The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 3611 - The Secret History Zionist Have Hidden w/ Molly Crabapple

Episode Date: March 30, 2026

It's Fun Day Monday on The Majority Report   On today's program:   Donald Trump is bringing the U.S. deep into a quagmire as reports show he is considering sending over thousands of troops on top of... the 2-3k soldiers from the 82nd Airborne already on their way.   Trump continues to talk publicly about how he has been advised to not use the world 'war' and instead say 'military operation'. Really defeats the purpose.   The president claims that Iran gifted the U.S. "20 big, big boats filled with oil".   Artist and author, Molly Crabapple joins to discuss her new book: Here Where We Live is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund    In the Fun Half:   Avi Lewis, friend of the show and full-throated leftist, is elected as the new leader of Canada's New Democratic Party   RFK, Jr performs a humiliation ritual at CPAC as speaks about Trump as if he is some mythological genius.   Emma antagonizes three very untalented pundits on CNN by daring to mention the genocide in Gaza.   Dave Rubin, Jillian Michaels and Dr. Drew from the Actual Friends podcast have a deranged conversation that cannot be explained. Just listen for yourselves.   all that and more     To connect and organize with your local ICE rapid response team visit ICERRT.com The Congress switchboard number is (202) 224-3121. 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 AMQuickie 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: DELETEME: Get 20% off your DeleteMe plan when you go to joindeleteme.com/MAJORITY and use promo code MAJORITY at checkout. FAST GROWING TREES: Get 20% off your first purchase.  FastGrowingTrees.com/majority SMALLS: For a limited time, get 60% off your first order, plus free shipping, when you head to Smalls.com/majority. SUNSET LAKE: From 3/27-3/30 we have a BOGO Use coupon code "Left Is Best" (all one word) for 20% off of your entire order at SunsetLakeCBD.com  Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @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 show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza's music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.com

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Starting point is 00:03:02 It is Monday, March 30th, 20, 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, Molly Crab Apple, artist and author, New book entitled Here Where We Live is Our Country, The Story of the Jewish Bund. Also on the program today, Day 31 of U.S. and Israel's war against Iran. Trump threatens to take Iran's oil and some secret mission to take Iran's uranium
Starting point is 00:03:50 and to obliterate Iran's energy and water infrastructure. and claims that Iran paid tribute to him. Meanwhile, the Pentagon is sending 10,000 more U.S. troops to the Middle East. We're up to 50,000 troops all already stationed. About 6 to 10 of those are relatively newly stationed. Spain has closed its airspace to U.S. warplanes. Last Friday, the House rejected the Senate. spending deal on DHS, Trump, to pay the TSA from a DHS slush fund of dubious legality.
Starting point is 00:04:37 This as the Republicans now fully own the DHS shutdown. No King's rallies across the country in what appears to be the largest single-day protest in U.S. history. Now their eyes are turning to a one-day general strike. strike on May Day. Russian oil tankers allowed through the blockade to reach Cuba. Israeli police blocked Catholics from a Palm Sunday Mass at Jerusalem's Holy Septer. This is the first time this has happened.
Starting point is 00:05:18 Wednesday, Supreme Court, to hear birthright citizenship arguments. And a discharge petition on extending temporary protected status for 350,000. thousand Haitians reaches the signature threshold. Lastly, Avi Lewis was elected
Starting point is 00:05:40 NDP leadership in Canada last night or this weekend. The Rekali came on the program to promote that candidacy. All this and more on today's
Starting point is 00:05:55 majority report. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. It is Fund-day. Monday. Fun day, Monday. Oh, yes. Just another fun week ahead of us.
Starting point is 00:06:06 We did not invade Iran yet. With boots on the ground, as it were, over the weekend. So that's good. Unclear whether Trump is waiting for 10,000 more troops to get into the region, or if he just keeps looking for some type of, of out where people can agree like to agree that he won. The problem is, is that, I mean, people should be aware of this. There are always people who are going to win in a war like this.
Starting point is 00:06:52 And they're winning right now. There are people who, in addition to weapons manufacturers, we have used like more Tomahawk missiles, I mean, just billions of dollars. I mean, there was also an analysis about how much oil and gas is making. Exxon, Mobile, Chevron, Shell, all raise their earnings estimates. Well, that's exactly the point. All of the oil interests, all of the LNG interests, they're making huge money now, because they're still spending, just let me just do this in simple math, because I don't know the exact
Starting point is 00:07:28 numbers. But let's say it cost $30 to extract a barrel of oil from wherever it is around the country, on average, $30. And the price of oil is $60. They make $30.
Starting point is 00:07:46 Well, now the price of oil, because there's less of it, is at $110. So those barrels of oil that they pull out of the ground still cost them $30. It's just now they have a $80 markup. And that's, I mean, that's where we're at.
Starting point is 00:08:02 So there should be windfall taxes on these kinds of corporations, let alone like we should be nationalizing them. Well, we could ask up asante, but I'd like someone to dig into what his holdings are in liquid natural gas. My suspicion is quite extensive. It'll be tough to reach his planting season. Yeah, exactly. He's out.
Starting point is 00:08:23 He's out in the fields right now. And incident, I mean, it's going to hurt his farming business a little bit because of the expense. It's going to be for fertilizer now. But we'll see. Here is Donald Trump in his, well, this was him on, let's do this on Friday. He is at the Future Investment Initiative in Miami, Florida. was not at CPAC. He said that he had prior commitments. This is where he was instead of going to a CPAC. A Saudi investment conference. Do you think that they wired it directly into his bank account?
Starting point is 00:09:11 Or, I mean, they outbid CPAC clearly. Oh, do you think it's just for cash? That's very cute. No, we're far more sophisticated than that. But here he is talking. to the Saudis, is that what it is? The Future Investment Initiative. Yeah, investor conference. And he sort of, I guess, gives a little bit of a clue as to what he thinks he's doing. There's a leader, and we had a deal. I was going there, and I didn't want to go during the war.
Starting point is 00:09:46 I said, look, you know, we have a thing called a war, as they would rather say, a military operation. is for legal reasons. I say military, because as a military operation, I don't need any approvals. As a war, you're supposed to get approval from Congress, something like that. So I call it a military operation. Now, if we had, like, I don't know,
Starting point is 00:10:09 any resourceful congresspeople, it seems to me that you have now, like, I don't know, you could sue somewhere, or, I mean, he's just revealed that he thinks it's a war. But you can't say that. This is also like the third or fourth time that he said this publicly where he's like,
Starting point is 00:10:29 I'm violating the law. Excuse me. This is the, we've said, you know, how the lack of accountability for war criminals, specifically coming out of Iraq, has led to this moment. But without a doubt, it's so acute. And also, let's be clear, you know, like I have seen arguments about particularly after Platner came out and was very very, explicit in saying the democratic leadership could do better on on this of course they could do
Starting point is 00:11:01 better but people don't seem to understand that's not just a critique on chuck schumer's failure as a leader like his leadership qualities is there anybody who actually believes that chuck Schumer was at best, at best, somewhat ambivalent about Trump going to war? Because I would put it, I'm just trying to, like, you know, for the sake of argument, I would say ambivalent. But it's quite clear that Chuck Schumer, if right here is ambivalent on the war, he's on the side over here of, yes, let's attack Iran. And so he was just doing his best to basically like, And, you know, to his credit to pretend so that he wouldn't be completely misaligned with the Democratic Party. I mean, this is someone who has voted against the JPCOA.
