It Could Happen Here - The Cheapest Land is Bought in Blood, Part 2

Episode Date: November 7, 2023

In part 2 of our episode on settler colonialism in Israel we look at how the imperatives of the settler state and settlers themselves invariably leads to radical settler parties seizing power and waging genocides on the Indigenous populationSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. CallZone Media. Welcome to Kidapid here, Call Zone Media up our conversation about Israel and settler colonialism. So strap in and enjoy the show. If you were trying to generate in a lab, a place where you could turn a bunch of people into fascists, it would be, it would be these settlements. This, this has a bunch of downstream political effects, right? One of them is that, okay, so whose lands are you taking here, right? The answer here is it's a lot of Palestinian farmers. And, you know, once you kick farmers off their land, they can't be farmers anymore. And this leaves them with two choices. One, flee Palestine altogether.

And this is really, really hard. We've talked about it on this show. It is really, really difficult to get out. Or your other option is to become cheap labor for israeli capitalists and this is another another part of the sort of self-reinforcing dynamic of these engines right is like you know if if if you're dealing with a population that doesn't have the means to support themselves except for you know these these israeli like work passes that they like you know like bestow upon the benighted population,

it makes it incredibly hard for there to be any sort of resistance movement. And the other thing that David Greer was pointing out that he was, I think, ahead of the curve on in a lot of ways is – I mean, this has been happening for a long time but the israeli like electoral left is just gone um israeli labor which is like the like israeli labor is the party that built israel right like it was israeli labor guys who like pulled together the entire zionist coalition and like turned them into the engine that could actually win the war in 48 labor was outperformed by fucking hadash in the in the most recent election this has happened several times now hadash is an alliance of the israeli communists

and like left arab nationalists and when i say they do better it's not to say that hadash is doing well but like you know they're both pulling at like four percent right and israeli labor again like has ruled is ruled israel for, like, a very significant part of its history. They are now nothing, right? There's 4% of the vote. They have the same amount of vote as the Israeli, like, and specifically, I should mention, this is the, like,

anti-occupation communists. This is another one of the sort of dynamics of settlerism that, you know, this is sort of, is universally true, right? It's not just Israel where a bunch of people who are nominally left, it's a bunch of people who, like, you know, fought in their own liberation struggles get turned into just like absolutely fanatical right-wingers. There are an enormous number of United Irishmen rebels

from the rebellion of 1878 in Irelandireland who go to the u.s and you know wind up a bunch of these people wind up in the american army a bunch of these people wind up like i mean i guess it's technically not the indian wars but like a lot of these people wind up like fighting the creeks in 1812 these people could become the front line of settler expansion in the u.s and this all this happens again with German and French liberals and socialists who flee the crushing of the 1848 revolution. It actually almost happened to Marx,

who wound up not going to the US. But there's a lot of settlers, there's a lot of European socialists who come to the US and see all of this land, and they go, oh shit, we can solve the problems of the old world by just taking this land. Yeah, having our little utopian socialist settlements.

Was it Owens or Jones or someone? They had these Quaker utopian settlement towns in someone else's land. Yeah, and that's one of the ways this happens. There are other ways this happens too, where it's just people, you know, it's not even always utopian communities. People, a lot, and this is also, so, okay.

There are people who come over from the 1848 revolutions who like, you know, like August von Willitsch is probably the most famous one. Like he's a communist who ends up like fighting for the union and then notably not fighting in the indian wars after but you know a lot of these people they come to the u.s and they're like okay well so they're like the the fundamental contradiction to capitalism or whatever is that like you know people like people

people are forced to become like as they would literally call it like the wage slaves of capital right and so these people take a bunch of just incredibly bizarre stances like one they're they're they're they're against the abolition of slavery because they they're like oh well if you free the slaves these people are going to compete with us for wage labor so either either they're pro-slavery or they're like slavery like ending slavery is a thing that could only happen with the end of capitalism so we don't care about it or and this is a very common thing that could only happen with the end of capitalism. So we don't care about it. Or, and this is a very common thing that this is one of, and this is, I think much closer to the Israeli dynamic is these people become convinced that like the, you know, the problem

