Pod Save the World - Trump Reignites the Forever Wars

Episode Date: March 19, 2025

Tommy and Ben discuss Bibi Netanyahu restarting the war in Gaza as he creates a new domestic political crisis, why Trump's airstrikes against the Houthi rebels in Yemen are likely to fail, and the gutting of Voice of America. They also cover the latest in Trump's efforts to harness the Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged gang members to El Salvador, how Putin continues to play Trump in negotiations over Ukraine, Serbia's wave of student-led protests over government corruption, and why patrons at a popular Chinese hotpot chain are getting more than just a full refund. Then Ben speaks with Pankaj Mishra, author of The World After Gaza: A History, about how Israel's relationship with the legacy of the Holocaust has shifted, decolonization in the 20th century, and how a writer can be of service in these dark times. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Hello, it's Claudia here. This week on the slow newscast from Tortus, the surfer who took on The Impossible. It was like this mountain of white. It was something that none of us had ever seen. And he said, well, I'm going to get the biggest wave ever here, world record. You don't know what it's like to get pounded by a 30 metre wave. And the fallout left in his wake.

I didn't think it was as big as they're saying at all. But once it's out there, there's no stopping it. To listen, just search for the slow newscast wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to Pod Tate the World on Tommy Vitor. I'm done Rhodes. I can look you directly in the eyes and this is kind of intense. You like it? It's like old school Charlie Rose or something.

Yeah, we're missing a black curtain. You know what we need is one of those cameras in the round. Yes. It just kind of spins around all the time. It just kind of follows us around. If you're listening to this and you're like, what are these idiots talking about? Subscribe to Pod Save the World on YouTube. We're trying some new setups in the studio here.

Looks cool. It feels cool, different vibes. Which you can see is Tommy and I are sitting like three feet across the table from each other. staring at each other. Oh, there's no way I'd rather have it then. We got a great show for you today. There's lots of things happening in the world. One of those weeks where we could have done two hours, unfortunately.

Today we're going to explain why Israel has resumed bombing in Gaza and how Netanyahu has created yet another domestic political crisis in his efforts to evade accountability for October 7th. We're going to talk about the Trump administration following President Biden's lead once again in bombing the Houthi rebels in Yemen. We'll cover the impact of Doge Gang gutting the voice of America and some new reporting about the impact of USAID cuts. And then Trump just got off the phone with Vladimir Putin. We'll fill you on how it went and tell you if there's any progress towards peace in Ukraine. We'll talk about these huge protests in Serbia and why a restaurant chain in China is going to have to cut a big old check to its customers. Ben, I was surprised for that one. And then, Ben, you did our interview earlier today.

What did you talk about? Yeah, I talked to Pankaj Mishra, who is a really extraordinary writer. and thinker. He has a book out now called The World After Gaza. And so we talked about the resumption of the war in Gaza. We talked about the different flavors of anti-Semitism in the world today. Obviously, the focus on Hamas and kind of campus anti-Semitism, but also the ethno-nationalism and far-right anti-Semitism that seems to get less attention. We talked about the kind of synergies between Netanyahu and the Israeli right and some of the other right-wing movements around the world, like the Hindu nationalists in India.

A lot of that today's episode, unfortunately. A lot of nationalists in today's episode. And we talked also about like the global South perspective on not just Israel-Ghasa, but everything that's happening in the world, whether or not there's ideas coming from within the global south that might help us find the next global order. So pretty wide-ranging conversation. We've talked about the role of the writer in this world today. So it was like, you know, put on your thinking caps and stick around for it.

is a really smart conversation. Definitely excited to listen to that. It must be weird to write a book called The World After Gaza and then have the war flare up. Yeah. The day of. I shouldn't be laughing. But, I mean, essentially, that was my first question, you know. So we are not after Gaza.

Yeah, no, unfortunately. So let's start with that. I mean, some terrible news overnight, which is that Israel broke the Gaza ceasefire and launched this massive series of airstrikes on the Gaza Strip that reportedly killed at least 400 people and wounded hundreds more. I think I saw estimates of over 500 wounded. Hamas said that, at least five senior officials in the organization were killed, as were many children and

innocent people. Israel said the strikes were in response to Hamas's intransigence during the ceasefire extension talks. Ben, it's hard not to notice that these strikes also come as Netanyahu is in the midst of a domestic political crisis, thanks to him trying to fire the head of the shin bet. Their domestic intelligence service, but we'll get to that in a second. With respect to the peace talks themselves, though, Israel wanted a seven-week extension of the ceasefire in exchange for Hamas releasing half of the living hostages in the remains of half of the dead hostages still in Gaza. The Hamas position was no. Let's work on phase two of the original agreement we all signed, which would have led to a

permanent end to the war. But as we've discussed many times, and Yahoo does not actually want to end the war because he'll get attacked from the right wing of his political coalition. And the Israeli position is also basically that Hamas must not have any power going forward, which is understandable after October 7th, but also clearly kind of a hard pill for Hamas to swallow. So, you know, that leads us to this moment. In the first phase of the ceasefire, Hamas released 25 living prisoners and the remains of eight hostages while Israel released 1,500 Palestinians. They had in captivity.

So, Ben, this is a really tough part of the talks, right? Because, of course, you can understand each side's position. Israel wants to permanently eradicate the threat of a Hamas attack. Hamas wants to continue to exist as a political organization, but also as a military wing. And they want the IDF out of Gaza. I guess where I lose my kind of empathy for the Israeli position is the idea that resuming the bombing campaign is going to do much besides lead to the deaths of innocent people and the remaining hostages. But I don't know, how are you analyzing Nanyahu's move over the weekend? Well, you summed up what happened in terms of the breakdown of talks well in the sense that

technically Hamas was just sticking to the original agreement, which is that there was this phase one and then you move to phase two and the additional hostage releases are tied to making agreements in phase two, which is about kind of the end of the war. Israel wanted to just extend phase one and make more exchanges within that framework. And those, we've talked about, we've talked about this a lot. I mean, essentially, the real rubber hits the road because Hamas wants the end of the war and Israel doesn't. And you can't really move to the next phase unless you're willing to entertain the end of the war and Israel's not willing to do that. Obviously, there's a banar intention between Israel having a continued objective of essentially destroying Hamas and Hamas having to

agree to this. So I don't know how you ever cross that bridge unless you're willing to entertain Hamas continuing in some fashion inside of Gaza, which they're going to probably do anyway because there's a lot of support from us. A couple of things I'd add to it. In terms of the Israeli political context, you mentioned the kind of uproar over him firing the head of the Shimbab, something that has not happened before because of investigations. Ever in Israeli history. Ever in Israeli history.

So this is not normal. But also, the Israeli government is supposed to pass a budget by the end of the month. And if they don't, that's one of the things that can kind of trigger the collapse of the government. There's a lot of reasons that B.B. needs to kind of return to his tried and true card of like playing to his own far right. And resuming bombing is a way to do that, as ghoulish as that may be. And, you know, the way in which this was broken, you know, in the middle of the night, bombing campaigns, literally violating the ceasefire, you know, just I obviously we are sympathetic to the idea that there is inside of Israel, a great degree of fear or opposition to Hamas being in charge in Gaza.

At the same time, there is no way, shape, or form in which there's any risk whatsoever of another October 7th happening tomorrow. Like, these strikes did not end some threat that was facing Israelis. This is punitive. This is obviously causing huge civilian harm. And there's no clear endgame other than just more war or more suffering for the people of Gaza. The last time is that keep in mind this comes on top of weeks now where we've had a complete cutoff of food and aid getting into Gaza, electricity.

So this is not happening even in a vacuum. It's happening in terms of an already worsening humanitarian situation. Yeah, and we should just be clear that, you know, this is a decision made by the Israeli government that is not backed by the Israeli people. I mean, there's some recent polling that found 70% of Israelis want the ceasefire and hostage talks to continue, even if it means Israel releasing terrorists. having to end the war permanently. So Netanyahu is just way off sides with the people he's ostensibly governing, including Yarden Bibbas. We've talked about the Bbos family before. This was the entire family that was kidnapped. Yard and Biaz's wife and two little children were murdered by Hamas or died in the Gaza Strip. I'm going to say they were murdered because if you take

children hostage, you are responsible for their life. And if they die, it's on you. He posted on Facebook, we must stop the fighting and bring everyone home. So there's this groundswell of support for continuing these negotiations, getting the rest of these hostages home. I think less than half of the 59 hostages still in Gaza are alive. But unfortunately, you know, once again, the United States President, President Trump, has enabled the continuation of this war. I think we've shipped over, what, like $8 or $12 billion worth of weapons to the Israelis. And interestingly, Ben, I mean, there's a Trump official who had done some direct talks with Hamas, this guy, Adam Boler, who had been nominated for this, you know, Senate-confirmed hostage negotiations or

released job. He seems to have been demoted or has position changed to some sort of special government employee that is no longer a Senate confirmed gig. Are you confusing him with Rubio? Yeah. Oh, the secretary, the sort of secretary of state. No, yeah. So it's it's confusing. I mean, it just it seems like there's a critical mass of things showing diplomacy kind of petering out here. Yeah, it feels like there was this pushed by Trump and, and Steve Whitkoff, his envoy to get a ceasefire in place right around his inauguration because they wanted the on optic of him coming in and things getting better. Obviously, they wanted some hostage releases, but they never really seemed that committed to actually ending the war. And they certainly

didn't seem committed to addressing the underlying question. I mean, Wiccoff said something about two-state solution, but nobody's talking about that right now. I mean, so I think the questions going forward are, does this bombardment continue? Do the aid cutoff continue? That alone is enough to bring massive suffering on the Palestinians. Do you see in the context of that bombardment, Trump start to talk about, you know, ethnically cleansing the Gaza Strip again, trying to move them into Egypt or Jordan. There's some noise about trying to find African countries to know the Palestinians, too. That was a little worrying. There's a question of whether there's a ground invasion, which Nanyahu, I think, would probably want Trump sign-off on. He didn't care what Joe Biden thought,

but with Trump, he probably wants to make sure that Trump's on side with that. But I think what this indicates is that Gaza is just this kind of open-ended, I don't want to call a war, because Hamas isn't really fighting, let's be clear. They're not even really like fighting back. I mean, at some point, I'm sure they'll fire some rockets. But there's just kind of ongoing bombardment of Gaza that's just going to be open-ended, maybe stop and start, and actually negotiating some kind of end to this, it seems to have been deprioritized. Yeah, and you mentioned it happened during Ramadan in like 2.30 in the morning, so it's terrifying for civilians. The political crisis that I refer to was BB trying to fire Ronin Barr, the head of the shinbet.

