Guerrilla History - Lawfare and Imperialism w/ Nina Farnia

Episode Date: July 11, 2025

In this episode of Guerrilla History, we bring back fan favorite Ali Kadri to discuss a very important topic - Sanctions as Genocide!  Long time listeners will remember that we previously had a series on Sanctions As War, and this episode is a great accompaniment to those past conversations.  Similarly, this goes very well with our other conversations with Ali (Lebanon vs. Zioimperialism and Palestine - War, Occupation, and Proletarianization).  We will be really excited to also have Ali back several more times for an upcoming mini-series! Nina Farnia is a legal historian, focusing on the role of modern imperialism in U.S. law and politics.  Her forthcoming book Imperialism and Resistance will be coming out next year from Stanford University Press, so stay tuned for that!  You can find more of her work on her Albany Law webpage, and you can follow her on twitter @NinaFarnia. Help support the show by signing up to our patreon, where you also will get bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory  We also have a (free!) newsletter you can sign up for, and please note that Guerrilla History now is uploading on YouTube as well, so do us a favor, subscribe to the show and share some links from there so we can get helped out in the algorithms!!

You don't remember Den Bamboo? 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. Gorilla 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 Huckmacki, joined as usual by my co-host, Professor Adnan Hussein, historian and director of the School of Religion at Queens University in Ontario, Canada. Hello, Adnan. How are you doing today? I'm doing great, Henry. It's wonderful to be with you. It's nice to see you as always, and we have a really great guest and a great conversation. planned for today. But before I introduce the guest on the topic for discussion, like to remind

the listeners that they can help support the show and allow us to continue making episodes like this by going to patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history. That's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history. Also noting that guerrilla history is now also on YouTube. You don't have to actually see Adnan an eye on YouTube, but you can listen to us on YouTube if you prefer. Just search for Gorilla History on YouTube. And you can follow the show on social media. We're on Twitter at Gorilla underscore Pod, Instagram, Gorilla underscore History. And we are on our email newsletter, which goes right to your email for free, gorillahistory.com. Again, Gorilla has two R's in all of those cases. So with that being said, we have, as I mentioned, a terrific guest today. We have

Professor Nina Farnia, who is a legal historian and law professor, whose research is about how law is used in imperialism, U.S. law, politics. She has a very interesting book that's coming forth. I'm really, really looking forward to the book, by the way, Professor, which I'm sure I've told you many times. But needless to say, here's another reminder. Professor, how are you doing today? It's nice to have you on the show finally. Thank you both for having me on. I'm a big fan of your show, so it's an honor to be here with you both. Absolutely.

And as I mentioned, we're both fans of your work, and it hopefully will not be the last time that you're on the show because I have a lot of other conversations that I'd love to have with you. But the topic for today is lawfare. Lawfare is a very interesting topic and something that we bring up in passing in many episodes of guerrilla history. But I think that as we get into this conversation about lawfare, we first need to define what it is. You know, many people might hear the word lawfare and just think it's the aggressive

use of the law or something along those lines and less about the structural purpose of it and the structures that propagate it about how states or corporations are manipulating and creating legal systems to legitimize reports. repression, legitimize the very systems that they stand for. So, Professor, can I turn it over to you? And can you introduce what is lawfare to our listeners? Yeah. I think, so my, I'm going to use analogy to start.

My introduction to lawfare really was through the Zionists and their prosecution of pro-Palestinian speech or Palestinian activists. And so it's really a nefarious, I would call it a nefarious use of the law to basically prosecute the very worst of, you know, the very worst objectives of state power, right? The most dangerous objectives of state power. It's, I hesitate to use it broadly because the fact of the matter is that in a capitalist society, like the one that I, live in, the law by and large plays a dangerous role. And there are ways to use it to sort of slow it down or to even stop it at points. But ultimately, the law is a dangerous tool in capitalist societies. So law fair could be that, but what it's most known for is sort of its use

in moments of extreme violence, to support that violence, to perpetuate it, and to protect the most violent. Given that sort of role of the law, what are some examples that you could give that, I mean, you mentioned sort of your first encounter with it as the Zionist. I'm wondering if you can maybe tell us a little bit about some of the ways in which you've seen the law being used to further and advance, you know, Zionist goals, you know, both in, you know, I don't know if some of the examples that might leap to mind are in the United States context, to suppress dissent or to redefine using kind of hate speech and

discrimination types of codes for a reverse interest, as it were, to immunize. a kind of supremacist and bigoted, you know, suppression of other, of pro-Palestinian rights, or if, like, one might also kind of think about them in the global context and international law, you know, also within the state of Israel and the way law, I could see like a lot of ways in which your study, you know, as a legal historian and scholar of, of law and imperialism and its uses, you could probably come up with a lot of examples. I'm wondering what are some the ones that you think are most illustrative of the complicity and the limits and the dangerous, as you were just saying, dangerous use of the law, you know, in those contexts

for readers to really get a sense, you know, of like what's at stake? Because as Henry was saying, you know, people typically think of the law as a recourse for a justice, you know, or, you know, kind of trying to ensure that there's peace in society, you know. So these kind of naive kind of official understandings of the law, you're countering. Maybe you could give us a little bit of more example and insight into that. So you're right. People generally view the law as objective, right? It's an objective force that upholds the liberal, the classical liberal notions of liberty

and justice and whatnot. The fact of the matter is that in the U.S. context in particular, the law is designed to uphold property, property interests, and the propertyed classes. And so like the National Lawyers Guild, which I'm a member of, which is sort of the left flank of the legal, of the bar in the United States, says, you know, as an organization, we don't uphold property. we uphold human rights. Not property rights, but human rights. There is so many, just as you were talking, there were so many examples that came to mind. But I'll sort of start with one from my book and then sort of bring us to the contemporary moment. The one that I talk about in my book, which involves the targeting of Palestinian and Palestinian solidarity activists, is the Los Angeles-Aid case. The book ends with the Palestinian struggle. And I, in chapter seven, the book. I focus on that case in particular. It was called by the FBI at the time the first

terrorist prosecution, the first prosecution of terrorists. And these were Palestinian socialists that were being accused of membership in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which is the left, the socialist Palestinian organization, which is still active today. And because the Zionists and then the U.S. government argued that it was a communist organization. They were immigrants, and so it was unlawful for them to be in the United States, to have received naturalization or green cards or student visas or whatever. The case lasted for 20 years.

