Fred Moten on Palestine and the Nation-State of Israel

[Music] [Music] all right welcome to Millennials are killing capitalism live uh today we have a very special guest a very special edition of this uh podcast um we're gon to be joined by Fred Moten um you know Fred Moten I could give a very lengthy introduction to and um I don't think that he would probably particularly like that and uh so so I won't I won't do that um but he's you know a distinguished Professor um um you know he's a he's a cultural theorist he's a poet um you know an interdisciplinary scholar and you know I brought I'm bringing him on because I've always appreciated um commentary that he's had on um the struggle for Palestinian Liberation on um the nation state of Israel and um yeah before we get into it the typical silly YouTube things that I feel ridiculous saying but um make sure you like the the video subscribe to the channel so that you get the other um episodes that we do we're having a lot of conversations right now about this topic um a couple that I would urge people to check out are episodes with uh decolonized Palestine and um uh uh Palestine action um because those you know I think can really help people both reach political Clarity but also think about how what are we going to do how do we act in this situation and I think those are important things um yesterday we also hosted a live stream with hanif Abdul rib and very grateful to him so check those things out um yeah and if you like what we do here um supporting us on patreon is always appreciated welcome to Millennials or killing capitalism live it's you know an honor always an honor to be in conversation with you um you know I really appreciate you making time for us thanks Jared I'm glad to be here right on so you know before I move into any real questions um you know I just wanted to give you space to kind of offer some you know initial thoughts if you have them um you know today we're talking on October 25th um you know we've this this has been it's been 18 days since the beginning of what is called uh operation Al AXA flood and the brutal retaliation and Collective punishment of the Palestinian people that has been a response to that operation um you know and I acknowledge like even in narrating it in that way I'm falling into a certain trap of talking about 18 days you know as opposed to and and trying to abstract those 18 days out of 75 years or 100 Years of history and struggle um and I think that that's one problem that we fall into in in discussing this a lot of times is the kind of decontextualizing and historicizing you know what's what's going on um but that's what you know that's the way Western media kind of kind of trains us to look at these things and so I just wanted to ask if there's anything that you wanted to start with uh you know before I move into into some questions anything that you um you know want to reflect on or are trying to think through for yourself well um you know I mean think first of all that you know we've got to have a kind of and I think they we're capable of having a kind of complex Vision with regard to the matters at hand um and that Vision has to allow us to look at something in in very specific in particular local context but also you know globally um and at the same time we have to look at a particular moment you know we have to deal and and and acknowledge you know what what Martin Luther King likeed to call the fierce urgency of now but we also have to recognize it that now operates and resonates within a a longer historical trajectory um and maybe even a better way to put it would be within within a within a a kind of series of historical trajectories um that that we can move out from you know uh a hundred years 500 years 2,000 years you know and we have to be able to account for you know all of that and try to understand something about all of that simultaneously um it's not uh it's not sufficient to to only look at the present it's not sufficient to to disregard the present moment and the the current emergency um and uh similarly it's it's not it's it's not it's not it's not sufficient to to pay attention only to what's happening in Gaza but it is absolutely imperative to pay as close possible as close attention as we possibly can to what's happening in Gaza so these seem these seem these appear to be contradictory you know imperatives but um but in fact it's both it's necessary for us to inhabit those contradictions and we ought to have the the intellectual and and ethical you know wherewithal to inhabit those contradictions um we ought not let ourselves off the hook of that of that work and of those Necessities um and so with that said you you know what has unfolded over the past two weeks in the wake of Al oxa flood is utterly incommensurate with any judgment that anybody might have or want to have about allock of flood um and I think that the most vicious and you know uh clear-sighted commentators who are in favor of Israel's Collective punishment have already admitted that that it is incommensurate they they care nothing whatsoever about the uh sorry I always this is a podcast so I just got to make sure about how much of my vocabulary I can actually use um but so I think I get to say the you know a lot of my technical language is is profane so I'm hoping I can no that's all good yeah yeah so so they're like yeah we don't give we don't care about these [ __ ] formulations about proportionate response right okay we don't we have no interest in a proportionate response right okay and of course but to even think about the language of response right requires us to say that at the very moment that we begin to think about this in terms of an action and a response that's when we have to say no but there's a historical context here right okay so this is why this kind of I don't know I guess I the word I would use is this this sort of complicated binocularity we have to have in terms of how we see these things it has to be operative at every moment all the time okay so okay but I'm but I'm acknowledging and I think it's it you know without and I and and and we can get to the whole question of passing moral judgment on [ __ ] in in a minute but I'm acknowledging right on some level the the the initiatory force let's say of all of flood okay and and to acknowledge that initiatory force is necessary it seems to me because then it allows us and requires us to consider the absolute genocidal and Colonial brutality of the so-called response okay um and the absolute incommensurability and the absolute disproportionality of the response okay and then almost immediately one has to join the evil you know apologists for the Israeli response and say that on a certain level um proportionality and commensurability are irrelevant okay because for instance if we considered alock of flood right okay as a response let's say to to to to the occupation okay and to the genocidal removal and the colonial exclusion right that has occurred over the past hundred years we would say well it was profoundly disproportionate too but in the opposite direction right right it was minimal it was beneath minimal okay now it ought to go without saying but I guess no it no longer does go without saying right because of the utter sort of you know ethical bankruptcy within which liberal discourse seems to operate it ought to go without saying that when I say that Alo of flood as response is minimal minimally disproportionate rather than maximally disproportionate it ought to go without saying right that I am not advocating you know um you know the whatever what whatever the beheading of children real or imagined the kidnapping of old people right it ought to go without saying okay matter of fact it's it definitely ought to go without saying for those of us who actually care about Justice it probably ought not go without saying for the people who administer you know State brutality okay they probably should have to be made to say that yes you know in fact we don't like to kill babies and we think that that's wrong okay but for those of us who have been fighting you know constantly you know their their their continued insistence upon their right to kill babies okay in a myriad of different possible ways right right because we kill babies in all kinds of ways in the United States of America we shoot them okay we bomb them we starve them okay right we send them to shitty schools okay right okay we we subject them to to to environmental degrad okay right they should have to be the ones to say okay you know we yeah