The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 2726 - Israel Report: Netanyahu Knew; The Rise Of The Right in Germany w/ Hanno Hauenstein

Episode Date: September 8, 2026

Welcome back to The Majority Report On today's program: Israeli journalist at Haaretz, Shlomi Eldar, reports on Benjamin Netanyahu receiving advance notice of the October 7 attacks from the UAE president. Netanyahu reportedly failed to brief any of Israel's security chiefs. Donald Trump calls the war on Iran "small potatoes" compared to other wars and is unmoved by a reporter reminding him that 18 people died, responding by rambling about America's space superiority. Trump lies about being carried out of a building by buff firemen on 9/11, a lie that he started spreading in 2021. The truth is on 9/11, Trump was calling in to the Howard Stern show to brag about how he now has the tallest building in New York Hanno Hauenstein, a Berlin-based independent journalist and publisher of the Nullpunkt newsletter on Substack, joins to discuss the recent electoral gains by Germany's far-right Alternative for Germany party. In the Fun Half: Fox News is scared of AOC's outreach to MAHA enthusiasts, acknowledging that it is brilliant politics by the Representative from New York. Fox reporter Rachel Campos-Duffy sounds surprised at data showing that 89% of Americans agree that the government should play a role in ensuring food safety. We take a look back at when Republicans threw a hissy fit over Michelle Obama's healthy school lunch program and the subsequent roll back during Trump's first term. Rudy Guiliani goes on Newsmax to rant and rave about Mayor Zohran Mamdani attending a 9/11 memorial event. Jasper Nanthiel makes a call-to-action to Jewish Americans to look into what institutions and synagogues are supporting in Israel and if this is something that one would want to be associated with. All that and more. On Sunday, October 4, Emma will be in Los Angeles doing a Bitchuation Room Live with Francesca Fiorentini at the Lodge Room. Get tickets here. To connect and organize with your local ICE rapid response team visit ICERRT.com The Congress switchboard number is [phone]. You can use this number to connect with either the U.S. Senate or the House of Representatives. Follow us on TikTok here: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the AM Quickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase Check out today's sponsors: ZOCDOC: Find and book the right doctor https://Zocdoc.com/MAJORITY  SUNSET LAKE CBD: Head to SunsetLakeCBD.com and use coupon code LABORDAY26 to save 25% on Sunset Lake Farms CBD Oil Tinctures. This sale ends September 14th at midnight Eastern time. Follow the crew on X @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech On Instagram: @MrBryanVokey Check out Matt's show, Left Reckoning, on YouTube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon's YouTube channel: https://ww.youtube.com/Th3Discourse Check out Ava Raiza's music here: https:/www.youtube.com/@avaraiza

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And now time for the show. It is Tuesday, September 8th, 2006. My name is Sam Cedar. This is the five-time award-winning majority report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, USA. On the program today, Hano, Howenstein, Berlin-based independent journalist and publisher of the Noll punked newsletter on substack to discuss the recent electoral gains by Germany's far-right alternative for Germany party. Also on the program today, Canada strikes back with retaliatory tariffs. This as Trump threatens sales of Canadian bombardier jets, UK, to impose trade restrictions

on Israeli settlements. Houtis attacked Saudi oil facilities and new report blockbuster in Israeli press. Netanyahu received explicit warning days before October 7th and hid it from Israeli security chiefs. Hmm. Health and human services cancels infant mortality

and postpartum grants. to focus on more research on sperm counts. Mom Donnie launches the First and Nation Office of Worker Power and also releases 25-year-old 9-11 documents showing Giuliani and Bloomberg lied to New Yorkers about the air quality in lower Manhattan. Primary today in New Hampshire, one in Rhode Island tomorrow. Meanwhile, ICE given president. permission to force feed a Cuban hunger striker with a gastric tube. All this and more on today's

majority report. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks so much for joining us. Newsday Tuesday. Newsday Tuesday. I almost fooled myself. It is not Monday. I know it. And so a good opportunity to wish everybody a late, happy Labor Day. Yes, happy Labor Day. Hope it was fun. Exactly. For everybody. And that you had time off. Brian was very busy booking the show, though. Yes.

I don't stop. Nope. Labor Day. I work. I grind. Yep, Labor Day for us, but not for you, as it should be. And we're on camera. We are on camera.

It works. The talent doesn't have to. Yes. I mean, thank you. But we will, of course, put you down for an extra credit on the pizza party day. And you'll get an extra slot. extra pepperoni. Yeah, exactly.

There you go. At least I get to go in line for it before me. There's this blockbuster report in Harats regarding the warning

that Netanyahu got in not just days. I mean, I think it was really. Ten days. A week and a half is how they describe it in Harats. It was specifically from the UAE president bin Zayed, known as MBZ, I guess.