They were initially jailed for three weeks in very harsh conditions, but they had a massive movement behind them. They were released, and then they filed their own lawsuit against the government. Every time they won in court, the government would file new charges against them. And so this went on for 20 years. It ended in the late 2000s, like 2007-2008. It basically didn't destroy their lives completely, but it hurt them significantly. It was a major hit to the Palestinian movement because a ton of attention and energy was diverted from the actual movement, the cause of Palestinian liberation, to protecting the movement, right? And so that is the duty of any movement is to protect its people, but it takes energy and resources to do that.

And so that was a challenge, and it created the legal architecture for the material support laws. So this is the case that the government prosecuted to create the legal architecture for material support laws, so that you could no longer be a member in quote-unquote terrorist organizations. You could no longer advocate for quote-unquote terrorist organizations. It was a limit on speech and advocacy. And then, you know, post-A-Luaxa, well, no, actually pre-A-Luqsa flood, you know, they were, the Zionist organizations were filing lawsuits against organizations like American Muslims for Palestine, national students for justice in Palestine, all kinds of Palestinian organizations.

And, you know, some of these lawsuits, if you look at the initial complaints, I mean, it's like they read like, you know, like a mediocre law student wrote them, right? Not even a mediocre lawyer, but a mediocre law student who was distracted wrote these complaints. And ultimately, a lot of them have gotten, or some of them have gotten dismissed. But again, it's a drain on resources. It's a drain on energy. And it causes a chilling effect on pro-Palestinian advocacy in the United States. As you said, after Alexa flood, there was, this is an example in New York where I am,

There was a hate crime bill that had a lot of, like, support. It was a coalition of Asian-American organizations and Jewish-American organizations really advanced this bill. It was really a Zionist bill. I mean, that's what it is that ultimately limits pro-Palestinian speech in New York. That's one example. And then I think the latest and most interesting example is Israel's use of the IAEA, like the International Atomic Energy Association Agency. It's disgusting.

I mean, this is, as dangerous and horrific as everything I just described is, this is basically bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war, right? because Grossi came out a couple days before Israel attacked Iran and said, Iran is violating the IAEA and the NPT. Israel, that gave Israel the pretext to attack Iran, of course, this is all U.S. orchestrated, right? Like, let's not confuse ourselves or delude ourselves into thinking that this is some sort of, you know, Israel-Iran war. It's not. It's the empire against Iran. Anyways, so Israel attacks on behalf of the United States in Europe, and it escalates to such a point to where the U.S. hits Iranian nuclear facilities.

Now, the Iranians are saying those nuclear, they moved everything out and that there wasn't much damage. The American intelligence apparatus is saying that there was damage, either minimal damage, or they, caused a couple months of delay or harm to the facilities. And this is good news, right? Because we don't want damage to nuclear facilities because of the potential for fallout. But the fact that this is now okay, that this is slowly being normalized and that so-called international institutions provided political cover for this and the head of those institutions provided intelligence to the Israelis for this, this is perhaps the peak of lawfare, right, where international institutions are now basically responsible for the targeting of nuclear

facilities. So how do we roll this back? What's next? Right? I mean, a lot of thinkers, a lot of our great political scientists, whether we agree with them or not, even the liberals are saying it's virtually impossible to walk this back, right? And so, you know, I digress, kind of, but I would call that an example of lawfare, right? International institutions I didn't cover for, you know, sort of nascent nuclear warfare. Oh, and then on top of we just, it just came out today that they were using depleted uranium in Iran, that they dropped you know, the missiles they dropped on Iran had depleted uranium, which is something that we knew about Lebanon as well. So this is all that. I just wanted to add that. It's important

to add that. No, I'm glad that you added that. And actually, I think that's an interesting point that you raised because initially when you discussed the IAEA, I could see it being very analogous to the legal kind of use of the law. But in fact, actually, what made me kind of see maybe a deeper symmetry between these processes is that the, you know, NPT basically sets out certain conditions, right, for peaceful development, you know, of nuclear energy and other peaceful and commercial, you know, uses of nuclear technology that are, you know, guaranteed by a whole process of inspection. and things. And these are, you know, have the force of law because they become part of international

law as nations enter into the treaty. And the IAEA is really just an administrative agency for the NPT. And so what it is is like the enforcement of the law that is now, you know, been suborned, corrupted and used. And in fact, the whole use of the IAEA inspection regime, you could say, has been lawfare to prevent the sovereign development of countries, you know, other than those who have already achieved nuclear, you know, weapons technology, you know, to kind of use the law, i.e., this treaty, to prevent others from developing, you know, and the whole way, the cynical way in which the IAEA, you know, has been used for, you know, years and years, you know, to kind of create sanctions regime on Iran is exactly like lawfare used, you know, against Palestinian solidarity

movements to distract, to take energy, to use the mechanisms of the international order or in the case of Palestinian, you know, activists, the enforcement and, you know, police arms of the state basically to suppress. So I see a real close connection. And I think it's great that you're, you know, making those analogies and connections. But just on this grossy, I mean, you know, he has been, I think, alarmed by the fact that Iran has really called out, you know, the evidence from presumably the intelligence cash that they got a hold of a couple of months ago or we don't know when they got a hold of it, but when that they announced that they had. And they've released some small portion of emails and things like that to demonstrate that he's been