we think killing babies you know because we're we I believe that we've already proven right and and when I say we y'all know who I mean we us I'm talking we're talking amongst ourselves now I'm not talking to Biden I'm not talking to Net I'm not talking to Obama okay all right I'm not talking to Madonna or I don't care you know I'm talking to I'm talking about us we I believe that we have already established that we don't like to see babies killed right okay okay so but but evidently right within the degree ated field that people call the field of public discourse somehow it's it's incumbent upon us right the defender of babies to say oh we we don't that that this particular moment requires us to say that okay okay I'll say it I'll say it I don't like to see babies killed I don't like to see old people kidnapped right you know and I I and and and when I say I I mean it in this sort of transhistorical sense I haveen it like that for a long time we haven't liked that forever we've never liked that we've never been okay with that right okay okay so I I guess I'm just at this point you know I think that there's a lot of careful parsing out of our speech that might even be useful for us to do and I guess it's definitely necessary for those of us who feel what I guess is in some ways the legitimate compulsion to speak or even legit the legitimate compulsion to to follow or to heed the call of others who ask us to speak right but I also think that we need to pay some attention to the question of how we speak to whom we are speaking with whom we are speaking okay I think we need to be able to make a distinction between the making of statements okay and the ethical practice of thinking and studying together okay in the face of the common malady that that we are confronted with you know um I I I think that over the last two weeks many people have felt compelled to speak okay to make stat and I think now we need to follow a SE a different compulsion which is to talk with one another to study and think with one another and to think in this very to think with regard to a specific question which is how do we renew and refine our anti-colonial practices so that's why I'm here to today um I'm not here to make a statement but I'm here to hopefully be involved in a conversation with you and and and whoever else is out there how can we renew and refine our anti-colonial practices right on um and so one of the reasons that I you know asked you here not I mean there's a million reason I could ask you here I love talking to you Fred um but um you know you have this there was this discussion and I know that even this discussion is part of what you're saying and it comes out of other work you're doing because um you had this conversation with um Robin Kelly and uh afua Cooper and Ronaldo Walcott in Toronto uh back in 2020 I believe is is when it happened um no that's not right it was back before that 2017 or 2016 something like that um and uh you know there's several points that you make there that I think are important for folks and you know I want to also get to thing more more of what you're thinking about now because I realized that was what you were thinking about six years ago and and and I think that um you know I'm sure what you're thinking about now is also a little bit different but there are a couple points I think are worth us revisiting in these times because there still manifests so prominently within society and people still have to you know especially folks who may be newer to thinking about this issue deeply or um haven't studies studied as much they run into these things right and so one of the things that people run into is this um this conflation of criticism with the state of Israel uh as as as an act of anti-Semitism or that um somehow um anti-zionist Jews are self-hating that they're anti-semitic for being anti-zionist and Jewish right um and then obviously that applies to everybody who's not Jewish as well but it even in this moment we're seeing you know L you know large groups of comrades of anti-zionist Jews standing up and being denounced by people like the Anti-Defamation League and things like that you know and so um I think that one of the interesting discussions you had was this comparison thinking about Israel um and the the anti the anti-Semitism of the creation of the state of Israel or of the or I guess you you you call Israel an artifact of anti-Semitism European anti-Semitism to a certain extent and you talked about that in relation to Liberia and Sierra Leon and I wondered if you could revisit that a little bit um and if just if there's anything that that you've seen or that you've thought about in relation to this this recently well it just seemed obvious to me and I have not had any occasion to to reconsider the obviousness of it that the the kinds of colonization schemes that were invented by the British by the Americans in the 19th century to remove and exclude black populations um that had already been forcibly removed and excluded so that in order to provide so to speak their pres presence in the United States and in in in Britain uh that those schemes are you know manifest um instances of of a kind of you know state sponsored State enacted anti-blackness this is not I don't believe that these formulations are controversial um the anti-blackness is redoubled because the colonization schemes have no interest whatsoever in what the impact of those schemes might be on the people who are as it were native to the zones that would be then colonized and they were called colonization schemes they were explicit about the use of that language with regard to Liberia with regard to uh Sierra Leon even the you know Lincoln's preferred scheme which is to ship folks to Nicaragua it would have been of of another order but certainly what we might call in the Indigenous populations which would then be impacted by the return of displaced indigenous peoples to those populations right in some instances it could be called a return and in other instances it would just be more technically precise to call it a removal the impact on those indigenous populations was a very little concern okay um I really don't understand I've never heard I don't know that there could be an argument that would imagine that the schemes the Zionist schemes that that theore Herzel began to put forward you know in the late 19th century and that were in some sense sanctioned you know by by the British Elite especially balfor Churchill you know I mean none of whom I think and it I I I really don't think it's controversy to to to speak of church Hills or balfor anti-Semitism you see what I'm trying to say it's like I think it's relatively straightforward that these schemes of colonization and removal and return within the African and let's say afro dasor context it's not it's not difficult it would be difficult in fact to make to try to make a AR arent about how these things would be other than how how these things could be seen as other than antiblack similarly right I don't know how it is that the British involvement and then subsequently the American involvement here can be separated from the anti-Semitism that has always been interested in how it is that the idea the fantasy of something called Europe right can be cleansed right can be protected right from what has always been seen as the the the the the the contaminative destructive invasive Force okay of Judaism in the Jewish people okay it I these these things just simply seem obvious to me right and it doesn't matter that you can say yes well there are all kinds of complex forms of incorporation and of extraction and even of limited modalities of welcoming yes of course similarly right Africans were visited with these same contradictions right I mean and in fact and we can see how those same contradictions manifest themselves in contemporary Palestine now the the the operative phrase which I first heard in in the in the work of two Israeli thinkers um well I think she probably would would bristle it being simply called Israeli and I wouldn't want to disrespect her in that way but AR ariela azulle and and and ADI oia they speak of what they call incorporative exclusion okay and again we could see these models of colonization as forms of incorporative exclusion right where extraction and exclusion go hand in hand they work together right and they have always worked together in the long history of the of colonial war in the long history of the war of Conquest in the long history of the war against subsistence right these are these