Starting point is 00:11:58 He complained when Trump was actually maybe making a deal with the Iranians that would in some way. They're going to sound tough in public and then have a side deal that lets Iran get away with everything. Well, get away with everything. Why are you talking about? That was last summer. I mean, the reason why Chuck Schumer has not been, has been so slow off the ball here until it turns into an obvious disaster. And even then, he's a, you know, is because he wanted this war and thought he could get it and still blame Trump. Oh, and that's the same in the House, we should say, too.
Starting point is 00:12:35 Gregory Meeks and Hakeem Jeffries could have brought up that war powers vote before the recess. and they chose not to because they think they can have it both ways here. One, the Zionist donor class likes this war and so you can appease them by not slowing the role of this, you know, a horrible disaster. But two, they think it hurts Trump. So it's a twofer for them. That's their viewpoint. The impacts on our economy and humanity be damned. Or democracy.
Starting point is 00:13:03 Now, here is Trump like either just trying to buy time and until. these other 10,000 troops get to the region because they plan for this so well. I mean, come on. And the bottom line is when they bring troops in, the idea that they're going to bring 10,000 troops in, and he's going to back out of this seems very aspirational thinking. You know, this is a big commitment. And at one point, it starts becoming like, well, in for a penny, in for a pound. But here he is maybe, I mean, you know, the, the most hopeful part of me thinks like, okay, maybe if we just like play along and nod and grandpa will say, okay, I won and get out. There's certainly people within his circle, I am sure, who are saying, you shouldn't do this.
Starting point is 00:14:04 But there are also a lot of people in his circle saying, you should do this. And here he is, you know, waffling. And if this sounds like the opening scene to Godfather, too, there's a reason for it. Joe, sent eight boats two days ago and then they added another two, so it was ten boats. And now today they gave us as a tribute that are no, I can't define it exactly, but they gave us, I think, out of a sign of respect, 20 votes of a big, big, boats of oil going through the Hormuz Strait and that's taking place starting tomorrow morning. I wonder if he I wonder if there's any relevance to him always saying Hormuz straight as opposed to the straight of Hormuz. I just I'm his thing is he misspeaks once and then he just says it a thousand
Starting point is 00:15:02 times to make it. I meant to do it that. No one here would understand that. But but but um, He also, this is a very small side note, but the way he talks about people in the Middle East with this complete Orientalism, he's always talking about how proud they are or how like shockingly smart they are or as a sign of respect. It's just very, it's, you can see why he's underestimated the Iranians and, or, you know, and people in, the Gulf because he just genuinely doesn't think of them as, as intelligent as him, which is hilarious, because. because Iran is clearly winning this here. And part of the problem is like, if they want to humiliate the United States, they can. But the problem is that Trump is going to want some sort of, I don't know, rhetorical victory here. He doesn't want to look humiliated. So Iran's rightly pissed.
Starting point is 00:15:58 But they have to play some sort of dance here to give him at least some sort of rhetorical win if they want to avoid the worst of this. Yeah. I think it's pretty clear that. that the die is cast. I just don't think you bring in that extra 10,000 troops this late in the game if you think you're not going to use them. And Iran simply cannot afford to not go ahead and charge people as they come through the Strait of Hormuz as a way of showing that there's a price to be paid if you're going to attack the country. but we will we will see when is that those troops supposed to arrive two or three days is it Brian's estimates from last week where we were saying do you think this is going to happen over the weekend
Starting point is 00:16:49 it was going to take more time for that troop buildup so you kind of guessed that it's going to happen this upcoming weekend yeah yeah this next weekend would be my guess but that's just there's no reason to put any stock in me no I mean but the weekend is because the weekend is because Because of the markets. Speaking of stock, right. Yeah. Trump is trying to manipulate the markets. And there have been some really dumb traders that have gone along with him on this.
Starting point is 00:17:13 But that's why the weekend makes the most sense for him. In a moment, we're going to be talking to Molly Crab Apple, artist, author. She's got a new book here. Where We Live is our country, the story of the Jewish Bund. First, a couple of words from our sponsors, both of whom are sponsors that I have used for years before they became sponsors. First one is delete me. Delete me makes it quick, easy, and safe
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Starting point is 00:23:03 Fastgrowing trees.com code majority. Now's the perfect time to plant. Let's grow together. Use majority to save today. Offer valid for limited time. Terms and conditions may apply. Check out the podcast and YouTube descriptions for this info. I'm going to take a quick break. And when we come back, Molly Crab Apple, our and author, new book entitled Here Where We Live is Our Country, The Story of the Jewish Bunt. We are back, Sam Cedar, Emma Vigland, on The Major Report. It's a real pleasure to welcome to the program. I feel like maybe welcome back.
Starting point is 00:24:01 I feel like maybe back on Air America Days. We had her on, Molly Crab Apple, artist, author, new book entitled Here Where We Live is our country, The Story of the Jewish Bund. And Molly, welcome back to the program or welcome to the program. Thanks so much for joining us. Oh, my absolute pleasure to be here, Sam. I love your book for two reasons. One, I mean, I'm really enjoying reading about the history.
Starting point is 00:24:32 And I think you wrote this in such an accessible way, in part because, and we'll talk about this, your relationship, your family's relationship to this story. are your great-grandfather or your grandfather in particular, but it's also so timely. I mean, obviously, you know, particularly in the past couple of years, the question of Zionism has become so prominent in our politics. And for a long time, I mean, you know, the biggest part of that story is obviously what's happening to Palestinians, what's happening to Lebanese, what's happening to Iranians. But there's a certain responsibility that Jews feel, in part because of Israel's conflating Judaism and Zionism, to push back on this. And there has yet to be sort of like a thing that you can be or a sort of like a sort of like
Starting point is 00:25:40 that is not just anti-Zionist, that there is a sort of like a positive vision for a Jewish anti-Zionism. And the Bund, you know, sort of like ends up being that answer. Now, you started writing this seven years ago. Let's just talk about the genesis of how you came to this, this really, in many respects, lost history. Thank you so much for that interest, Sam. Well, I came to the boon because of my great grandfather, Samuel Rothport, who was a post-impressionist painter. And it might seem a little funny, right, to be so into your great-grandparents. But Sam taught my mother how to paint, and my mother taught me how to paint. So I viewed my whole ability to be an artist as sort of this like transgenerational gift from him. And he had this body of work that he called memory paintings that showed every aspect of life in Volkovisk, the small town that he came from. There was the sacred, the rabbi reading the Torah on Yom Kippur. There was the profane himself spying on the women in the bathhouse when he was a bad little boy.
Starting point is 00:26:50 But there was one painting that I was obsessed with. And it was a young woman and she had, you know, big Gibson girl hair, a little corset waist and a long skirt. And she was standing on a twilight street throwing a rock through a window. And her boyfriend was next to her, offering her more rocks. And this painting, which he had titled in his own hand, was called Itka the Bundist. And so I still remember I was like, maybe I was like 19 or 20 when I saw it, but I was like, Bundist, what's that? And that question became the doorway that led me to discover the Jewish labor Bund.
Starting point is 00:27:32 And we should say, Volzavik, I'm not going to be able to pronounce any. Volkivsk. Volkavik. But it's in, it's Poland, in Poland. All right. So, so you get this idea of like, you know, what is the Bund? And it really is a fascinating history. Before we get to the Bund, let's work up.
Starting point is 00:27:57 Because the Bund and Zionism or Zionists basically show up almost in the exact same time. I mean, within the same year or so. and talk about the history in Eastern Europe and in Russia, Lithuania, Ukraine, that is happening in the run-up, in the, I guess, you know, 150 years, 100 years or so before we get to the birth of Zionism and the bond, because they're both responses in some respect. or at least elements of it to what had taken place in terms of the way that Jews were trying to assimilate in certain countries and couldn't. Well, in the 19th century, the majority of Jews in the world lived inside the borders of the Tsarist Empire. And this was by far the worst place in the world to be Jewish. You were, it was, imagine you had like three different boots stamping on your face. The first was that like all subjects of the Tsar, you had no political rights.