with Europe, right. Is that, you know, Europe is entirely ruled by either feudalist or like feudal barons or capitalist. Right. So there, there's no way for someone to like, make, like make themselves in the world. Right. There's no way for them to be independent, like of the capitalist class. But in, but in the U S there is, because all you have to do is, you know, instead of being

part of the, like the industrial proletariat or whatever, and getting like crushed by the Buddha capital, you can just go become a settler farmer. And this is like, this is one of the defining ideologies of the U S like Abraham Lincoln talks about this. It's like the thing that makes the U S different from Europe is that like, yeah, you of the US. Abraham Lincoln talks about this. The thing that makes the US different from Europe is that, yeah, you can go be a settler. You can get your own land. And this is something you can also trace back to the foundation of Israel. Israel was created – there are right-wing Zionists, right?

But it's also created by liberal, socialist, communist, and even anarchists who'd fought in the Spanish Civil War who go to Israel, become Zionists, are armed by Stalin, and these people create, these are the people who do the Nakba. Yeah. Lots of people were also, they were Jewish, I guess socialist is probably

the best term for them, who would come to fight in Spain and then returned to Israel. People interested, Renan Rain has done a really good paper about some Jewish people in international brigades. So not all of them turned out to do the Nakba, to be clear. Yeah, some of them were good, but also... It's actually really sad to follow the plight of, it's a slight divergence, I guess,

but Jewish people who had fled pogroms in the early 20th century, grown up largely in New York, in extremely impoverished neighborhoods, fought fascism in Spain, came home, fought fascism again in the rest of Europe after pointing at it in 1935 and going bad and America going,

now, dog, we're good. And then in 1941 going going who could have foreseen this um and then they come in the meantime they see Stalin signing a pact with fascism right and they feel horribly betrayed and have to have to deal with either leaving the communist party or working out in their own head how the fuck the people who killed their friends are now their friends and then they come home after the war they're blacklisted under mccarthy and they see the knock but happening you know like later on and they they they're disgusted right like like they everything that like every sort of like identity and group that they've had they feel has turned against the things they think are morally right and they have these really

difficult lives uh despite like pursuing what most of us would agree is immoral good throughout their lives yeah being being consistently moral fucking sucks and that is a terrible world will leave you behind yeah yeah that is a fucking awful time to do that yeah um okay we should take another ad break and then yeah our adverts are not consistently moral very unlikely welcome i'm daniel thrill won't you join me at the fire and dare enter nocturnal tales from the, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America.

From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now, and I cannot decide if I like him or not.

Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your

podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture.

Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we are back. So we've been talking about the capacity of settlements to change someone's politics, right? It's as these labs of consciousness that produce certain kinds of right-wing politics and mentalities and produce right-wing soldiers, right?

But the settlements also do other things. And one of those things that they do is the settlements are a big reason, you know, if you were invested in the peace process, like this is a big reason why the peace process failed, was that the settlers never had any intentions

of abiding by any of the treaties that were being signed by the Israelis, right? And this is something that is true trans-historically, right? This is a dynamic you see in American history too. The U.S. signs like hundreds of with like like just incredible numbers of indigenous nations and do you know how

many of those trees i end up upholding yeah that's none yeah and you know i mean you you can look at the supreme court right and you know the supreme court will uphold laws from like 1795, right? Yeah. The one kind of law they will not uphold is their treaty obligations, at which case they will go, literally they will just go, well, we are obligated to do this under treaty, but it is too hard, so fuck you. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Or they'll go previous to that and cite the fucking Doctrine of Discovery or the Treaty of Tordesillas. Yeah. Good old Ruth B ginsburg liberal hero yeah and so you you can look at this from sort of two perspectives right you can look at this from the perspective of the state and you can look at it from the perspective of the settlers and you know i mean and i think i think there's a there's a a third view that's kind of sees them

both as an extension of the same thing which is what we're going to sort of come to but you know you you can you can look at this treaty stuff and you can look at the fact that you know both the settlers and the israeli government like signed the oslo accords fully intending to do more settlements right and this is this is something that that like the palestinians are watching right like if you're a palestinian like you are watching these peace accords get signed and then you are watching the israelis fucking bulldozing your house yeah and and this is this is a this is a thing in the u.s too right it's like everyone who signs a treaty get like like all of the nation that signed treaties get a get a watch as the u.s is like oh well actually like no we never had any