So this announcement happened suddenly on Sunday. It's the latest example of Netanyahu demanding accountability from everyone but himself for October 7th. So they pushed out the defense minister. They pushed out the IDF chief of staff. Also, we should just point out the shin bet has launched a bunch of investigations into Netanyahu's staff, including allegations that the Qatari government paid money to some of Netanyahu's top aides. It seems relevant here. They're also looking into the leak of sensitive intelligence documents to a German newspaper, which Netanyahu then used to as a pretext to blow up the hostage talks.

We talked about that at the time, was to build this German outlet. On top of all that, though, Ben, the shin bed has publicized a summary of its own failures in preventing October 7th, which talked about their internal mistakes, not taking seriously enough intelligence about Hamas planning to attack Southern Israel. But they also pointed the finger at political decisions by the Netanyahu government for letting Hamas getting funding from Qatar, for failing to target Hamas's leadership and then just sort of like general chaos around the Netanyahu's political moves during the judicial coup that we talked about a bunch that just made Israel look weak and divided. Basically, you know, they're talking about how the Netanyahu government's policy was contain Hamas, kind of prop them up in some sense to keep the Palestinian movement divided. and weaken the Palestinian authority that obviously ended catastrophically for everyone involved. But instead of accountability for Netanyahu,

what seems to be happening is he is consolidating power by pushing out other leaders in government, even though a recent poll found that 70% of the country wants him to resign. However, instead, we're talking, going back to these same tactics and, you know, kind of pushing out other people and other power centers and consolidating.

So on Wednesday, the day this episode comes out, the cabinet will vote on Ronan Barr's dismissal, The attorney general, the Israeli attorney general, said, BB can't fire Ronan Barr unless it goes through a process to determine whether doing so is lawful. We'll see if, you know, Netanyahu goes along with that ruling from the AG or else we might have a constitutional crisis brewing. But, I mean, Ben, what did you make of this? I mean, it's, for us now, it's pretty familiar to see, like, unpopular, right-wing kind of autocrats driving countries into a ditch. But this feels like a real escalation to me. And memory-holing their own crimes or, in Nanyahu's case, there's a lot to look at.

There's literal crimes. And then there's him doing everything you can to memory-hole his own massive and glaring failures around October 7. You know, why was the IDF up in the West Bank chasing around settlers to commit violence against Palestinians instead of guarding that border? You know, why was all this money essentially used to prop up Hamas with Nanyahu himself telling members of the Lekrood Party? We want Hamas. It's a justification for there never being a Palestinian state. It's a justification for keeping the Palestinian leadership separated. Those are things that he wants to just kind of literally sweep under the rug.

And I think part of what is so concerning here is he has learned the lesson of the last, you know, year and a half that perpetuating this war is a way to constantly keep the political pressure off of himself and to kind of placate the far right that wants kind of an open-ended, can brutalist Israeli policy. Right now, Tommy. we are looking at the bombardment of Gaza resuming. Israel continues to be in southern Syria, where they've done all kinds of, they've taken land, they've bombed targets, they are making threats about the Iranian nuclear program, so there's a potential front there.

Obviously, in Lebanon, there's a tenuous ceasefire on that border. We're talking like multiple countries, where Netanyahu has this capacity to turn the dial up or down, and every time he feels political pressure, he seems to turn the dial up. And that's not some conspiracy. That's literally what's happened the last, you know, whenever he feels politically cornered, something is, you know, going to get hotter somewhere else.

Right now, nobody's even fighting back, right? You know, Hamas isn't fighting back. The Syrians aren't fighting back. There's a, you know, ceasefire in Lebanon. The Iranians are trying to get into nuclear talks, right? And so... It's only the Houthis, which we'll talk about in a second. Except the Houthis, yeah, which...

Teeing this up for the transition. But the reality is, like, there are more places, including Iran, where... this could escalate further, the more the political pressure builds on him, the more you might expect to see him, or the West Bank, for that matter, the more you might expect to see him do dramatic things to kind of get the attention off of his own political fortune. And he's also, I mean, the man has fought an independent review of October 7th. What has happened is independent components of the Israeli, like security state, have done their own investigation and reviews into their own conduct, but he has just evaded any real accountability by, you know, a sort of 9-11 commission

style look back at how October 7th. It's, I mean, it's probably why he's at a 70% disapproval rating, but it's just infuriating. Yeah, but not surprising. Not at all surprising. Okay, so Ben, sort of in the neighborhood, let's check in on our own anti-war president, Donald Trump. So over the weekend, the Trump administration launched a major series of airstrikes on Houthi-Revel targets in Yemen, which local authorities, say, killed 53 people and injured nearly 100 more. Those strikes included targets in the capital of Sanaa. This came after the Houthi threatened to resume attacks on ships in the Red Sea, which they say are in response most recently to Israel cutting off humanitarian support into Gaza.

Listeners probably remember that back in November of 2023, the Houthi started attacking ships in the Red Sea, including U.S. warships, calling this an act of solidarity with Gaza. So at the time, the Biden administration retaliated against the Houthis with strikes on Houthi targets, most of which were designed to destroy military infrastructure in anti-ship missiles. But Trump may have started something bigger here. Here's a clip of Marco Rubio discussing their plans on CBS News over the weekend. This is not a message. This is not a one-off.

This is an effort to deny them the ability to continue to constrict and control shipping. and it's just not going to happen. We're not going to have these guys, these people with weapons, able to tell us where our ships can go, where the ships of all the world can go, by the way. It's not just the U.S. We're doing the world of favor. We're doing the entire world of favor

by getting rid of these guys and their ability to strike global shipping. That's the mission here, and it will continue until that's carried out. That never happened before. The Biden administration didn't do that. All the Biden administration would do is they would respond to an attack. These guys would launch one rocket. We'd hit the rocket launcher. That's it.

This is an effort to take away. their ability to control global shipping in that part of the world. That's just not going to happen anymore. So we're doing the world of favor by getting rid of these guys. Sounded a little regime changey to me, Ben, but then I also noticed Pete Heggzath, Secretary of Defense, said the bomb encampaigning at the Houthies will end if the Houthi stopped shooting at U.S. ships. So that is clearly more limited. But Hagsath also said, quote, we don't care what happens in the Umini civil war, which is very nice of him. So, Ben, what do you make of this old but new war from our anti-war president.

Are we back in regime change mode, or is this more limited? I mean, first of all, Marco Rubio, despite his very best efforts, sounds like the least tough person on the face of the earth. You know, you can tell he kind of rehearsed this in the mirror.

And he wanted to sound like a tough guy, and he wanted to say things like these guys a bunch of times. And he literally just sounds like the kind of kid that voice doesn't sound like someone threatening Houthis. It sounds like a kid who ran in from the schoolyard to tell the teacher on somebody else or something. These guys are trying to mess up international shipping. You know, like...

It's so careless with his word choices. I just don't get it. But anyway, put General Rubio aside for a second here. The thing that worries me about this is, look, the Biden policy wasn't the clearest policy in the world. It was every now and then we'd just go bomb a bunch of the Houthis and their infrastructure. But part of what is, like, troubling to me is it,

the messaging from Trump on down to Rubio, because you know Rubio is on whatever messages he's been commanded to deliver. So he has to take that shot at Biden, you know. This just seems to be informed by like our strikes on the Houthis are going to be a little bit bigger than Joe Biden. So we can say that they're bigger, you know. And there's not really any logic if you unpack what he said. Because the Houthis have, you know, they kind of stop shooting at chips and then they do. This is not a new thing.

kind of stop and start from them. They've tied it to the resumption of hostilities in Gaza. There's no indication that one round of airstrikes is going to make the Houthis go away or change their fundamental calculus. I was talking to an expert today who said he thinks that Trump was almost certainly told by like sent com or some of his military advisors that all we need to do, sir, is take the gloves off, stir, and stop caring about civilian casualties and get rid of these Biden restrictions, sir, and then we'll take these guys out. And it's just bullshit. Yeah. Like they might be attacking leaders. They might have found intel and leaders.

It seemed like they're hitting warehouses or other targets in cities. But I just don't think that they're going to make a material difference here. And I think what happened to Tommy, you're right. And like I'm talking to some people, it seems like there were some people at CENTCOM that wanted the more maximalist option that did include, for instance, trying to hit individual hooty leaders, like you said. And sometimes you actually don't have good intel on where those guys are. Sometimes you might, but like you might kill a whole bunch of civilians in doing that. And they went, Mr. Trump, sir, Joe Biden was afraid to take out these guys. But the reality is that the Houthis are people that live in Yemen.