consulting with, you know, Israel, you know, and adopting their agenda. I mean, we don't know. I don't know if there's been direct evidence of, there's a lot of smoke, but I don't know if there's been direct evidence released or shown of his complicity in providing information and intelligence on Iranian nuclear scientists to Israel and their proxy, you know, groups who have been assassinated, but, I mean, I think there are questions to be asked. And in light of that, he has been walking back that statement that, you know, the decision of the IAEA that was announced right before the Israeli attacks commence, the, you know, illegal, you know, preemptive, you know, or not even preemptive, they're just aggressive, aggressive attacks by Israel. You know, he's walked

that back a little bit saying, well, it wasn't a warrant for war. Well, so why did you release it then two days before, if you didn't intend it to be somehow justifying or providing some kind of diplomatic cover lawfare, you know, legal cover under the IAA. But I think he's worried that, you know, there's that, that, you know, he could really be in serious, you know, well, I mean, will he be no? Because, you know. The Iranian says much during the, because during the sort of peak of the, of the aggression, the Iranians basically said, we're going to deal with grossy later. I mean, and so, you know, they use that kind of language. And so it leaves some space to feel, well, what do they mean? Are they going to prosecute him? Are they going to,

white intelligence do they have? Right. Was he paid? Is he a committed Zionist, loyalist? You know, what is going on here that he is passing intelligence about people's civilians, private lives to the most dangerous genocidal entity in modern history? Yeah, it's, it's, it's, absolutely disgusting. And I'm sure, you know, there will be processes to carry forward, you know, whether they will lead to enough political pressure where there's actual accountability and all of that. I mean, I'm sure he thought there would be absolute impunity. Now he's worried. At least that's something, you know, and I think that's interesting. I did want to come back before I turn things over to Henry for a new question, but just to follow up back on the previous history that

you mentioned about what was characterized in the U.S. legal and law. enforcement establishment as the first kind of counter-terrorist prosecution, you know, on the, you know, PFLP, you know, the legal, the L.A. Aid case. And this, for listeners, is, you know, even well before, this is like starting in the 1980s, right, 80s or early 90s. This is even before the very famous Holy Land Foundation case, which is a very analogous one. But what I wanted to point out and just ask you for further thoughts and comment on that, is that a legal approach seems quite interesting, especially in light of more recent kinds of attempts to, under the Trump and, well, even under the Biden, but under the Trump administration in particular,

these attempts to use immigration law to suppress political speech and organization. So this idea that, well, if you're here as a permanent resident or a student on a student visa or here on a work visa, you know, those would not be valid if you were adhering to a political ideology that we've now decided to count as beyond kind of what's allowable retroactively and retrospectively and then to use kind of foreign policy. discretion on the part of the Secretary of State and other things like this to use certain legal provisions and certain legal kind of loopholes within, you know, raison de tat, you know, kind of national security and this sort of thing, as well as immigration law, where there is much more kind of latitude for the federal kind of executive branch, you know, ICE and, you know, Homeland Security and the immigration and naturalization. services and so on, to use those to target, you know, and attack certain political positions.

And we see that with the Mahmoud Khalil and, you know, all these things that have happened. That's so similar and interesting that it, you know, really goes back to a legal approach since the late 80s, early 90s. And I'm wondering if you have anything more you want to talk about, that sort of sphere of the way in which lawfare is used. So I would actually take it back much further. I mean, I don't talk about this in the book, because I'm a modern historian, but in the early 1900s, there was the Sacco and Venzetti case of Italian anarchists, and they were executed for their activism, their political work. And I would even take it back a little bit further. slavery ended, the U.S. had to bring in a bunch of immigrants to replace that free and coerced labor with cheap coerced labor, right? Not as coerced as enslavement, but still somewhat coerced.

And these immigrants, all of us, you and I are both among that category, right, have to be disciplined, right? On the one hand, they need us. I mean, this place cannot survive without immigrants. Well, we were just before we started talking a little bit about our connections to the Bay Area where, you know, the Silicon Valley industry, all these electrical engineers and the computer industry and integrated chips and, you know, all that's the developed. I mean, if it wasn't for, you know, foreign-born engineers, like, you know, coming and contributing all of that knowledge and education at like, you know, perhaps lower rates as a result of immigration and recruitment. from like the global, you know, the global South, like that brain drain that undermined, you know, possibilities of development in the global South and also at the same time fed I-Tech for the empire. I mean, that's not possible without these people. So I think that's a great point. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, just on yesterday I heard on NPR, they were saying there's a massive housing

shortage in New York, very, very significant. And NPR was reporting that, Despite the so-called efforts of the state government, the housing construction has slowed down because of deportations. I mean, it's like the, first of all, like the instrumentality of immigrants to the empire is horrific. But then also the fact that now they're so fascistic that they're willing to get rid of these immigrants and have a bunch of un-house people. Anyway, so the point is to say that immigrants have to be disciplined, right? right? We are supposed to be cheap labor and we must stay in line. And so you have, and the same applies to Africans and African-descended people. So that, you know, following the abolition of slavery. So you just have a series of laws, especially in the 1900s, in the 20th century,

that completely suppressed speech. A lot of people got deported. for their speech. Even there are some examples, and I don't remember who, they're famous. There are some examples of citizens being deported or being sent out because of their speech. These were communists. So, and then we come to this moment where now you have the fall of imperialism. The U.S. is having a massive economic crisis. China is rising.

Asia is rising. and the U.S. is becoming more and more fascistic and needs to kick out all these immigrants in order to save face. So, to some, the Palestinian, the targeting of Palestinian speech is real. It's honest. It's ideological. It's constitutive. It's related to the empire and the threat that Palestinians pose to the empire. But there is also an instrumentality to it because those laws, are used to get rid of a bunch of other people. And so the idea that this is going to stop with Palestinians is ridiculous. It's not going to stop with Palestinians.