intention of like fulfilling this like no we're just gonna keep exterminating you and like chasing the sort of like like shattered remnants of your tribes like literally across the entire fucking continent and you know so so you can look at this from the from the perspective of the state and you know like like dealing dealing with the american state like it is well known by every nation in every race that has ever had to deal with them that the white man is duplicitous and his state is built on lies and that is only kind of a joke like everyone who fucking deals with the americans is like what the fuck is wrong with these people like do you like do these people like not understand what an agreement is like what you know yeah this is something that like i know if you travel a lot

abroad uh and and you work in places where american forces have been, nine times out of ten, someone will sit you down in a tea house or a coffee house and unbidden just be like, what the fuck is wrong with these people? Like, why do they treat us like this? Like, we fucking did everything you asked and then you fucking abandoned us or killed us. Like, yeah, like everyone.

Of course, Britain does it too. I'm not saying like America's special, but fuck me, America in the last 200 years has really set a new precedent for just like janus faced bullshit yeah and you know and this and it's particularly bad when you're dealing when you're dealing with settlers because you know one of the one of the things about the state is that the arc of state policy and settler colonies always bends towards injustice in general, and in particular, the thing it always bends towards land seizures. It seeks to expand its base of power, its territorial base, and its economy, which leads it to push as far as it possibly can towards dispossessing the indigenous population. Now, this is also the interest of

settlers who act as a kind of extension of the state that goes beyond its normal capacity to do what it wants to do. And in the US, the human manifestation of this is Andrew Jackson, who was a man who completely illegally on multiple occasions just conquered Florida and conquered Florida specifically. And this is one of the – like a couple of things. I have a very good friend who talks about this a lot because they've been studying this period immensely. You're probably not listening, but love you. Yeah, but talks about this a lot, which is that Andrew Jackson is – a big part of the reason why he's going into Florida is specifically because he wants to smash these indigenous – black indigenous allied Baroon communities there. So Jackson is under orders not to invade florida he invades florida anyways you know we we we there there's a very similar sort

of tension between like the courts and you know like the the the the courts in the settler state that you have with the sort of international community in israel now where like the courts are like andrew jackson you cannot do the trail of tears and andrew jackson is just like fuck you like we're doing the trail of tears we're going we're going to do a genocide and you know and the thing the thing about what jackson represents right is that jackson is is the human embodiment of of all of these sort of structural like he's the human embodiment of all of these sort of structural he's the human and political embodiment of all of these structural tendencies of settler colonialism now

and one of the things that I think is interesting about this is that there are like all of the settler states right you see this in like every single one and I'm going to talk about the US because that's the one that like other than Israel that I know the best well I don't probably think the US better than Israel but there are always times when this when the federal government tries to crack down on settlers,

right? This happens repeatedly. The British spend a lot of time trying to stop the colonists from moving west. And I think that there's a lot of people who come to believe. That if the British had won the American Revolution. That they would have been able to stop the settlers. And no. They wouldn't have been able to. Maybe they could have delayed it by 20 years. But no. No one has ever really.

Been able to stop these people. And you know the IDF. Like we talked about this a bit earlier, right? The IDF in 2005 did pull, when they pulled out of Gaza, they dragged 8,600 settlers with them. But again, this is the dynamic that's incredibly familiar to anyone who's studied the history of settlers in the US, is that government attempts to control settler expansion inevitably fail when confronted with these unstoppable

twin economic and twin imperatives of the economic benefit to the settlers and also the sort of speculative value of this new land to land speculators. But then the other problem is the inevitable rise of the settlers themselves as a political bloc, which in the US, the man who is the champion of the settlers is Andrew Jackson. And this is, you know, when he comes into, when he starts taking power, when he starts getting power in the army, you get the conquest of Florida. And when he becomes president, you have the trail of tears.