Starting point is 00:29:06 could be sent to Siberia for having a book club. You are living in a country that's run by a royal family that is so inbred that their blood no longer clots and they have to depend on scam hypnotists from Siberia in order to stop this. So you're just like politically repressed, Jewish and not. You're also really poor, much poorer than you would have been in Western Europe because, again, the inbred hemophiliac royal family is spending all of your money on diamond magical eggs. Okay, but also you're Jewish. And as a Jew, you're part of a racialized minority, which means that you can only live in a certain impoverished swath of land called the Pale of Settlement. Your term of military conscription is 25 years. You are severely limited into where you can live,
Starting point is 00:29:57 like, you know, what towns you can live in, what jobs you can do. There are quotas for the universities. And as always happens, right, when a government decides to target, minority, this leads to a general miasma of racism and violence, including these giant mob attacks that were called pogroms. And Jews tried to assimilate, I mean, certain elite Jews tried to assimilate in Russia, just like they did in Western Europe. But unlike in Western Europe, where Jews were able to get legal emancipation in the mid-19th century, this was not possible and utterly rejected by the powers that be in Russia. And so young Jews decided that they had to think of more radical solutions.
Starting point is 00:30:44 Now, Zionism and the Jewish labor boom both come onto the scene in 1897, and they are diametric opposites from the start. Political Zionism is most associated with Theodore Herzl, who was a Ritzie Hapsberg journalist who wanted to assimilate so badly that he thought all Jews should convert to Christianity. But then he saw the Dreyfus trial, which was when a Jewish army officer in France was falsely accused of spying in a way that everyone knew was fake and sent off to Devil's Island. And just the shock, right, the trauma of that, that in sophisticated, liberated France, this guy who had to, done everything to assimilate should be reduced to just being a Jew, right? That was enough to convince Theodore Herzl that Europe was just racist, that there was nothing you could do about it,
Starting point is 00:31:47 you could not assimilate, you couldn't learn the language real good, you couldn't show your worthiness through social contributions, you just had to get out because Europe was racist. And Herzl didn't really care where the Jewish ethno state he built would be. He was even willing to have it be in Uganda. But he just thought that Jews needed a state. And more importantly, he did not care what means he used to get it. Now, Theodore Herzl launches World Zionism in 1897 at a Ritzie Casino in Basel, Switzerland, and immediately becomes a superstar. But that same year, another group of young Jews elsewhere is also thinking of a solution to the problem of Jewish persecution in Eastern Europe. So in 1897, a group of 13 young Jewish Marxist troublemakers,
Starting point is 00:32:44 all of them with rap sheets, all of them deeply influenced by the revolutionary wave that was bubbling up in Western Europe. They meet in the attic of a rickety safe house in Vilna and they form something that's called the Jewish labor boon. And the boond was an amazing organization because it was almost like proto-intersectional is the only way to describe that in the original meaning of the word. These young Jews realized that the Jewish worker in the Tsarist Empire was oppressed in two ways. He was oppressed by a worker slaving at a sweatshop for wages so insufficient that his kids would starve to death. But he was also oppressed as a Jew because of these specific laws. And so the Boond wanted his liberation as a Jew as well. They wanted to overthrow
Starting point is 00:33:35 the Tsar, established democratic socialism, and also fight for the right of Jews to live beautiful, free, and dignified lives in Eastern Europe, where they'd lived a thousand years. There's a couple of things I want to just, let's just start with pale of settlement. Like where is that area physically? And how many Jews were, were in there when it was Catherine, right? The sort of like created that as not quite a ghetto, but sort of like this is the area where you're allowed to be if you're Jewish. The pale of settlement were essentially the westernmost provinces of the Russian Empire.
Starting point is 00:34:17 And these were created because in the 1700s, Poland was partitioned. Poland was at that time the home to the world's largest Jewish community. And it was partitioned between Prussia, the Habsburg Empire, and the Russians. Russian Empire. And as soon as Poland gets cut up, Russia is like, fuck, like, what do we do with all these non-Christians? What do we do? And they decide that what they're going to do is that they're going to confine these Jews to the areas where they're already living. They're not allowed to move to like St. Petersburg or Moscow. That they're going to limit the jobs they can do. They're going to limit like what they do in university. But especially if they're going to just confine them to these
Starting point is 00:34:58 Western borderlands. And, you know, by the time the boon is created, about a third of, millions of Jews by this point have already fled Russia's Western borderlands, mostly for New York City, because of the grinding poverty, the constant discrimination, the sense of futurelessness, and also the quotidian violence of living there. And I want to say that, you're talking about maybe four, like six, like six million Jews maybe out of, which is like a huge percentage of the Jews in Europe. And was it Alexander the, I don't know, it does one of the Alexander's. How many Alexander's? Well, Alexander two sort of like ease things up a little bit.
Starting point is 00:35:50 And then Alexander the third, I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, doing this now from, from memory from your book. um, and basically said like, okay, uh, maybe the plan is one third of the Jews, uh, you stay Jews. One third will convert to Christian and then we'll kill the other third, um, which was indicative of like, this was not just about, um, for, uh, these folks, it wasn't just about what religion you were practicing. There was sort of like, like you say, like a racialized element to it. And what, what I found sort of fascinating was that Zionism was a response. Zionism and the Bund were both answers to the same dilemma, which is like, on one hand, you had these Zionists who were like, I'm willing to, you know, at least some of them,
Starting point is 00:36:47 I'm willing to completely assimilate, but I'm not allowed to. I can't even become Christian, you know, after, you know, the Dreyfus affair. And on the other hand, you have these would be socialists who or socialists who cannot find common acceptance as a, as working people, essentially, from, from. their Christian sort of fellow workers because they're Jews. And they have two diametrically opposed responses. And so let's take it from there after the birth of both of these ideologies. Tell us more about that. The theory of the Bund is that we're going to, we can continue to both.
Starting point is 00:37:46 Or tell us the notion of like here. I can't remember the... Zokite. That concept and what it meant in terms of their socialism, because their desire to stay was also very much tied into this sort of like socialist, almost internationalism. So the Boontan idea that to me is so profoundly ethical that it sounds almost obvious. And it's something that I honestly see being lived out in practice. every day in New York City, which is that you can have a multicultural, multiracial,
Starting point is 00:38:24 democratic socialism. You can fight for a better world with people who are very, very different than you, and you don't have to change who you are. You don't have to change your name. You don't have to start speaking another language. You don't have to believe in a different God. You don't have to change your culture. I mean, this is, I'm essentially describing the Zoranamamani coalition over here. But at that time, this idea was revolutionary. What the Boond believed was they believe that, especially in a place like the Tsarist empire that had so many different groups of people, speaking so many different languages with so many religions, that the only way to create a just world would be to have a country where everyone is allowed to practice their own culture
Starting point is 00:39:06 to be served in their own language, but that it's a democratic socialist country. They were not separatists. They did not think that Jews had to live in this little isolated group In fact, they saw themselves as a key part of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, which is the party that eventually will give birth to the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks. It was just that they also believed that Jews should have an autonomous organization within that party. And not just Jews. They thought, like, Armenians, Finns, Latvians, like, you know, all of the many, many ethnic groups and the Tsarist Empire, because they also thought, you know, we have our own struggles, right?
Starting point is 00:39:45 We have the struggle against the legal and practical racism we deal with. And also we have our own culture. And it's awesome. And we're really proud of it. And we think that we deserve beautiful music and literature and theater and cultural support just like Polish or Russian people do. We think we're not less than them. And this dynamic I'm also sort of like interested in is the idea of Zionism ultimately people move to Israel and they changed their name to sound. like more Middle Eastern, I guess.