these things just don't seem that controversial to me okay so so but it seems like it's just really counterintuitive for some people to imagine that Israel can be an artifact of anti-Semitism well I that doesn't seem counterfactual or counterintuitive to me it seems again pretty obvious does that mean that everything that happens in Israel is an extension of that anti-semitic ideal okay an idea no no it doesn't doesn't mean that at all does it mean that that every Jewish person or that even every Jewish person in Israel is somehow both extending that anti-Semitism in their daily lives and also extending it in the in the in in the in the in the very real ways in which their presence there can't help but be involved in coloniality yeah I mean it it no it doesn't doesn't mean that we we ought to be able to think about things that are a little complicated in a in a in a in a some what complicated way okay but then some [ __ ] is actually simple too okay so this seems to me to be relatively simple and relatively straightforward and what it means is okay is that you can be deeply deeply anti-semitic and still support Israel and and there's and there's hundreds of examples there's there's there should be a Rogues gallery of mug shots that comes before our Mind's Eye right when we see or think of such people okay that when we when we when we take into account that possibility okay and by the same token I think it's also possible and and and not only possible but absolutely necessary okay to say that we are against the existence of the state of Israel okay but that that does but that that is not tantamount to anti-semitism ISM and that in fact it might even be a fundamental element of a resistance to and a refusal of anti-Semitism right this to me is again not a counterintuitive and not a a counterfactual you know possibility right on yeah I mean as you were talking about this this group of anti-Semitic people that are you know profoundly in support of the state of Israel it brought to mind we had a qu a discussion I think it was two weeks ago now with Morgan ukina and she brought up that there are more members of Christian zionists organizations in the United States than there are Jewish people in the United States and I think that that's a you know if that's that's a profound point that we should sit with and think about too in terms of the impact of of you know the policy and the demands of folks in in that camp as well and you know our own our own settler Colonial uh right-wing Christian nationalisms and things like that as well um and so yeah I appreciate that point um I mean I just think one sorry one of the and I I think I said something like this that night you know with Robin and and and the other folks is that uh to me one of the one of the most egregious examples of this of of this kind of pro Zionist anti-Semitism is is the way in which it makes Israel stand in for the principle of settler coloniality as well as the principle of of the nation state what what it means to carry that weight to carry the banner for maybe the two most destructive ideas in the history of ideas right is is is is pretty intense and pretty profound and um no no no no people should be made to carry that weight okay um and uh yeah it's an unsustainable weight it's an unsustainable weight it's a weight that requires that people to literally as it were constitute something of a dam against the the motion of History you know right and um that's a good way to put it yeah I mean just the the dam against the motion of history I mean that is in some ways it feels very um I don't know that metaphor fits very well I think think for this this current moment of you see the sort of Western world trying to prop up the dam against the flood of people who are just saying no like you can't continue to keep Palestinians in concentration camps and you know keep them out of their lands you know you know um and uh you know yeah and I mean you certainly see not so much in the states although some maybe but not so much in the states in you know the middle easts or you know what gets called West Asia or whatever but the people the people you know when you see rallies in Yemen or Jordan or Syria or Lebanon um or Egypt you know it's just quite clear that you know the masses are very much with um the Palestinian people and you know desperately act asking their states to to step in and and help uh basically helped the Palestinians in the struggle you know well I but I have to say something here too now and I think it's it's a kind of mirror image of this last statement right I think that all of us who seek to to move within the flow you know of of History you know um if we believe that as King used to say again you know the moral Arc of the universe is long but it bends towards Justice that if we and if we believe that that's the the the the motion that history takes or should take you know then we also have to ask some questions about what what it means for us to allow ourselves to require the Palestinians to stand in for that too right right in other words and this is to me is about the difference between expressing solidarity for their anti-colonial practice and actually joining their anti-colonial practice where they are with the anti-colonial practices that we engage in wherever we are right on they can't be made to stand in for the principle of anti- coloniality okay because they can't bear that weight either right on and it's and at that point it becomes something where it's it's about something more more Beyond if you will solidarity and and deeper still it's Way Beyond the mere expression of solidarity or statement of solidarity right so yeah right on I want to just for fun say hello to some people that are here in the in the chat um uh some good folks folks from the study group folks from um different organizations um and uh let me see duka good morning um and we'll pull up a couple questions from folks in the chat later on today peace Jared um and uh yeah but just wanted to say some hell to folks um so another thing we should talk about and again like this this in some ways I apologize that some of these questions are probably a bit Elementary uh I know they are to you um but I know that these are things that that people deal with right and and so I want to help arm people with with thought thoughtful responses to some of these things and I know you have um that you have those and so one is you know there's the right to exist which you address in that that discussion I don't I don't see that as I mean it still comes out I I don't I feel like a lot of people realize that that's not a thing um but be that as it may um that there is a discussion a lot right now of the right to defend itself which I think is particularly uh as we talked about the proportionality earlier on in this discussion the idea that this that a that a colonizing power that is you know engaging in this Siege that's denying you know food water and fuel to people as it's bombing them uh that this constitute a mode of self-defense I think you know has to be one of the most egregious um formulations possible of what self-defense could mean um but I think that the other thing about that is that um yeah maybe just I'll just say that there but oh there there's a quote that I do always think of with you around this which is that uh settlers always think they're defending themselves it's why they build forts on other people's land and I always just appreciate that and I it it came to mind recently too as like other forces are um engaging and you know drone striking and you know trying to send missiles at US military bases in the Middle East right now you know and it's sort of like well how did they get there right like what what you know uh how do we find us in this place where people don't like that we're here so um yeah I don't know if you wanted to to say anything on on either of those points but yeah I mean it well now you know to hear that phrase you know maybe the key word is the always you know um they always think they're defending themselves and what they're they're always defending themselves they have always already decided to present themselves in such a way as to require that kind kind of Defense right you what I mean like they they you know aggressors require defense at all times I mean you know the this thing of what it means to always be you know I me even think now we have a you know a a Department of Defense you know why why are you always in this why are we always in the need why why why do we always have to be defending