And Israel, this is represented by Israel's overtly genocidal finance minister, B'Tsele Smotrich, who represents the religious Zionist party. I'll give you all three guesses what those guys believe. If your guesses are they are unhinged

settler racists and turbo homophobes, you're right on the money. He's also a conspiracy theorist like yeah yeah this guy is uh unhinged they're very open with their uh genocidal yeah yeah wants like there's no there's no subtlety they're just like let's let's flatten what let's flatten gaza let's kill them all you know what i mean it's just like they encourage same like with a very

Trumpian thing that's like encouraging the hate that is there to fester it's particularly like to I'm sorry to divert us again I found the fucking

like you can't support Palestinian liberation if you're queer dunk that we see from like Zionist neoliberals to be one of the most frustrating A like you can support what the fuck you want like you don't need a condescending

fucking like resist mum in a minivan to tell you what you can and can't believe and like B go look up some of this guy's statements because fucking you ain't going to find anyone who's more genocidal towards queer people openly than this motherfucker. I mean, Israel is like

very well known for like pinkwashing and pretending they're very progressive and supportive of queer people when they're really not. I mean, this country

also is not. You know what I mean? Like it's, I think, I think that argument is a very privileged elitist one. Yeah.

And like, like, yeah, just like, ha ha, homophobia exists there. It's not, it's not a win for anyone yeah if you want to get married to someone of the same gender as you in israel you do it on zoom in fucking utah like that like when you've been outflanked to the left by utah uh you done fucked up uh you don't get to wave your pride flag at anyone. Fuck off. This is one of the sort of progressive veneer of the Israelis has been, you know,

like fading because these, the people who are coming to power, and then Yahoo in some ways was one of the sort of vanguards of this, but like this, and this is the thing you're seeing in India too, right? Like whenever you get a far right guy, right? The thing that inevitably generates

is people who are even further right than they are and that that's that that's what these these settler people are and the thing is like these settler guys you can't cover for them like if you if they are on camera for longer than about 30 seconds they start saying stuff like just the most unhinged like we're gonna kill all the palestinians they start saying like we just the most unhinged, like we're going to kill all the Palestinians. They start saying like, we're going to kill every Arab. Like they start talking about various,

and very explicitly like their, their, their platforms that they, you know, they're, and then this is, this is so part of the reason that there are, there are,

there's a coalition of, of these likes of these like far right settler parties that are now backing Netanyahu. And this is, this is how Netanyahu has been able to stay out of prison is that he's been able to back enough. He's been able to buy off enough of these people that they're backing his government so he can stay prime minister.

So they can't charge him. But the, the, you know, the, the, the concession basically for this was that these, like this guy was just basically just given control of a bunch of state military power, like from the army in the West Bank, has been given to him in a settler fanatics.

And, you know, like especially since like the Hamas attack, the government has been handing out guns to these people like candy. Yes. And they've been using it to just murder Palestinians and cold blood. And, you know, I mean, I think as people do a lot, right, sometimes they just kill people. murder palestinians and cold blood and you know i mean i think these people do a lot right sometimes they just kill people thing they do all the time is just in the middle of the night like if you're if you're living in the west bank like a bunch of masked guys will show up they'll break into your home they'll beat the shit out of you and they'll say like if you don't leave tomorrow we'll kill you and you know sometimes those guys are settlers like are just like sort of non-mil like i don't know like non-military settlers right they're like settler civilians or whatever sometimes those guys are just like the army and there's no fucking

way to tell which one like because again it's just a bunch of people in masks appear in the night and break into your house and start beating the shit out of you and these people these are these are the people that increasingly the israel Israeli political system is being run by. And you can't – in a similar way to the way that Andrew Jackson just rips off this mask of sort of New England gentility that the US had had under John Adams and – or John Quincy Adams and Monroe. Well, Monroe is I guess like a like minn-row is like a you know like another one of these like dignified virginia planter guys and like you know those people have do a lot of the same violence that that jackson does but jackson is the guy who just rips the mask off and is just you know this completely unhinged settler maniac who like