Starting point is 00:40:20 Or biblical, yeah, Hebrew. Biblical, Hebrew. I mean, and there is, I mean, and we're getting ahead of ourselves a little bit in terms of like in the wake of World War II. But even, I think prior to that, there is a sense of like a disdain for the sort of peasant, the Russian peasant archetype, as it were. I mean, even to the point where, you know, jumping head about 20 years or so, like the Balfour Declaration is a function of some British Jews also, I'm not holy, but there's a lot of different reasons that brought that about, were that they were concerned about Russian peasants, Jews coming to England and sort of making things a little more difficult for them and having these sort of like cousins. almost that they were embarrassed by. Low-class cousins, yeah. Yes.
Starting point is 00:41:17 And the Bund sort of takes the opposite tack and says, we're not going to issue Yiddish. We're not going to lose our identity. We're going to embrace it more. And this happens even when they head to the states or some do. So let's track your grandfather. He comes to the states in part because he may have. been involved in a shooting or he says he was, I mean, how involved in a shooting we don't know
Starting point is 00:41:52 from your, but that he was involved in a shooting that was, again, sort of like in the context of the politics of the day. And he heads to the states in the early 1900s. Take it from there and give us a sense of like what was happening in the U.S. in terms of the Bund and then back in Poland and Russia. Well, my grandfather was in some ways a fairly typical example of his generation. He was born, you know, dirt poor in this small town. He apprenticed at a leather tannery, which was a miserable job that would give people anthrax poisoning. And he got involved with the boom.
Starting point is 00:42:42 wound for the same reason that many, many young people did, which is that he wanted better labor conditions. Like, he just wanted some time off from work so that he could live. But we should say, one thing I learned from this is that, to be clear, his boss was Jewish. Yeah, his boss is Jewish, too. They would give the Sabbath off from Friday night. You get 25 hours from Friday night to Saturday night. But then you had to come back to work Saturday night after the son comes down. Exactly. Exactly. It was like letter of the religious law of the day of rest, but not the spirit of it because your boss is still a capitalist. And that's what he got involved in the boon to fix. He wanted to have Saturday night off from work to modest desire. But he
Starting point is 00:43:27 immediately got swept up into what I almost think of as like a teenage rebellion or a young people's rebellion where he rejected this like very strict religious law that he was born into. He started reading, you know, illicit books, revolutionary books, but also just like secular books, like Jules Verne. He started hanging out with girls. You know, he broke with like the crazy gender segregation of the time. He started getting involved in sabotage. He has drawings of guys like burning down these sweatshops or of getting into brawls, the strike breakers. He starts helping guard secret meetings in the woods where they would raise the red flag and sing socialist songs. And eventually, and this is what I found out from my research, he was involved in the shooting
Starting point is 00:44:17 of two police officers that were leading a program in Volkovisk during a market day. And I don't know exactly what involved means, but that's what he wrote. And I confirmed the shooting. And very soon afterwards, he was in New York. He was one of many, many, many, young Jews involved in radical movements who ended up in New York City before and immediately after the failed Russian Revolution of 1905. Now, New York at this point was a radical hotbed and not just for Jews, right? Like the same years that I'm writing about Puerto Ricans are also creating the Puerto Rican flag and launching rebellions against the Spanish. These are the same years that Irish are in New York, in New York, in New York, yeah, at a hotel, at a, at a, at a, at, um,
Starting point is 00:45:03 at the chimney corner hall in Wall Street. That's where the Puerto Rican flag is created. There are people from all over the world that are gathering in New York to fight the despotism in their home countries and to build radical networks. And Jews become some of the most passionate participants. By the time that my great-grandfather arrives
Starting point is 00:45:26 in New York City in 1904, there is already a booming world of Yiddish socialism with its own newspapers, its own like street speaker celebrities, its own, you know, labor unions that represent hundreds of thousands of people that are capable of like having strikes that bring the whole city to the halt. Eventually, like within a little over a decade of his arrival, New York Jews will have elected one of the first socialist congressmen in the United States, Meyer London.
Starting point is 00:45:58 They will have built a like sort of skyscraper called, the forward building with busts of marks and angles on the front of it. This is a vibrant, vibrant world that's both reflective of the conditions in what they call Daryl Terhame, you know, the old home, but also is embracing the new freedoms of America, especially the freedom to organize official unions and to contest for state power. It really, I mean, this is one of the things I really enjoyed about is like that A, hearing about how radical that era was across the board. I mean, I have some old photos of of Yiddish posters at, at protests and labor union protests. But to hear like this was happening for a whole range of countries and folks are sending money back because it's much easier to get a dollar
Starting point is 00:46:53 here in the U.S. and send it back. And also just the level of violence. If folks aren't familiar, what a program is, you know, you write rather descriptively of like you had many, many Jews who would just, they'd get an arm chopped off, they'd get killed, there was a mass rape. This was just, you just never knew if it would just come to your town, as it were. And so there was a lot of strife. So your grandfather's in New York. what what happens then and now we're like situated just before the world world war one uh as this is happening what happens then because it what is most fascinating to me is how the the the
Starting point is 00:47:48 bund sort of uh evaporates in some way uh over the course of the next 20 or 30 years that history is buried i mean it and it's because it's in contention also with Zionism. And the Zionists want to make sure that there is not an alternative that is at least bandied about. Of course. So to give you kind of a capsule history, there is an attempt at a revolution in 1905 in Russia. And the Boond is fighting on the barricades. They are leading the charge in Pale of Settlement cities like in Lodz in Odessa.
Starting point is 00:48:27 They are fighting not just themselves, but like alongside. the multiracial working class of the Tsarist empire as brothers. And then after this revolution wave picks up enough to like seriously, seriously threaten the Tsarist state, the Tsar does like a one-two move. The first thing is he gives like a few like little concessions like a powerless parliament that sort of buy off the liberals and they buy off the rich who are done with the disorder. But then he also blames the whole thing on the Jews. And there is a series of what can only be state-coordinated pogroms that break out in over 800 cities in the Tsarist Empire, literally the same day as he gives these liberal concessions.
Starting point is 00:49:12 And these pogroms, like people think that that means, I don't know, like some people getting roughed up. We're talking like 800 people slaughtered in Odessa, like over 1,000 people slaughtered in Kiev. The pogroms are so savage that in New York City, the black press, the New York Age, which is like the preeminent black newspaper of the time, is writing about these pogromes. and they're comparing them to these like mass, these mass racist terror murders that are happening in the American South. They're drawing a comparison between the KKK and the Black Hundreds, which was the racist anti-Jewish group in Russia.
Starting point is 00:49:51 So these pogroms, which, you know, fellow Christian workers joined in, they devastate the Jewish revolutionary movement. and they really just lead to as many people as possible leaving the Tsarist empire and trying to move to New York City. Now, World War I happens and it is a disaster for Russia. Millions of people die for literally nothing. You're talking about millions of young men that the Tsar is throwing into a meat grinder essentially. people who don't even have like shoes who are asked to take the guns off of the dead bodies of their friends. And after a few years of this nonsensical bloodbath, the people of Petrograd, the working women of Petrograd, which is the capital of Russia, they decide enough.