Like they're not even analogous to ISIS. The last time Trump wanted to prove you was tougher than someone basically just took the same Obama plan and loosened some restrictions on civilian casualties, which I think is not a good thing. But the ISIS was foreign fighters, right? They're not going to go away in Yemen unless you, you know, go commit a genocide or something. like they're there are people that live there and and so i don't really think if anything worries me about this it's trump doing the opposite of what you know he said about getting set of wars in a situation in which you have a war in gaza like i said you've got Syria like there's

sectarian violence picking up there these Israelis are occupying southern syria there are people stirring the pot there and the government can't really get its legs under it because there's sanctions Yemen, you've got an act of civil war and the soothy thing. You've got the Iranians like trying to avoid a war over their nuclear program, but it's not clear whether there's a deal. Like this whole region could still, if Trump's impulses to continue to show that he's tough by like saying yes to the most, you know, square jaw general that like calls him, sir, like we, you know, this could get worse.

The coolest nickname. Who's our new chairman? I forgot the nickname already. This is a nail bag. Yeah, yeah. Adam in Mosul. Yeah, yeah. Rasmataz or something.

That was our guy. Nick, yeah, I mean, just to really like hammer home the point you're making about the Hussi's living in Yemen. I mean, they are, they're a tribal group from northern Yemen. The Houthis tribe, you know. Yeah, they practiced in form of Shia Islam. And like the Houthi movement emerged in the 90s in part in opposition to like Saudi influence and hardline Saudi religious practices.

But then they came onto like the international community's radar in a big way in 2014 when they seized the capital of Yemen, when they forced the Yemeni president at the time to run for his life. And by 2015, the Houthis controlled a big chunk of Yemen's territory. And in 2015, the Saudis decided to launch this major military operation to dislodge them. And that proved to be a catastrophic failure on a military and a humanitarian level. It led to hundreds of thousands of Yemenis dying either in the fighting or from the famine. And by 2022, the Saudis were like, all right, we're good on bombing. We're going to try to cut a deal. And, you know, I think everything was reawakened by October 7th. Now, like everyone points out that the Houthis get a lot of support from

Iran. That is true. It's also, I think, important to say, Ben, that, like, there are some quarters of the left that embrace the Houthi rebels because they were seen as doing something to end the war in Gaza. But we should say, these are not good guys. They are authoritarian. They have kidnapped and killed aid workers. They've terrorized the population. Like, no one should cheer for. them. But back to the military campaign, Ben. I mean, this expert I was talking to and other people who left the Biden administration have said the same thing to me, which is that by the end of their Houthi military campaign, they realize that, like, you can't deter these guys. Like, you can, you can- Degrade them. You can take raise some other capabilities. Yes. You can degrade them.

You can set up, like, defensive infrastructure in the Red Sea. You can, like, create a missile defense wall around Israel. But, like, really dismantling them is a year-long project with one. way better intelligence, some sort of ground campaign? Like, it's a disaster. The Saudis and the Emirates have fought a war for nearly a decade against these guys with plenty of U.S. support, and they were somehow stronger at the end of that process than they were at the beginning. Right.

And also Trump, and this is why the Iran part worries me in his like truth socialing, which is, I guess, where we announce military operations now, he was like, this is a message for Iran, all caps or something, you know. And the Iranians do not control the who. These. It's a very important point. This is so important. This is actually not like Hezbollah or something. They do give them some weapons and they have. And maybe they could stop doing that. I don't think that would impact the Houthis behavior that much. You know, they do their own thing these guys, you know. And what is Trump exactly saying in terms of the message to Iran, the message that we're going to bomb you next? I mean, this whole thing could get, could go sideways pretty fast. And let's also point out whether we're talking about Gaza or. Yemen or wherever, we used to think about what we're doing to, obviously, civilians from a humanitarian perspective, also from like a just multi-decade anti-American sentiment radicalization perspective.

Like this is kind of the casual nature of these pretty large-scale bombing. I mean, these aren't even, these are not like drone strikes. No. And people should give us plenty of shit about those too. But this is like, you know, we're dropping huge ordinance on multiple countries or we're giving Israel ordinance to do that. I just, I don't know, I don't like where this is probably headed for the Middle East. Yeah, that tweet from Trump blaming Iran saying you're responsible for anything the Houthis do.

They're not. They're just not. Yeah, apparently the Houthis, the Pentagon says the Houthis have fired 174 projectiles at U.S. Navy ships since 2023 and like 150 more at commercial ships. So they've been firing off a lot of stuff. And if we're holding Iran responsible for all of that, that's a problem. Because to your point, I mean, the Houthis have a high degree of autonomy and this, Houthi expert was telling me that after the Soleimani assassination, that kind of strategy of more distributed authority and autonomy to their kind of so-called proxy forces has seems to have been a policy because it allows them not to like have such close ties or create, you know,

intelligence channels that can be intercepted, et cetera. But it is also allowed for a lot of proliferation of missile and drone technology. Like there's some concern that the Houthis could be sharing this stuff. with al-Qaeda or al-Shabaab. And that's what I mean about terrorism coming our way. Yeah. Because if you start to really go after these guys, they're not going to surrender. And imagine Trump after a terrorist attack.

I just, none of this makes me feel good. Yeah. And just in terms of Yemen itself, like there's not a lot of good options to deal with the Houthis right now. But the current plan, if we just sum it all up, is Israel resuming the war in Gaza with, you know, eight or $12 billion worth of additional U.S. weapons, Trump gutting USAID and cutting off parts of Yemen to humanitarian support. And now we're bombing the shit out of Yemen again. And that's just like, that is catastrophic to the point where even the Saudis are like,

do not do this. Like, we went down this path. The Saudis are saying that, you know. And the USAID point is really important because in the kind of, you know, pretty dark, contradictory reality of American foreign policy, USAID was a huge donor to addressing humanitarian needs in Yemen. And now that's gone. So a lot more people are going to suffer than even suffered in past bomb encampines. Yeah, and it won't be the Houthis, who I think represent like 15% of the population. It'll be women and kids and civilians who always get hurt. Yeah,

who will blame America. Potsie the World is brought to you by Helix. We got a bunch of visitors in my house right now. It's a full house. We've in-laws, sister-in-law, a bunch of people here. So we're rotating people sort of through. Really? People are coming out. Well, that really. Oh, I think it meant like to different rooms. No, like people are coming and staggered to stagger times. And everyone who sleeps on our guest room on the Helix mattress says, best sleep in my life. Sle like a baby. There you go. Almost slept through breakfast. It was so good and so comfortable. My mother-in-law was with us all week and she slept on a Helix mattress and also loved it. There you go. Look at all the in-laws. How will you know which Helix mattress works best for you in your body? You take the Helix sleep quiz and you find your perfect mattress in under two minutes. I took this quiz a long time ago. I'm pretty sure I'm pretty sure I.

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Plus, your personalized mattress is shipped straight to your door, free of charge. Go to helixleep.com slash world for 20% off sitewide. That's Helixleep.com slash world for 20% off site wide, helixleep.com slash world. Ben, speaking of kind of the gutting of U.S. power abroad, including soft power, let's talk about the Voice of America, or VOA, was founded in 19, 1942 during World War II to be counterweight to Nazi propaganda. The idea was you provide news and information and cultural programs to audiences literally around the world while also promoting American values like press freedom, democracy, etc. After World War II ended, VOA's mission evolved into a tool to combat communism in the Soviet Union. More recently, that mission evolved further. They are doing programming in the Middle East, Asia. There's combating extremism, China, Iran, etc. Right. So, That was until Friday last week. Trump released an executive order targeting VOA's parent organization, the U.S. agency for global media, which also funds other U.S.-backed news outlets like Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, etc.

Combined, these outlets are reached 420 million people in 100 countries and broadcast in 63 languages. The impact of this EO is that nearly all of VOA's 1,300 staff members, have been put on paid leave. their programming is gone. It's been replaced by like Musac or, you know, dead air or whatever. Trump has installed failed Arizona Senate and gubernatorial candidate Carrie Lake to run VOA, basically with the mission to destroy it. Ben, do you want to talk about the mission of VOA and the impact of these new services being eviscerated? Yeah. So the numbers begin to tell a story. Over 400 million people and over 60 languages. And I think what people have to realize is, Think of VOA something like a wire service largely.

Like it's pretty straight news to the point that we actually used to get shit. Like, why aren't you doing your own propaganda? Like RT's so much better at propagandizing. But part of the idea behind it is a lot of the places, sure, we can focus on the places where, you know, we're trying to get information into like the Iranian people or places where there's geopolitical tension. A lot of these are places where there's no other access to straight news, just knowing what the fuck is going on, you know? That's why you do it in all these languages.

And if you think that that seems like a luxury, consider the fact that we're living in a world in which people are constantly bombarded on social media or through various propaganda channels with garbage, you know. And people are more important than ever. Yeah, I know people in Southeast Asia, for instance, who are living in pretty tough places, but Myanmar, Cambodia, places where you have civil conflict or you've got dictators who put out all kinds of disinformation all the time.

or misinformation, and people could trust a VOA product or a Radio Free Asia product, right? If you remove that, not only is that just denying, you know, credible news source to people, it is opening the door for people to be further radicalized or brainwashed, essentially, through disinformation. You know, it's just literally pulling the plug on hundreds of millions of people that rely on this information. And I think what I find so kind of grotesque about this to take a step back is to connect what we were just talking about, America First, right? A lot of us had to be like, well, I can see some of the points Trump's making, you know. But this is, he was talking about, like, the credible version of America First is the Forever War. We fought 20 years of fucking dumb wars in the Middle East. Let's not do that. And we killed hundreds of thousands of people and thousands of our own people died and we spent all this money. Let's not do that. And that's not what America First turned out to be. We are still fighting the dumb fucking wars. We're still bombing people in Yemen.