ourselves well because you're always attacking people that's why right that's kind of why you know um you're always acting in such a way as to require defense because you're always [ __ ] with somebody all the time you know I mean so so there's that part of it um you know uh I I feel like um this this well so there's couple things what is the nature of this of a of of a sovereignty that must in fact be aggressive right what is this notion of both personal sovereignty as well as National sovereignty that had has embedded in it at its core right uh both the impulse and the assumed right to aggression right that's why is it that we seem to be committed to a model of both personhood and and political form that enshrines this this this this this this the the the aggressivity that then must in turn always defend itself right it's you know okay um that's that's a question that that we could ask you know and and obviously we would ask it from the position of the of someone who imagines the possibility of an alternative okay and then there's just the very idea of a right to exist um you know there's I don't believe that the right to exist has a right to exist like the very idea is is kind of an indefensible idea you know um uh you know it's an aggressive idea right it's a you know I don't know I mean I don't want we don't try to turn this into a pseudo philosophy class cuz because which is the only kind of philosophy class that I could ever hope to teach because I'm a pseudo philosopher at best you know but it makes me want to like dig into the atmology of exist you know um it's a you know um I I I I think maybe maybe you know I don't even I'm not even and I'm not comfortable with the idea of Rights either for that matter but if I was going to assert a right maybe it would be the right to insist you know rather than exist you know um but but yeah I I I think that all of these Concepts the right to exist the right to defend itself um that they in some complicated ways are predicated on a prior assertion of right and that is the right to be aggressive the right to invade right the uh the right to overwhelm okay the right to displace okay um you know and um and and and and and that's a right that we must refuse okay we we have to refuse it when it is when it is asserted against us but we also have to refuse it in the sense that it can never be a right that we choose to claim okay and um you know um states don't have rights okay they certainly don't have a right to exist okay and and I'm of the opinion at least that everything is better everything will have been better when States no longer exist okay and again I think it's extraordinarily unfortunate for the Jewish people okay right okay that they are tied ideologically okay most of the time by people other than themselves okay to the existence of a state that stands in for the state's right to exist which is always already a colonial right okay and I believe that it is absolutely imperative on us who support the idea and and the necessity of justice for the people of Palestine to make sure that they are not made to stand in for any such right themselves okay so yeah right on I appreciated um you know when we talked to Fai from decolonized Palestine he said you know first he said it's not a thing he also said what is this right to exist it he said he said not at my expense you know and I and I think that that's that's the thing you know with all of this I mean that yeah within any formulation you know uh yeah but but it's a we you know it might very well be the case I mean I believe that we one question we should ask ourselves would be what if existence is always at some other's expense okay what if that is just baked into the nature of existence okay which is to say that what's baked into the nature of existence is already a division between something like a self and something like another right these are you know and it's why the the X the ex in exist is is so potentially problematic because it might very well always already have been aggressively outward in its orientation right okay and and this is why but you know these are these are these are Semite technical questions about the terrible relay between being and existence that that we might want to that eventually I guess they do have something to do with the the matter at hand but but we'd have to talk about that for a long time you know and it would end up I think having an impact on on on on H on on on on how we talk when we talk amongst ourselves and and and what we claim you know and and and what we desire what what what we what we learn to want you know um so right on I want to pull in so I have a couple other questions but we've touched on a lot of what I wanted to kind of make sure that we got to um so I'm actually going to pull in something from the AUD so nen here asks she said I am asking myself after a sustained and Consolidated effort to evacuate the humanity of Arabs through every Colonial instrument what combination of words can prove our Humanity now and I I think this gets a little bit to this discussion you know you had a and I had I mean it I remember in 2020 we were talking and it was around the time that um that Amazon was was putting black lives matter when you turned on your TV and you know and it the that like the you know the the proliferation and and people were these corporations were using the word solidarity which was which was a fascinating appropriation of language because I you know that's you know you know I mean I I think you know that word has been so evacuated now of of what it what it should mean um but you know I mean I think that this is the complicatedness of of of of speaking and not speaking and you and I were talking you know we exchanged the email before this initially you weren't sure that you wanted to to do this because of you know the frustration that you had with a lot of the speech that's out there as well um but at the same time you do you you did come around to I guess I don't want to put words in your mouth you can you can clarify for me but that you wanted to talk about it right and the and the difference between getting together and having conversations and talking about these things versus uh the need to make declarative statements well it's just like um well a couple things I mean um well everything look I mean any statement that anybody's gonna make right now if we're honest about it it ought to begin to feel inadequate about five or six minutes after it was uttered you know like I don't have any you know maybe it's just a quirk in language you know maybe there there's there's a kind of weird you know problem with the very idea of a statement you know um that it it appears to to indicate something definitive when it can't indicate something definitive maybe all statements are without us knowing it very well it's just a kind of weird particularly perverse subset of of of the larger field of what we might call of question you know um you know maybe all of these things that we say ought to have a question mark at the end of it just to indicate that they're tentative and that they're necessarily imperfect and and and and to indicate that they must be followed by another statement we could call this something like the the the the the emancipation of the dissonance of every statement right like a musicologist could say well what's a dissonant not a dissonant note is just a note that needs to be followed by another note okay so the one thing we know about all these statements is that they need to be followed by another statement okay that refines the previous statement or that undermines this previous statement or that defines the previous statement it's all tentative right and the question is what's the intention you know behind the statement what are you trying to get to you know what are you attempting to approach okay what what desires are you driven by okay um you know and I believe that if we could kind of you know ask those questions particularly the questions about desire then we could give each other a little bit of a break right when it turns out that the statements which we already knew were destined to be inadequate when they turn out to be inadequate okay you know let's give yeah you know we were trying to you know the problem then becomes the seriality of the statement right my statement has to follow somebody else's statement well maybe we need to try to figure out a way to create some kind of CounterPoint here right not CounterPoint in the sense of of argument or or disputation but rather just