It's going to continue. In fact, they're just now getting rid of a bunch of Iranians just this week. All of a sudden, they're going after Iranians, which, you know, I'm ashamed to say, Iranian Americans are not the most revolutionary bunch, right? And in fact, they're the opposite. So, you know, like, borderline fascists, by and large. So, like, I'm kind of joking. They're not fascists.

But they're not, they tend to be right-winged. They tend to support the U.S. a lot. So the attacks on Palestinians are not. They're not going to stay there. They're going to expand dramatically. Yeah, I mean, I think one thing that we've learned is, that the pro-Palestine solidarity movement is being used very effectively as a way to undermine rights, political rights more broadly, you know, like that's just sort of the sharp end of

the wedge because you can target these groups, but put in place. And I saw this in the UK, for example, the year before when I was on sabbatical there and I spent a lot of time going to these massive protests in London. And, you know, they were called hate marches and there were a lot of new legislation and new administrative, you know, mechanisms put in place because the specter of all these, you know, even though it wasn't, you know, necessarily majority kind of Muslim people, you know, but they were prominent enough that one could kind of sort of engage the Islamophobic kind of political culture to, you know, exaggerate the panic. of, you know, this being, you know, dangerous, you know, having these people exhibit their political views in political, public political space, that that then became the justification for putting in place new legislation to monitor, to surveil and to suppress. And they would, for good measure, throw in radical, you know, environmental groups within, you know, just to make it seem that it was like, you know, a broader, a kind of categorical question of public. order that required these new emergency kinds of provision. So I think that's a very important kind of point, is that this, that, you know, it's being used in that way. But let me turn things over to Henry. Yeah, well, my internet is working anyway. Like I told both of you

offer, when we have drone threats, the internet gets cut. And so my internet has been very spotty these days, unfortunately. Read into that what you will, listeners. But in any case, I do want to talk about the long history of lawfare. Lawfare reaches back as a colonial tool, as a tool for upholding slavery. Lawfare is not a modern phenomenon. So, of course, we can talk about the way that modern capitalist, imperialist states utilize it against radical groups within their countries, like how the United States utilized various codes under conspiracy acts against the Black Panthers, for example, or we have these material support statutes that you've been talking about, Professor. We have where they've been labeling Stop Cop City protesters as domestic

terrorists. We have where they're even finding legal ways of trying to ban BDS, a nonviolent expression of supposedly, you know, being able to use our free speech and saying, look, we don't want to send our money to an apartheid genocidal regime, that is now trying to be looked at at how to make that illegal. But while we have a tendency to look at all of these modern expressions of lawfare, lawfare does go back and is foundational in many ways to the emergence of a capitalist, imperialist system. So can you talk at all about some of those more historical precedence of lawfare in the colonial context, in the context of upholding slavery, etc., whatever you want to bring up on that, professor.

So Thomas Payne has this great quote that in America, the law is God. And I think that, and God with a capital G, right, so the God. And I think to some extent there's truth to that, where the love of law, the upholding of it, the vaunting of it, the vaunting of it is a very American phenomenon. It has roots in England and in Europe, but the U.S. has transformed it. And, I mean, I think one great example, which I always try to remind our friends in Asia and Africa and Latin America, are the treaties that the U.S. established with the indigenous nations here. Every time, every time they lost on the battlefield, they would write treaties where they would, you know, not get as much as they wanted, but they would get a lot, right, a lot from the indigenous nations. And then they would break the treaties and continue the war.

And so I think we can see that in the modern moment, you know, its counterpart in the modern moment, that period, that period. of the treaty negotiations and all that stuff can be used to rebuild, to figure out next steps, continue planning in order to expand the empire in this case, in the U.S. case westward. In the old U.S. case westward, today it's to protect what's left of the empire. And so that is a form of lawfare. That's a form of lawfare that's colonial that helped to create the modern United States. the use of the law to identify Africans as partial humans, right? This was in the founding documents of the United States.

That's a form of lawfare. After the end of slavery, the rise of police forces, the transformation of night watches and slave patrols into what we now know is modern police forces that execute the protection of property against black and indigenous people. That's a form of lawfare. These are all sort of the use of the law

to protect property and protect capital. And now we're seeing a version of that in sort of ceasefire negotiations in my region of the world. And I say this repeatedly, the same thing happened during the Korean War, where the U.S. used ceasefire negotiations to extend the war and extend the damage it caused against the Korean Peninsula. In my book, and I found this, I didn't expect to find this, but I found it in the archives. They actually talk about using ceasefire negotiations during the contra war. against Nicaragua in order to dupe the American people,

the American people were really rising up against the Contra War. It was a disgusting, disgusting war. I mean, all wars are disgusting, but the Contra War was horrific. And the American people knew about it, knew what their leaders were doing. I found in the Reagan archives at the library in California,

documentation where very senior Reagan officials, Reagan administration officials, are saying, we need to engage in ceasefire negotiations so that the American people think that we're serious about ending this war. What, in fact, like the most, the worst atrocities of the war were happening during those so-called ceasefire negotiations. But those negotiations were cover. They were political cover for those atrocities. And so there's like a, there is a relationship between the use of policy, which is a form of law and extreme violence, right? And we should, when we hear the word ceasefire, and I've been telling that, saying this over, when we hear the word ceasefire, our alarm should go up these days. That's just like unfortunate, but it's, that's the reality

that we're in right now. And just to add in, you know, when we think about these weaponizations of lawfare, we may tend to think of some of the more egregious examples. And in your examples, you talked about something that happened during the Reagan administration, or right now we're looking at examples that are happening under the Trump administration. But actually, the way that lawfare has been utilized, has been successful and has been able to be carried out for centuries because it is bipartisan. In the case of American politics, that is, you know, two parties. both of the parties engage in weaponization of the law when they're in power, or even if they

are in the minority position of government at that time, they still abide by the usage of lawfare. And even in instances where they are opposed to the way that the law is being used in a certain situation, the way in which they engage that application of the law is limited by liberalism. Liberalism is inherently limited when fighting lawfare that has been utilized to construct

a capitalist system that is what the liberals themselves had been fighting for. You can't tear down the edifice on which you have built up your system without also questioning the system itself. And that is something that liberalism

is incapable of doing because that is the structure that it built itself on. So in the case of the United States, it's bipartisan. Lawfare is bipartisan. And because of it, there is a legitimacy in the weaponization of the law in the case of the United States to uphold these systems. Now, in other capitalist imperialist countries, that's also true, even if they have more than two parties. I mean, Germany, let's look at Germany right now in the way that, They are also dealing with protest that's taking place in their country against the genocide in Gaza.