We're still sending $8 to $12 billion of assistance to Israel to bomb people. We're upping the defense budget. That's the only thing that went up in the recent thing that Schumer capitulated to. What are we cutting? We're cutting the only good things America does in the world. We're taking away USAID. All soft power, gone, all of it, right? We're cutting all of USAID, all of PEPFAR, which is obviously a life-saving assistance for HIV-AIDS,

all of Voice of America and its various cousins. that is not the the the America and the world sure people like grumble about foreign aid but I don't think that's what people were were upset about in terms of the excesses of the deep state or whatever you want to call it and so that's what is so disgusting about what we're watching is like we're seeing the methodical destruction of anything good America might do in the world or anything that might improve people's laws around the world or anything that might combat autocracy around the world and we're not seeing any diminution in if anything we're seeing ratcheting up of geopolitical tension

with tariffs and military action and all the rest of it. And before we started recording, you and I were talking about how Deputy Assistant Secretary of Rubio used to really care about a certain component of VOA. Yes, well, this turns me fucking nuts

about Marco Rubio's. I used to get, I had this argument with him because one of the bloated parts of this whole enterprise is something called Radio Marti, which has been broadcasting from basically South Florida, where it supports a bunch of jobs, by the way,

into Cuba, right? and you know seemed like a lot of money to be spending on something that wasn't really working Cubans blocked it so it was kind of like a radio station

that hardliners in Florida Miami likes so Rubio fights to the death if Barack Obama wants to cut one dollar but then Rubio fucking shuts it all down when he's like to turn off the switch turning off the switch

like killing jobs in Florida and just to connect some dots with Markerubio right now you've got Venezuelans being flown into Gulogs in El Salvador something that Markerubio would have once

seemingly objected to. I thought we wanted to help the Venezuelan people. We've got, you know, Cubans are not allowed in this country anymore. It's something that Markerub used to care about. Like all, Marco Rubio used to complain about conditions in Cuban prisons that fucking the El Salvadorian prisons make that look like, you know, a country club. I mean, this is, this is insane. What, Marco Rubio is single-handedly proving how full of shit he was in just two months. Yeah, I mean, on the Salvadoran part, Ben, so on Positive America, we spent a bunch of time digging at the Trump's most recent immigration moves. I do think, like, taken together, they're horrifying and scary, but I think the most relevant part of this for us is Trump using this law from 1798.

All the best laws are written then called the Alien Enemies Act, which they're using to deportment to deportation to El Salvador, which they're using to deportation to El Salvador, like literally any Venezuelan male over 16 can be declared a part of a gang and now shipped to El Salvador. At the moment, these deportations are being blocked by the courts. Trump is furious about that. He called the judge who halted the deportations, a radical left lunatic and demanded that the guy. be impeached. That statement actually prompted a response from Chief Justice John Roberts, who was like, hey, bud, impeachment isn't how you deal with a ruling you don't like. You try the appeals process, you know, like let's be an adult here. But Ben, I mean, this, this is so scary, it's scary on its face, but it's also a scary precedent that could be expanded

to other groups that Donald Trump does not like. And to your point, I mean, it's worth reminding everyone just how bad El Salvador's prison system is. There's a lot of components to this. 2% of the population of the country is in prison because Naya Bukali is put in place a mass incarceration policy where he indiscriminately rounds people up and throws them in jail with no due process. To your point, I was talking to a human rights expert in El Salvador a couple months ago, who said that prisoners in Venezuela have more due process than prisoners in El Salvador under this current system because Buckele declared this state of exception, which is there sort of, it's like a state of emergency where he's suspended due process rights ostensibly to deal with.

gang violence for like a month, but then like every state of emergency, it just gets extended over and over and over and over again. And he's used it to sweep people up and indiscriminately throw men into prison. And now the United States is going to help keep O'Keeley in power by paying El Salvador money to house prisoners from the U.S. with no due process. And there was a point in time where conservatives like a Marco Rubio, like a John McCain, cared deeply about human rights, or at least they talked about it a lot, right? And that is just, I guess is just gone. I mean, Rubio tweeted something about the Uyghurs the other day.

And it made me think about when... Credibility to see you have to talk about that. Yeah, I remember when Trump, John Bolton, Trump's former national security advisor, said in his book that Trump not only did not care about millions of Uighurs being thrown into concentration camps. He told Xi Jinping that it was the right thing to do. Yeah. I mean, we're literally subsidizing like one of the largest gulags, if not the largest gulag in the world. I have to check it to don't know live. suit Buckele, but it's a big fucking prison where terrible things happen to people.

That's very clear. I think one way to think about it, too, Tommy, is because you guys had a very good conversation on PSA. You know, I think a lot about this, you know, kind of authoritarian playbook that we're living through, and I obviously wrote a, like, my last book was about this. We are... You're ahead of the curve on that book, unfortunately. Yeah, the whole Orban-Bund Trump comparison.

Yeah, I don't like that that was kind of pressing. I know. And so as I think back on that, what's scary about living through a now is in some ways we are so far ahead of like Orban has never approached this right like these people that we think of as dictators in their wildest dreams they could never think of like randomly deporting lots of people to prisons in third countries because what we're seeing is yes Trump is implementing a playbook ignore judges do whatever you want install loyalists like we all now unfortunately are familiar with that playbook but what's scary is when you're the president of the United

States, there's things that are available to you that are not available to the Bolsonaro's and Orbons and even do territories of the world, which are you can pressure countries in Latin America to take all these people and throw them into your prisons, right? And so we're seeing, I think Americans have to get their minds around. Like, we are not, you know, at the beginning of this, we're kind of pretty late in the spectrum, which is like there's no constraint on him. But we're also seeing how, like, Trump, for all of his railing against the deep state, he's using the awesome powers of the American national security state for his authoritarian impulses. Yep.

So he doesn't like, he talks shit on the FBI. He loves ice. He loves those military planes that are flying people down there and he's posting, like, fascist snuff videos, you know, with them. Like, and we're starting to see what it's like to have that U.S. national security apparatus wedded to the authoritarian. playbook, and that's what I find scary about it. Yeah, it's really scary. That point about

his ability to force other countries to do things that no other dictator would be able to do. And also, the United States is usually the one calling out other countries in trying to at least to deter these kinds of human rights violations. Oh, and we're going to see all kinds of copycat stuff happening around the world. I mean, you wait a few months to see the ripples of

not only USAID being gone and VOA being gone, but seeing other people saying, well, look what Trump's doing. Like, I'm going to do whatever the fuck I want. In fact, you're already seeing it, right? Because once, you know, you have Trump and Elon Musk and others in the government saying that, like, USAID is a corrupt, you know, organization designed for regime change. That gives every authoritarian around the world the pretext to raid NGOs supported by USAID, et cetera, right? Yeah. We'll get to that a minute in Serbia.

So one last thing on this, Ben, we've been trying to keep everybody updated on the impact of Trump gutting USAID. along those lines, there was a really well-done piece in the New York Times by Nick Christoff over the weekend. It had the headline. Musk said no one has died since aid was cut. That isn't true. Highly recommend reading this. He went to Sudan, South Sudan, met with people who are going to die or know of children who died because USAID is gone. The Times also worked with the Center for Global Development to estimate how many people at risk of dying within a year.

Here's the stats that came up with. 1.65 million people could die without US help to fund HIV prevention and treatment. Half a million could die without vaccine funding. More than half a million could die without food from America. Almost 300,000 could die without malaria prevention funding from the U.S. 310,000 could die without U.S. funding for tuberculosis prevention. There's also this broader concern about us helping reignite drug-resistant tuberculosis strains all around the world.

So that's great. But look, read the Christoph piece, share the impact on social media. I don't think we have any hope of saving USAID at this point, but I do think we need to make these monsters own the impact of what they are doing. And the only thing I'll say about this is our ketamine-addled white South African deputy dictator, you know, tweeted out something about how like he gets all this hate when he's never harmed a person in his life. He's going to be directly responsible for the deaths of millions of fucking people. Millions of people.

Children. Children. Elon Musk is going to be responsible for the deaths of children. of so many people that I can't get my mind around it. And there's going to be a relentless effort by him and all of his like, you know, I don't know, doge, douchebag, wannabe Elon's, you know, to say like, oh, all this irrational Elon derangement syndrome.

Like, I don't know, maybe go talk to the people in places like Sudan who are dying right now because they're not getting nutrition. The way these guys think they are the victims. You know, you and I were talking about this before. Oh, I got criticized online. How dare you? Tweet me on the platform.

own where I can ban you. Yeah. People should be boycotting Tesla. Yeah, boycott Tesla. I'm not saying like harm Teslas or do not buy a Tesla. Just don't ever buy anything that Elon Musk makes. I honestly for a long time I like wanted a one of those Tesla power walls at my house. So did I.

Yeah. Because I like I am actually worried about blackouts in LA. But like there's absolutely no way that I would buy one from Tesla now. No one should buy anything from Tesla. Like he's a terrible person. It's maybe some sort of economic impact will matter to him because he's fucking rapacious, billionaires actually really care if they're the number one richest or the number three. Like that's how awful they are.

He will care more about that than you will care about the assessment of how many people die because he cut off USAID. So please boycott. And to all the people who say, well, you know, the climate impact of creating Tesla is incalculate. Like, he has already done more harm and is a couple months in government than good than he has ever done. Buying your Tesla is good. There are other EVs and, you know, guess what? It's a drop in the bucket compared to the car.

cheaper and better made. Okay, we're going to take a quick break. But before we do that, Ben, we need to address something. We do. Which is, uh, there is a lot of heat in like the comments on the YouTube, on social media from our Canadian listeners who I think feel like we've been talking about the tariff war with Canada and some of the political machinations happening in Canada in a way that is flippant. And so I don't know exactly what we said. I'm sorry if we, uh, offended anybody. I, I, I sort of am confused why we, why we, why would I, would listen to this conversation and think we are not on your side versus the fucking morons like trying to crush the Canadian economy?

I think that's stupid and ridiculous. I look, I will apologize to the people of Canada. I feel your pain. And I mean that seriously, genuinely, what I take from it is when it feels like there's a lunatic who's trying to take over your country and destroy your economy, like maybe you don't want the huge humorous banter about it, which I get. But bear in mind, like, we're living under this lunatic, too, and sometimes we turn to the dark humor of it all. But I'm feeling Mark Carney's hockey fighting energy. Like, we dig it. We love you guys. We love our Canadian listeners. And we hear you, yeah, I want to apologize substantially less than Ben. I reserve the right to make fun of anything.

