Guerrilla History - Indigeneity & Palestine w/ Nick Estes & Mohamed Abdou

Episode Date: January 5, 2024

In this episode of Guerrilla History, bring on two exceptional guests to discuss a critical topic for deepening our understanding of Palestine and the ongoing settler-colonial domination by the state of "Israel"!  Nick Estes and Mohamed Abdou come on the show for a conversation about Indigeneity and Palestine, and we found this discussion to be incredibly fruitful and useful when analyzing the situation in Occupied Palestine today. We are sure that you will also find use in this, and we encourage you to send it along to comrades to help them deepen their thinking of this as well! A few pieces to check out:  Mohamed did an YouTube event and wrote an article on the topic "1492 Palestine". Nick was active in the in the drafting of a letter by indigenous activists and scholars condemning the actions of Israel, and there is also an episode of The Red Nation where you can learn about this letter and indigenous solidarity with Palestine. Nick Estes is a Lakota organizer, journalist, and historian at the University of Minnesota. He has cofounded The Red Nation and Red Media. Be sure to pick up Nick's book Our History is the Future, and he can be followed on twitter @nickwestes  Mohamed Abdou is a North African-Egyptian Muslim anarchist activist-scholar. He has been a Visiting Scholar at Cornell University and an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the American University of Cairo, and is incoming at Columbia University. Pick up his book Islam and Anarchism: Relationships and Resonances, and follow him on twitter @minuetinGmajor  Help support the show by signing up to our patreon, where you also will get bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory

You don't remember Dinn-Bin-Bin-Bou? No, the same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare, but they put some guerrilla action on. Hello and welcome to guerrilla history, The podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present.

I'm one of your co-hosts, Henry Huckimacki. Unfortunately, only joined by one of my usual co-hosts. We are joined by Professor Adnan Hussein, who is historian director at the School of Religion at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada. Hello, Adnan. How are you doing today? I'm doing great, Henry. It's excellent to be with you. It's nice to see you as always. Unfortunately, we're not joined by our other usual co-host

Brett O'Shea, who of course is host of Revolutionary Left Radio and the Red Menace podcast as he had something come up last minute. But we are definitely looking forward to having Brett back on the program again soon to co-host these conversations. We have a really great conversation ahead of us today with two exceptional activist scholars. And before I introduce that topic and our guests, I just want to remind the listeners that you can help support the show and allow us to keep making episodes like the one that you are going to hear as well as or more than 150 others at this point by going to patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history,

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with guerrilla being spelled G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A-U-Pod. So as I mentioned, we have a great topic today and two excellent guests. The topic is going to be around indigenity and the current situation in Gaza. We have two great guests, Mohamed Abdu, who is coming in to Columbia University and also is author of the fascinating book, which I know there's an episode of on the Mujah's podcast, Adnan's other podcast, Islam and Anarchism, Relationships and Resonances. So, Muhammad, it's nice to have you on the show. Thank you.

Salam al-a-a-a-com, Henry, and I'm a very honored to be with you all and with Adnan and with Nick. So thank you. Absolutely. It's a pleasure. We're also joined by returning guest, Nick Estes, who is a historian at University of Minnesota, author of Our History is The Future, does a lot of work. with the Red Nation, everybody loves Nick and Nick, you're a friend of the show, although it's been a long time since we've had you on the show. I feel like we've kind of been

negligent in having you come back on. But it's nice to have you on the show, Nick. Yeah, it's great to be back. So I'm going to actually just open the conversation for broad discussion. I'm going to turn it over to Muhammad first because this topic was actually posed by Muhammad to Adnan. And then Adnan, of course, forwarded this idea to all of us. and we were very happy to have this conversation. So, Muhammad, can you introduce this topic for us and talk about why this topic was at the forefront of your mind and why you think it warrants the conversation that we're having today?

Well, thank you very much again. I'm very humbled an honor to be with you all. Let me start with just a Quranic prayer. allamashri l'alli wiescerly umri w'hlo al-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-sha-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-aqaqaulii and undo or the nod in my tongue such that our speeches become legible and sort of accessible to one another and certainly to the listeners the topic really that I was thinking about and obviously this is moses's prayer upon meeting pharaoh that I just recited. But the topic really is, I think, is quite vital and quite important for several reasons. The question of settler colonialism, the question of indigeneity, which becomes really crucial and its deployment both as a racial and ethnic construct, but also as a non-racial and

ethnic analytic, if you will. But also what I personally find to be problematic in terms of the secularization of Palestine as a struggle, particularly given significant transnational significance of 1492 and if we're talking about decolonization, if we're talking about abolition, if we're talking about anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism, then we need to be talking about transnationalism. And I think 1492 serves as in so many ways as zero. And it's very interesting, obviously, the way that the U.S. constructs its history, more or less. This is the premise in a certain sense of the 1619 project and sort of the ongoing erasure

of indigenous people and their assignment a sign boosts history versus, say, the so-called Canada, and obviously I'm speaking from Algonquin territory, at the moment on the Shunabai territory in the context of Ottawa. So that's sort of what sparked the interest, the situating of Islam as a quintessential other. Islam is not an exception, but it is made to be exceptional that way. And I think, yeah, those are some of the reasons, if you will,

of what to do with Islam, what to do with Islamism. We're seeing a generation Zed reading OBL's letter to America. We're seeing discussions of conversion to Islam, reminiscent of, you know, post-9-11, the question of, yeah, the so-called war on terror that I argue is a war on Islam and a war that's been conjured within Islam along racial and ethnic and sectarian lines. So, yeah, that's just very briefly what is some of the dimensions as to why I proposed or thought through this discussion on roundtable. Before Adnan hops in with a question, because I know Adnan is going to have a lot more

to say on the Islam front than I inevitably will during this conversation. I want to make sure that I bring in Nick early here also. So the key question here, one of the key questions anyway, is indigenity, which is a question that comes up time and time again. And in this context, in terms of the conflict between Palestine and the so-called state of Israel, the question of indigenity is coming up more and more often, even than it has in the past, I think, at least in terms of what I'm seeing. But the question of indigenity is a quite complex one.

You know, it's not as simple as just looking and saying, you know, at time X, this people were here. We have to look at relationships between settler colonialism and people at a given time, but it, of course, does not extend to that. We have to look at the history, the relationships to the land. There's a lot of factors that go into indigenity that I think often get flattened into just this term, indigenous, and people aren't really thinking through the complexities of this term. So, Nick, being somebody who is far more qualified to speak on this topic than I am

myself, I'm going to turn it over to you. Can you talk a little bit about some of these complexities of indigenity and how they relate to the context that we're talking about here, just in broad sweeps, because of course, we're going to dive in much deeper during the conversation as well. Hamatakiapi, so that's something that we say as local to people, which just means, hello, my relations. It doesn't mean, like, hello, my human relations. It means everybody, everything, right? And I start with that because indigenity, as it's been defined by indigenous people,

is fundamentally a way of relating. And if we understand that in the context of settler colonialism, we can understand settler colonialism and its specific intent, right, to break relations, to destroy relations. And I was, you know, just recently in a conversation with Mark, Lamont Hill and Nora Erichat about the definitions of genocide and the invocation of the genocide convention in 1948 and how that legalistic sort of international definition is both an accusation, it's both the prevention of genocide as much as the punishment of genocide. I think we forget

the prevention piece, which maybe shows the inadequacy of an international body to actually prevent genocide but I would I would dare to sort of like recast that definition and looking at like genocide in general and how we actually define it because it speaks to indigenous 80 and the indigenous experience because even Raphael Lemkin himself and I was listening to your wonderful podcast episode with our friend and comrade Shrease Bernstelli and in the definition we charge genocide right in looking at the the black freedom struggle and bringing the you know invoking the genocide convention and trying to bring the the sort of accusation and the charge of genocide to the United Nations about the U.S. sort of both its legalistic and sort of informal sort of vigilante

terrorism against black people through the form of lynching. And the sort of the sort of critiques of that move, or excuse me, the criticisms and the attack, you know, and the labeling of that movement as, you know, communist and sort of this plot sort of speaks to a general sort of antipathy towards these particular movements and these accusations, but it also speaks to how genocide itself has been distorted, specifically from the context of people who have experienced genocide and sort of the way in which it's sort of mobilized in this particular moment as a way to silence Palestinians, because it's a way. way to, you know, we have the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of

anti-Semitism becoming the definition of anti-Semitism, saying that your anti-Zionist is now a social sort of accusation or it's become socialized in the sense that, or popular is in the sense that it is now equivocated to anti-Semitism. Think about that. You can't speak about genocide against the actual perpetrators of genocide without being accused of anti-Semitism. I want to hop in one quick second, Nick. Just I believe yesterday, Benjamin Netanyahu made a statement where he said that even investigating Israel's, you know, potential war crime, quote-unquote, potential war crimes. This is how he framed it.

Investigating potential war crimes by the state of Israel is anti-Semitic in itself. just the investigation of potential war crimes. So just to add that into this ridiculous definition that you just laid out, we even have people that are trying to push it even further. Yeah, and just to kind of speak to some of the topics you've all discussed on your show and the work that you've done, Dominiccio Lo Sudo wrote a book called A War and Revolution. And I implore everyone to read that book because he shows how both anti-communism and the sort of genocide against, you know, Jewish and Romani people and the Nazi genocide against Jewish and Romani people sort of draws from, yeah, Henry's got a copy of it, draws, it uses the language of colonialism, right?

19th century colonialism to enact or to exact a sort of a political terror campaign and racial terror campaign within the context of Europe. And I bring that up because even Raphael Lemkin, if you look at his. when he writes and defines genocide and he talks about specifically the Nazi occupation of Eastern Europe, he's using colonial frameworks to do so because that's the only language, that's the precedent for this all, right? It's using the technologies of colonialism. It's using the frameworks of colonialism, but also it's an inadequate framework in many ways because it's talking about the context of war. So typically we think of genocide is only occurring, when there's a formal declaration of war.

And that's not useful. I'm making a point here, but so I'm going a roundabout way, but it's not useful for the context of thinking about indigenous people in the context of the United States and Canada. Because sure, in the United States, there was a formal declared war for 100 years from 1790 to 1891. There are 14 battle streamers on the U.S. Army flag commemorating the United States longest military campaign, which was called the Indian Wars. In 1891, that's actually commemorated

with, you know, the, the wounded knee massacre in December of 1890. And so the United States understands, yeah, sure, there was this military campaign against indigenous people. But that's, that's also an inadequate definition of genocide because it places genocide only within the context of warmaking. And I'm bringing this up because on October 6th, genocide was taking place in Gaza. On October 5th, genocide was taking place in Gaza. Genocide didn't begin after October 7th in Gaza. The conditions of genocide were already taking place. And it happens. And again, this legal framework is important, but it's wholly inadequate in understanding, even through Raphael Lemkin's definition, because he said there were two, there's sort of two definitions of

genocide in his framework. And only one made it into the sort of international legal framework. It's vandalism and mass slaughter. In other words, cultural destruction and mass slaughter, right? Cultural destruction is, you know, we can define that. He defines it in a really kind of in-depth way, but I think thinking about it in the context of settler colonialism, the taking of children, the indoctrination of them into, you know, a boarding school system, the erasure of our place names, the destruction of our languages are all part and parcel to a genocidal project. But I think from an indigenous perspective, and what defines indigenous aity, and I'll quote my comrade Justine Teba, who is doing a teaching here in Minneapolis.

She's a pueblo activist who works for red media and as part of the Red Media. nation, she said, had settler colonialism not happened, had the United States not invaded Tewa territory where she is from, she would just be Tewa today. That's all. She would just be Tewa. She wouldn't be indigenous. Because indigenous is fundamentally defined by a colonial condition and the experience of occupation and genocide.

So on one hand, it has that sort of negative context, right? But it's as indigenous people, we struggle against those particular things. And even within the legal frameworks of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People and how it's been, you know, characterized and defined within UN human rights law, indigenousity is fundamentally about statelessness. And so our human rights and our rights within the context of international law will only be about statelessness in relation to our occupiers. So those are fundamentally prohibitive and, you know, limiting frameworks in terms of what

an articulation of liberation, right? And I always, and I bring this up because when we think about, you know, the Palestinian liberation movement in its broad, you know, historical context, it began from the form of statelessness and defining itself against the occupart, even to just, just to say Palestinian was, you know, a revolutionary act because it was under constant erasure. And when they allied with us within the indigenous movement in the late 60s and 1970s, we begin to see a different definition of indigenousness, right? And it's, I would say it's wholly incomplete. It's something that, you know, should be struggled over and redefined.