Starting point is 00:50:49 And it's those people, not a political party, but the people who overthrow the Tsar and who start what's going to be an experiment with. revolutionary democracy in Russia that is cut short by the October Revolution. Now, at this time, the Bund is probably kind of at its weakest. Like, if you know a little bit about World War I, you know that Russia lost a lot of territory, and the territory that they lost was on their borderlands with Germany and Austria. So tons of Bundists end up in Poland, which for the first time in, you know, like 160 years is now an independent country. Other boondists end up in Russia where they take part in this democratic experiment,
Starting point is 00:51:39 but where the boond is repressed by the Bolsheviks, just like the Bolsheviks repress all other socialist political parties. But in Poland, the boond is able to not just rebound, but in some ways, and in spite of everything, they create a golden age there. And when I talk about what the Boond was like in Poland, I want to draw parallel to the Black Panther Party because I feel like that's the group that they're the closest to. These are two groups of primarily like young people from a racialized, oppressed group who are Marxists, who are committed to internationalism and universalism, but are also deeply committed to the liberation of their own people. both the Boond and the Black Panther Party would create vast networks of mutual aid, of, you know, free breakfast programs, of clinics. They would militantly fight evictions by corrupt landlords.
Starting point is 00:52:36 And both of them were so committed to the idea of self-defense through force of arms, if necessary. Like, it's so funny. Like, even the Boond and the Panthers both had like little paramilitary groups wearing cool berets. at a slant marching around and like looking tough and sexy. So in interwar Poland, the boon creates an alternate world. They have like youth groups. They have a woman's movement fighting for free child care. They have labor unions. They have summer camps for kids. They have theater troops. They have a sanatorium that's for young slum kids that are at risk of tuberculosis. And they have a militia that defends them. And I also just want to talk to.
Starting point is 00:53:22 a little bit about the atmosphere in Poland at this time because it's not the same as in the Tsarist Empire. Poland is a republic, right? It's not something that has a hemophiliac emperor at its helm. But as the 30s drag on, an extremely paranoid and insanely racist form of Polish nationalism comes to dominate the government. Marshall Joseph Pilzutsky, who is considered the father of modern Poland, he was not racist. That was not part of his vision. He was authoritarian, but he was not racist whatsoever. But the military guys that took over after his death in 1935, these were people who saw racism as a glue with which they could hold the country together.
Starting point is 00:54:11 They were not charismatic war heroes like Pilzutsky. They were just puffed up men with medals on their chests. and they decided to just lean into anti-Jewish racism. They literally were going around the world demanding that France allowed them to ship the entire Jewish population of Poland to Madagascar. They were funding terrorist youth groups in Poland that would throw bombs at Jewish shops while at the same time screaming Jews to Palestine. They wanted to expropriate and expel their entire Jewish. population. And so when the Boond is building this world, right, they're also defending it from this savage racism that's back by the state. How much of at this point, so if you're talking like
Starting point is 00:55:01 the 1930s and the Boond is sort of just about at its heyday or at its heyday in terms of like, you know, what it's able to create before this new regime comes in, how much, the interplay between Zionism and the Bundes ideology, give us a sense of that because it feels like it both they're competing ideas of what Jews should do in Europe, but it also feels like, and you write about this, Zionists will make common cause with fascist and anti-Semiticetic regimes because Zionism provided a solution to what to do with the Jews. And in some
Starting point is 00:55:53 level it feels like then it became self-fulfilling. Go back to Palestine's not something that you would say in maybe 1897. But it becomes something that makes some sense after 1918
Starting point is 00:56:09 to those people who want to kick the Jews out of their country. I mean, before Balfour, people were saying go back to Palestine. It was just like kind of a racist year, not really a political program, but it was just like thing racist said. But, yeah, I want to explore how the Boone's opposition to Zionism developed. So in the early years before Balfour, Boondists just thought Zionists were smoking the good drugs. They were like, okay, yeah, you're going to make millions upon millions of people move to the Levant and become collective farmers. Sure you will.
Starting point is 00:56:44 They literally thought it was a scam by Jewish bosses to distract from the fact that they weren't paying their Jewish workers living wages. And they also found it to be submission to the same bigots who were always marching around screaming Jews to Palestine and throwing bombs into Jewish shops. They were like, this is our home. We were born here. We lived a thousand years. And how dare you tell us to leave? But when the Balford Declaration is signed and when Britain begins its occupation. of Palestine, there's another element to their opposition. And that is that they see Zionism
Starting point is 00:57:20 as a handmaid in a British imperialism. They're are ethically disgusted. They're like, you are working with the British Empire, which is occupying another people's country, which is denying these people the most basic political rights. And furthermore, you are involved in like beager land evictions. You're forcing farmers from their homes that they've lived on for, hundreds, maybe a thousand years, just the same way we're getting forced from our homes. They thought this was reprehensible. I mean, they were socialists and they believed in human equality and they saw Zionism as essentially antithetical to human equality and solidarity. But also, as the Polish government became more insane, Zionists started cutting these really,
Starting point is 00:58:09 really messed up deals. The same Polish government that, that is funding these terrorist youth paramilitaries is giving weapons, money, and military training to the three Zionist paramilitaries that are in Palestine and that are murdering Palestinians during the Great Arab Revolt of 1936 through 1939. Sahagana, the Ergun, and the Stern gang, an absolutely deranged and psychopathic group, all received weapons, money, and military training from a Polish government that was murdering Polish Jews. And the Boond was just, they were disgusted and they were horrified. And they continuously refused collaboration with Zionism up until like the very, very darkest days of the Holocaust when, but I won't get ahead of myself there.
Starting point is 00:59:02 But they repeatedly refused this collaboration because they thought that Zionists were ethically bankrupt. And you talk about, you know, through those years, a lot of times this came to brawls and there was a lot of fights between the Zionists and the Boon. And then so moving into World War II, the Boon becomes sort of the undergirding or the leadership of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. I wouldn't say, I wouldn't say that. It's a little more complicated, but go on. Okay, well, they're heavily involved. Yes, very heavily involved, yeah. And so talk about, like, you know, what happens through that period and the relationship and just walk us through that sort of like these two competing ideologies and maybe
Starting point is 01:00:00 Zionism at that point is far more dominant one in terms of like, what, and particularly as the Holocaust continues, the idea of leaving for Palestine becomes, or at least leaving becomes a lot more obvious of an option. Talk about that, but also, I'm also curious as to what extent socialism played, what role socialism played within the context of Zionism, because it feels like their part of the Zionist pitch was like we're going to be, you know, a lot of the kibbutzs were socialist projects. And Israel feels like at its founding was far more socialist than it is today. And how much of that was a function of actual ideologies that exist in Zionism and how much
Starting point is 01:01:03 was it a way in which to peel off Bundists? Okay, so these are two pretty big questions. So I'm just going to start with like a capsule history of the Bund and the Holocaust. The Bund in the summer of 1939 sweeps the Polish municipal elections. It is by far the most popular Jewish party in Poland. It wins the majority of Jewish seats in every major city in Poland. They are at their very peak. Germany invades on September 1st, 1939.
Starting point is 01:01:32 And when Germany invades the Polish government, these puffed up military men, runs away. They abandon Warsaw. But the Polish Socialist Party, which is the Boone's sister party, they decide to defend the city. And they organize workers' brigades where Jewish and Polish workers fight on the barricades of Warsaw with their bare hands sometimes against panzer tanks. And they are able to hold off the Nazi army longer than most of the country of Poland. And that's a bit of heroism by both not just Jewish workers, but also Polish workers, Polish socialist workers, that I think deserves to be acknowledged. Now, once the Nazi occupation starts, the Boond immediately reconstitutes as an underground. Their leadership by this point has fled east into the part of Poland that will be occupied by the Soviet Union, seeking to, you know, try to.