I'm going to make fun of Mark Carney for being low key. We're the, we have fucking Donnie. Donald Trump is our president. We're trying to survive guys. Cut us a break. Just like you. Yeah. No, but the director and deputy director of the FBI actively hate both of us. They do.

Things are bad here. Let's be clear about that. Let's be clear. We do not want to tariff you. They personally are aware of who we are. We do not want to tariff you. We liked Justin Drew. We had him on this show.

Yeah. We like Mark Carney, but we get it. No one wants this terror for. I know it's a very serious thing. Trump is actively trying to destroy the Canadian economy, and that is insane and stupid. Let's all fight. Let's all fight these lunatics together and not, no turning on each other. We're on the same team.

Also, fuck Pierre Pahliav. Also, we wanted to tell you about an amazing new podcast from Crooked Media. We all need a little break from the news, Ben, and we are releasing a new podcast. We think Worldos in particular are going to love and might already love because the first episode is in your feed. It's called Shadow Kingdom, God's Banker. Here's what it's about. In the summer of 1982, the Vatican's top money man was found dead. Roberto Calvi, known as God's banker.

I tried to do in a tiny accent, Caliavi, was embroiled in an infamous money laundering scandal that tied him to an ultra-secretive far-right society, the Sicilian mafia, and the Catholic Church. His death at the time was ruled a suicide, but the evidence it told a different story. For decades, no one could say what really happened until now. Journalist Nicola Minone is following a new lead,

one that could finally answer the question, who killed God's banker? This is a fun, wild story. It's a little bit sinister, too. There are masons involved? There's some masons. Can I say something that was interesting about the last time we talked this? So this is like, you ever find out that you're communicating with like your parents through the podcast?

No. Like, because they listen and they hear something and my grandfather was a Mason. No way. Yes. Which I had once known and forgotten. So when I was kind of, you know, throwing some shade at the masons, my dad was like, oh, remember your grandfather was a Mason. I bet that there's a. And by the way, he was a Mason in small town, Texas.

Sure. He wasn't like running the world in some headquarters. he was in like Baytown Texas. Yeah. Look, I also, I assume most Masons were just like part of any kind of fraternal organization that got people together in like a civic way and did things together. My time in government has led me to believe that most conspiracies don't exist because no one can keep a secret or get anything done.

Because the actual reality is kind of the ultimate conspiracy theory. They're a bunch of rich, powerful people controlling the world. In front of our faces. Yeah, we're like Elon Musk. In the doge, cutting all the shit. So God's banker, you know, Shadow Kingdom. Yeah. At least get a good story out of it.

This is a great story because we are living in this horrifying far-right world led by awful people. And you can see the beginnings of this far-right movement. Italy take form in this podcast in a way that provides a lot of contacts for what we're dealing with today. So episode one is in the Pots of the World feed. You should check it out. And if you love it, you can hear episode two now by subscribing to the Shadow Kingdom

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Okay, let's move on to Russia. Beas earlier today, Trump and Vladimir Putin spoke on the phone about the war in Ukraine. It's interesting that they previewed this one, Ben, as like Trump has previously suggested in some news conferences that he's talked to Putin a few times since he's been in the White house, but I guess who really knows because they're a bunch of liars. So NBC News says the call was at least an hour and a half long. Other outlets said it was up to three hours. I was talking to some of our team here. Like, I suspect that's a lot because of translation and also because Putin likes to give long historical rants about his grievances. I imagine Trump even gets a flavor of that,

but who knows? So the biggest deliverable out of the call is Putin saying he's agreed not to bomb. Ukraine's energy infrastructure for 30 days. What a win. Trump announced... At the end of the winter, by the way. It's like this is not, I haven't seen this point out of the coverage, but they bombed the energy infrastructure in like November, December heading into the winter. Guess what time of the year it is is March, April. Yeah. Putin doesn't need to bomb the energy infrastructure anymore. And also, it doesn't get unbombed. Like if it's not working. Anyway, so also Trump, they announced they're going to begin talks about a possible ceasefire in the Black Sea. It's worth noting that there have been these little partial ceasefires along the way

between the Russians and Ukrainians. Friend of the pod, Max Seddon, tweeted an analysis of Putin's Russian language readout of the call with Trump. Max's big takeaway is that Putin gave almost no ground. Putin wants a total end to foreign military support and intelligence to Ukraine. The readout said that any deal must, quote, take into account the unconditional necessity to remove the initial reasons for the crisis in Russia's legal security interests. You could drive a truck through kind of the implications of that language, which we can

unpack in a second. The readout also says that Trump and Putin talked about some non-Ukraine topics, including mutually beneficial partnership in economics and security, some sort of cooperation in the Middle East, non-proliferation, and then some shit about hosting hockey games, which I guess means it just effectively ends the kind of sports isolation of Russia. Which Trump's probably not even aware of. Yeah. He's so fucking dumb. Right. If you want, it'd be great if we have hockey games. He doesn't realize he's just like removed a huge source of pressure on it. It is a big carry, right? Because like the Russians were competing the Olympics under like some non-flag I can't remember what it looked like.

But anyway, it sucked for them. They were pissed about it. The goon flag. Yeah, the goon flag. And now they're just back, I guess. So I guess, like, look, my takeaway then was I don't want to criticize diplomacy just because Trump is doing it. But I think we should be honest that a one-month energy ceasefire is not only not that much,

given the context you just talked about, about the time of year, but also Trump pushed the Ukrainians to sign a 30-day unconditional ceasefire. And Putin was like, nah, I'm good. and he also didn't signal any real willingness to give ground and other stuff. So I don't know what was accomplished. Maybe Putin agreed to buy a bunch of Trump coin with Russian oil and gas. Half kidding about that. But what were your takeaways from this?

Well, yeah, first of all, in the time, hearing that brought back, you know, not great memories of I sat through probably, I don't know, after the invasion of Crimea, up through the end of the Obama administration, I probably sat through five or six of these like two-hour phone calls. and it makes it sound like a really substantive robust conversation. Each side probably spoke three or four times in those two hours because Putin sits there and reads like a 20-minute speech about... Literally reads. ...about all of his fucking grievances and how hard what bunch of bastards

the Ukrainians are and he gives you a history lesson going all the way back to like... Yeah, he goes way back. You know, the Bulgaria joining NATO and shit. Ottoman Empire. And then that has to be fucking translated. Right. And so you're sitting there and you're like, so then we'd put out like, they spoke for two hours.

And I'm like, it's not as cool as you guys think it is. No, but anyway, put that aside. Yeah, I think that what's amazing about this is he's just walking Trump right along his fucking path where Putin is literally taking the things that he would usually have to negotiate at the end of the fucking negotiation, right? Ukraine can't rearm, can't have foreign forces there, can't get any intel, you know, can't join NATO, like his whole list. He's even laundering in his version of history.

You know, he congratulates Trump for not voting for the UN resolution, the General Assembly Resolution calling the regressor. Like, you know, good job Donald and voting with me in Belarus on that. And he's trying to pull all these issues forward into the negotiation at the 30-day ceasefire. And Trump is so thirsty for either a combination of Putin's friendship and some partial news cycle win that he's literally celebrated. like a partial ceasefire around just hitting energy targets when he didn't get anything else. Like Putin is not moved off of any other position. Literally.

The only thing Putin can be said to have done that is any different tomorrow than today, if he actually fucking does it, and I could see him just violating it anyway, is this thing about not hitting energy targets. And then, you know, meanwhile, he's just adding to the list of demands on the Ukrainians. And this is what happens when you humiliate the Ukrainian president of the Oval Office, cut him off from intelligence and military support, which Putin grabbed. Do you notice that? Like, Putin said, oh, like, see, well, like, you better go back to cutting them off because I saw you did that once before. You can do that again, right?

So Putin is just, like, moving the goalposts further and further in his direction. And we're not negotiating peace. We're negotiating literally, like, Russian demands on behalf of Putin. Well, Putin's moving the goalpost as are the Trump team. I mean, there was a leak in semaphore like today or yesterday about how Trump is considering recognizing Russian control of Crimea. Now, I don't think there's any like peace deal that ends with the Ukrainian sides fully controlling Crimea. But why are you giving that way? I mean, it's just this is like anybody like, and this is what like you made this point last week and it's true, anybody who's ever had any experience of Putin.

And this is exactly what he does. He just tries to pocket every single thing at the table before even entertaining any concession by himself. And none of these guys have ever, Trump thinks that, and Whitkoff that like, you know, selling some fucking golf courses in Florida is like akin to like dealing with issues that have been at the subject of war and peace and geopolitical tension for hundreds of years in Ukraine. Like these guys have no idea what they're doing. Putin is in no rush either. No, what rush is he in? The broader context is, you know, we talked late last year, I think in August about this surprising Ukrainian offensive into Kursk, which is part of Russia. And they occupied like 500 miles, square miles worth of territory within Russia in the Kersk region.

The Russians, along with these North Korean troops, have slowly but methodically battled back and pushed the Ukrainian forces out of Kersk, except for like a sliver right along the border that the Ukrainian forces are now using to keep the high ground and prevent essentially the Russians. from entering into another part of Ukraine. So Putin knows that the momentum is on his side. You know, the Americans are no longer supporting the Ukrainian side. He's getting reinforcements from North Korea. The weapons are flowing from Iran and others. And so things are just, he's looking good. So if I'm Putin, I'm thinking, I'm in this job for life.