this is a guy who killed it like just murdered a bunch of people in duels like you know and and these are the kind of people who are who are coming to power in israel right now and this is this is a self-reinforcing dynamic because the more power these people get right the more they're able to you know just carry out genocides and the more genocides are able to carry out the more of it they're the more people they're able to push into these territories that they've taken and the more people they put in these territories the more of the more people they're able to push into these territories that they've taken. And the more people they put in these territories, the more of these like settler fanatics there are. And this is one of the big things that is driving the entire conflict. Oh, I think a good thing to remember is that last year there was an election

like going into 2023 and Israel like put into power a bunch of these right-wing people was it 2023 with 2022 i wasn't track of time he came in last he came in 20 yeah i think he was a minute he was appointed minister in 2022 but okay sorry the years a time the election is not real yeah i don't remember when my point is that like in recent history the last couple of years these extreme right-wing racist people are in power all the all the places of power all the ministers all the whatever the shit they're all shared they all share this ideology that like arabs must die basically that's like they're the main point is that they are superior to arabs and then they must die and that this is a zionist place that is theirs and you know and what these people are doing when they're in power and this is the

thing that and this is one of the things they were trying to do before the sort of like the current war started was they were trying to annex the west bank this is a very explicit goal now this is a very explicit goal of the settler parties. They will kind of, they know it's pretty hard for them to like legally annex it. So they will talk about like effectively annexing it and stuff. They'll do these sort of like subtle metaphors. But like, yeah, what they want to do is to kick people out of what's called Area C, which is the majority of the West Bank. And they want to kick all majority of the West Bank. The immediate plans, they want to kick all the people out of Area C and push them

into just increasingly tiny corners of the West Bank. Presumably, because again, if you listen to all these people talk, they talk about Jews have the right to live in... Judea and Samaria.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What they call the west bank yeah yeah they have a restricted right to live there so and the thing is like if you believe that right that means you have to kick all the palestinians out of the west bank entirely now the place these people have stopped sort of before the war the places people had stopped whereas like well okay they can live in gaza but now they're talking about you you know, I mean, just like taking over most of, like just taking over most of Gaza and driving the Palestinians out. Yeah.

It doesn't have to lead, like Jews have a right to live in this place. It doesn't have to lead to, thus we must genocide the people who live there. Like this is what happens when we get a state that understands existence as destroying anybody who is not in agreement with this right-wing genocidal fucking outlook. Like,

like it has been possible for people of different faiths to live in different places, but it was possible before 48. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Like, yeah,

this, this, the ideology that is inherent to like a Zionist militarized state will never allow that coexistence to happen, right? Because it relies on coexistence not being possible as part of its narrative for, like Mia said, taking, dominating, and expropriating that land and gaining the value from it.

Yeah, it's the narrative that they need to say stuff like, oh, all the Gazans should just go to Egypt or whatever it is. It's all part of the plan to kind of just, like, expel them so they can... Yeah, it doesn't even have to be, like... ...take control of all the territory. Yeah, go ahead.

It's not like an explicit plan that they have a whiteboard and they're like, it is, you know... They do actually occasionally just write it out. Sometimes they do actually explicitly write the plans down. You can see it on X.com from time to time.

But it's inherent, as Mia said, like several times, to states and to a capitalist state that is a settler colony, right? Like it's inevitable. It happened here. It's happening there. It's happened all over the world. Like it's not possible to construct a capitalist state on someone else's land, on someone else's bodies.

It doesn't do this. Yeah. And I mean, and this is also one thing i wanted to emphasize too is that all of the shit that's happening in palestine happened here right i mean i guess like we like the u.s didn't have the kind of surveillance technology in like the the the 18 teens right that the israelis have now but you know like we we did all this shit too right like this is this is all of the land that we live on that's that's where that shit came from um there's there's this great uh

i really love uh daniel conan the painted bird uh it has this great line in one of his songs that goes because he's the one who did the stealing and named you as the heir whose filthiness provided you the privileges you bear and this is this thing in the u.s right it's like in israel you know if you're a settler on the border right there's no there's no escape from what you did to take this place right like you are you are looking down on the people who you've like whose houses you've taken right in the u.s we have this sort of luxury of like well this happened a long time ago like we don't have to sort of we don't have to see the consequences of it but we still do it though right like we didn't just like we're doing it at oak flat for instance

right now yeah or like yeah look at how trump fucking did uh indigenous people during covid like it's an ongoing process yeah and i think you're right yeah but it's it's so much easier for americans to pretend that it's not happening yes yeah you know like no like it turns out in fact that like this this this and this is where the sort of sub-colonialism the structure not an event stuff comes from and it applies to both israel and the u the US because guess what it turns out Israel literally took notes from what the US did and just did it you know what I mean like it's just the same thing in the end like we're the bad guys like we've always been the bad guys are we the bad guys yeah yeah exactly exactly welcome

I'm Danny Thrill won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows presented by iHeart and Sonora an anthology of modern day horror stories

inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly.