Or historically against the way that Israel has engaged with the Palestinian people. I mean, we don't just have to draw that there is a continuity between the way that the Nazis weaponized the law to the way that the German state today is still weaponizing the law. The point is that Germany is a modern capitalist imperialist nation, and all of the parties that are present within Germany, and there is many of them, they may disagree with the application of law in individual cases, but by and large, in terms of the structures that are in place, they can't question or they can't challenge the usage of that law for the purposes of upholding that system because they support the upholding of that. system. I know there wasn't really a question there, professor, but I've ranted a bit. Maybe you have something you want to say on that. No, no, I think that's a great intervention. You're correct. People in the U.S., so I'll touch on Germany a bit. I joked with my students, I think, last year. You know, I just don't understand, like, the Germans, you know, they keep engaging in these genocide just over and over and over again. I mean, setting aside sort of the international,

the fact that the globe allows this to continue, why haven't, why can't the Germans stop themselves? Why haven't they stopped themselves? I mean, do they really want to just keep doing this? At some point, it's going to blow back in a serious way. But the fact of the matter is that Germany is an occupied country. It's occupied by the United States. And so it, and, and it, East Germany, as we know, the U.S. had to defeat it. It had to defeat East Germany and its relationship with the Soviet Union. And the way that it has done this is to basically make it a sort of garrisoned state of some sort, right? Not as severe or as extreme as Israel, but yeah.

So the Germans, I think, are very specific and interesting example. And this partially explains why when the Nicaragans just filed a genocide lawsuit, against Germany in particular, right? Because Germany needs to be stopped, and this is a small way to try to stop it. In terms of the United States, people like to think, they're nostalgic about the Obama era,

as if it was, I don't know. I don't know what is going on in people's minds. You know, it was great to say, see, you know, he's obviously very charismatic guy. Maybe that's what they remember. I don't know. But Obama participated in law fair in perhaps one of the most brilliant ways that we've seen in this century, because people continue to be confused about what he did. He was the deporter in chief. He deported so many people. I think still his numbers are higher. I can't, I actually

don't know if his numbers are higher than Biden's numbers. But his numbers are very, very high. It's going to take a lot for the Trump administration, this particular, this Trump, too, to get there. He was drone strikes left and right. He killed an American citizen with drone strikes, which I don't think it matters whether they're American or not, but the Americans should at least care, right? Like, the people here, the politicians should at least care, that this is not a great idea, but he did it. The agreement, JCPOA that he created with Iran, you know, that particular Iranian administration was willing and was willing to create that agreement. I was critical of it from the get-go because I knew it was going to blow back on Iran, but it was also a violation of Iranian sovereignty.

You know, why can the U.S. have nuclear weapons, but Iran can't? Why can the U.S. and Israel and Russia and China and India have nuclear weapons and the European countries, but the U.S., but Iran can't, because nobody wants Iran to be able to defend itself. Why can't, not only can the Europeans have nuclear weapons, but, you know, recently they have proposed moving nuclear weapons around between EU states to extend the nuclear umbrella. So it's not that individual states in the EU have nuclear weapons anymore, but France, in particular, has proposed stationing of nuclear weapons in other EU countries to extend the quote-unquote nuclear umbrella.

Why is that something that can happen unquestioned? I mean, obviously it's egregious that Israel can have nuclear weapons and doesn't, isn't signed on to any of the nuclear treaties, does not allow nuclear inspectors into the country, and yet which is the country that has its nuclear program struck? It's Iran, not Israel. It's not the country that actually has nuclear weapons within the Middle East. It's the other one that doesn't have nuclear weapons in the Middle East that gets struck as a result of a nuclear program. But, I mean, that's an egregious example that everybody knows about.

But it wasn't as widely reported as it should have been that France and other European countries said it was a great idea, by the way. but France was the one that was proposing, well, you know, we should shift around some of the EU's nuclear weapons to have more nuclear weapons in more countries of the EU so that our umbrella reaches wider. That is egregious. Why was that not discussed in the news? Why is that not debated in public? Why has that not sparked protests on the streets? It's remarkable, but yet it's something that most people hadn't even heard of because it went underreported. but it's remarkable professor. Yeah, yeah. I mean, and when after the Ukraine war began, Gerald Horn, he was probably the only, at that point,

the only super prominent American intellectual that was out there on almost a daily basis saying that this is a NATO war on Russia. And we are out of our minds if we think it's a good idea for the Europeans to arm again, especially the Germans at the rate that they're arming right now. And that position continues to be correct, right? Nobody on the planet should agree with the Europeans arming themselves

to the extent that they're arming themselves now and this nuclear umbrella that you're talking about occurring at the same time as Israel attacks at Iranian nuclear facilities. this basically takes us many steps closer to nuclear war. And there are people that are talking about it. Even John Mearsheimer, who is a liberal, he's very much critical of Israel, but a liberal, he has been sounding this alarm for years.

A lot of people have. But the Americans are clear that they are willing to go as far as they possibly can to reap as many resources and pillage as much as they can before their empire falls. And finance capital, global finance capital, has the same position. They will rape and they will pillage as much as they can while they can. And that is what is happening. And if millions of us die at the hands of whatever it is, it appears like so be it, right? I mean, that's the American, but I don't think that's going to happen.