And it was literally delivered from Yaya Sinwar, who was the Hamas leader in Gaza, there were ongoing negotiations and the Israelis were dragging their feet. Sinwar, in really an incredible telegraphing of the plans to break through the, essentially, the prison bars that Gaza had been placed in, warned on multiple occasions to the mediators and to the people that he was negotiating with tell the Israelis we're planning something really big if they don't engage they stop slow walking these negotiations

I mean because Simmar understood the asymmetrical nature of where they're at they were at in Gaza under the blockade since 2006 versus Israel like that And what Israel would do? Right, exactly. So that was an effort to put pressure on them, it seems like. And then Netanyahu was informed and claimed that, well, the real

thing is in the West Bank. And oddly, depending on your perspective, not only was convinced that Gaza, an attack from or within Gaza was supposedly not likely.

He didn't even inform his national security apparatus of this dire warning that he had received from the UAE president. Here is a clip from

Shlomi Eldar Haret's writer on this expose. It's in Hebrew I will read the translation. Netanyahu did not pass the warning he received. On to the heads of Israel's security established, not to the IDF chief,

not the head of the defense minister or the head of Mossad. Revealed. This is the most complex scoop I've uncovered in my decades as a journalist. While writing the book, Hostages, 843 days of abandonment, Rudy Yuval and I conducted dozens of interviews with sources in Israel, and around the world and reviewed hundreds of recordings and internal conversations. All of this led to one crucial conversation that took place a week and a half before October 7th for 45 minutes.

UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed spoke with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. During the call, bin Zayed warned that he had received information that Hamas's Yaya Zinwar was planning a major attack in the near future. According to a close advisor who was present during the conversation, Bin Zayyad spent several minute is trying to impress upon Netanyahu that something big was about to happen and that Israel needed to be prepared for such a scenario. But Netanyahu did not pass the warning onto the heads of Israel's security establishment, not to the IDF chief, not to the head of Shimbab, the defense minister, or the head of Mossad. You did not inform them of it. The existence of this conversation

is being revealed here for the first time. The story is quite extensive. And it has political relevance within Israel right now because, as we've talked about many times, there is really no meaningful political left constituency in Israel. Right now, Benjamin Netanyahu's best bet to get reelected is to give the settlers every single thing that they could possibly want, as he's been doing in the West Bank so far, just handing it over to Ben Gavir. and those escalations have been obvious for us all to see. But what could actually hurt him in this upcoming elections is this very issue. In Israel, they don't care about the genocide and the Palestinian people for the most part,

but what they do care about is October 7th and what happened and the lack of, at the very least, the incompetence that led to this moment. But it raises obviously other questions because of what the long, told plans for Gaza and the ethnic cleansing would be. Is this incompetence or was this Benjamin Netanyahu seeing an opportunity? And it's not conspiratorial to ask those questions. It's not definitive. We don't know, we don't have an answer yet. We do know that like the Nova Music Festival, by the way, was supposed to wrap up on that Friday, October 6th. And they went to the IDF and said, can we extend it? Ryan Grimm was talking about this this morning. And if the IDF had been informed by,

Benjamin Netanyahu, the chief of staff of the IDF, was one of the people he didn't speak to. Perhaps they wouldn't have extended the festival knowing that there was a potential security breach happening on that Saturday, and yet it went on. And it provided a very convenient pretext for the genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip. What also strikes me is that Sinwar was so, I mean, on two separate occasions, I think, as outlined in this, like I say, really extensive report by Haaretz. He very explicitly telegraphed that we have a major operation plant. I think he referred to it as essentially like an earthquake that would happen in the wake of

this. And so it's quite clear that this was a negotiation tactic. and a essentially a last resort attempt by Sinwar to get the Israelis to engage in

negotiations. In good faith right? Because that he'd been as we've seen now, the Americans are doing this to the Iranians. When you feel like you have escalation dominance, you feel like you have more firepower, they the arrogance of our like these Western powers right now is to use the ruse of negotiations to lull their opponent into a false sense of security in some instances or in other instances just stall and

stall and never have their needs or address like as I said Gaza had been under a brutal blockade since 2006 according to this reporting um they had come to some terms on the economic uh terms but that Netanyahu kept coming back to the Hamasnese negotiators with a reduced total for the hostages that they were going to release back the Palestinian prisoners slash hostages, which is another indication that these tactics were not in good faith. And I suspect would Netanyahu, you know, felt that once the, if the Abraham Accords would continue on and go to their next stage, that the Palestinians would be that much more diminished in their negotiating power.

And I suspect also that Sinwar had a similar notion. But it really is stunning that this guy is out there, like offering such dire warnings beforehand. And Netanyahu, not only ignored them but didn't pass them on to a security apparatus and what about that report that he was

slowly even respond on the day that came out last week he was slow to respond on the day and his excuse was yeah and his excuse was I was sleeping and no one woke me up like I mean it literally sounds like I mean been there

doesn't that sound like your teenage son if he's late to school? Yes. No one woke me up. Or your 40-year-old podcast producer. But it's going to be, it's going to be, it's going to be, it's going to be, it will be fascinating to see how much of the rhetoric that has been deployed around A, the idea of Hamas, you know, attempting suicide in this instance, being completely irrational. again, like the fact that there were these warnings issued, the, the UAE president did not get this information through their intelligence services.