I am talking to a felon right now, and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents.

Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audio books while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters.

From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Black Lit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Black Lit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You know, I'm Chinese, right? And this is one of the things that has informed a lot of my sort of perspective on Palestine, because all of the things that are happening to Palestine is shit that was done to us by the Japanese empire, right? And we fought a war to stop them. And that war was hideous. That war, the war in China sees some of the darkest moments in human history. And there's this tendency among, I mean, there's a tendency among both the communists and the nationalists want to sort of sanitize it, right? They want to turn it into this sort of glorious war for liberation. And yeah, there are moments of glorious anti-imperialist struggle, but that war

mostly was just a horror. And it's a horror not just because of the atrocities committed by the Japanese, right? The Chinese side in that war also does things that are unforgivable. And I'm not even talking about Hiroshima and Nagasaki here because, you know, like we, as in like Chinese people, like we didn't do that, right? Like, you know, Mao, like on the one hand, it is true that when Mao found out about the nuclear eruptions, his reaction was, wait, you had a third bomb and you didn't drop it on Tokyo? But we didn't do that, right? That was the Americans. That wasn't us in China.

But the things that I'm talking about, the Chinese side of that war did that were just unforgivable. were just unforgivable. You know, I mean, I think the best example of it is Chiang Kai-shek blew up a dam on the Yellow River. And his goal was he was trying to, you know, he was trying to flood like several provinces to cut off the Japanese army and to like slow down their troop movements, right? And he slows down their troop movements

and he does it by killing 400, this is the low end estimates is that he killed 400 000 people that is a an amount of death that is unimaginable he killed like in a single act he killed 400 000 people it It is two Hiroshima and Nagasaki's. And that's the low-end estimate, right? People fighting against Japan, people fighting against colonialism did unforgivable crimes. And, you know, and the people of China,

like, never forget, like, to this day, like, in the provinces where, like, where this shit happened, like, Chiang Kai-shek is fucking despised. And, you know the and like when when like when the allies won the war and when china drove out the japanese right like the next thing they did was they drove out shankai shack because he was you know because because he had done things in that war that were so terrible that people were willing to be like fuck it like

mao didn't fucking blow up a dam and kill 400,000 of us right you know and so like and this is the thing about colonial resistance is that it is the things that people do are unforgivable also that that war that japan fought in china they killed 20 million of us. 20 million. And this is one of these things, right, where like colonialism makes monsters of us all. Suffering does not make you noble, it just makes you suffer. And so, you know, again, like China's anti-colonial freedom fighters, right? Like fucking killed numbers of

Chinese people that are, it's just unimaginable. And then, you know, these same freedom fighters who fought the good fight against Japan, you know, within 20 years, they're bulldozing mosques in Xinjiang and murdering communists in Tibet, right? And they've built two, you know, after successfully repelling Japan's attempt to turn China into a settler state, they have made two of their own. And, you know, so like there's no, i think the point that i'm trying to make here is that you know like anti-colonial resistance is not this sort of like it doesn't look pretty it's

a fucking whore most of the time but you also you know when when you're looking into like when you're looking at these wars you have to look at the direction in which colonization is moving. And that's, you know, that's the thing that is crystal clear in Palestine, right? Is you can just look at, like, in which direction is colonization moving, right? Like, who is taking whose houses, right? Who is forcing a million people from what population to flee their homes who was you know who has been he was been seizing people's land and i think it clears up i don't know clears up isn't the right word but specifically the fact that this is the this is active colonization

that this is this is this is a setter colonial state waging a war against you know people like people who are fighting against colonization that is the sort of that that that that is the the the underlying current of everything that happens and and you know like i don't know like people people in anti-colonial wars do things that are unforgivable and they get, you know, and like often like their own people will eventually come for them one day. And also, I don't know. I know it has to agree with me. It's fine. But I personally really dislike when it's called a war.

