area and I may have eaten my weight in rack of lamb. We mingled with old friends. Oh, rack of lamb. Folks, we've interacted with Sheldon Adelson there.

Did they wheel him out? By the way, prayers up. Prayer's over Sheldon. Can we get a spirit bomb going for Sheldon Adelson? I mean that in a positive way. Sheldon Adelson's brothers, the high prophet of regret and the high prophet of mercy were also killed. Wait, is he dead yet?

Oh my God. Watch the news thing. No, he's not dead. But he said we mingled with old friends. Holy shit. And did a double take when Jared Kushner walked by or Sheldon Adelson passed us on his scooter. Wow. He needs razor scooter.

He's doing tricks. There were a lot of these bizarre moments. Yeah, I'm sure. I mean, that's the thing. I find her selling how bizarre this is, the big Hanukkah party featuring the Marine band Sheldon Adelson and like the most openly fascist president America's ever had. She, well, it's like in her tone, it's like she was starstruck by seeing Jared Kushner. Yeah, she was like, ooh, I made sure my husband was out of the room when I snuck a look at

Jared. She's like Felix's Call of Cthulhu character and how much she enjoys this. It's, yeah, this is the launch of Calvin Coolidge. This is great insanity. This is so fucking lame. Walking around the White House seeing famous portraits of ex-presidents and first ladies and then seeing a bright Trump Yamaha pass by. We also heard a somewhat decent speech from the president about Jews lost in Parkland

in Pittsburgh and then hearing chants of Trump, Trump, Trump down the hallway through the television monitor broadcasting the speech into the buffet room. So he's talking about, yes, many, many of your Jewish brothers killed in Parkland and then down the hall where they're watching on a monitor, like, we're just like, they just started chanting, Trump, Trump, Trump. Best wishes. Even the cult of personality couldn't dampen the feeling of being in the White House at Hanukkah surrounded by beautiful Christmas trees and decorations.

As we let others because I stood and watched the band, took a peek at their sheet music and marveled about how blessed American Jews are. For many of those present last night, our recent ancestors arrived with little in their pockets and no grasp of the English language and we're now all working hard to make sure that never happens again for any other human being. No, they lived in the Tenements of the Lower East Side. Have you guys heard about this one, by the way? You guys heard about Jews living in the Tenements and Lower East Side?

Garments, making garments in factories? It's about Miss Maisel again. Yeah, because many of them became stand-up comedians. Stop referencing that. Nobody knows what you mean when you're referencing that. All the people who watch the show do. Nobody watches the show. Miss Maisel is a Barristan Selmy of the Upper West Side.

And Mrs. Maisel in Infinity War, she's known as the greatest comedian on earth and then Steve Harvey comes back and she can't stand up to his awesome power. So they said, all right, they gave us a better life, nothing short of the American dream. And in her mind, she's like, oh, they all came the right way when they were just poured out of every ghetto in Eastern Europe into Lower Manhattan and they were like, what? They waited in line. Yeah, and also the right breed is what she's saying. White Jews.

The president himself, far from an ideal man of this we are well aware, proudly spoke of how the Jewish faith is so deeply woven into the fabric of his family. This country isn't perfect for Jews or anyone else, but for a few precious minutes, looking at the sheet music and seeing those in attendance dancing, it felt remarkably close. Now, Ellie, I know a lot of your haters on the Jewish right love to call you a capo, but I mean, I'm not going to call her that. No, I mean, I don't even call them that because I think capo, we have to recognize capos during the Holocaust didn't really have a choice.

That's hard to judge them by our standards, living in free society. What people who are normalizing what's happening now, this is worse than capo. This is because they have a choice and they are electing because they already have privilege to shit on all marginalized communities, including Jews as we're heading in that direction again. So that is worse than capo. Her invocation of the Jewish immigrant story of coming to Lower East Side and not speaking Yiddish and then like, oh, now we're successful and it's like an American success story. By the way, Central Americans are invading our country and are a plague that must be

stopped and fall. Or yeah, the Muslims are, yeah, they're not assimilating to America. There's zero self-awareness with that shit. But yeah, no, she's they're selling out for a fucking buffet and Sheldon, it was being at a party where they can see Sheldon Adelson in his scooter for a buffet, Adelson scooter, and also knowing that the embassy is moved to Jerusalem, you know? I like to say that they would shovel us into the ovens if it meant new gold toilets in the Jerusalem embassy.

Trump Mar-a-Lago new hotel in Jerusalem? Yeah, exactly. Why do they care so much about Israel? I mean, there's like a lot of things you can care about. There's movies, TV shows, posts. Yeah. That's it. No, that is, I agree with that.

I agree with that assessment of like, things is OK to care about. I'll say why. Are you like, it's like, oh, I'm the Israel nerd. The capital is always bedroom slow. Check out these coins I found. Oh, you're talking about Judah and Samaria, easy new mistake, but take it off topic. Well, personally, you see, for them, the Torah and the Old Testament is the lore that they're really into.

Yeah, but it's like, there's only like, there's like a few really good books of lore and it doesn't even connect. Like, you know how people bitch about what D&D did to Game of Thrones? It's like, Israel to the Old Testament, it's like, only season seven. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's, you know, that's my point again, there's a million books. You could be really obsessed with, I don't know, the works of Shakespeare. Israel, Palestine, Saul, my first old Texas, you heard it here first.