It's not going to happen because fortunately we have some. states and some entities who are willing to take positions against it. But the American position, I think, is that. And the Europeans are more than happy to be the canon fodder. They're more than happy to be the canon fodder. You know, it's very interesting, like from the perspective of the law and legal regimes that is meant to be kind of a stabilizing of a liberal kind of paradigm of, you know, imperial capital.

But what seems to have happened in the last few years is that attempts to invest perhaps in sort of manipulating and reinforcing or extending that kind of structure and system to, you know, the world has sort of fallen apart. And we are in that kind of stage where it's back to kind of plunder, primitive accumulation. And likewise at the same time, we're seeing the emergence and the rise of fashion. and fascistic movements in the West that, of course, are the simple corollary domestically to increased kind of colonial, imperial intervention, militaristic enforcement of hegemony abroad. And I mean, one thing that has happened in the last few years with the kinds of things we've been discussing up to this point about lawfare is the shredding of the, you know, international legal regime, the so-called rules-based international order, the subordinating, as you were just

pointing out, even at the very beginning of the conversation of international institutions that were meant to enforce kind of collective treaties on things like nuclear, you know, tech control. That is all fraying and falling apart. And I think it's what, you know, for a variety of reasons, because the West is sort of unwilling to kind of invest in. the kind of slower process, you know, of extraction and domination that is kind of created by trying to maintain that sort of regime of order and get participation in. And it's been willing to sort of abandon that, throw it aside, sacrifice all of that for the sake of supporting a genocidal apartheid regime in, you know, Israel's genocide in Gaza. But like, it's similar

to a lot of other, you know, kind of processes, it seems like. And so, So, you know, one might ask and think about, what's the future of the law, you know, as a kind of institution in such a, you know, sort of future. You know, when anything like, you know, the last sort of example domestically that I wanted to bring up because it's so timely and something that, again, shows what's the problem to this regime is when there is genuine resistance. When resistance builds, it has to throw this all aside because it no longer is capable of managing and controlling, you know, the populations, the Global South, others, domestic, you know, dissidents and so on. And like, for example, Palestine action, you know, that has used kind of the mechanism of pushing the law, of breaking the law in order to highlight the important higher legal standard of preservation of life. of defending human rights, of the international treaties that, you know, the UK and even under UK law that it's supposedly committed to in order to say, look, trespass and, you know, vandalism and these kind of property crimes are in fact actually supposed to be under this

liberal regime of law, you know, subordinate to some higher kind of prevention of the killing, you know, like a, you know, saving lives, and that's what we're doing. And up to a certain point, they were able to do the damage, kind of inflict costs, and still escape the worst of the kinds of punishment that the legal system, because there was still some investment in maintaining kind of this fiction that, yes, you know, English justice does, you know, have this kind of higher kind of purpose and higher values. And juries were willing to kind of, you know, exonerate people because they believed in those values and the law. But that has to be dispensed with now. And so they're being reclassified as a terrorist organization so that law can actually be used for

what it's supposed to be able to do, which is prevent, you know, actual resistance. And so that seems to be a case where that just, you know, encapsulates that wider kind of story we've been talking about. But it highlights, I think, this question of this point that resistance is what pushes and causes this fraying that we've seen. And that's kind of in a way a hopeful thing, even though there's more suppression, more violent and open suppression to the point of even dispensing with like law and those systems and norms. That suggests, however, that, you know, the resistance is happening, it's working, it's forcing the contradiction. And in that context, so that's what I wanted to ask is like in that context, you know, what future the law? Like, you know,

and should we demone it, you know, the end of, on the one hand, we like its protections when we can actually, you know, avail ourselves of them. But on the other hand, the wider kind of situation is that that's only possible when there's enough space for it. And when those, you know, you know, kind of contradictions sharpen, they're ready to throw it all aside. So maybe it's useful that we're achieving the end of illusions, you know, and we just have to have resistance. I don't know. I'm wondering what you think about that. I want to add on.

I want to add on something to what Adnan was saying in terms of what the future of the law could be like. So, you know, the illusion is gone, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the system can't perpetuate itself in scary new ways. So I'm thinking particularly of new technologies that are being utilized. already and are continuing to be developed, such as AI-based surveillance, such as predictive policing. These are methods that could, you know, it wants the facade of some sort of fair and just legal system has to be dispensed with because it has just been violently clear that that's not what the legal system is for for so long that the brutal repression.

and the repressive tactics that are utilized under the same guise of utilizing the law, using the same lawfare tactics, but with new technologies to be even more efficient, does it make it even more difficult to find ways to deal with the weaponization of the law and continued efforts of lawfare by the structures that utilize them? That's a lot of questions. That's what we're good at. If we like to load you up.

This is one of the reasons I like you, Shil. So I'm going to start with the AI question. Right now, as we speak, we're learning a lot about the use of AI in warfare, and specifically in West Asia. That's the region that we're learning about the most. Obviously, it's being used everywhere, and especially the United States. But, you know, for whatever reason, everybody's attention is focused on West Asia. And I can tell you just like from anecdotal experience that that the legal academy in the United

States is quickly trying to catch up. So a lot of law professors are trying to understand how AI works. They're not people that are schools or formally educated in technology or engineering or STEM in general. But a lot of the legal academy is trying to figure out how AI works so that the laws can be designed to address its use. And this is a lot of liberal legal academics in the United States. It's the same case in Europe. In West Asia, a lot of the sort of resistance forces in the region, the leaders of the resistance forces, have come out and said that we need to be much more savvy about the way we think about AI and how we defend ourselves against it, but also use it. And Lebanon, I think what happened in Lebanon is perhaps the best example

of the violence of AI, the extreme violence of AI. The pager attacks, I'm specifically talking about the pager attacks, and then the bombing of whole neighborhoods in order to take out top Hezbollah leadership like Nasrullah and other. So it's very much on people's minds. I am not of the mind that technology is bad or that we should be wary of technology. Because human society, from the creation of tools in ancient times in the Stone Age, you know, just like basic tools for like cutting and the plow, you know, whatnot, that was technology.