Exactly. It came directly from Sinwar. And why would it go to the UAE if the, you know, Sinwar, that is the closest. Well, that's where the moderators. But that means that you want that information, obviously, I think, to get to the Israeli apparatus. Oh, he literally said. he is quoted as or the the reports were that he literally said tell the Israelis.

And when the moderators came back and negotiators came back, he said, did you tell them? Tell them again. And so this was clearly a part of his strategy there. And it was shocking. It's just shocking that Netanyahu did not even pass this information on internally. Yeah, that's the thing that, like, the Heretz article does get into motivations and, you know, the motivation of Netanyahu not wanting to reach or even hint at any deal with Hamas because of, like you said about the Abraham Accords. But the motivations, I think need to be interrogated are the ones for not telling your security and why. It's one thing to like, you know, George Bush it, when your security services come with you and say bin Laden prime to strike.

America and he does this in you know early August and he looks at the presidential daily briefing and says and this is a quote apparently you've covered your ass now and it's one thing to reject what your intelligence agencies are telling you it's another not to inform them of such a direct warning that has been given but the other part that will be telling aside from what it also like sort of expresses in terms of Hamas that in fact they were looking out for the interests of Gazans and once they're essentially like the negotiations were exhausted even to the point where under you know issuing a threat like this got no response from the Israelis it also will speak to the Israeli society's desire for for a security I mean it's hard to imagine a

scenario that is you know even if regardless of whether you perceive this as sheer incompetence or something more nefarious in trying to create a context which would justify at least within Israeli society, the ultimate genocidal attacks on Gaza. It also speaks to sort of like the Israeli public's disposition. We are told by a certain type of critic of Israel, that this is a function of Netanyahu and a couple of crazy right-wingers, who just happened to have some of the most important positions in Israeli society. And despite the fact that Netanyahu has been prime minister for a quarter more of Israel's existence.

I guess in Israel, all the bad apples flow to the top and the good ones sink to the bottom. That's how it works? Apparently. But it'll be interesting to see the Israeli population. appetite to actually be concerned about security as opposed to their own, yes, ethnic cleansing project of the Palestinians. And it's interesting that you bring up 9-11, just because Benjamin Netanyahu was quoted after 9-11 about it being, quote, very good.

He said to the New York Times. Then he edited himself, they report, well, not very good. but it will generate immediate sympathy. He predicted the attack would, quote, strengthen the bomb between our two peoples because we've experienced terror over so many decades, but the United States has now experienced

a massive hemorrhaging of terror. So you're suggesting he understood certain dynamics that happened in the wake of a massive terrorist tech. That is what I am suggesting, that is what I'm suggesting and what could be made possible. Yes, yeah.

Killed, you know, a million people in Iraq. He's like, can we get that done in Gaza? I'd love it. And they're now, recovering over the weekend. This is not getting talked about enough. It still is endlessly frustrating to me that we're using death toll numbers from early 2024, but they are holding mass funerals right now for the remains of children that are being covered under the, recovered under the rubble in parts of Gaza. And this is not being reflected in the updated death totals, but

Israel's been bulldozing or gathering all this rubble, destroying certain genocidal evidence. But for the evidence that remains, we're seeing body after body come out of the rubble and mass funerals being held. So we're not going to know for a long time what the true death toll is, but this is what Netanyahu obviously wanted. In the meantime, Donald Trump and we, We'll obviously talk about the fallout from this report if there is one. Over the weekend, Donald Trump was holding court and with just another strange array of his sycophants.

And he was asked a question of the press. Now, gas apparently, Diesel hit a all-time record the other day last week. and gas now is at its highest price, I think, in this country on average in maybe ever. And we're starting to see more and more pieces in the U.S. and international press outlining how this attack on Iran could be and probably is the greatest strategic. strategic blunder in the history of the United States, with the petro dollar essentially being broken as a function of this. And here's Donald Trump saying, eh, no bigs. Mr. President, the vice president said yesterday that he would not describe the conflict with

Iran as a war. But the U.S. resumed strikes for the first time in recent weeks. Can you explain to the American people if this is not a war? What exactly is it? Well, I'll tell you what. A lot of people don't call it a war. I call it a military conflict because it's small potatoes for us. It's not a big thing. We did Venezuela and we did this. In Venezuela, we lost nobody and this we lost 18 people. And in Vietnam, you lost 100,000 people.