This dipshit's there for four years. I'm going to play this negotiation out as long as I can, get whatever I want from it, wait this idiot out, and then play the next guy who's in the job. And by the way, he also loved, in the Russian readout, they had this language about, you know, Russia and the U.S., you know, consistent with their international responsibilities, talked about this and the Middle East and that. He's making himself bigger and the United States smaller, you know. Like it's, and Trump is not even aware that that's what he's doing.

Yeah. It's, oh, God. Trump, who ostensibly thinks that the big fish are him and Xi Jinping. Yeah. No, no, now it's like Xi Jinping's the big fish. And then, like, Trump is in the second class with Putin. Great, great. Okay, let's switch gears here, Ben, and talk about these massive protests in Serbia.

I don't know if we've talked about this on the show before. No, we should have. Yeah, you're right. We should have. Well, so this past weekend, hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets in Belgrade to protest against the government, the government corruption and President Alexander Buccich. There were reports of up to 300,000 people, which in Serbia is a massive number. So these are student-led protests.

They've been happening since last November. There's this horrible incident where a concrete canopy that was part of the newly renovated train station collapsed and killed 15 people. As often happens with protests like this, though, over time they evolved from being about, you know, outrage about this tragic incident at the Novisage Rail Station to outrage about corruption generally, the lack of transparency about construction of this train station, the treatment of protesters, which include, you know, mass arrests of individuals who are on the streets, but also these government-sponsored efforts to harass and violently. assault protesters, some really bleak stuff. There was a video that Ben and I, you saw this weekend of like reports of a sonic weapon being used on protesters. So pretty awful. So on Monday, the protesters even blocked access to a Serbian public TV station called RTS because of the way it was reporting on them. I guess a journalist referred to them, the peaceful protesters as a mob. So the president of Serbia, this guy named Alexander Vuchich, he's been in Serbian politics for decades. In the late 90s,

he was Slobodon Milosevic's information minister. How about that fucking? job. That's a great thing in your fucking CV. Yeah. So for those who don't know, Milosevic was charged with war crimes and genocide and put on trial at the international criminal court. There was a massacre, horrific massacre in 1995 or 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were killed by Bosnian Serb forces. And Vuchit said, quote, you kill one Serb and we kill 100 Muslims, as a quote attributed to the current president. So charming guy. More recently, Vuchich has been head of the Serbian Progressive Party since 2012. He was prime minister from 2014 to 2017, has been and has been president of Serbia.

Not those kind of progressives. No, yeah. Yeah, don't let the name fool you, the name of the party fool you. Yeah, he's far right. He's authoritarian. It's like the national socialist. We're not socialists.

Yes. Something we unfortunately have had to clarify in the show as well. He's authoritarian. He's far right. He's also someone who, he'll mouth like pro-EU, pro-Western sentiment. I think he gets a lot of credit from the population or has gotten leeway for their economic growth recently. But like, you know, every autocrat, like corruption catches up to you. So that gets a,

back to these protests. Vuchitchitch has blamed the protests on leftist radicals. He's blaming the United States and USAID. It's always interesting to note which Americans are dumb enough to regurgitate those kinds of claims by authoritarian leaders, which brings us to a clip from a recent episode of Donald Trump Jr.'s podcast triggered where he interviewed Vuchich. Here's a clip. We also talk about the protests you've been seeing in Belgrade. I'm sure the media will cover them. Only one way. There's seemingly evidence that they are all tied in some form to the same left-wing actors here in America. There's even some reported links to USAID.

It feels to me as someone who's watched this play out in America and with my family, a tragic incident, of course, but it was later weaponized, perhaps like our January 6th. I was saying the same to my people here. It was a huge amount of money that was invested from outside, from different countries, different foundations. Well, there's another planned protest in a couple of days. How much of that is manufactured? I've read and I've seen and spoken to other people here.

Some of these protests, they're offering kids 100 euro to show up. So there's a little super cut of Don Jr. regurgitating kind of right-wing autocrat. Talking points. I mean, it's worth pointing up Benj, just a friend of the pod, Rick Grinnell, was like a special envoy for Serbia. He's become thick with Vuchic. There's all those reports of the Serbian government giving approval to Jared Kushner or some developer in Dubai, the Trump family to build like a Trump family hotel on the site of the former Yugoslav Ministry of Defense in Belgrade that was bombed by NATO in 1999. I think there was something part of the least said that there had to be a memorial to those injured or killed by NATO.

Yeah. By us. Anyway, then, thoughts on this protest movement and why it is that there's always a nexus between the Trump family and like the shittiest autocrats in the world. Oh, God. Well, let's start with like the dumb part and then the good part. I mean, I'm so fucking sick. I mean, maybe one good thing that could have come from the USAID being shuttered is maybe these guys can stop. blaming everything on USAID or something.

Or what they're alluding to, I'm sure, is like George Soros and the Open Society foundations, you know. Probably that too. I mean, in February, the Serbian police rated four NGOs. They said that it was because they had USAID ties, but three of the four had gotten like a small amount of money from USAID, one had gotten none. None of them are the reason these people are protesting. And this is, that's right.

They'll go and they'll find, you know, somebody got like $50,000 grant for like new computers from USAID or something. something. And suddenly the reason that there's millions of people on the street, I mean, they assign or even open societies, which does great work. But like, if open society, you know, the Soros Foundation was as all powerful as these people, you know, we wouldn't be in the fucking mess word. Right. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Like this is not what is happening in the world, you know. So I'm just so tired. The fact that people, they've been on the same talking points about Soros and USAID and foreign funding for 20 years now, you know?

And the fact that people still swallow that shit is such like, because the amount of money that the Trump people are going to put in there in their various developments is far more than they came in from USAID or some foundations. I will say on a hopeful note, this is an entirely organic student-led movement that is able to get, like, I'm not that good of math, but it's like something like 5% of the population. for talking about 300,000 people on the street. And they're wildly popular, too. Wildly popular, innovative.

They look like they're having fun. Message to America. Like, where are we? Like, we need to get out in the streets like this. This is the only thing that has a remote chance of arresting a democratic backsliding is to see this number of people out in the streets. 300,000 people in Serbia is like having millions and millions and millions of people out in the streets here.

And I think my hope is it is showing that there are people in parts. Serbia is a tough place to protest too, right? You're taking some degree of risk. You've got a creepy, pretty autocratic president. He's kind of like Putin adjacent, right? This is, you know, hopefully breaking the fear factor for people to stand up against these far-right movements or these kind of corrupt. And it also shows you that the argument, the thing that got people in the streets at the end of the day was not just about democracy. It was more about corruption.

It was more about we know these people have patronage networks. We know that their autocracy is directly screwing us. It's leading to things like this thing collapsing and that's getting people killed. And so I think it's a message that this combination of like using corruption as a motivator and using protest as a vehicle is something that can be replicated in other places. Yeah, I mean, right, exactly. I mean, Vuchich calls the protesters, he says it's a color revolution. He says it's USAID. It's total bullshit.

The government allowed a bunch of Chinese companies to renovate this railway like a year ago. this rail station. And then this giant piece of concrete collapsed and killed 15 people. So that's why people took to the streets. And this movement, there was a great, I think it was Al Jazeera. I did a great piece on the protesters. They've been organized in a really interesting way in that there's no leader. Yes.

Like these students will get together. It's like Hong Kong. Yeah, exactly. Just like Hong Kong. Like they'll all get together in some big, you know, a hall or something, like a big lecture room. Yeah. And they'll put forward ideas and they'll all vote on them.

and they've been doing interesting things like walking on foot for miles and miles from city to city and something like 80% of the population of the Serbian population supports their demands

which are pretty focused around like transparency, accountability, not punishing the protesters supporting higher education. So you're right. I mean, I do think despite what Vucut says,

despite what fucking morons like Don Jr. said, like this is the way. Yeah. For anyone, yes, this is the way. Wink, wink, a living under a tortarian rule.

Well, and one other thing I'd say is that like, in addition to being specific in their demands, being creative in their tactics, having fun, by the way, it's a good thing to like, it's a fun protest together. It's a move and you want to be a part of. They also, they made an alliance of labor, right? And so they have labor unions who have, like, you know, their own power bases.

And so that's an interesting way to, like, you start with students and then you bring in labor and then all of a sudden you're bringing in other people, right? Yep. Yep, that's exactly right. Yeah. Not Jared Kushner buying the old defense ministry building. What's the corruption that's happening in Serbia? Is it like a few USCID grants and a few foreign foundations, or is it like the massive amounts of

Chinese money paying for shitty infrastructure projects, lining the pockets of Vouchage cronies while, you know, Jared and Rick Grinnell are making real estate deals? I think there's a little more money on one side of that ledger. With the former information minister for the genocidal war criminal. Let's just close out this section by listening to a clip of some protesters who spoke to the BBC. And I'm protesting because they want to leave. in a safer country, a country without corruption, and a country with a much higher level of democracy. This corruption has led to many lives being lost. It's just awful living in this kind of climate

in Serbia right now. I was at every protest in every city. It was magical to be in Novisat, where it all happened. It felt like a celebration of democracy. The protest gave me back the pride I had in my country because of the students who allowed me to hope, the things that things can get better and that we can do better. So not USAID. No. Wink Americans, you know what to do. This show is really pointing us to the right direction, I think.

Okay, final thing. Ben, did you know that one of China's biggest restaurants is offering refunds to an estimated 4,000 customers? Hmm. Sounds exciting, right? That sounds very exciting. Unfortunately, the reason is because a video went viral of a customer standing on a table

in pissing into a vat of boiling broth at a hot pot restaurant. Oh, no, no, no. These, so these, like, I guess some 17-year-old guys were in a private room. I'm sure they were hammered. They pushed into this hot-pot thing. It went super viral, and I guess the restaurant chain's, like, didn't respond forever. And then finally, like, people were not thrilled with the food safety implications.