Starting point is 01:02:32 lead an underground from there, but their leaders are arrested by the Soviet Union and later killed because socialists never forget a grudge. And there was a conference in 1903 that led to these groups disliking each other. But in Western Poland, the part of Poland that was occupied by the Nazis, the Boond reconstitutes as an underground. They set up underground schools. They have an underground red cross. They create an underground newspapers that are smuggled around the country with the help of Polish socialist comrades. I found a story of a young Polish socialist woman who literally went to Auschwitz for distributing the Bundist press. They also create a militia that tries to organize like basic self-defense. But the power of the Nazis is such that they are able to force Poland's Jews,
Starting point is 01:03:23 Warsaw's Jews. Warsaw's the largest Jewish city in the world outside of New York. They're able to force them all into a ghetto. And I also want to note that the Bundist councilman, Arthur Ziegleboim, publicly begged the Jews of Warsaw not to go into the ghetto and told them to fight with their bare hands if necessary. This was something of impossible bravery for you to imagine. Inside the ghetto, they created two forms of resistance. One was what I would call almost like a social, cultural survival resistance that was devoted not just to maintaining the life of their members, but to maintaining the memory of who they were. I mean, I sometimes read about, like, secret libraries that were carried in people's briefcases because, you know, books were banned.
Starting point is 01:04:08 But also, they wanted to have an armed resistance. And the truth was, was that the Polish home army, which was the largest resistance force that would ever exist in occupied Europe, a heroic resistance force did not believe in arming the Jews in the ghetto until it was basically too late. And even then, they gave guns in a shockingly stingy quantity. So the Bund is in this position where they want to do armed resistance. And they want to do it, you know, as part of a Polish socialist movement to liberate the entire country from the Nazi occupier. They want to help liberate Warsaw, not just the ghetto. But their allies, are not giving them weapons.
Starting point is 01:04:54 Now, at the same time, you have two activists from a Zionist youth movement that's called Adjora Habonim. The activists are Antek Zuckerman and Selina Lubetkin. And they get reports about the complete extermination of Jews in Eastern Poland. And they realize pretty early that what's going on here isn't just persecution and massacres. like a lot of people thought that it's a genocide, that they're going to kill everyone. It's not something that's survivable. And they initially try to unite with the Boond in an armed fighting group, and the Boond
Starting point is 01:05:33 rejects it because of their political differences. Now, what happens then is that in 1942, the Nazis begin to liquidate the Warsaw Ghetto, and over the course of several months, they shipped 90% of the ghetto's Jews to tripling. where the vast majority of them are murdered. And during the course of this liquidation, the Home Army does nothing to stop it. And they don't give Jews weapons to defend themselves. And the Boond works with their comrades in the Socialist Party to actually get one of their guys to go undercover on the route to Treblinka and to expose the truth about the Holocaust. The Boond writes the first major Jewish report of the Holocaust.
Starting point is 01:06:21 and has it smuggled to London by a Polish Home Army courier in a set of dentures he has. They basically reveal the truth of the Holocaust to the world. And the Western world, as we all know, does not do anything. They have their own war aims. And so after that, with almost everyone in the ghetto killed, with most of the Boone's adult leadership, either dead or in hiding, Bundists, Zionist, socialists, as you said, and communists. unite and they form a group called the Jewish Combat Organization, which will be the primary group
Starting point is 01:06:58 in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the first urban revolt in occupied Europe. There's also another group that's called the Jewish Military Union that's right-wing Zionist because, you know, there are some political divisions that were too much to cross. But yeah, the Jewish Combat Organization launches the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt and is able to hold off the Nazis for six weeks. with nothing, with like literally 50 pistols and some homemade landmines and light bulbs that they filled with acid. And wasn't it a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, who went to, who went to London. Yes. At one point to warn, uh, uh, uh, everybody about the Holocaust.
Starting point is 01:07:49 and I think like self-immolated or committed suicide at the very least, if I recall correctly, because no one was listening to. Yes, so this was Arthur Ziegle-Boam. So Arthur Ziegle-Boam was the same city councilman who begged the Jews not to go into the ghetto. He was able to flee from Poland, both. So first he goes to New York and then he sails to London as a delegate to the Polish government in exile. He's the only boondist, one of the only two Jews on this governmental body, which is, again, a government in exile. And it is a miserable experience for him.
Starting point is 01:08:28 You literally have these ministers in exile in this government and exile debating about how when the war is over, they're going to put all the Jews in a ghetto and ship them to Palestine. Like the problems had not been reformed, had not been fixed. and Arthur Ziegleboim is one of the first people who gets Jan Karski's report about the Holocaust. And he does everything he can to publicize it. He tries to like speak at a thousand things. He's constantly sending out newspaper things. He's trying to meet with Churchill. He's getting blown off.
Starting point is 01:09:03 Basically no one cares. He's trying to beg the Polish government in exile to tell the home army to, you know, try to rescue the Jews. And they're just like, nope, not part of our military plans. And then he gets this message from Jan Karski from his bundest comrades who are inside the ghetto, where they tell him, you know, sometimes us inside the ghetto, we hate you for being in the free world. And we think that if we're dying here, you should die there. Go and starve yourself with all the other Jewish leadership in London. Go to starve yourself to death in front of parliament until someone does something.
Starting point is 01:09:41 And when Arthur Ziegleboim hears the reports that the Warsaw ghetto uprising has been crushed and the last Jews in the ghetto have been murdered, he swallows poison as an act of protest. And he leaves a note making it very clear that he's doing this to protest the world's indifference to the genocide. So let's turn to that question of like Zionism, absorbing some. or coming, the relationship being Zionism and socialism at that time and what, how much of that was to appeal to Bundes, how much of it was organic, walk us through that. Well, I think first of all, it's important to note that while almost all forms of Zionism are the same from the Palestinians point of view, you know, they're all built on ethnic cleansing at their core, that there were many different Zionist movements. So you had Zionist movements
Starting point is 01:10:46 like the one led by Zev Jabotinsky that openly admired Mussolini and where he would call himself I'll duchay and where his boys would wear a brown shirt. These were fascist movements. And I don't mean that. I'm not being like histrionic. I mean, they would have called themselves fascist movements at the time. You had Zionist groups that were like very rich and bourgeois and maybe even didn't think that they personally should leave like their beautiful apartments in New York, but they thought that the broke-ass eastern European Jews should leave to go to Palestine. And then you had Zionist movements that were socialist. And with this, you're talking about groups like Polizian or, you know, labor Zionism. And they had kind of a crazy idea. Their idea
Starting point is 01:11:32 was like that Jews couldn't be normal in the diaspora because they weren't allowed to, you know, to like work in big manly industries like steel mills and, you know, develop like good hammer swinging muscles or whatever. And so for Jews to be like a normal people, they had to move to their own state where there would be Jewish socialists and Jewish capitalists and the Jewish socialists would overthrow the Jewish capitalists and make socialism. And like it's quite bad. Like when you read Baer Borech of stuff early on, he literally is using Liberia as a model for how great things are going to be between Jews and Palestinians. He's like, well, they're our cousins. So it'll be like, you know, the same as Liberia where things are so great between the like African American settlers and the crew people that they colonize. It's quite daffy. But when, what Liber Zionism means in practice in Palestine is a little bit different because Boratrov like didn't go to Palestine. He's just writing pamphlets. What it means is that you have people like David Ben-Gurion, the, you know, first leader of Israel and a lifetime.
Starting point is 01:12:39 I'm Boond antagonist, who is creating and leading groups like the Hista Drute, which is the Jewish labor union, which on one hand is a sensibly socialist. The other hand, it is built to keep Palestinians out of the labor market. It is a group that is just as discriminatory as any whites-only union in the U.S. and just as discriminatory as the Polish unions that were keeping Jews out of the labor market in Poland. Socialist Zionism was always racist. I mean, one of the things that I found in my research, like, I couldn't believe it, was I was reading Hilaal Cohen, is a great Israeli historian, his book 1929, which is historiography of the 1929 riots.