And today, AI is technology. And we can always, we can always unfortunately resort to the most base and most violent instincts that human beings have. And that is what capitalism is. That's what capitalism is a reflection of. But the overwhelming majority of us are not like that. By and large, humanity can function well, can function healthily and can provide shelter and food and food. safety and education and health care for its people when it's committed to doing so. And we actually have living examples of that in Cuba, in China, in the Soviet Union, not so long ago.

Attempts are being strong attempts are being made in Venezuela, Nicaragua, though they're truly under the boot of the U.S. So if it weren't for imperialism, and this is why we say, that imperialism is the primary contradiction. If it weren't for imperialism, the world would be a better place. And we know that for a fact. We know that we have the resources and the mental faculties to marshal all of the inventions that human society has brought to the planet to make the world better. And AI can be used to make the world better. But right now, it's not. So, you know, that's sort of my feeling about technology and AI. I actually have a similar relationship to the law. I'm going to transition now to your question or comment,

Adnan. What I tell my students on the law is that at the end of the day, I'm a law professor. I'm not an anarchist. I actually believe in the role of the law, right? In the classroom, there are rules that we use to operate. And those rules are that we respect each other, that nobody goes and hits anybody they disagree with or just hit somebody because they, those are rules, right? Like, there's social rules that we have. And that's how I view law. That's what law should be. And no matter what kind of society we're in, whether it's a common, an advanced communist society, a socialist society, an Islamist society like Iran, a capitalist society, Republican, Democratic, you know, whatever.

There is a legal system. There is a legal framework. Unless you're a pure anarchist, and nobody is, whatever they say to you, nobody is. We have laws and we have rules. And there are ways in which to create a world where law serves humanity. Just as technology should serve humanity, law should serve humanity. That's what the law should be. And we also have living examples of that, right?

Cuba is a living example of that, where they have reformed their family code recently, the most recent huge example coming out of Cuba, reforms to their family code. I mean, these are the kinds of models that we should be thinking about and looking to when we're trying to imagine a new world. And I'm going to end with the end this question with the discussion with the discussion. Russian of China. China is in the process of developing an alternative legal framework to the Hague. And they launched it last month in Hong Kong. It's an alternative arbitration process, alternative dispute resolution process that they're focusing on. But we'll see where they

plan to take this, but they're quite serious about thinking, about looking at how to use the law to actually resolve disputes and disagreements in a healthy way, in a way that helps humanity and doesn't resort to extreme violence. So they're, as, as grim as things appear now, with the genocide in Palestine, with rising fascism in Europe and North America. The reason these things are happening is because we are at the brink of a new world order that is being led by Asia. And the U.S. is scared. They're shaking in their britches or whatever the thing is that the Americans say.

And this is their response. But there is great promise awaiting us, and I actually think it's much closer. This promise is much closer than we think. Prabat Patneik, who's a famous South Indian economist, political economist, actually said this in an interview a few months ago. He said that all these horrible things that we're seeing now are, one can see them as predictors of great promise. because the people are not going to be able,

the masses are not going to be able to sustain this level of violence without stopping it. And history has proven that. He said that history has proven that. We saw that after World War II, where Asia and the third world created an architecture to make sure the Holocaust doesn't happen again. That architecture fell apart because of the United States,

because the United States at that point was much more powerful, but the U.S. no longer has the economic fundamentals, just as a basic matter, the U.S. no longer has the economic fundamentals to compete in the way that it did back then. And through a resource drain and a variety of other contradictions, it can't destroy the rise of Asia the way it destroyed the rise of communism and socialism. And this very weakness, and by the way, Professor, thank you for your time. This is going to be the closing question. So feel free to expand as much as you want on this.

That very weakness of the system is why I believe that we are seeing and will continue to see even more egregious and open expressions of lawfare. And the reason for that is because, in my estimation, and I'm fairly sure that you'll agree with this, lawfare is an indication of the weakness of the state, of the weakness of the system. capitalism and states that are predicated on capitalism have inherent weaknesses in them and they have to utilize tactics in order to perpetuate themselves lawfare is one of those tools that they utilize it's nothing more than a tool just as when the law is constructed in a way for perpetuating a given system that is a tool it's not some legal code that was given to them from above that has some objective truth in it, right? Legal codes are constructed as tools for, in some cases,

upholding some sort of order in society, but also for upholding the society itself. What I then see is that lawfare itself and the usage of it is an indication and almost an acknowledgement that there's a weakness in that system. And as the system continues to weaken itself further and further, and as you mentioned, the United States, as a case and point, is not able to maintain competitive advantages against other countries that it previously had been able to. And so the appeals to international law and violations of international law or supposed violations of international law by these other countries that it used to way out compete but no longer can come more. more frequently. Can you talk about whether you see lawfare similarly as an indication

of weakness? And given that, you know, as we've both discussed in the last few minutes, that in the case of the United States, which is still the imperial hegemon in the world system, with the weakening of that positioning in the world system for the United States, Do you also see that the weaponization of the law, continued lawfare, is going to only ramp up even further as they try to hold on to the position that they still have at this moment? Yeah. So this is a really timely question because of what the Trump administration is doing. So fascism, the sort of formal classical definition of fascism is the collapse of the various branches of government under the aegis of the executive. And so what the Trump administration and the far right have orchestrated over the last couple decades, several decades, is the weakening of the congressional branch. This began a long time ago in the 90s.