a a a different level of harmonic complexity so that you know so that a way we can figure out how to regulate you know if you will and to work with this the the necessity of talking with each other at the same time about this stuff right not having to you know it's we have to figure out how to talk with each other about things you know we have to refine that it's like my friend Manolo Callahan and I I'm always trying to I'm always got this impulse to mention the names of the people whose thoughts have influenced me and I almost feel like I don't want to do that today because I don't want to feel like I'm making them responsible for whatever crazy [ __ ] I'm saying that's GNA end up inevitably being wrong but it is like monolo would say you know we have to renew our habits of assembly right we have to refine those those habits and learn we have to keep learning how to talk to each other keep learning how to get together with each other you know um and and and I believe it's important to spend most of our time when we're talking with each other outside of the necessity okay of addressing um silly [ __ ] or feeling the necessity of uh being involved in in in in in some impossible discursive imperative like for instance proving your Humanity you can't prove your Humanity so the best thing to do is to stay away from people to whom you must prove it okay don't talk to them whatever you say to them should be a lie okay as as far as I'm concerned you know I mean I'm not there's no there's no utopian space in which we never have to deal with them or their effects but what we don't have to do is argue with them on their own ground and it turns out anyway that at least 99% of the evil [ __ ] they do to you is not because they don't think you're human it's because they know that you are right right okay they know how much it's going to hurt they know how much it's gonna damage you okay they know how they know the pain it's gonna make you feel then reason they know it is because they sort of know how they would feel if somebody did that [ __ ] to them right they know that it's gonna [ __ ] you up what they're getting ready to do to you in a way that it wouldn't [ __ ] up a dog or that it wouldn't really [ __ ] up a fish right so their brutality is generally not a function of their you know of of their belief in your inhumanity it's a function of their absolute certainty of your Humanity okay the Israeli de defense minister was clear and you know it it can be complex you know right well we're going to not no water no electricity no fuel we're fighting human what human animals is what he said right right okay but he he didn't say inhuman animals you know he said yeah we we're gonna yeah we're gonna do yeah right so look I mean I I can't prove my Humanity okay I don't want to prove my Humanity I'm leery of humans right right I see we live right within the in the wake of the brutality of what humans do okay um I'm much more interested in the idea of species reassignment okay than than species confirmation when it comes to the human you know I'm pretty sure that that that that that the capacity of those that set of differences that we reduce right when we place the name human on it right that the capacity for that set of generative interesting sometimes beautiful differences to maintain itself on the earth okay will have been if it maintains itself on the earth it will have been a function of our detachment from the idea of the human rather than our fulfillment or our confirmation of the idea of the human Okay so so if the [ __ ] want to say I Ain't Human [ __ ] you [ __ ] you know I mean you know no no no no and and and as far as the statement thing is concerned look I mean you reminded me of something that we said you know years ago about the statement being what the the bad breath of whiteness or something like that the the you said the bad breath of the white world is what you said yeah okay well but it didn't stop me from signing on to statements right in in this last in this present moment I couldn't I couldn't stop myself you know maybe it was like a moment where my you know my Humanity sprang up to bite me in the ass and and and to persuade me yet again to do the wrong damn thing okay you know I mean I signed a state and and and and please I'm not denouncing the people who who write the statements or come up with the statements I I understand the impulse I I have the impulse myself you see right um but I statement artist statement you know and I was like okay I signed it okay so I'm I'm not trying to I'm not denouncing it from the position of someone who was above it I signed it and and under and if you catch me at the wrong moment you know a week from now I might sign it again you know um but we were statement was like calling upon art institutions to speak out against the violence that's being perpetrated by the Israeli State and I'm like um I'm like I don't want the Guggenheim to say something about I don't they can't I don't want them to speak for me when it comes to this I don't want the Tate modern to speak for no no no no no no they're not going to say what I would want them to say I don't want them to do that that I you know um I don't want New York University to make a statement on my behalf with regard to this you know and and I and and and frankly I don't want NYU to make a statement on my behalf in a way that will make me feel a little less queasy about working for NYU right I don't I you know no because first of all I don't even I don't think we should feel queasy about the fact that we have to work but we have to work right you know General Baker didn't feel queasy about the fact that he had to work for Ford Motor Company and and he saw no contradiction between going to work for Ford Motor Company and trying to destroy Ford Motor Company that's a contradiction that I can live in and live with happily you know until the material conditions for it disappear as the function of the work that we do right right I'm like you know I I don't I'm not mad at artists work for museums and galleries because the museums and galleries work for the rich people who collect and it's cool and artists need to come to grips with that and it doesn't make you a bad person it just makes you another one of these people out here who's got to work for some evil [ __ ] to make a living that's all okay and and most people are smart enough to not like their bosses right and to not want their bosses to speak for them right you know and to not need their bosses to speak for them you know to not need their bosses to to offer to offer some to ventriloquize their sentiments you know so it's okay you know not you know if if you if you've you know know if you're if you're under if I believe it's like a horrible Misfortune to be given to making visual art right it's because because you're driven to do it you know it's an Impulse that you can't help but follow but but look what it puts you in connection with you know it's sad it's it's horrible to be a nerdy kind of person who wants to read a lot of books because you're almost sort of driven towards the UN you know and and then you gotta and then you're with you got to deal with bad people all the time you know or whatever you know but but that doesn't make you you know that's we we have to learn how to work through these things you know it without you know Den denouncing some individual's morality you know or some individual's assertion of a moral position no no no no no let's consider you know the the the the General Health of our common ethical practices you know and yeah fah did did did it could be said that fah or or Sylvia winter who we whom we love and Revere okay they do try to imagine another idea of the human and that might be a moment in which we would say I love y'all but maybe maybe it's really beyond the formation of another idea of the human maybe the very idea of the human as such is just a genuine problem that we have have to get get out of you know um maybe maybe the idea of the human is already so fundamentally contaminated by a latent raciality right by a latent misogyny okay right by maybe maybe it's just a bad idea you know maybe it can't be saved maybe we have to let that go I appreciate that provocation um one of the things so yeah what we have you here I do want to spend a little time because you know we've we've hinted at it but we haven't talked much about about ethical practice about you know thinking about our own anti-colonial practice and I appreciate the way you say that right because it's not like I think