So they've offered to compensate anyone who is at the chain, a part of the chain's 4,400 orders between February 24th and March 8th. So I guess, Justice in the end. Thank you, C. news for all this reporting. But I, these are the kind of stories we need. I do have like a general weariness when you go to,

I mean, the hop-hot here or two is not that good, let's face it. Like, I haven't done a lot of hop-up. I've done it. And I love anything involving like bowls with stuff in it and broth and meat and noodles and stuff.

But it just doesn't look appetizing. Like there's this, where's this liquid? They bring you these liquids that they, drop on your, I don't know, like, this is confirming my worst fears about hot pot, you know. I suppose anything could happen in the kitchen that I don't know about, but the communal space aspect. I'm excited for the feedback on this commentary because I'm sure people are going to torch us,

but I am so pathetic about spice that, like, if something is, like, Anthony Bourdain wouldn't look me in the eye where he's still alive and we talked about this, because I remember one of my first, early on, like first, not first dates, but like early on in dating Hannah, we went to this really cool, like new. high place in D.C. That did this progressive coursing. Little syrup. Yes.

Yeah, I was like a regular there. Right on like 14th. Yeah, they knew me by name there. Okay, and there was no reservation. So I, your scalp starts sweating on the second course. Dude. Yeah.

I love that place. That place was so good. By the end of the meal, they were bringing me milk after milk after milk because I was like sweating bullets. I just couldn't do it and I couldn't get through. And I wanted to eat it so badly because it was so delicious, but I just couldn't do it.

And like no amount of practice makes me better at that, which is why I haven't been like a big hot pocketer. I like spice. It's like I like actually just to put in a plug nearby, I went and got a, I know if you guys, any of the crew back there has been to a land noodle on LaBreya and San Monica. Good. I got the spicy land noodle. And I was literally, I liked the spice, but it doesn't mean you don't have natural reactions. So I just had tears like coming at.

I was like if someone could have been looking at me and just thinking I was having like some of going to breakdown because I'm literally just crying but like crying with joy. If I went on hot ones by the third winter. my face would look like a fire engine. Well, yeah, this is a problem with the... And I'd be dripping and the snot and the tears and it would be, I would never get through it. At least you weren't, wouldn't be eating piss. Yeah, I mean, just to bring this home.

And that's the problem with the hot pot. And that's the problem with Netanyahu. I don't, I don't, sure people may be triggered by this. So this is just one man's opinion. You're a lot to have an opinion on this show. But, like, I also kind of don't want to cook my own food. I mean, like, that's why you go out, right? I don't need to like...

I like Korean barbecue for that reason. That's fine. Yeah. Like, you can bring it to me, you know. Okay. Well, we'll go out. We'll get some hot pot. We'll see what everyone says to us.

Okay, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, you're going to hear Ben's interview with Pankaj Mishra about his book, The World After Gaza. So stick around for that. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. I know for a lot of people, therapy can feel like a big investment of time and money and resources. And maybe it's like nice to do, not need to have.

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That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P-L-P-com slash crooked world. Okay, I'm very pleased to be joined by Pankaj Mishra. He's the author of the new book, The World After Gaza, also one of our leading thinkers, writers, essayist. You can read his work in many different places. Pankash, thanks so much for joining us. Thanks, Ben, for having you. So I really recommend everybody read this book.

it's tough but bracing and fearless and connects so many different threads to answer kind of a question that you pose in the book that I think kind of sums it up. How did Israel a country built to house of persecuted and homeless people come to exercise such a terrible power of life and death over another population of refugees, many of them refugees in their own land? And how can the Western political and journalistic mainstream ignore even justify its clearly systematic cruelties and injustice? which, you know, I feel like the book sets out to answer that question through everything from intellectual history to political analysis to wrestling with current events. Before we dive into that, though, it's interesting we're speaking the day after Israel resumed

its bombardment of Gaza. And I wonder what your reaction is to that event, because it feels to me like, as shocking as these images are and hundreds of people killed, children killed, people are so worn down by experiencing this. How do you connect, you know, being out in the world talking about this book, which is about the world after Gaza, to the kind of resumption of what we're seeing in Gaza? Well, but it's become more and more difficult, you know, because in a way I was one of those people who did not believe the ceasefire would last. It was extremely fragile and of course it was being violated all through these previous weeks, previous four eight weeks.

But in any case, I mean, I think, you know, the sudden violation of it this morning and the, you know, number of casualties just in a single day, I think the current figures are more than 150 children. It still leaves you speechless. And again, that question, like, what strategic objectives, what geopolitical goals are being met through this kind of indiscriminate bombing? And it's very clear, again, the answer is that Netanyahu is doing this in order to preserve his, at this point, weakening hold on power.

we know that he's, you know, a few steps away from prison. And he keeps postponing that sort of moment somehow. And there are people in his cabinet who help him do this. And of course, there is now the Trump administration willing to give him a green light to really whatever he wants to do at this point. So I think in a way we are in a more kind of desperate stage where the culture and politics of cruelty is now, you know, truly global, especially after the arrival of President Trump in the White House.

And there is simply no really recourse to any ideas of, you know, sustainable peace or let alone, you know, things like compassion or empathy. Well, I think what's so important about your book is you step back from this, and you look at the kind of narratives and identity politics, for lack of a better way of putting it, that helped produce the moment we're in. And, you know, I should just say, some people may find this a challenging read. I hope people read this book who might go into that being inclined to disagree with it. I think that's actually the most important reader for you.

So I'm going to go through some of those pieces of it. And one that you talk about a lot is the interconnect. between Israel and the Holocaust and how that has evolved over time. And I'll tell you, Pankaj, I was very challenged by this because I'm one of those people, I'm a secular Jew who grew up and my identity was not religious, but it was tied to the Holocaust, right? We had family in the Holocaust and Israel was a part of the reckoning for the Holocaust and kind of my self-conception, right, that it was an achievement to have this kind of safe haven. And yet you kind of build I think a pretty compelling case that it wasn't immediately, you know, Zionism obviously predated

the Holocaust and even when the state of Israel was declared independent, the Holocaust did not play as central role in its identity as it came to do later. And you kind of talk about, and to quote from the book, this deepening fixation with the Shoah and official Israeli rhetoric and a radical re-envisioning of Israel's identity and purpose as a country that would forever be on guard against another Shoah, which I think is a statement that nobody would really disagree with. Talk about why that, what, to take on T you up here, you kind of make an argument that that kind of infinitely justifies anything Israel does vis-a-vis security threats vis-a-vis-vis-vis-vis-vis the Palestinians, that if you are imbued with that kind of moral mission to prevent another Holocaust, you,

you kind of have a certain impunity. Why did you decide to focus on this piece of the conflict and the Israeli identity? You know, because Ben, like many, many people out there, I tended to think that the memory of the Holocaust, at least, you know, as commemorated in Israel, flowed very naturally out of this, you know, extraordinary traumatic experience of it. And there were survivors who then, you know, transmitted their memories to their children and so within the culture at large, that memory was slowly sort of institutionalized in a way. But then much to my great shock, I discovered that was certainly not the case, and that, in fact, the survivors were treated

with great contempt when they first arrived in the state of Israel because they seemed to project an image of weakness that the leaders of the state of Israel at that point recoiled from, because they were invested in a very different image of Israel altogether. It's this very strong country. So it's only in the 1960s that politicians turned to invoking the Holocaust as a sort of shared narrative as a kind of nation-binding glue for the Israeli population. You have to remember, you know,

last by the Israeli population at that point, in fact, more than 50 percent consisted of people who had come to Israel from Arab countries. And so they had to be educated into this, you know, European experience and to this European narrative. So I think unscrupulous, far-right politicians started to deploy the Shoah, you know, precisely at the point, again worth remembering when, in the 1960s, when Israel actually becomes a supreme military power in the Middle East. So on one hand, you have, you know, this extraordinary military power, which is, you know, capable of taking on

simultaneously several Arab nation-states, several Arab armies and defeating them. At the same time, there is this emphasis on the idea that the Shoa happened once, it could happen again, and that you're living in a country that's surrounded by potential Nazis, you know, that the Israel's borders are, as Moshe Dan put it, the borders of Auschwitz. So this kind of, you know, very deliberately cultivated paranoia is something that replaces really, you know, what might have been for some people at least a memory flowing out of that particular experience. So what I'm trying to say is in the book is that, you know, individual memory is one thing, collective memories quite another. Collective memories always constructed with very particular ideological ends. And that is certainly the case here with the memory of the Holocaust in Israel.

Well, and I want to apply this to a number of things that are happening around the world right now. So because basically, you know, part of what follows from that idea is that the risk of a genocide of the Jewish people, the risk of any Semitism, you kind of show how it transferred from actual Nazis, you know, the German flavor, to kind of putting that on the Palestinians or the Arabs, right? That even though there was no evidence that they, you know, they never, they weren't responsible for the Holocaust, right? But what confuses me, Pankaj, you know, what do you make of the fact that today, the discourse on anti-Semitism, particularly in this country, tends to focus almost wholly on Hamas or the kind of left, right? So Hamas, which did horrific, horrific pogrom on October 7th, but I don't think anyone would think

that Hamas is capable of destroying the state of Israel. But even to go beyond that, you know, college kids getting deported from, you know, Colombia because they pose some violent threat to Jews, there's this kind of this zero tolerance for essentially criticism of Israel or solidarity with a certain kind of Palestinian politics. At the same time that we see a rise of the very far-right ethno-nationalism in Europe and the United States that I think actually, was the political force that led to the actual Holocaust. So what do you make of this redirection that at precisely the time that we see these kind of echoes of the 30s in the rise of ethno-nationalism in the West?