And in other conflicts, you lost tens of thousands of people. I would say that it's intermittent. You know, we do intermittent strikes. So I heard what he said, and it was interesting because I think that There's a lot of two. We're not fighting right now. There's no fighting. We're taking out a lot of oil. We control the harmless trade. We control it very strongly. We did a hit on certain areas around the harmless street. We took out their radar, as you know that very well. We took out some aircraft. We took out some other things that protect for them. Used to protect the harmless street when they had it under very tight control. But now we control it. And we're taking out last night. We took a lot of boats. A lot of ships came through. And they come through every day. So I can understand what he's saying. It's a military conflict, but it's very intermittent.

I could see somebody not calling it. But it certainly doesn't feel like small potatoes, Mr. President. 18 people have died. It certainly doesn't feel like small potatoes. 18 service members have died. We're seeing record long deployments. You initially said this last. Record long?

Why is it record long? How long were we in Vietnam? How long were we in Vietnam? No, no, how long were we in Vietnam? We're in five months now. days at sea. And you know what we did in five months? They're not going to have a nuclear weapon.

That's what we did. Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. Because if they did, you probably wouldn't be standing here very long. Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. We've stopped them from having. We may hit pickaxe very soon because if there was anything going on with pickaxe. But because of all of the things, you know, we're leading in space now by a lot. When I first took over my first term, we were a distant third to Russia and to China.

China. We're leading in space. We know everybody that's moving at Pickax. We know everybody that's moving everywhere all over Iran. And if anything goes bad, we hit him. We hit him. Pickax is a mountain. He's conflating in his mind the length of the Iran non-war excursion with the deployments, which that's not the case. Excuse me. How long were they there in Iran? Also, I accidentally just told everybody. that we have better satellite technology than people thought, whatever, it doesn't matter.

I've really got to convince you that this is working out great. Do you remember when Obama saluted with the coffee cup and that was called disrespectful towards the troops? I'm just throwing that out there when you have the American president saying that 18 service

members dying. Small potatoes. This is small potatoes. I could see many people not calling it a war. I call it a military operation. He's also like completely rambling this morning at the 9-11 memorial thing and it's just now mom donnie is being told that it's disrespectful for the new york city mayor to even attend because he's muslim like look at these different standards that are applied to white people in this country or versus if you're black and brown and tell me we don't live in a racist country right now here yeah here he is talking about

uh his experience on 9-11 which just coincidentally seems to keep changing all the time If you got two firemen, we thought it was coming down on top of us and two firemen, big, strong guys. And I'm not the smallest guy in the world. They grabbed me under the arms and said, got to get out of here. And they literally lifted me up. This is not easy to do. Best day in my life. I'm big.

They lifted me up and they started running with me. I said, fellas, I can run myself. But they were amazing. But they thought it was coming down. It didn't come down. U.S. Steel. What if you get two fighters. What?

He's now claiming... Was he talking 1993, or was he talking... Well, maybe it's a fuller context there. That is insane. Yeah. Trump was... There we go. Context.

Trump was miles away from Ground Zero on 9-11, speaking by phone from his office. He visited the area a few days later. His story of being lifted from the rubble by firefighters first appeared in 2021 and lacks corroborate evidence. No, really? He was... When he called into Howard Stern...

Yes. On that day, he was, he had nothing, he didn't say anything about that. Looks like I got the tallest building in New York. I mean, he's ran as easy in it. One of, one of, one of the big strong firefighters was holding the cell phone up to his mouth as he carried him out of the rubble where he called him to Howard Stern. What is Benny Johnson saying? Apparently he's, he repeated this claim of Donald Trump spent 9-11 marching into a war zone of fire. I mean, that's just something.

Do we have that? Can you find that? We need to find more context. The Howard Stern. call? Because that doesn't sound like a guy who's just like, I just got lifted out of there. It's not like a guy who was just very excited about what the implications

were for his own buildings. Yeah, let me see if I could find that. U.S. deal. U.S. deal. Here it is. Was he not aware that the towers did end up a collect? Here we go. You have one of the landmark buildings

down in the financial district, 40 Wall Street. Did you have any damage or did you know, what's happened down there? Well, it was an amazing phone call. I made 40 Wall Street actually was the second tallest building in downtown Manhattan, and it was actually before the World Trade Center was

the tallest, and then when they built the World Trade Center, it became known as the second tallest, and now it's the tallest. You have one of the landmarks building. Now it's the tallest. In his memory, it was too strong firemen that pulled him up by his arms.

I'm telling you, his dementia is gay as hell. He's bisexual. He is bisexual. I mean, he loves, yeah. He loves makeup. He's strong for me. I'm like, guys, I can run.