the weakening of the congressional branch and to where now that's like completely cool i mean it's been completely neutralized right like they don't pass any major legislation that that isn't that does not uphold the interests of the billionaire class in one form or another right they can't even like throw bones real bones meaningful bones to the masses anymore um they haven't this is an interesting case. They haven't passed a single environmental legislation since the early 90s. Congress. I mean, that is ridiculous, right? So Congress has been completely neutralized. The far right is not trying to neutralize the judicial branch in the United States. And I think just yesterday or the day before they announced lawsuits against a bunch of judges who have been

trying to push back immigration, Trump's immigration efforts, or at least hold the ground against Trump's immigration efforts. They've arrested judges. They have threatened the judiciary and they've also packed it over the last couple decades. So I think you're right. I think you're right that the increasing use of lawfare over the last several decades is a reflection of heightened contradictions, capitalist contradictions. But I think there's an open question about what's going to happen with the judicial branch in the United States. If the reality is, whatever we want to say about the Trump administration and the far right in the United States, you know, people like to say they're stupid, this, that, they don't seem so stupid to me.

They've been quite successful at executing their fascistic objectives. So they have basically neutralized Congress. I think they may be able to neutralize the judicial branch. I think it's taking a little longer than they wanted, but I think they will successfully do that. At that point, I don't think law is really going to matter that much because the rule of law was meant to uphold bourgeois democracy. When you transition from bourgeois democracy,

I mean the rule of law in capitalist states, when you transition out of bourgeois democracy into straight fascism run by finance capital, you don't really need the rule of law anymore. All you need is state power and, you know, cops and guns and the military. And that's it. So we'll see.

We'll see how long this process takes. We've seen it happen historically not so long ago. And so far, the blueprint is pretty similar. The blueprint is actually very, very similar to what we saw in Italy and in Germany. So I don't know. But I argue in the articles that I've been writing on fascism and in the talks that I've been giving, on fascism, that the future is a bit grim for the people living in North America. And law, I think, is going to be less and less important.

And the rule of capital is going to really emerge at the fore. And exploitation, the rule of capital and accumulation and exploitation is really going to emerge as the primary force soon. the clothes will come off, right, as bourgeois democracy falls. I think that's a great note to end on. Again, listeners, our guest was Professor Nina Farnia. Longtime Mutual on Twitter, but first time on the show for you, but hopefully we can get you back on again soon.

I know there's a few other topics that we would love to talk with you with, and one that I'm going to propose it now because I know that he also listens to the show. We mentioned off the record at the beginning that it would be, possibly fun to have a collaborative episode between you and the Leninist lawyer on law in socialist states and what the law could look like in the communist horizon. I think that would be a really fun conversation. So listeners, if that's something that you would like to hear as well, let us know on social media and Leninist lawyer. I know you're probably listening to this because I know he listens to the show.

If you're up for that, you can also, you know how to get a hold of me. So, Professor, thanks for coming on. Can you let the listeners know where they can find your work, and particularly where they should be looking for your book? Where is it going to be available? I got to finish the book. I was actually in the archives yesterday, trying to wrap up Chapter 1. But it's almost done.

The book is almost done. She's not only in Chapter 1, listener. She's going back to Chapter 1. I have to rewrite Chapter 1. The rest of it is mostly done. So the book is going to come out in 2026, and the rest of my work is on my Albany Law School bio page, so you can find most of it there. But I have a couple of articles coming out actually on the Insurrection Act and the use of martial law in the United States. And then on fascism.

I have a two-part series on fascism coming out. The first part's coming out in the next week or two, and then they'll be posted on my bio page. I want to thank you both very, very much. I really like her show a lot, and so it's an honor to be here, and the dialogue and the questions were excellent. So thank you very much. And keep up the great work. Oh, it's our pleasure, of course, and we're going to hold you on to coming back on the show then. You don't have any choice at this point. Adnan, can you let the listeners know where they can find you in your other excellent program? Sure, and I just want to say thank you so much, Nina, for making time to come on the show and share your insight and analysis and also for the

kind words about the work we're doing here. It's really only because we have great guests like you, and so we definitely want to continue to have these kinds of fruitful discussions and hopefully, you know, educate our listeners. You can keep up with me by following me on Twitter at Adnan A-Husain, H-U-S-A-I-N, and of course you can check out my other show, which is a replacement for the mudglis. We've taken it out of like my institutional framework at the university and gone on our own because we don't want to deal with the censorship. So that means, you know, your support for that would be greatly appreciated. It's the Adnan Hussein show. It's on YouTube and also on audio podcast. And you can support it and support my great, you know, video editor. Video is costly. And I have,

you know, a great video editor who, Sina Rahmani, who you all know, know as a host of East as a podcast, another great, you know, online show. So you can support the show at at patreon.com slash adnan hussein. And we look forward to, you know, convening with you soon there as well as here on guerrilla history. As for me, listeners, you can find me on Twitter at Huck-1995, H-U-C-1-995. I know I've mentioned a couple times that I have another show that will be starting up very soon called Tsars and Commissars from Rushtamad in Russia, which is a 25-part series on Russian history from pre-state formation all the way to the present. I don't have any episodes up as of yet, but it's not because the episodes aren't ready. YouTube is giving me problems.

So listeners, you should be aware that we're done recording through episode seven and the episodes are upwards of three hours. long. So you'll get a very good overview of Russian history when YouTube stops giving me problems. But listeners, I'm only mentioning this because if you have experience with YouTube and know how to fix problems with YouTube, get in touch with me on Twitter at Huck 1995 because the episodes are ready. I just can't post them. In any case, you can also follow Gorilla History on Twitter and Instagram and through our email newsletter. We're on Twitter. at Gorilla underscore Pod, Instagram, Gorilla underscore History, and you can sign up for our newsletter, GorillaHistory.

Dotubstack.com. Gorilla is with two R's in all of those cases, and you can help support the show and allow us to continue making episodes like this by going to patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history. That's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history. So on that note, then, listeners, and until next time, Solidarity.

You know what I'm going to be able to be. Thank you.