Starting point is 01:13:22 And he has interviews with these men who were in the Haganah, which is the Jewish socialist paramilitary, who were bragging about how in the 1920s they would kidnap Jewish women who were dating Arab men. and they would sexually torture them as punishment for dating Arab men. Like these groups, even though they claim that they were socialist and even maybe like the kibbutz is socialist in and of itself, these were also like segregationist groups. It's fascinating. Let's just take it to the present. I mean, the Bund essentially, or before we take it. to the president like what what was the last sort of like um that we heard from the boond um i know there's like maybe vestiges now but like what when was the was it essentially the holocaust that
Starting point is 01:14:22 ended the sort of real presence of the boond anywhere and um what fills in in like the history of the Boon, you know, from the World War II till now. And then I just want to talk about the relevance of that history. Well, the Holocaust kills 90% of Polish Jews, but that still means that there's 300,000 Jews who survived. And, you know, these are people of every possible political disposition, you know, and none. And the Boone tries to reconstitute after the war. However, after the war, after the war. Poland has not been cured of this racism problem. And in fact, Polish nationalists murder a thousand Jews after the war, including a particularly vile incident in a Kelze, where dozens of of young Jews are essentially like burned alive in an apartment complex. This leads to a mass flight
Starting point is 01:15:23 out of Poland by Polish Jews into displaced persons camps in the part of Germany that's occupied by America. And in these camps, Jews apply for visas to Western democracies, not just to America, but primarily to America. And they are rejected. And tell me if this sounds like a very familiar story about refugees and camps that we have seen very recently. Meanwhile, while they're rotting in these camps, the Zionist movement very quickly takes control of the camp administrations. And this means that they control, like what meals people get, what jobs they get, where they live, you know, basic things of life. And they use this power to convince, but also to coerce people into signing up to go to Palestine and to join the Haganah, because everyone knows that there's going to be a war
Starting point is 01:16:23 for the future of Palestine. And the boon is forced to liquidate in Poland by, by the communist dictatorship. They are essentially beaten and bullied into silence in these camps. And also the hypocrisy of the Western democracies is intensely destructive to their idea of human solidarity because the boon, their whole belief was about solidarity across difference. And when that solidarity is betrayed by governments that claim to speak in terms of democracy and of human rights,
Starting point is 01:17:00 that is a crushing thing and that is something that provides the space for violent supremacist ideologies to flourish. The Boond was able to survive in the U.S., but not as a political organization. It was essentially a small group for Holocaust survivors and their family and their family members to, you know, to support each other to try to pass this culture onto their children. You know, they set up like a summer camp. had socialist summer schools, but they just got smaller and smaller every year until, yeah, that's what they were. They became like a dwindling group of old people. But they did play a huge role in the Yiddish language revival and they spent great resources compiling histories
Starting point is 01:17:48 of their party that I used to write this book. Like they, even though they had lost the power they had in Poland because they had lost their country and their families and their milieu, even though they had lost that, they still planted the seeds for their own rediscovery. Let's talk about that because it feels like, I certainly in my lifetime, I mean, there's never been a more appropriate time for the emergence of a democratic socialist aligned or sort of like based anti-Zionist movement amongst Jews than today. I mean, I mean, I just, I don't think
Starting point is 01:18:35 period. It doesn't have to confine it to my lifetime, although that's rather long. But that, like, this seems to be like the moment for the Bund. I mean, that's why I think for me, what I found so exciting about reading your book and learning this history, was the idea of an affirmative political project that rejects Zionism on affirmative grounds as well as, obviously, what Zionism has wrought. and so like what i just talk about that notion and you know uh you know your book is coming out in a week um and i i want to encourage everybody to buy the book i also want to let members know that we're
Starting point is 01:19:29 going to make a decent amount available of copies of your book uh for free um and we're going to send out an email to to members over the next week so they can reduce you. deem those because I really do think this is a such a perfect history for people to be aware of at this time, particularly, you know, broadly for folks who are, you know, ideologically aligned, but also for young Jews and for Jews my age whose Judaism was so wrapped up, their understanding of their own Judaism was so closely identified with Zionism and where there's real danger in that Judaism being conflated with Zionism now, I think, that this is just a wonderful history to have available to us now. Thank you. Well, I think that there's two reasons that this book is so,
Starting point is 01:20:36 so relevant right now. And one, I want to speak to everyone. We are plunging into the most idiotic fascism and bloodshed that I have ever seen in my lifetime. And I also am not young. And the more I see this disgusting dissent into war in ethno-nationalism, the more convinced I am that the only thing that can save us is democratic socialism and human solidarity across difference. And that is the ethos that the Boons built their lives on and they fought to the death for. And I think it's really important for all of us who believe in human solidarity, all of us in the left, to seek examples of our valiant ancestors. But for Jews, I want to say something specific.
Starting point is 01:21:19 The worst thing that Zionism did was the mass murder that they wrought against Palestinians, against Lebanese, against the entire region. But another crime that they did was that they stole our history. They colonized our history and they made it seem that everything that, Everything that happened in the diaspora was just the story of weak Jews being murdered because they were weak. And that the only salvation for us was to be a big, strong Israeli Zionist, bravely and strongly oppressing Arabs. And this is a lie. And I think that this is the time for us to rediscover our ancestors, the people who fought for freedom, for justice, for the better and more beautiful world, as they call it.
Starting point is 01:22:02 And I want to invite young Jewish people. You do not have to reject being a Jew because you reject the disgusting ideology of Zionism. You have a history and you have a heritage she is proud of. And I want to invite you to embrace that. It's really well said. And again, we're going to make some books available because I really am so both impressed with the work, but really believe that that is a huge, component of like what needs to happen now, at least in terms of, of Jewry outside of Israel
Starting point is 01:22:40 and outside of Zionism, to push back on and to reclaim that heritage so that it can't be used in the way that Zionists use, use it. Molly Crabapple, the book is, here where we live is our country, the story of the Jewish Bund. We will put a link to that. The book is coming out next week. I want to encourage people to get the book, if you're even thinking about it, buy a copy. I would love this book to get, you know, up on... Give it to your relatives. The ones that are wrong, too. Give it to everyone you know who's wrong as well. I love a passive, aggressive book. Honestly, and for those of you who, you know, can't afford it.
Starting point is 01:23:31 We will have some available. Those emails will be going out later this week. But Molly Crab Apple, thanks so much for coming on. Good luck with this. I think it's a really important thing. And hopefully we can have you back, you know, in the months to come, to talk about Bundes meetings happening in New York or Milwaukee or Miami or wherever it is across the country.
Starting point is 01:23:57 that would be great. I would love to hear about that. I would love that, Sam. Thank you so much. Thank you. All right, folks. Once again, we will put a link to that Molly Crab Apple. Thank you so much. That rocked so much, truly. All right, folks. We're going to take a break. Head into the fun half. I'm sure that will be an audio book. Yeah, and I know we're getting a lot of IMs about that being a best of, and I'm sure that's going to be at the top. of lists. Yeah, very excited about that. And again, we will send an email out to members. If we have any left over after members request it, but if you can afford it, go and purchase this book. Pre-sales will dictate how much acclaim and, like, you know, if it becomes a New York Times
Starting point is 01:24:50 bestseller, it will build a momentum on its own. But it's the history is so, It's so submerged or it's so censored. Yeah. Yeah. And important. I mean, you know, there was a lot of a reason for the Zionist to sort of like a fight this ideology. And I think it's just, it's great. I mean, she's, you know, seven years in the making this book.