But I think in the context of what we define as indigenous in the context of Palestine, it's interesting now that, you know, you have, I can't remember his name. I think his name is Herzog. He's the prime minister, I believe, of Israel, saying that the genocide against Palestinians is fundamentally about saving Western civilization. He's saying that on one side of his mouth. And then on the other side of his mouth, he's saying, we are also the original peoples of this land. How can you be saving Western civilization on one hand by committing genocide against the native population in Palestine, while also claiming to be indigenous. And I think what we're seeing here is the limitations of these sort of frameworks of indigenousity.

And I always, in my personal opinion, I think indigenousness or indigenousity is sometimes a limiting framework and can be co-opted into these other sort of, you know, these other frameworks of a, you know, a Jewish national project that's fundamentally premised on the elimination of another, another people, right? So it's a very complicated thing. And I'm not saying that like there weren't Jewish people who were and who are indigenous to Palestine. There are, obviously. Like that's a silly question. But it also like to say that, you know, there's a Jewish population that lives in exile and then must return. And then the people who are resisting them are anti-Jewish or anti-Semitic fundamentally misplaces the blame because they should be

going to you know there was there should be they should be going to nazi germany they should be going to all of europe and saying this is what you owe us right not displacing that sort of obligation onto people who had nothing to do with the genocide against jewish people in europe or the long history of anti-Semitism within the sort of European tradition. But I'll end it there. Yeah, so many threads to pick up on on what you both have begun with. But just coming back to this, I mean, I'm so glad to have you on to talk about this issue about how the framework of indigenousity has been used and deployed in this context as a response basically to the success of political mobilizing and analyzing Israel through the frame of settler colonialism.

This is something that I think, you know, Zionist apologists and advocates, particularly, you know, in the West have observed. It has been very crucial in reframing solidarity and political, you know, activism, you know, around, you know, thinking of Israel through the prism of a settler colonial project. And they want to deny that it is a form of settler colonialism by making these claims of indigenity. And of course, this is all very important in the original Zionist narrative about the suitability of this particular land through these religious, you know, documents and scriptures and, you know, a judging, you know, that as a warrant for, you know, recall. colonization. And so I'll have something that I want to ask Muhammad about this, in particular about

secularizing the struggle. But first, just your point about indigenity, reframing it as fundamentally relational, I think is very important. And then also thinking about it as historical, as something that emerges and develops, as a product of various other factors and forces and as a response, as you alluded to, you know, Zionism is a response to millennia of persecution of the Jews in Europe, their marginalization, and in particular in the 19th century, in the era of formation of new nation states and breaking up these kind of old land-based empires, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Russian Empire, Ottoman Empire, all undergoing various pressures, and there were independence movements of peoples who had been part of multi-ethnic, multi-religious, multi-linguistic polities as subjects, as subordinates, of course, but as subjects integrated into these different kinds of polities were now demanding nation-states.

And this was seen as an antidote that the very framework of freedom, of political existence in history, was having a nation, being a nation, and having a state to sort of ratify. that kind of identity. And so it seemed to me the unique kind of problem here that's relevant relationally is that those who developed this kind of idea of Zionism as a form of Jewish nationalism and as a political project did it to make themselves, you know, essentially Europeans by, you know, or at least modern and enlightened, you know, Western people through this project of colonization of settler colonialism. So whether or not they had historic and religious and ties to the land in various ways, you know, through their cultural inheritance and so on, the project involves them going as colonizers very explicitly in order to remake themselves

in the image of modern Europeans. And so they're inhabiting the role of colonists and they're very open and clear about that. And so I think that helps kind of understand the relational dimension here is that you don't have to deny that there is a historic connection and that Jews have lived in this land continuously because the political project, however, was organized in such a way is to make them European, as it were. And so I just wanted to have some kind of sense of that. And in terms of the larger kind of question, the other question here about secularizing the struggle, is that in your remarks, Nick also related to something Muhammad was saying, was talking about, which is, in a way,

it's the sanctifying of the state, you know. I mean, this whole kind of association of Zionism with Judaism, you know, is you're taking a 5,000 year religious and cultural tradition and making it the same as, you know, a political ideology that and a movement that has 150 year history. I mean, it's like a real, these are totally not comparable kinds of phenomenon, but what it's doing is it's kind of sanctifying the state as like, so if you charge, you know, Israel should be without impunity because you know, in Netanyahu's words that you were quoting, that even investigating it is anti-Semitism, is a way of sanctifying the state as holy, as not subject to reason, evidence,

you know, any of these kinds of things of the kind of a modern political vocabulary is to say it is holy, it is sanctified, it is beyond, you know, critique. And that is the appropriation, you might say, of a religious tradition for, you know, a kind of secularized theocratic kind of position. So I was wondering if either of you had some kind of responses to the way in which settler colonial frame helps us understand each of those two things, you know, one about how to really understand indigenousity and as a frame that's useful or not in what way. And also the way, the way. in which the struggle has been secularized, but yet it operates in this very kind of

theological kind of space, you know, that's not subject to, you know, normal critique of reason and history. And so far as your question, and there are so many insightful points that have been raised, obviously, with Nick, and this is maybe why, maybe I'll start up back to, to, or run us back to the 1492. what happened with Muslims and Jews insofar as Andalusia in Spain. And their casting as both savages and heathens. And again, savage was obviously the racial derogatory sort of a term that was being used in heathens as godless.

Particularly by Ferdinand and Isabel as part of the ongoing resaving project. When we look, though, beyond that, the Columbus has conquested or invasion. This is why I really prefer even Tiffany Lothabo-Kinns for the use of, the term conquested or settler colonialism, because when Columbus was, when they were conquering, obviously, the Taino people, Columbus had referred to the weapons that were being used by the Taino people that were Alphanjis as Sintar weapons and, and he, which were being used by Muslims against the crusades. More than that, even Hernal-Cortez referred to Aztec women as Moorish women. He very much said that well and described Aztec temples as mosques.

He described Montezuma, the Aztec leader as a Sultan. We see a great deal of, again, analogies because of the world of Christendom that these conquesterors were arriving from. But it wasn't only the ongoing genocide that, again, settler colonialism was very much predicated upon in terms of indigenous people. But we also know that historically speaking, a third to a fifth of the transatlantic sort of middle passage in transatlantic slaves were Muslims from the Arabian Peninsula and the west coast of Africa as well. So Islam was always hovering there in the background as sort of, again, a quintessential other that couldn't be destroyed head on vis-a-vis the Crusades, but rather had to be dismantled in a certain way within. So we begin to even look at the Enlightenment scholarship, whether it's Hobbs, Kant, Rousseau, and so on. And as Joseph Masad had pointed, there was two simultaneous logics that were being employed. Let's sort of racialize Islam, the various different formations of Islam and African Islam and Asian Islam and Arab Islam and pit them against one another.

But also, let's harp on the sectarian tendencies. And Ahmadi Islam versus an Islam versus an Ismaili versus a Sunni versus a Shiite and voila, Iraq, right? Or Afghanistan and so on and so forth. So I think in so many ways that also incepted in terms of, you know, the breakdown of, if you will, traditional formations of the Ummah that existed, and I use that term in terms of the global community of Muslims and non-Muslims together in various different manifestations of them that existed within 1,400 years of Muslim history, loosely speaking, whether we're talking about the Abbasid period, the Rathmanian period, whether we're talking even within the context of the Ottoman so-called empire. And so on, again, there's a lot to disentangle there. So I'm not meaning to homogenize that history because of the different manifestations of the umand, the significance of that in terms of the global polity, if you will, from a political theological perspective. But that also created a crisis of identity that choose.

Is your affiliation to sort of a nationalist sense of identity, for instance in the context of a country as Egypt? Are you an Arab nation? Are you an African nation? Where does that then place the Nubian sort of people? Where does that place the Siwa, indigenous people? where does that place Sudanese people who are Egyptians and so on and so forth. And even at a certain point, I mean, Gaza was a part of Egypt. Where does that place Palestinian Egyptians in the context of it all?

Or do you have some sense of Muslim belonging? And that's the fracture. This is where we can to see, at least in the context of North Africa, for instance, in just the broader Suana region, if you will, Southward Asia and North Africa. The split between sort of a pan-Islamist current, a pan-Arab and a pan-Africanist trajectory, And not that the two are reconcilable with one another, but in a certain sense, you know, the spiritual dimension that allows for a transcendence, if you will, at least from an Islamic theological perspective, the transcendence of a racial dimension in terms of the discussion, whereby indigenity then as an analytic is conceived, at least within Muslim terms, and as I write in my book, as synonymous with the concept of fithra. And fithra is the inclination that all human beings, unlike the original sin, Muslims believe that we're all born in the condition of footra, in the sense that we're born to connect with community, connect with non-human life, because we're all

Hulipat, we're all caretakers of the land, and we're all caretakers of one another. So it's not about a race to innocence, sort of a Shereen Razak sort of puts it. It's not as playing Indian or Indian grandmother syndrome, as Philip Doloria had noted it, but rather sort of indigenity has nothing to do with bloodlines. It doesn't have to do with color of skin, but actually the embodiment of fulfilling acts of compassion, and so far as Rahma, goodness, or what is referred to as Heihan, and to honor communal bonds and reciprocal non-authoritarian and non-materialist, horizontal, ethical, political, spiritual commitments in relationship to the land, the non-human life. I mean, it's ironic that, you know,

there are many chapters in the Quran, for instance, that are named after non-human life, you know, the chapter of the sun, the chapter of the bees, the chapter of the moon, the chapter of the ends and so on, but Muslims seldom think about the significance of that and our responsibilities, responsibilities, not rights, to non-human life that is a subject with a spirit and not an object to that way, that can be anthropomorphized as property, if you will. And so there becomes a disconnect even in so far as our indigenating in relationship to one another, our ethical political responsibilities and relationships, but also in relationship to land as well in which we are severed, because that's, that's, you know, the first

object of colonialism, as Patrick Wolf had noted, and even Fanon had noted this, is the severance of land, because you sever from land, you sever at the same time the conceptualization of gender, of a people's race, relationships, and so on and so forth, to that land, the conceptualization of masculinity, of femininity, of what constitutes, if you will, so-called el chosuziat or the privacies versus the public domains. if you will. So there's a huge distinction there that in a paradigm shift, if you will, and hence a cognitive dissidents that is introduced psychologically speaking in a very psycho-effective violent way to those that are occupied in relationship to land.

So, and this is why somebody like Patty Kerwick, and I love the way that she praises it, the element of carrying our own bundles becomes very important because part of the dimension, and we go back to the question of why. I really wanted us to get together and discuss this panel, because in so many ways, I'm also very perturbed, if you will, with two things specifically. Why don't we get into those, if you're going to talk about solidarity? I definitely want to get to that topic, but let's pick that up in a moment, I think, because that's a big topic that I think we'll want to discuss.