there's a lot of like armchair quarterbacking of like like Palestinians and and that falls into the very trap you mentioned too of um expecting that all of anti-colonial struggle and the weight of that as a concept and a formulation has to follow has to fall upon the Palestinian people and that that is a brutal formulation in itself um and so yeah I mean I don't you know what what are you what are some of the things you're wrestling in terms of anti-colonial practices as as we might think of it here in in where we are in the so-called United States well I mean this is what you know I've been talking about with my friends trying to think through it for a long time but especially more intensely over the last couple of weeks and first of all I think it's not well I mean I was driving with my partner on the way to where I am right now this morning and she was like adamantly opposed to the the the very idea of the question what should we do right because it always because it induces somebody usually some man to say okay here's what we you know and that and that's already a defeat you know and I'm not trying to ask you that no no I know I know I know I wouldn't wasn't even I was just I just had her in my ear you know um CUA because I often end up you know too happily standing in in the playing the role of that man you know and I don't want to be that man you know um but but you know I mean when she talks about she said well Fuko you know people ask that question fuk just say everything there's everything to do you know um and then but then there's another way in which is just sort of say well maybe some small I I know that people feel despair over what seems like the the the the the magnitude of of the brutality the magnitude of the evil okay and I guess I'm I'm starting to think well you know you know you can work work where you are you have to do work where you are um I live in the United States which is a brutal settler Colony okay and um and and the brutality of it the massiveness of it is that it that that settler Colonial intent pervades every every activity every sphere of life every every place everything and so you know whether you want to call it anti-colonial practice or decolonial practice it's really about re-calibrating everyday practices in such a way is to disrupt that Colonial intent so I think about it because I think about it with regard to my job okay because my job is I'm a I'm a teacher and I think how does the coloniality express itself in the sort of forms and Protocols of my job and what would be the ways to to detach and to work against those Colonial forms and protocols so I've got I've got I've got some ideas about that and what I want to do is is is talk with some other people about these ideas and see how they can be enacted and and and and refined I don't think we have to have the answer before we start doing [ __ ] I think we have to be willing to experiment and get it wrong and then try to fix it okay and I also think that we have to do so especially in those zones where the coloniality the colonial intent has become so pervasive that they don't even watch us anymore right like they don't come to my classroom to check and make sure that I am adhering to the Colonial intent and they're not particularly interested in the content of my class because it's not NE necessarily the content where adherence to the Colonial intent is being played out right like in other words I have to now come to grips with the fact that I can teach all the Sylvia winter and all the fol and all the malcs I want and I might still be adhering to the Colonial intent that it's really not about the content of what you read maybe it's about how you read maybe it's about how much reading you a sign maybe it's about grading or not you know that maybe there's these maybe the maybe the coloniality is given somewhere other than in the content okay but but these are all questions that I want to begin to think about and investigate and experiment with with other people recognizing that there's maybe some interesting leeway that we have in a classroom setting because they're not really watching us they're really not yeah you could somebody might annoy you or somebody you know and it's and obviously it's a different situation if you're a tenur faculty person rather than a adjunct so I I get that and and those and but even that you know I shouldn't have to give I don't want to be in a position of always having to provide a caveat to the stupid [ __ ] I just said I want to be in a room full of my friends so that they can say no that [ __ ] is stupid and we can work something out together that's the point you know so yeah yeah appreciate that um let's see folks if you do have questions drop them in the chat we have a we can have a little bit more time um uh just looking through the comments in the chat to see if there's anything here um let's see this question can we say the same for those whose teachings Center Palestine though so I guess that's a question of is it still is it still Colonial if we're centering Palestinian anti-colonial work maybe is the question here um yeah obviously some content is is is maybe a little bit riskier and a little more volatile to than others and I think but even that also depends upon who's doing the teaching and and where they're doing that teaching I so yeah I I don't wantan to I'm not trying to adhere to some to the to the blanket statement that I just made but um and then the qu and then here's the point right oh Okay then if there are people who are particularly vulnerable when they teach um in in a in a class that is sort of focused on Palestine then how do we um how how do we mobilize in order to protect them how do we create different kinds of pedagogical situations so that they will be less vulnerable stuff like that right um and I and I don't believe that it's impossible to formulate some some some strategies for doing that they might not be perfect strategies and they might not last for all time they would have to themselves be revised depending upon see here's the thing there's conditions under which it turn we will end up being under attack okay and then we'll have to deal with that attack but what I guess I'm suggesting is is that if we begin to do engage in more sort of conscious and anti-colonial practices in the sort of before the fact of the attack will be that much better prepared for the attack when it comes right and we'll have some ideas about how to withstand it okay and and and how to yeah so do Jared ball from Morgan State University's question is can I be down with those class experiments yeah I would love to to I would be I'm so I mean and you know there are people that I've already and I I'm sure that Professor ball too we've already been involved in some of these experiments and and and experiments with people who are in different universities and maybe outside of the sort of normative University trying to create other kinds of you know Alternative Learning spaces and so I'm not talking about inventing something that we had that we haven't already been doing I'm saying kind of reclaiming and refining those those practices but yes I would this is all I want to work on and and I want to work with anybody else who wants to work on it you know so right on a person just commented that they went to a teaching on Palestine and while learning what was happening in Palestine their brain couldn't help but think the same things are happening in black communities Across America um yeah I mean I think that there's a lot of resonance uh you know between the two um experiences um obviously there's some there's some real particularities to um I think the Palestinian experience um but that doesn't mean that there's not um a lot of a lot of shared history and a lot you know I mean there's a lot of black nationalists and black socialists and black commun communist figures who have historically been in solidarity with Palestine and not just solidarity as some expression but actual you know exchange of knowledge and you know practice and and thinking and stuff like that too so um yeah yeah no I I think that uh well first of all I just think that black communities in the United States are are almost invariably and have been for a very very very long time they are international communities and they are internationalist communities right um and that internationalism manifests itself in ways that are both let's say internal to the African diaspora but that cross the boundary beyond what it is that we would call the African diaspora so