In fact, no, we love to pageantry. Yeah, yeah. Tonight, in the White House, we're going to recreate the scene. We're all going to wear boxer briefs. It's a yearly competition which firemen get to carry Trump. Exactly. That's what America 250 was really about. Who's going to be central?

casting to pick Trump up for the Firefighter 9-11 porno cosplay. Just a reminder, starting Thursday night that the 10th, the Republican midterm convention starts, and apparently it's just going to be basically Donald Trump and J.D. Vance talking. Trumpapalooza, they're calling it. and Republican law candidates are all afraid to attend. Yes. It sounds like anybody who's in a, I will make this bet right now that we will not see a single person, a Republican attending, who is within four points in the polls of their races. We will not see any of the endangered Republican.

candidates for Senate and barely like it's going to be Donald Trump Jady Vance and Max Miller are going to be the only people that we're going to see there. Well, it is amazing too because I saw this this morning so it fits into exactly what you're saying. Playbook is reporting that this Republican in a kind of more frontline district in California, young Kim, deleted almost all the references to Trump from her campaign. And Trump and America First are now completely off her campaign website's homepage. I do get a bit of Schidenfreude, which we're about to talk about German politics. Hey, when I see these Republicans have to do this like Sisyphian exercise of trying to like cling

to Trump in the years where he's on the ballot. And then when he's off the ballot, when his celebrity name no longer benefits them, they have to distance themselves from the sky who's as unpopular as ever. So live by the cult, die by the cult. Mother Fers. I like the way you did that with the censoring yourself.

I did. I did, right? We're going to take a, in just a moment, we're going to be talking to Hano Hohenstein, a Berlin-based independent journalist, publisher of the NullPunk newsletter on Substack to discuss the recent electoral gains by Germany's

far-right AFD. or alternative for Germany party. First a word from our sponsor. I want to thank Zoc Doc for sponsoring today's episode. My best experience with Zoc Doc was now a couple of years ago. You know, at my age, I have all my doctors that I need for the most part. But I was on the road, had a dental emergency. and I found a great dentist through Zoc Doc.

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Check it out today. We'll put that information in the podcast and YouTube description. And a quick break. We'll be back with Hano Hohenstein. We are back. Sam Cedar, Emma Vigland on the Majority Report. I want to welcome to the program, Hanow Hounstein. Berlin-based independent journalist, publisher of the Null Punkd newsletter on Substack to discuss the recent electoral gains by Germany's far-right alternative for Germans' party.

Hano, thanks so much for joining us. Will you just start with giving us a brief history of the AFD? I'm not sure that folks have a sense of where the AFD sits within German politics and also the concept of a fortified democracy that Germany ostensibly operates under. Well, thanks so much for having me. The AFT came into existence in the early 2010s, 2013, 2014, as a kind of like, ordo-liberal Euro-sceptic kind of party and had right-wing tendencies, but these weren't as kind of pronounced invisible in the beginning as they turned out to be

the years after. I think with the quote-unquote migration crisis, with like millions of refugees coming to Europe and Germany in 2015, the FDA really started capitalizing on like the anti-immigration rhetoric much more heavily and turned ever more extreme. Up to the point that at this point, even the forfassung Schutz, the something like the internal constitutional protection service, which is like an intelligence service in Germany, is calling the IFDA right being extremists.

And I think at this point, because you asked about like, what does this mean for German democracy, right? I think it means something that we really normalize the far-right party, which really has clear fascist undertones, I would personally say. And the election just now shows that this is no longer a fringe phenomenon. This is something we'll have to deal with on a federal level, on a state level, and it's really kind of like it's a dominating force right now. My understanding is that there is, if not an explicit.

obviously you cite the I can't say that word of the of the of uh... uh... Arsaint Schutz? Yes. Uh, the fashion shots.

Um, but also there is my understanding is there is a implicit apparatus if you will to ostensibly protect German democracy from far right movements like this

where there is a tradition of party uniting across ideological lines to inhibit the success of parties like that. We just expand on that and then we'll talk about it in the context of what happens next in this particular region where the AFD gains some traction. Well, there has been a long-standing push against the AFD by the established liberal slash conservative centrist parties in Germany, the CDU, the SPD, the Greens, which titles itself Brandmauer, like a firewall, basically,

a cordon, sanitaire, if you will, a kind of pronounced commitment to not enter into coalitions with the AFD. And ever since the last federal elections, which happened fairly recently, the AFD is now in the Bundestag with 130 seats out of, I think, 630 altogether. So it is already a massive force in the national representation. So this kind of firewall has become more fractious, I'd say, at points. But this is basically the main pronounced idea to keep the IFD at bay. And I think I personally would say that the problem with this is as much as it's an honorable project,

but it hasn't really offered an alternative vision. Because what the AFD is capitalizing on, what they're using is like economic insecurity and grievances that people have unemployment, all these kind of like real issues that people are dealing with. I think there's definitely neo-Nazis and committed racist within the party. But many people who vote for the AFD,

especially now in Saxony, Anhal, I think they do so out of a sense. of real economic insecurity. And if you ask me, I think the established liberal parties haven't really offered a vision to combat that and to kind of offer something else. And I think in a way, this state election in Saxony-Anhalt where this is just like a spectacular result.