But thank you, yeah. Just to build, I guess, a little bit off of that question, and thinking about, I guess, the theological dimensions of settler colonialism. I can only speak to, I guess, U.S. context. And what really comes to mind when we talk about this is the federal Supreme Court cases, specifically like the Marshall trilogy, which create the superstructure of what we know now as federal Indian law. And the grounds in which that were sort of like retroactively applied to justify conquest and taking and the taking of the land. And I think of, you know, the Johnson v. McIntosh decision, which is, you know,

we're on the 200-year anniversary of that decision. It was 1823 the same year as the Monroe Doctrine, which, you know, they both kind of speak to each other in different ways. But this decision, this federal Supreme Court decision was, you know, at the beginning of Cherokee Roman. removal. And Cherokee, you know, the Cherokee nation in Georgia at that particular moment in time had adopted, had tried to reflect the society that was colonizing it. It was called one of the five, quote unquote, civilized tribes. It had adopted a written constitution. It had created a writing system for its language. It had a newspaper. It had a parliament. It had everything, you know, that the United States had in terms of a government. And it didn't even participate. in a hierarchy of racialization. It had enslaved African people. It had created a small, but not significant compared to the U.S. system, plantation economy. So it had adopted the very

framework, you know, that the white settlers had adopted, right? It had even, you know, adopted Christianity in many ways and had, you know, implicated it within its own sort of belief system in the Cherokee belief system. But none of this prevented it from being removed because this, you know, I think it's important to remember that even though, you know, settler colonialism is, you know, the framework that we're using, it's, it's oftentimes we see in the news, you know, we'll talk about like how our languages have been destroyed, how our spirituality and our sacred sites have been destroyed. But that's not the intent, right? That's not, they didn't destroy that because they just think that we are, we are fundamentally different.

and therefore our things need to be destroyed, there's a clear intent, right, to access land and resources. We're not racialized as indigenous people because of our language, what we believe, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, our culture. We're racialized because we stand in the way of settler colonialism. We stand in the way of settlers to access our land. In this particular Supreme Court decision under the, you know, under the Chief Justice John Marshall,

invoked the doctrine of discovery, even though he never really called it the doctrine of discovery, but nonetheless, that became the sort of retroactive justification. The United States was a quote unquote secular, right? We have the separation of the church and the state. It was a quote unquote secular state that arose in fundamental in its own, you know, it's in its own sort of thinking as a fundamentally different project than the so-called tyranny of Europe, right?

In the monarchical traditions and, you know, the idea, that, you know, the divine right of kings, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But nonetheless, it invokes the doctrine of discovery, which is a, which comes from a papal bull in the 15th century. Because it claims that although we are not a, quote, unquote, Catholic state, we're not a quote unquote Christian nation.

Nonetheless, we inherit the principles of those who came before us, those who have conquered before us. And this is, you know, the doctrine of discovery was something that was debated and, you know, I think is De Las Casas and Sepo Veda. I can't remember the exact, I'm not like a theological sort of historian, but they were debating about the rights of indigenous people, whether or not the church, you know, recognized, you know, the Holy See recognized indigenous people as possessing reason, as possessing, you know, the rights of, of, you know, rational. sort of human beings or other in other words Christian people right or Christian nations and that became the basis of international law it became the basis because Christianity was synonymous with civilization and so if you were not Christian if you had not adopted or were recognized

as a Christian nation therefore you didn't have rights you didn't have property rights so the doctrine of discovery as it is defined retroactively you know in the context of the 1823 Supreme court decision says that because indigenous people were not recognized as civilized nation, they were savages, they were in a state of savagery, they could only possess occupancy rights to the land, meaning that they could exist on the land, they had the right to live on it, but they didn't have the right to possess it. They didn't have the highest form of property relation, which is alienation. When you can alienate your land, that is the exercise or alienate property that is the exercise of not just private property it's the exercise of civilization and so

i i begin with this because while you know the united states may you know project itself as a sort of secularized you know a nation it's a liberal democracy it's tolerant the fundamental legal relationship that it has with indigenous peoples is based on the theological doctrine and it has not renounced those. It has not overturned it. So our lives are fundamentally dictated as indigenous people. When we go to Congress, when we go to the executive, it's fundamentally dictated by this theological premise that we are not entirely human. And no matter what we can even do within the legal rights framework that has been created for us, within the federal Indian, you know, the trust relationship that we supposedly have with our colonizers, we can never fully.

exercise rights as a nation we don't have true sovereignty it's constantly there's unlimited limitations that are always placed upon us and our you know articulation of ourselves as people our relationship to the land um and so i bring that up because you know the the there are other elements to this and you know there's a really wonderful book by my my friend and colleague it's called we are the stars. It's colonizing and decolonizing the Ocheti-Shakoui literary tradition. Her name is Sarah Hernandez. But she talks about even the writing of our language, whether it's Dakota or Lakota, it has been Christianized. Because the first people to transcribe our language and to write it into an alphabet form, to articulate the grammar, to write the dictionaries, we're Christian

missionaries because they understood that language was key to accessing our land and to colonizing us and to fundamentally changing how we conceive of ourselves as human beings in relation to the land, but also how we sign documents. Because in 1851, there was actually a Dakota treaty that was written in the Dakota language. And if you compare the English version with the Dakota version, we didn't have words for sale. There was no such thing as selling land, but they turned it into a gift. It's, it's all of a sudden it becomes a gift, right? And there's, they, they also distort our perceptions of, you know, like we didn't have a

whole, we didn't have a great chain of being concept in our, in, you know, in our language, but then they invent terms or they distort our terms like wakantanka, which actually just literally means something that is so mysterious that we can't comprehend and therefore it is sacred, right? and in our entire sort of like worldview is based on understanding and respecting things that we don't understand, that we will never as human beings have the capacity to understand. And it's not about knowing. It's about not knowing and trusting that there's something that's greater out there.

It's not, you know, some people might call that God, but we didn't have that sort of hierarchy in terms of there was, you know, a monotheistic sort of, you know, God figure. it came later and I'm not I'm not dismissing it I'm just saying that that was the sort of concept but nonetheless when you invoke that and when you change the meaning right it was it was one of the first attempts to also translate the Bible into a Dakota you know into the Dakota language thus altering the meanings of how we understand even our relationship to the universe and to the land and and I say this you know out of out of respect because my grandfather was a he was a he was a who was Episcopalian a preacher.

And he even said, he said, the reason why we, you know, we adopted Christianity was to save our language, because there was the only place where we could actually speak and pray in our own language. And so there is a, there was a resistance to it. And I would say now, it's like, we don't need the church anymore to speak our own language. We can, we can do away with that concept. But we also need to sort of decolonize our, our own perceptions of what that language even means and how we interact, but also pushing back against how, you know, this Christian

framework of domination governs and dictates our relationship, not only with the government that colonizes us, the, you know, the state that colonizes us, but also dictates our relationship to our own land and our own relatives. Because that framework was used, and I just want to, I was rambling earlier in my other question, but I just want to add this definition. I've been thinking about a lot. I've been thinking about a lot about the question of genocide. So if genocide, if we reframe this according to our perception or our worldviews as indigenous people as the destruction of our relationships, the annihilation and the targeting of our relations, it is both the the targeting of our familial sort of immediate kinship human relations,

the taking away of children, right? The separation of those children from their parents. The entire annihilation of families, as we're seeing happening in Gaza, the targeting of entire apartment buildings that hold entire families, the wiping out of lineages, right, from a very human perspective. There's also the destruction of our relation to the land. That's the second point, or, you know, what could be considered non-human relations, the annihilation of, you know, if we look at it in the context of Gaza and Palestine, the annihilation of beings that are older than the nation state concept itself, the destruction of olive trees

and olive groves where, you know, human beings have had a fundamental, you know, relation with those things that define them as people, right? And the relation to the land itself. The annihilation of our, you know, of the Buffalo nation within the context of, you know, the great plains. That fundamentally altered us as people. So genocide shouldn't just include the human element. It should also include the non-human element. And the last point is a sort of temporal framing. Because those are kind of spatial and kinship based, but there's also a temporal framework, the annihilation of our conception of history, the elimination of how we understand.

Think about how you understand U.S. history. Think about how you understand a Canadian history. No settlers, no history, right? There were indigenous people who lived here, you know, who could fill. libraries of the knowledge that they've had living in relation to the land, right? There's a history that exists before. There's a history that exists in spite of. And there's a history that it exists beyond what we now know as Canada and the United

States and what we now know as, you know, the state of Israel. So there's the annihilation of the past. But then there's also the annihilation of a future that there can be no alternative to these particular systems, right? that not only are you annihilating or destroying an entire generation of children that represent, you know, the literal manifestation of a future of a people, but you're also annihilating even the dreams of having a future beyond the nightmarish present. Just to hop in with a brief follow-up,

and I appreciate that this is something that I also talked about on a recently released episode. I know we recorded it several months ago, but we held it until just today or yesterday at the time of recording. We're recording on December 9th, I should mention, which was settler colonial law and sued the T-Rex. And yes, listeners, those two topics are related. And if you listen to the episode, you'll know why. But one of the things that I talked about a little bit in that episode

was that when we're talking about genocide, a lot of people today seem to equitably. it just to like extermination of the population like they just look at population numbers without any of these other factors that you just talked about in consideration nick and one of the the most clear examples of not exterminating the people but exterminating one of the things that you talked about this idea of history um one of the most stark examples is residential schools in in north america both the u.s and Canada because these these residential schools despite the fact that many indigenous children died in them,

and then they were just chucked in mass graves that were then covered up from being discovered for decades afterwards because the government knew that at these residential schools, indigenous children were dying, but they didn't care, and they wanted to make sure that nobody else cared either. The point is that in these residential schools,

the reason that they functioned was that they would be able to take the next generation and eliminate any of that cultural history that cultural conception of history, that collective history of their own peoples, that idea of what the future could look like and that understanding of that cultural conception of what the future could look like

and eliminate that by indoctrinating them with this settler knowledge, this settler history, this settler conception of the future. So that when they were out of these residential schools, that was lost. If they survived. If they survived, then it was lost.

what that means is that again you are destroying that people culturally you're not having to kill every individual of them to genocide their culture and this is an important point and that's just one example like i said in your last answer you covered some very very critical components you know land uh is another thing that is generally not thought about at all when the term genocide comes up but these are critical components and i'm very happy that you brought that up and And again, listeners, I appreciate that if you listen to that episode, you will have heard it relatively recently. And I talk a little bit more in that episode about it. But, you know, thinking about residential schools is a really stark example of just thinking about this is clearly genocide, even though at that point in time, the goal was not to kill every single one of them. That was something from a previous generation.

But at that time, the goal was still genocide just in a different form. Well, that's part of that. Yeah. Sorry, I was going to say, I was just going to add that that's part of the. the hegemony that's being exercised or the hegemony of hegemony. And so far is, again, that's the liberal hollering out of words in so many different ways. This is the euphemisms too, like that are enacted. And so far is, you know, the access of evil, the war against terror, simulated drowning,

preventive war, civilians killed or referred to as collateral damage, CIA kidnappings are referred to as extraordinary renditions. Even Muslims, I mean, when we talk about sort of, again, that's the violence of translation, mistranslation as well, that's Sabah Mahmoud or the late Sabam Mahmoud as well as Sibaba. and so many other folks had discussed, which is there's also an internalization of that by the other, by the colonized other. Like for instance,

Muslims often, and we all hear this term, regurgitate the fact that Islam actually means submission, although the word for submission in Arabic is quodua. Islam comes, of course, it means peace, but from the root sallama, which is to willfully give or to offer or to surrender, which is based on choice that way, right?

And so taking away that element and, of choice, or willful deliverance, if you will, and assigning it a submission reifies, again, that savage trope of these folks don't reflect, that they don't critically think, they don't engage cognitively

with what it is that they supposedly embrace. So that's part of the severance in so far as language itself, and again, it's relationality. Language isn't just language, but rather it's relational sort of prospectus. And with regards to non-human life,

with regards to all relations with regards our kin. And this is part of the problem, the internalization of that and the mimicking of that by people of color as well. Unfortunately, without a reflection on dimensions of, you know, what that means in terms of the preservation so far as our frameworks of sovereignty, and so far as when we pledge allegiances to, say, the nation state, territorially, spatially, temporally, and God we trust on the dollar bill, Protestant conceptualizations of

poverty, Victorian Moors and sexuality. So it's a means of not just disciplining, but also organizing and controlling people of color that then end up reifying these manifest sort of again secularized Christian enlightenment and obviously

Christianity's in Eastern tradition, but in very your American ways that are just replicated over and over again. And this is part of the lure, say, in the context of Palestine that we do see the reality that there are Arab Jews and Arab Zionists that have occupied the lands of their kin who are Palestinians. We see even African Jews, despite the fact that I, again, and Israel acknowledge that,

Ethiopian women being sterilized in a certain sense as part of the demographic control of white supremacy within Israeli society. We have the history of the Haschala in which, you know, European Jews had already argued and made the case for the fact that why they're European and Jewish. And yet, nonetheless, the problem wasn't the fact that, well, there weren't Jewish people, as was discussed earlier, as Nick and Adnan, and we all had pointed out. But rather the fact that we were talking about a blonde-haired blue-eyed man that showed up on the shores. This was the issue.