Instead of focusing on that, the entire anti-Semitism seems to be focused on either the Palestinians or the Western left. Well, it's fascinating. I mean, I think it attests in a very significant way to the success of the Israeli narrative. You know that we are under sort of constant. we live with this constant threat of being exterminated. And this is a narrative that the state of Israel has very successfully persuaded many other people

outside of Israel to believe and to subscribe to. So this is why you have this sort of, you know, extraordinary disparity or discrepancy where, you know, Israel is a formidable military power. You can see that right away, you know, it's engaged in a war with Yemen, with Syria, with Lebanon, and of course it's bombing Gaza as we speak. doing that without any serious military response whatsoever from any of these parties that it's

engaged in this war with. So you have, you know, Israel becoming stronger and stronger, partly thanks to American support and at the same time becoming closer and closer to far-right formations across Europe and, of course, the United States, the Christian evangelicals. So the object of anxieties for many people in the United States, which is the state of Israel, What they have really not noticed is how in kind of really disturbing ways, this state that they watch to be protective of, a sympathetic to, has gone down this very dangerous, very sinister path of closer and closer alliances with not only far-right political groups or personalities or governments in Europe, but actually actively, explicitly anti-Semitic movements.

There was a piece on Hararets only yesterday. about this, you know, very, very close links being developed between the state of Israel and, you know, various notoriously anti-Semitic organizations in Europe. So this conversation in the United States seems to be completely detached from these developments, you know, the internal developments within the state of Israel, the rise, the emergence of far right, and the fact that the Israelis themselves, the Israeli regime is today, you know, establishing intimate relationships. with some of the most powerful anti-Semites in the world. You also talk about the relationship between Narendra Modi and Bibi Netanyahu.

I want you to just describe for listeners who might not be familiar, like what are the overlapping roots and the overlapping project of the Hindu nationalisms we see from Modi and the kind of ethnic nationalism we see from Netanyahu? And is this the future of politics? I mean, because it feels like that all around the world there's a different flavor of this, you know? You know, I grew up in India, in a Hindu nationalist family, you know, very sympathetic to Israel.

And partly because, you know, Israel we saw as a country that was merciless in its treatment of, you know, potentially treacherous forces such as, you know, the Muslim population of Palestine. So that was one major sort of, source of admiration for us. And I think today, there are many more people in India who feel that way. You know, Netanyahu has his biggest fan base in India. And of course, the Modi government is actually an exception within the global South, within Asia and Africa and Latin America,

in having such close relations. And I think it's partly because, again, I think like other far-right formations or ethno-nationalist movements and personalities, they see Israel essentially as getting away, doing a lot of things that they would like to pull off, but can't. So Israel really is a great sort of object of envy for them. And I think there's a kind of ideological affinity, of course, with the majoritarian ethno-nationalist project. But I think on a psychological level, there is this great feeling of identification with a country that can be so indiscreet. criminally brutal and uncompromising. And that is something they themselves aspire to.

So it works at very many different levels. It's not just people point to arm sales or increasing trade or India becoming part of some Middle Eastern kind of anti-China group or narrative. But I think it's also really important to look at these ideological and psychological affinities between not only India and Israel, but also other far-right groups and Israel today. Well, if I were to play devil's advocate and say from the perspective of a Modi or Netanyahu or any number of these figures, Putin has his own version of this history, Orban, Hungary, lost territory after World War I, et cetera, I think the way they wouldn't

describe it, but I think the way their mind might work is this world is corrupt, it's cruel, it's a tough place. And you know what? If we want to to survive in this world, we might just need to be cruel ourselves, you know, that the Indians suffered under the yoke of the British and before that the Mughal Empire, I guess, and, you know, the Russians got humiliated at the end of the Cold War. Obviously, the Jewish people have suffered for centuries. And you know what? You might not, you know, guys like you and me might not like it, but this is how the world works. And if you don't have this kind of ethno-national, strong man type state, you're going to end up being on the other end of that, you know? How do you wrestle with that possibility that

maybe they're right? I think, you know, I mean, that's certainly the trend right now. And it was, of course, a trend back in the 19th century, you know, scramble for Africa, all the sort of clashes between imperialist powers. And then we saw two world wars in the 20th century. I think the whole point of countries like India or places where people fought devoted a large part of their lives to fighting imperialism and fighting for national sovereignty was that we create a new world order where this kind of social Darwinist survivalist mentality, which causes constant conflict, causes forces nations to live in this atmosphere of fear and paranoia, that we can get away from all that, create society or international global order based on some shared norms,

some norms of civilization. So if you want to go back to there, you know, to those dark days of, you know, racial imperialism in the 19th century, kind of naked exploitation, naked expansion, well, you know, maybe these people have a point, but if we don't want to go back there and find ourselves in a Third World War, then I think we need to move away from these, you know, sort of fantasies of a purified national community, a national community purified of its treacherous elements. All this is really potentially extremely violent, not just to the nations themselves,

but also to world peace at large. So I think these people may have persuaded some parts of their population that this is the right way. But I think you can say very clearly a future full of more and more conflict, if not catastrophic world. world. Yeah. No, the history shows it leads to bad places. And I want to ask you about this, because the world order seems to have unraveled, at least as the post-World War II U.S.

led order. Another core point of your book, which I think, again, I hope people in this country read because you make it very persuasively, is that for most of the world's people, right, there's not the same narrative of the last hundred years where the central events were World War II and the Cold War and the Holocaust, it's actually the story of decolonization, which encompasses, by the way, many Holocaust of non-white peoples and many liberation struggles. And you're kind of reflecting the perspective, you know, to use the shorthand that can be problematic, but the global South view, essentially, the decolonized world. It's probably looking at what's happening in the U.S. now. It's certainly looking at what's

happening in Gaza now and see. kind of confirming all of their worst experiences and perspectives on the West. Is there a potential as someone who's written about this in other books too? Do you see any potential for some different kind of concept of order to generate not from within the West but from within the global South? What is the potential for something to emerge out of this wreckage of a period of history we're living through in which some of the the countries that are generally seen as more marginal to world events, but are rising and power and influence, could we see something emerge from that narrative that is more durable

than the order that President Trump is currently deconstructing? Well, it's interesting you asked that, you know, because obviously India is not the leader in the way it used to be of the, you know, non-West, as it were. It was once, you know, it had this very morally prestigious position. The leader right now is South Africa, South Africa, which is kind of insisting that certain norms be observed, and for that reason, we know it risks a great deal by going to the Hague, by filing that case against the state of Israel. But again, it comes out of that long experience of fighting against, you know, racist imperialism, of fighting against racial discrimination and saying, look, we can't have this anymore. We can't have, you know,

a sort of a nation whose borders have never been clearly defined that keeps expanding all the time, then periodically bombing people. So I suppose the South African initiative in recent months, a very risky initiative for which it is being severely punished as we speak by the Trump administration, is probably one sign that within the global south, some of those energy, that went into the anti-apartheid struggle or went into the struggle for decolonization, the urge for a new world order, those impulses, those desires are probably still alive and can occasionally take surprising forms like the South African case against Israel, which again I say was a huge gamble and a huge risk, and obviously they are paying the price

for it right now. And one last question, another one of your books that I really liked is from the ruins of empire, where you detail some of the writers and thinkers from within these parts of the world, whether it's China, India, the Islamic world, who kind of ceded what became liberation movements. What is the role of the writer today? Because it can probably feel so overwhelming. People are on social media. People are in this kind of pretty dumbed-down discourse. you or someone who've written for, you know, the New Yorker, the New York Review Books, London Review of books, write these books.

How do you think about the role of a political writer in this kind of very, both scary and sometimes stupid period we're living through? You know, that's, I think, Ben, I sometimes feel like all we can do is kind of keep opening up fresh perspectives, keep exploring experiences that haven't been explored before, persuade people to step out of their, you know, boxes, their silos, their particular narratives, and make them see that there are other ways of understanding this, other ways of perceiving the world, and try and make them see how the other looks at it, how people in different parts of the world look at it. And again, as I said, there are so many

histories, and those are the histories that I've been engaging with, that have not really been properly told, because who will tell them? You need a lot of institutions, a lot of institutional power, a lot of cultural power, to relate those histories. And I think as, you know, responsible citizens, whether as writers or just ordinary citizens, it's our kind of responsibility to bring those experiences into play, to make people think that there is not only just this one story. There are so many different stories out there. And, you know, if, if as writers, we can insist on the multiplicity of these stories and, you know, the multiple perspective. is that go with those stories, then perhaps we would have made, you know, a tiny contribution.

Obviously, we don't have any kind of political power. We can, you know, we watch as helplessly as anyone else, the mayhem in the world today. But at least, you know, we can make a small difference just by creating this little archive that, you know, people can, can look to for some kind of intellectual and even perhaps emotional support. Yeah. Well, look, I really appreciate the conversation. The book is The World After Gaza. People should read it. If you have been critical of Israel, you will learn much about the history of how we got here. If you are supportive of Israel, I think it's even more important, again, for you to kind of wrestle with some of the difficult questions that are raised in the book. So Pankash, thanks for writing the book and thanks for joining us.

Thanks so much, Ben, for having me. Thanks again to Pankaj Mishra for joining the show. What else should we get? We'll get a little hot pot. I do. I love the Korean barbecue in this area. Korean barbecue in L.A. is just off the charts. Incredible. Good. What else we... We got good Vietnamese. I mean, like, there's pockets of amazing Vietnamese around, you know, the... I mean, L.A.'s got a good game. Yeah, we got a good friend team.

All right, that's it for this week. Talk to you soon. Ponset World is a crooked media production. Our senior producer is Alona Minkowski. Our associate producer is Michael Goldsmith. Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor, and Ben Rhodes. Say hi, Ben. Hi. The show is mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.

Jordan Canter is our audio engineer. Audio support by Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis. Thanks to our digital team, Ben Heffcote, Mia Kelman, William Jones, David Tolls, and Molly LaBelle. Natalie Harenger is our head of news and programming. Matt DeGroote is our head of production. If you want to get ad-free episodes, exclusive content, and more, consider joining our friends of the pod subscription community

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