Starting point is 01:25:19 And it's also fascinating. It's also such a easy read because it almost, it almost reads. like, you know, historical fiction because her grandfather was such in the middle of all this. And just the way that she sort of discovered it. And it's really, it's a fascinating read. She's also like just also an incredibly interesting person who's been involved in all sorts of of important political movements and fights over the past couple of decades now. and her artwork is also amazing.
Starting point is 01:26:00 So you should check that out. So very happy to have had her on. I guess we're going to head to the fun half. Just a reminder, it's your support that makes this show possible. You can become a member of join the majority report.com. When you do, you not only get the free show, but you get the free show free of commercials, and you get to IMS on the fun half. And this week, we're, you know, we don't have enough for all our members.
Starting point is 01:26:35 No. But we will be giving away a lot of books of Molly Crab Apple's book about the Bundes. It is on audio. It is pre-ordered, says Noel, and it is narrated by the author. Oh, yeah. I was going to ask, does she read it? Yeah. Also, just coffee.coop, fair trade coffee tea, no, coffee, hot chocolate, usually coupon code, majority, get 10% off. Justcoffee.com, no, dot co-op, sorry. Matt, what's happening?
Starting point is 01:27:16 Yeah, on yesterday's Left Reckoning, I did another solo show. And people have been asking what their favorite tweet of all time has been. And this one probably comes up for me the most by Matrix Reloaded. who said, people on here will tweet anything, quote, Charlie Brown had hoes, end of quote.
Starting point is 01:27:31 No, he didn't. That isn't true. Talked about a couple of things where people just say things that aren't true. Like Emma's compatriot on CNN who said people don't join
Starting point is 01:27:41 the military for the benefits, which is just objectively not true. Neither Emma and I join the military unlike Brian. But I think categorically can say that's a load of horse shit. Brian does everything for the benefits. I can't get out of bed
Starting point is 01:27:57 unless somebody's giving me something I literally had to step out in the middle of the show to talk to my VA doctor and that makes the whole reason I was in the military work and yeah also people talking bollocks as the Brits say
Starting point is 01:28:14 Bill Maher said that every war Israel's ever fought including the present conflict that we have in the Middle East has been defensive so that's a high level thinking. That's fascinating. That is quite a contention. Was it him or Mark Twain? It was the anti-imperalist Mark Twain, I think.
Starting point is 01:28:31 Maybe in the fun half I'll tell some stories from my CNN appearance on Friday. It was pretty funny. We all need to play those clips. People can find them. But, you know, just some interactions with the Republicans on the panel that I found. People just say stuff. Maybe I'll just say really quickly. The guy to my left, Tim, I'm forgetting his last name. He's a Republican
Starting point is 01:28:51 in-house at CNN. I kind of almost appreciate him because he's clearly doing it for the entertainment value of it, but there was a guy, and he was telling me in the commercial break that online they're calling him Maga Milk Dud, which I thought was pretty funny. And he said he thought it was funny, so I'm sure he doesn't mind me sharing that. But the Republican across from me, okay, well, I don't care. The Republican across for me, like, worked for Bush, and he really hated me. Like, it wasn't like on for TV purposes. And then in the commercial break, I said something to him like, you work for Bush, right? And he was like, yeah.
Starting point is 01:29:29 I was like, oh, there's no wonder you're so in favor of these illegal wars. And he looked at me like with such a seething rage. And he was pretty quiet for the rest of the show. And I felt I felt like that was an okay moment in my life. Good job. F that guy. Yeah. I mean, I just, if it made him a little bit uncomfortable,
Starting point is 01:29:53 about his past support for the Iraq war. That was okay with me. That is, honestly, that is, you should get a medal. Just anybody you can shame off air or on air, I think about that is, is helpful. Oh, just one more thing in my plug. I'm trying to get to 10,000
Starting point is 01:30:09 followers on Instagram. Me too! Because Brian told me you can start posting links for that. If you don't and you pay for the checkmark, it's like $40 a month. $40 a month? It is hilarious how much they cost for like above the even the lowest level where you don't even get the ability to share links is like $15 a month.
Starting point is 01:30:28 If I, here's what I will promise. If I get to 10,000 followers, I don't know how many I have. I will learn how to post things on Instagram. Don't let's say it. All you have to do is post one basic video and you would have 100,000 followers. Yeah, you just don't post anything. I don't know how to. Brian's supposed to be teaching me and he hasn't done it because I haven't dangled some reward in front.
Starting point is 01:30:53 Over here, pay to play over here. I try to argue, but I actually 100% agree. What's in it for me, Sammy? Yeah. I wasn't part of the job. I don't think that was in the job description. Where's my 20 big boats filled with oil? All right, well, listen, we're going to put a link to,
Starting point is 01:31:22 the Penguin Random House link where they give you an opportunity to purchase the pre-order the book. Powell's is on there, bookshop.org, Hudson booksellers, Barnes & Noble, Books a Million, Amazon, at Target, Walmart.
Starting point is 01:31:41 I don't think it matters where you buy it from in terms of like pre-sales. They all, it all goes to be counted. So that's good. But so check that out. Again, if you're a member, we're going to make a bunch available for free for you. But if you can afford to support the book, do so by all means.
Starting point is 01:32:07 We'll see you in the fun half in the break. Brian's going to show me how to work on Instagram because I have a silver dollar in my pocket. I'll see you in the fun half. three months from now, six months from now, nine months from now. And I don't think it's going to be the same as it looks like in six months from now. And I don't know if it's necessarily going to be better six months from now than it is three months from now. But I think around 18 months out, we're going to look back and go like, wow. What?
Starting point is 01:32:41 What is that going on? It's nuts. Wait a second. Hold on for, hold on for a second. Emma, welcome to the program. Hey. Fun group. Fun hack. What is up, everyone?
Starting point is 01:32:58 Fun hat. No, me, Keene. You did it. Fun hat. Let's go Brandon. Let's go Brandon. Bradley, you want to say hello? Sorry to disappoint.
Starting point is 01:33:10 Everyone, I'm just a random guy. It's all the boys today. Fundamentally false. No, I'm sorry. Stop talking for a second. Let me finish. Where is this coming from, dude? But dude, you want to smoke this?
Starting point is 01:33:23 Seven aid. Yes. Yes, it's you. I think it is you. Who is you? No sound. Every single freaking day. What's on your mind?
Starting point is 01:33:50 We can discuss free markets and we can discuss capitalism. I'm going to just know what. Libertarians. They're so stupid though. Common sense says, of course. Gobbled e gook. We fucking nailed him. So what's 79 plus 21?
Starting point is 01:34:03 Challenge met. I'm positively quivering. I believe 96, I want to say. 857. 210. 35. 501. 1.5.
Starting point is 01:34:11 Three eights. Nine eleven, for instance. $3,400, $1,900. $6, $5, $4, $3 trillion sold. It's a zero-sum game. Actually, you're making me think less. But let me say this. Poop.
Starting point is 01:34:26 You can call it satire. Sam goes to satire. On top of it all, my favorite part about you is just like every day, all day, like everything you do. Without a doubt. Hey, buddy, we see you. Folks, obviously. Yeah. Sundow guns out.
Starting point is 01:34:50 Should know. People just don't like to entertain ideas anymore. I have a question. Who cares? Is enabled folks. I love it. I do love that. Got to jump.
Starting point is 01:35:10 You got to be quick. I get a jump. I'm losing. Two o'clock. We're already late. And the guy's being a dick. So scroom. Sent to a goul?
Starting point is 01:35:22 Outrage. Like, what is wrong with you? Love you. Bye. Love you. Bye-bye.

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