And this is what constantly gets reproduced in terms of, again, all the racial hierarchies, the ethnic hierarchies, the religionalities, and so far as a place dispossessed, in so far as Palestine and the continuing sort of evocation of an oppression, Olympics and a competition between struggles that is constantly being reenacted then by other populations within the context of Palestine, within the context of Turtle Island, because of what refugee is, because of what migrants, because of what white supremacy has in terms of an impact on racialized bodies that are, if you will, cast out of, of a sense of belonging, right?

Whether it's with regards to land, whether it's where it's regards to space, whether it's with regards to time itself. We're regarded as out of time and out of space simultaneously. So yeah, but I just thought that I'd add that little bit with regards to just language. And this is, you know, maybe to talk about just very generally, this is also the problem with sort of the element of the state, because the state is not this abstract entity that exists and how verse, you know, it's not even, or a set of institutions that are the set over and above us,

but rather represents a complex web of sort of complicated relations in which we each govern one another as a species on a horizontal level. And that's how that part of that violence is just constantly being reenacted as well, across all kinds of racial, gendered sectarian lines over and over again. So, so yeah, I think, yeah, that becomes very important in order to include into that, that analytic of again of indigenity of that how that manifests and so on versus you know there's the abstract term of just indigenous yeah absolutely i just wanted to follow up with the you know what we've been talking a little bit about is also that thread of a different kind of concept

of history different sets of cultural relations and so on but just from all the way back just to remind listeners that there was this theological doctrine of discovery that Nick was mentioning, and it was a series of papal bulls in the, you know, 15th century right on the cusp of the two things that, you know, Muhammad has been mentioning the importance of 1492, right on the cusp of this European kind of expansion into the Atlantic world, and they've already, of course, begun, you know, raiding the west coast of Africa and so on, and this is where they've, started to have to develop some kind of techniques of law and justify them on the basis of some sort of religious theological orientation. So you have the Pope Nicholas Dum Diversas in 1452

and Romanus pontifacts, a very important bull from 1455, so in the middle of the 15th century, and then Pope Alexander the 6th intercaitra 1493. And these kind of together are papal bulls that formulate what becomes this kind of classic doctrine of discovery. But what I'm kind of, why I wanted to mention, you know, all of that is because Muhammad, you had mentioned that, you know, there are all these resonances where, you know, when they're coming into the Atlantic world, you know, and they see the Aztecs and kind of characterize them as a sultan and all that, is that, of course, they've already had this experience of confrontation in the medieval Mediterranean world, both in Spain but also through the establishment of a frontier

settler colonial state, the crusader states in the Levant, because again they had these religious claims that they actually were indigenous because it was Christ's territory and they as the inheritors of Christ and they even frame themselves as the Franks, we Latins, we are the most Christian people, you know, and so we are the, you know, sons of Christ. And so, you know, there's a way in which there's so many parallels between, you know, this kind of pre-modern Latin Christian crusader history and ideology that distills itself into some way of approaching the Muslim, even in the, like, you know, the crusader states, that then gets somewhat exported into the Atlantic. And the reason why there is some ambiguity,

initially, what I think that language is reflecting is that they had encountered established states. They had encountered societies that were sophisticated and resistant. And so that was a vocabulary they could use, you know, to try and kind of frame, you know, encounter with more, with polities in the new world, right? But it was ambiguous where, how exactly, and there were these debates, you know, are they human, do they, or are they barbarian? And so, It doesn't get resolved until later with the doctrine of discovery more finally. But initial reactions are like, okay, if you're meeting, you see Mayan pyramids and you're, you know, dealing with a kind of clearly, you know, politically organized, stratified society, you know, like it is, okay, well, how do we think of them? And so they drew upon these resources that they had from this long, you know, sort of encounter over hundreds of years.

But getting back to this kind of question of history, the return to, you know, what kind of history, indigenous history versus these other kinds of conceptions of history is just to note that, you know, Zionism really saw itself as an antidote to the problem of Jews not having history after the biblical period, right? When the Jewish kingdoms are destroyed, when they're subordinated to the Romans, and then their temple is destroyed, this marks an era of diaspora, of exile. And in this Christian sort of framework, and I'm drawing here on work by an Israeli scholar Amnon Raz Krakotskin, who talked about how the Zionist movement was a kind of orientalist, colonialist, attempt at returning to history. And what they meant by history was importing a kind of Western, kind of modern notion that depends on the state. You don't have history if you don't have a state, which is exactly what we were speaking about indigenous, kind of inhabiting vis-a-vis the occupier, this position of statelessness. So the whole framework, which is why, Nick, what you were saying, so resonated with me about the need to decolonize even what is understood as, you know, native. peoples of the Americas, they're having their history and their culture back because the very framework was one of dynamic, you know, relationship to this imposition, this colonial, you know,

occupation and violence. And so for them, you know, the only way to restore kind of presence in history was to found a state, a colonial state. And that's why there's so many kind of resonances, it seems to me, between this period and these pre-modern kinds of experiences that reinforces the point that you've been making, Muhammad, that what we're talking about is a kind of secularized version of Christian culture, right? So even if it's denuded of some of the theological language, the bedrock conceptions are being carried forward. And you see that in international law. You see that in all of these kinds of conceptions. you know, that what they needed to do was essentially create their own version of a euro secularized Christian almost kind of sense of what it would be to be Jews, you know, like it doesn't have that much to do necessarily with the 5,000 years of, and especially the post-temple, you know, post-second temple Jewish diaspora, which is why so many of these.

Orthodox religious communities are anti-Zionist, you know, is because for them Judaism was something else. It wasn't a political nationalism. It was a theological and a social and a cultural, you know, experience, you know, for centuries, which is exactly what Zionism was meant to, you know, erase because that was the hated, despised Jew of the anti-Semitic Europe. And so what we end up having is this, you know, way in which this, you know, the way in which this salvation history of Europe goes from Latin Christendom into Europe, but the narrative structure of it is really still the same, which culminates in this apocalyptic kind of genocidal event in Europe, which is to, you know, remove the Jews from, you know, which is exactly parallel to the Christian Zionists. of today who fantasize about, you know, the end of Judaism and Jews and Judaism by the means of supporting, you know, the state of Israel to, you know, precipitate some Armageddon. And so you may have like secular kind of versions of this kind of, you know, of this process.

And you can have, you know, religious theological ones, but ultimately Christian Zionists and secular Zionists are, you know, on this kind of same plane, you know, of trying to erase that previous history and start a new one of like basically a European society in the Levant, starting with the foundation of the state. And so that's, you know, I think very important for us to kind of recognize those sort of parallels that are deep in Western culture, which is why when they say that they're trying to save Western civilization. It maybe makes sense because these are deep-rooted parts of the narrative, the self-narrative and self-identity of the West. Anyway, sorry, you guys raised so many interesting points that I wanted to bring up some of those connections, but I know

I interrupted earlier, Muhammad, you were going to talk about some critiques that you had in the politics of how this is working out now. And so I want to allow us to get onto this kind of question of the politics of solidarity indigenous and pro-Palestine solidarity and you know what you're you see you know kind of viewing here and what your critiques are and maybe to get your reactions to frame it for you is just that in a recent recording um uh Alex Avenio's writing an article um about uh you know kind of Israel and Latin America uh really interesting and about borders and border walls and and this kind of thing. And he quoted journalist Todd Miller's conversation or his report on Dr. Mazen Kumsia, who visited, you know, the southwest. And his comment was

about talking about climate change as a global Nakhba. And he said, they want us to be divided and not a joint struggle. I don't like the word solidarity. I'm not in solidarity with NATO. Americans, their struggle is my struggle. And I wonder what your reactions are to that, because there's a lot telescoped in that kind of comment that he made that might be worth unpacking from your different perspectives about solidarity. Sure. I wanted to address a little bit about the state, if that's all right with you all. I don't mean to take too much time, but to really return just this concept, just because it becomes very important in terms of, again, what we're talking about insofar as the violence of language.

But the question of the state becomes, I think, something that's very important, not only in terms of divide and conquer, not only in terms of psych speak or the entire history of that, but rather even in terms of the replication of concepts is the Islamic State, because there's such a, that term is just a dehistoricized term. It never existed in pre-modernity, right? And the problem is, as part of our conflation of words, because if we ask any Muslim or your average Muslim or your average Arabic speaking, individual, with regards to what is the word for a state,

they usually use the term dula. But that's a misinterpretation and a mistranslation of the word state, because Arab nationalists have used actually the word dula as a post-colonial term to refer to each Arab and individual state. Even ISIS has used that term, al-Dal-Islamia.

But obviously, Dau-la stems from the verb, actually stems from the Quranic term, Duwela. And within that, the term falls between Dahl, which morphically as well as semantically falls between the Arab d'ar to rotate and the verb zal or to go away. We then have a word for state.

And even temporarily, temporality and succession were essential connotations of the word Duwai. And it's even used in the Quran on at least two different occasions. The chapter, the sort of hachr, chapter 59, verse 7, in terms of the prophet's distribution of the spoils of war, but also in the family of Aramran chapter, the third chapter, verse 140, in which is referred to the different conditions. constantly circulating from one day to another. One day we have our health the next day, it wanes away.

But that becomes very important, again, insofar as, again, the internalization of these terms, of these logics. Their displacement or they're misused by modern Muslims projecting it onto pre-modern terms and premodern terms being projected into the present. And then the question of, again, sovereignty for being critical of the state, then what forms of sovereignty then exist and govern it beyond the state? for to undo this nightmare of a mess. And so far as the question of solidarity,

I think it becomes a very important one at this point because of the difference between, if you will, solidarity is a verb, right? And to me, again, it's exercised during times of peace and not during times of four. And part of what's a little bit frustrating is the conflation because Kwamey Tori had very much distinguished between organization and mobilization.

And maybe if there's something that we need to learn from, say, the three or Black Lives matter, it's not, Black Lives Matter or don't matter anymore, and this is part of the irony, right? It's Sandra Blan, George Floyd, Michael Brown. This is a current sort of ongoing anti-black project. And that's one of the pillars of settler

colonialism. It isn't just anti-Indigenous dispossession and the even pitting of indigenous people against black people and black people being conscripted towards indigenous extermination, but this is also shows us vis-a-vis sort of these massacres and competitions between struggles of how the

white supremacy deployed. That Afro-Indigenous future ideas are very much entwined. But to get to this point, right, is this element of mobilization versus organization. Mobilization usually, you know, organization usually is about long-term sustainable and ongoing relationships of solidarity. It's not about crisis management, as in short-term solidarity. And this that inhibits possibilities for transformative solidarity because that means and a relocating of our positionality and situating onto the land that we are.