um and again to to again the challenge is always to figure out ways to move beyond the limits of the rhetorical right not to eliminate the rhetorical not to eliminate the necessity of speaking because that that can't be done and it shouldn't be done but but to engage in practices um that are not that are not just about making those again you know statements of of solidarity and you know um yeah so I but what you know when we see things happening in the West Bank in Gaza yeah it rings Bells you know but not just there there's stuff happening elsewhere in the world and and it's happening not just you know the black communities in the US but other communities in the US as well indigenous communities most especially you know um and so I think it's really important to that that's another important that that that the way that that question was framed was precisely around this necessity of a kind of double vision right that I see there and I see other places too you know and that's that's a more again that's a that's a more refined seeing the and it's the an example of the the more refined seeing that we that we need to engage in you know right on um I'm going to pull up a couple other things um this was a comment that someone's interested in what happens when the majority of can't be the majority of us can't be trusted by the state and then they don't know where to look cuz they'd be looking everywhere um and that majority could be real or imagined um someone else asked is this petite Marin I assume this was discussing when you were talking about the practices of of the classroom and things like that um yeah I don't know if you have anything to reflect on either of those well I I don't know if it would be right to so what I would say is with regard to the P Marge I don't know if it would be right to just make that absolute kind of direct equivalence okay but but let's just say that there's absolutely and definitely there there could be and there should be a family you know resemblance and um and what that means is that it's important for us to study the history of of P marinaj not just to not just in the interest of claiming some connection to it as a kind of way of exalting one's own personal identity but rather to say man we don't have to invent everything right we've got a history in which we have in which people have worked you know against odds that are you know pretty objectively greater than the odds that we face and we can learn something from what it is that we've already done right um that that maybe the mistake was thinking that those those those kinds of activities weren't necessary anymore like Well turns out they are you know and and uh you know and and so we we learn we seek out the history of p marinaj and um and look for it everywhere I mean that that other question was like well yeah they don't trust us you they already don't trust us and they already look for us everywhere we're under constant surveillance um maybe one of the things is may we need to look for ourselves you know a little bit more you know um I kind of feel like sometimes they have a better idea what we can do than we do you know um so you know yeah I'll say you know just one thing with regards to that and to connect back to Palestine is that I do think one of the things that um and I realize some people get conspiratorial about this and I and I disagree with them but um one of the things that folks could say or have said about Israel is that it had Perfect Defense structures it had perfect security apparatuses it had you know perfected surveillance and yet and still they were caught completely off guard in terms of a lot of the actions that were taken by Palestinians in the early phases of this resistance and I think that if nothing else that that should point us to the fact that yes we we should be very wary of all this surveillance and we should be wary of the surveillance that we subject ourselves to with with these things and with what we're on right now and and all of that um but also I I think it's important for people not to um let the existence of the surveillance State um deter them from you know taking careful but you know appropriate action you know and uh yeah well you know the question questions regarding what Israeli intelligence knew and didn't know is is an interesting one you know um and my my my sense of it could be totally wrong is that they didn't know when or where or exactly how it was going to happen but they knew it was going to happen because they've been imposing the conditions that made it absolutely inevitable that it would happen Okay um and I think it's similar with regard to our our situation here in the US you know I mean but what we've got is is is uncertainty and indeterminacy with regard to the the where the how the when you know and and and and that's and that indeterminacy is our is is is is one of our is one of our advantages you know um but but but the fact of the matter is it's they know it's going to happen um and so they surveil heavily and they've got extraordinarily you know they're they got techniques and powers that are meant to to suppress it when it happens the the suppression will never be total um but but they do but it but but the point the point is that uh well look man I mean I the optimism to which I subscribe is is completely is out of necessity like in order to fight in order to play you know I gotta believe that we can win and that we have what it takes to to win okay so you know um and it's what allows it's what makes it possible to try to look closely enough at at at the forces that are array against us to be able to understand how they work you know um and and and and at the same time to know that even however daunting those forces might appear to be we still have what it takes to to to to to defeat those forces so that's I believe that it I will stop believing that when I die you know and and and I won't need to believe it anymore when I'm gone you know but but but I but I you know if if I stopped believing that then I would then I think that I would die you know so um I we can win I know we can win right on so Matt D asked a question um shout out to Matt Matt is is an organizer that goes back to the March for our lives and has engaged in significant politicization and radicalization since then as well and um you know he said today there are many many walkouts happening I've organized so many walkouts and years ago pivoted the calls for walkouts and teachin to be paired so that the action could become a momentum organization Builder I'm curious on additional insights that can develop this tactic further regarding student protests um yeah I don't know if you have any thoughts on that Fred but uh you know was a good question well I got one thought um but I guess it's kind of a long thought um I'll see if I can try to make it concise um and it gets back to that question of content you know and in a classroom let's say Okay um I've always I began to believe because of my interest in jazz and interest in the music and I always had this kind of idealistic notion that I wanted my classes to be like being in a band you know that I wanted him to operate that way and I and I never was able to to do it never was able to pull it off it it's doesn't I don't know but I began to consider that there's this other element to it too which is that I kind of feel like every class that is about the class that the class is a kind of it's an event you know it's a it's a it's a sort of organized sort of temporarily framed you know you know AB you know sort of occasion for Gathering right and that the class is always about the class the class is always about how do we get together to do this what are the protocols how do we organize ourselves in order to study this stuff right so it's always like a little experiment in Social organization um and um and and whatever the content of the class it it's always about the class whether it's this this experiment in Social organization is operative whether you're teaching about opera or Palestine it doesn't matter um and um and there might be ways to align the question of content with the question of form okay but that question of form or even or if you or better yet a kind of deformation right right um that's that's always operative it's always has to be foregrounded right it can't just be hidden it's got to always be made clear okay and and that and so another so every every goddamn class should be an experiment in anti-colonial practice at the level of its organization okay and if you're engaged in