You know, 44% we don't have a two-party system in Germany. We have like all sorts of different parties. Like a party getting, achieving more than 40% is a real historic victory and the FD being a far-right party with these fascist undertones doing this for the first time after the Holocaust, I mean, it's really, really quite concerning. So that's, I guess, then lay out the facts of what happened over the weekend, right? So this was a state election. And can you say Saxony, say it again?

Saxony, Anhalt. Unhalt, okay, okay. So Saxony-on-Halt, I was reading. Onholt, before it merged with Saxony in the 1930s, was the first state to elect a Nazi PM in 1932. So there's some eerieness there about how this is like the first, since that period, far-right nationalist party to have this victory. But in addition to what you say, I mean, so much of this is mirrored across the West. in the U.S. as well, that the AFD is, uh, it, it had success in the state that was once the center of industrialism in Germany. And then you also see that polling, when you look at polling, many of them are motivated,

as you say by financial difficulties, of course, the nativism as well. Uh, this voting block is less educated than the rest of the population is my understanding. But what would scare me the most is that they benefited from all this high turnout in rural areas, meaning they're not just capitalizing on depressed turnout. They are generating votes from people that may have

sat outside of the political process altogether. Can you talk about all of those dynamics and like the coalition they built in this particular area of the country? Yeah, I think they really, as you say, they really managed to mobilize masses that usually just

wouldn't go to the ballots. I think the election turnout for this election in Saxony Anhalt was up to 80%, which in of itself is a real change. And the the CDU party, which is one of the most established party in the party cosmos in Germany, they dropped by half. They achieved only 17%. So this was also a very clear answer in many ways to Friedrich Mercer's policies, a policy that has seen like extreme, you know, cuts for social welfare, for especially the healthcare sector, for investing billions into remilitarization and basically drafting young people back into the military. All these things are tendencies that I think you need to kind of keep in mind when you look at this election result, because

this is some... His popularity is really as low as it gets. I think other European leaders of other European countries really look in comparison, kind of extremely popular if you look at maths right now. So another factor, I think, to factor in specifically in Saxony-Anhehalt, because as you also said correctly, I think the AFD is not nearly an East German phenomenon that's often like the story or the narrative that gets told,

specifically in Germany that it's kind of these, you know, uneducated, a little bit silly Easterners that they're just not enlightened enough. But I think they definitely do capitalize on these kind of grievances of like past reunification when basically the East was industrialized and there was a lot of unemployment. And like many, many people experienced this as like a real dispossession. But at the same time, you know, the FD is winning in the world. West as well. They're winning in like Baden Wittenberg in one of the most wealthy and important West German states and they are projected to have a lot of votes even in Berlin, which is seen

as like one of the more progress most progressive states in Germany. We have elections coming up in two weeks now and like the link is doing fairly well here. Luckily, but the left party, but the IFD is also actually turning out pretty pretty good projections right now. Let's talk about I mean, I want to talk about the, I think there's two or three elections coming up in the next month in other states. But in the context of the state that they have won in, Saxony and Holtz. We're trying. 44% in the parliament there, there's some question as to like, will they be able?

that the, the, the leader has said, um, we're not going to mess around with like a minority rule insofar as like getting into a coalition, unclear whether that's, you know, a negotiation tactic or just sort of like, don't want to lead if I have to, uh, in any way capitulate to some type of drag on my power. but there's also I've seen reports of the potential of CDU members of parliament essentially

defecting to inhibit a coalition that would involve leftists running the government. Can you speak to that dynamic? Sure. I mean right now that place the CDU ideologically because on some level it's like you know it's it's a hard

translation for us with two parties here, but we have seen a lot of like Republicans who are just interested in tax cuts ostensibly pair with the more fascistic elements of the Trump, you know, MAGA movement. Right. Because, you know, they want the tax cuts. Yeah, right. Look, right now there's a few scenarios. I think the two more realistic scenarios that people are speaking about at the moment, or let's say three, sorry for this is complicated, but are either, the AFD is just a few seats short of having an absolute majority. So they got 44%, which translates to 39 seats in the Parliament of Saxony Anheald.

They need three more seats to have an absolute majority. So right now what they could do is merge with the BSV, which is a small kind of fringe party that barely made, the 5% hurdle into Parliament. They are, they used to, they're kind of a split off of the left party, interestingly enough, but they're kind of, you know,

if I were to sum up their political profile, they're sort of progressive on economics, but kind of right wing on immigration. So if you will, there's sort of like a right wing version of social democracy in a way. And they have shown open. to kind of merge with the IFD and sort of be the kingmaker to help them form this government. That's one option.