American Canada are leading this word. Israel is but an instrument. And Israel, again, and Zionism is a white supremacist interpretation of Judaism, just as much as arguably Wahhabism is a white supremacist interpretation of Islam. If that is the case, then ultimately, what is the position, and if we're having people march out on the streets, and I find very valiant and very incredible, and I love mobilization, and I love mobilization.

love direct action and I love the blue blockades. But again, if we're to learn from the legacies of Nodakoda, I don't know more, what connects all these struggles, and particularly in relationship to Palestine, if American Canada are leading this war, if the fact that you have a lot of settler immigrants, who are settlers on stolen land? And I'm speaking here, particularly to Muslims, what are their responsibility insofar as land back, insofar as abolition, in the context of Turtle Island? Because we can't be hypocrites if we're arguing for land back in Palestine, we should, because that is the honorable and ethical and political, and I would argue even spiritual Muslim responsibility, right, to uphold, then what is our responsibility

as settler immigrants in the context of Turtle Island? Because, you know, indigenous people under struggle for self-determination and sovereignty, and we have to be honest about this too, have become tokenized at the expense of personal and organizational and structural and systemic levels. The result of this is the replication in so many ways in which the settler colonial states use also indigenous people and their cultures to perform, to perform, you know, land acknowledgments in superficial ways of occupied lands, of resources, through opening ceremonies that sometimes don't integrate actually a critique and an explicit challenge of Canadian and U.S. settler colonialism. And so they normalized the violence of these states. And we're part of that normalization

process. Right. So, so, you know, Dan Aluan, who you and I know, and who is a Palestinian thinker and organizer and fellow colleague, you know, she talks about how this type of solidarity, you know, doesn't transform our relationships with one another or with the land on which we live, nor does it require our sustained long-term and wide-range in commitments to work that is at times difficult and easy and complicated. This type of solidarity is comfortable. It is felt affectively, but never experienced materially, situationally or historically. While enticing, this form of solidarity doesn't move us closer to those whom we wish to be in alliance, with, nor do it move us directly to confront or transform the conditions after which we

come to encounter one another. The irony is a lot of also, and this is the power of the so-called American dream that, as Malcolm Exot called it, was always an American nightmare, is that it's so seductive and lucrative in terms of its upward mobility, right? Because at the end of the day, it maintains that promise of that dream of, oh, ultimately America can be reformed. Ultimately, the dream is salvage of all, right? We just need to engage in different kinds of representatives. of politics. We just need to outvote certain members or create even a third system and a third party or a third way out as opposed to the fact that, well, how about we relate and so far as our kinship relationships to one another on the land? I mean, I question the billions, if not millions

of dollars that were spent towards soft imperialist Zionists as Bernie Sanders. If those billions were, say, invested in, and I hate this idea of buying land by settler immigrants, that was then put in a land trust to avoid being interest and remiturated to indigenous people? Where would we be now, insofar as the relationships of alternative governance that were established, if we were to do that on the land with indigenous people, with

our black kin, that would actually disrupt the sovereignty of the U.S. and Canada on its very own soil and actually act as more of a threat within empire, if you will. This is not to take away, again, from the importance of direct action or blockading

and so on. But for us to think about alternative ways of being with the land and being with one another, as opposed to living on the land, which is a different form of political existence and philosophy. So the question of, you know, what are we doing here? Where are we a geographically located, given that we're at the heart of the serpent coil of empire? And how can we go about in terms of disrupting that, spiritually, ethically, politically, in a relationship to, again, those who, because because we do have black, red-skinned,

brown-skinned people with white masks who have disconnected and do not wish to reconnect with their indigenity, how can settler immigrants, diaspora, refugees, and so on, reconnect with our indigenity where we are in the spaces and places that we are, temporally speaking. To act more effectively in disrupting the machina of Zionism, Zionism, but also the crusading project and the very bosom of how it manipulated both again, Islam and Judaism and pitted these sister religions and faiths and spiritual

one another. That becomes the point of investment to me, and that's hard work because it involves actually spending time with indigenous people on the land, but most people of Qatar are within the urban metropolis. We can't, I mean, we're talking about divesting also from capitalism and racial capitalism, and capitalism is a religion of itself in the state, as we know, this is a religion of itself. And a lot of people have, particularly settler immigrants, have come to worship these forms of religion in some ways because we're in survival mode, because then we're in resistance mode, which are reactionary, both we're not thinking about thriving, we're not thinking about liberation, which are active forms of thinking, again, about the world and are situating within it, right? But ultimately then, what does that mean insofar as, you know, how do we grow our own food? How do we develop our own autonomy? When we even lack the skills in a certain sense, when they're very geological. of the land has changed, because we're not going back to 1492 either.

The geography and the landscape of the land has changed. So how do we begin to disrupt this simultaneously as settler immigrants in kinship with indigenous people, with our black kin? That becomes the question in order to disrupt ongoing Zionism and ongoing white supremacy globally, really. You know, everything you said is great, Muhammad, but I think that if we just put more money into a political campaign, we'll probably be all right. Anyway, I just wanted to go in there with that flip and comment.

Nick, go ahead. I know you probably have something to say, but I couldn't help it. Well, no, I was actually just like kind of like this, like this moment is like bringing up a lot of memories for me. And one, as Muhammad was speaking, was sitting in the Standing Rock camps and Ocetei Shalkoi camp. And one of our spiritual leaders, he was sort of the last medicine men, you know, for lack of a better term of our generation. He passed away last year. His name is Leonard Crodog. And he was, you know, the spiritual leader for the American Indian movement. But I remember there was this particularly brutal and violent eviction that happened in October. There was, you know, the police

came in and just beat the crap out of people, you know, desecrated, you know, ceremonial items, attacked the camp. And then we were holding what was called. a host or excuse me a horse ceremony it was a horse dance it's kind of complicated to explain but it was something i'd never seen before first of all but anyways he he was um they brought him in a arville looking horse to the center of the camp circle and um the first thing that um you know he spoke in lakota and then he the first thing he said in english was all you white people all you non-natives you are now traitors of the united states government for being here and i was just like It was like an interesting, because you could kind of see it like settling in their face,

you know, like this, this thought that they are now being considered enemies of the country that they, you know, that they've come to, you know, identify with. And it wasn't saying that he's like, you know, you're, you're just kind of like committing treason or whatever. It's just like, just by being with us on the land, you're now considered enemies of the United States because we are the oldest enemy of. the United States, right? The little founding document of the U.S., the U.S. Declaration of Rights, or excuse me, the Declaration of Independence calls us merciless Indian savages because of our so-called, you know,

savage war against white settlers or whatever. So it makes invasion look like self-defense. And I think it's interesting because the idea of a water protector is an allegiance that goes beyond a nation state. It goes beyond the settler, state. And that's why they hate it so much. That's why they've criminalized it so much. That's why they called it a jihadi-inspired religious movement. That's the language that the state uses is to criminalize to other it because it recognizes the power of non-native people, white, black, Muslim, it doesn't matter of identifying with something that's different that came before, right? That's beyond just this, this, you know, current sort of state of things. And we

We saw that in the George Floyd uprising, where there was so much attention paid to people like Kyle Rittenhouse and whether or not he had the right to murder white kids standing up for black lives. That became the topic. And then we see the backlash of woke, right? The identification of woke as being, you know, a liberal elite sort of politics, completely decontextualizing it from it's, it's, you know, this important alliance between, you know, I mean, for lack of a better, you know, kind of framing of white kids and black people and the

black movement, because we know that in, you know, in the George Floyd summer, the majority of people who were marching in the street were white kids, right? I mean, just the demographic kind of, that was just the demographic reality. And that was so reprehensible. That was so against what this, you know, what the elites wanted is an identification between these groups of people, between the oppressed and these sort of socially positioned oppressors, right? It's not, if you're not going to buy into white supremacy, we're going to beat it into you, right? That's where we're at right now. That's where Zionism is at in this

country. If we look at Cop City, perfect example, read the attorney, read Georgia's Attorney General's indictment of charges against Cop City protesters. Where does it begin in terms of of this conspiracy, it begins on May 25th, 2020, the day that Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd in Minneapolis. It is creating a conspiracy that the alliance of non-black people, of abolitionists, of water protectors are somehow conspiring and creating, you know, they use reclassians, RICO charges against them are creating a criminal network, right, to essentially overthrow the United States government. This is the conspiracy that the attorney general's office of Georgia is putting forward.

And we can see that in the context of how, in this moment in time, even the declaration of a white Jewish person in this country of saying that they're anti-Zionists or that the state If Israel doesn't represent all Jewish people, right, even if they're not white Jews, that is now going to become a criminal act. It's resulting in expulsions. It's resulting in silencing, right? And so we see how they criminalize solidities. They criminalize identifications, right?

And they criminalize the sort of treasoness, the trees, like what we should all be declaring treason against white supremacy, right? we should all, everyone should declare, you know, treason against white, white supremacy. But if they don't, and when they do that, they're going to beat it back into them, right? You see the proliferation of anti-protest laws within the United States against protesting pipeline infrastructure, essentially criminalized being a water protector using the same model as anti-BDS laws, anti-boycott divestment and sanction laws. You now have to sign in certain states, essentially a lower,

loyalty oath to the state of Israel that you will not protest it. There's one that exists here in this state against targeting, specifically targeting Israeli companies, doesn't exist for anything else, you know. The fact of the matter is that this state actually boycotts us. On the books, there are removal laws that it has not removed, you know, that have not been overturned, that disallowed daco to people from establishing a presence here in this state. We might think, oh, well, that's, you know, something that exists in the past. And it's like, if it didn't, if it wasn't overturned, then why can't we return?

Why can't we have a restoration of our treaty rights over our original, you know, rights to this land, right? So this is, I think this is the important crux here to understand like why, you know, it's not, I don't even know if it's, if it's solidarity. I think solidarity is incredibly important because solidarity doesn't mean, as Mohammed just said, doesn't mean just doing a land acknowledgement. Any settler can say a land acknowledgement because they do it out of relative comfort, knowing that just saying that is not going to change the social economic reality of indigenous people within the context that they live. It's not going to actually return land, right?

But when we say something like Zionism is a form of racism, Zionism is a genocidal logic, then that becomes, you know, that becomes, oh, we, We can't say that because the truth of the matter is it exposes a weakness within that system. Why react that way? If Israel is such a great, powerful state, then why is it so threatened by words? Why is it so threatened by the presence of Palestinians? Why is it so threatened by the comparison of, you know, of acknowledging the truth that it draws inspiration from the United States for its settler colonial project?

Oftentimes we think of settler colonialism as sort of the collapsing of the metropole and the colony. in the sense that there's no overseas sort of mother country, for lack of a better word. I don't know if mother country is the right word, parent country, we'll just say that. There's no parent country, right? But if we think about how settler colonialism in the context of North America was attached to Europe in the sense that the expansion of chattel slavery, of plantation slavery in the south, the expansion of the United States ever westward created more resources and raw materials that actually raised the standard of living in Europe. They directly benefited from

it. Sure, they fought here and there, you know, against the British or whatever, but there was a direct sort of material benefit, economic benefit of Western, you know, of Western expansion and settler colonialism. So Europe has always been the, the parental country of the United States and Canada. I mean, I go to Canada, it's more explicit. You guys have like the queen. I don't even know. You have like these weird British like monarchs on your on your on your uh you call it the crown still it's so such a joke it's so hilarious but um but and it's the same with israel all obviously you know the united states supported the settler colonel design a settler colonial project in 1948 um from the get go but it didn't be it didn't really see and i recommend everyone read uh this book by norman finklestein

called the Holocaust industry because he really maps the sort of history of when it became sort of profitable for the United States, both financially, militarily, culturally, to begin openly identifying with Israel as sort of a project of Western European imperialism. Joe Biden said explicitly when he was a senator,

if Israel didn't exist, we would invent it. That shows you, that there's deeper interests there. And there's the main benefactor of Israeli or Zionist settler colonialism is the United States, is Canada, is Europe. You can just see in the recent vote that happened, like at the Security Council, when Antonio Gutierrez brought to vote a ceasefire resolution that the United States invoked its veto power to crush it.

So literally, we can debate all we want about the merits of settler, I mean, not the merits, but the sort of analysis of settler colonialism, but the truth of the matter is that it's an imperial project, right? And so decolonization is not just an Indian problem here in the United States. It's not just an indigenous problem. It's literally holding the world hostage. We can see that at COP 28 when you saw world leaders walk out of events or walk out of talks. It was the, it was Palestine. That was the wedge issue. It wasn't, you know, these, you know, how we, you know, what do they call it net green or net, I can't remember what the carbon neutral, whatever arguments that they're making, it was Palestine, it was decolonization. That was the dividing line. That was the wedge issue at COP 28. That should, that should key us into like, this is a bigger problem than just, you know, a transition economy. It's the fundamental relation. Not only the people of the world have with each other and where we align our solidarity. it's the fundamental dividing line it's the millions versus the billions and we need to like be explicit like in the climate movement i mean greta thumburg say what you will about that but she you know she she got up in front and said you know Palestine is an environmental justice issue it's a climate justice issue and look how she's been sort of demonized for that just for saying

something that we've always been saying you know um so i think this notion of solidarity I didn't agree with what you said Anand about how this framing, it's like, I think how it's articulated is, yeah, that's true. There's something that has to be, you know, deeper. And, you know, in a kind of Marxist tradition or in a left tradition, we say like comrade, right? Comrade is a political relation, you know, in our sort of understanding, we say comrades and relatives, right? Meaning that it's an expansive sort of framing. And we do believe that Palestine, they are relatives to our struggle. you can't have decolonization in Palestine without having decolonization in Turtle Island.

Just to add in, you know, you mentioned that we need solidarity. You know, there's a lot of solidarity in the United States. Unfortunately, historically, the solidarity that has won out has been the solidarity of the United States government with other settler colonial regimes. And it's always worth keeping that in mind that solidarity is not just something that can happen from the ground, that is also something that happens from states. and particularly settler colonial states that have a shared vested interest.