What's happening in Palestine? Because I just think it's the clearest case of genocide I've ever seen and like i don't care how it started or whatever i feel like at this point in time uh it's a genocide like there palestine's not a country palestine does not have an army they can't no one can leave gaza uh i think that is um the current state of what the violence is going on over there and so yeah i'm just like particular no like i think i think you're like i think you're right about that and that's the thing that that's the thing that's different than yeah like the stuff that was happening in china was like at least we sort of had like at least we had a state right and we had armies and our armies got fucking stomped but you know we had like we we we had a state, right? And we had armies and our armies got fucking stomped. But, you know,

we had actual weapons. Yeah. I must have some now. I think to your greater point, I think it sounds very similar to have you read Sartre's introduction to

The Wretched of the Earth? Where he talks about violence and the state talking in the language of violence and people responding Well, yeah, it sounds very similar to, like, have you read Sartre's introduction to The Wretched of the Earth? Yeah. Like, where he talks about violence and the state talking in the language of violence and people responding in the language in which they're spoken to. I think I'm paraphrasing that relatively accurately. It doesn't have to be, like, neither violence has to be good for it to be, like, an inevitable consequence of violent colonialism, right? Like, it sparks violent decolonization movements and it doesn't imply like a moral uh like a goodness to the individual acts it's just an inevitable consequence of people fighting against colonialism in the only way that that colonialism

kind of leaves for them i guess yeah and i think i think another part of this too is that like just being in contact with colonial powers makes everyone worse like this is the thing you see in in the u.s with a lot of with a lot of indigenous groups is that like you know like like by by by by the time the trail of tears is happening like the cherokee are like have adopted chattel slavery like like american style plantation chattel slavery and that fucking sucks right it's like like it being in contact with these settler empires like brings out the worst in everyone and there's no winning from that position right like the the the best i don't even know if it's

the best case scenario like i guess occasionally you get like an algeria where you know they kill enough people and like the algeria like you know the the settlers in algeria all like went back to france but that's not an option in israel right like and we wouldn't even you wouldn't want it to be the solution either so i don't know it's one of these i don't know it's one of the sort of dilemmas of how do you deal with a colony is that it's harder to decolonize a colony right yeah it's like it implies a removal of one people or another people and uh neither of those things are in any way desirable like and it's so hard to see like a path to a peaceful coexistence now because all we see is like the entire world ratcheting the fucking like violence level up and uh like yeah israel carrying out genocidal violence in gaza is not the way we reach a way for

people to like children to grow up without fucking fearing if the sky is going to kill them in gaza right like this will happen for generations to come uh because you've emotionally scarred a few children. Well, how would you... I think it's a very human response, if anything. Like, I... I don't think we have the right to judge how someone

that has been through that hell, how they respond, because it's... I don't know. We haven't lived their nightmare. It's just a nightmare. And like, it's not like, like there,

it's not like there haven't been attempts at nonviolent resistance in Gaza because they have. And look what fucking happened. There was a big one like, like three or four years ago. Yeah. Like, you know,

they like the fucking Krasenstein take the, why can't they all disorganize to arch in the wall holding hands and singing they fucking like I didn't try to do that but like

people kept killing them like I say this every time we talk about Gaza but I'll say it again like when we were talking to the PK Gaza guys

and I've known them for a few years like one of them was telling me about how they used to do sleepover camps for kids so that kids could learn parkour and not have to pay for the travel and like you know take their time and risk to travel so they do do sleepover camps in the summertime and he was explaining to me like it was the most normal thing in the world these six

eight year old children would wake up at night with night terrors screaming uh because they thought they were being bombed and because they're having uh like a flashback from being bombed i guess and like that's something i recognize from from ptsd from from you know other uh contexts but like it really fucked me up that an eight-year-old child is... We can't expect these people to develop into Kumbaya singing peace activists. They've taken on massive amounts of trauma. They've seen their neighbours and families die. It doesn't mean that we have to be like,