that experiment then I've always I always kind of felt like you know we're the ones who kind of feel like thinking and studying is important for what we do and for Who We Are so so kind of not having a class always seemed to me to be like like I'd rather like go on a hunger strike than not have class you know like I got more of a commitment to the experimental social organization of the class than to the you know the Integrity of my own body you see what I'm trying to say so so I'm like you know like in the H blocks you know right like Bobby they they went on hunger strike but they didn't stop their Irish glasses you see what I'm saying I mean like I kind that's but and this raises another issue right regarding the question of what it means to walk out what it means to go on strike okay and and and I feel like over the last few years maybe most emphatically and again if I mention the name it's not to suggest that this person might be endorsing any of what I'm saying on any level but but I think you know one of the important contributions in Sidia Hartman's recent work is she's giving us a way of refining you know kind of in the wake of duboyce and maybe in the wake wake of Walter Benyamin our understanding of the general strike and one way to think about it is what's the relation between PTI marinaj and the general strike right okay what we like do Boyce in Black reconstruction he's saying well you know somewhere early on in the Civil War enslaved people went on a general strike that basically tipped the scales in the favor of the the union and it makes you want to go well did they begin the general strike at that moment or were there always these forms of Labor action if you will right and I understand all the various reasons why people want to not say that the the slave was a worker but but just this once I'll try to see if I can get away with it just because of what it might generate right were there forms of Labor Insurgency right that we could talk about under the rubric of P marinaj but that we might even that might we might get even more out of it if we talk about it under the rubric of a general strike right this is It's a complicated thing and it's something to talk about another time maybe but but all I'm trying to suggest you know in relation to that question okay is we should just always be trying to radicalize what it is we do in the classroom and embracing that as an experimental space right so that when a crisis emerges when an intensification of the brutal brutalities of genocide and coloniality when when those things emerge in ways that that require that we pay attention to them even though though they extend the long ass history that we it better prepares us to respond in the attention that we pay right we should have already been working on this [ __ ] is what I'm trying to say right because these [ __ ] are killing people in [ __ ] up ways all over the place every day yeah okay and we should be working against that [ __ ] every day okay that's not to lessen or to reduce the intensity of the current brutality it's in fact to better prepare us for the the intensity of the next brutality because the [ __ ] are working on that right now okay oh thank you Fred I'm GNA pull up so I'll do two more and then we'll close it out because I I do want to uh well why are there balloons on my screen I'm just trying to figure out this thing um all right so this one I think we can kind of pretty pretty quickly so this was just a question uh Palestine Palestinian comrades have told them that the Zionist state has too much power for us to afford just talking amongst ourselves we need to bring people in not cut them off what do you think of that Fred and then I'll pull up the other one and we can just kind of do both and then um say are grateful goodbyes so quacy asked um would you say that we are witnessing the occupation and genocide of Palestinians is an antagonism at the level of ontology or simply on the terrain of geopolitical conflict so there's those two the ontology versus geopolitical con uh conflict and then the other one was about bringing folks in and not cutting folks off and I'm sorry chat we won't take any more but we will we'll we respond to these and close it out well um I just say [ __ ] very briefly and probably therefore cryptically and but I'm happy to try to expand on what I think with quazy and with uh the other person whose name I didn't get um if they want to email me or something but Arturo Arturo I don't believe believe that talking amongst ourselves is ever predicated on some exclusionary idea of who constitutes ourselves when we talk upon even when we talk amongst ourselves I believe that we do it with and within a an let's say an Evangelical imperative okay and I guess maybe what I mean when I say Talk Amongst ourselves is that we just don't need to okay so here's an example and I know Robin Kelly said something like this this weekend too so I'm echoing him as as I always do at least when I'm trying to when I'm close to saying something right at least is that uh sometimes when we say that we want to reach a larger audience we are also involved in this process in which we take up the terms and conditions of the discourse within which that larger audience operates so for instance we might say something like when the when when Israel bombs Gaza at this particular moment they do so against these extraord in in in blatant violation of international law for me what it means to Talk Amongst ourselves is to be able to operate within what I think is an absolutely necessary and absolutely unavoidable critique of the very idea and of the foundations of international law okay international law and settler coloniality are handmaidens of one another right and and so but see the thing is we need to talk amongst ourselves elves about that because talking with them about that means exceeding to the the mythologies of international law right so so so I guess when I say Talk Amongst ourselves I don't mean it to sort of create a boundary in terms of who we talk to I mean that it establishes a set of protocols about how we talk okay and um so that's that's a rough answer to that and then second answer would be it'll be more cryptic you know um I believe in the absolute importance of the sort of heuristic value of the distinction between antagonism and conflict like I think it's a totally productive distinction it helps us to think but then I but I also believe it's it's heuristic right and I believe that the distinction between antagonism and conflict ought not blind us to the fact that every geopolitical conflict right is a function of the brutalities of ontological thinking okay so that's the way I would put it you know um and again that's kind of hyper cryptic and insular but but I'm kind of having a feeling that quazy understands what I'm getting that even if he might disagree with it you know so right on Fred I just want to thank you so much for for doing this um for coming on having these this conversation shout out to everybody uh in the chat for the the great questions the great um you know responses um I think that added something for sure to this discussion today because people brought up a lot of stuff that um you know I wouldn't I wouldn't have asked and I think that those are important questions that people have and um yeah Fred I just want to I just want to thank you again well thank you Jared now I just want to say I maybe I was a little wary about coming on because I knew the form is structured so that it puts me in a position of answering questions you know even if I a got no answers and but I also wanted to but I'm I I appreciate the invitation because for me it was a chance to what I really want to say is is I don't know if any of what I'm saying is right it's I I I believe it when I'm saying it you know I'm I'm happy to find out that it was wrong or limited the only way that I could do that is if people who are here I want to talk with y'all not to y'all but with y'all about it some kind of way um so if you're in New York or you got an email address or whatever we I I'd love to find ways to keep talking about all this with y'all so we can work on on this stuff together so um that'll be much more important and valuable than anything that I said today so all right so but thank you for the chance Tok you to get something yeah to keep it going you know so yeah absolutely thank you again all right folks uh this has been another live stream from Millennials or killing capitalism live um thanks to you all and we'll see you next time