As you mentioned, Nick, and again, I apologize listeners because this will be two episodes in a row that you hear this. This episode hasn't come out yet that I mentioned this, but the episode that we recorded with Alexander Avina yesterday, I say this exact same thing, which is that you brought up the quote by Joe Biden that if Israel didn't exist,

the United States would have to create an Israel, but many people have heard that quote, but many people have not heard the follow-up. At least on one or two occasions, the follow-up immediately after that was so that, so the United States would have to create an Israel so that we could protect her interests, which really goes to show, like you said, Nick, that there are greater interests at play. What we have to think about, though, is that her interests are not solely Israel's interests. These are settler, colonial interests.

And this goes to connect to that point, that when we think about solid interests, It's important that we consider, you know, we hear this word solidarity and we tend to think of it as a good thing of people that are standing up with other oppressed people. But that is not the only form of solidarity and often the solidarity that has preponderant power and ends up winning out until eventually our small, poorly funded solidarity over decades or even centuries is able to topple the solidarity of the, you know, the well-funded governmental structures of settler colonial regimes. The solidarity that generally wins out in these struggles, at least in the short term, is the solidarity of settler colonial regimes with one another. And it's really important to remember that because as you remember that, you start to draw these connections of why some of these decisions are made. Like, for example, you've mentioned the ceasefire. This just happened yesterday. Again, at the time of recording, this episode will come out in about two weeks, I think.

you know the United States stands up and says we're going to utilize our veto power to crush the ceasefire bill this immediate ceasefire call at the United Nations the security council voted 13 votes in favor one abstained which was the UK but the United States has veto power and therefore was able to crush the resolution why would they crush this resolution because it is in the interest of another settler colony and a settler colony that they have always stood in solidarity with. And, you know, not to beat the dead horse because it's kind of something that we talk about all the time is that settler colonial interests often run in parallel with other

settler colonial interests. And so keeping that in mind is really crucial to thinking about why some of these decisions are made, why some of these statements are made, and how we can understand what is likely to happen until we are able to dismantle the settler colonial structures at play. I also think that it's inseparable. You can't separate the interest. Of course. And it's this, I mean, that's the thing.

It's like, that's why you can't have decolonization in Palestine without decolonization here. It's like those interests are so, it's not just the line. They're inseparable. The end goal is like inseparable. And I think that's the point here. It's like these, you know, these terrorist settlers are kin. They see themselves as kin. Of course.

If you look at even the, the, where did a, you know, like, When they did the call up for reservists, there was these photos that was, I think it was in the New York Times. I can't remember AP or something. They showed photos like of a lineup of people in Brooklyn, like getting on flights to go fight. And I was like, that is so. One of my one of my favorites of those was a plane full of white South African reservists coming in. Like look at the confluence here. We have white South African Israelis flying in from South Africa to Israel to, you know, carry out

that task of suppressing the indigenous population there. Like, really, it doesn't get more stark. I mean, Brooklyn is one thing, but white South Africans are like, that's a whole other level there. And we have a couple episodes on apartheid, one that's already come out, one that will also be coming out by the time

this episode drops. Well, there's, you know, there was that onion article that was it was, you know, satirical, but it was actually the truth. It was like, you know, apartheid born billionaire kisses apartheid ground for the second time in his life. And that was when Elon Musk visited Israel, you know, and I think it's also important to point out that there is, you know,

he not only, like, it's just not just Elon Musk, but they, these capitalists, these billionaire, the billionaire class literally holds the future hostage in terms of like what also happened in COP 28, what also happened, you know, with the rejection of the ceasefire. You get the, the announcement of the cyber truck, you know, this luxury EV, you know, that's going to be like, help you know like energy green energy transition is now a luxury item right it's completely inaccessible to the rest of the world and that's the future right it's it's like i mean there's a lot of things to say about it but i think it's just so symbolic of the decadence and the utter disdain for for an alternative right because we know like even here in this in this state

they're re they're rebamping mining in the iron range there's literally they're calling them Tesla mines to mine the materials, the, you know, the nickel, the copper, et cetera, to build this energy, you know, for this energy transition. Because Biden, you know, he has this like kind of one-to-one, you know, energy transition plan. It's like, we're going to keep the car economy, right? It's like, wait, what? So yeah, we're going to transition every, you know, gas-guzzling car into an electric vehicle. Because that's the only alternative. We're literally locked into this consumption pattern. So where do you get the components for these electric vehicles?

You can't recycle the copper that goes into them. It actually has to be copper ore. It has to be mine from the earth because they haven't developed the technology to even use recycled components. Lithium has to be extracted, right? The colonial relation is still the same. Wait, so Nick, you mean that you mean fully automated luxury communism is not what we should be aiming for.

Oh, that's an op. I'm sorry. You know, I again, my snarky, flippant comments, I must be, I don't know. Well, I think, I think life would be a lot easier if we, I mean, I hate this sort of denigration of poor people in consumption. I think there's this idea that somehow, you know, poor people shop at Walmart because they're bought into this, you know, consumption pattern. It's like, well, we don't have an alternative, right?

And we can't blame the. poor, we should be blaming the billioners who literally have strangled any alternative or attempting to strangle an alternative. And we do have to talk about consumption, but we also have to talk about work and we have to talk about quality of life. We have to talk about what the Bolivians we'll call bien-Vivir, like the good life, like redefining that, not around consumption patterns, but redefining about quality of life. Like how are we actually living life in relation to other people in the planet well you know nick that's uh talking about individual consumption and you know poor making judgments about poor people's choices of what to consume and where to consume and how

much to consume etc etc i mean this is just liberal conceptions of the world 101 individualizing every problem as opposed to looking at structural issues i mean i'm not going to get too deep into it because of course again this is something that like spans the entire shows history in terms of we touch on the fact that this is what liberalism is in in basically every episode that we have but individualizing problems is always going to lead to these very undercooked analyses and to transition into you know something that then will get us kind of back on topic because we seem to be going off a little bit not that I have any problem with that but you know when we talk about individualizing consumption patterns that's one thing

But we also have this individualization, or individualizing, rather, of what's going on in Israel. So we have a lot of liberal commentators, for example, saying things like, well, you know, it's kind of too late to really do anything about the fact that Israel exists and that Israelis are there. But, you know, we can all agree that maybe Netanyahu is not a very good guy and his government is full of maybe not some. so good people. But, you know, that doesn't mean that we should call for the extermination of the state of Israel. Like that's a step too far. Again, this is what we see from kind of, even in many cases, more progressive liberals, but liberals nonetheless is this individualization of these structural issues. The structural issue is the settler colonial regime of Israel. It is not the fact that Benjamin Netanyahu is in charge of that settler colonial regime. The settler colonial

regime itself and that state that it is founded on is the issue. And that is another thing that we have to, you know, really push back against this individualizing of these issues when we have to look at the structures. And it's just pure projection. I mean, it's so strange that we, you why does, you know, Israel can, you know, Benjamin Netanyahu can go in front of the United Nations and show a map of Israel that completely erases Palestine, advocate for the elimination of Palestinians, advocate for the elimination of Palestine as a concept, and then carry out a carpet bombing campaign, you know, carry out decades of, you know, of torturous sort of imprisonment of Palestinians, the abduction of Palestinian children. But yet it says that no, it's actually

Palestinians who want to commit genocide. It's actually, no, it's like, that's not a, you know, this idea that like, to even say equality, I mean, the sort of. basic sort of normative assumption even within like western liberal democracy okay grant equal political rights to everybody that becomes a genocidal framework because equality even within their liberal thinking is a form of oppression and they can't think beyond eliminating Palestine but they project that onto onto us onto Palestinians they even when you say things like land back people will say well what about settlers and it's like that's a that's pure projection because your only alternative is to is that somehow we're going to do what you did to us

that we're going to remove you we're going to put you into uh you know concentration camps etc etc etc even while you have done that and are continuing to do that that's a you problem not a not a not a not a not a not a me problem right or an us problem um but i always think about that even within that framework that you you you pointed out henry it's like there's this categorical assumption that what Israel is doing is defending itself from a genocide while it's actually committing a genocide. And that takes some really powerful ideological indoctrination to believe that, but also to scare entire populations into believing that and accepting that as the reality. Well, this projection, and I'll turn it over to Muhammad then after I make this other quick comment,

which is that this projection is something that we see even from, again, nominatively on the left people. So again, Twitter is a very bad gauge of like what is in popular discourse. But this is something that was directed at me. And I've talked about this in the past, but a couple months ago at this point, something that was directed at me is, well, you know, you're calling for the liberation of Palestine. What do you do with the Jews in the area? Like, what's your plan for the Jews? I said, okay, well, first of all, I'm an American living in Russia. Like, why is my my plan relevant to this at all but okay if you want a plan here you go i attached a some photos from the strategy for the liberation of Palestine from the pflp where they lay out

what would what their goal of liberation of palestine is and i've read it before on the show like this excerpt i'm not going to read it again right now uh listeners if you're looking at the the strategy for the liberation of palestine it's on pages 102 and 100 of the foreign languages press edition of a bottom of 102, top of 103. But I attach this and basically what it says is, hey, we're against the state of Israel. We're not against Jews. We want Jews in our society to have the same rights as Arab Palestinians in our society because that's what having a democratic state means is equal citizenship, equal rights

for all people there, regardless of their ethnicity, regardless of their race. religion. That is not what Israel wants. And this person then responded to me, well, I didn't ask what the PLO wants. I asked what you want. I said, well, look, obviously I attached these photos because this is more or less in line with what I am, you know, trying to tell you. They said, well, there's no way that that would happen. If you gave power to the Palestinians, they would get rid of the Jews. I said, that is what Israel has done to the Palestinians. That is not what the Palestinians have done to the Jews of the region. Prior to the state of Israel's existence,

there was Jews in the area. They weren't in camps the same way that Palestinians have been sequestered into them by the state of Israel. That thinking is projection of what Israel has done. Just to underscore that point that you made, Nick. Muhammad, I'm sorry, we've been making sure that you haven't been able to talk recently.

No, no, no, no. But that's part of, you know, maybe just picking up on that thread, Henry, that you and Nick were discussing. That's part of the mass psychology of fascism, and that's what makes fascism so dangerous, because it operates at all tiers and all levels, right, from the state all the way down to the below,

or the world of the above to the world of the below, as the Zapatis would say, I mean, we're just talking with you all, we're just talking with the special interests that are particularly shared. I mean, look at, for instance, how, you know, the Gulf monarchies, but particularly as Arab Zionists, right?

are very much colluding, including Egypt, right? Colluding with Israel, including with the U.S., including with Euro-America. And it's not out of love of Palestinians. I mean, you have Arab Gulf monarchies that are, you know, using, you know, alfalfa fields in Arizona, particularly the context of Saudi Arabia that's collaborating with U of A, University of Arizona,

in order to feed us 100,000, you know, cattle, if you will. And because of the analogies that are drawn and so far as well, you're making our desert bloom just as much as we're trying to make Arizona bloom as well, right? And that relationship extends back to sort of the early 19th century. But also because of the fact that it's a resentment of what Palestine stands for spiritually, ethically, politically, politically. And what I mean by that is if we take the context of, for instance, what is going on on the Ruffa border and Egypt is being the second or the second jader of Gaza and complicit that way, right?

C.C. is not doing what he's doing because he's doing. he's keen on Palestinians not being displaced in Sinai, but as a matter of fact, because he does not want Hamas or any form of political Islamic resistance to exist on the soil given his mandate and how he came about in 2013 at the first place, right, which is his desire and the mandate to eradicate any kind of Muslim brotherhood that let me put it more broadly political Islamist thought. And this is part of the project within the region is to destroy any manifestation of political Islam. Now, that's a big word that obviously I'm using because I find the term Islamism or political Islam to be highly problematic because any idea, particularly that spiritual is inherently political. But that's part of the issue and part of maybe to go back to our earlier discussion of the schizophrenia, the double consciousness that exists at least within the region. And so far as this question of race and religion, are you an Arab or an African or are you a Muslim or Christian or Jew and so on? so forth, right? As if these two things are inseparable, as if they ferment binaries as opposed to

the fact that they can become conjunctive ants. But this is part of the dilemma, the pit trap of the Harrier. And so far as the secular dimension, that a lot of, for instance, leftists played into revolutionary socialists, anarchists, Marxist, liberals, feminists, even. And that resulted in sort of the biggest mass slaughter in modern Egyptian history of the Muslim Brotherhood and the two encampents of Raban Nathda massacres in which a lot of members of the Muslim Brotherhood were completely just wiped out and were genocided for lack of a better word. But this is also part of how, again, the Gulf, Egypt would like to deal with this question because of who controls narratives over particularly Islam?