The alternative option, which is somewhat unrealistic, would be that all the remaining parties, the left, the Greens, the SPD, the CDU, that they all come together and form a very small majority. But they are ideologically very far away from each other. And the only thing that would actually combine them is that they are trying to prevent this IFD government. So this would be super fragile to begin with and likely fail. And I think also many people in the East would see this as a kind of failure on the part of the left party

to kind of go against their own values, to go with the CDU. Because as you said, the CDU is in many ways and has been in the past years just basically copy-pasting the talking points of the IFD and kind of repackaging. them in a slightly softer version, a softer way. And I think, you know, this is also, in my, in my view, a big part of the big success of the IFD that like the established parties haven't really shown in an alternative vision. And in many ways, they've kind of reaffirmed the IFD's talking points by basically making immigration the core issue of their political program. So these are the two options. The third option would be that as you kind of

indicated that some some cdu politics because the vote the inner parliament vote in saxony anhalt is actually secret so there there could there could be a case that um cdu members or other members of other parties vote for ulrich sigmund the potential future prime minister of saxony anhalt from the afd um that they could vote for him and basically help him that way to become prime minister and like so that they would basically flip on the part of the IFD. This is, in my view, the third scenario is the most likely one, but this is obviously just speculation. Those are three pretty bleak scenarios. They're almost, it's, I mean, it's almost like, you know, pick your poison in that scenario. So, well, or those three scenarios. What,

so assuming Siegman ascends to power in this state. what are the material implications of that relative to the rest of the country and to the national government and what are there sort of the more political ephemeral implications of that? Yeah, this is a very good question. I think the material, clear political areas where they could do a lot of damage is, is three threefold, it's culture, it's education, and it's policing. So they have kind of played with the idea of like,

you know, an independent police force, they call that Bulgarwehr, like a citizen's force is very ice adjacent. And of course, and ice models itself on some past, you know. Yeah, yeah, that's not great in German history. Sorry. Yeah.

And in the German context, I mean, it's especially eerie, you know. Think of the Gestapo and, like, think of these, like, these Nazi police forces. I mean, this is really kind of, this could be very scary for people who are, you know, not whites or not able-bodied or whatever. I mean, the FD's, this comes to education, but they are very heavily actually making inclusion of disabled people, people with mental, like children with mental disabilities as a, as a, core part of the program, which give them against a backdrop of history of euthanasia in Germany. It's just like also super eerie in many ways. And in culture, you know, I think they could basically do and exacerbate some of the tendencies that we've seen over the past years in Germany

already. That's so many, Germany has this kind of state's funding model that like the local states and the federal state are funding, giving a lot of money to culture. But this has been more and more politicized in recent years, especially in the context of Palestine and Israel, and critics of the genocide have lost funding, jobs, invitations, or exhibitions, or, you know, all sorts of different things like that have already played out without the IFD being the driving force. But I think if they were to come to power, we would, in Saxony and Hul, we would most likely in that state see many of these tendencies exacerbate much,

much further. And then you asked about the kind of more ephemeral and more sort of like symbolic, I think, tendencies. You know, they're celebrating this as a success and as a sign for their participation in the government. And I think in many way, we have this kind of Weimer like moment right now. It's not clear whether the established parties are going to begin to appease to the IFD to appease to their far-right racist rhetoric or whether they're going to present a different way forward. And right now, it's not really clear, but it really seems as if this could be a kind of defining moment for the IFD to sort of normalize itself into the mainstream, into also like federal party politics further. Well, you mentioned Israel policy. And I just want to

touch on that too because you're talking about how the German state is tripling down on militarism where the AFD is united with conservatives and other mainstream parties in Germany is steadfast support for Israel in spite of protests against it from a lot of people in Germany. They're also engaged in regular

Holocaust denial like that or verging on it to the point where it almost you know because of the the laws in Germany, it's illegal to engage in that, but the AFD has done so at the very least, I've seen videos from their rallies of a Nazi salute, for example. Like, they're teasing Holocaust denial, and yet they are huge Zionists as well. Can you talk about that dynamic and how that plays out in German politics? Yeah, I think the kind of the revisionism, the historical revisionism and the sort of flirt,

I would say with kind of Nazi symbolism within the IFD is very clear. And there is a lot of anti-Semitism in the party. If you look at Alexander Gowland, who's one of the kind of honorary, you know, leaders of the party, he constantly writes these texts about like globalists kind of controlling the economy. There's a lot of anti-Semitism in the party. I think it's good to keep that in mind. But at the same time, you know, being very pro-examist. Israel, very outspokenly pro-Israel, pro-Zionist, has helped the IFD a lot to sort of normalize itself

into the mainstream, you know, preaching to the choir of Stats raison, of Germany's raison d'etat to nearly totally support whatever Israel does, however fascist their government is, if it carries out a genocide or not. This helped the IFD to become an integral part of like a, a, broader kind of German self-understanding. And I think I remember this one conversation that Elon Musk endorsed the IFTA earlier last year publicly. There was this conversation between Alice Vidal and Elon Musk on X. And I remember that Vidal said, you know, she spoke of these like leftish Palestinians,

which she meant that was that like Palestinians are importing anti-Semitism into Germany. and like one sentence after she kind of spoke of Hitler as a communist. And it was just like this bizarre moment of, you know, coupling. And I think that's no coincidence, you know, coupling this kind of revisionism and this sort of strange misunderstanding of history with a kind of outward anti-Palestinian racism that has a lot of resonance with the German mainstream and liberal parties as well. And, you know, it was kind of ironic that, yes, Yesterday, when the election results came out, this was the same day the election results became public.