oh, well, violence is going to happen. We should do everything we can to be like oh well like violence is going to happen like we should do everything we can to to make a world where like people aren't killing and dying there uh because it will always result in more of the least empowered people dying um but it's something that i think a lot of us are so far detached from that i think it's that's like you know if you lived your whole life in the united states relative safety and prosperity it's it's hard for you to understand i think yeah and i mean like this is a like gaza is a place where it rains body parts like that's what happens when an israeli bomb goes off it rains body parts and like that is a i don't know like

the kind of person who has to grow up with that is just not going to be the same as like even people who have been through a lot of like really messed up stuff like it's not going to be the same as like experiencing that yeah even if you like i have visited wars to report on them but then i get to go home and be safe and sometimes that juxtaposition is hard and it takes me a long time to not be afraid that the sky or a parked car is going to kill me but i'm home and i'm safe and once i can adjust to that then i can i can get on you know change things like that change you but you continue with your life. But if you are never home and you're never,

or your home is never safe, that's something I can't understand, right? That's something that I haven't experienced and very, very few of us probably have. A lot of doctors have said that all the children in Gaza, they haven't, they can't be quantified of having experienced PTSD because they haven't reached the post part yet. They're still in a perpetual state of PTSD

because that's just how their entire lives have been. Most of them have never known life outside of the blockade. So it's... I don't know. Yeah, and I think that's a good place to end of just you know this is what this is what this is what the the the reality and the eternal present of settler colonialism is right yeah and you know this is one of these things where in in a lot of weird ways like that like there are ways in which we like people like if you live in the us if you like even just some set the uk like you are probably in a like maybe a better position to actually stop this than anyone who lives in palestine is so yeah yeah this is in but and and

the problem is if we don't right the the the mutually self-reinforcing dynamics of settler colonialism are just going to keep like carrying on and keep spiraling on and this is going to go on until everyone is dead or everyone is gone yeah it's even if you can't stop it like i sent the video i'm sure you guys saw the video of the jewish voice of peace people in the uh grand central terminal in new york um and i said that to the palestinian journalist syndicate and they were like oh this is great to see and it's something we spoke about in the interview too how like it makes a meaningful difference to someone's state of mind to see solidarity even if like you know we can get in the streets and we can say something and maybe that

will make a difference maybe it won't but like it at least if it makes someone understand that you're kind of standing with them in a moment of darkness and maybe that will make a difference maybe it won't but like at least if it makes someone understand that you're kind of standing with them in a moment of darkness and maybe that helps in a way yeah I think when a whole population is not able to share what they're going through

their journalists are getting killed when the internet is out and the one thing they're saying is like please don't stop talking about this i think that's the easiest thing that we can do yeah and hopefully maybe this will impel us to like as mia said at the start right this keeps fucking happening and like as ethnic cleansings go this one's got more coverage than most in the u.s and like i would encourage you to look at what you're seeing in Gaza and understand how inhuman and unimaginable it is. And like maybe follow that that shouldn't happen anywhere.

It shouldn't happen in Tigray and it shouldn't happen in Kurdistan. It shouldn't happen to the Rohingya people. And like, yeah, try and extend that. It's not to scold people. like if you weren't in the streets in 2017 fuck you like it's uh it's just to say that like we've all had a window opened even with every fucking attempt to shut that window right like for cutting off the internet

to gaza etc this has been the most photographed ethnic cleansing whatever you want to call it in in probably in human history we're seeing more of it than we've ever seen before a lot of it in sort of uncertain ways or fucking footage from video games past office real life but we're still seeing it and we're still bearing witness to it to a to a limited degree right we're not seeing it in the sense people are seeing it firsthand and i I'd encourage people to like, remember this moment and the shock and the terrible things that you felt and like to not forget that next time you hear about something happening.

Because like anywhere this happens, it's a tragedy and anywhere it happens, we should do everything we can to stop it. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool zone media for more podcasts from cool zone media visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts you can find sources for it could happen here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com sources thanks for listening you should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trails, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern day

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