Because again, the state of exception that it foments given its historical significance, material, significant, spiritual, symbolic, in relationship to 1490s, too. And this is what then, you know, whether it's Hezbollah, whether it's Hamas, and so on and so forth, offers itself or offer themselves as sort of a thorn in the side and including sort of, you know, Iran within itself, right, as a status manifestation of, if you will, Islamist thought. Because ultimately, again, as Muslims, we are constantly weaned and Abnan knows this. I think any Muslim really is brought up with this concept that was evoked earlier in the conversation with regards to this idea of the Ummah, the global polity of Muslims and so-called non-Muslims alike

or believers alongside of them, living together in a relationship to land and so on. But that also transcends the idea of a state. And this is, I think, part of the conundrum that facilitates, I guess, and I'm not condoning it. I'm trying to understand, or we need to understand it, of the Jewish settler, but also sort of all kinds of responses to, well, you know, what would happen if there is a single state or a one state, which I don't even believe is possible for all sorts of logistical reasons. But also, it opens up the possibility of can there be alternative paradigms to the state? Of those are Euro-American models of conceiving of hierarchizing the world. Can there be sort of what does epitist describe a world of many belowes that are simultaneously living together?

And this is how we transcend the element of identity politics, because we have a lot of Muslim Zionists, whether it's on the street, whether it's in the world of the above that are billionaires, and so on as part of the capitalist class, right? And again, we run into challenging difficulties because three months ago, two and a half months ago, and some people may think, well, why is this relevant? But this becomes relevant as to what a liberated Palestine, what a liberated Turtle Island might mean.

Three months ago, prior to just before Palestine, you know, at Hamas on October 7th, A group of conservative Muslim scholars had issued a statement that this was a huge thing in the context of the U.S. and Canada had issued a statement condemning queer Muslims and calling them as, you know, outside the fold of Islam and so on and so forth. And these same Muslims now are marched obviously with, you know, the million family march in addition to some segments of the indigenous community, aligning themselves with the alt-right. And yet these same scholars, the same individuals, these same conservative Muslims are out on the streets now. alongside queer Muslims, alongside all kinds of queer folks, and so on and so forth, and they're all chanting pro-Palestinian slogans. But then that scares me because, in a certain sense, as much as it's wonderful seeing solidarity for Palestine, there are meanings to Palestine

that are still emptied out, just as much as bread freedom and social justice in the context of Tahir. What do these things mean in the relationship to Tahrean, in relationship to Palestine? You ask different people and you get different responses. And this becomes the question. and so far as these are the conversations, I think, in terms of to return back to the point of solidarity that we need to discuss. We need to also develop an ethics of disagreement amongst ourselves and so far as dealing with the differences that we may be having with one another and ethics of hospitality because of part of white supremacy has done

as introduced sort of misconceptions that we have of one another. And this is why this really has to happen also at the level of ideas. It has to happen on the land. A free Palestine means anti-queeraphobic commitments, anti-sexist commitments, anti-so many different things in terms of commitments. And it means then that we also need to develop, at least from a Muslim perspective, the colonial abolitionist readings of Islam, while I might be with Hamas and support the resistance, absolutely, and so on. But there are certain junctions and force in the road that I think me and I think a lot of other Muslims, whether we speak about it or not. And this is not for white supremacist or white liberals to use this point that may have issues with in terms of certain levels of authoritarianism or queerophobia and so on and so forth that need to be discussed. But these are the kinds of conversations, I think, that become very valid and very important.

And why the political theological discussion, particularly as it relates to Islam, also needs to manifest. Because, look, we have the neoliberal manifestations of Islam that are peddled by Gulf monarchies, that are peddled by states like Turkey and so on. on and so forth. And we have the new conservative, the new fundamentalist, conceptualizations of it, with various different degrees, right, that range from al-Qaeda to ISIS and so on and so forth. And this becomes the idea, you know, Iran wants to ultimately see an OMA, and that's a beautiful thing, right? And the UMA means different things to different Islamist, again, manifestations, because the UMA rests on the ethical political commitments that inform it ultimately, right? ISIS had a totalitarian vision of it that even include excluded Sunni Muslims and so on and so forth. But this is why, again, this question becomes

important. Because just because you call yourself a Muslim or a Jew or a Marxist or an anarchist for that matter makes you a part of my Ummma or a part of, if you will, the community of belowes because you could be Marxist and anarchist and misogynist. You could be, again, we're Muslim and you could be Zionist and there are those and so on. So I think these kinds of discussions, when we are in the streets, when we are together, we should really expend an effort. to have these conversations. Otherwise, unfortunately, or at least from my experience, both in 2011 and 2013 in the Hahrir, we risk what had happened in Egypt in 2013, or we risk these becoming single issue causes,

or we risk Palestine simply becoming a slogan that is emptied and hollowed out of the manifestations of different meanings to different people, because we also have internalized and compartmentalized ourselves, unfortunately, or a lot of people have, within ideological underpinnings. unless we have these difficult conversations with one another, what does a free Turtle Island mean? You know, and certainly indigenous people have said, well, that doesn't mean that, you know, settlers need to get back.

Well, some European races might have to or whatever, but that doesn't mean that Scepters, you know, need to leave. But then you need to, as Maticaric says, you need to carry your bundle. And as indigenous and Afro-Dinish scholars have said, well, black people, particularly those that are part of the Middle Passage, that mean, you know, they also have a sense of belonging because they were strict of that choice and agency.

But the lure and the seduction is always there and I think it's mitigated vis-à-vis the state and what the state teaches us in terms of, again, a politics of rise and are throwing off of our responsibility in relationship to one another where it's not to be back onto state logic and the representational politics. And I remember, you know, at least in one incident, and this is not to condone sort of the false anti-Semitic charges that are leveled against her or the anti-blackness that is leveled against her.

But Ilhan Omar during at the height of BLM, in which, you know, she's, she's stating, well, this country was founded on genocide. Actually, it's ongoing genocide sister. And this country is founded on slavery. Actually, it's afterlife to slavery project sister. But look at me. She continues. I'm an example of the American dream. This is, this, this becomes the problem and the element of seduction.

As if, again, we don't have as Bipak people, our native forms of governance, as Zapatistas have shown, you know, over their two decades sort of been since they were rose. onto the scene in 1994, and I think this is what requires a sort of a radical form of imagination. If colonialism has stripped anything of people of color, it's our ability to dream dangerously again. And I think we really need to take that seriously of dreaming, pluriverse worlds of below, that are horizontal, that are anti-authoritarian. And this is where the ethical and political commitments and spiritual commitment should supersede whatever sense of ideological underpinnings, I guess, that we might ultimately see ourselves in relationship too. And if, you know, if not for ourselves, then as Muayar Jermal says,

then for our children that come from immortality and are the heroes that we shoot towards infinity. So I think, you know, the solidities of below become very important given, as you all noted, the solidities that are happening at the level of the above. And the way that the above always plays on the insidious, again, misconceptions that we have and the fears and the insecurities that we have of one and other because of a Jew or a settler Jew is. saying, or if a settler is saying, even a settler immigrant is saying, well, I'm

afraid of the so-called disappearance of the U.S. and Canada and all that I bought into of imaginary underpinnings that comes from a place of insecurities of fear and not being able to be exposed to a different world and a different way of belonging, that they have thought through. And a constraint of even, you know, what democracy is and meanings of democracy is and our disconnection even from history to go back to that words. Our histories and different ways of being with the land. So I just, yeah, I just wanted to touch, you know, and just emphasize that element.

What does Black Lives Matter mean in the context of Africa that is the size of, you know, east and west Europe that is the size of, as well as China and Japan. That's how big Africa is. So it's more than just renaming Confederate bases. It's more than a lot of things, right? And restoration of some kind of like civic rights. And that's the work of, again, that we really need to invest in, and I hope from an organizational standpoint and not just mobilizing standpoint that we think through. And I think the dominant order is also counting on our fatigue, our psychological and physical and mental and emotional exhaustion, because it's not easy being out on the streets, right?

But this is why I think Panthers left us with a legacy of Zapatistas and many other of our ancestors and movements. what are the alternatives and we need to create those alternatives now because I think that's what threatens the dominant order as much as possible. That's why the Black Mantras were so threatening in so many ways because they created the breakfast programs. They were armed and prepared to protect their communities and their neighborhood. They established community councils. This is where we were out in Tahrir at the beginning. But then we relinquished that responsibility and, you know, return the agency back to the state. Well, you figure out how you're going to feed us.

You figure out what's going to happen with the garbage. You figure out what's going to happen with the health care, et cetera, because that's what revolutionary questions actually involve. They involve the development of alternatives, and they involve individuals wanting to change the way that they breathe, the way that they eat, the way that they conceive of intimacy. That's the level of responsibility that it bears. This is why the Quran always states,

and all Muslims know this verse, and Allah Allahe-Hari-Rama be come and Qat-ahir-a-a-a-in-fossim. God does not change a people until they change themselves. So people need to be willing to take up that responsibility. in that agency. The same Egyptians that marched in 2011, 2013, and I just got back from Egypt. And this is part of the set thing. Yes, we have a dictator,

a dictator that so many people were complicit in terms of bringing to power. But the same agency that was exercised in 2011 could have been exercised now. We could march over Rafah. We're in the millions of people. But again, it's the era of fear that supposedly Egyptians thought that they overcame in 2011 that takes over.

And it's the question of, well, we don't want to end up being like Syria. And we don't want to end up being like this, and therefore we have to acquiesce to the authoritarian rule that exists over there. So again, you know, it's complicated but also very simple, my rate, I think, of questions that we need to be contented with of what solidarity is about, because it's about intent, purpose, and action. I'll say that again, intent, purpose, and action. And we need to think through, I think, these different questions for our kin that are in Palestine. And it doesn't take a lot of people. Again, look what

1,500 did. They brought in the sixth fleet. They brought in the aircraft carriers. They bought in nuclear sub-brains from all over Europe. But they were organized and they worked in stealth mode and they divested. And nobody expected that this was the direction

that Hamas and the Hamas leadership or at least the political leadership was going to take. But look what a dedicated few. And the Quran even says this. You know, how much of a small group had defeated a larger enemy, if you will. It's a David and Goliath. But it has to involve a degree of organization and dedication

and full belief in the cause that way, and a vision for an alternative future aid that includes everybody, and hence a political project that generally does include everybody on a transnational and on a global scale, because what we're facing are these global

kinds of issues and collaborations by a dominant elite equally at the same time. And, you know, it's a said, you know, particularly if we're seeing, again, residences, you know, Indigenous land defenders are being referred to, or water protectors, sorry, are being referred to as jihadi terrorists and black protesters are being referred to as black extremist groups. So, so, yeah, we need to think big and be able to see the force through the trees as well, right? And not just

below our feet. We need to think strategically that way insofar as the solidities that we enact and the worlds that we are seeking to give birth to at the same time. So forgive me for a little bit of a ramble there. Well, I mean, no one could accuse us in this conversation of narrowly limiting the consequences and significance of the Palestine question and of what's really at stake here. I really think that was a very capacious kind of set of connections and challenges, that there are a lot of things to consider in this question of solidarity. and if we're going to, you know, be thinking through, you know, analyzing this particular situation through the lens of settler colonialism, there are a lot of responsibilities, you know, upon us.