Germany defended itself in front of the ICJ in the Nicaragua case, right? I mean, like against allegation of aiding and abetting Israel's genocide in Gaza. And its argument was basically saying, you know, until there is a formal recognition of genocide, we cannot have a better. genocide. Which is a bizarre argument to me because the genocide convention clearly states that states need to prevent genocide from happening, not only retroactively and when it's just too late. But I think this is an interesting kind of historical moment right now in Germany. We should also say, I mean, just the, there is a lot of precedent for the Israeli good relations between Israel and nationalist and right-wing parties in Europe, whether it was in Hungary

or in France over the past decade plus, this dynamic of a party being able to both hold anti-Semitism and pro-Zionism is founded in an ideological belief of an uber nationalism. And, you know, not too dissimilar from, you know, abolitionists who are like back in the day who are like, we should not have slaves. We should be sending them all back to Africa and deporting all of them. So this is, there's a lot of precedent for this. it's also helpful i should say just as a complete side note uh helpful distinction between uh anti samaditism and anti zionism um and and how it operates in practice uh so with all this said there are three

more uh elections i think in september uh for state just outline those and what people are anticipating uh may happen in those elections Well, I think the most important election that people are looking at right now is Berlin, because it's just not only the city of Berlin, Berlin is also a state, and it is, of course, the center of federal politics as well. And Berlin has been governed by the CDU, by members of the CDU, that when you look at the things they regularly say,

specifically in the context of Israel, Palestine, but also on several other issues as well. You know, they could easily make a career in the IFD too, if you ask me. I think that wouldn't be a huge issue. And right now this era seems to be ending. The left is projected to have a really high turnout. And a different issue will be, the main issue of these Berlin elections will be whether a project of disappropeation of, of companies that own thousands of flats in Berlin will go through.

This is a project that the left is very much pushing, and the left needs to, if they get the amounts of votes that they are projected to get, which is over 20%, then they have to find a kind of compromise with the Green Party and the SPD party, how they're going to work that out. But it very much seems like they will be able to do so. However, again, like the IFD also in Berlin,

is close to 20%, which is shocking if you live here because you kind of you walk around in Berlin, you feel like it's this like liberal sort of progressive place, but in the outskirts of the city, there are a lot of people voting for the IFD. So I think this is the most important election.

People are looking to at the moment. But again, I think right now we need to find a way to address some of the kind of grievances and some of the insecurities that people very much have. In a way, the FDA really managed to do something that the left has not managed to do. At least in Saxony-Anhe, the left party actually lost votes. They really mass-mobilized people, and they did it in a way that they mass-mobilized on racism

and on fascism and all these things like print ideas. But these insecurities that people have, they still continue to exist. And I think that's something that will be a much more kind of broader ongoing discussion. Like how can you address those things and how can you offer a different vision for the future? Hannah Howenstein, the newsletter on Substact is null punked. We will link to that. Thanks so much. Thank you.

And the podcast on YouTube as well. Oh, yes. Okay, great. We will link to both of those. Really appreciate you coming on and talking to us. Thank you so much. I'm a huge fun of your show. Thanks. Oh, well, thank you. It's always great to talk to you. Have a great night.

All right, folks. That's it for the free half of the program today. We will head into the fun half and have some fun. And you can join us there by becoming a member at join the majority report.com. When you do, you can only get the free show free of commercials, but you also get the fun half. You can also, I Am Us, by picking up the app at Majority. app.com. It is free for the iPhone

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You get 10% off. Matt. Yeah, coming up right on the show right after. majority report today and 98 minutes or a little bit under there Elon Musk colonized in Texas Etienne Rosas a DSA member

down in Texas and guys run for political office is talking about Elon Musk and particularly in Brownsville I mean basically just rolling over by city municipal governments for

this guy and who's like de-annexing land in order to create a space ex colony down there so I was a great talk to Etienne and we also talk about how Trump can't stop talking about how Ken Paxton looks like shit as he's

trying to help him win a Senate race in Texas. Yeah, I enjoyed that too. I also just got to say link down below. We'll have Francesca Furentini on later this week, but if you'd like to get in before that, before the rush, there's a link

down below for our show, October 4th, the lodge room in L.A. baby. It's at showtime's at 1 p.m. You can get in before that, but just think of it as like a little brunch. That's what I mean, look. We all win when we see more women in leading roles. That's my appeal to women.

Think of it as a brunch. Nice. Nice. Four person cedar, don't believe Sam. He never reads any of the IMs. There. Wow. Proved you wrong in just seconds.

See you in the fun half. Are in for it. All right, folks. 64, 6, 4, 625, 7, 39, 20. See you in the fun. Oh, no. Are you ready? Who sent us this?

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