Just read Hamlet. Get into something else. Dude, what if that worked? What if you like, you went up to Netanyahu and said that and he's like, I never thought about it that way. And Israel just fucking disbands. They're like, he's right, this shit's stupid. He's getting into fighting games and fucking how I met your mother.

There's just, there's just no more Israel, it just works. They're like, no one told us that we could do something else besides this. I'm free now. There's no more forward. No more forward. The newspaper. Yeah. No more.

No more of the greatest articles we've ever read. What do you think? Do you think that'll work? Just tell people like, Hey, just stop caring about Israel. It's just a country. Yeah. If Virgil's a messenger. Okay.

Okay. Check. How do you, what do you think about this through a message? Okay. Do the Israel nerd? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, we go on Heights in 1953. And I shove him out of the way. I'm like, Hey, Israel, Palestine, Xbox, PC. I don't care. Grab the sticks and shut up and game. Who's your main Palestine? Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I think we've, uh, we solved it. We saw it. Took it to, you know, another, another issue sensitively dealt with and dispatched with problem solved. We did it. Oh, no more evil in the world. Do you see the fucking guy who killed the, uh, the mob boss is a Q and on guy? No.

Yeah. With the dude who killed the guy in Staten Island is a Q and on guy. Fucking Q on his palm as, as they found the mob boss behind all the, uh, all the deep stage shit. Yeah. No, it's crazy. That way that guy put the clues together. Yeah.

It's nuts. No. The Q and on guy killed the mob boss. You've got to be fucking pissed if you're a mafia guy and that happens. You're like, it's not another mob guy, just some fucking guy who loves online. Did he kill him because of Q and on? I don't know. We don't know.

I don't know yet. Probably. If you have all these enemies and you think you're safeguarded from all of them and it's just like, I like, I like, yeah, you're like, all right, I double check my own for bugs and making sure I wasn't followed home, uh, change my guards every like, every like three hours. And then just some guy who like, he's been reading about John Podesta every day for two years.

Just bang. Uh, can I just say, I actually forgot what the referent of your Megan McCain comic was because people have spent the past weekend retweeting just the most vapid post from Megan McCain from 2009. Well, what? Which one was that? I don't think I saw that. I just throughout the weekend, uh, just like, just like the most boring and stupid shit

I can imagine. And someone found this, they saw this morning. It's really perfect. This is from 2010. And this woman is like in her twenties and a graduate of Columbia University, which merit. Uh, give me the beach boys and free my soul. Michael. No, dude.

Michael went into the werewood tree and wrote that I refuse to believe that's give me the beach boys and free my soul. Fucking Jesus, dude. And then she would be, and then whenever someone would retweet something like that, she would delete it. So I, she's spending most of her time doing that now, deleting the original tweets, just deleting the original tweets. And they're also perfect.

I mean, they, I hope these are archived somewhere under some, you know, like the, the presidential failed otter library. Give me the beach boys and free my soul. It's really perfect. I don't, that's going to make me forget the original song. Give me the beat, give me the beat boys and free my soul. I want to get lost in your rock and roll. Right.

Give me Jim Morrison. Yeah. Jim Morrison. Well, I think that about does it for us today, sort of, sort of spun out at the end there, but sometimes you got to spin out to go forward. That's true. You got to turn into the crash. I got, I got a plug.

Fine. Fine. Okay. So as you know, the New York department of sanitation is for the recycling team members. And they're anthropomorphized garbage cans. No, no, no. Only public. Only one is a garbage can.

See, that's why this is difficult to talk about because they don't have names. One is a compost pile. One is a recycling bin. One is a recycling bin of another color because of two different ones. They're supposed to explain these things is the thing. That's their purpose. And I find them very helpful, but they don't have names. So they'll, they're, they're, they're soliciting names for each one.

They don't have backstories too. And they're holding these polls to name each one. And right now they're on the gray one, which is a trash can, you know, gray trash can you'd see outside, you know, conventional. And they have a, you know, they have a poll with these three options. And the options are terrible. Like when one was like Captain Hero, something like that, that's nothing to do with the character's backstory or anything like that.

I would, I would like one of them to be named after me. Okay. So I would like listeners to go to the New York Department of Sanitation's Twitter feed. And you know, just, yeah, just add them. Just tell them, you know, hey, name the can after Virgil. You could also go on the form and I, the form, like I said, it's just, it's just a, it's just a form with three options, you know, but I found a little work around here. You could add, you could put your email address in there.

So just put like name the can after Virgil at gmail.com. And then submit that. Thanks for that. Virgil. You know, our listeners might also consider, I don't know, you know, donating some time or money to their local, you know, mosque or Muslim community or groups that works with immigrants or anything or they could raise their fund raiser for the victims of the Christ George massacre that we'll put in the episode description as well.

Or you could do the thing Virgil has to do. You can do both. You can do both. You can do both. I mean, I'm curious about the others' back stories because they've only mentioned the one so far. All right. I'm, I'm ending this episode.

Oh, my God. Can I say, uh, oh, are we still on? Oh, I just want to say I'm sorry that I'm so exhausted. I was up all night drawing Chelsea Clinton and I just cannot muster energy to speak. So a terrible time to go on a podcast. Well, uh, we thank you for the, for all the art. All right. And all the laughs.

Keep them coming. Okay. All right.