And, you know, listeners, if you've got something, I think, of a pracey, of some of the kind of key points in your book, but I do, you know, Islam and anarchism, but I want to encourage people to go and read it and get it because they'll be provoked to think about exactly some of those questions that you were just putting on the table. But I'm wondering, Nick, if you have any concluding thoughts on this conversation that you want to leave listeners with about, you know, how we imagine and understand the interconnections between, you know, resistance to settler colonialism across Turtle Island and Palestine. I think the indignity expressed by indigenous people in this, particular moment around the genocide against Palestinians and not only demonstrates our international

kind of scope of indigenous resistance, but it also demonstrates this unbroken continuity of indigenous resistance in North America. There's a reason why the state, if we were inconsequential, if we were so minorized, if we were such a demographic, inconsequential, quote unquote threat to the state or to settler colonialism, then why does the RCMP need to create a special operations group inspired by what happened at Standing Rock to police water protectors, to police land defenders, what's so did in land defenders, and to surveil, monitor people who are fighting for their land. Why do they need to create a special operations group? Why? Why Why do they need to create laws to prohibit us from protecting and exercising our

relationality with the land? Why do they need to constantly undermine those political projects, those social projects, those spiritual projects, those spiritual movements? Why do they need to do that? If we're such a minority threat, like why do, why is it that my comrades are getting shot at, at, at, um, protest to remove statues, celebrate, celebrate, celebrate, colonizers why is it that we pose a sort of threat to that social order like why is it if we're such a significant minority then why is it that you need to

constantly undermine constantly kill constantly kidnap constantly take and remove us from the land if we were such an insignificant thing then you wouldn't need to do that right um so i think that that's what it represents on one hand and it's become more clear in this particular moment. And that's why we created indigenous for Palestine.org. Go check it out. We have a letter that more than 600, you know, indigenous people, activists, you know, there is even some politicians who, from our, from our, you know, from our communities that signed this and signed on to it, even some celebrities. But it shows you that there is widespread support amongst indigenous people. And it's not reflective by our leadership. Those who have

allied and collaborated with the settler state in this genocide. Look at our Congress people who are elected, our indigenous Congress people who are elected into the U.S. Congress, nearly all of them. They're not just like pro-Israel. They are like extremely Zionist, even the Democratic versions of them, right? And that's not, that's not reflective of how indigenous people are viewing this particular moment in time. So I just wanted to point that out. And lastly, I just want to say with this because there is, we saw this happen in George Floyd. We saw an election cycle completely suck up all the energy in the room, suck up all the air and channel it into electoral politics. And we're sort of seeing that in this moment. I think there's a fatigue. There's

an expectation that people will just forget because the United States has, United States and Canada have normalized genocide. They've normalized it. And, and, and, in ways that I think we should learn from and not just like combating it in the cultural realm, but combating it in the organizational realm and thinking that, thinking about this is long-term struggles because I will never forget the names, the peoples and the faces of those who have green lighted this and acquiesce to this genocide. And we should never forget them. We should make lists.

we should, in our professional organizations, we should make note of who is silent, who is ad, you know, stridently opposed to a ceasefire, the bare minimum sort of thing. We should, we should remember them and remember this particular moment in time. So we don't make the mistakes of sort of casually falling into these alliances with them in the future. Because we know at this critical juncture, they are, their solidarity is through white supremacy. It's through genocide. It's through a U.S. imperialism. And that should, we should take note. And this younger generation, I would say, is like really beautiful in that, in that regard.

But we should also not let this sort of numerical devastation of our Palestinian relatives just become a number that these are people, these are people with dreams, these are children. The images, we should not look away, but we should also not accept this as a reality, that sons and daughters and children are literally bringing their parents in bags, their body parts in bags to hospitals because they're literally being dismembered by these bombs that are paid for

and bought and funded by the United States. And that these are people with dreams, much like ours. You know, their dreams, they're dreams of freedom. And we should also not flinch away from the right to defend oneself there's been so much hyper focus on the oppressed use of violence that it's overtaken this massive genocide and onslaught against Palestinians that we should

stay hyperfocused on the oppressor's use of violence not after october seventh we need to stop exceptionalizing that date as somehow like the the the key the the way that we talk about Palestine. And to understand that this is a 75-year occupation, it's a century, more than a century-long, counterinsurgency campaign, a colonial campaign against Palestinians. There's a deep history. And we know that within decolonization movements, we know that there's not a single sort of event that constitutes decolonization. There's not sort of a single event that constitutes revolution that this is a process it took them 500 years to complete what they see as a as a as the the colonization and subjugation of our people you know

a decade is not going to undo that right so this is a long term struggle and we have to we have to gear ourselves to that you know that mindset that we may not you know in this moment in time reap the benefits of our resistance of you know of our organizing but knowing that we are here to ensure the coming of the next generation, right? That this is a continual sort of struggle. That's what I learned from my sort of movement elders. I'll just say this again. I say this everywhere,

but it's totally apt for this particular moment in this particular conversation. Madonna Thunderhawk was once asked by a young native activist, you know, why did you sacrifice your own sanctity, your own right to life? to have a normal life, you know, and to join a revolutionary struggle, the American Indian movement and do what you did. You know, you've, she was talking about in the context of her strained relationships he had with her own family because she dedicated to the movement. And Manana Thunderhawk never flinched, she said, because I wanted to be an ancestor to future generations, because somebody in the past sacrificed their life so that I could be here today.

And I think that's what we need to do when it, whether it's for climate justice, you know, decolonization that we want to be good ancestors to future generations because what we do in this particular moment in time, sure, we're going to be criminalized, they're going to do all kinds of things, they're going to put us in camps, they're going to assassinate our friends. They've assassinated our friends. They've literally targeted poets, writers, presidents of universities. They're trying to wipe out knowledge and, you know, the very language that we use to articulate, you know, our expression as humans, right? Like, they're trying to wipe that out.

And we have to remember that this moment in time is critical in terms of how we respond and act, but also, you know, try to be connected not only to our ancestors in the past, but are, you know, try to be future ancestors to generations that they can look at us and say, hey, at least they tried, you know, and I want to be like them in that sense. It's not that you're just constantly romanticizing the past, but you're understanding that you're part of a long tradition. And I just add one more thing to what, Nick, graciously, I think the importance of honoring our martyrs,

because they are shohadah and shohadah for those that don't know, our witnesses, our witnesses to history, right? And that goes across sect, that grows across race, that grows across. But I think we need to also celebrate our livingness and our defiance. And the awe that Palestine has left us with, in the awe of human beings that are young, like Pleistia, like Bassan, like Mojtaz, who are citizen journalists. We need to celebrate the doctors like Ahmed Mugrabi, Gassan, Abu Sita, and Ahmed Mughalati. We need to mourn, but also celebrate, you know, our brother, our Companero, the poet, the writer, the thinker Ritfa al-Arir, who himself is a life. in Ghazah and a light extending from Ghazah everywhere and yeah I want us to also

think about our livingness because we deserve to also honor that livingness and not to only live in states of mourning and states of trauma a bit but to also be inspired in order to again think about our future 80s and to think about thriving and to think about liberation beyond just surviving and beyond just resistance so I hope we can that this episode really to all our ancestors, but particularly our Palestinian sisters and brothers and families that are in Gaza, that are in the West Bank. We didn't talk. I mean, the West Bank often gets excluded from the conversations, particularly insofar as what's going on in Palestine, despite the atrocities that are also being committed there and the genocide that is very much

ongoing there. And yeah, all the way to Turtle Island. The two can only be freed in relationship to one another and everything that has been between and so far as the Atlantic. So Africa is there to and extending beyond that. So thank you. It was an honor to be a part of this conversation. I think that those are great notes to end on.

And I want to again thank our guests, Muhammad Abdou, author of Anarchism and Islam, as well as Nick Estes, author of our history is the future. Thanks very much, comrades, for coming on to the program. I just want to make sure that listeners are aware. I know Nick had mentioned indigenous for Palestine.org and he mentioned that there was this letter that came out of indigenous

solidarity with Palestine. There was a really great episode of the Red Nation that talked about that letter. So if you are interested in hearing more about that with Nick, check out the Red Nations feed. We'll have it also linked in our show notes. So check out that episode if you're interested in that. But Muhammad, can you tell the listeners how they can follow you and keep up to date with any of your new work that you're doing. Thank you, Henry. I'm not an other Twitter adi,

but my Twitter account is at Minwee in G major. I think it's M-I-N-U-E-T-I-N-G-M-A-J-O-R. My account on Instagram is at slightly drifting. You could just Google Mohammed Abdo Islam and anarchism and a whole bunch of stuff will come up. So, and the book is available vis-a-vis

be depressed. So I'm not that hard to find and I'm not seeking to hide out either. So, you know, as specialized people, yeah, there's no really, no real point. So absolutely. And of course, we'll have that all linked in the show notes as well. Nick, thanks again for coming on the show. Again, we'll have to invite you back again in shorter measure than we did last time. Can you tell the listeners how they can find you and more of your work? Yeah, just check out the Red Nation podcast, Red Media. I'm on Twitter. You can find it. You can find me there at Nick W. Estes. I think that's my social media handle for across platforms.

But just support the Red Nation where a native run organization, support our podcast. It's native run. We literally just, you know, it's, we literally just survive on subscriptions. We're not like we don't have like some, you know, secret donor or like, you know, we don't get like that much. But we would do it without the funding even. So, but we appreciate all those who do support us. Also listen to guerrilla history.

I'm a subscriber to the Patreon and guerrilla history and Rev Left, and I try to support as much as I can all these really radical formations because actually I just wanted to say this, thank you all for this conversation. This is one of the most enlightening conversations I've had, both in a historical sense, but also in a political sense about this issue because there's such mass censorship and fear-mongering about just having an objective conversation. And it speaks to this time, but also it speaks to the important. of platforms like this where we can have an honest and intellectual and a political conversation

without smears but as comrades yeah appreciate that we're going to shamelessly rip that and use that as a promotional thing on on social media just so you know well you know what does zapatista say henry you know holding each other's hands we ask one another what each of us knows you know and this is how we don't leave anybody behind right in terms of our growth in terms of of our nurturing in terms of maturity, and I think if there's anything that I loved about your show and I appreciate about Nick, about Adnan, the conceptability, again, to mature, to grow,

the element of humility that I think is a fundamental character of both our ancestors and anybody who's seeking and striving to be, you know, engage in a kind of revolutionary becomings because it shows that we're not dogmatic, shows we can be anti-authoritarian, it shows we know how to hold one another and learn from one another and listen to one another

and not just hear one another. And I value that a great deal. So thank you again. appreciate that adnan how can the listeners find you and your other podcast yeah i just want to thank both our guests so much for a rich stimulating and challenging conversation and one thing that i appreciate so much about their work um and their perspectives on it is that you can speak about uh these political historical uh you know uh issues with uh genuine uh analysis but also that the spiritual, the emotional, those cultural components that are so important and also are what make the struggle sustainable over the long term by having that sense of

brotherhood, comradeship, and connection to something a bit bigger than us individually is so much a part of their work and their approach. And so I appreciate that very much. Thank you both. we're coming on if you want it listeners find me i'm on twitter at adnan a hussein i come out of hibernation occasionally uh to vent as you know during the during the past couple of months so you can follow me there and also check out the mudge list podcast that has also been on a bit of a hiatus but we're going to have an episode very soon on the history of the ode a beautiful

instrument that sometimes, you know, for me, has started to become a bit of a solace in this world to, you know, connect with something a little bit different Arabic music. So check out the M-A-J-L-I-S on the usual platforms and look out for this upcoming episode. Yeah, absolutely looking forward to it. For our co-host who was not able to make it, Brett O'Shea, you can find all of his work at Revolutionary Left Radio. and, of course, I highly recommend everybody to do that. And we're looking forward to Brett being part of the next conversation.

As for me, you can find me on Twitter at Huck-N-N-N-N-N-E-C-K-1-9-5. You can follow Gorilla History on Twitter to keep up with each of us individually, as well as what the show is doing collectively at Gorilla-U-E-R-R-R-I-L-A-U-R-A-U-R-L-A-U-S-Pod. And you can help support the show financially and allow us to keep the lights on and keep putting out more episodes like this by going to patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history. Again, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history.

And just as another mention, if you're not financially able to do so, but you would like to help support the show nonetheless, you can do so by sharing our episodes. That's probably the best way to help the show, get more new people's ears on the show, as well as if you're able to give the show a rating, and if you are having the time to do so, write a review,

for it on whatever podcast app you use. That's really helpful for juicing the algorithm, which we're generally quite bad at, but we can try. All right. And until next time, listeners, solidarity. Thank you.